Lost (6 page)

They drove along the docks. Liners bound for the Continent stood, tall as department stores, against the quay. Stuart kept his eyes on the road.

‘My husband hated this place,’ she whispered. ‘He really hated it.’

Stuart turned and looked at her. Of course he had.

They drove up into the hills. She was looking out of her window at the view he knew by heart of the hills falling away in tiers to the sea. A lurid moon took away the land’s contours, bringing it closer to them, and as they wound
further
into the island, Stuart felt the discomfort that always accompanied a return to his village.

They drove past the petrol station and the piece of scrubland the mayor tried to call a playground. He had even bought three swings for it, but the brand-new recreational unit had not lasted more than a week. It now stood as a reminder to the village of the sin of overenthusiasm – an empty scaffold, its ropes severed just below the rings. They drove past the gates to the cemetery, cut in neat rows into the hillside directly opposite the village, barring the view to the sea. ‘We live with our backs to the sea,’ the villagers told outsiders. ‘The sea never brought us any good.’

Sam kept his eyes wide open in the dark. Through the thin walls he could hear their voices. They spoke in French but their accents made it hard for him to understand. His wrists burned from the man’s grip and his finger was numb, but it was still there. He closed his eyes at the memory of the man who had sat beside him in the car, holding his finger in the machine for cutting cigars.

‘This is for cutting cigars,’ he said. If you move I’ll close it and you’ll lose your finger.’

He had felt a sharp pain just after the blade cut his skin. Because of the glasses they had made him wear, when he looked down he could see only the man’s hand covering his own. It was white with black hairs up to his knuckles. They had stuck something on the lenses so that he couldn’t see out.

The man had come up to him while he was looking for his swimming goggles. He had asked him where the church was, leaning down to him, his hands resting on his knees. His sunglasses were dark at the top and light at the bottom so Sam could see his eyes. Sam had told him that he didn’t know, which was not true. The man had asked him how old he was and when Sam had told him he had said that he had a son the same age. Sam could already smell the man – he smelled of perfume – and he had stepped back. It was then that he had seen the car. It was behind him and close. He had heard the door open. The man’s smile had suddenly vanished and Sam’s heart had jumped. Then the man had gripped him tightly round the shoulders and driven him backwards and Sam had cried out, and the man had clenched his teeth and said something he didn’t understand and pushed him into the car. Inside he had put the glasses on him
and then grabbed his finger, pushed it into the cold metal thing and explained what he would do if Sam moved. Then Sam had heard the tyres skidding on the gravel and been thrown against the man, and someone in the car had shouted and he thought they would crash, but they drove on and he felt the smooth road, and knew they were driving downhill along the winding road his mother had taken the day before.

His mother had told him to stay in the square. Perhaps he had left the square without realising. Where had he been playing? His heart beat fast again as he tried to remember.

They had driven straight inside a building. He had seen the darkness through the side of the glasses and heard a heavy metal door slamming behind them. As soon as they opened the car door he could smell garage. They had held his arm so tightly it hurt, and led him to a door that he had to crawl through. Someone had gone before him and grabbed him by the wrists from the other side. It was bright in the room and he could hear the buzzing of a long light bulb like the ones they had in the canteen at school. He had hung back because he was afraid of whoever it was that held his wrists so tightly and he could feel his hands weren’t getting any blood. Then they had opened another door and thrown him into this place. When he had taken off the glasses he was in the dark.

He lay curled up and thought of his cousin Jeanne, who had been born with no thumbs. The doctor had sewn on one of her four fingers in place of the missing thumb so that she could pick things up. When he was small, her hands had scared him, but now he liked the feeling of her hand, with its missing finger, so small and soft in his.

He tried to stand up, raising his arms above him in case he bumped his head. He stretched his hand upwards but could feel nothing. He put his arms out to the side and pressed his palms flat against the two walls. Holding his hands in front of him, he stepped forward and after four steps his fingertips touched another wall.

He pressed his hands hard against the walls at his side, and then his feet, and began to climb like he did in the narrow corridor behind the kitchen in his house. It made his mother smile to see him high above her on the ceiling. She would pretend she didn’t believe he could jump from right up there. He’d say, I can, and his mother would say, No you can’t, and then he’d do it. After five hoists he hit the ceiling and found a square of small holes in the wall. Through the holes he could hear the men’s voices more clearly. Here was some light. He lifted his hand to the holes to look at his sore finger. His foot slipped and he fell back, his hands flailing against the sides of his prison, down into the darkness. He hit the floor and the air was knocked out of him, and he lay, unable to breathe or cry out. Pain ran along his spine. ‘Mummy,’ he gasped, closing his eyes, and the tears came and his whole body shook with them.

‘The kid’s crying.’

‘I can hear.’

Mickey da Cruz stared at the door to the child’s prison. They had built it specially for him. They had sound-proofed the room but not the kid’s cell. He wished they had, because the noise was distressing. With his fork he speared a piece of ravioli in tomato sauce and put it into his mouth. He chewed hard, glancing repeatedly in the direction of the child’s cupboard.

‘Oh look,’ he said. His fork clattered on the plate. ‘I’ll feed him. He’s probably hungry.’ As he stood up, his chair scraped on the cement floor and the two brothers glanced at him.

Mickey poured some ravioli, cold from the tin, on to a plate. Then he put a stocking over his head. When he opened the door he saw the boy shrink back, shielding his eyes from the light. He thrust the plate into the boy’s hands and shut the door. The crying had stopped.

‘We did well to take him when we did,’ he said, peeling the stocking from his head and sitting down.

‘It was unprofessional.’

Mickey looked from one brother to the other, unsure of which one had spoken. It was not the first time this had happened and it unnerved him. He believed the timing was a stroke of genius, but he did not say so. He felt inside his jacket pocket for the cold weight of his knife. Opening and shutting the blade with one hand, he watched the brothers smoking their poncy black cigarettes with gold tips.

‘They’ll waste a lot of time. They won’t think it was a kidnapping, will they?’ he said, snapping his knife open and shut. He put the knife down on the table. ‘The night in the hotel wasn’t planned, was it?’

‘It was unprofessional.’

It was Paolo, the fatter brother. He was the one who usually spoke for them both. It was he who had negotiated the deal for the kid. Sylvano had stood just behind his shoulder, his hands in his pockets, observing Mickey’s every expression, as though that was what he had been told to do and he was going to do it, so conscientiously he wouldn’t miss a thing.

‘Impromptu,’ Mickey said triumphantly. That was the word he had been looking for. The hit had been carefully planned. There had been no denying the brothers’ professionalism, but they had no flair. You just had to look at the way they ate. Mickey had fought hard to get them to agree to pick up the child there and then, while he was playing in the square. They had hesitated and nearly missed the moment. The younger child had appeared in the hotel entrance as they were driving off.

‘They’ll think a pervert got him,’ Mickey said, smiling. The brothers rose to their feet. ‘You going already?’ Mickey asked, watching them take their jackets from the backs of their chairs. ‘Get us some fags, will you?’ They both buttoned their jackets. ‘Winstons.’

Mickey watched Paolo squeeze through the door to the garage and felt a flicker of irritation. Unlike Coco they were completely without style. It was a shame to have to use the Scatti brothers, but they were his only chance for freedom. It
was enough for people like Georges Rocca to be Santini’s guard dog all their lives but not him. With this deal he’d leave the island and set himself up in Cabo Verde.

He went and stood in front of the kid’s cupboard and listened. There was not a sound. He wished there was a mirror. Sadly he had stopped growing upwards in his twelfth year. His shape was dominated by his thorax, artificially large and dense from years of weightlifting. His limbs had proved incapable of following suit. His arms, though muscular, were long and thin and would not lie flat against his sides, and his short, atrophied legs had become bowed beneath the weight of his upper body.

He stood there looking at the room he had chosen for his prison. They had decided not to let it drag on. If after three months they didn’t have the money, they would kill the child. These words, formed in his head, caused that unmistakable shrinking of his anus, part pleasure, part fear. The Scatti brothers would bring food and supplies. He would not leave the room until the ransom was paid. There were no windows, just a ventilation shaft high up in the wall that gave on to a small courtyard, invisible from the street. A delicious smell came in waves from the pizzeria on the other side of the courtyard. He had once dined there with Evelyne when Coco had stood her up. As far as he knew it had been their little secret. He liked Evelyne. She had guts. Or maybe she was just stupid. At this idea Mickey began to laugh. His laughter swelled and overcame him until he rocked back and forth on his chair, gripping his stomach. This hit was so … what was the word? Audacious. Santini would never believe he was capable of something like this. Mickey laughed until he was so weak he let himself slip from his chair and lay on the cold concrete floor, his knees drawn up to his chest. He remembered the child sitting there in the dark and all the money he was going to make and he stopped laughing and listened, in perfect happiness, to the faint din of the pizza-makers on the other side of the wall.

Stuart parked beneath the chestnut trees in the square where Sam had disappeared. Alice climbed out of the car and slammed the door. She heard the breeze moving the leaves and felt the tears rising in her again, so she moved away from the car and began to walk. She walked quickly towards the fountain in the centre of the square.

Too sensitive, his teacher had said of him. The child’s too solicitous.

His little hands holding her face: I love you, Mummy.

Me too, my darling. Now go to sleep. You’re tired.

Why not just I love you, you’re my whole life? Because she didn’t know it then.

When she reached the fountain she began pacing before it. Stuart walked round his car, carefully locking the doors. She watched him approach, the man who was supposed to restore Sam to her. He was small, perhaps a little shorter than her, and so slight in his clothes, they might be empty if it weren’t for the hands, which seemed to hang from his cuffs, too large and square. She had seen in his office how they shook. His face was hard and seemed to fall at rest into a frown. The brows were a dark ledge that cut across the forehead and overshadowed the eyes. The cheeks were hollow and cut with lines.

He stood beside her with his hands in his pockets, looking stupidly at the square.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked. He turned his frown on her. ‘What are you planning to do?’ Her voice wavered and she put her hand on her throat. ‘I haven’t seen anyone do anything useful. The gendarme – he just stood around all afternoon like … like some local celebrity.’ She
threw her hand out at the deserted square. ‘The whole village was here.’ She stepped away from him. ‘All the time Sam was getting further away.’ She covered her mouth with her hand, gagging her tears.

There was a clatter. She turned and saw a sand-coloured dog rummaging in an upturned dustbin against the wall of the
mairie.

‘We’ll set up surveillance,’ he said. ‘Cover everybody. There are reinforcements coming from the mainland.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we watch and wait.’

‘Who will you be watching?’ she said. ‘The people from the Movement?’

‘I don’t think the FNL would get involved in a kidnapping.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would be the end of them.’

‘Who then?’

The dustbin rolled and the dog sprang back. It looked at the shredded plastic and orange peel on the ground and then, disheartened, turned and came towards them, haunches low, teeth bared. Alice pulled back. Stuart kicked out and shouted ‘Getaah!’ The dog turned and trotted off as though there were no hard feelings.

‘First thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘We search the country round the village. I don’t think we’ll find anything.’ He looked ashamed.

She turned and walked a few paces to keep herself from hitting this stranger, hitting him hard on the face, because this was the person on whom she now depended.

When she turned again he was squatting, his back to her, looking at something on the ground. He rose and came towards her. He was holding out Sam’s green swimming goggles.

‘Take them by the strap,’ he said.

She took them. They were dusty and scratched.

You never look after anything. I’m always tidying up after you. I’m not your slave.

Oh Mummy, don’t be cross; coaxing, a faint smile, full of gentleness and knowing.

‘God. How could they have missed them?’

She stood in the square in the empty village, beneath the bright uneven moon, her heart encased, cold and heavy.

She handed back the goggles. Stuart took them from her because it was expected of him. They would go into a transparent plastic bag, with a seal number, an exhibit number, and his pointless initials. He would take prints but with little conviction. This woman would believe in the myth of clues, in the careful scrutiny of detail, conscientiously gathered and reassembled. But there were no such things as clues, only mistakes. Clues suggested some pattern, some internal rules for a game that, with guile and intelligence, he could win. But his job was to sit still as a lizard in the sun and wait for the fallible mechanism to spring and perhaps make a catch, perhaps not. If this woman knew how little he could do.

‘I’ll take you back.’

He watched her blow her nose. Her eyes were full of tears. The vein stood out on her forehead.

‘Your son needs you to be strong,’ he said. ‘Your grief isn’t helpful to you, not now.’ He looked down. When he looked up again she was walking away towards the car.

They drove up the narrow road to the Colonna house. He had not seen the place since he was a child. Two stone pillars still marked the entrance to the property, but the iron gates had gone. The drive was still gravel and there was still the tall cedar on the lawn in front of the house, the lower branches now reachable for him. Beside him the woman shivered once.

He stopped in front of the main door. The date 1746 was carved in the granite lintel. All the shutters were closed. He turned off the ignition.

‘He was playing,’ she said. ‘He plays games by himself. He plays the goody and the baddy. Running around doing different voices. I watch him sometimes from a distance. He’s so involved; if I interrupt him, he looks ashamed, like he’s been caught naked.’ Her voice was returning. It was still hoarse, but the robotic whisper had gone. He could hear its contours now, her faint accent and the melody of her class.

He turned and reached into the back for the spare mobile.

‘Take this. Keep the phone in the house free for their call.’ She took the telephone. He turned on the light above the mirror. He found an old parking ticket in the pocket of his door and wrote down three numbers. ‘Here. The top one is my home number, the office, the car.’

He handed her the ticket and she looked at the three numbers. As she climbed out of the car he told himself that he was no more useless to her than the next man.

He followed her round to the side of the house and up the steps to the terrace. He noticed that her arms swung slightly as she walked. She opened the glass door at the back of the house and they stepped into the dark corridor. He recognised the smell instantly: boiled food, flagstone dust and something indeterminable, alluring but sickly, that he still associated with rich old ladies. She patted the wall for the light switch. Two pairs of wall lights came on, mock candles with little pink shades. He considered the fact that Titi had never been in the house. Titi had always refused to go to the parties. Even as a child he had possessed the obscure knowledge that you had to pay for such things. Stuart followed the woman into the kitchen. The fluorescent light buzzed, then flickered on. It was her house now, by inheritance.

‘If I could sleep on the ground floor,’ he said.

‘I’ll ask Babette to make a bed up for you in the sitting room.’ She stepped back towards the door. ‘I’m going to look in on Dan.’ Then she turned and was gone.

He tried to recall the expression he had worn. He kept poor track of what his face did. He went to the sink and drank
from the tap, closing his eyes and gulping. Once again a woman was asking for his help. Close by, his sister Beatrice lay asleep in their father’s house. She would mind when she discovered that he was in the village and had not visited her. But he disliked going there and sitting in silence while she fed him. He straightened up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Food, he thought, had become their only form of exchange.

He looked around the room. An old-fashioned electric clock on the wall above the sink noisily hammered out the seconds. It was the same tin percussion as the clock in his father’s kitchen. Stuart had started to believe in the process that had set in over the past year, the growing detachment. He hoped he was freeing himself of the pattern of desire, disappointment and failure. But his memory, that part of his mind which caused him the most discomfort, seemed to be resisting the shrinking process. As his attachment to the present dwindled, the past seemed to take up the deserted ground. He would encounter memories like little pebbles in his shoes and he would have to stop and wearily bend down, retrieve the pebble and throw it away. Like his sister’s face as a child, appearing as he fell asleep – a colour slide behind his eyes.

Babette was standing in the doorway in her nightdress, her arms folded under her breasts. She wore a pair of slippers made out of pink teddy-bear skin, horny toes protruding from the ends.

‘Madame Aron said to make a bed up for you in the sitting room.’ She stepped into the room, careful not to meet his eye. He didn’t move. ‘She said to wake her if there was anything.’ She looked at him, giving in suddenly. ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, appealing to him, looking for a bond in the business of sympathy, but he stared at her unhelpfully.

‘When were you informed of Madame Aron’s visit?’ he asked.

Babette folded her arms more tightly and stared back at him, no doubt remembering how strongly she disliked him.
‘Late May. Why?’

She could not close her mouth completely and her teeth rested on her bottom lip, leaving little dents in the flesh. Her breasts were very large. They sat on her folded arms and stared at him like two heads.

‘Did you talk about their arrival in the village?’

‘No. I don’t know. Maybe. I probably mentioned it. What are you saying?’

‘I’m not saying anything. I’m asking questions. How often does Madame Aron come here?’

‘More often since her husband’s death. She always said how much she liked it. He didn’t, though. People don’t always like being reminded where they come from, do they?’ She dropped her arms, releasing her breasts from their trap.

He noticed that all her fingers had gold rings on them.

‘When was the last time she came?’

‘Easter and then, before that, last summer. It was last summer she told me she had to sell. But it’s been on the market nearly a year.’ She shook her head. ‘No one’s interested. There’s too much work to do on it, it’s too far from the sea and it’s in Santarosa.’ She raised her eyebrows encouragingly. “They wrote on the advert, “an historic village”. Historic for what? For the Movement. Anyone from outside thinks that means terrorists, don’t they?’

‘Do you show people around?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘No you don’t,’ he said.

Babette shrugged.

‘When was the last time you showed someone round?’

‘After her last visit. The end of April.’

‘Who?’

‘An Italian couple. Young. She was very unfriendly.’

‘Does the agency always send the visitors?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yesterday night when she didn’t show up, did you call anyone? What did you do that evening?’

‘I watched telly.’ She stopped herself. ‘What are you suggesting?’ Her voice got on his nerves. It was high-pitched and girlish.

‘I’m asking if you told anyone that she hadn’t shown up.’

‘No. Why should I?’ He stared at her, unyielding. ‘I might have mentioned it to Liliane. We speak all the time. I don’t remember.’

‘Liliane.’

‘Liliane Santini.’

‘I know. Did you?’

‘Did I what?’ She spat the last word.

‘Did you tell Liliane?’ he asked calmly.

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Will you show me where I’m sleeping?’ he said. ‘And give me keys to the back and front doors.’

Upstairs Alice lay fully clothed on the bed. Next to her on a scant bedside table stood a porcelain dragon with an apricot lampshade. It gave off the only light, a smudged haze that thickened the darkness elsewhere. On the other side of her slept Dan, his mouth open, arms thrown back on the pillow in a posture of triumph. She stared at the brown stain on the ceiling and listened to his gentle breathing.

She pressed her hand hard against the bone between her breasts where the constricted feeling was burning her, affecting her breathing. She tried to breathe deeply. She closed her eyes and searched in her mind for Sam’s beginning. He had entered her life before she was ready for him and the expression in his eyes was apologetic, like that of someone who has burst in unannounced.

She saw Mathieu’s naked body laid out before her, chest down, the three creases like small commas behind his ears. She saw herself kneeling beside him, hunched over him studiously and carefully, with both hands stroking his back, his bum, his thighs. She could not remember when Sam had been conceived, but it had been at a time when she still
mistrusted Mathieu. She had sensed his deep, ranging boredom, even then.

The fist around her heart squeezed tighter and she breathed shallowly, allowing the pain to take over. It was Mathieu who had convinced her to keep their baby. There had been such an urgency in his desire for the child that it had frightened her. Still, the weeks had passed and the hormones had risen in her like a tide, flooding out her will, and she had held on to his desire as the only tangible thing in her shifting world.

Before telling Mathieu, she had called her mother in England and told her she was going to keep the baby. She had thought of this call as an act of rebellion. She had believed she was cutting loose. Now she saw how she had bypassed Mathieu. She saw that it was a gesture of which her mother would have been proud.

Soon she had discovered that for Mathieu her act of faith made her worthy of a depth of love of which she had never suspected him capable. He had worshipped the mother in her. Only since his death had she allowed herself to accept that this was all she was.

Beside her, Dan slept on. She leaned over to feel his breath on her face. She touched his hair. This one’s existence had always seemed to her a simple matter, broaching no questions. He had arrived in the world complete, appearing to lack nothing. The daily minutiae he required from her he claimed without ceremony. Alice turned off the lamp beside the bed, lay back and stared into the darkness. She felt unable to face Dan unless he was asleep like this; he seemed to her Sam’s opposite in so many ways. She saw Dan as invulnerable and knew she would punish him for it.

She looked at the digital clock beside the bed. Its green digits glowed 4 a.m. She had less than two hours before the search. In the dark she tried to imagine Sam’s fear. But she could not see him as he was, alone and terrified – only as he had been. She understood that his little life had brought him to this night of terror, that it was this terror that had been
waiting for him. All his questions, from the moment he could recognise them, were a manifestation of this fear that had been building up behind him all his life, like a swell growing into a wave that today had broken over him.