The Innocent (16 page)

So he stepped forward into the bright light, his heart thumping, sweat rolling down his temples. He’d thought he was on the train already, but when he reached the edge of the pool they made him step up on the ledge and walk along it, trying to keep his balance, until they reached almost the end of the platform. Then they all climbed into the train and pushed along the centre aisle. The railway police were there as well as the carabinieri and a magistrate. They all stood back to let him through and somebody said:

—It’s his father.

He stopped at the edge of the pool of thickened blood.

The door of the lavatory had been broken down and stood leaning to one side. Esposito was hunkered down in the tiny space but his head was raised, leaning against the wall. His handsome face, seen in profile, was perfect. He was smiling. The marshal’s heart lifted. It wasn’t too late!

—Listen, Esposito, it’s going to be all right. I promise you. I’ll help you. We’ll all help you.

He talked to Esposito for a long time. He got no answer but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that, as he talked, the light felt warm and pleasant on his face and his breathing grew more gentle. Esposito understood the words which the marshal himself couldn’t hear all that clearly except in snatches.

—And on your birthday we’ll go to Lapo’s place for a good meal and everybody who cares for you will be there.

—You can eat whatever you want, it doesn’t matter.

—You’ll be happy, you’ll see. We want you to eat. You must eat to stay alive, that’s all we want.

—Do you understand?

He understood. His handsome face, still in profile, still smiling …

—And look, just look how the sunshine warms your glass of wine and makes that red spot on the white—no, don’t touch it. Don’t turn round.

They were surrounded by such a warm glow that everything must be all right now.

—We won’t tell your mother, that will be best. We won’t tell her.

—Everything will be all right. You’ll get better with time.

The chattering voices were quiet. Nobody disturbed them.

There was no hurry, after all, to get back to his office so they walked through the gardens. Lorenzini would be looking after things. What was there to worry about? Esposito had been upset and needed a rest. That’s all there was to it. They must take it gently. So they walked together and the marshal talked to him, encouraging him, keeping him going. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear his own words and Esposito couldn’t hear them either. It only mattered that there was a voice, very close by, soothing.

It wasn’t dark any more. He could see every pebble, every leaf. A double row of potted lemon trees crossed the great pool towards Poseidon on his island. The scene was so brightly lit that the lemons glittered and orange flickers appeared and disappeared in the green water.

—No. Throw the bread but don’t touch the water.

—Look at that massive one! That could eat you!

—It couldn’t, could it, Dad?

—No. They’re only teasing you. Come away.

Esposito came away without protest but he seemed very quiet.

—We can sit down if you’re tired. This stone seat’s nice and smooth.

But they didn’t stop. The sun warmed the side of the marshal’s forehead and it felt pleasant but what about Esposito? The handsome profile was still smiling but the other side?

—It’s better now—Esposito said.

They were turning right and climbing.

—No … don’t go up there. You mustn’t go up there. Esposito didn’t listen. The marshal felt him growing colder and sadder.

—Wait … Let’s go back.

But he knew they couldn’t. They climbed on until they reached the botanical garden and Esposito went in to where the crowd was waiting.

—No …

Esposito was laying himself down in the shallow pool. Forli’s voice described in detail what was happening, though he wasn’t there. The marshal understood that the voice must be coming from a tape recorder somewhere and he was content because Forli understood the dead.

—It’ll only take one drop of water, you’ll see.

Esposito pushed the barrel up his nose. It looked like a water pistol but it was really his Beretta 9. One side of his face remained perfect, a friendly dark eye watching the marshal. But then the face cracked open right down the centre and the other side split away to glare in the opposite direction at the crowd, a creased half-mask, leaving a white and bloody mess in between. The photographers moved in with flash after flash after flash after flash after flash …

‘Tickets, please.’

The marshal jerked awake. The sun was coming up and warming his brow through the glass. Telegraph poles rushed by the window making the low light blink and blink and blink. The open fields beyond were still pearly white. His eyes were watering.

‘Your ticket, please?’

Still trapped inside his dream, mouth dry, head pounding, he struggled to find his ticket and handed it over.

‘Have a pleasant journey. Good morning.’ The inspector withdrew.

The woman in the opposite window seat looked at the marshal with sympathy. ‘You were so tired. It’s a shame he woke you.’

‘I’m sorry. I must have been snoring.’

‘Don’t worry. Everybody else was asleep and I don’t mind.’ She kept her voice low since the other passengers were dozing again and this created a soothing intimacy.

‘My son works for my brother in Arezzo and we live in Florence. He has to be up at five every morning to get his train and you can imagine how exhausted he is coming back in the evenings. He’s said to me many a time:—Mum, I’m sure I snored all the way and I think I was even dribbling a bit. If I ever met a nice girl on the train—I mean, can you imagine?’

The marshal fished out a big white handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of his mouth.

‘A bit more to the side,’ she murmured. ‘That’s it. Of course, he’s lucky in many ways. My brother has a small goldsmithing factory there and it’s not easy to find a job these days, is it?’

‘It’s not.’ He prayed that she’d go on talking and not leave him alone with that dream.

‘Of course, we’ve thought about a car—he’s only ever had a moped—but it’s still a long journey, he’d still have to be off very early, and what’s snoring on the train compared to the risks of driving on the motorway half asleep?’

‘You’re quite right. The motorways are dangerous enough when we’re wide awake. You make him stick to the train.’ He dried his eyes and put his suglasses on.

‘I can see the sun’s bothering you.’

‘It’s nothing. Just an allergy.’ But wanting her to go on talking and afraid the black glasses might put her off, he said, ‘I have two boys myself.’ That kept them going for a quarter of an hour or so.

Then she offered, ‘You must think it odd, my travelling back up to Florence at this hour—though my sister-in-law’s a lot better—but I’ve got workmen coming at eight this morning and I really didn’t want to put them off because I’ve been waiting weeks. You know what it’s like …’

It was the third time she’d opened up this space for him to talk about the reason for his night journey.

He told her, instead, about his recent experience with builders and the pink tiles.

‘No! You must have been furious!’

As long as she kept talking … He could tell that she knew what he needed and that her attempts to give him a cue were born of sympathy, not idle curiosity.

They were approaching the outskirts of Florence. She offered him a sweet.

‘Thank you.’

‘They’re fruit jellies. Sometimes you need a bit of sugar to buck you up. It’s been a long night.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not many people come up from Rome on this train now there’s the Intercity that’s so much faster.’

‘It was the first one leaving and I was tired, so …’ Reluctant to break this invisible thread connecting him to a safe, sane world, he carried her small case to the taxi rank. A carabinieri car was waiting for him across the way in the cold dawn light of the empty station square. He held the car door for her and, since there was nothing else he could say, he said, ‘Thank you.’

‘I want his body brought back to Florence. I want Forli to do the autopsy.’ He offered no explanation.

The captain asked for none. All he said was, ‘The Roman magistrate would never allow that.’

The marshal’s thoughts were still wandering in a velvety Roman night. Two feathery palms lit by yellow globes of light outside a family trattoria. A cheery waiter in a red striped waistcoat signalling to him as he stood on the cobbles ringing a brass doorbell, telling him the man he was looking for was down here eating with his girlfriend. Eleven-thirty at night and it was still hot. Inside the trattoria, someone was playing a mandolin and singing as waiters called out orders to the smoky kitchen. Inside the marshal’s head, Esposito’s face looked in two different directions and when they moved him stuff slopped about. The heat and the lights made the scene in front of him too unreal, too theatrical, to cancel out the other and he longed to get away from Rome …

Now, he forced himself to concentrate on today, on this quiet office, on what the captain was saying. ‘I could try for it on the grounds that we need his DNA as part of an ongoing investigation into the Japanese girl’s death—’

‘Akiko.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Nothing. Her name is Akiko. Akiko Kametsu.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I want Forli to do the autopsy. Her name … I kept forgetting it. It just came into my head that those films they show on television sometimes about real crimes or stuff about the war … when they say this is a true story, only some names have been changed to protect the innocent. I used to wonder about that. Who are they, the innocent? How do you separate them off so cleanly? And now I can see it—oh, not the way they mean it when they say it on television. None of us can be said to be as innocent as that. It’s just a different way of … a different world. All the people involved in this case … Akiko herself, the artisans, Esposito … They’re the innocent, you see, and yet there’s nobody else, so—’

‘Guarnaccia, you’re exhausted. What possessed you to travel up in the middle of the night when you could have stayed over I don’t know, but there was certainly no reason to come straight here from the station—have you even had breakfast?’

‘Breakfast … no. No, I don’t think so …’ There was a lingering sweetness in his mouth but he didn’t remember having had a coffee.

‘Go home, Guarnaccia, and get some sleep.’

‘Yes. Esposito’s mother called him Enzo. I know I’m not explaining myself. It’s just that I’m seeing things in a different way now.’

‘You’re tired. But I do understand that you’re also upset. There’s nothing to be done now except forget what’s been a very bad business. You liked Esposito. So did I. I had high hopes of him. But at least his death extinguishes the crime. We can only let his memory rest and go on.’

‘No, no … Death doesn’t extinguish the crime in his mother’s mind. We have to protect the innocent, don’t we? I understand who they are now and I’ve got to find whoever it is who isn’t one of them. I want his body brought back here because Professor Forli can help me.’

‘I’ve said I’ll try but I’m not hopeful, I’m really not. I keep telling you to go home and you’re not moving.’

‘No. I’m sorry.’ He knew what he must look like. Lorenzini had told him often enough:

—Sitting there, crouched like a bulldog making up its mind to sink its teeth into somebody’s leg. Sometimes your breathing’s that deep and slow I think you must actually be growling—and God help the owner of the leg you sink your teeth into. Can’t you just ask for a warrant like anybody else?

How can you just ask for a warrant when you don’t know whose name should be on it? The captain was too polite, too formal, to make the sort of comments Lorenzini came out with but the marshal said again, ‘I’m sorry. You see my only hope was this friend in Rome. And now …’

‘You’re sure his alibi will be confirmed?’

‘There’s no doubt. He was in Japan for his brother’s wedding. He showed me digital photographs and his passport. He said he was worried about Akiko because she’d been down to see him just before he left. They met here in Florence when they were both studying art history—his name is Toshimitsu … I’ve written his surname down …’

‘It doesn’t matter now. It’ll be in your report. Go on.’

‘He works for a restorer now. They were good friends, nothing more. He said they kept in touch. He said:

—Then she got pregnant and didn’t know what to do.

—Perhaps I was the only person she could talk to because I understood what she’d got away from.

—She said the Easter visit to Naples had been a disaster. Enzo’s family suffocated her. They never got a minute to themselves and everything they did was organised for them. She said he couldn’t see it. He thought it was normal and it didn’t bother him at all that they were told where to go, how to dress, who to invite back and what was to be eaten. He and his mother even talked over buying a flat and she wasn’t included in the conversation. When she heard about it, she objected. Peruzzi had offered to help with a deposit. He wouldn’t hear of that, to be helped by a stranger instead of family, while she would have preferred it. She was often in tears but they couldn’t even have a quarrel because there was no privacy. For her, he was a different person from the man she’d fallen in love with. She felt she didn’t know him at all. They quarrelled on the train back to Florence and she broke it off. But it turned out she was already pregnant. The last time she called me she had decided on an abortion. She said her sister had pressurised her, telling her not to lose her freedom and ruin her life, to use her intelligence. After all, what had she run away from her family for? Akiko said she was right. It was the only sensible thing to do but she was so distressed … It seems her sister had talked to their mother about it—it was out of the question to let their father find out. The mother said she must abort the child quickly and come back home. As long as it was kept quiet there was no harm done and she was still young enough to make a respectable match. Respectable, meaning lucrative.

—When was this, do you remember?