The Innocent (13 page)

In the afternoon the waiting room was full, but a glance around the worried or hopeful faces told him there was nothing Lorenzini couldn’t deal with. He walked through with a polite greeting and shut himself in his office with the stuff from the Japanese girl’s flat.

As he sat down and drew the pile on the desk towards him, he was still thinking about Totò. He’d never been an easy child, not compared with Giovanni. It was impossible not to admire his intelligence and quickness, though. And now … you had to hand it to him, vegetarian or not, that was a lovely girl. His place at table had been empty again but Teresa hadn’t even had to look at him. He kept quiet.

It had been Giovanni who’d told them that the girl’s parents were separating and that, as soon as term ended, she was to move back to Denmark with her mother:

—He says he’s going to run away. He won’t, though, will he, Mum?

—Of course he won’t. And give me that T-shirt after. You’ve splashed tomato on it and I’ve still to do a dark wash. Does anybody want any more?

You thought your children were children for ever and then, all of a sudden, they weren’t. A lovely girl, but foreign. The Japanese girl had run away from her family and look how that had ended up.

His respect for his younger son was redoubled but he felt worried.

Small children, small problems, they say.

And if they suddenly stopped being children, the world looked completely different.

His son had run straight past, not even seeing him, and now he felt as lonely as if they’d both left home. After all, one day they would.

Just get on with your work, he told himself, opening the folder in front of him. No danger of that running away.

Of course, he’d have to retire when the moment came …

Everything in your life that seems so solid and permanent is really shifting underneath you without your noticing.

Lorenzini’s head appearing round the door was a welcome sight. ‘Visitor for you.’

It was Beppe, the oldest gardener, his face bursting with self-importance, peering through the fronds of a huge plant.

‘Come in, come in … what on earth have you got there?’

‘A
Kentia
. It won’t dirty your floor, there’s a plastic dish under it. We’ve had a delivery and I thought this would do nicely in here. I’ll put it near the window. It’s to say thank you.’

‘Thank you?’

‘You remember? That flat you suggested for my granddaughter? They’re moving in on the first of next month. Don’t overwater it. Now: what I’ve really come about is that shoe. You’d better come with me—we’ve not touched it. I said right away to Giovanni, I said, they’ll be wanting to take photographs like they did up at the pool. Am I right?’

‘I—quite right, yes. Where did you—’

‘Shall we go, then?’

As they started up the gravel path Beppe, despite his age, his girth and the steepness of the climb, chattered on, breathless. It was because of last night’s storm, you see.

We always have to check all the drains after a storm. It was one of those, look. D’you see?’

The pale gravel, only superficially dry as yet, was interrupted every few metres by a diagonal stone runnel leading to what looked like a tiny sepulchre at the side.

‘We have to go left here and go up the main avenue a bit.’

The main avenue was even steeper and Beppe fell silent for a while, catching his breath.

‘How much further up?’ the marshal asked.

‘Not far now. Where Giovanni’s standing guard. We thought he should stay there, just in case …’

The broad stretch of sand-coloured gravel rose to a glistening horizon crowned by the silhouette of a stone staircase and an equestrian statue. Huge fluffy white clouds drifted above in the deep-blue sky and everything smelled of wet laurel leaves.

Giovanni, the head gardener, stood back when they reached him so that the marshal could take a look. ‘We haven’t touched it. I suppose you’ll take photographs like you did up at the pool. You’re lucky. These drains may not be much bigger than your hand, but once you’re behind the opening they’re enormous. If it had been pushed harder it’d have gone down and you’d never have seen it again. Stuck like that with the heel caught, a fair bit of gravel and some leaves and stuff washed up against it during the storm so it wasn’t draining properly and we spotted it.’

‘I knew right away it was the one you were looking for,’ said Beppe, ‘and it is, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’ The marshal straightened up and looked about him. ‘The pool where we found her must be up there to the right. If our man went straight down this avenue, he didn’t taken the nearest exit, the Annalena one …’

Below them, at the foot of the main avenue, lay the biggest pool with its central island, the Porta Romana exit and the ring roads. That was the exit furthest from Peruzzi’s workshop, from Peruzzi himself, from Issino, from the Japanese girl’s flat, from her world. People who came into the city by car parked outside the city walls near the Porta Romana. The boyfriend, maybe … Rome. Who’d mentioned Rome? Lapo … or Peruzzi? Peruzzi, slamming the door, purple with anger, shouting:

—If she’s not in Rome, I don’t know where she is!

But Lapo had said something about a friend in Rome. Was all that anger really about loutish tourists or were they just a cover for Peruzzi’s jealousy?

—If you’ve got time to be running after young people who don’t know their own minds …

Anxious to get back to his office and those letters and photographs, he left as soon as the technician arrived on the scene. As his feet crunched downhill, he could hear Beppe, his breath quite recovered, elaborating on his story as he told it again.

‘The marshal knows my name and address if you need to get in touch with me.’

‘I don’t think I’ll need to do that—stand out of the way, will you …’

He quickened his pace. Back at the station he found the waiting room empty. He looked in at the door of the duty room where he could hear the crackle of the motorbike patrol calling in.

‘Everything all right?’

The young carabiniere at the console looked up. ‘Fine. All quiet.’

‘Lorenzini?’

‘He’s got somebody with him. A woman. She was crying her eyes out. I could hear her from in here but she seems to have quietened down now.’

‘Oh, Lord, I bet it’s Monica … Listen, when he’s finished, tell him I’m in my office and I don’t want to be disturbed for an hour at least—and don’t put any calls through.’

‘All right.’

But when a weeping Monica had been shown out, the bike patrol had come in and a good two hours had gone by, he was still sitting at his desk, too shocked to speak. When Lorenzini at last opened the door, looking puzzled, the marshal could find no words and only stared at him, unseeing.

‘What’s the matter with you? What’s happened?’

The marshal dropped his head into his hands and rubbed hard at his eyes. Then, with a deep breath, he pulled himself together. ‘You’d better come in.’

Seven

‘H
ave you rung Borgognissanti?’

‘No.’

‘You haven’t talked to anybody?’

‘No.’ How could he explain? He’d been sitting there for goodness knows how long like somebody paralysed because once he moved, once he acted on what he’d seen, told somebody, it would become real. He’d been practically holding his breath, trying to stop the world turning. It was his responsibility, no getting away from that. His fault. And now there was Lorenzini drumming his fingers, his body tense with impatience.

‘I was thinking …’ he lied, ‘I don’t want to make things worse …’

‘How much worse can it get? She’s dead. What’s worse than dead?’ Lorenzini looked at him the way he always did when his aggressive good sense came up against what he referred to as Sicilianity. He had learned over the years to be patient but you could see he felt this was no time for treading tactfully around what he saw as his superior’s slow southern ways.

‘Do you want me to call? Or go over there? What’s the problem? We’ve got to move!’ He didn’t even try to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Can you imagine what will happen if the newspapers get to this first?’

‘Yes.’

Lapo had said it:—Good God, if I’d told what I know it’d be on the front page …

The photographs lay spread all over the desk between them. Views of red roofs, domes and towers from Piazzale Michelangelo, views of the Arno valley from Bellosguardo, the Ponte Vecchio from the Santa Trinita Bridge, Peruzzi and Issino in their long aprons at the door of the workshop, close-ups of shoes, details of shoes, skeletons of shoes.

And then a whole packet of pictures of him. Eyes alight, handsome face a little flushed, the same face as Totò when he’d bounded past his father today, the face of someone in love.

‘Telephone him.’

‘What?’

‘Or, better still, send somebody round there and have him brought in. There’s no time to waste! He could disappear if this gets out!’

‘He already has.’ The marshal watched Lorenzini’s face. He’d known him so long. The more aggressive he seemed, the more upset he was. He was very upset now.

‘You’re right, of course, about the papers. It’ll be a scandal anyway, but as far as disappearing’s concerned, it’s too late. I said I haven’t told anybody and I haven’t, but since Captain Maestrangelo had asked me particularly to keep an eye, I felt I could call the signora without any sort of explanation and I did. It was a shock when she answered so … cheerfully. She seemed really pleased to hear from me but, of course, she realised right away that I wouldn’t call for no reason:’

—Has something happened to him?

—No, no, Signora …

—It’s such a dangerous job. I can’t help worrying.

—Nothing like that, I promise you. I just wanted to check something with him … a case we’ve been working on. How are you, anyway? I was sorry to hear about your illness.

‘She laughed and said she’d never been ill in her life. I got round that by saying I must have been mistaken, just an impression. I said her son probably worried about her falling ill, given that she was alone, the way she worried about something happening to him because he did a dangerous job. She didn’t pick it up, just said she missed him and was looking forward to his next leave.’

‘He didn’t go home.’

‘No. She hasn’t seen him since Easter when he brought his girlfriend home. She had a lot to say about that, said she was a lovely girl but—’

‘Foreign.’

‘Yes. They all did their best. It’s a big family and they all invited her. Not a day went by without there being a family dinner at one aunt’s or another’s but despite all the hospitality there’d been a quarrel of some sort. She said she wasn’t the interfering kind but marriage is difficult enough without the problems two different cultures are likely to cause. He seemed so head over heels in love, though, that her only hope was that it would wear off. She hoped I’d back her up if … if he confided in me.’ Lorenzini dropped into the chair in front of the marshal’s desk. His aggressiveness had dissipated as the full implications sank in. It was the man’s disappearance that made the case as bad as it could get. So he, too, fell as silent as the marshal for a moment. Twenty-six colour photographs of Esposito lay spread on the desk between them, handsome, happy and glowing with love.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake …’ was all Lorenzini could manage at last. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

It rained again during the night, steady, heavy rain with distant grumblings of thunder. The marshal lay in the dark, his eyes wide open. Every so often a faint wash of light managed to get between the slats of the closed outer shutters and for a second he saw a paler darkness of long muslin curtain, then it all went black. Heavier curtains would shut the storm out. Or solid inside shutters. Each spent flash provoked an answering flicker of irritation. For God’s sake, how was he supposed to sleep? He hadn’t got to bed until one in the morning and tomorrow promised to be a long and heavy day. Teresa had only given him a bowl of the light broth she’d prepared for tomorrow with some bread in it and a sprinkling of cheese.

—You know you always have nightmares if you eat late at night.

Well, there was little enough danger of having any nightmares tonight, with the room lighting up like a firework display every few minutes, and on top of that he was starving. The stormy air was sticky and his thin cotton pyjamas felt like they were made of serge. Either they or the sheets were damp and creased under his back. He tried wriggling his shoulders to smooth things out but only managed to make more creases. He turned on his side and pushed the top sheet down. Four o’clock. It would be easier to sleep with the bedside light on than with this blasted flashing but he didn’t want to wake Teresa. Installing inside shutters would be an expense but surely a bit of a curtain wasn’t too much to ask! What was she thinking about? That thin stuff wouldn’t keep anything out. If you couldn’t be safe in your own house, where could you be safe?

Should he get up and check on the boys again? She’d be annoyed if she woke up and noticed. She’d been annoyed when he went in before:

—It’s after midnight. You’ll wake them up.

—I won’t.

—Well, don’t switch the light on. You know how you used to wake them up when they were small.

—I never saw them when they were small. I was here on my own, wasn’t I? I missed their whole childhood!

—Don’t exaggerate, Salva. And don’t wake them up.

So he hadn’t switched the light on, just stood there in the doorway, listening to their breathing. He’d even resisted the temptation to cover Totò with his tumbled sheets since it was so hot anyway.

You thought you could help them, protect them, but then it turned out that you couldn’t do a thing. They weren’t your children, they were just other people. You might as well not be there. It seemed as if every time that faint flash of light came it was a signal for the scene to play over again in his head. Totò bounding towards him, calling
Where were you?
Each time it played he wanted to open his arms and swing his laughing little boy round and round. But each time, Totò bounded past without seeing him.

So he wouldn’t get up. He’d only disturb them. Teresa was right.