The Skin Room Read online

  “What about my ankle? It hurts so much I think I’ll faint.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Yes, it’s that fucking bad, you asshole.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Maybe I can fix it myself. I’m sure all you need is ice and then some rest, maybe a brace, but I can make one. I’ve got some carpentry tools at home, or my father does, anyway.” I paced up and down inside the little cave. “Just stay quiet for a while and let me think.”

  “I’ll talk all I want. What if I start screaming? Maybe someone will hear me.”

  “I doubt they’ll hear you, but are you sure you want to try?”

  She did scream. The sound needled my eardrums.

  “You’re asking for it,” I said. “Stop screaming.”

  She screamed again.

  I revved the lighter and saw her pale face. I squeezed the stone pressed in my palm.

  She tried screaming again but she stopped after I hit her. I meant to go for her forehead but I struck her on the nose instead and it crumpled and the blood shot out everywhere. I hit her in the eye. I felt angry with her and was surprised because I had expected to be calmer, and yet I really threw my weight into the next few blows. I guessed she had made me angry, after all. All that bullshit she had made me suffer in hospital—the worst time of my life. Then being nursed by my father. The memory of all that came back and sort of sickened me. I rammed the stone down on the top of her skull one last time. Her head rocked back and to the side, and her eyes stayed very open and didn’t blink any more.

  I wish I’d kept my fucking knife. How could I have lost it? It was stupid, all so damned stupid. I sat down next to her broken face and cried. All that beauty, all messed up, her skin striped with blood. That was what I regretted most—her beautiful body gone to waste. There was no point in coming back here now.

  I stumbled out of the hideout and stared at the sea. I saw the zigzag reflections of the moonlight on the black water. The police car had gone, as had the officers with the dog. The area looked safe, even peaceful. I turned and picked up a large rock and placed it over the front of the cave. Then I picked up another. And then another. Piling them high.

  PART TWO

  Fugitive

  1

  It was a long walk back to town. I stayed away from the main road and moved along the coast, clambered over the rocks, nearing the water’s edge where I crouched and washed my face and arms. There was the smell of seaweed by the foaming waves as I rinsed the blood off my hands into the petrol-dark water. A squashed plastic bottle rotated in the shallow pools. The moon shimmered overhead. A dull witness.

  I sat on a rock, shook my hands dry, and heard a noise in the distance, the sound of a dog barking. I looked over my shoulder and saw two officers in black uniforms approaching. The dog scampered ahead on its lead. It was too soon to know if they had seen me, or if they were just on a routine patrol. I tried to keep my head down as I ran along the shore, away from them, but it made my body hurt even more. My head ached and I was soon out of breath.

  I looked back to see if they were following me. Perhaps the dog had picked up my scent? A sniff at the car, a sniff at the rocks: a matching sample.

  I could not run fast, but I jogged and held my right arm close to my side, since it had smashed against the steering wheel during the crash, and now it jolted with pain every time I jumped on a rock. I heard the dog barking and the voices of the policemen growing louder. I ran as fast as I could, hustling forwards. Soon I heard the voices fading away, saw the city lights ahead. I dived beneath the shelter of an overhanging rock and hunkered down. I heard cars zooming along the road not far away while the seawater sloshed beneath my feet. I lay for ten, maybe fifteen minutes with my head down, just listening to my own heartbeat and smelling the seaweed, afraid to look up and see a policeman’s flashlight jammed between my eyes.

  My skin turned cold. I knew I could not hide in here forever. Once I sensed they had gone, I stood up, arching my stiff back, and trudged toward the electric lights. At 7 a.m. I approached the Café Martino. I felt ill all over. Hadn’t eaten for a day. I was about to walk straight up to the counter when I saw the reflection of the living-dead man in a window as I passed by. I entered the café, ducked my head, and headed straight downstairs to the restroom.

  I washed my face and hands with liquid soap and felt much better. My face was scratched and bleeding. I wanted to be clean, utterly clean, but I would just have to wait. There were slits in my clothes, black scuffs on my pants, and bloodstains on my shoes. I wiped myself all over with damp paper towels. An unclean job. I couldn’t wait to get home and step into a shower.

  I climbed upstairs to see the café near empty—at last, something in my favor. I ordered a coffee, a sandwich. The assistant behind the counter gave me an edgy, overlong stare, or perhaps it was just the start of my paranoia.

  I drank the hot coffee, picked my warm mozzarella-and-ham panino off the counter and ate it standing outside beneath the pink morning sun. I felt like a vampire devouring my last snack before sunrise.

  Getting home was a test of endurance. I should have walked all the way, but I was too exhausted. With bowed head, I trudged to the nearest bus stop, waited a long time for the bus, sat a long time at the back of the bus, stared for a long while out of the windows at the scrolling, awakening city. My thoughts were mixed, scarred. I was half-human now, one quarter automaton, one quarter zombie.

  Home is where I headed. Along the way, I had the impression that people were taking me in differently. I was distasteful to them, but they kept looking, kept swallowing me with their eyes. I realized that grimness, superficial grimness at least, can be fascinating. I imagined I stood out from the norm—rough-looking, scar-faced. Perhaps I was a subject of interest to them, a spectacle, even if I suspected that behind their stares, their glasses, their contact lenses and designer shades, they knew all about my crimes and wished to see me burned at the stake.

  I stepped off the bus near home and walked the rest of the way. I traipsed up the drive, my footsteps crunching in the gravel. The pine trees wavered in the blue morning air. I felt cold and rigid, in need of a hot shower to wash away my crime and my post-crime disgust.

  I had a funny feeling at the bottom of my throat, just beneath my Adam’s apple, when I saw the police car parked on the driveway. It was a dark blue Alfa Romeo 156 with CARABINIERI printed on the side. The flashing light splintered the walls of the house—blue, white, blue, white. In a fit of panic, I dived behind a hedge and lay there like an animal on prey alert. I watched two men in uniforms enter the house. Lights were switched on then off in my bedroom. My father was awake. What questions were the policemen asking? How much did they know? I waited five minutes behind the hedge, peeped now and again. The best thing for me, I realized, was to leave Catania. This was my list of needs: car keys, passport, cell phone, and car. Perhaps I could slip into the house without being seen? I curled my fingers and uncurled them again. The back door was my best chance, but I had to wait till the policemen left. Did they think I would just walk in and give myself up? They should have stayed out of sight. I would have walked straight into any ambush, but this? All I had to do was skirt my way around the house, through the garden, quiet as a slug.

  I tiptoed, belly-crawled, scampered, and slid. At one point I dived onto the dew-wet grass, bumped my cheek in the mud, and ducked beneath a face which appeared suddenly in the window. Had I been seen? I breathed heavily, my pulse throbbing in my neck. I lay still. The grass soaked my pants and chilled my bones. I curled and uncurled my fingers again. What action would I take? Perhaps stillness, for now, was the best option. I heard voices skittering through the air like rain. Two male voices. My father’s affirmation, denial, silence. I could not grasp the meaning of the conversation, only the tones. My father, I guessed, was facing facts. His son was a kidnapper, a butcher. Why had he not seen it sooner? What a fool he had been. I played out the entire scene in my head.

  Some ten minutes later, the two of
ficers left the house. One of them unclipped his walkie-talkie and the crackle-hiss drowned out his words. I was an official case now, that much was clear. The two men ducked into the car, turned in a tight circle and drove off. The tires crackled over the dead pine cones on the road.

  I stepped out from behind the hedge and stood with hands on hips, staring at the dark blue police car as it disappeared down the road, its lights flashing. Now it was just me, and the house, and him.

  I heard my father murmuring to himself in the kitchen.

  His expression changed when he saw me—his frown became a look of fright.

  “What did you tell them?” I asked.

  My voice was too loud and the house became too still. There was a little silence.

  “What do you mean, son?”

  “The policemen.”

  “They were looking for you, said they’d come back later, wanted to ask you about the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “I’m not sure. They said she visited the house. They showed me a photograph.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. I said nothing.” He looked down and rubbed his palms together. When he looked up again there was a light in his eyes I had not seen in a long time. A flash of recollection. “Is it true what they said?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. What did they say?”

  “You killed a man.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you harmed that girl?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You shouldn’t have touched her.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her. It just happened.”

  “Alex, you know as well as I do…”

  “What?”

  “This can’t go on. Give yourself up. We’ll find someone who will help you.”

  “Like the others? Those doctors? All that stinking analysis?”

  “We tried to help you. Your mother and I. And look how you repaid us.” A few strands of loose gray hair moved across his brow as he shook his head.

  I approached.

  “Don’t come any closer.” He took a step backwards, eyes shining.

  I could see that he was holding something behind his back. His arm twitched.

  “Old man. Stop it.” I lunged toward him and grabbed his wrist.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I smelled the cheap aftershave he always wore, and the alcohol on his breath.

  “Drop that.”

  I heard something clang on the floor.

  I looked down and saw where his hammer had fallen. I kicked it away.

  I grabbed his arm and marched him down the corridor.

  “Where are we going?”

  He struggled in my grasp. He still had strength in his limbs, even if his mind was impaired. He tried to resist as I pushed him along the corridor, past my grandfather’s paintings, down the steps, past the crates of tomatoes, into the room.

  “In here,” I said, opening the door.

  I let him turn and face me. He blinked a lot, as though he didn’t understand a thing. “Are you going to lock me in? Are you afraid of what I might say to the police? But I’ve already told them everything. I mean, nothing.”

  “I can’t have you setting the dogs on me. You’ve got to stay quiet in here, you understand? Quiet.”

  “But you can’t—”

  “Now get in and shut up.”

  I shoved him through the open door. As I slammed the door closed I got a last glimpse of his face. A pink moon, full of fright. His eyes were staring at me in disbelief, and I was glad I didn’t have to look at them again. That pitiful glazed empty color gray.

  I couldn’t believe I had done it, but I had done it. Locked my father up.

  I leaned back against the door, slid down and sat on the floor; put my head in my hands and tugged at my hair.

  2

  I turned my back on the cellar door. Now my father would remain here alone, at least for a little while.

  I climbed upstairs and entered my bedroom, opened the wardrobe and saw the collection of transparent bags neatly lined up on the shelf, my pouches of nail clippings, some from my mother, others from my sister. I had marked labels on the packets: person, year, month, e.g., Giorgia, 2009, June. That was the last set I took from my mother in the month before she passed away. It was the lightest bag of all. I weighed it in my palm like a bag of sugar—the clippings were curved, smart. The contents in older bags had turned to dust. I picked up one of my sister’s bags, one I liked best, from 2009, a good vintage all in all. She had been wearing carmine nail varnish, a color which suited her. May was a bumper month. The nails were thick, chunks of red, like candy. I pocketed this special bag as a souvenir and reset my mother’s in the row.

  I turned and dug out my passport and cell phone from underneath a pile of clothes. I checked to see if there was a message from Sonia: nothing. I could have used her help right now. I hadn’t seen her since our last goodbyes at the port of Messina.

  It was time to head there now. She could help me to sneak out of Sicily. She had the right sort of contacts, I was sure of that. This island was becoming a trap.

  I needed a shower but realized there wasn’t much time, so I just changed my shirt and ducked my head under the tap, slapped my face and neck with cool water, took out a new bar of soap, washed my hands and scrubbed under the nails.

  Things were so complicated just then. I hadn’t planned to leave the house for good. This was my nest, everything was here. I should have made a bonfire of these clothes in the garden and destroyed all minor traces of evidence, but there wasn’t time for any Technicolor ritual. The police might be back at any moment and I couldn’t risk getting caught.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I left my shirt in a heap on the floor, tidied myself up as best I could, slipped on a beige jacket, and decided I was ready to go.

  Money, passport, cell phone, car keys: check.

  I went down to the basement, put my hand on the door handle, and hesitated. There was the sound of my father’s footsteps shuffling on the other side of the door.

  “Alex, is that you?”

  Silence.

  I unlocked the door, turned and scampered back upstairs, not wanting to face him again right now. Instead, I left the house, climbed into my Alfa, slammed in the key, and flicked my wrist. The car had a fiery tone and the chassis vibrated as I set the engine running. I looked over my shoulder and reversed along the path.

  Would a police car be waiting for me around the corner? I half-closed my eyes as I turned the wheel and eased the car into the main road, expecting the worst. But there was nobody waiting.

  It was fine. I was free.

  I decided to go to Messina to meet my sister and seek her help. She knew people who owned boats. And a boat seemed like a much safer option than driving my own car or heading to the airport. My sister had male friends, powerful and inscrutable. In fact, she was rarely alone, my sister. That was part of the problem. Perhaps it was unsafe for me to see her, after all? But the airports were too risky and I could only drive so far with this car before I got stopped. The sea was the answer.

  I crossed town with the roof down, the wind razing my hair, the sunlight bleeding past me. I was headed for a boat, one I knew well, the Sant’Agata. It was my best route out of this hellhole. I figured I would try to get a ride across to mainland Italy. From there I could head north; the farther away from Sicily, the better.

  A couple of miles down the road I started worrying about my car, my license plate—I was traceable. I pulled into a rest area off the highway and stopped the engine. There was a toolbox in the trunk of my car and I went to fetch it. The box had oily handles that were greasy under my fingertips. I took out the screwdriver, knelt down and started unscrewing the license plate beneath the boot. One screw safely out, I attacked the second.

  I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a driver stepping down from his dump truck and trudging into a field to urinate.

  I locked my car, shut the r
oof, and left the license plate hanging. An idea struck me. Maybe they would be looking for an Alfa convertible, but nobody would be looking for a truck.

  I strode away from my car and suddenly had an uneasy feeling. Would it be difficult to drive? Was it the same set-up as a car? I jogged swiftly across the concrete, going after the driver in the field. He had his back turned to me.

  OK. Now.

  I picked up a heavy stick and ran toward him, my shoes thumping across the tarmac. I kept looking both ways to see if anyone was watching. The distance shrank between us. I could not steal the truck and risk being traced and followed. The driver had to be silenced, too.

  I stopped just in time to see him turn around and snarl in my face. I should have picked an easier target. This man stood a foot taller than me. He had a thick chin, even thicker neck, and huge fists. His arms were scrawled with rose tattoos. He grunted something in Sicilian dialect. He tried to attack me, and I had to duck his pre-emptive blow before I could strike him on the side of the head. He groaned and his eyes flickered. The blow left a thick brown stripe above his eye. He fell diagonally down the slope, his feet turning the stones. He tumbled, rolled over a couple of times, and lay still. He was face down in the mud and did not budge. One arm was twisted behind his back. I bent down, frisked him for his keys, found them.

  Was it safe to leave him like this? I turned and scanned the rest area, the highway, the horizon. People were unlikely to venture down here. I was safe until the driver regained consciousness—a few hours at least, I figured.

  I turned and ran toward his truck. It was a steep climb up into the cabin . Stepping up behind the wheel, it felt like climbing onto the roof of a building with the ground far below. I turned the key and heard the motor growl. My seat trembled as the cabin vibrated—I could see this was going to take some getting used to. The gearstick seemed too high or too thin, like a gentleman’s cane. The engine hollered as I slugged through the gears and drove past my little Alfa Spider which looked rather forlorn in its parking space, the license plate dangling. Did I feel a slight twinge of nostalgia? Yes, a hint. It was the car Valentina had sat in, her long bronze legs uncoiling beneath the dash.