A Darkening Stain Read Free Page A

wiping my fingers off on the newspaper.
    â€˜Mr Franconelli’s got a job for you.’
    â€˜I didn’t think Mr Franconelli liked me any more.’
    â€˜He don’t.’
    â€˜Does that mean he won’t be paying?’
    â€˜He’ll pay. You’re small change.’
    â€˜What’s the job?’
    â€˜Find someone,’ said Carlo, stretching himself to a shivering yawn.
    â€˜You can tell me it all at once, you know, Carlo. I can take in more than one thing at a time—beer, kebab, your friend here, who you want me to find—all in one big rush.’
    â€˜The guy’s name is Jean-Luc Marnier.’
    â€˜Would that be a full-blooded Frenchman, a
metis
or an African?’
    Carlo flipped a photo across to me. Jean-Luc Marnier was white, in his fifties, with thick, swept-back grey hair that was longish at the collar and tonic-ed. It had gone yellow over one eye, stained by smoke from an unfiltered cigarette he had in his mouth. Attractive was just about an applicable adjective. He might have been movie-hunk material when he was younger and smoother, but some hardness in his life had cragged him up. He had prominent facial bones—cheeks, jaw, forehead all rugged with wear—a full-lipped mouth, surprisingly long ears with fleshy lobes and a blade-sharp nose—a seductive mixture of soft and hard. His dark eyes were shrewd and looked as if they could find weaknesses even when there weren’t any. I thought he probably had bad teeth, but he looked like a ladies’ man, which meant he’d have had them fixed. The man had some presence, even in a photo, but it was a rogue presence.
    â€˜Is he a big guy?’ I asked.
    â€˜A metre seventy-five. Eighty-five kilos. Not fat, just a little heavy.’
    â€˜What’s he do?’
    â€˜Import/export.’
    â€˜For a change,’ I said. ‘He have an office?’
    â€˜And a home,’ said Carlo, sliding over a piece of paper.
    â€˜Why can’t you find him yourself?’
    Carlo pinged the ring-pull some more, getting on my nerves.
    â€˜We’ve looked. He’s not around. Nobody talks to us.’
    â€˜Does that mean he’s been a bad boy?’
    â€˜Take a look at the guy,’ said Carlo.
    â€˜What do I do when I find him?’
    Gio looked at Carlo out of the corner of his hand as if he might be interested in something for the first time.
    â€˜You just tell us where he is.’
    â€˜Then what?’
    â€˜Finish,’ he said, and crushed his cigarette out in the tuna can supplied.
    â€˜You going to kill him? Is that it?’
    Carlo and Gio stilled to a religious quiet.
    â€˜Forget it, Carlo,’ I said. ‘
That
is not my kind of work.’
    Carlo’s feet crashed to the floor. He slammed the beer can down on the desk top and leaned over at me so that our faces were close enough for beer and tobacco fumes to be exchanged.
    â€˜I thought you were the one who liked me, Carlo.’
    â€˜I do, Bruce. I like you fine. But not when you’re dumb.’
    â€˜Then I don’t know how you ever
got
to like me.’
    Carlo grunted about one sixteenth of a laugh. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a little massage, brutally thumbing the muscle over the bone.
    â€˜I know a lot of smart people who tell me they’re dumb.’
    â€˜It’s a trick we learn,’ I said.
    â€˜Now, Gio, you might be surprised to learn, is a very remarkable teacher ’cos he can make dumb people think smart and smart people think dumb. Not bad for a guy who’s never been to school, still has trouble readin’ a book with no pictures.’
    I took another look at Gio, at the slab-of-concrete forehead, the short neck with black hair sprouting up it from his deep chest, forearms like animals’ thighs, rower’s wrists and agricultural hands, the odd knuckle missing from thumping the mule straight whilst ploughing.
    â€˜He’s got