Mimi's Ghost by Tim Parks

Author:Tim Parks [Parks, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9781559706025
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 1995-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

In the car, Morris told Kwame to drive. Which gave the Englishman a chance to observe his Third-World accomplice with more care. That curiously grainy skin real Negroes have, a cortex almost. Thicker, surely, than his own too-delicate peach-drying-to-parchment. Though he had begun to use Paola’s formidable array of moisturisers; not purely out of vanity, but because of the small thrill he always got from fiddling through the mysteries of a woman’s cosmetics bag.

He thought again of Mimi’s darned pants that he had found in Signora Trevisan’s sewing basket. Could he reasonably ask Paola to wear them sometime? Would she get off on that?

Then he remembered she was pregnant now, and this made him feel calmer and more respectful. All could yet turn out for the best with Paola. It was pointless hankering after Antonella’s piety. Perhaps it was his appointed duty to make a good woman out of Paola. A sort of trial. Life might yet settle into something decent and honourable.

From now on you drive me everywhere I need to go.’

‘OK, boss.’

Taking a bend coming down from Avesa, the car wandered dangerously into the middle of the road. Kwame had to swerve to avoid an oncoming motor bike. His round cheeks remained impassive, as though nothing had happened. Morris’s likewise, though the blood had clearly drained from his face. And when Kwame simply ran the light where the country road joined the main statale from Trento, Morris realised that this was the right thing. This humble submission to contingency must guarantee one luck.

‘You will also become my secretary and learn how to run the company when I’m busy elsewhere,’ Morris went on determinedly. ‘In particular you will be responsible for the other boys at Villa Caritas, you will refer any needs to me and above all you will make sure that none of them is involved in the kind of behaviour that could cause trouble with the Italian workers or in any way pollute the atmosphere. I don’t want a repeat of the Farouk-Azedine business. I find that kind of thing disgusting.’

Even as he was speaking, Morris reached forward, picked up the phone and, in an extraordinary act of memory , phoned the number he had last phoned from Roma Termini almost two years ago when he was about to pick up the ransom, about to run into Stan.

‘Inspector Marangoni here.’

Not unsurprisingly, the man had not been promoted in the meantime. The office was the same, the phone number the same.

‘Sono Morris,’ he said. ‘Morris Duckworth.’

There was the kind of brief pause that suggests that a call is unwelcome.

‘And how can I help you?’ The inspector’s voice was, if possible, both avuncular and cold.

Not to be outdone, Morris left a pause himself.

A little more uncertainly the inspector asked: ‘E allora?’

‘I’m not really sure if I should tell you this,’ Morris said, and at the same time saw a smile forming on Kwame’s face. But then he had to shut his eyes as, painfully slowly, the newly appointed chauffeur turned left across a hectically advancing stream of traffic.

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