Lila repeated blankly that Arianna had taken the money, hadn’t she? She wiped her nose, then her hand on her trousers. As soon as the men had come this morning she’d left. She was frightened. They told her to go. She didn’t understand what was happening. They told her to get out. Arianna had the money. Hadn’t he said so?
‘Where is it?’
Maybe the men who came this morning took the money. They let the dog free.
Rafí shook his head. ‘No. No.’ This didn’t make sense. ‘They’re still looking for me,’ he spelled out the situation. ‘Why would they still be looking for me if they’d found the money? That’s what they came for.’ And as for the dog, no stranger had let that dog free, no stranger could come anywhere close, he’d deliberately under-fed it, kept it mean, for this explicit purpose. Whoever let the dog free had to know the dog. Which meant one thing: Cecco had let the dog free. ‘Did Cecco come back to the Stromboli?’
Lila shook her head.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t shake your head, don’t cry, and don’t draw attention to yourself.’
Lila nodded and wiped her eyes.
Rafí leaned closer, wrapped his arm about her shoulder, the table cut into his gut, he wiped her tears from the tabletop. ‘I know what happened. I know that Cecco came back to the Stromboli. I know he found the money. He’s the only one.’
Lila’s hand closed over the scar on her wrist.
‘Now tell me where he is.’
She took Rafí’s phone from her pocket and slid it along the table. Cecco — 3 Missed Calls, registered dimly on the screen. She leaned forward and spoke clearly. ‘He hates you. Every time he talks about you he says how stupid you are. He can’t stand you.’
Rafí froze. So it was true. ‘Where is he? Where is my money?’
Lila sat back, drew the toy to her chest and hugged hard. Her expression set as if she didn’t know, as if she didn’t care.
* * *
Unwilling to return to the Stromboli, Rafí arranged to meet Cecco at the Montesanto station. Lila watched from the station steps as Rafí became increasingly anxious. The waiting crowd grew thicker and mixed with the more active crowd scouring the market, so that commuters stood static beside the busier shoppers.
She thought it impossible that so much could go wrong at such speed. She looked down upon the market hating the stink and bustle, and uncomfortable to be out in the open she held the panda tight to her stomach and let her fingers press into the rolls of cash, outlining their shape even as she looked at Rafí, and she wondered why she had ever thought of him as smart.
Rafí came back and called Cecco a second time. How long could this take? Why wasn’t he here already? As he listened to the reply he slowly straightened and looked up, patience draining out of him.
‘What do you mean you’re in Pozzuoli?’
Rafí listened, appeared to agree, then said he couldn’t stop at the Stromboli, the men who were after him would be back, and he wasn’t going back. He needed money and a place to stay. Lila noticed that he did not mention her. Rafí repeated: he had a handful of coins and that was it. He needed money.
‘No,’ Rafí disagreed. ‘It isn’t the same.’ He hawked phlegm to his mouth then spat on the pavement and looked to see if anyone would disagree with him. When he said he only had a couple of euros, that’s exactly what he meant. He needed money and he needed a place to stay. Lila watched Rafí cock his head, and for the first time look square at her. He held the phone up, his expression a mess of irritation and pure disbelief. Cecco had hung up. When he redialled the call would not go through. Rafí held the phone out and swore at it.
Cecco, Rafí said, the fat bastard, was dead to him, dead to the world.
He grabbed Lila’s arm and pulled her up the steps toward the station. The platform, busy with people returning home, made it easy to bypass the gates and the guards. Slipping onto the train they stood close to the doors in the thick of the crowd and Rafí looked among them for bags that were open, and people who were distracted. When the train doors closed with a final decompression, Lila realized that she would not escape and began to hope for some other intervention. A wreck. A flood. A fire. A derailment. Some terrible affliction.
* * *
Within an hour of arriving at Pozzuoli they found Cecco at one of the bars facing the small port. Keeping their distance they watched from the shelter of the small tourist shops; if Cecco intended to go to Proceda it would be difficult to follow, but even he had enough animal cunning not to trap himself on an island. Rafí had managed to steal a pack of cigarettes on the train, slipped from a woman’s open shoulder-bag, but for the moment was still without money. Lila smoked and found herself strangely unbothered, a little dizzy. How delicately Cecco held himself when he was alone. Two fingers pricked out as he held his beer.
‘Get rid of the bear.’
‘No.’
‘Get rid of it.’ Rafí raised his hand. ‘You look stupid. People are noticing you.’
Lila tucked the toy to her stomach, leaned over it and drew on her cigarette. She couldn’t help but shiver.
‘You look stupid.’
‘Stupid.’ Lila repeated, her voice flat and factual, her arms clamped about the bear, shivering. ‘Stupid me.’
Cecco stayed at the bar all evening and kept to himself, contented, perhaps even self-satisfied. Later, after talking on his mobile, he left the bar and began to walk away from the small marina. The road curled up the hillside and ran under the railway through a short steep tunnel carved into the tufa. Rafí stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and Lila followed after. They watched as Cecco entered an apartment block set on its own. Four storeys high, the building squatted into the hillside beside a small orchard raised from the road, paint peeling in soft folds on the undersides of the balconies. The street was open and Rafí decided to return when it was dark. Until then they would wait at the station and keep an eye on the road.
* * *
Niccolò woke early. Livia could not sleep; uncomfortable and nauseous, she asked him to feel her brow. Brother and sister slept in T-shirts and shorts for decency, side by side, back to back, although this was becoming uncomfortable for her. Livia swore in her sleep, cursed and muttered so that she was always present in his thoughts. Sometimes the child stirred inside her and she would exclaim, often nothing more than a sharp intake of breath, but enough of a disturbance. The notion that something swam inside her turning, shifting, possibly even dreaming, made him uneasy.
‘Am I hot? I feel hot.’ She worried that something might be wrong but wouldn’t say so directly, and it was left to Niccolò to divine this information out of her. Having slept poorly / very little / not at all (her status changed with each mention of her night), Livia demanded attention. Niccolò sat with her, clumsy with sleep, and when he reached for her stomach, because this is what he thought she wanted, she flinched and told him not to touch her.
‘Why do men do that?’ she asked. Angry now, Livia told him to get up and prepare for work.
By the time Niccolò had dressed Livia was sitting at the table drinking hot water, calmer and less concerned, colour back in her face. ‘I’m OK.’ She gave a tight smile that said she was still not quite herself. It had been a hot night and the heat had made her uncomfortable. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Go. You’ll only make me more anxious.’
He said goodbye from the door and as she waved she told him to head directly to work.
* * *
Niccolò returned to the wasteland to find the cordon taken down from the field. After only one night the police and reporters were already gone. The wasteland was still sectioned with stakes and tape, but the vans and cars and massive steel stanchions that held the arc lamps were gone. With nothing left except a few posts and lengths of tape snagged in the flattened grass it was hard to believe that the wasteland had attracted any attention at all.