Kill and Tell, page 22
At this point, she tried not to believe, but something in her heart sang. She tried to resist, but the hope had already risen.
Everybody rushes to gather their things. They cram into each other, shuffling for the doors as if their lives depend on it. Maureen sits alone, until the man with the large bin bag comes to clear the newspapers and coffee cups. He tells her to move on, doing it with a kindly smile and a soft hand on her shoulder, as if he could possibly understand.
*
Jacobo Sartori moves away from the window of his fine Edwardian villa. The window is etched with long-stemmed flowers, stained emerald and rose.
Within sixty seconds, Jacobo is back, looking up and down the street. Before long, Appolina appears at his side. The two of them appear to be in some well-mannered disagreement and Jacobo points up the street, in the direction of Muswell Hill Road.
Five minutes later, the front door opens and Appolina leaves the house, pulling a shopping bag behind her, on wheels.
Jacobo waves from the window, looking quite mournful. She waves back and looks equally sad; Staffe lowers his field glasses as she comes towards his parked Peugeot 406, battered and inconspicuous. He turns down the music, which is Bartók. It makes him think of Curtis Consadine and Mako, two long lives ahead of them.
Staffe watches Appolina until she is completely out of sight, and considers his next move.
*
‘You are in a strange mood today, my boy,’ says Carmelo, sitting in the back of the car, which has blacked-out windows.
Maurice locks the doors from the switch on the driver’s door.
Carmelo lights up a cigarette. ‘Is this the day?’ He takes a drag as best he can, coughs until his eyes water.
‘Those will kill you, uncle, and you don’t want that.’
‘Are we finally done with all this prevaricating? The truth is what’s killing me.’
‘Which truth?’ Maurice keeps an eye on Carmelo in the rear-view.
The old man is looking out of the window, watching his adopted city scroll by. ‘The truth that it was Abie Myers who killed your grandfather; that I completed the pact and ran David Myers through on Brighton racetrack. It was straight after the third race. You can corroborate.’
‘There is only one truth, uncle. You can’t give one to me and the police, and keep another to yourself.’
‘I’m coming clean, so why would I lie?’
Maurice drives steady.
Carmelo says, ‘You drive slower than me – like an old man. You should be fast, at your age, eating life up.’
‘They say it is better to travel—’
‘Than to arrive. Hah! Just like an old man. But where are we travelling to. What is this fateful destination of mine? A police station?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps not at all – unless you tell me the truth.’
‘I’ve told you the truth!’ Carmelo takes a deep drag on his cigarette and holds his side as he coughs up. ‘Where are we going? These are the woods. Is this Muswell Hill?’
‘It’s where you stashed Jacobo.’
‘Stashed?’
‘You’ve been a good boss. He lives like a successful man, perhaps the manager of a bank, yet all he does is make you risotto and collect your laundry. It doesn’t add up.’
‘He’s a friend.’
‘But I’ve been adding up, uncle. I wonder how I’ll fare, with my total?’
‘You talk in riddles.’ Carmelo sits back and remembers when he and Jacobo first came here, thinking they were champions of the world.
Maurice turns slowly without indicating into Cranley Gardens and a horn blares from the angry driver behind.
They paid cash for the house: four hundred and fifty pounds – a fortune. Carmelo catches Maurice looking at him in the rear-view mirror. A smile creases across the young man’s face.
‘I never thanked you, uncle, for that share in your house. I appreciate it, and I think I understand it.’
‘There’s nothing to understand.’
‘Me and Jacobo and Appolina sharing – not allowed to sell. We’d end up living there together, wouldn’t we? It’s big enough for an extended family.’
‘Extended family? What’s that?’
Maurice pulls up, outside Jacobo’s house.
Carmelo says, ‘This is too obvious a place for me to seek refuge.’
‘Refuge? We’re simply taking our chances with the truth, and by coming here, a swift resolution is assured. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘I want to confess, damn you! Is that too much for a dying man to ask? What harm—’ Carmelo coughs. ‘—what harm can come of that?’
Maurice turns off the engine, twists in his seat to face Carmelo. ‘Attilio rests heavy on my conscience. They arrested him for your abduction. We can’t allow that.’
‘He doesn’t care a jot for his own father. He can fuck himself. He would see me die in sin just so he can cling onto his life as gentry. That’s a lie, not a life, and they say he tried to kill himself. That’s the act of a coward; and a sinner. My God! He deserves the truth to come out.’
‘Does anybody really want the truth?’
‘You want it, surely? You want justice for Maurizio‚ your poor grandfather?’
‘I want what is best for my grandfather, after the life he has lived. That’s the only thing that matters to me. Absolutely the only thing.’
Carmelo tries to say something, but coughs again, holding his chest and leaning back.
*
Staffe keeps an eye on the black Golf with tinted windows outside Jacobo’s house.
After a short while, Maurice Greene steps out. He glides around the car, leaning into the back, helping someone out.
For the first time in many long years, Staffe sees Carmelo Trapani. His eyes are bright but his face is grey. In his hand, a bloodied handkerchief. Still, everything about the man exudes grandeur. He would draw the eye, even if you weren’t looking for him.
Carmelo walks up Jacobo’s path with his head high, his draped overcoat hanging from his shoulders in long folds, like a Bernini, and Staffe suddenly feels less capable of negotiating the conclusion he had in mind. At the door, Carmelo pauses and turns. He looks across the road and fixes his eyes on Staffe’s Peugeot. His long jowls crease almost into a smile. His chin comes up an inch or so, like a leader of men. He grimaces and holds his side, coughing, bringing the handkerchief to his mouth. The door opens and Carmelo steps inside.
Staffe thinks, ‘Stick or twist?’
*
Jacobo brings Maurice and Carmelo a tray of tea, with glasses of water and a bottle of aquavit, three tulip-shaped glasses from Murano.
‘Will Appolina be gone long?’ says Carmelo.
‘Until she hears from me,’ says Jacobo.
‘Did she know we were coming?’
‘She knows me well enough, after everything I have denied her.’
‘You gave her plenty, Jacobo,’ says Carmelo.
‘She was here when Maurice called. I have never been able to lie to her.’
‘You just didn’t tell her. That’s the same as lying. Don’t think you’re better than me, Jacobo. And Maurice called you to say we were coming? To what end, I wonder?’ says Carmelo, looking at Maurice with some hostility.
‘My only concern is Maurizio, uncle. I’m still unsure of the circumstances surrounding his murder.’
‘I told you, Abie Myers killed him and in return I did for David Myers – to my eternal shame and suffering.’
‘I need to hear Jacobo’s version of events.’
‘He was my cousin,’ says Carmelo, ‘And the important thing is, two men died. I must atone for what was done. Justice must be done.’
‘What would my grandfather think of what we are doing, Jacobo? What part did you play in the murder of that poor soul on Cable Street?’
‘Jacobo had nothing to gain,’ says Carmelo.
Maurice sits beside Jacobo on the sofa and taps him lightly on the knee with his open palm. His knee is all bone. Jacobo, a shadow of his master. ‘Is that correct? Does my grandfather concur?’
‘Your grandfather?’ says Jacobo, his eyes big and wide in his kindly, wrinkled face.
Maurice produces the photograph of the burly man with the dark hair and the broken, Roman nose. He shows it to Jacobo, turning it over, showing the yellowed reverse, with his name on it.
‘What the hell is that?’ says Carmelo.
‘Jacobo Sartori,’ says Jacobo, reading the reverse of the photograph.
‘He is watching over us; looking down,’ says Maurice. ‘But he is not Maurizio Verdetti, is he, nonno?’
‘He’s not your nonno,’ says Carmelo.
Maurice turns to Jacobo, holds both his hands. ‘What did he do to you, nonno? What did you do with your life, and poor Appolina, and my damned father? Claudio was damned, wasn’t he, nonno, even before he was born.’
‘That’s why we had to send him away.’
‘And what of me? Am I damned?’ He turns to face Carmelo. ‘What must I do, to be absolved? I’ll tell you what, uncle – I must save my grandfather from a prosecution of this awful truth. That’s what I must do even if that means sending you to hell.’
Thirty-six
Maureen Pulford doesn’t know where she is. These streets are a raggedy mix of the posh and the down-at-heel. Eventually, they stop and the driver growls, ‘Twenty-two,’ over the chunter of the black cab.
She looks up at HMP Pentonville: grim and impenetrable. Twenty-two quid seems an inordinate amount considering it only looked a mile or so on the map, but Maureen picks five folded fivers from her purse and tells the driver to keep the change. He doesn’t say ‘thank you’ and gives her an untrusting smirk.
‘He isn’t guilty. Didn’t do it,’ says Maureen.
‘Sure he didn’t,’ says the driver. He has an unkind face and Maureen wonders if that is what his job did to him.
She steps out and when she sees the young mothers and girlfriends outside the visitor centre, her last whisper of hope loses itself in the noisy London air.
*
Maureen looks at her boy on the other side of the glass, reinforced with wire patterned like the exercise books he would bring home from school. He stands out from the crowd he is in now. He doesn’t belong here. She realises that what she thinks is unchristian and surely nobody is born to a life like this, but looking across at the other inmates, she can just tell that some of them are equipped to survive in here. Not David.
‘It’s good of you to come, mother.’
His voice is frail and that makes her heart bump.
‘It’s wonderful news. They say they have a confession. Somebody else did it.’
‘I told you somebody else did it.’
‘But now they can prove it. You’re getting out, David.’
‘The Crown is considering the evidence.’
‘You don’t sound pleased. Am I a fool to get my hopes up?’
David tries to make the shape of a smile but there’s barely any life in his eyes. ‘Of course not. Just that it might not happen in a hurry.’
‘Why not? If you didn’t do it and someone else did and he says he did it, that means you didn’t.’
Maureen watches her son’s eyes as they settle into a gaze to the floor.
They sit like that a while, neither speaking. She wants to hold him, but she can’t and she feels now, so surely in her heart, that if she did hold him it would be for a last time. How can that be? Her voice breaks when she eventually says, ‘What is it, David? I can bear anything, but don’t lie to me.’
‘I was with him. I was with the boy who confessed, so I know he didn’t do it. I was following him, hoping he would lead me somewhere.’
‘But he confessed.’
‘So we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Not just yet.’
*
‘Call the inspector, for pity’s sake,’ says Carmelo.
‘I want to hear your confession first, uncle,’ says Maurice. ‘Tell me exactly what happened in ’36.’
‘You know what happened.’
‘Some of the threads are loose. In real life, there isn’t such a thing as a loose end. Everything happens for a perfect reason. Everybody acts according to their heads or their hearts; from strength or out of desperation. Life is perfect, in that respect. Everything is explicable.’
‘Riddles, riddles. You have your damned story.’
‘My grandfather—’ Maurice looks at Jacobo. ‘—is Maurizio Verdetti, is he not?’
‘Of course.’
‘And he is here, with us.’
‘Names mean nothing. What matters is what we do with the lives we are given; finding a way to survive in the circumstances we are dealt. Jacobo and I have changed. We are different people.’
‘I was denied a family because of you.’
‘Your father’s death was accidental. Your mother deserted you.’
‘You sent my father away as soon as he was born. You lied. The least you can do is tell me what happened that day on Cable Street.’ Maurice turns to face his grandfather. ‘Say it wasn’t you who killed Jacobo Sartori, grandfather.’
Carmelo says, ‘For God’s sake let me tell my truth. What does it matter if we did for Jacobo Sartori? We saved your grandfather. Two men were killed. The names don’t matter.’
‘It matters that I am not alone in the world. I have lineage. And what about the family of this Jacobo Sartori? Don’t they deserve the truth about what happened to their husband, their father, their grandfather?’
‘Not everybody is like you,’ says Carmelo.
‘And there’s the pity,’ says Jacobo. He stands, goes to his grandson and embraces him. ‘It was supposed to be me who they killed, nipote. I did a terrible thing. That’s why I had to leave Sicily.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I killed a man. The wrong man, and your uncle Carmelo was sent from Sicily to do for me, but he couldn’t. We played together as boys. I bullied him!’ Jacobo laughs, wipes his eyes. ‘Then he met Abie Myers and they had this great idea.’
‘I ran David Myers through on the racecourse at Brighton. That’s what I did!’ says Carmelo, short of breath. He clutches his chest and collapses into a chair.
‘We told Abie Myers exactly what this new Maurizio Verdetti looked like.’ Maurice’s grandfather taps the photograph of the tall beast of a man.
‘And Abie did a job on him,’ says Maurice. ‘Who was he, this Jacobo Sartori?’
‘A fellow your uncle sailed into Tilbury with.’
‘Poor bastard,’ says Carmelo, wheezing.
‘And you became my uncle’s servant?’
‘Maurizio Verdetti had to disappear, one way or the other.’
‘But you shipped my father back to Sicily. Why do that?’ says Maurice.
Jacobo says, ‘Your grandmother wasn’t fit to raise a child. Not then. You wouldn’t believe the upset.’
‘I thought you met afterwards? She was a seamstress for Uncle Carmelo.’
‘We rewrote our history. You can’t imagine how afraid we were, of being caught out.’
‘We should never have sent your father away, but your grandmother was convinced we would be found out. It was for his own safety. Believe me, there’s not a day has passed . . . So when Carmelo heard you were orphaned . . . We were so proud of you. We still are.’ Carmelo’s manservant, Maurizio Verdetti, looks across, kindly, upon his old friend and saviour. He says to Maurice, ‘Grant your Uncle Carmelo his peace. It is in your gift. Do that, after everything he did for you.’
‘I have to think of you, nonno. You are my flesh and blood. You plotted and played a part in the murder of Jacobo Sartori. I can’t allow that to come out.’
‘It was so long ago.’
‘There is no statute of limitations on murder here, nonno. If I don’t protect you, who will?’
*
When Leilah Frankland has signed her statement and is released, it is Brandon Latymer who is waiting outside. It’s true what he told her all those weeks ago – that he’d always be there for her, if she did the right thing. She feels herself smile, for the first time in a long one.
She gets into his big rig on the Farringdon Road and they take a high-wheeled ride through the shiny City and on the way he starts fixing her up, gently. He gives her a little GHB and smiles with her as it takes her down. He puts his hand on the top of her leg and gives her a soft and long squeeze.
‘You got some benzos, Bran?’ she says, her eyes all dreamy and a little girl’s smile smudging in her face.
Brandon doesn’t know how people can live like this, but thank the Lord they do. This is his client base. He’s not deceiving himself. He’s a businessman and this is the consequence of his sales and distribution. The overriding truth is this: if Brandon didn’t sell, he’d use. Economics isn’t fair, but he looks at Leilah and can see that he and she had an equality of opportunity, as Curtis calls it. He loves talking to Curtis. Together, they are above where they came from and that is going to continue. It’s what Curtis calls social mobility. Oh, man.
He says, ‘You got to be up for this little thing we need you to do, Lay. Then we can bring you all the way down. Hear what I’m saying, doll?’ He leans across, kisses her on the side of the mouth. ‘How’s I give you half a Val?’
He sparks up a Dunhill International and holds the tar in the back of his throat. He’ll have some Armagnac when the sun goes down. It’s superior to brandy, he thinks. Maybe a line of coke if it’s just him and Jasmine and everything is quiet. But it’s not quiet, yet.
Leilah lies back, presses her head against the black tint and she shifts in her seat, so she is facing Brandon. Her little skirt rides up along her skinny white legs and from his perspective, her thong doesn’t quite do its job. Something in Brandon shifts. His libido is a constant threat.
‘Gonna fix you up proper. Take you shopping and then there’s that something you can do for us all.’
