The Affair (33 page)

The coffee arrived and Bradley tipped a single spoonful of sugar into his then stirred it thoughtfully. ‘My prediction is they’ll be wiped out by a rival family within the next five to ten years. American crime bosses are being deported from the US and coming back to the home country looking for a piece of the action. There’s a lot of rivalry in the construction industry, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s full-scale war over the next few years, with bodies turning up in the streets of Rome. I just hope yours isn’t one of them.’

Scott felt the hairs on the backs of his arms prickle as he remembered lying on the ground while Alessandro and his friends laid into him. They had been prepared to kill him that day. He could easily have died if one of their vicious kicks had connected with his head. Maybe Bradley was right. Perhaps he shouldn’t pursue this. ‘Are you still working as a journalist?’ he asked.

‘Well …’ Bradley screwed up his nose. ‘Journalism of sorts. I’m employed by a Swiss bank to write a magazine for their investors. We have a great lifestyle, with sailing on the lake in summer and skiing in winter. As jobs go, it’s lucrative, safe and dull. It’s certainly not what I imagined I’d be doing when I graduated college.’

‘Couldn’t you go back to the States and work for a paper out there? Or London? Surely the Ghianciaminas wouldn’t come after you so long as you weren’t writing about them?’

Bradley’s face took on a haunted look. ‘At first, I thought I might tough it out in Rome. I was ambitious, hungry to get the story in print – like you. And then the day after delivering his warning, Alessandro picked up my six-year-old daughter from school. The teachers just let him, then telephoned us. He took her for a ride in his flashy Alfa Romeo and bought her candy before dropping her off at our front door.’ He blinked hard. ‘They were only gone half an hour but my wife and I were frantic. I ran outside when I saw them and Alessandro beeped his horn and waved at me before driving off.’

‘Holy shit!’

‘So you see, I might write for a newspaper again one day, but not while my children are young and the Ghianciaminas are walking free. Even if I wanted to, my wife wouldn’t let me. She didn’t even want me to meet you today … And that reminds me: I don’t know where you got my brother’s number, but will you destroy it? Nothing in that office can give any clue to my whereabouts. I’m placing my trust in you, Scott. Do whatever your conscience dictates about your own research but promise me that nothing you dig up will ever lead to my door. After today’s meeting, you’re on your own.’

He nodded. ‘Message understood.’

Scott asked some questions about the government ministers on the Cosa Nostra payroll and the legislation that had been passed by them in return for bribes, then they went on to talk about the editor of
Midwest Daily
and his taste for stories about the rich and famous. Scott made Bradley laugh with some of the more ludicrous articles about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

‘The latest news is that Sybil Burton finally broke her silence and gave an interview to the
Express
in London saying that Elizabeth is a close friend of both her and her husband and that Richard is only taking her out for dinner to comfort her since her latest marriage breakdown. Isn’t that exactly what Debbie Reynolds used to say when Eddie started dating Elizabeth? That he was comforting her after Mike Todd died? History repeats itself.’

‘Poor Sybil. I don’t think she believes it for one moment. She’s desperately trying to maintain her dignity but she’s fighting a rearguard action.’

‘It’s as if the circus has come to Rome. No one will emerge from this with any dignity.’

They talked about the foreign press hacks who frequented the bar of the Eden Hotel. According to Bradley, Joe was a once-great writer who had gradually pissed away his talent in the bars of each city he was posted to.

‘Do you think he really knows Truman Capote?’ Scott asked.

Bradley was scathing. ‘Is that what he says? Maybe they were introduced at a party once but I wouldn’t count on Mr Capote remembering his name.’

Suddenly he checked his watch and rose abruptly to his feet. ‘I have to go. My wife is waiting and she’ll be nervous if I’m late.’

Scott stood to shake his hand. ‘Thanks for meeting me. I appreciate it.’

‘Take care of yourself, Scott. Think about what I’ve said.’ Bradley put on his sunglasses then, with a final nod, he hurried across the square and disappeared down an alley between buildings.

It was too late to catch a flight back to Rome, so Scott had dinner in the hotel then went for a drink in the bar, where he met an English air stewardess called Cheryl. He bought her a few cocktails and managed to lure her upstairs to his room where they had satisfactory if somewhat drunken sex. Next morning she gave him her phone number in London but he lost it on the way to the airport.

Diana was wakened just after dawn by a man’s voice shouting from far off. She lifted her head to try and make out the words. It sounded like ‘
Aiuto!
’ – ‘Help!’ She opened her patio door and looked out. A pinky-yellow sun had just begun to rise above the horizon and the Mediterranean was steel-grey in the distance.

Then it came again: ‘
Aiuto. C’è qualcuno?
’ It sounded urgent.

Diana pulled her nightdress over her head and scrambled into her clothes. She took her room key, shut the patio door behind her and walked out across the scrubland separating the lodging house from the waterfront. As she had done the previous day, she stamped heavily and scanned the ground in front of her for snakes.

The Alexandria set loomed on the horizon. Beyond that, she thought she could see a figure in the water, moving towards the jetty. She walked faster. It was a man and he was carrying a bright red object. Something must have fallen in the water and he was retrieving it. He climbed the steps onto the quayside, and it was only as he laid the object on the ground that Diana realised it was a person. Another man appeared and they both leant over it. She broke into a run.

‘
Cosa è successo? Sta bene?’
she shouted as she reached the edge of the set.

‘
E’ annegata una ragazza
,’ one of them men called. A girl had drowned.

‘Are you sure?’ She saw that it was a blonde girl, wearing a red dress, and that she was very thin. The legs were splayed out like those of a fawn. Suddenly it struck her that there was something familiar about those legs.

When Diana reached the spot, her knees gave way. Beneath the mass of matted blonde hair was Helen’s face, streaked with black makeup. Diana screamed, an animal sound forced from deep within her, then pushed the man out of the way and began to administer mouth-to-mouth and compress Helen’s chest. She had learned how to do it on a first-aid course in the Girl Guides – two breaths, four chest compressions – but the last time she tried it had been after her father had a heart attack right in front of her and it hadn’t worked then.

‘You know her?’ one of the men asked.

Diana gasped between chest compressions: ‘It’s Helen. My friend. Get help!’ She noticed that the first man was dressed in a soldier’s camouflage trousers and jacket, and the other looked like a security guard. ‘
Quick!
’ she yelled, wondering at his lack of urgency.

‘It’s too late,’ the guard said in English. ‘She is dead.’

‘No!’ Diana screamed. ‘She can’t be. Please call an ambulance.
Chiami un’ambulanza.
’ She pointed to the gatehouse. What was their problem?

The guard got up and sprinted in that direction. Diana continued, and in her head raced the words:
I have to save her, I have to. She’s too young to die.

‘Come on, Helen,’ she urged during the chest compressions. ‘Come on,
try
at least.’ She gulped air and breathed it into Helen’s mouth, holding her nose. The chest rose and fell with her breaths but there was no sign of a pulse, no sign of the heart restarting.

Tears began to roll down Diana’s cheeks but still she kept going.
Helen, come back. You can do it. Please. For me.

She remembered stories from the newspapers of doctors restarting someone’s heart after they’d been dead for twenty minutes. She had heard that being in cold water made the metabolism slow down. All sorts of miraculous recoveries came to her as she kept up the rhythm of two breaths, four compressions, two breaths, four compressions. But Helen’s skin felt cold as stone. Diana tried to feel a pulse in her neck, but there was nothing. She lifted her arm, expecting it to be floppy but there was a stiffness. The elbow wouldn’t bend. The guard’s words – ‘
She’s dead
’ – came back to her. How long had Helen been in the water?

‘I was just over there,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you come and find me? Why?’

She lifted Helen’s head and cradled her, rocking her back and forwards and speaking to her softly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. You’re safe. I’ve got you now.’ She felt like a mother holding her daughter. Nothing more must harm her. She’d failed to save her life so all she could do now was protect her body from further damage.

The security guard returned and told her the police were on their way. He was looking at her oddly so she explained: ‘She’s my friend. She was my best friend here in Italy.’

The soldier took out a cigarette, offering one to the security guard but he shook his head. Diana felt it was wrong to smoke with Helen lying there and opened her mouth to say so but the words wouldn’t come out.
They’re so casual about it. How can they be so indifferent to a young girl’s death?
She bent to kiss the white marble forehead and again she begged her, ‘Please forgive me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

When the ambulance got there, Diana didn’t want to let Helen go. She asked if she could accompany her – it seemed wrong to leave her on her own – but the policeman said they wanted to take statements from all of them. There were procedures to be followed. She argued, but they wouldn’t budge.

The ambulanceman who lifted Helen onto a stretcher seemed surprised at how little she weighed. There was hardly anything of her. Diana walked alongside as she was carried back towards the ambulance, which was parked just inside the gates. She tried to read the expression on Helen’s face. Had she been scared when she died? Upset about something? The look was blank and unseeing, offering no clues. Helen simply wasn’t there any more.

Diana gave her friend’s hand one final squeeze before she was lifted into the ambulance and the doors closed. As it drove away she began to shiver. There was a rushing sound in her ears and in a separate part of her mind she realised she must be in shock. What happened now? What should she do? She should telephone someone to tell them – but who?

A man she’d never met handed her a cup of sweet scalding coffee and she sipped a little, burning the roof of her mouth. Someone else brought a towel and she realised she was soaking wet from cradling Helen. The soldier was also wrapped in a towel. She sat down on the steps of the Serapeum, the most magnificent building of the third century BC, and a police officer came over to talk to her.

First they asked who Helen was and how they knew each other, and she explained. Then they asked why she was at Torre Astura and she told them it was her job to check the set but that she had no idea why Helen had been there or when she had arrived. She hadn’t seen her there – not until that morning, when it was too late. She gave the telephone number of the production office at Cinecittà, because someone would have to phone England and tell Helen’s parents. Fresh tears welled at that thought. Who would be responsible for delivering the worst news any parent could ever receive?

Then the policeman asked if Helen had any enemies. It was such an absurd question that Diana laughed in disbelief, a strange kind of laugh that came out as more of a snort. ‘God, no. She was an angel.’

Why were they asking that? Did they think someone had been involved in her death? Ernesto’s name popped into her mind but she dismissed it instantly. He could have no possible reason to kill Helen. That was silly. ‘She had no enemies,’ she said out loud, then repeated it in Italian for emphasis.

‘The soldier tells me that you kept saying you were sorry. What were you sorry for, Mrs Bailey?’

Diana explained about their argument two days earlier. She said that Helen had wanted to go out with a man she had had an affair with and she hadn’t liked the idea because he had a wife and children. The policeman peered closely at her before writing that down, and she felt ashamed. It sounded immoral and not like her at all. He asked the name of the man and she gave it. Ernesto would be annoyed.

Diana was shivering hard now, although she could feel the sun was already hot. It was a curious sensation, as though she was separate from the physical world.

‘Perhaps you should go and lie down for a while,’ the policeman suggested. ‘But stay here. Don’t go back to Rome until we give you permission. We will need to speak to you later.’

Diana got up and started to walk back towards the
pensione
, her legs feeling as though they didn’t belong to her. There was a buzzing noise in her head and she felt as though everything was very far away. Nothing was real. Had it definitely been Helen? Could she have made a mistake?