‘I’m hungry …’ The man’s cracked lips drew back on his teeth.
‘He’s dying,’ the boy said.
I glanced over my shoulder. ‘What do you know about this?’
His pale face hung before me. He had a pained expression. ‘It can happen to anyone, being set upon. This isn’t —’
‘You’re not answering my question.’
‘I thought you trusted me.’ He peered off down the street. ‘I thought we were getting on —’
‘Dio ladro!’ I shouted. ‘This isn’t about getting on.’
He flinched.
I turned back to the stinking javel who lay beneath me and pushed the point of my knife into the thin skin below his ear. His teeth showed like bits of stained mosaic. He began to mutter. Something about the water. A black cloak. Then the word naked. None of it made any sense.
‘I do trust you, Earhole,’ I said. ‘I have no choice but to trust you.’
‘Those sentences mean two different things.’
‘Was it Pampolini who taught you to argue every single fucking point?’ I looked round at him again. His arms were dangling by his sides, his hands had fallen still. ‘All right. I trust you. Happy now?’
He nodded, but only after seeming to consider my words, and not without a certain reluctance.
I tilted my face to the brown sky, and the wind lifted again, freighted with drizzle. ‘Gesù maiale, it was me who was attacked.’
‘They would have killed me too, just for the symmetry of it.’ Once again, his hands shook in the air, as if they were wet and he was drying them. ‘You were quick with that knife, though. I don’t think they’ll be back.’
I looked down at the piece of steel, which was dark with blood, its sickly aroma more metallic than the knife itself. I wiped the blade clean on the stranger’s tunic, then stood up.
‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I think it might be best if we took the less deserted streets.’
Pampolini had fallen asleep at his desk, his face turned sideways on his arm, drool blackening his cuff. His blond wig hung on the wall behind him like the pelt of some exotic animal.
Earhole bent over his master and spoke gently to him. Pampolini lifted his head. His eyes had a veiled, milky cast, and the folds and creases in his sleeve were faithfully recorded on his forehead and his cheek.
‘Zummo,’ he said.
‘How are you?’
‘My arm’s gone numb.’ He gave Earhole a reprimanding look. ‘You took your time.’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ I said. ‘We were attacked.’
I explained what had happened in that dark, dank alley near the candle factory.
‘He fairly skewered one of the bastards,’ Earhole said, hands twitching frenetically. ‘Blood everywhere.’
Pampolini stared at me. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘Yes, well. I’ve never killed anyone before.’
‘You’re all right, though?’
I nodded.
He yawned, then rose to his feet and led me down a dimly lit passageway. ‘Busy night,’ he said, rubbing some life back into his arm. ‘Sixteen injured in that football game.’ He paused outside a metal door; his top lip glistened. ‘I think we’ve got something here that might interest you.’
I followed him into a long, cold room. Lying on a marble-topped table was the naked body of a girl, her skin mauve-white and damp-looking. Her hips and ribs were streaked with mud, and weeds had wrapped themselves around her legs. Her hair was an autumnal colour, not brown or red or gold, but somewhere in-between, and a few coiling ringlets had spilled over the edge of the slab and hung halfway to the floor. A small black pool of water had formed below. Every now and then the stillness of the pool was shattered by another tiny drop.
‘A beauty, isn’t she?’ Pampolini said.
Earhole slipped past me and occupied himself at the far end of the room.
‘What do you know about her?’ I said.
‘Not much.’
A dredger had brought her in. He had been working his way along the river-bank, collecting sand. As the light faded, he had drifted towards Sardigna. The smell of rotting carcasses was so pungent that he had to tie a rag over his nose and mouth. For that reason, perhaps, he had been alone on the water. The girl’s body was lying next to the remains of a dead mule. She was still warm when he knelt beside her. That frightened him. He felt the person who had done it might be close by, watching. He hadn’t seen anyone, though. He took the body straight to the hospital, where Pampolini had given him a few coins for his trouble. Pampolini had told him to forget everything that had taken place that evening. The dredger shrugged; you got used to all sorts, working on the river. Before he left, he admitted that the grazes on the girl’s body had happened when he heaved her into the boat. He regretted his clumsiness, he said, then he disappeared into the night.
‘That was quick thinking,’ I said, ‘to buy his silence.’
Pampolini chuckled. ‘I even surprise myself sometimes.’
‘Sardigna, though. What a terrible place to end up.’
‘You know it?’
‘Yes.’
He walked round the table. ‘We don’t have any idea who she is, or how she died. She might have been murdered — that’s what the dredger thought — but there’s no evidence of violence. She might have killed herself. It might even have been an accident — though there’s the small matter of the missing clothes …
‘It’s a shame about the clothes, actually. They would have told us a lot.’
‘Maybe that’s why they were taken,’ I said.
‘In any case, no one’s enquired about her yet.’ He bent down and studied the fingers of her right hand. ‘I have the feeling she’s a foreigner. I’m not sure why.’
‘But apart from the grazes, there are no marks on her?’
‘Now you come to mention it …’ Pampolini turned the girl’s body on to its side, and I saw patches of indigo across her thighs and the small of the back where the blood had pooled. ‘Lift the hair away from her neck.’
I did as he asked. Her hair was unusually heavy, perhaps because it was still wet. It felt eerie in my fingers.
‘See it?’ Pampolini said.
At the top of the girl’s spine, above the first cervical, the head of a dog had been carved into her skin. Judging by the pointed muzzle and the jagged rows of teeth, the person responsible had had a particular breed in mind.
‘It’s not an injury, is it?’ I said. ‘I mean, it doesn’t look like something that happened accidentally.’
‘No,’ Pampolini said.
‘Can you tell how long it’s been there?’
‘The wound’s still bleeding, and there’s no sign of inflammation. It looks recent.’
‘So it could have been done after she was dead?’
Pampolini looked at me. ‘Or just before.’
In that moment, a revelation flashed across the inside of my brain. Ever since that drink with Jack Towne, I had been aware of the need to build something ambiguous into the commission. I’d had no idea how to go about it, though. Now, for the first time, I thought I saw a way forwards. If I were to incorporate the dog’s head, I would be creating a piece of work which, depending on what Towne called one’s ‘angle of approach’, could be viewed on at least two different levels.
‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ I was trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.
Pampolini shook his head.
I let go of the girl’s hair and walked away from the table. ‘A dog …’
There was a sudden retching sound. Turning, I saw Earhole bent over a stone sink at the back of the room. I looked at Pampolini. ‘He’s not squeamish, is he?’
‘It’s not that,’ Pampolini said. ‘He was mauled by a dog when he was a baby. That’s how he lost his ear.’