Notorious (17 page)

I say his name. His real name. His eyelids flicker but he won’t turn his head.

I say, ‘John – ’

‘You’re not my only case,’ he says. ‘We’re all on the clock here.’

A circle of light appears, the size of the bracelet on my wrist. If my wrist wasn’t in it.

‘This is all about time,’ he says. ‘Remember that, will you?’

I wonder what would happen if I reached out and put my hand on the shadows circling the base of his neck.

‘And for God’s sake,’ he says, ‘don’t tell them you were in Venice celebrating your father’s death.’

The storm seems worse on the other side of the tunnel. Whirled spouts of water rise high above us before dumping broken seaweed and crushed shells and fistfuls of gritty dark brown sand. I think hail is hammering the roof until I see hard black pebbles bouncing on the bonnet.

A huge rock the size of a mule smashes down. Chunks hit the windscreen, leaving spider-webs of cracks in the glass, more chunks breaking up on the road or cart-wheeling over the edge of the cliff. Devlin hauls at the wheel to avoid the biggest piece. We hit a water plane and skid sickeningly. As the car jerks to a stop and the engine dies, he flings out his right arm to pin me to my seat. I put my hand over his hand, feel the broad wrist, the long fingers. He is still for a moment, shocked maybe, and I find his pulse, press in. He twists his hand away.

‘This bloody country,’ he says.

He starts the car.

‘I’d like to emphasise,’ he barely opens his mouth, each syllable as compressed as stone, ‘that I didn’t mean – ’ he almost shudders at what he is about to say – ‘on the cliff. I do care about . . . ’

Even for the sake of his work he can’t bring himself to say ‘you’.

He says, ‘I do care about the job.’ The Scotch taint is replaced by sharp mint. The same mouthwash my mother used, by the smell of it.

‘If you care about the job,’ I say, ‘why can’t I have a few days off?’

‘You had a few days off,’ he says. ‘In Venice.’

He slows down to avoid a large white boulder lying in the middle of the road. The fog on the window softens the edges; it looks like someone in cream robes, kneeling in the road, praying to Mecca.

‘This is our only window of opportunity,’ he says in the voice carefully bleached of all emotion that he uses whenever he tries to reason with me. ‘Pietr is putting his affairs in order. He’s relocating – South America. Venezuela. You know the Americans have no extradition deals there. You agreed to do this now.’

I raise my wrist, jangle the tracking bracelet viciously.

He won’t look at me. ‘That wasn’t my idea.’

‘Why then?’

‘If I told you it was as much to keep an eye on me as you . . . ’ I cover the bracelet; the green light hums warmth beneath my fingers. Sending out its little calculations, its little messages. ‘You can take it off.’

‘You made the deal,’ he says. ‘It’s this or jail for being your father’s accessory.’

I turn my head to the glass. The cliffs tremble past in dark blurry shapes.

He says, and maybe his tone is softer, ‘I thought you wanted to find out – ’

‘Don’t say it.’

‘ – what happened to your brother.’

Everyone is so sad now, I think to myself as I draw twisted figures of eight on the fogged window. The cliffs move past in a dark parade. The windscreen wipers beat their faltering rhythm, straining under the heavier falls of water.

When the waves come up the cliff, we move through light dampened to an aquamarine glow. I am immensely relaxed, the way I am when I see a fine piece of art or read a poem from the soul. I feel as safe and secure as when I was a child. I am reminded of the games I played with my brother, draping old blankets over the sofa and chairs in the living room to make intricate tunnels and little rooms; our own tiny kingdom. There was one blanket we liked the best: an old green one. It had holes in it, enough to let the light in, enough to let us look out. Spy on everyone outside.

Everyone is so sad now. Where did I say that? The green curtain falls over the car and I remember. I remember saying it to my father at my brother’s funeral, the funeral with the empty coffin.

I slump, exhausted. ‘The cliffs are black glass. Imagine living in a land which constantly reflected black images of you.’

‘Lava,’ he says. ‘Sicily is a volcanic land. There used to be more volcanoes, not just Etna.’ He presses his lips together.

‘Go on.’

He stares ahead. ‘I’m not a tour guide.’

‘You say that in exactly the same tone that women say, I’m not a secretary.’

‘I rest my case.’

‘I am interested, Dev,’ I say, as meekly as I can.

‘Stop talking to me as though you know me.’

I shouldn’t let his disdain get to me – it is what I deserve after all – and I say to myself that I don’t care what he thinks. But I can’t help myself. I can’t not say anything.

‘I’m as interested now as I was the night we met,’ I say slowly.

His face contorts then settles into its usual impassive lines and planes; his Embassy face. But I bet there’s another face under there. Another face revolving in the black wind. I can always tell.

‘Nothing happened that night,’ he says. The emotion has gone again from his voice; he’s forced out any tell-tale inflections. ‘You don’t know me.’

‘No biblical knowings allowed in your schedule.’

His foot comes down hard on the accelerator. The car leaps forward. He can’t remember, that’s his problem. The only thing he can remember is how furious he is with me. All those timetables that he clings to, all those hi-tech gadgets in his briefcase – everything derailed by one too many Scotches.

I look over my shoulder at the briefcase – the new one – on the back seat. I wonder if he knows I picked the lock of his old briefcase the first time I met him. I think so. I never saw that case again. The one he has now is bigger, made of some light steel, with an electronic pad instead of locks. Fingerprint identification. I bet my diary is in there.

‘Can you please check the map,’ he says in that clipped monotone. He thinks I won’t be able to rile him if he stamps everything down. But I am convinced I know what subjects get under his skin. Misguidedly convinced, as it will turn out.

‘You know, we are alike,’ I say. ‘You have your maps, I have my poetry.’

He shakes his head.

‘You don’t like poetry,’ I say, ‘because it seems useless to you. But it is a magnificent uselessness. People die every day for the lack of it.’

‘I don’t like poetry,’ he says, wiping hard at the misted windscreen, ‘because it stirs up emotions. In feeble-minded people who should just get on with the job and stop thinking about their feelings all the time.’

‘You mean me,’ I say. ‘The famous Miss K.’

‘The infamous Miss K,’ he says. ‘It’s not so attractive when you get older, the stories.’

I try to laugh but this is one of those times when the land disappears from under me and I have to scramble to get back.

I unfold the map, trace the red line of road. This section of the coast is sparsely populated, nothing but the inverted black Vs of the mountains running down to the sea, a village or small town here and there. ‘Trepani,’ I read out. ‘Partanna. Santa Margherita. Great names.’

He grunts. ‘Mafia villages. The satellite photos are on the back.’

The other side is covered with blue-grey images. I recognise a farm building and the jagged shadows of a dried-out river. These are aerial shots, taken far above. Up near the moon maybe.

The country in the map is draped with a fine black lattice which clings even to the steep cliffs along the coast road. The land is divided into grey squares; a small number lurks in the right-hand corner of each.

‘These numbers look like scavengers,’ I say. ‘Alien invaders.’

He blows out air, exasperated. ‘Work your way back from 37N 15E. There are no signs in this bloody place.’

‘I know we passed a statue of Saint Agrippina a few kilometres back.’

He looks blank.

‘Near the first rock fall,’ I say helpfully. I don’t bother to say, Near the ruins of the Saracen temple, near the first real reminder that we are in Arabic territory. My father’s old route.

I find the temple on the map: a hatch of pale bones. Even Agrippina’s statue shows as a pale dome and an upraised arm. I trace my way forward, through what must be the tunnel; the road disappears for a while under the mountain’s shroud.

I reach a black circle marking a road running sharply to the right, up the side of a hill. There is a house on the top, and the dark oval of a driveway. But the house is surrounded by what looks like flat panes of water, a ghostly shield where the building’s inner walls, pale and distorted, seem to show through. They are smudged, like Devlin’s face in the rain.

He takes a quick look at the map. ‘Probably a misprint. These things are never as accurate as you want them to be.’

I stare at the fine squares, the land reduced to its essentials. I see Agrippina’s pleading hand. The grey tree tops tremble in my lap as the car slides on the wet road. The map seems very accurate to me.

We go on. Twice we have to swerve sharply as boulders hit the road. The next time, a rock lands on the roof and makes a bulge in the metal over the back seat.

I touch the distortion. The vinyl has stretched but held.

‘They’ll need to fish-oil that quick smart,’ I say, ‘to keep the rust out.’

‘Like you know anything about cars,’ says Devlin. ‘The party princess.’

‘My brother loved cars. I helped him fix up his first one.’ I have a sharp image of blue sky and jacaranda. My brother wiping his hands on an oily rag and saying, ‘It’s a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll.’

I smell wattle and gum leaves. ‘Aren’t you ever homesick?’ I say to Devlin.

He says, ‘Don’t even think of trying that one on me.’

The rain comes down, harder. The windscreen wipers are barely clearing the water when he says, ‘There.’

The side road looks as though it rises almost vertically. But it is paved with large heavy stones wedged into the earth, enough surface for the tyres to grip. There are thick stone columns on either side; on top of each is a wolf’s head, cast in steel. In the glowering light, the rain running down the twisted grey metal looks like tears.

The car climbs the steep hill, the motor whining. We lean forward in our seats to stay upright, feel the weight pulling at us, in our lower backs, in our stomachs, the pressure wanting us to slide back into the sea. The bracelet is heavy on my wrist. I wonder how high we will go. I wonder if the light on the bracelet will change.

Balls of mist roll slowly past the windows. The land is black wet scrub: stubby bushes cling to small pockets of soil between the scattered rocks. I wipe a circle in the smudged window and look into the side mirror. Behind us, the drifting sheets of rain have settled into steady, falling walls. There is no sign of the horizon, just a glimpse of clouds swelling like sails out of the sea. The road disappears into them.

The slope seems to ease; statues appear on either side: more wolves, a boar with long curving tusks, a bear on its hind legs, clawing up out of the grey mist. A garland of mist as thick as fairy floss is wrapped around its throat.

‘Do they have bears here?’

‘Probably some homage to the local Mafia leader,’ Devlin says as the car crawls on.

Here are statues of women, saints presumably, bowed heads under lovingly carved cowls, their clasped hands protruding from the carefully draped robes. Their eyes are downcast, their faces long-suffering. Passive. Resigned. Ineffectuality as survival.

I have an image of black shawls, hidden faces. Imagine never feeling the sun on your head. I feel a moment’s pity for them: living in this backwater, far from the world, cut off from all events.

I stare at the panel at the top of Devlin’s map: a miniaturised outline of Sicily, set between Europe and Africa. There is barely a square’s width between Sicily and Tunisia, just under three to where Iraq sits, an innocuous patch to the right.

I think of my father’s business. For business, Sicily was the most strategic point in the world to him. And to Pietr’s grandfather. Only Pietr’s father escaped – what had they called it at the trial? ‘A century of deliberately orchestrated looting and plundering.’ Was there a better word than ‘looting’, something other than ‘plundering’, for what my father did? I didn’t think so.

The road flattens; the land on my right falls away more gently. The strain on our lower backs is immediately relieved.

We are on a natural plateau. I rub at the window and see six broken columns reach from the ground like massive arms.

‘Jesus,’ says Devlin, but he is not looking at the ruins.

A mule comes into view, its head bowed beneath the rain. The black sacking it wears has holes to allow the long ears through.

The mule tows a painted wooden cart, the vivid blues and reds dulled by the rain. A man sits hunched on the front seat, wearing a black plastic sheet as a poncho. The raindrops hit the plastic, forming small rivers that run down the shiny surface. The mule steps carefully; the sound of its hooves reaches us.

We sit in the road. The idling exhaust blows past us, broken up by the rain. The cart comes on, the man doesn’t raise his head.

‘Jesus,’ says Devlin again, reversing the car in a tight left-hand curve off the road, across a shallow waterlogged ditch and onto soft ground which sucks at the tyres.

The cart goes past. The hooves fade into the distance.

The six columns shiver in the rain-soaked rear window. They are set into a raised stone floor around a huge statue, pale against the dark land. A stone face with almond eyes and a square beard looks at me, the cracks in the white marble show as veins on the white eyeballs. Rain runs down his face to his massive shoulders and planes off the arms bent along his legs, rain drips from the palms cupping the giant knees. In front of him is more white marble: a heavy square block with a twisted crown of snakes – or are they thorns? – carved on the front. It must be shadows made by the rain which stain the tabletop.

I stop rubbing the window.

‘What is it?’ says Devlin.