“It must mean a lot to you,” Tom said. “Finding out about your dad.”
“Yes. It does.”
“My mum and dad have been shouting at each other for ages. All they ever do is fight. Now they’re splitting up and they’re fighting about that. I don’t care about either of them any more. I don’t think I even like them.” For a brief moment Tom looked sadder than Alex had ever seen him. “So I think I understand what you’re saying, and I hope you find out something good about your dad, because right now I can’t think of anything good about mine.”
Jerry Harris, Tom’s elder brother, met them at the station and took them by taxi to his flat. He was twenty-two years old and had come to Italy on his gap year but had somehow forgotten to return. Alex liked him immediately. Jerry was totally laid-back, thin to the point of scrawny, with bleached hair and a lopsided smile.
It made no difference to him that Alex had turned up uninvited, and he didn’t comment on Alex’s appearance or the fact that he seemed to have made the journey from Venice without shoes.
He lived in the Spanish Quarter of the city. It was a typical Naples street: narrow, with buildings five or six storeys high on both sides and washing lines strung out between them. Looking up, Alex saw a fantastic patchwork of crumbling plaster, wooden shutters, ornate railings, window boxes and terraces with Italian women leaning out to chat with their neighbours. Jerry was renting a top-floor flat. There was no lift. The three of them climbed a twisting staircase with a different smell and sound on each floor: disinfectant and a baby crying on the first, pasta and a violin playing on the second…
“This is it,” Jerry announced, unlocking a door. “Make yourselves at home.” Home was an open-plan space with hardly any furniture, white painted walls, a wooden floor and views over the city. There was a kitchen in the corner, every surface piled high with dirty plates, and a door leading to a small bedroom and bathroom. Somehow, someone had dragged a battered leather three-seater sofa all the way up. It sat in the middle of the room surrounded by a tangle of sports equipment, only some of which Alex recognized. There were two skateboards, ropes and pitons, an oversized kite, a mono-ski and what looked like a parachute. Tom had already told Alex that his brother was into extreme sports. He was teaching English as a foreign language in Naples, but only to pay for his trips mountaineering, surfing or whatever.
“You two hungry?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah.” Tom slumped down on the sofa. “We’ve been on a train for, like, six hours. You got any food?”
“You’ve got to be kidding! No. We’ll go out and get a pizza or something. How’s things, Tom? How are Mum and Dad?”
“The same.”
“As bad as that?” Jerry turned to Alex. “Our parents are complete crap. I’m sure my brother’s told you. I mean, calling him Tom and me Jerry. How crap can you get?” He shrugged. “What are you doing down here, Alex?
You want to visit the coast?”
On the train Alex had impressed on Tom the importance of not repeating anything he’d said. Now he winced as Tom announced, “Alex is a spy.”
“Is he?”
“Yeah. He works for MI6.”
“Wow. That’s awesome.”
“Thanks.” Alex wasn’t sure what to say.
“So what are you doing in Naples, Alex?”
Tom answered for him. “He wants to find out about a company. Constanza.”
“Consanto,” Alex said.
“Consanto Enterprises?” Jerry opened the fridge and took out a beer. Alex noticed that, apart from beer, there was nothing else in the fridge. “I know about them. I used to have one of their people learning English. He was a research chemist or something. I hope he was a better chemist than he was a linguist, because his English was awful.”
“Who are Consanto?” Alex asked.
“They’re one of these big pharmaceutical companies. They make drugs and biological stuff. They’ve got a plant near Amalfi.”
“Can you get me in?” Alex was hopeful.
“You’ve got to be kidding. I doubt the pope could get in. I drove past once and it’s this really high-tech sort of place. It looks like something out of a sci-fi film. And it’s got all these fences and security cameras and stuff.”
“They must have something to hide,” Tom said.
“Of course they’ve got something to hide, you dimwit,” Jerry muttered. “All these drugs companies are coming up with new patents and they’re worth a fortune. I mean, like, if someone discovers a cure for AIDS or something, it would be worth billions. That’s why you can’t get in. The guy I was teaching never said anything about his work. He wasn’t allowed to.”
“Like Alex.”
“What?”
“Being a spy. He’s not allowed to say anything about that either.”
“Right.” Jerry nodded.
Alex looked from one to the other. Despite the fact that there were eight years between them, the two brothers were obviously close. He wished he could spend more time with them. He felt more relaxed now than he had in a long time. But that wasn’t why he was here. “Can you take me to Amalfi?” he asked.
“Sure.” Jerry shrugged and finished his beer. “I haven’t got any lessons tomorrow. Would that be OK?”
“It would be great.”
