The Innocent (5 page)

They were very often the victims, that was true … they had to do with murderers.

That dreadful green eyeshadow woman hadn’t turned a hair, though, when she saw the drowned face and dumped the problem on the gardener and he’d almost fainted.

So, you couldn’t really say … he let this mystery go, took a sip of wine and finished the last scrap of his frittata.

It was so good.

‘Do you want any more?’

‘A bit. I just fancied a frittata tonight and the onion one’s my favourite.’

She looked puzzled. ‘I know that.’

‘And that reminds me: what’s this business about Totò? I’m not having him running about not eating.’

‘Running about not … ? That woman’s really got on your nerves, hasn’t she? Anyway, listen: Totò’s decided he’s a vegetarian. Now, it’ll probably wear off but don’t, for goodness’ sake, say anything to him!’

‘Me … ?’

‘The more attention gets drawn to it, the more he’ll stick to it out of pride. You know what he’s like.’

‘Hmph.’ Out of pride? How could anybody resist a Florentine beefsteak, especially with chips, out of pride? He’d have said it couldn’t be done. Or roast rabbit … with fresh herbs and olives and a splash of dry wine the way Teresa always did it …

‘Were you saving some of this for tomorrow?’

‘No. Finish it. Another drop? The electrician’s left his estimate …’

Three

E
sposito was driving. It had seemed like a good idea to the marshal, to get him out and about, do him good.

It had seemed like an even better idea to Lorenzini who’d had about enough of his long face around the place and enough of Nardi and his women, too. The marshal had given in on that one. So their first call took them to the heart of the San Frediano quarter. It was mid-morning. Women stood talking outside the baker’s and there was a big queue in the butcher’s where Costanza had attacked Monica. At another corner of the tiny crossroads stood what had once been Franco’s bar where everybody used to hang about and gossip, have elevenses and watch the match in a fug of cigarette smoke on Wednesday nights. Franco’s bar had been a godsend long ago when the marshal had been investigating the death of poor mad Clementina. Franco knew everything about everybody and he’d kept the peace and settled disputes like a tribal chief of the Quarter. If he’d been here now there would have been no need for the marshal’s visit. But Franco had died and now the dusty bottles and football rosettes, the pinball machines and Formica chairs, had given way to tourists and pink tablecloths, ‘No Smoking’ and micro-waved pasta followed by salads for a light lunch. Across the road from the bar, Nardi was leaning on his elbows at the first-floor window, his face turned up to the sun, his shirtsleeves rolled up, smoking. He saw them at the street door in the shadows below and withdrew to open up. What he wanted was sympathy. What he got was a lecture. The marshal didn’t consider himself to be an unreasonable man, but in his opinion a man who had his work cut out coping with one woman had better not take on two. Admittedly, he’d managed all right for donkey’s years—with a bit of help from the marshal—but perhaps the truth was that the women had somehow managed up to now. Well, he certainly had his tail between his legs this morning. The three of them stood in the brown ceramictiled entrance hall. Nardi was wearing those flat felt slippers that clean the floor as you shuffle.

‘Listen, Marshal, you’ve got to talk to her.’

‘To your wife?’

‘No! No! To Monica! She’s threatening to—’

‘I know what she’s threatening, Nardi, but if you want to stop this thing now, you’re going to have to get Costanza to apologise, at least.’

‘I can’t do that—d’you want to come and sit down? She’s out shopping.’

A cloud of smoke was drifting inside the open door of the sitting room that gave on to the street. ‘No, no …’ Nardi kept shooting unhappy glances at Esposito.

Probably, he was embarrassed by the presence of so young a man. With an inward sigh, the marshal sent him back down to the car.

‘Thanks. I didn’t like … come and sit down a minute.’

‘No, I can’t. I have to get to the Medico-legal Institute. Just tell me what it is that’s started all this fuss. You’ve not been neglecting your wife, have you? You know what I’m talking about.’

‘What, me? No, no, no. My wife’s never had to go elsewhere for it.’

‘So what’s happened, all of a sudden?’

‘She wants to leave me, that’s what’s happened!’

‘Monica?’

‘No! Costanza!’

‘Why do I have to talk to Monica, then?’

‘So she’ll convince Costanza to stay with me!’

‘So she’ll—Listen, Nardi, this is bound to blow over. It has before. And besides, where’s Costanza going to go?’

‘She’s not going anywhere!’

‘Well, then!’

‘I’m the one who has to go. She’s leaving me but this was her mother’s house. She expects me to get out. It’s me who’s supposed to find somewhere to go. Are you with me now?’

‘I … and Monica … ?’

‘She lives with her mother, you know that. She’s a nice woman, I’m not saying anything against her, but she’s nearly ninety and what I’m saying is that—just for example—if I want to trail round the house in my underwear when it’s hot, that’s what I do. I can’t live like a guest in somebody else’s house. D’you follow me?’

‘Well, yes, but if she’s nearly ninety, after all …’

‘She’s in better shape than you or me. Probably outlive me. So will you talk to her?’

‘What, the mother?’

‘Monica!’

The marshal had been exhausted by the time he got away. Nardi never seemed to bother putting his dental plate in. He only had four teeth of his own and, what with age and nicotine, they weren’t very nice teeth, not very nice at all. It made you wonder …

As they drove along, he decided that he would definitely try to get Lorenzini on to it and if they weren’t used to him they’d better get used to him. Four teeth … Young Esposito beside him was a good-looking lad, no question about that. Tall, dark and handsome—perfect teeth, too—Teresa seemed to be very taken with him and his beautiful smile. Wondering if the lad was in a fit state to drive, the marshal gave his attention a nudge. ‘Just look at this traffic. It’s going to take us an hour at this rate.’

The traffic was just as bad today as it was every other day and it always did take an hour. Yet despite all the exhaust fumes, the car was filled with perfume from the lime trees in blossom along all the avenues so the journey wasn’t unpleasant. It was just that Esposito’s morose silence was much more irritating than Nardi’s diatribe. The marshal comforted himself with the thought of a meeting with Professor Forli at which both Esposito and he would be kept on their toes, paying attention and trying to answer questions which the professor would answer himself before they could open their mouths. The Medico-legal Institute was a department of the University of Florence. Professor Forli was a teacher, a gifted one, and every year he gave a series of lectures on forensic pathology to the students in the carabinieri NCO school, disconcerting them by his unusual method of delivery. The system was his own invention and he was very proud of its efficiency. He recorded the lectures beforehand and played the tape to the class, striding up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back, listening to himself, until he couldn’t resist intervening. After that, he would talk over himself, saying the same thing as the tape, word for word, until he became irritated by the competition and snapped his recorded self off.

One carabiniere student had drawn a cartoon of him in which the balloon coming out of his mouth and the one coming out of the tape recorder were both saying: ‘Now, most of the flies involved in the early stages of decomposition have maggots of three stages, the first, second and third instars …’ Photocopies were passed around the school and, of course, a copy eventually fell into the professor’s hands. When the marshal and Esposito arrived and were sent down the broad marble corridor to go into Forli’s office and wait there, the cartoon, pinned on a notice board behind his desk, was the first thing they saw.

It was rather a good cartoon. The gaunt professor’s chin was jutting out, his big hands clasped tightly behind his back. Esposito looked at it and then at the marshal. ‘He wasn’t at all annoyed.’

The marshal who had known Forli for many years said, ‘Why should he be? Did you survive his autopsy?’

‘I was all right. It was only the smell I was worried about. Anything really bad makes me sick but it wasn’t that terrible … They all say, though, that he …’

‘That he sees to it that it’s always lasagne on the canteen menu that day.’

‘Is it true?’

‘Of course it’s not true! As if professors have anything to do with canteen menus. That story’s been going the rounds for years.’

‘Yes. I’ve never eaten lasagne since, though.’

There. The professor had worked his magic before he even arrived in the room. Esposito hadn’t put two sentences together like that for days.

‘Good-morning, good-morning, good-morning!’

‘I’m afraid we’re disturbing you …’

‘Not at all. Pleasure to see you, Marshal. Your drowned woman, right? I haven’t dissected the internal organs yet, apart from her lungs to establish whether she drowned, and he’s asked for a tox report, too. What’s the panic? You people always say it’s the first forty-eight hours that count. They’re long gone in this case. Got a lead, have you?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ He didn’t try to explain why he was there. He knew all the facts would be in the autopsy report. It wasn’t the facts that he wanted. What he wanted was a glimpse of the things Forli knew but didn’t write.

Some people had an instinct for understanding the living. Forli had one for understanding the dead. He talked to them during his autopsies. They didn’t lie, he said.

‘She did drown, then? I wondered, with there being so little water …’

The professor had turned his eagle eye on Esposito.

‘You’re not long out of school. How much water would I need to kill the marshal here?’

‘One drop, sir.’

‘If it went where?’

‘Up the nostril with enough force to hit the olefactory nerve, sir.’

‘Don’t call me sir. And what would happen to the marshal’s heart?’

‘Could be paralysed, ss—’

‘I thought I remembered you. Esposito.’

‘Yes.’ The young man flushed a little under his brown skin. His eyes were alight. The marshal had almost forgotten but that’s how he used to look.

‘Well, don’t try and kill the marshal with a water pistol, Esposito. I doubt, knowing him, that his sympathetic nervous system is of the sort to amplifly small disturbances. Your woman drowned all right, Marshal—pond life in the lungs—but she had a bit of help: she took a blow to the back of the head—can’t tell you much about it because of decomposition but something sharp. Nicked her skull. She could well have been unconscious when she drowned.’

‘We didn’t find any possible weapon nearby. And it would have been something to hand, wouldn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t choose to murder somebody in a public park. Of course, it’s a very big park and we’re still looking, but unless we’re lucky enough to find something with blood or hair on it …’

‘As likely as Esposito’s killing you with his water pistol. I’d look in the pool, if I were you. She only had one shoe on. People sit on those stone ledges around the pools. So: one shoe. Esposito?’

‘Somebody could have picked her feet up and tipped her backwards into the water …’

‘And?’

‘And she hit her head.’

‘Drain the pool, Marshal.’

‘Yes. We have to anyway. We found no bag, no documents. A young woman would have had a bag of some sort, I think …’

‘Drain the pool. Pity about her hands. They could have told me a lot. As it is I can only tell you young—late twenties, I’d say, seems healthy, non-smoker—so: what else is she telling us?’

The professor began striding up and down the room, chin jutting, hands clasped behind his back, oblivious of his audience. Some ten minutes or so went by and he hadn’t stopped for breath …

‘Now, that was an interesting case for many reasons. What could we see? That he hyperventilated leading to pulmonary oedema and hypoxia whereas the other one I mentioned, our example number three …’

Only the tape recorder was missing. Both the marshal and Esposito were unable to resist a quick glance at the cartoon and then at each other. That was a mistake. Esposito was soon suffocating with nervous laughter which eventually exploded, despite the hand clapped over his face. The professor stopped mid-stream. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes! It’s an allergy. Pollen from the limes. I sneeze all the time in May. Excuse me.’ He covered his face with a paper handkerchief.

The marshal fixed the young man with huge solemn eyes. The professor was soon going full steam again and forgot they were there. When they tried to leave, he offered to let them look at the drowned woman’s lungs through the microscope. The marshal had to drag Esposito away.

When they were back in the car the marshal, more than a little impressed by Esposito’s performance, said, ‘You seem to have learned a lot.’

‘Yes, it’s an interesting subject, not like law or, even worse, the military stuff we had to do. Besides, he’s a good teacher.’

‘Yes. But you must have been a very good student. He remembered your name. He told me once he’s been known to hesitate when he has to sign his own name if he’s really concentrating on a problem.’

Esposito didn’t answer. He had retreated into gloomy silence again and the marshal reined in the desire to try to get to the bottom of his problem and scold him into cheerfulness. What was the use when he’d said all he could think of to say just the other day? He’d do better to be thinking about the problem of the builders who hadn’t turned up this morning. Their story was something to do with the building permit. When it was only internal stuff you were supposed to be able to start three weeeks after depositing the plans. Like as if … the Palazzo Pitti was the Palazzo Pitti and it was inevitable that the state would send an inspector … but when? He’d better let Captain Maestrangelo know. The captain paid attention to the details of life, all the more so if they affected the well-being of his carabinieri. It wasn’t that they couldn’t manage with just the two shower stalls, it was the immersion heater that was the problem. They needed constant hot water. As things were, when two lads had taken a quick shower there was no more hot water for half an hour. Still, it seemed unlikely that Esposito would cheer up even if he could have a long hot shower instead of a quick tepid one.