He told the woman that he’d sent Rino home early, like, really early. He lowered the phone to cancel the call and then couldn’t help from asking one last question.
‘How did you get this number?’
After a hesitation the woman answered crisply. ‘Rino gave it to me.’
Finn thought he could hear laughter in the background — something close to a donkey bray.
‘He gave you this number?’
More braying laughter.
‘But he has his own phone?’
‘He isn’t answering, culo. That’s why I called you.’
Finn bridled at being called an asshole and at the hee-haw laughter behind this. ‘Just don’t call this number, all right. Never call this number again.’
As he hung up he could hear more hefty chuckles above the donkey-laugh which seemed to choke on itself, a laugh that was also a haughty gulp.
* * *
He should have turned the phone off. Right off. Instead he checked his messages and email, and felt that the glow from the small screen, blue and just bright enough to pick out the white sheet, the edge of the pillow, as if sensing and measuring the rising humidity, which now, thanks to the air-conditioner, closed in, a kind of seepage, the air quickly thickening. Finn lay on his stomach, felt sweat bristle in the small of his back and he thought again about the student and wondered if Krawiec had stayed in the room the whole time, watched him strung up, ankles to wrists, and taunted him, or left him alone at times. This information mattered, he wanted to know if the student was toyed with, tortured. He felt the dimensions of the room, could sense exactly where and how he was located, the distance of the walls and floor, the pitch and angle of his body. He could sense it all. The boy had suffered, and it mattered that no one properly knew how much, and that no one knew his name.
The second call came forty minutes after the first. The number, again, withheld.
‘If that whoreson isn’t home in five minutes you can tell him not to come home at all. You tell him—’ and this time the woman’s voice tumbled into laughter and she couldn’t quite complete her sentence. Once again a donkey-like laugh buckled through from the background like this whole thing was a dare. He hadn’t heard Rino laugh. She hung up, then called back immediately.
‘I think he’s been kidnapped.’ Again, that laugh, a little more distant but a little more explosive.
‘I’m tracing the call,’ Finn lied. ‘It just takes a second but I can do it. There. I’ve got it. I’m passing this on to the police.’
‘Culo, you’ll do no such thing.’ The voice sounded angry now, she hung up herself.
The phone rang again. Stopped. Then rang again. Nearly two o’clock.
He resisted answering, allowed the call to go to message, managed not to check the message, until — with the phone under the pillow, his arms supporting his head he realized he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
The message started with a string of expletives: culo, pezzo di merda, frocio, succhiatore, pompinaio, leccacazzi, affanculo. ‘You come here and you think you know who we are.’
* * *
The phone rang regularly after this at intervals which cut shorter over the hour. Every fifteen minutes, every ten, every five. Finn switched off the ring, turned off the vibrate, but the small screen still lit up each time a call came through and each time a message was stored, and he fought against the urge to check the messages. Finally, when he decided to switch it off he was surprised to see that the calls had come from Rino’s phone.
He checked the messages and heard Rino, at first apologetic: ‘I’m in a situation,’ he said. His voice a little bashful, hushed, and a noise about him, which Finn identified after replaying the message, as a number of men quietly pushing over some discussion. ‘I need money. Badly. I can pay you back.’
The second and third calls reiterated the demand with a little more emphasis. ‘Pick up. Answer. Come on. I know you’re there.’ Finn couldn’t tell if this was frustration at receiving no answer or desperation because he really was in trouble.
The phone rang in his hand. Finn didn’t intend to answer but his thumb hit the keyboard.
‘Hey, hey. Are you there?’ Rino sounded indignant. ‘I need a little help. It isn’t much, I can pay you back.’
Finn didn’t respond, and waited for some explanation.
‘I need seven hundred euro. I swear I can pay you back as soon as the banks open.’
The phone crackled and another voice cut in gruffly and demanding, ‘Just get the money. Do exactly as he tells you.’
Then Rino — ‘I need the money tonight. I know you can do this.’
The call cut off and Finn switched on the bedside light and sat upright and blinked, really unsure what was going on.
Minutes later the phone beeped. An SMS, again from an unmarked number, with the simple instruction that Finn should walk to the piazza Nicola Amore, right where Corso Umberto crosses via Duomo, and wait. Portico, Café Flavia, 20 minutes. €800.
He arranged his clothes ready to dress, picked the socks out of his trainers, half-hurrying, then paused because he was working up a sweat and something about this whole thing just didn’t convince him. He sat on the bed, looked about the room for his clothes, and wondered what he was doing. A demand for money for no reason, coming in the middle of the night: why would he answer this? Rino didn’t sound drunk and didn’t sound particularly under pressure, and Finn had paid him, transferred a good deal more than this already, in advance. He had no obligation to go out.
€1,000. A new demand.
And how safe would this be? Walking the streets with a thousand euro.
Ten minutes later another message. You’d better be on your way. A definite threat.
Minutes after: Room 32, Hotel Grimaldi. Your light is on. His hotel, his room.
Then finally: Bring €2,000. Mr Rabbit & Mr Wolf.
Finn re-dressed, tucked his shirt into his pants. Two thousand euro? Rino wasn’t worth two thousand euro. One, maybe, at a stretch. But two thousand? Not a chance. A meeting with Mr Rabbit and Mr Wolf would be worth much more than two thousand.
* * *
He had the money, as it happened. This was all of his money for the month. It troubled him more that these people knew his hotel room, and, more likely than not, this would make him a target. If he didn’t go to the café they would come to the hotel. If he did go to cafe this could all be resolved.
He wrapped the notes in a sock and brought it with him to the piazza. Mr Rabbit and Mr Wolf? The mention of these men, he had to admit, was alarming and deeply unexpected, and sent the whole night off kilter. Finn waited in the portico outside the Café Flavia, the metal blinds down, no lights in any windows along the curved arcade. The road ran in a circle about the piazza and a centre island barricaded by temporary plywood barriers and a sign saying ‘Metro’. Above the hoardings some indication of roadworks, or digging: the sketched tops of cranes and heavy equipment. No traffic and no people. Finn stood under one of the arches, in view, in case anyone was watching, the money in the sock in his fist, in his pocket.
He heard the scooter come down the corso — a feeble wavering zip. When it came about the piazza the scooter continued, made an entire circuit, and when it returned to view a second time the man slowed down and crawled hesitantly toward him. A skinny man in shorts, very tight red shorts, with a striped T-shirt, a white helmet, sunglasses, a ratty beard, set his feet either side of the scooter to hold it up. Red shorts and white shoes. No socks. Sunglasses at two thirty-five in the morning. The man whistled through his teeth at Finn and signalled him forward.