The Marshal's Own Case (11 page)

‘Blackmail?’

‘That’s right. He had a wife and kids in Milan. God knows how much she tried to screw him for by threatening to turn up on his doorstep and tell all. Poor sod. They say he tried to strangle her and no wonder, but Lulu knew how to defend herself. Whoever did for her must have known that, don’t you think? It said in the paper they knocked her out with sleeping pills first.’

‘Yes. What happened in the end?’

‘With that Milanese chap? I don’t know, but I imagine he must have paid up. What else could he have done? In any case he made himself scarce. It must be nearly a year ago by now and I’ve never seen him around since. I bet she ruined him. Hadn’t we better go? God! I haven’t fed the cat! Mishi! Mishi!’

The little cat appeared from the bedroom, yawning, as though she, too, were unaccustomed to getting up in the mornings. She followed Carla into the kitchen, her tail pointing upwards expectantly.

‘It won’t take me a minute!’

‘Don’t worry . . .’ But he, too, followed Carla into the kitchen, standing just inside the doorway, watching him open the tin. The little cat made no fuss but seated herself near her dish in the corner and waited quietly.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ Carla said, scraping the food out on to a saucer, ‘she couldn’t have pulled a trick like that on Peppina. Peppina’s got no wife and kids.’

‘What about his parents? Do they know?’ After his experience with the Luciano woman he might have thought to ask instead ‘Did they care?’ but her reaction was something so alien to him that it hadn’t really penetrated.

‘She’s an orphan.’ Carla placed the saucer of food next to the plastic water dish and Mishi sniffed it cautiously. ‘She grew up in an orphanage, I think. Mishi, you’re a real pain in the neck with your food fads. You liked it last time I gave it you, now get on with it.’

Mishi started to nibble slowly round the edges of the food, careful not to dirty her whiskers.

‘Let’s leave while she’s eating, then she won’t try to escape.’

Carla double locked the door as they left. The Marshal gave him a sidelong glance as they started down the stairs. There was nothing to dismay him about Carla in street dress. A little on the opulent side for his taste perhaps, but on the whole the impression was of a well-dressed young woman rather unusually tall. Nevertheless, as they reached the ground floor, a middle-aged woman with a shopping-bag came out of a door on the left and pushed past them very deliberately to get out the front door first, giving them a black look over her shoulder. If the Marshal hadn’t put his hand out in time the door would have slammed in their faces.

‘That’s her, the nasty bag. The one who complained about my Mishi, I told you. Christ, it’s starting to rain and I’ve no umbrella. Shall I go back and get one?’

‘There’s no need. I’ll bring you back in the taxi.’

They got in and the Marshal directed the driver to the Medico-Legal Institute. It was a longish drive to the hospital city in the suburbs. Carla looked out of the window at the rainy streets for some time before asking, ‘What’s Peppina’s lawyer like?’

‘He seems sharp enough.’ The Captain, he recalled, had thought him too clever for his own good.

‘I don’t mean that, I mean what does he look like?’

‘Look like? Well, I don’t know . . . tallish, thick-set . . . I’m not much of a hand at describing people. Why?’

‘Plenty of dark hair, greying at the temples?’

‘Yes . . . I think so.’

‘Good. He’s one of her regular clients. It’s nice that he hasn’t dumped her. Some of them would.’

‘I suppose so.’ He had been right, then, to suspect it. When he’d let out that ‘she’ it had crossed his mind right away.

After a while, when they had struggled through the traffic in the centre and taken the road out to the hospitals, Carla said, ‘I’m getting a bit nervous. I’ve never had to do anything like this before. I’ve never seen anybody dead, let alone . . . Will it bother you if I smoke a cigarette?’

‘No, no, but . . .’ The Marshal, already embarrassed by his having opened his mouth at all in the presence of the driver who must have thought he’d picked up a man and a woman and was now hearing two men’s voices, indicated the No smoking sign.

‘Oh, Elio doesn’t mind if it’s me, do you, Elio? I’ve got to identify a body and I’m getting cold feet. I want a smoke.’

‘Carry on. You’re not telling me it’s Lulu you’ve got to—’

‘That’s right.’

‘Rather you than me. The paper said he’d been chopped—’

‘Talk about something else, will you?’

‘You knew Lulu?’ the Marshal asked.

‘Knew him? Took him to work many a time, like I do Carla. But that Lulu was a rum sort. Nobody could stand Lulu, right, Carla?’

‘Dead right.’

‘I take most of them to and fro but Lulu was a right nut-case—you remember, Carla, that dirty trick he pulled on that fellow from Milan?’

‘I’ve just been telling the Marshal about it.’

‘Bound to get the chop sooner or later, that one.’

‘Who told you about the client from Milan?’ the Marshal asked him quickly.

‘Who told me? He did. He always stayed at the Excelsior, which is right near my rank. I ran him down to the park many a time and it was always Lulu he was after. You have to admit, Lulu was a smasher, better-looking than any woman, but a bad lot. I remember him complaining one time—the Milanese chap—that Lulu had taken it into his head one night to charge three times the usual price. He was furious.’

‘But he paid?’

‘Oh, he paid all right. There was nobody could touch Lulu for—let’s say—certain little extras. He complained plenty, though.’ The taxi-driver laughed. ‘Then Lulu really gave him something to complain about and he hasn’t been seen since. I take a left here, is that right?’

‘Yes. You don’t know the chap’s name, by any chance?’

‘I do that. He once had to give me a cheque one night because our friend Lulu had cleaned him out of cash. Name’s Rossini.’

‘You have a long memory if that was a year ago.’

‘More than a year. But I’d have to have a very short memory to forget that name since I’m called Elio Rossini myself! Well, here you are and the best of luck. Wouldn’t fancy a sight of Lulu in his present state myself.’

The Medico-Legal Institute was an imposing building with a broad flight of steps leading up to it. As they climbed, heads ducked against the downpour, the Marshal could sense Carla’s increasing fear. He kept hesitating and looking up at the great doors.

‘It’ll be over very quickly,’ he assured him.

It was over quickly, and the Marshal did his best for Carla by keeping him back a moment to ensure that the attendant exposed only the side of the head that still had flesh on it and kept a covering over the saw marks at the neck. But even so, the shaved crown which had been very perfunctorily sewn back in place made Carla give a first recoil of shock, and the clouded eye was distorted by the flattened folds of dead yellow flesh around it.

He got him out of the place as fast as the formalities allowed and they were half way down the steps when he saw him sag forward.

‘I feel sick—I think I’m going to faint.’

And he cursed himself then for his selfishness and pusillanimity in bringing him in a taxi when they could have got away at once in his own car.

‘There’s a bar across there,’ he said, taking the arm Carla was holding across his stomach. ‘I’ll get you a glass of something strong while I call a taxi.’ Why hadn’t he even thought to let the other one wait? Cursing himself, he led him across to the bar. He sat in a chair with his head down and the Marshal placed a glass of cognac in front of him before starting to telephone. He had counted on there being plenty of taxis around the hospital area but this rain made it difficult and he was some time in finding one.

Carla was sitting in the same position, not having touched the drink.

‘I’m afraid if I try to swallow anything I’ll throw up.’

All the way back in the taxi he kept his head down and his eyes shut and at times the Marshal wasn’t sure whether he was conscious or not. When they arrived, he paid the driver before getting out so as to be free to help Carla to his feet.

He thrust his handbag at the Marshal. ‘The keys . . . I daren’t open my eyes, everything’s spinning.’

He found the keys and opened the street door, then took the stairs as fast as he could to get the flat door open for him. Carla pushed past him without a word, holding both hands to his mouth. He must have reached the bathroom only just in time. The Marshal heard an explosive retch and then a deep groan. Then a gurgle of running water. It was some minutes before he reappeared.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’s no need to apologize. You did well to hold out so long.’ He was lingering near the still open door, wondering if he was fit to be left.

‘Mishi!’

‘What . . .’

‘Mishi! She’ll have got out! Oh God . . . Mishi . . .’

‘I didn’t see her go out . . .’

‘Mishi!’

They were both on the stairs when the street door opened and the woman they had encountered earlier came in with two bags of shopping.

They started running down the stairs, the Marshal in front.

‘The door!’ Carla shouted. ‘Shut that door!’ The woman only stood gaping up at them, halfway in with the door still open. The little black cat, until that moment invisible, leapt from where it was crouching beneath the bottom stair and shot out into the street. The Marshal ran on down and reached the pavement just as the No. 36 bus passed, going downhill at speed. There was no squeal of brakes. The driver didn’t even notice the swift dark little creature that was caught by his back wheel and flung up on to the pavement almost at the Marshal’s feet.

Its front paws made feeble movements as though it were still running. A small amount of blood issued from one ear on to the pavement. Then the tiny movements subsided. Mishi was dead.

‘Any better?’

‘I’ll be all right now. I’m sorry I got so hysterical.’ He was lying curled on the sofa and the Marshal stood before him, a glass still in his hand. ‘It’s just that Mishi was . . . There were times when she was the only happy thing in my life. Sometimes it’s awful to have to work yourself up to—to going out there and performing, leaving your own personality at home, dressing up for the show. Sometimes, when I feel a bit down and I’m out there . . . I can think: Mishi’s at home curled up, waiting for me in another world. She keeps my real world alive for me while I’m . . . And now, what will I do? I can’t go out tonight. I just can’t.’

‘You should stay at home and rest. You’ve had two nasty shocks. Isn’t there anyone who could stay with you?’

‘It’s all right. I’ll call my mother, but not yet.’ Although he’d calmed down he was still crying. ‘I’ll wait a bit. If I call her in this state it’ll only upset her. That sleeping pill will work in ten minutes or so and when I’ve slept I’ll call her. Are you in a hurry?’

‘No, no . . .’

‘If you could just stay a few minutes until the pill works. I can’t face being on my own yet. You’re a good sort.’

‘It’s the least I can do after what I’ve put you through.’

‘Once I’ve slept a bit and talked to my mother I’ll get myself going again.’

The Marshal put the glass down near a silver bowl of fruit standing on a low table and perched on the arm of a chair.

‘Your mother . . .’ He still couldn’t take in the Luciano woman’s reaction. ‘Your mother doesn’t— you needn’t tell me this if it bothers you, but how did your mother react . . . I mean the shock when she found out . . .’

‘About my being a transsexual?’ He dried his eyes and blew his nose. ‘There was never any shock, they always knew I wasn’t—you know—normal, if that’s the word. Even when I was small people often took me for a girl, no matter how they dressed me. Oh, I’m not saying they weren’t upset. A wealthy bourgeois family and me their only son. They took me to doctor after doctor but it wasn’t as though they could blame me at that age, could they? I remember when I got to adolescence they took me to a specialist and I was given male hormone injections for a while but they made me so ill my mother couldn’t go on with it. I think they took me to somebody else then, another specialist who talked to me for a long time. He was nice. I wasn’t upset by it at all. Anyway the upshot was that he told my parents to leave me be, that there was nothing they could usefully do.’

‘But . . . what you’re doing now . . .’

‘Being a prostitute, you mean? Well, I left home first, that was one thing. I’d finished studying and I knew I couldn’t face getting a job that would force me to dress all my life as a man and lead a completely false existence. There was only one other possibility, wasn’t there? Do you understand? Mind you, if I’d known then what I know now . . . the danger, the exhaustion. Even so, I’m not complaining. There are times when I’d give anything to stop, but when all’s said and done, I’ve been able to earn my living and I’ve been able to be myself, a transsexual. I think if I’d had to pretend to be a man I’d have ended up in a lunatic asylum. But my parents, although they accept me as I am, never mention that they know I’m a prostitute. They shut their eyes to it and I can’t blame them for that. I’d be the last one to throw it in their faces. Parents are weird though, aren’t they? I remember when I decided to get my breasts done. My mother came to see me afterwards—I wanted her to come, I had to tell her. I even showed them to her. I suppose that’s the only time you could say there was anything like a shock—I mean, she might have taken it badly. But she didn’t. It wasn’t long after I’d left home and I was living in a tiny bedsit with a hole in the wall of a bathroom. It was a mess, I hadn’t really learned to look after things the way I do now. My mother hardly looked at my breasts—she just kept looking around her, saying, “How can you live like this after the way we brought you up?” I could see her point, of course. I’d grown up in a ten-bedroomed villa with two full-time servants. Poor thing, she was just shocked by the poky room and the mess. She’s all right, my mother. I know I’ve been luckier than most.’

‘Yes. I think you must have been.’

‘One of these days I’ll give it all up. Not yet, but one day . . . I’m falling asleep . . . If only I could sleep for days and days and days . . . one day, when I find some peace and quiet . . .’