* * *
Livia returned home as the evening news concluded. She sat heavily on the side of the bed and twisted off her shoes, her mouth set in a tight line as she smoothed her hand over her shoulders.
‘They stand at the entrance,’ she said, ‘those boys, right by the door so you have to push past them. How old are they? I don’t like it. Always a group of them. My neck,’ she complained, ‘and my back, all day. There’s something bad in the kitchen. I could smell it as I came in.’ Livia made a face. ‘What is that smell? Something smells bad. What is it?’
Niccolò leaned into the doorway with his arms folded and said that he was careful now to smoke outside and lean over the balcony so that the smoke did not enter the apartment. Afterward he washed his hands and brushed his teeth as she didn’t like the stink of cigarettes on him. The bother of it meant that he was smoking more at work and less at home.
‘I’m not talking about cigarettes.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Can’t you smell it? It’s like something has died.’
For an hour Niccolò indulged his sister, he moved the furniture around, checked behind and under the fridge while she sprayed with disinfectant, but the source of the smell could not be discovered.
‘Men are so dirty,’ she said. Which was not true as Niccolò kept his rooms clean and in order. Livia’s clothes, her cups and plates, her shoes and papers littered the small apartment.
She asked him to sit down and said they needed to talk about the upcoming assessment. ‘They will want to know how you’ve managed,’ she said, ‘they’ll ask you questions, they’ll try to trip you up, and you know not to tell them that I have been here. They won’t want to know that I was here. You know not to say anything about that. You also shouldn’t say that you’ve been using the scooter. Not right away. They’ll want to know that everything is fine, that you are coping well. Tell them about work. Tell them that you cook and clean for yourself. Just tell them what they want to hear.’
Niccolò said he understood, this didn’t need talking through — he didn’t say, although he hoped that this was true, that once the first assessment had occurred that she would also leave. She hadn’t come to look after him so much as to punish her husband.
FRIDAY: DAY M
As Niccolò steered his scooter around the barrier Fede came out of the booth, a little swagger to his walk, the Cronache folded in his hand. Stiki slumped in the booth, asleep, with his head to his chest. On a single-ring stove beside him was a pot of noodles.
‘I imagine you haven’t seen this?’ Fede thrust the newspaper forward.
Niccolò set the scooter on its stand then brushed his hand over his hair. He took the paper out of Fede’s hands.
‘He was American. The man who was stabbed. A student or a tourist. Have they told you this?’
Niccolò shook his head as he read.
‘And … there’s a witness. Someone at the Circumvesuviana station on Friday morning — that’s five days before you found the clothes.’ Fede squeezed Niccolò’s shoulder. ‘What did I tell you? Didn’t I say there would be news today? It says that a woman has come forward who recognized the star on the T-shirt. She saw someone at the station wearing the clothes you found. On Friday. In Naples. The T-shirt comes from America, it’s unlikely there are more like it in the country. It’s exactly as I told you.’
Niccolò looked hard at Fede and saw that he was serious. He didn’t remember Fede telling him any of this but didn’t want to openly disagree. Fede’s face being creased and rubbery, was the hardest of faces to read.
‘The police are certain it’s the same person. They’re looking at videotape from the security cameras to see which station he came from. It also says the person is almost certainly dead.’ Fede pointed to the article. ‘Here. Wounds to the lower stomach, chest, upper…’ he ran a finger across his neck, ‘… within four minutes.’
The two men sat side by side on the concrete step beside the security booth.
Niccolò opened the newspaper across his lap and focused on where the hillside dropped to a smooth blue plate of sky. Aquamarine. The tips of the city’s towers visible at the edge in a tawny haze.
‘I know,’ Fede interrupted his thoughts. ‘It’s a bad world.’ He slapped the paper with the back of his hand. ‘But you know what. Everything moves forward.’ The man stood up and looked down at Niccolò. ‘Some family is going to thank you for finding the clothes. If it wasn’t for you this might not have been discovered. When they sort this out some family is going to be grateful. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of recognition, some kind of a reward.’
Niccolò slowly re-read the article. Please, no more rewards, no more meals / speeches / flowers and plaques, no more interviews, no more presentations. He studied the two articles with care and re-read sections that were unclear to him until they began to make sense. The police wanted to hear from anyone who’d travelled on the six thirty Trento express or the six thirty-five Circumvesuviana into Naples on the previous Friday, or anyone who was in or around the station from seven fifteen in the morning until eight thirty. An image of the five-pointed star was reprinted, bold, white on black, accompanied with a map of the Circumvesuviana line marking all stops to Naples. An editorial called for witnesses to come forward, and an appeal was made to hoteliers asking them to report unfilled or cancelled bookings and ensure that all visitors were properly recorded as required. He began to count.
‘I know,’ Fede sucked in his breath, ‘four minutes is a long time.’
* * *
Niccolò took the night report and logbook to the main office and waited a little while in the entrance, knowing that Fede would not be able to linger. When he returned he sat with the small blue notebook on his lap and kept it concealed under the counter. Happy to be alone he studied the tidy, sloping handwriting, his eye ran over words he couldn’t understand. A fan blew warm air into the booth. On the first page, written in capitals he found an address and what he thought to be a name and serial number. N. CLARK, — 0626.
The police had said that they would get back to him if they needed help, and given this new witness he was certain that they would need more information once they understood a little more about the situation. He wouldn’t wait for the call, he would make his own investigation. It was almost two days now since his discovery, and during those two days Niccolò had been walking in a different world, breathing different air, separate and expectant. In the long hours sat monitoring cars and staff in and out of the dye plant, he nursed the idea that he was being tested and observed, as if the event itself, the murder of this student, was some kind of creature.
Closing the book Niccolò decided that he would conduct his own investigation, then he would contact the police and hand the notebook over to them along with his findings. He would say that someone left the little book outside his door, or that he had found it in a part of the field that they had not searched, or perhaps that he had found it a place that they had searched just to make a point of their uselessness.