Читать книгу Death Brings Gold - Nicola Rocca - Страница 11

CHAPTER 4

He couldn’t remember the last time there’d been such a cold day.

After starting the car, he’d spent almost ten minutes scraping the layer of ice from the windscreen. He had done it with his bare hands, because he couldn’t remember where the hell he had put the ice scraper. It had lived in the glove box the whole summer and every time he’d opened the compartment to retrieve something, the ice scraper had always been in the way. Then one day, tired of having to toss it around from side to side, he’d removed and put it…

Nothing, he couldn’t remember where in hell he’d stuck it.

And now, even after driving for fifteen minutes, he was still feeling a shooting pain in his hands caused by the ice. He was driving slightly bent forward, so he could breathe on his hands as they clutched the wheel. From time to time, he tried to drive with one hand, vigorously rubbing the other hand on his trousers in an attempt to warm it.

Giovanni Belmondo turned left and drove until he found a parking space right in front of the block of flats where his work colleague lived. He parked his Passat between two small, old cars and felt like a middle-class Italian. That thought managed to get a smile out of him, in spite of the terrible throbbing in his fingertips. He put his hands together in a prayer position. Then he began rubbing them vigorously against each other. The heat the exercise produced was minor, but enough to give him the relief he needed. He recovered his iPhone from the glove box and skimmed through his Contacts List.

When he saw the name Raffaele Ghezzi Cell, he swiped the screen with his index finger and made the call. He waited until he heard it ring, then he hung up. As he did every time that, for one reason or another, he’d go pick his friend up to give him a lift to work or go to a pub and watch Champions League matches together.

That morning, five minutes had already passed but Ghezzi still had not appeared.

“Dickhead,” he said, looking at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was 8:32 am.

According to workplace rules, at five to nine they should all be sitting in front of their PC’s. Mazzucotelli, their boss, was very strict. He said that you can tell a good employee by their punctuality.

Pffft… by their punctuality…

Due to a kind of superstitious bent-, he waited the full minute until the clock showed the thirty-third minute before calling Ghezzi again.

This time he let it ring twice, three time, four times, five, six …

“You’ve reached the voicemail of 338…”

He hung up, grumbling.

“I’ll bet this idiot is going to make us both late.”

For a moment he regretted having offered the lift. He cursed his colleague, his car that was with the mechanic and the mechanic himself. With all the money mechanics charge for a simple vehicle inspection, he mused, the price should include the risk of being insulted without reason.

He tried making yet another call, but after six rings, it went to voicemail again.

“Fuck,” he cursed, realising that his annoyance had even made him forget about his throbbing hands.

He browsed through his Contacts again until he found his colleague’s landline number. He pressed the Call button.

After it rang and rang endlessly, hearing at last the click of a receiver being picked up suggested to him that someone had answered.

“Hi…”

He recognised the voice as belonging to that great piece of ass, Martina.

“… you’ve reached our voice message. The Ghezzi’s are not at home at the moment. If it’s urgent, please leave a…”

“Fuck off,” snapped Giovanni, after he hung up.

He felt stupid for mistaking Martina-answering machine’s voice for the flesh and blood Martina.

For a moment he even doubted he was supposed to pick Raffaele up that day.

He scrolled down the list of text messages until he found the conversation with the dickhead. Raffaele’s last message dated back to 9:03 pm of the day before.

Could you pick me up tomorrow as well? Thank you. Raf

He’d sent a reply two minutes later.

Ok. Good night.

He stood and gazed at the screen on his mobile phone. He hadn’t make a mistake, not at all. Raffaele himself had asked for the lift.

“Dickhead,” he said to a colleague that couldn’t hear him. “Probably still sleeping.”

He was about to put the car into gear and start driving, but something inside him – something that he couldn’t explain – told him that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

“Dammit!” he cursed, banging the wheel with his fist.

He stopped the car and sat there, contemplating the muted colours of a morning that looked as dull and grey as the city.

His side window reflected the image of a man in his forties that had no desire to deal with that freezing morning again. This also reminded him of a phrase that somebody –he couldn’t remember who – had said to him a couple of weeks before:

Mirrors will always reflect an idiot.

He smiled and in doing so he felt a bit more idiotic than before.

He started counting down mentally from three. When his imaginary timer reached zero, he unlocked the car door handle and got out of the car, closing the car door behind him. As he was crossing the road, he pressed the button on the car key. In return, he heard the sound of the car’s central locking system engage. He didn’t know why, but crossing the street as the car locked itself always made him feel cool…

He smiled at the thought.

When he reached the gate he realised – as he should have imagined– that it was closed.

As he engaged his climbing skills, he asked himself what the point was of having a seventy centimetre high fence. His mind could not formulate an answer.

He walked down the path towards the glass door. He pulled the handle down, luckily it was open. He began climbing the stairs.

Reaching the landing on the first floor he saw his image reflected in the glass of the big window. He then remembered who had told him that stupid thing about mirrors and idiots.

The memory of Angelo Brera saying those words managed to get an almost hysterical laugh out of him. Then, he composed himself and continued going up.

When he reached the second floor, his wheezing suggested to him that maybe, from now on, it would be better to spend his time jogging instead of going to the pub and drinking Irish beer while watching twenty two guys on a giant screen kicking a ball around in exchange for millions of Euros a year and hot babes.

He covered the last flight of stairs trying to work out how many lifetimes someone with his job would need to work to earn what those boys pocket annually.

He reached the third and last floor now gasping for air. He moved closer to the door of his colleague’s flat. He knocked, lightly at first, with his knuckles. Then again with his hand in a fist.

No answer. Whatthefuck.

He pushed the door bell and in return received a sharp ring coming from inside the house.

Apart from that, no other sound.

He rang it a second time.

Another sharp ring and nothing more.

At that point, he instinctively pulled the door handle down. And to his surprise, realised the door to the flat was open.

What he saw when the door swung open forced him to turn away. For a long moment, he thought his imagination was playing a horrible trick on him. Rather, he hoped it was.

Taking a breath, as if building courage, he looked back. His imagination had nothing to do with it. It was all real.

With one hand holding himself up against the door frame, against his will, he began retching violently.