‘It’s Dad here.’
‘Coming,’ said Ella after a pause, her tone falsely cheerful. She let him in. Chris was standing on the far side of the bed and Lucas noticed immediately that he was empty-handed. He glanced at the bedside table, then at Ella, relieved as he saw the gun in her hand, hanging at her side. She’d gone for the gun; that was good.
Once she’d closed the door she put it back on the table and said, ‘Where have you been?’
‘I tried to call your dad. No reply. I’ll try again in the morning.’
Chris looked at his watch and said, ‘Maybe they’re in bed.’ He was still standing in the same place, like someone in a wooden amateur theater production, uneasy in his own space.
Lucas nodded but Ella said quickly, ‘Ben wouldn’t be in bed.’ She shrugged then, answering herself. ‘He doesn’t always pick up the phone, though.’
Lucas looked at her, thought of saying something and decided against it, turning on the TV instead. He went through a couple of channels—soccer, a hallucinatory game show—stopping on something that looked like the news.
As he watched, he was conscious of the two of them behind him. Chris was static, like he wasn’t sure who had the next line, an air of suppressed panic at the thought it might be him. Ella seemed more relaxed, projecting a slightly bewildered acceptance.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her sit on the foot of the bed, watching with him now. They were covering a political story, pictures of Berlusconi, other people he didn’t recognize.
When that story finished, the anchor spoke for a minute or two and all three of them heard him mention Montecatini. It kicked Chris back into life, bringing him over to sit next to Ella. There was some footage of the aftermath, a confused crowd, police, a covered body on the ground.
The last thing the camera fixed on was a gun that had been dropped by one of them. It lay in the road now, a MAC-10. That’s how Lucas had spotted them so quickly; if they’d been carrying something more discreet they might just have slipped a couple of shots in before he got to them.
And that was something else the MAC-10 said to him, something he wouldn’t share with Ella—that this hadn’t been an attempted kidnap: it had been a hit. He didn’t know what kind of business Hatto was involved in now but he had to have upset someone in a big way for them to consider this a reasonable payback.
A policeman was being interviewed, talking rapidly with a look of grave concern that didn’t match the excited flow of words coming from his mouth. Lucas was staring intently at the screen, just staring—it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder what was being said. But then Ella said, ‘What is it? What’s he saying?’
He turned and shrugged.
‘I only speak English.’
She smiled a little. ‘You don’t speak much of that.’
He nodded, smiled back. He wanted to say something but couldn’t think of a response. He wasn’t much good at conversation, he knew that; never able to come up with the mindless chitchat people used to fill the pauses.
‘Will the police be looking for us?’ It was Chris, still shocked, taking too long to snap out of it.
‘Me. Maybe you.’
Chris looked confused for a second before saying, ‘Why don’t we just go to the police?’
Lucas shook his head. ‘Not until I know what’s going on.’
‘So what are we gonna do?’
‘You should sleep. Tomorrow might be a tough day.’ He could see from their faces what they were thinking, that it could hardly be tougher than the last couple of hours.
It could, though, and Lucas was uncomfortable with the thought of what might still lie ahead of them. He didn’t know how to deal with people who were falling apart, how to comfort them. He wasn’t sure if he’d just forgotten how to be with people at all.
He turned off the TV and sat down in the small armchair in the corner of the room—a token gesture by the owners to mimic bigger, better hotels. Ella looked at him for a moment or two and said, ‘We haven’t got our things.’
‘I know.’ It was funny how people fixed on little things—the lack of a toothbrush and a change of underwear seemingly more important than the fact that two gunmen had tried to kidnap or kill them. ‘It’s only for one night.’
‘Do you at least have some toothpaste I could borrow?’
‘Sure.’ He went over to his bag, took the toothpaste out and handed it to her.
‘Thanks.’ She walked into the bathroom and Lucas took his book out before going back to the armchair.