—
He drove into Brindisi two hours before lunch. He found an Internet cafe on a despondent street and sat there with a coffee, looking through the news sites for Greece. There was no sign of a drama on Hydra. Perhaps it was too early for such news to have appeared on the wires. He went out into the front of the same cafe and drank two cappuccinos with three spoons of sugar apiece. It was an old Crusader city, down at the heel and filled with an atmosphere of pessimistic expectancy. The men looked like Arabs, the women sly and more Greek, to his eye. The cafes hard and spare, with too much red plastic and too much football paraphernalia. He was dressed too well for it, which was all to the good.
He walked down a few streets afterward and bought a cell phone in a shop that appeared to be run by Indians; they sold him a SIM card that they said he could start up by himself even without an Italian address. He also bought some razors and shaving cream, some bread and cheese, and a pair of fashion sunglasses on sale. He then drove out of the city toward San Vito dei Normanni under a high sun, along a road as straight as an engineer’s drawing.
When he got to the crook in the road as it swung around the citadel-like town of Ostuni, he stopped and got out into the sun, sitting behind a low stone wall on the hard shoulder. The land had a very slight gradient, divided by the same low walls, and whitewashed trulli stood against the latter’s horizontal repetitiveness. It looked fertilely satanic. He sat there a long time watching lizards scatter across the walls and thinking with remorse about the couple he had killed. He still didn’t know why it had come to that; panic and pent-up terror and maybe even a little grain of mysterious hatred. It had been unintended, but then who knew what was intended and what was not? His own mind had acted in spite of itself. He was sorry, but there was no use in it. One had to plunge forward, eyes closed if necessary.
He decided he would call the friend of his father’s who had given him work when he was living in the neighborhood of Fatih in Istanbul, a businessman who had helped him arrange his flight out of Turkey. He had done some translation work for him in the area of medical supplies. Now Faoud had another favor to ask him. There were underground networks in Rome and Naples that he could use, people who might be able to alter the passport he had now. He opened the phone and called a number in Istanbul. As far as he could tell, the line was active. He tried it three or four times, but no one answered. It now occurred to him that the businessman might well be avoiding his calls. That was the way the Istanbouli were: they were interested in you when you were there, but if you moved abroad you ceased to exist. And yet the man had been reasonably kind to him at the time; had taken him in as if he’d been a stray dog. And he was still a stray dog.
Having no luck with the call, he hung up and drove on.
At dusk, having seen many signs for eateries by the road, he decided to eat in a better sort of restaurant and stopped in a field to change into some of Jimmie’s clothes. He placed a pocket square in the jacket he had selected and then continued until he saw a sign for a handsome-looking place called Masseria Marzalossa. It was a large agriturismo estate with a hotel and a restaurant, and it seemed as good a place as any to stop. He took a room for the night, paid up front in cash, and ate in the hotel dining room. The elderly couples there hardly noticed him.
On his bed later he went through the credit cards and the clothes and wondered where he could sell the jewelry. It would surely be easier, less inconspicuous, in a big city. Rome or Naples, places he didn’t know. He also went through the notebook and the papers that he had found in the glove compartment of the car. There was a map of the region where their house lay with the roads around it clearly marked. There was only the question of whether the vengeful ghost of the white man would be living there.
In the morning he went to the public computer in the lobby and looked again through the news from Greece. There was nothing about Hydra. The murder of wealthy visitors would surely be headline news, but the wires mentioned no such thing. Then he understood what had happened. God had moved Naomi to act in his defense and, naturally, to cover her own culpability.
As for Codrington and his wife, no one could say—maybe they had had an argument and she had gone to Paris to do some shopping. The mysteries and vanities of the rich were inexplicable, and in any case, no one asked them any awkward questions about their movements. They were free to do as they wanted.
THIRTEEN
“The Arab was very calm when he came,” Carissa said, with no disequilibrium in her voice as she rolled off the incredible words. Her eyes were unfazed, soldiers ready for combat and the impertinent doubts of others. As she spoke she could sense that her confidence alone defended her but that it was more than enough. “I went to bed as you told me. When I was there, I stayed there. I fell asleep.”
“I don’t understand why Jimmie woke up.” Naomi’s voice cracked and tears burst into her eyes without falling. “How could he?”
The maid remained calm.
“He must have heard a noise.”
“Impossible.”
Naomi sat on the carpet and put her head in her hands. The tears rushed out at last, but they were finite. It was just a question of time. She began talking anyway.
“Now we have to sit down and think and not do anything stupid.”
“Yes,” the maid said.
Sam had sat down as well, and her hand was on her mouth to stop the regurgitation that threatened.
“What time did you come up here?” Naomi went on.
“At seven.”
“You didn’t call me?”
“I called you, but you didn’t answer.”
“Yes, that’s true. I was negligent, I’m sorry. It must have been terrible for you.”
“I’ve been here alone—”
“Thank God you didn’t call anyone else. We have to think.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Carissa said.
“Sam?”
“I’m OK.”
“We have to stay calm,” Naomi insisted.
“I’m calm.”
“Carissa, you’re the only one—”
“Yes. No one called this morning.”
“You definitely didn’t call anyone else?”
“No, miss.”
They were speaking in Greek and Sam couldn’t understand. But she guessed from gestures and intonations that the two other women were not planning to call the police. She protested, but Naomi wouldn’t hear of it. She explained to Sam that Jimmie had surely woken up when he heard a noise and came downstairs in his usual belligerent temper. Seeing a man of non-European hue in his house at three in the morning, he must have flown into one of his rages. Faoud would have panicked. The maid said, “It was the poker from the fire. Look.” She had laid it on the table, uncleaned.
“Why didn’t he just run out?” Sam said. “He didn’t have to do this.”