Notorious (23 page)

‘You mean Pietr?’

He scribbles a thicket of black lines on his page. ‘Any of them.

Yes, Pietr.’

‘He’s – kind,’ I say.

Devlin makes a noise under his breath.

‘He set up the swimming pool for me.’

‘Yeah, well,’ says Devlin. ‘Easy for the rich ones.’

‘He doesn’t treat me like a criminal.’

‘Criminals never do. How’s the old woman?’

‘She’s away,’ I say. ‘Doing business or something.’

‘Oh, well, don’t waste too much time on her,’ says Devlin. ‘Mitch says she’s not important.’ He presses his pen down into the page. I see the point disappear into the white. ‘So – no visitors, no odd packages?’

‘Pietr says the locals steer clear of the place. Because of the toxic lake.’

‘That sounds like total superstitious bullshit.’ He bends over the page. ‘You’d better start snooping around. There’s got to be an office somewhere, documents. They won’t be on their guard. They think you’re one of them.’

I lower the umbrella. My hood falls back. Usually I enjoy rain on my head but now the coldness is an irritation.

‘It would help if I knew – ’ I say.

‘Need to know only,’ says Devlin. ‘Just note anything unusual. Anything valuable.’

‘Pietr wants to show me a book of poetry by a French explorer.’

‘Oh, not poetry,’ says Devlin, waving a hand. ‘No-one cares about poetry. Think what would impress Mitch and the Americans.’

‘Money,’ I say. ‘Antiques.’

‘You didn’t hear it from me.’ He makes more marks in his book. A trio of frozen water drops falls from the bare branch behind him.

I say slowly, ‘But Mitch has started looking for my brother?’

‘Sure,’ says Devlin. He meets my gaze without blinking. ‘It takes time to check every old building, every deserted farm.’

I think of the peak I can see from my room, the ruined village across the plain.

I say, ‘You think that’s where he could be?’

‘Sicily – land of kidnappings. Some of these villages made their living that way for decades. The Mafia would snatch rich kids in Rome or Bologna and fly them down here. Still do. You can land a plane any number of places inland.’

I think of the plain in summer: flat, dry, dusty, the road running almost straight to Santa Margherita. I imagine flares lit on the ground, the plane coming in at night, low, under the radar, the dark shadows against a moon chosen precisely because it was three-quarters eaten. The steps being let down, a blindfolded figure being dragged to the waiting car.

‘Or boat,’ says Devlin casually. ‘You could bring them ashore if you knew the right place to land. But our guys say this part of the coast is impassable.’

He reaches across and pushes my jacket sleeve up. I had taken the bandage off. The burns and cuts flare red beneath the silver circle.

‘The steel will chafe,’ says Devlin. ‘You need to pad it.’

I move until I am directly in front of him. ‘Dev, you will tell me if you hear anything about my brother?’

He drops my sleeve but I am sure I see sympathy in his eyes. He had this way of looking at me as though there was something else – some memory, some image – superimposed over me, the way that if a living being walked into the frame of an image which was already being photographed, the human would be made misty by the shorter exposure. The human would become a ghost in the photo, the real background showing through harsh and clear. I wonder if it is images of when we met that he sees when he looks at me. I don’t think so. Nothing he has shown me – even that night – makes me think he can’t completely shut down that side of himself. Of course, I realise later, that had always been my mistake with him. Misjudging the limits of his control.

He blinks and goes back to making the marks in his book. ‘I can’t do anything if Mitch doesn’t okay the funds. None of these guys have long attention spans. So you’d better find something in the next week.’

‘I can’t find something in nothing,’ I say.

‘That never stopped the Americans,’ says Devlin.

THURSDAY

I
am dreaming of swimming in the only land where I can be myself. In a past-less land. I roll over in the patient liquid, talking to someone I can’t see, explaining myself, my obsession.
Don’t you
understand? It is a democratic country. There are no boundaries, no surfaces
between skin and water. Language is useless here, entire conversations
conducted with fingers as gentle as anemones.
I wave my hand and clear bubbles rise like fireflies lighting dark gardens.
Don’t you see?
Look around us. The anxious, the unsteady, the regretful, they are all
buoyant again.
Ripples of blue light play beautiful patterns across the dimpled flesh moving slowly past me. I am swimming through liquid chrome. I see the shiny coin of an elbow, the unblinking eyes of the lap swimmers.
Don’t you see
, I say to the person who is with me. The unknown person. The one.

Water flows into you in infinitesimal particles.

Like tears. Like pulses.

I am dreaming in water. The reflection from the pool plays across the metal roof in waves of light. I turn over and over like a seal. This is one of only two places where the absence inside is filled. Where I don’t want to shoot up heroin. I dive down to the bottom of the pool, touch the gritted concrete with my knuckle and swim up.

Through the liquid veil, I see Pietr. He waits with a towel as I climb the ladder.

‘You’re fast,’ he says in a tone of surprise.

‘I swam a lot when I was under house arrest.’ I see him looking at the marks on my arms. I wonder if he can see past the word written across each inner elbow. I think so. He can imagine the small pinpricks, the old purple scars, the clotted red holes, the twisted veins. The red holes are hard to see under the tattooed words but he knows they are there. He would have searched for them on Anna’s arms. In the morgue.

He looks away.

‘It was a long time ago, Pietr. And you know what they say about rich junkies.’ I can’t halt the self-disgust. ‘They can afford much better gear.’ I look down at my arms, past the faint purple of the word, the trembling Rs and Es, to the tiny trails of holes. Little marks on some other page. Refugees from another country.

‘Now, I don’t even know why I did it,’ I say slowly. ‘One year it was fun, it was something you did. And then – the next year it wasn’t. After Anna. My brother.’

‘Anna told me you were the only one who visited her in hospital,’ he says. Then, in wonderment, ‘All those parties, all those friends. And no-one came.’ The hard explosion on the last word. I see it in the air, with the same initial letter as my last name.
Kame
.

I wrap the towel around my shoulders. ‘It was another time. Sleep until early afternoon, get dressed, go shopping. Dinner. Party till dawn. I remember the bouncer at Zone saying to me, You’ve got a very 1980s attitude.’

‘It helped Anna, you being there,’ says Pietr.

‘Did it?’ I shake my head. ‘She would sit for hours in the same position, sifting dirt through her hands. She said she was holding a millennia of bones.’

‘She had photos of you,’ he says. ‘And your brother.’

‘I know those photos.’ I am silent a moment. ‘If you take me out of the fine clothes you hardly recognise the girl. I couldn’t recognise her at all in the news photos. A small, worried-looking girl. A stupid girl.’

He touches my arm. ‘You must have been strong not to go under,’ he says. ‘After the rest of your family.’

‘No-one knows,’ I say sharply, ‘what happened to my brother.’

‘Not even Mr Devlin?’

‘He says not.’

‘Do you believe him?’

‘I have to.’

The shifting light from the water reflects on his face. Outside, rain streams down the glass panels which are bolted now to the railing and the metal roof. The heat from the pool mists the panels but every now and then, the cold air eddying between the steel rods hits the glass and there is a glimpse of the day outside. I imagine the deserted ruins of Santa Margherita. Beckoning.

Later, when we are standing on the back terrace, Pietr says, ‘I planted the forest here. I wanted a reminder of Koloshnovar – my grandfather’s estate – before it was spoiled.’

The sky is a flat grey. Rain falls in fitful bursts, the wind slaps at the treetops. There is a faint scream: an eagle rises slowly on the current, drifting, beginning to turn, wings scything the air lazily, rolling over to look back along its shoulder, turning tighter and tighter, corkscrewing down through the hazy air, almost a straight line, faster and faster until it seemed to dive into the trees. A pause and then the bird reappears. It climbs steadily into the leached sky, a crumpled body in its beak.

‘Rabbit,’ says Pietr, turning to follow the bird, and I think he shivers.

‘You always refer to Koloshnovar as your grandfather’s estate,’ I say. ‘But wasn’t it also your father’s?’

‘My father wanted to get away from it,’ says Pietr. ‘When I was a boy I asked the staff about him. They say he wanted to become a monk.’ He lets out a short disbelieving laugh. ‘And he married my mother.’

The storm rolls in again, the clouds close over. I say, ‘I think Devlin knows more than he is telling me.’

Pietr takes my hand in his and examines the bracelet, becoming still when he finds the illuminated green panel.

He says, ‘You can get those for alcoholics. There is an alarm inside, to make noise if you drink too much.’

‘It’s not for drinking, Pietr.’

‘Pity,’ he says. ‘I would suggest giving one to Mr Devlin.’ He reaches into his pocket and takes out a set of finely curved steel hooks hanging from a small ring. ‘Jeweller’s hooks,’ he says as he tries to insert the smallest into the hairline join in the metal. The point slips but he nods. ‘I can get that off.’

‘They would know you were helping.’

He pushes my sleeve further. He reads the word tattooed along my inner elbow.
Remember
.

He says, ‘Remembering.’
Rememberingk
. ‘Who has the luxury to forget?’ He pauses; I try not to feel it is deliberate. ‘When I see you,’ he says, ‘I think of Anna.’

I look at his hand on my arm. I think about time passing and Devlin taking my diary. I say to Pietr, ‘This is what I will tell Devlin: this is what happened. This is the truth.’

FRIDAY

A
fter lunch, I go to meet Devlin. The cold creeps in under my hood, it chills my skull. The burned skin on my wrist itches. The ice seems thicker on the trees today, hanging in crystal slivers which chime and tinkle in the wind. A bird calls over and over.

Below me is the tongue of road; beyond, the glinting lake. I am drifting down, half annoyed that Devlin hasn’t showed when a branch cracks nearby.

I turn to see a shadow move behind a tree.

‘Devlin?’

Silence, just the wind tugging at the leaves. The sun is watery, like a golden lake in the centre of a land of air, with clouds for peaks and strips of mist for fields.

My boots sink into black mud up to my ankles. Glitters of ice crown the odd blade of grass, coating fallen twigs, shearing off in minute plates from the grey stubby rocks and boulders. I struggle across to look behind the tree, convinced I see a figure.

There is no-one.

‘You bastard.’

My words splinter in the cold air. I try to read the letters in the thin black lines of the stripped branches. They are messages spelled out along the horizon, struggling through the cold air, past the uncaring trees, to the no-one who is there.

SATURDAY

P
ietr and I are in the darkroom on the top floor of the glass tower. He has run black curtains on rails all around the hexagonal room. ‘But the light still gets in,’ he says. ‘Winter is easier and often I work at night, so the photos don’t get exposed.’

The dark is a pulsing cloak around us; the red light bulb casts a warm glow over the liquid rocking in the tray he is holding. The photo begins to grow through the chemicals. He hasn’t used a tele-photo lens but has left the graininess of distance so that the woman moving across the bare landscape blurs into the dark trees. The glitter of frozen water hanging from the branches shows as white absences; the earth is as dark as opened arteries between the fallen mounds of grey leaves.

The woman is walking purposefully down the slope, putting out a hand to grasp the next tree trunk. I see the dark oval on the bottom left hand corner and I understand why he hadn’t gone further: the lake was between him and the woman.

I look at the picture. It is a season between seasons, a waiting world. Even the walking woman is waiting. I know, I recognise myself despite the lapping tides in the developing tray.

I wonder which day it was. Where Devlin was. I trace my path. Above the woman – me – is a dark shape merged with the trees; someone is watching and waiting for his moment to come out. If you didn’t know another person was there you wouldn’t pick the shape as human. It is a hunched and hooded blackness. I wondered if Pietr realises. I wonder how much longer Devlin had waited.

There are photos hanging clipped to a line in the corner.

‘Can I see?’ I say.

Pietr hesitates.

‘I understand not wanting to show.’

‘Go ahead,’ he says.

The first I choose is a close-up of me, walking through the woods. I have an absent-minded expression.

‘You can really see the freckles across my nose,’ I say.

‘You look like your brother.’

The word hangs in the room. ‘It’s not how I remember him.’

Pietr says, ‘Maybe it is – was – how he was over here.’

When I think back on this conversation, I wonder whether I left things out. Was there more that he said? Did he give me clues about my brother? He must have known all along – and I must have known that he knew. Should have known. He was my father’s business partner after all.

‘I can’t remember my brother,’ I say. ‘He’s already a dark outline, like one of those cloaks, those shrouds the women wear in the Middle East.’

‘Burqas,’ says Pietr.

‘It happened,’ I say, ‘when he started going to Koloshnovar.’