Juggling the Stars (29 page)

Morris sat in the dark again. He turned out the light for safety and sat in the dark, watching the faint white of her body. He felt different this time. Sicker. Stranger. His face was wet with tears. Mimi! Why couldn't this cup at least have been spared him? Why couldn't she have been more sensible? It was her fault.

Perhaps he was going to go to pieces completely this time. He could feel it. He closed his eyes and great areas of dark gathered and pressed against throbbing burning brilliant lights inside his skull. Bright blues and reds were squeezed and crushed into darkness by the encroaching black. When he opened his eyes there was just that pale indefinite, lifeless shape, floating upwards from the shadows. It wasn't his fault life was so fragile, that you could solve all your problems with a single blow. And then he'd never planned to kill her, had he? He'd wanted it the other way (he should have recorded the conversation), and it was pure bad luck that… but he had to stand up and hurry to the bathroom to throw up in the sink.

For a moment, coming back across the corridor, he had the idea she might somehow still be alive and he ran the last few steps into the sitting room, ready to roll her over and breathe life into that pouting little mouth. But beside the body he stopped and turned away. Her nakedness frightened him. No, he had to get rid of her and do it fast. He had to get the body a hundred miles from here and perfectly hidden. If possible destroyed. How, he didn't know. But these were the kind of problems that would help him get himself back together again. If he just sat down and looked at her he was done.

It was five o'clock. Outside there would be the first grey light. Morris dressed quickly, went out of the front door, round the side of the house to the right and opened the door of a small garden shed, forlorn on the edge of an unkempt rockery. He had sniffed about inside here before and noticed some big plastic sacks full of fertilizer. Potassium something or other. There was one empty sack laid over a lawnmower and three full ones against the wall. He took a full one, dragged it into the pale light outside the shed, split open the top and emptied the stuff. A stream of blue crystals piled themselves into a heap. He took the empty sack, plus the one in the garden shed and went back into the house. The electric light was still needed here because he hadn't lifted the blinds and had no intention of doing so. At the door he wiped his feet carefully and then went back across the tiles through to the dining room and the corpse.

There would be no need to turn her over and see her face, nor even to touch her much with any luck. Just jerk out the cushion from under the head, then slip the first sack over her as far as it would go. And if she was alive? If she gasped, turned, looked? She wasn't alive. Morris bent down over the naked girl, drew a deep breath and then did it. It was clumsy, the arms wouldn't go in, then the breasts caught and for a moment he thought they were going to be too big, she was too wide for the sack, but no, they went in, a little pressure and they went. He worked the sack down, lifting her and pulling the thing untill it was right at her waist. No further. Looking at her then, or what was visible, he felt a surge of affection, a desire to bend down and kiss the soft round bottom. But he held firm. He mustn't get into stuff like that. Absolutely. He picked up the other sack and had worked it up as far as her knees when the telephone rang.

The bell hit Morris like a physical blow or a bullet. He felt dazed. The phone, at six o'clock on a Thursday morning? They had traced the call she'd made and phoned back perhaps. Bet you didn't phone back when you traced a call like that. You sent round ten cars fell of police tout de suite. Still, it would be better not to answer, nerves too shaky. After ten rings or so the thing stopped.

He worked feverishly now. The ringing phone had impressed him with a senserf flight, a closing net, given him that hunted animal feeling he seemed to have lived with all his life and had learnt in a rather curious way to enjoy. He moved very quickly and efficiently, getting the second sack up to overlap with the first, then back into the bedroom to tidy.

He gathered all her clothes, everything, knickers, bras, swimming costume, slip, and then the dirty things she'd left in the bathroom, plus her handbag of course, where was her handbag? Here. Every single possession, he got them all together, took them back, into the sitting room and stuffed them up inside the sacks. Which was when he remembered the St Christopher. Shouldn't he get it off her? If they ever found the body, for example, then identified the thing, what then? They must have appreciated that it had been stolen along with Giacomo's wallet, mustn't they? No, he was just getting paranoid. Forget it. He wasn't taking the sack off her body again anyway. Under any circumstances.

With all her clothes, belongings and shoes stuffed in now, he rolled the body over so it would be face upwards, lifted the feet end so that they pressed down on the face, held them there with his own foot while he undid his belt, and then slipped the belt round head and feet and tightened it, hard. Done. Coming adrift a bit at the middle but he could see to that later. The first thing was to have her out of the house and clean the place up. He took the two sack ends where they met at her bent waist and dragged the package down the corridor, down the two stone steps outside the front door, wincing as the head cracked on the second step, and then out behind the garden shed.

Oh what the hell was he going to do with that fertilizer, sitting there in a damn great shining blue pile? Nothing. Shovel it behind the shed and leave it there. Nobody would notice. Certainly not Gregorio anyway, and his parents wouldn't be coming again this year if the father had had an operation. Next year if anybody came across it, it would just be one of those little domestic mysteries of which life offered examples enough for heaven's sake - a big pile of dust behind the bathroom door, an ornament you've never seen before wrapped in tissue at the back of the visitor's bedroom wardrobe - these things were fairly normal You didn't have to suspect murder just because there was a pile of fertilizer unaccountably dumped behind your garden shed. He shovelled the blue crystals round there, swept the path with a twig broom, then dragged the corpse behind the shed too. Just a temporary arrangement. The thing to concentrate on now was the house.

He went back over the bedroom, cleaning meticulously. Every sign of her must go. He had overlooked a nail varnish bottle, a box of Tampax, a tissue on the bedside table with toe-nail parings (after telling her to let the things grow!). And then there was the pregnancy test. How on earth could he have forgotten it? Morris stopped a moment to read through the instructions on the box, but it was too complicated, he didn't have time. And who cared anyway? He swept the thing into a plastic bag with the other odds and ends, carried them outside and pushed them inside the open mouths of the fertilizer sacks. He would have to tie those up later. Keep his eye open for a good piece of rope.

Towards eight thirty Morris was giving the sitting room floor a last careful wipe with warm water and alcohol, whistling now because he was almost through, singing sometimes - Through the night of doubt and sorrow. 'Onward goes the pilgrim band' - when his voice was suddenly drowned by the sound of a car racing up the drive. A squeal of brakes, scrunching wheels on gravel, a slamming door, running feet.

Still wearing Signora Perroni's apron that he'd put on to clean, Morris blundered towards the door, the confession already forming on his lips. What was the point of denying it? If only they'd come an hour or two earlier to stop him. Morris felt close to tears and suddenly desperately lonely. Dear Mimi. If only they'd come earlier.

‘Ciao, Morris! So you
are
here. Why didn't you answer the phone earlier? It did ring, didn't it?'

Gregorio ran up the steps. He was in shorts and his long athletic legs had a strong brown healthy look to them. Likewise his face under a mop of dark curls. Oh he was so terriically glad to be back! And he'd just got his exam results, he said. He'd done it, passed, would you believe it? And he burst out laughing. Morris stared, backing away into the darkened house. Did he have to kill Gregorio too?

‘Buono, in English.
Buono!
Mamma nearly fainted.'

‘Congratulations,' Morris croaked.

A moment later he was helping the boy bring his bags in.

‘I know it was early but you might have answered, you lazy bastard. I came on the night boat and was hoping you'd get me some breakfast ready.'

‘You're back earlier than you said.' Morris was almost accusing.

'Yes, they let Papa out of hospital early and I. What on earth have you been doing in the sitting room; washing the floor at eight in …'

‘I was about to go,' Morris said, looking for a voice with something natural about it, and putting down the suitcase he'd brought in, he moved quickly to lift the shutters so as to dispel that air of covertness. And the smell? Did the room smell, it suddenly occurred to him? Only of cleaning alcohol surely.

‘Going?'

‘Yes, that must be why I missed this call you say you made. It's all a bit complicated though. Come into the kitchen while I make you a coffee and I'll tell you about it.' His voice sounded about as natural as something from Wagner. But foreignness was on his side here. Gregorio would put it down to his English way with Italian. Put on a bit of an accent perhaps?

They sat on stools watching the coffee pot, Gregorio munching biscuits, and Morris explained how he had had a girlfriend with him and …

‘Oh, a girlfriend, I thought you were coming with a boy?'

‘No, really? How come?'

‘You said
amico
on the phone.'

'Did I?' Morris looked innocently at Gregorio and held his gaze untill he caught the faintest blush behind the boy's tan. ‘No, no, a girl. Anyway.'

‘Not the one I saw you with in Piazza Bra that night? With the red tracksuit.'

‘Who? Oh no, this was my real girlfriend,' He tried a little grin and thought he made it. ‘Anyway, we had a hell of a row last night - about getting married inevitably enough, she thought she was pregnant - and then when I refused, she took it into her head she was going to leave immediately, on the first bus from the village, so I had to walk her down there, carry her bags,'

‘But I phoned at six, you weren't surely,'

The village is a good five kilometres and the first bus back to Olbia was 7:10,' Morris had no idea when the first bus was, but then nor would Gregorio. The only time Gregorio noticed buses was when he was overtaking them in one of Papa's cars. A warm feeling of justification began to throb back through Morris's veins. He too would have a car soon. (Oh damn, he must get the cash out of Gregorio's wardrobe!)

'Yes, I told her she should wait till nine or so and then call Roberto, but you know what girls are; I was a beast and she was going to get away as soon as she could. So of course “the beast” here ended up lugging her cases five kilometres down there and himself five kilometres back,'

He could see it all, was even beginning to feel hard done by. ‘Anyway, when I got back I thought I'd just clean up and go myself, seeing as it's not too much fun being in a place all on your own.'

Actually, now he thought about it, there was nothing he would have liked more than a few days' rest here on his own.

Gregorio appeared to swallow it all and then while he was swallowing his coffee too. Morris said he had to go to the toilet for a minute. He dashed into Gregorio's bedroom and quietly eased the plastic bag out from behind the pullovers. Excellent. He padded into his own room and packed the thing into his suitcase. Had he forgotten anything? Was there anything at all anywhere that could give him away? He had washed the paperweight and put it back. Traces of blood in the sink? He thought not. There'd hardly been any blood. The floor was clean. All her things were gone. Everything.

‘You'll stay a few days though now I'm here?' Gregorio's voice behind him had him starting a moment.

‘A day or two maybe, but I'm kind of eager to be back. Find myself some work before the money runs out.'

How long would it be before the corpse began to smell, before Gregorio for some reason wandered behind the garden shed?

‘What are you doing today?' Morris asked point-blank.

'I thought a lazy day on the beach with Roberto would hit the spot. Then I need a haircut.'

These people didn't do anything but spend lazy days on the beach. And it was a scandal they'd passed him in English. His mother must have known the examiner or something. He followed Gregorio into the bathroom and watched him beginning to shave.

‘I was wondering if you could maybe do me a favour then. ‘ And he explained that when he had come over on the boat he had met a rich industrialist who was apparently a count or something and this man had hinted that Morris might be able to work for him in his office in Vicenza. He'd invited Morris to drop over and see him at his villa in La Caletta, and what he'd been intending to do was get the bus down there and from there to the ferry, but if he was going to come all the way back here to stay another couple of days, then …

‘Sure, take the car,' Gregorio said, slicing through white foam on his neck. Morris noticed a pack of old-fashioned Gillette blades on the glass shelf in the corner of the bathroom. People really were so vulnerable. It was ridiculous.

‘Well just go to Roberto's first,I'll get off there and you can go on.'

The only problem was that to go back and load Massimina into the car he would have to turn round and drive back in front of Roberto's hotel going in the wrong direction for where he'd said he was going. There was no other road. Could it make them suspicious? It could. But Morris had learned by now that where there was no choice it was better not to worry about the danger of doing something. You just did it. He drove quietly past the white hotels careful not to accelerate or do anything unusual, then once out of sight cruised moderately back to the villa. He'd seen an old skipping rope somewhere in one of the cupboards that he could use for tying her up.