Dead Season (12 page)

Sandro was still shaking his head. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘I still don’t buy it. Why here?’

Belligerent, even as he said the words, Sandro thought, I’m too old for this. Too old to be standing in the particularly livid glare of the inside of a forensics tent, a glare that had illuminated his nightmares for the best years of his life, along with that particular smell of fusty plastic and preservatives, and of decomposing humanity. Too old to be picking a fight with his best – his only – friend. And abruptly he pushed his way out through the flapping plastic.

Pietro came out behind him, a gloved hand on his shoulder. Outside, even the gaseous miasma that rose from the overheating traffic seemed like fresh air, compared with the stench inside the tent, and both men took deep gulps until they began to cough. A woman in the passenger seat of a red convertible brought to a temporary standstill, twenty-five perhaps, though made up to look older, turned and stared at them with distaste. The car’s driver, a tanned, well-preserved man approaching fifty, looked ahead resolutely through dark glasses.

Sandro turned, one way then another, still thinking it over, suicide or – something else; still: why here? To the east, the blue hills of the Casentino, Pontassieve and beyond, from where you could stop and look back at the city as he and Luisa used to do, picnicking, and see right through the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Hectares and hectares of forested hillside, untended olive groves, silent valleys where a body could rot to nothing unobserved.

‘It’s madness, isn’t it?’ Sandro spoke as if to himself. ‘Here?’ he said. ‘Why not – Christ. Why not somewhere less – less—’

‘Yes,’ said Pietro gently, ‘it’s a shithole. But we both know that people sometimes take themselves off to places – to terrible places, far away from home. To do this.’

Pietro stood in uneasy silence, waiting for Sandro to come to his senses. A siren whooped once and they both turned towards the sound; a blue light revolved on an unmarked van’s roof, stuck in the traffic coming towards them from the city. At the sound the cars began, reluctantly, to edge out of the way.

‘That’s pathology,’ said Sandro flatly.

‘Look,’ said Pietro quickly, in an undertone. ‘If he’d got himself – into a situation. With the wife, and the pregnant girlfriend. Running two homes?’ And Pietro shook his head wryly. ‘The wife might have been asking questions, the baby about to be born, the money—’ And he stopped. ‘You can see.’

‘Luisa wants us to move,’ said Sandro suddenly. ‘She’s found this apartment. D’you think I could get a loan, at my age?’

Taken aback, Pietro said nothing, but then again, he didn’t have to. His expression was enough. ‘Sandro—’ he began, aghast.

Sandro nodded slowly. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Suicide because of – the money. It’s always the money. Not wanting to let her down.’ He’d been stupid, hadn’t he? Instincts were sometimes the wrong things to pursue. He’d let Anna’s sweet, hopeful little face get between him and the facts. ‘Right,’ he said slowly.

Pietro was raising a hand to indicate their presence to the pathology van. ‘Monterosso, you said?’ Sandro gazed back blankly. ‘The wife?’ said Pietro patiently.

‘Yes,’ said Sandro. ‘Monterosso. He’s supposed to be on holiday.’ He thought of the weeping woman who would sooner or later emerge from the room in the police morgue that smelled of bleach and preserving agents and the sickly topnote of decay. ‘A house called Le Glicine, overlooking the sea. His in-laws.’

‘And we’ll need your girl, too,’ said Pietro. ‘The other woman. When the wife’s been. She’ll need to ID him too.’

‘My girl,’ said Sandro and for a moment he set his hand before his eyes, wanting darkness. ‘Yes.’

C
HAPTER
N
INE

‘I
T WAS HIS WIFE
,’ Ma said triumphantly.

‘What?’

Roxana was sitting in an expensive new wine bar this side of the Uffizi – ten euros for a plate of sliced meats and a single cold glass of Greco di Tufa – and trying to relax. She didn’t usually drink very much, let alone at lunchtime, but today was not like other days. This month, in fact, was not like other months. Today Roxana needed something to click the little worry switch off in her brain, and wine seemed like a reasonable start. She’d just taken the first sip or two, just felt the beginnings of an effect – felt the shoulders drop, started to look around at the other customers, appreciate the sophisticated air-conditioning, because clearly that ten euros had to be paying for something other than two slices of
finocchiona
and three of salt ham – when her phone went.

And it was Ma. ‘Hey, Mamma.’ She set the glass down. She’d stopped calling her mother by her first name; there’d been enough confusion of roles already.

But Ma sounded her old self, completely: bristling, sharp, certain. ‘I’ve remembered.’

‘Remembered what?’

‘It was the wife,’ she said. ‘Yesterday. His wife phoned.’

‘What?’ This was the old Ma, too, making no concessions to those trying to follow her train of thought. ‘Whose wife? You mean the woman who phoned yesterday?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Ma, exaggeratedly patient. ‘I told you I was just tired, you know. You were putting too much pressure on me. That was why I couldn’t remember.’ A pause. ‘And I found the paper I made a note of her name on.’

‘Whose wife, Ma?’

‘Well, your boss’s wife, of course. That was the confusion. I know she’s not exactly a friend of yours but she did ask for you by name.’

‘Signora Brunello?’

Roxana knew her, of course. Gracious, pretty, pampered, with the plump little children she tugged behind her impatiently. On holiday in Monterosso, her darling Claudio grilling fish on the barbecue, children splashing in the blue shallows: why on earth would she be calling Roxana at home?

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve told you.’ Ma spoke sharply, as though Roxana was seven years old, and the summer holidays stretched for two months ahead of them and her temper was fraying. ‘Irene Brunello, wife of your boss, left her number and said, please could you call back when you got home.’

‘Damn,’ said Roxana. The supercilious girl behind the cold counter looked across at her with vague interest, and Roxana shifted to half-turn her back, her mind working furiously.

Brunello’s wife calls. A private detective comes looking for Brunello. Had it been a mistake to talk to that man? Roxana’s stomach clenched. But she had trusted him; even now, she trusted him.

‘Give me the number, Ma,’ she said. Then, hearing the huffy silence, ‘Please.’

Violetta Delfino read out the number, in the cut-glass accent that had served her so well for fifteen years as a hospital secretary. Roxana took a gulp of the wine, too recklessly; it made her giddy. How had Irene Brunello got her number? From the book? She was surprised the woman even remembered her name.

‘Thanks, Ma,’ she said, apologetically. Meaning,
Sorry I doubted you
.

‘And there
was
someone in the garden,’ said Ma defiantly. As if she knew exactly the way Roxana was thinking. ‘I went out there this morning and I saw footprints. I didn’t fall asleep and dream it, as I know you were wondering. I’m not—’

‘Footprints?’ They could have been Roxana’s footprints. ‘You’re not stupid, Ma, I know that.’

‘Gaga, I was going to say. Senile. I’m just old, and – and, well. You wait, my girl. You wait. You think you’re in charge, you are the one that manages everything. And suddenly it’s all different. Suddenly you have to take care, to be afraid. Soon they’ll be talking to you like a baby, feeding you mush on a spoon.’

The food hadn’t tasted like ten euros’ worth, after that, though it had been fine. Roxana had cut her lunch break short by a good twenty minutes, paid up and headed for the door, the pretty girl’s eyes on her back. Didn’t she have a mother?

Once outside, within a millisecond she regretted leaving the air-conditioned wine bar. The heat was something else. It probably reached its daily maximum at three in the afternoon, especially in the Via dei Saponai. The street of the soapmakers, how illustrious was that, in the great city of the Renaissance? But it led south off the Via dei Neri and the sun shone straight down its length. Fine in the winter; in the summer, though, it was deserted, a scalding thoroughfare to nowhere. No wonder business was bad.

It was hard to marshal your thoughts in this temperature. Brunello’s wife was after him and Sandro Cellini, private investigator, was after Brunello. Roxana slowed as it dawned on her: this was something. Not just a rumour, not just a bit of something to be gossiped about – this was her boss. Her job. If Brunello was in trouble – then she stopped.

Even from the end of the street she could see that something was up. The light was on in the bank, but they didn’t open up again till four, didn’t have to get back inside till three-thirty. Could Val have come back early from his lunch hour, instead of his usual six minutes late, smiling amiably and knowing he’d be forgiven?

But August turned everything on its head; maybe Val had got too lazy to go out in the first place. And for a minute, her thoughts loosened by the wine, Roxana thought again of the man from the cinema with his bag of takings. As they came in with their cash and paying-in books, all those shop assistants and market boys, were they tempted just to do a runner? They must be. August would be the month to do it.

It wasn’t Valentino. Marisa Goldman met her at the security door.

Marisa Goldman, straight-nosed, arrogant and beautiful as an Egyptian cat – only not today. She was tanned, her black hair was looped up in the usual tight shiny French knot, but under the superficial effects of the sun she looked sallow and ugly with shock.

‘What is it?’ said Roxana immediately. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on what’s his name’s yacht? What’s happened? Something’s happened.’

But Marisa was saying nothing; carefully she closed the door behind Roxana and as they passed from the sweltering street into the tepid gloom of the banking floor she felt a sweat breakout all down her back. Only when they were both in Marisa’s neat office, with the leather and steel chairs and the expensive lamp, did she speak.

‘It’s Claudio,’ she said, and her voice shook.

‘Claudio,’ repeated Roxana stupidly, wanting to ward off the terrible moment. ‘What’s happened?’

They were both standing. She saw that Marisa was wearing beach clothes, a turquoise silk shirt, no jewellery, sandals. Those little knotted cotton bracelets you could have tied round your wrist by some Chinese girl on the beach.

‘She phoned me. Irene Brunello called me …’ She looked at her watch, staring as if her life depended on it. ‘A bit more than an hour ago.’

‘You got here quick,’ said Roxana. An hour? From Elba?

‘I took the helicopter,’ said Marisa, distractedly.

‘She was calling here yesterday,’ said Roxana, hearing the foolish eagerness in her voice. ‘She even called me at home—’ But then she faltered, seeing the look of dull fear on Marisa’s face.

‘Yesterday?’ Marisa sounded bewildered. ‘She knew yesterday?’

‘Knew what?’

And then Marisa seemed to crumple, with a small sound of distress, her long angular body collapsing into the uncomfortable leather sling of her office chair.

‘She’s been asked to – they need her to identify—’ She stopped, swallowed. ‘He’s dead,’ she said, barely whispering. ‘Claudio’s dead.’

Roxana stood over her superior, and stared. With one part of her brain all she could think of was that she should take the woman’s hand, rub some colour back into her cheeks, fetch a glass of water – but the rest of her head was suddenly filled to painful bursting with that awful word.

‘Dead?’

And the flood of images, unstoppable, came: Claudio Brunello giving her a quizzical, serious, calculating look over his screen; the fastidious movement with which he adjusted the sleeves of his jacket; the look – impatient, fond, superstitious – he would shoot at the photograph on his shelf. And more than images: his soft, considered, evasive voice, murmuring behind his closed door; the smell of sandalwood and polished leather that entered a room with him.

Marisa looked up at her and jerked her head in a nod that was more like a spasm.

Abruptly Roxana sat down. ‘But what—’ And then she stopped. Of course. ‘An accident,’ she said, almost relieved. How could it have been anything else? ‘And she’s been trying to get hold of us. Oh, God. In the car?’ The boss drove that car so fast, it was so unnecessarily powerful, and the coast road—

Somewhere off beyond the office door there was a noise, the sound of Valentino back from his lunch break, the hiss of the door and his idiotic friendly voice calling out.

But Marisa was shaking her head. Roxana’s thoughts whirled – a drowning, the currents up there, a body pulled out of the sea – until at last Marisa spoke, with what seemed like a terrible effort.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

*

‘Anna’s on her way,’ said the tough, skinny Russian girl on reception at the Loggiata.

She eyed Sandro with deep suspicion, before adjusting it to a look of contempt for Giuli, at his side.

‘She’s laying up for tomorrow’s breakfast. She’s a bit slow on her feet these days.’ Sarcastic, with it: Sandro just smiled and nodded. A violent death put things in perspective. Like childbirth, no doubt: the surly Russian was the least of their worries.

Outside there was the soundtrack of August: cicadas in the garden below them, starting up as the sun went down, and the sullen banging of builders at work, the crash of falling plaster. They might work at half-speed in August, but the city was full of them. The skies were clear, people were away, businesses shut for a month – so they called in the builders. Scaffolding everywhere, skips and rubble, and that infernal banging.

He turned to Giuli and whispered, ‘Thanks for coming.’

She looked at him with weary amusement. ‘No problem,’ she said.

The Loggiata was, as Pietro had said in what now seemed like another world but was only that tired bar in San Ambrogio last night, an old-fashioned sort of place. If old-fashioned meant it hadn’t been redecorated in thirty-five years and smelled of decades of cat. The hotel occupied the top floor of a crumbling
palazzo
behind Santo Spirito, and the foyer opened through a long, glazed door on to the
loggia
that gave it its name. The veneer reception desk was surmounted by a frayed square of orange hessian and the upholstered chairs in which he and Giuli sat were shiny with age. But the foyer was vast, the polished cotto of the floor undulating and ancient and the tall windows were original, with delicate glazing bars and wobbly old glass.