Steal You Away (28 page)

A lawyer. I need a lawyer. A good one. Someone with balls,
who’ll take them for every penny
.

As the doctor and the nurses inserted cotton-wool tampons into his nostrils, he reflected that this was the chance he’d been waiting for all these years. And it had come just at the right moment, with perfect timing, on the eve of his retirement.

Those little bastards had done him a favour.

Now he was a hero, he had done his duty, he had driven them out of the school, and he was going to clean up on it.

A complex fracture of the nose with severe respiratory complications. Permanent scars, grazes and a lot of other things that would come out in due time.

All that must be worth a cool … what? twenty million. No,
that’s too low. If it turns out that I can’t breathe through my nose
any more, it’ll be at least fifty million, maybe more
.

He was quoting figures off the top of his head, but it was in his impulsive nature to start making wild guesses at the amount of the compensation without having the slightest knowledge of the facts.

He would buy himself a new car, complete with air conditioning and radio, get a larger television and change all the kitchen appliances and the windows and shutters on the upper floor of the farmhouse.

And he’d be getting all these things for a broken nose and a few piddling little injuries.

Although those three incompetents were hurting him like mad, he felt a surge of spontaneous, sincere affection and gratitude to the little thugs who had done this to him.

Behind the black hills the sky was covered with big clouds that twisted and rolled over each other to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning like something out of Noah’s flood. The wind brought over sand and the smell of brine and seaweed. The white oxen, on the meadows, didn’t give a damn about the rain. They grazed slowly and methodically and now and again raised their heads and looked without interest at the raging storm.

Pietro was dashing to school. Although it was raining hard he had gone by bike.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to stay at home. Curiosity, the desire to know what had happened, had prevailed over his plan to feign illness.

He had held the thermometer under the hot tap, but when the moment had come to tell his mother that he had a temperature of thirty-seven point five he had said nothing.

How could he stay in bed all day, not knowing if they had managed to open the gate, not hearing the reactions of his schoolmates and the teachers?

When he had taken the decision to move it had already been late, so he had dressed hurriedly, gulped down his caffè latte, swallowed a couple of biscuits, donned his cape and galoshes and to get there more quickly had taken his bike.

Now that he was less than a kilometre from the school, every turn of the pedals was another twist at his guts.

On entering the ward Miss Palmieri had the impression that she wasn’t in an Italian hospital but in a veterinary centre in southern Florida. In the middle of the large room, under the white lights, stretched out on a bed, was a manatee.

Flora, though no expert in zoology, knew what a manatee was,
having seen a
National Geographic
documentary on television a few weeks earlier.

The manatee is a sirenian, a kind of gigantic, flabby albino seal that lives in Lake Chad and in the estuaries of the great rivers of South America. Being naturally lazy, slow animals, they often get caught by boats’ propellers.

The caretaker, lying flat on his back in his underpants, looked just like one of those creatures.

He was monstrous. As round and white as a snowman. His taut, swollen belly was like an Easter egg about to explode. On the summit was a thick tuft of white hairs which joined up with those on his chest. His short stumpy legs were hairless and covered with thick blue veins. The calf of the lame leg was purple in colour and as round as a cottage loaf. His arms, stretched out on the bed, seemed like fins. His fingers were as thick as cigars. Cruel mother nature had not seen fit to supply him with a neck, and that big round head slotted directly between his shoulder blades.

He was in a pretty bad way.

His forearms and his knees were covered with scratches and grazes. His forehead stitched up and his nose bandaged.

Flora didn’t like him. He was a layabout. Aggressive with the pupils. And a pervert. When she passed the porter’s lodge, she felt herself being mentally undressed. And Miss Cirillo had told her he was also a notorious frequenter of prostitutes. He went every night with those poor coloured girls who hustled on the Aurelia.

It gave her no pleasure at all to be there playing detective with those two. She wished she were in school. Teaching.

‘Come along … hurry up,’ Miss Gatta said to her.

The three of them sat down by the caretaker’s bed.

The deputy head nodded in greeting and then spoke in the most worried voice in the world. ‘Well, Italo, how are you?’

Despite the scratches and bruises that he had on his battered face, a disgusting, sly expression appeared in the caretaker’s piglike eyes.

‘Terrible. How am I? Terrible!’

Italo reminded himself of the part he had to play. He must cut a pathetic figure, seem like a poor cripple in need of care who had sacrificed himself for the good of the school and the teachers in combating juvenile delinquency.

‘Now, Italo, if you can, I’d like you to explain exactly what happened last night in the school,’ said the head.

Italo looked around and began to tell a story of which about sixty per cent was the truth, thirty per cent was complete fabrication and the remaining ten per cent was padded out with exaggeration, pathos, drama and pathetic tear-jerking details (… you’ve no idea how cold it can get in winter in that little room where I live, alone, far away from home, my wife and my darling children …).

He omitted a number of minor details, which would only have encumbered the narrative and complicated the plot. (My nose? How did I break it? One of those boys must have hit me in the face with an iron bar while I was walking in the dark.)

And he concluded. ‘Now I’m here. You see me. In this hospital. A broken man. I can’t move my leg and I think I’ve got a couple of broken ribs but it doesn’t matter, I saved the school from the vandals. And that’s the most important thing. Isn’t it? All I ask of you is one thing: help me, you educated people. I’m just a poor ignorant old man. Help me get what I deserve after all these years of work and after this terrible accident which has robbed me of what little health I still had. In the meantime a whip-round among the teachers and parents wouldn’t go amiss. Thank you, thank you very much indeed.’

Having finished his speech, he checked its effect on his listeners.

The headmaster was bent forward on his chair, his hands over his mouth and his gaze directed downwards. Italo judged that posture to be an expression of deep sympathy for his sad, unfortunate situation.

Good
.

Then he moved on to inspect Miss Palmieri.

The redhead was staring at him blankly. But what could you expect from a woman like that?

And, finally, he explored the face of the deputy headmistress.

Miss Gatta had a face of marble which didn’t seem to bode well. A derisive smile curled her lips.

What did it mean? Why was she giving him that nasty little leer? Didn’t the sour old spinster believe him?

Italo screwed up his eyes and contracted his facial muscles, trying to express all the pain that he felt. And he lay there waiting for comfort, a friendly word, a handshake, anything.

The deputy headmistress coughed and took a notebook and her spectacles out of her little chamois handbag. ‘Italo, I don’t understand some of the things you said. They don’t seem to correspond to the evidence we found at the school with the police. If you feel up to it, I’d like to ask you a few questions.’

‘All right. But make it quick because I don’t feel too well.’

‘First of all, you said you spent the night on your own. Who is this Alima Guabré, then? It appears that it was this Nigerian girl – who, by the way, has no residence permit – who called the police.’

A sharp pain formed in the caretaker’s bowels, shooting up to inflame his tonsils. Italo tried to hold back this flow of acidic gas that had risen from his oesophagus, but failed and gave a loud burp.

The three teachers pretended they hadn’t heard.

Italo put his hand over his mouth. ‘What did you say, deputy headmistress? Alima who? I don’t know the woman, never heard of her …’

‘How odd. The young lady, who apparently works as a prostitute, says she knows you very well, that you took her to the school and invited her to spend the night with you …’

Italo snorted. His nose was now pulsing like a broken radiator.

Wait, wait a minute
… That old bitch was interrogating him. Him? The man who had saved the school, and nearly got killed in the process? What the hell was hap …. This was a stab in the back. And there was him expecting a hug, a box of Ferrero Rocher, a bunch of flowers.

‘She must be mad. She’s made it all up. Who is she? What does she want from me? I don’t know her …’ he said, waving his arms about as if trying to ward off a swarm of wasps.

‘She says you dine together every week at the Old Wagon and she mentioned a practical joke …’ the teacher grimaced and held the notebook away from her as if to read it more clearly. ‘I didn’t quite understand … The police say she was very angry with you … A trick you played on her during dinner …’

‘How dare that fucking tar …?’ Italo only just managed to break off the sentence in time.

The deputy head gave him a glare as lethal as Mazinger Z’s rotating mallet.

‘I agree the whole story does sound extremely odd. One detail appears to confirm Miss Guabré’s story. This morning your 131 was outside the chained-up gate. And then there’s the testimony of the waiters of the Old Wagon …’

The caretaker started trembling like a leaf and looked at this heartless monster who was delighting in torturing him. He felt like leaping on her and wringing that scrawny neck and pulling out all her teeth and making them into a necklace. That wasn’t a woman … it was a demon with no feelings and no pity. With a ball of lead where her heart should be and a freezer instead of a cunt.

‘This leads me to believe that when the vandals entered the school you were not present … As was probably the case two years ago, when the burglars broke in.’

‘Nooo! I was there that time, I was asleep! I swear to God. It’s not my fault if I’m a sound sleeper!’ Italo turned to the headmaster. ‘Please, sir, surely you believe me. What does this woman want? I feel so bad. I can’t bear to hear these scandalous accusations. Me going with prostitutes, not doing my duty. Me, with thirty years’ honourable service behind me. Headmaster, please, say something.’

The little man looked at him as one might look at the last specimen of a now extinct species. ‘What can I say? Try to be more honest, try to tell the truth. It’s always best to tell the truth…’

Then Italo looked at Miss Palmieri, seeking sympathy, but didn’t find any.

‘Go away, the lot of you … go away …’ he murmured with eyes closed, like a man on his deathbed who wishes to die in peace.

But Miss Gatta was not to be melted. ‘You should be grateful to that poor unfortunate girl. If Miss Guabré hadn’t been there, you would probably still be lying there unconscious in a pool of blood. You’re an ungrateful wretch. And now let us move on to the subject which is of more concern to me. The shotgun.’

Italo felt faint. Luckily he had a vision which for a moment alleviated the pain in his nose and the constriction in his chest. That old spinster being impaled – yes, him ramming a lamp-post covered with chilli powder and sand up her arse, and her screaming in agony.

‘You used a shotgun on school premises.’

‘It’s not true!’

‘How can you deny it? They found it beside you … The gun doesn’t seem to be licensed, nor, apparently, do you have a hunting licence or a firearms permit …’

‘It’s not true!’

‘That is a very serious offence, punishable …’

‘It’s not true!’

Italo had adopted the last and most desperate strategy of defence. Denying everything. Anything. The sun is hot? It’s not true! Swallows fly? It’s not true!

Saying always and only no.

‘You fired a shot. You tried to hit them. And you broke one of the gym windo …’

‘It’s not true!’

‘Stop staying it’s not true!’ deputy headmistress Gatta shouted, shattering the calm she had maintained till that moment, and becoming a Chinese dragon with two vicious little eyes.

Italo deflated and rolled up in a ball like a beach flea.

‘Mariuccia, please, calm down, calm down …’ The head, paralysed on his chair, implored her. All the patients in the ward had turned round and the nurse was glaring at them.

The deputy head lowered her voice and, between her teeth, continued.

‘My dear Italo, you are in a very serious predicament. And you don’t seem to be aware of the fact. You risk a multiple charge of illegal possession of firearms, attempted murder, living off immoral earnings, being drunk and disorderly …’

‘No no no no nooooo,’ repeated Italo in despair, shaking his big head.

‘You’re a complete imbecile. What is it you want? Did I hear you correctly? Compensation? You even have the nerve to ask for a whip-round. Now listen to me very carefully.’ Mariuccia Gatta rose to her feet and those cold eyes suddenly lit up as if they had thousand-watt light-bulbs inside them. Her cheeks flushed. She grabbed the caretaker by his pyjama lapels and almost lifted him off the bed. ‘The headmaster and I are doing our best to help you and only because your son, a policeman, begged us to do so and said his mother would die of shame if she found out. That is the only reason why we haven’t reported you. We are doing all we can to save your ar … to save you, to prevent you from spending a couple of years in prison, to stop you losing your job, your pension, everything, but now I absolutely must know who those vandals were.’