Free The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit by Richard House Page B

finished before he could find himself a seat. The attendant who gave out the rosewater and paper towels sat at a separate table, smoking, eyes narrowed on Ford.
    Ford wandered through the stalls. Men sold jewellery, bracelets and beaded bangles, small handcrafted pieces. One man punched names into metal dog tags. He set the letters into a punch and imprinted the tags in a small vice. Ford stopped in front of the table and idled through a tray of Zippo lighters. The man spoke to him and he smiled but did not reply.
    ‘American?’ the man asked. ‘English? You want your name?’ The man held up one of the tags to show Ford. The man had a lazy eye, not so acute, but noticeable. He wore a jacket and no shirt. When he looked up the lazy eye shifted with a slight but perceptible twitch, the movement so subtle that Ford found himself watching to catch it. The man waited, all patience. Searching for money, Ford pushed his hands into his pocket and found the note with the account numbers. An idea occurred to him and he held up the note.
    ‘How much,’ he asked, ‘for only numbers. These numbers.’ He opened out the paper and showed it to the man. ‘Five tags.’ He held up his hand, five wide fingers. ‘Five. You can do numbers? How much for five tags?’
    The man squinted at the paper then smiled as he looked up and Ford could not be sure that he’d understood. He found a pen on the table and began to write out the numbers to be stamped on each tag. A separate number on each sheet. ‘You understand?’ He set a tag on the paper. ‘This for this.’
    The man nodded. Ford continued to write out the numbers and did not notice the student approach.
    ‘I didn’t get your name.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Your name?’
    Ford concentrated on the numbers. The boy wanted a name. ‘Michael.’
    ‘Michael, not Mike?’
    ‘Right, it’s Michael.’
    ‘You’re English?’
    Ford nodded. He finished writing the last of the numbers and handed them to the man. One account number per tag. The workman held up his hands to indicate that he would be ten minutes.
    ‘That’s all? Ten minutes?’
    The man nodded and began to set the numbers into the punch.
    The student followed Ford back to the restaurant. ‘My mother’s English. She still has her accent.’ Without asking he set his book on the table and sat opposite. Tucked between the pages a small black notebook. ‘Do you know Winchester?’
    For the first time Ford noticed that the restaurant sat in a field. The coach had driven off the road and over rough land to reach it. To steer the conversation away from himself he pointed at the book and asked what the boy was reading.
    ‘This? I’m just getting into it. I’m not that far.’
    They were talking, he guessed, because the boy felt some common ground between them, something more than the simple coincidence of travel. The silver case, the snake, the confidence about the film, connecting elements, at least for the boy.
    ‘It’s making its way round campuses. There’s a whole story about it. The guy who wrote it was a student, and he disappeared before the book came out. It’s about how these guys, these brothers, copy a murder from another book, a thriller.’ He held up the book. ‘It’s true. They pick someone up from the train station, then cut him up in a basement room, just like the story, then pieces of him are found in the street. It happened in Naples, Italy. There’s any number of versions on this story – the original book wasn’t published in English till about ten years ago – but the writer, this student, went to Naples and wrote about the people who still lived in the apartment where the murder happened, and then he disappeared. You’ve not heard about it?’
    Ford said no.
    ‘There’s a film also. I think it’s just out in the States.’ The boy grimaced. ‘I haven’t read the original book yet. The one the brothers copied. But imagine. You write about something like that, a thriller, something