The Darkest Heart Read online

  For Divya

  THE DARKEST HEART

  1

  There were times I felt I would always be death’s passenger. It moved one step ahead of me wherever I went, letting its shadow fall across me. It carried me on; shaded me from the world other people lived in. Whenever I tried to step into the light, it shifted, slipping its arm around me, draping its black cloak over me and bringing me home like an old friend. We were inseparable. Parters. I could never leave it behind.

  I walked in death’s shadow that morning – the morning I saw Costa’s men across the street – and I knew it was going to be a bad day as soon as I laid eyes on them. They weren’t the kind of men who brought good news. Standing out of the morning sun, watching my place, they hadn’t come to pass the time of day. They were there for a reason.

  I’d had nothing to do with Costa for at least six months but I’d always felt his presence. Just like that shadow, Costa was always there. You work for a man like that, you can’t just walk away. And now he’d come calling again.

  I stopped at the edge of the road, pretending to adjust my shirt, touching my fingers to the handle of the knife tucked into the back of my belt. I watched Luis and Wilson just a few metres away on the other side, considering my options, while they considered theirs.

  Nothing passed on the dusty red road. The morning was quiet.

  Luis shifted his weight and pushed back the peak of his cap. The early sun was already warming the day but there was more than just that to put sweat on his brow. He knew me, and he’d be wondering what I was going to do.

  Somewhere to my right, a car door slammed with a tinny, hollow sound. An engine started up, but Luis and I continued to watch each other. Behind him, Wilson looked in the direction of the disturbance. A small shift of his eyes and then he was looking back at me again.

  A pickup came into my field of vision, gathering speed, passing between us, blocking our view for a moment and then it was gone, moving away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The dirt swirled, rolling out, falling, settling around my feet. I waited for it to subside, then crossed over to meet them.

  ‘Costa wants to see you.’ Luis started speaking straight away, stepping back so he was just beyond my reach. He looked like a foreman, the way he wore his cap and stood like he was in charge, drawing himself to full height. He was at least a head taller than me, but I wasn’t worried about that. What concerned me was that he had one hand in his pocket, his fingers probably curled round the handle of some old revolver.

  Wilson stayed behind him and stared at me for no longer than a second, then ran his fingers over his moustache and glanced about, checking the street and alley, taking everything in. He was shorter than his partner, the beginning of a pot belly pushing at the cotton of his T-shirt, and he wore a straw hat pulled low against the sun.

  ‘I don’t want to see Costa.’ I stared Luis right in the eye. ‘Anyway, I’m late for work.’

  ‘You’re working now?’ he asked. ‘What kind of job you got, Zico?’

  ‘You know what kind of job. You people are always watching.’

  ‘Don’t need to watch you to know what work you’re doing. Just have to take a sniff. You stink like Batista’s place.’

  I put one hand on my hip, fingertips close to my knife. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘Ask him yourself.’

  ‘I’m busy. I haven’t got time.’

  ‘Maybe you should make time.’

  ‘And if I don’t? What did he tell you to do then?’

  Luis shook his head like he didn’t know what I was talking about.

  ‘He tell you to use that?’ I nodded at his pocket, his hand stuffed hard inside.

  ‘Use what?’ Luis showed me his smile; thin-lipped and tight-mouthed. He still had yesterday’s growth on his chin and there was a patch around the chest of his T-shirt where yesterday’s sweat had dried. It made him look road weary. Behind him, Wilson moved, his hand dropping out of sight.

  ‘You think you could pull that pistol out of your pocket before I ...’ I shrugged at Luis and patted my hip. ‘You know.’

  Luis narrowed his eyes.

  ‘And with Wilson getting ready behind you,’ I said. ‘Nice and close like this. Who’s standing right in the middle?’

  Luis swallowed and I could see it all playing out in his mind. He was imagining his partner pulling his pistol, putting holes in his back just to get to me. He took a deep breath and his expression betrayed his feelings.

  ‘All right.’ He took his hand from his pocket and spread his fingers. ‘No trouble,’ he said, turning to shake his head at Wilson. ‘No trouble. Costa just wants to talk.’

  ‘Sure he does.’

  Somewhere out there, Batista would be cursing me for being late, thinking I was just what everyone said I was; a waste of time and only good for one thing.

  And right here, death’s shadow grew a little longer.

  2

  Luis and Wilson walked a few paces behind me, making my skin crawl. Even with the growing heat of the day, it made me cold to know they were there.

  When I came to the building on the corner, I paused to look back at them, then pushed open the heavy wooden door. The blue paint was cracked and flaking, some of it coming away on my fingers. I dusted it off as I went into the stuffy stairwell and climbed to the office above. Loose tiles rattled on the steps.

  The room at the top was drab and had a temporary feel to it. It had been that way since I first saw it a couple of years ago, and God knows how long before that. Nothing on the walls but stains left by age and neglect. There were drawers in one corner, a filing cabinet, and a broken fan hanging its head. A pile of boxes without lids had spilled their contents of papers and no one had bothered to pick them up. Some of the papers were yellowed, the corners curled in the incessant heat. There was a simple desk with an old, dusty computer, and an even older secretary – a woman who might have been a hundred years old. Her face was fissured like a dry lakebed.

  Costa was in the room, too, leaning over the desk, holding a sheaf of paper in his thick fingers. Fair skinned, maybe fifty years old, coarse black hair touched with grey at the temples. He was dressed like a city businessman – dark trousers and a white shirt – but he’d pulled the patterned tie loose and unfastened the top button.

  ‘Ah.’ He straightened and waved the other two men away. ‘Good to see you, Zico, come in, come in.’ He dropped the paper in front of the secretary and held open the door to his office.

  I hesitated, approached, and he put his arm around my shoulder as if we were old friends.

  He walked me into his office and closed the door, sealing us from the others before moving round to the far side of the desk.

  There were documents on the scratched surface but Costa made no attempt to cover them. He knew I couldn’t read them even if I wanted to. I had never spent a full day in school and couldn’t even write my own name.

  ‘Sit, Zico.’ He pointed to the only other chair in the room. ‘I have something for you.’ In the silence after his words, there was only the sound of his laboured breathing, as if the warm air was too thick for his lungs.

  I shook my head. ‘No, Costa’—

  ‘Something much better than pig farming. A man like you shouldn’t work with animals – not that kind, anyway. I have something much more suited to your talents.’ When he spoke, there was an air of authority and education in his words.

  ‘I haven’t done anything like that for a long time. Not for you, not for anybody.’

  ‘But it’s in your blood, Zico, it’s what you do best. Men like you are rare. You can look a man in the eye and feel his last breath on your face, walk away and sleep like a child. It’s a rare talent.’

  ‘I’d rather have anothe
r talent,’ I said. ‘An artist, maybe. Or a farmer.’

  Costa smiled and dabbed sweat from the back of his neck with a handkerchief. ‘I can offer you something better than that.’

  ‘I don’t do this any more.’

  ‘I know, I know. You say that, but you’ve said it before and’

  ‘This time I mean it.’

  ‘But this time, the pay is more than you might think.’

  I looked away and thought about walking out. If I didn’t hear what he had to say, I wouldn’t be tempted.

  ‘A thousand,’ he said.

  ‘Reais?’ I turned to look in his eyes; to see the lie. It was more than I’d ever been paid for anything.

  Costa shook his head. ‘Not reais.’

  ‘Dollars?’

  He nodded and grinned.

  ‘A thousand dollars? American?’

  Costa’s eyes narrowed, becoming small and dark. He could read my indecision; my need for money. ‘Why don’t you listen to what I have to say?’

  His chair creaked as he lowered himself into it, then he waited for me to do the same. I let out my breath without realising I’d been holding it, then yielded, and sat down. If there had been any doubt in Costa’s mind about my willingness to work for him again, it was now gone.

  We remained still, studying one another, each knowing what the other could do – I had my skills and he had his connections.

  ‘Who is he?’ I sighed, knowing I should have walked out. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Not he. She.’

  I blinked hard and stared at the surface of the desk.

  ‘Zico?’ Costa’s voice intruded.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘You still with me?’

  I looked up at his serious face, his eyes shining like glass. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Dolores Beckett.’

  I took a deep breath to clear my head and leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair. ‘I’ve heard that name. Why do I know it?’

  Costa averted his eyes. ‘I have no idea.’ He started to say something else but I wasn’t listening. The name had triggered a memory.

  Dolores Beckett.

  ‘Wait.’ I held up a hand. ‘I do know that name. I’ve heard you complaining about her. But it’s not just Dolores Beckett, is it? It’s Sister Dolores Beckett.’

  Costa stopped and looked at me, his mouth open.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was short. Tense.

  ‘The American nun.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Indian rights nun.’

  Costa nodded.

  I put a hand to my chin, felt the day’s growth already beginning. ‘You want me to kill a nun?’

  3

  I didn’t know exactly how many people I had killed, but at least eleven of them had been close enough to blow their last breath in my face, just like Costa had said.

  All of them had been men, though – or male, if not yet men – and I had never lost a moment of sleep over any of them. They were all made from the same mould and they had all deserved it. But my life was changing and it was time to leave certain things behind. The work I did for Costa was one of those things, but I was tempted by the money, and I might have done it one more time for him. But this? A nun?

  ‘She’s well known, so it needs to be quiet.’ Costa took out his handkerchief again. ‘Very quiet. No connections coming back to me or ... well.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead and made a show of almost letting something slip, but he was just reminding me he had knowledge I didn’t. Costa had city sophistication and links to people who gained him respect in a town like ours. He was more important than me, and he didn’t want me to forget it.

  ‘It’s even better if no one knows she’s dead,’ he went on. ‘If you can make her disappear, that’s the best thing.’ He wiped the beads of moisture from his upper lip. ‘And you’ve always been so good at that.’

  ‘Foreign nuns don’t just disappear.’

  ‘I’m sure a man like you can—’

  ‘Not even a man like me, Costa. Get someone else to do it.’ But he’d mentioned money, a lot of it, and a small part of me was tempted, drawing me back into the shadow.

  ‘Is it because she’s a nun? Or because she’s a woman?’

  ‘Neither. I’m finished with this.’ I was more than just a killer. I had other things now.

  Costa raised his eyebrows and gave me a knowing look. He’d heard me say it before and sometimes I felt like I’d been saying it or thinking it most of my life. I was going to leave the shadow behind, find honest work; let the blood fade from my hands. But the shadow was always close, and people like Costa had a way of seeing how it followed me. He was willing to pay for the kind of work I could do and, no matter how much I wanted to get away, there was always something to entice me back. I could tell myself the people deserved it one way or another, that none of them was a good person and any one of them would do the same to me or to someone like my sister Sofia.

  Sister Dolores Beckett, though; she was different.

  ‘What if we were talking about a man?’ Costa asked. ‘Some cruel landowner who needs shifting from his land? The kind of work you’ve done before? What would you be saying to me now?’

  ‘That I’m finished with this.’

  ‘Zico.’ Costa shook his head. ‘That’s not true. You wouldn’t think twice.’

  I wondered if he was right; if he knew me better than I knew myself.

  Costa looked away, tightening his thin lips. ‘I need to get the air conditioning fixed in this office. I keep telling that woman to get it sorted but she’s damn useless. I don’t know why I keep her on. It’s hotter than hell in here.’ He stood and went to the window, staring out at the street.

  Sweat patches grew under his arms as the perspiration leached into the material of his shirt and darkened it. There was a fan in the corner of the room, its head rotating back and forth in a lazy arc, but it had no effect in the enclosed space.

  ‘You know I can’t get anyone else to do this,’ Costa said.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Of course you do. That’s why you’re still in your seat. You want to know how much I need you; how much I can offer you.’ Costa turned around, face glistening. He’d never got used to the heat. All the time I’d known him, he’d been like that. He’d had his hair cut short, shaved off the moustache he wore when I first met him, and the way he smelled, you’d think he bathed in aftershave, but nothing worked.

  ‘You know I can’t afford for some local pistoleiro to screw this up,’ he said. Times are changing. People are watching now and they write things in the newspapers. Even about things that happen in shit-hole, middle-of-nowhere places like this. It’s not so easy to get away with things any more. That’s how much I need you.’

  When I was growing up in Rio, the few years of real childhood I had, my sister Sofia and I used to blame the saci pererê for anything that went wrong. We used to believe he was right there in the dust devils that swirled on the street in the favela, a one-legged mulatto ready to cause all kinds of mischief. If the milk soured, it was the saci pererê. If the meat was bad, or the keys were missing or the sole came off your shoe, it was him. Later, when Sofia was gone, if the knife’s edge was dull, or the cartridge misfired, the boys blamed the saci pererê.

  Right now, looking at Costa, feeling him draw me in, I saw something like the saci pererê trying to trick me with flattery and promises and clever games. Except there was something more cruel in Costa’s heart. The saci pererê was a creature of mischief. Perhaps Costa was more like Anhangá.

  The Indians said Anhangá was a shape-shifter who could look like a caiman as easily as he could look like a man. He was a protector of the forest but loved to torment humans, filling their heads with mistrust and misery and horrific visions of hell. When the Catholics came to evangelise the Indians, Anhangá was the name they chose for the Devil.

  The old man, Raul, said he knew
people who had seen it in the forest, and some of the fishermen swore they’d seen men who walked to the river’s edge before transforming into a caiman and sliding into the murky waters. Some of them were afraid to take their children on their boats because they thought Anhangá would steal them in the night.

  My sister Sofia would have liked the stories just as she did when we were children and we sat on the steps to listen when the women talked about the orixas – the gods of the Candomblé religion. Once our father was dead, Sofia found comfort in Candomblé and its rituals, while I turned to more worldly things.

  When I thought of those things now, though, I remembered the shadow in which I had walked since Sofia had gone. Perhaps she would have known a name for that shadow. And I couldn’t help wondering what she would say about me now; about the temptation I was feeling.

  ‘You know I need you, Zico.’ Costa said. ‘That’s why you’re still sitting there. Because men like Luis and Wilson lack your subtlety. They can be effective in their own way, but for something like this?’ He shook his head. ‘Luis and Wilson are like a hammer but you are like a filleting knife. They can move a man from his land or ... deal with a difficult worker.’ He let that idea hang in the air for a moment. ‘But they’re too heavy-handed and loose-tongued.’

  ‘And they’re on your payroll.’

  Costa looked surprised that I’d even thought about that. ‘This can’t come back to me,’ he said. ‘That’s one of the things you’re so good at. You keep it to yourself. There’s no proof you ever worked for me.’ He shrugged. ‘If you get caught ...’ He turned around again and opened the window. The sound of samba music eased in from the street below, where the café was serving up breakfast. He took a lung full of air and came back to the desk, drying his sweaty palms on his trousers and sitting down.

  ‘So who wants this nun dead?’ I asked him. ‘The Branquinos?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

  I was sure I was right, though. Costa was discreet, he never mentioned the Branquinos by name, but everyone knew they owned all the land round here. Some of the older people in Piratinga remembered when the Branquino brothers lived on their fazenda not far from Piratinga, but they had people to run their businesses now, they were too important to live in a place like this. Heat and sweat and the stink of cattle wasn’t their style any more. Now they lived the good life in Brasilia or Manaus or some other place that was far away, passing their orders down to men like Costa in towns all over this area.