The Innocent (17 page)

—Yes, I do. She called me on the eighth of May and she was booked in at the hospital the next day, the day I left for Tokyo. I wish I hadn’t had to go. She was really suffering, desperate, even. She could hardly speak for crying and she apologised for calling me in that state.

Some people, I know, have an abortion without thinking twice but if they love the father …

—If you’d seen them together, you’d understand. They came to stay with us for two days once and—I don’t know how to put it—they kind of lit up everything around them.

It affected everybody who saw them, even Mario in the trattoria downstairs. He offered us a bottle of spumante to toast them.

—Agli innamorati!

—I don’t think they drank more than a sip. They were drunk with each other and so innocent, like two children.

‘I’m sure his concern was genuine, Captain. He was very shocked when I told him what had happened to her. He protested:

—You surely don’t think that Enzo … ?

—I don’t know.

—When I got back from Tokyo. he was waiting for me. Mario, who has the trattoria downstairs, said he’d been hanging around for days, waiting for me. Mario keeps my spare keys and knew when I’d be back. If you’d seen the state he was in …

—I did see.

—Of course, yes. Anyway, Mario was worried. He said, I don’t mind telling you, he frightened me. Asked me if his little girlfriend had been here—well, of course, I’d seen her but I said no. The man looked dangerous. It’s none of my business but if there’s something going on between you and that Japanese girlfriend of his you’d better watch your back. I said there wasn’t, that he was upset because she’d left him, that was all. You watch your back, anyway, he said, because I’ve seen a thing or two in my time and that man’s about to do something drastic. Well, he was right. When I opened the door to Enzo next morning, there was no denying it. His face was white and his eyes burning. He said to me, I know she must have come here. There’s nowhere else. She came here, didn’t she?

—He looked shocking. I said he should come in, sit down and try and calm himself. I said that once she got over the abortion they would have time to think things out. I said, However bad it seems now, it’s not the end of the world. She was frightened, can’t you understand? She felt trapped. But she loves you, I’m sure of it. You’ll convince her in the end if you just keep calm. You’ll get married. There’ll be other children. I wish you’d come in, let me make you a coffee, or something.

—But he wouldn’t. I don’t think he was even listening to me. All he said was, She must have hated me. Remembering his face then, it’s easy to imagine he would have killed himself. When he left here, he was like somebody walking about in a waking nightmare. He can’t have done that to her. He can’t, can he?

The marshal paused, staring at Captain Maestrangelo, willing him to understand. But he was in a waking nightmare himself and he couldn’t explain.

‘They would have been all right. They were so young and they needed help. She was so far from her home and only had this friend Toshimitsu to tell. He couldn’t advise her, but at least she could talk to him in her own language, couldn’t she? And it’s true what he said, that he knew what she’d run away from. Esposito didn’t and his mother didn’t either. The world’s changed so much, so fast. We’re not able to help our children, that’s the problem. They were so young … When we’re older, settled in our lives, we know what we can cope with and even if things go wrong we can be less catastrophic … his face was split right up the middle … it’s going to be hard to forget that … and still, life goes on …’

‘Guarnaccia,’ interrupted the captain, ‘don’t you think you should get some sleep, clear your head?’

‘No. He told me how Akiko and Enzo met. I wanted to know that—after all, they came from such different worlds. It seems a group of lads from the non-commissioned officers’ school went on a jaunt to the Japanese restaurant when it first opened but that, since they serve Italian food as well, almost all of them lost their courage and ordered pasta. One or two of them, Esposito among them, had a go at ordering something Japanese. Akiko was at the next table, celebrating her birthday with Issino. Since she spoke good Italian, she was asked by the proprietor to help out. She tried to teach him to use chopsticks.

‘She started off showing him how to hold them but he was hopeless and they were laughing. So, she placed her hand on the back of his to guide him. They stopped laughing. He just looked at her. That was all it took.

‘He told me how Akiko changed:

—She was never the sentimental type and if she’d ever been in love before she certainly never mentioned it. She said to me, Everything’s different now.

‘I’m sure if they hadn’t gone down to Naples she would have been all right. After all, he wasn’t living at home, he was in the army. They could have made their own life.

‘He seemed to me’, the marshal said, ‘to be taking Akiko’s story very badly, considering their relationship, and I was right. The girlfriend he’d introduced me to in the trattoria before we came up to his apartment to talk was American and they were in a crisis because she wanted them to go and live in California once she’d finished her year here and he felt he needed to be in Rome because of his work. I tried to reassure him but he wasn’t convinced. He said:

—You think you’ve found the perfect person as long as you’re just in love and living in a sort of vacuum. Then you start talking about marriage and suddenly it’s not just about two people any more.’

The captain got to his feet and started to walk about the room. The marshal, supersensitive as he was in his tired and distressed state, felt his agitation and the cause of it. Again, as in Rome, he tried to reassure. ‘It needn’t have ended like it did, it wouldn’t have ended like it did.. They would have talked. They would have found a way through. People get over their problems if they love each other.’

Behind him, he heard the captain stop, then stride back towards his desk. He rang the bell. ‘They don’t get over death. I’ll have some coffee brought for you. Then you’re going home.’

Teresa tried to send him straight to bed but he didn’t go. He didn’t tell her so but he was afraid of going to sleep because if he went to sleep, the nightmare would come back. What was worse, he would yet again wake up to find that what happened in the nightmare had really happened and the only part that wasn’t true was the part about everything being all right, about Esposito walking beside him, comforted, healed. That really was a dream. He would be obliged to face the nightmare and the worse awakening when it came to bedtime, but at least Teresa would be there. He wasn’t going to fall asleep alone if he could avoid it. Teresa look hard at his face. She didn’t argue with him.

‘Well, at least let Lorenzini deal with everything. You’re in no fit state. And come home early. I’ll make you a good meal and then you can watch the news and have an afternoon nap on the sofa.’

He didn’t say anything, only looked at her, pleading in silence.

‘I’ve those jeans of Totò’s I’ve promised to shorten, so you’ll keep me company. Now have a shower and get into uniform. You’ll feel more yourself.’

Back in uniform, feeling more himself, the marshal stayed in his office and dealt with every available scrap of dull, blessedly normal paperwork as he waited for Lorenzini to finish ‘dealing with everything’ and join him. When he came in and sat down, he wanted details of Esposito’s suicide. He didn’t get them. It wasn’t squeamishness. It wasn’t distress. It was a question of concentration. He didn’t know how he was going to get where he was going, only that he had to go there and there was so little time.

Lorenzini had to help him. ‘You mean you refuse to believe—even now that he’s killed himself, even though he lied about his mother and went missing …’

‘I’m not interested in believing things or not believing things.’

‘And what about the facts in the case? Are you not interested in those either?’

‘The facts … yes. You see, you’re better at those things than I am.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know exactly what I mean except that now I’ve got another date, apart from May twenty-first when Peruzzi last saw her. The ninth of May. Going by what her friend—Toshimitsu—told me, that was the date she booked for the abortion.’

‘Easy enough to check round the hospitals, then. There’ll be a paper trail, even if she didn’t turn up.’

‘Yes. She couldn’t go through with it because she loved him. Between the ninth and the twenty-first she must have been so distressed … I haven’t a lot of time. I want this sorted out before the funeral. It’s too big a burden for his mother. Losing her only son, suicide, an accusation of murder.’

‘Death extinguishes the crime.’

‘Not for her. The papers will put two and two together.’

‘While you …’

Had he been wanting to say:—While you won’t?—It didn’t matter.

‘You understand me? There’s no time.’

‘If you want me to deal with checking the hospitals, of course I will.’

‘Yes. But help me. I have to find someone …’

‘Out of thin air.’

‘Yes. I need more facts, maybe more dates.’ He had to keep on at Lorenzini until he came up with what he needed. There was nothing he could ask for exactly because he didn’t know what he was after, only that Lorenzini was the one who had to provide it. He stared at him, dogged, insistent. That irritated, almost pitying look meant he was getting there.

‘Well, dates would be something—I don’t know about plucking a suspect out of thin air for you but they might well result in an alibi for Esposito, given that his movements are all recorded here. If his mother’s your only worry, that would be enough, wouldn’t it?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘All right. You want your phantom suspect behind bars.’ The marshal brooded on this a moment, staring past Lorenzini at the map on the opposite wall and a tiny piazza with no name.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. He couldn’t explain just who and what he felt the need to protect, even to himself. ‘But you’re right. To start by proving Esposito’s innocence would be something … Only, Forli can’t give me a precise time of death, just a rough idea of the number of days. In water it’s not easy. The fish …’

—It’s because I have no face.—He could still hear her voice, so cold and sad. He hadn’t even remembered her name. She was just ‘the Japanese girl’. He still couldn’t shake off the nightmare. It was more real than anything around him. He must try to listen to Lorenzini.

‘So, if you put Forli’s estimate together with the day Peruzzi last saw her—I mean, you might not need the exact time if Esposito was on duty all day. It had to happen in the daytime if it happened in the gardens. Esposito was here inside already, but the girl, even if she’d fixed to meet him, wouldn’t have been allowed through the gates anywhere near closing time.’

‘No.’

‘So ask Peruzzi. If she left the workshop when it closed, half past seven or something, to go home, then the Boboli Gardens were already shut and you’re talking about the next day and Forli’s estimate should be enough. I’ll check the daily sheets for you and any reports with Esposito’s name on them.’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

‘So: Forli’s estimate, opening hours of the Boboli Gardens, Esposito’s movements. If there’s an alibi there, I’ll find it for you but if there isn’t … the scene’s so close by and if there’s even half an hour of Esposito’s time unaccounted for …’

Lorenzini was getting to his feet.

‘Wait.’ He had to make him stay. He needed more. ‘I was wondering how things were going with …’ With what? He must keep him there. Pictures flipped around in his weary head, a kaleidoscope of useless images: a builder trundling through clouds of cigarette smoke, that awful woman with the handbag and her skewed eye-shadow, a duty roster for the medieval football, Nardi—

‘Nardi.’

‘What about him?’

‘Nothing. I’ve been leaving you to deal with so much. I just wondered how that was going.’

‘Oh. It’s all calming down. I think I’ve pretty well got to the bottom of the problem. I talked to the butcher and their neighbours …’

Keep talking … just keep talking … That was his brain, slopping about … he was so clever and now his brain …

‘Anyway, there’s one woman—I don’t know if you know her but she’s not bad looking. She doesn’t look so much like a housewife from around here as like Claudia Cardinale playing the part of a housewife in a film, if you know what I mean. Funnily enough, she is called Claudia.’

‘I know her. She’s a beautiful woman who always looks worn-out. Always wears down-at-heel shoes. Married to a short fat chap who looks twice her age.’

Two halves looking two different ways … If he let his mind drift, he felt as though he were still on the train, his body feeling the rhythm. Was he falling asleep? Listen to Lorenzini ‘And she told me she’s been following the whole story.

She said:

—It’s better than any soap opera, I can tell you. I missed most of the fight but I managed to get to the window in time to see them being separated and Monica leaving in an ambulance. Fancy calling the Misericordia for a scratch or two! Is she really going to go on telly?

‘I told her it wasn’t our business, as long as it stayed out of the courts but that I hoped to put her off doing it, seeing as they’d all got on so well for so many years except for a bit of a quarrel every now and again.’

‘And what did she think about it?’

Keep him talking. He mustn’t go yet …

‘That’s just it. She said there’d been a bit of jealousy at first but Monica and Costanza had got used to each other years ago and even get together, now and again, to talk over his faults—he was drinking a bit too much at one time but they soon put a stop to that between them.’

‘Poor chap … Why don’t you sit down?’

‘I can’t. It’s late and I ought to be getting home—and didn’t you say your wife was expecting you early? It’s after one. Anyway, I’ve started so I’ll finish. She said this fight was different. She said it’s not about love, it’s about money.’

The marshal stood up, his gaze still fixed on Lorenzini.

‘Money? What money? I didn’t know any of them had any money.’