The Marshal and the Madwoman (15 page)

'No, no.' The Marshal frowned. She'd been out for years, so why now? Why now? And what the devil did happen to the husband and child? Well, if it was something criminal he could find out. He went back to his desk and, without sitting down, rang Borgo Ognissanti and asked for Records. At first he asked them to check 1967 but then, on second thoughts, he added:

'Try '66 as well.' For all he knew, her illness could have begun at the end of '66 or the very beginning of '67— damn the man who'd got away with those documents. And shouldn't he have thought of that when he asked for the Dangerous Persons certificate?

He rang the San Giovanni Commissariat again and was embarrassed to realize that he hadn't thought to get that helpful policeman's name. It was lucky for him that the boy on the switchboard didn't wait for him to ask. When he heard who was calling he said at once: 'Do you want Extension 12 again?'

'Yes. Thanks.' And the familiar accent was soon coming over the line, though sounding surprised.

'I'm afraid I haven't got anything for you yet.'

'No, no, it was just that it occurred to me that you should check 1966 as well as '67 because I don't know what month she arrived at San Salvi, and if it was January, for instance . . .'

'I get you. I'll check the second half of'66, then.'

'And there was something else. I shouldn't be asking all this of you . . .' Not that there was any reason why he shouldn't but it did no harm to say so.

'Ask anything you want,' said the policeman, impelled by this remark to show himself even more generous than before, 'What's the problem?'

'I'm trying to trace, in that same period, any case of violence involving the deaths of a man and a child. All I have is the surname, Chiari, and they were the family of Clementina Franci.'

'You can't specify the type of crime? It might be a help to Records.'

'I don't even know that there was a crime, let alone what type. I only know that the husband and child died. I'm even guessing as to their dying together, and that the circumstances were unusual or violent enough to have driven this woman out of her mind. All you can do is check that period and that surname.'

'Mm. Could have been a road accident, though, couldn't it, or a gas explosion. Anything.'

'People don't usually lose their wits after a thing like that. Oh, you're right, of course, it could have been anything, but I still think it's worth checking, if you don't mind.'

'I don't mind. Anything to oblige. You've got me curious by this time ... I mean, I saw it in the paper about this Franci woman. She committed suicide, didn't she?'

'And you think I'm going to an awful lot of trouble for a suicide? I'm sorry, I might have told you before since by now the Prosecutor leading the inquiry will have let it out to the papers. She was murdered.'

'I see. Keeping it quiet, were you?'

'It was set up to look like suicide and it seemed as well to let the culprit think he'd got away with it for the time being.'

'Might get cocky and show his hand, you mean? Seems a good idea to me. What are you letting it out for?'

'I'm not. The Prosecutor is.'

'Enough said. Who've you got?'

The Marshal named him.

'Christ.'

'Yes.'

'Not his sort of case, at all. Won't hit the national papers and he's ambitious. I suppose he got saddled with it because it's August and there's nobody else.'

'Didn't we all.'

'Including me, now, eh? Well, I'll do all I can.'

'Thanks a lot.'

And the Marshal hung up, still without having thought to ask the man's name. At least he had the extension number, which he wrote on his pad, and with a bit of luck his wife might know who the man was.

'That'll be young Spicuzza.'

'You know him?'

'I've never met him—do you want another slice of ham?'

'I wouldn't mind.'

'You may as well finish it. He's a cousin of Annamaria Rizza, Annamaria La Rosa she was, before she was married. You must remember the La Rosa family. Their eldest boy gave them a lot of trouble at one time. Finish the melon as well, it won't keep.'

'What sort of trouble?'

'The father was a baker—on the corner of Via Gramsci next to that shop that sells fishing tackle, you know the one —and the son . . . now, what was he called . . . Corrado, that's it, didn't want to go into the business. He wanted to be a mechanic. He had a passion for cars and could fix anything, even as a boy. His mother was quite ill over it. After all, to let the business go out of the family, it would have been the end of the world—it had been her father's. Anyway, it turned out he met a nice girl and that settled him down. He runs the baker's now his father's retired, but I think he still does car repairs at weekends. The sister has a boy who was in Giovanni's class. We used to chat once in a while outside school when they were smaller. I remember her mentioning once that her cousin was in the police up here. I suppose it came out because of you being here. What did you want to know about him?'

'Just his name.' But he couldn't help thinking that in his small home town there could be no Clementina with a complete blank in her past. Florentines had long memories but each Quarter was like a separate village and that complicated things. Clementina wasn't from San Frediano.

'I've made a cake,' said the Marshal's wife, interrupting his wandering thoughts. 'It's the first time I've ventured to use the oven unnecessarily in weeks. I've made one for the boys upstairs as well.'

'You've no call to be doing that,' growled the Marshal, pleased. 'They're old enough to look after themselves.'

'A treat now and then does them no harm. They're good lads.'

'They're not here to be mollycoddled. They get enough of that at home and it takes me all my time to toughen them up''

'Well, I don't think a slice of cake will ruin their characters,' said his wife mildly, knowing he was pleased but allowing him to pretend he wasn't. 'And young Bruno's given up cooking so they're back on spaghetti and tomato sauce every night.'

'Given up cookery?'

'I saw him this morning when I was going shopping. He said his genius was being thwarted because all the shops are shut—or at least the fancy ones are that sell the funny things he needs. I wish he'd go back to painting.' She had hung one of his offerings in their entrance.

'I wish he'd stick to his job.'

'You always said you couldn't complain about him in that respect.'

'I'm not complaining. But he's . . .'

'What?'

'I don't know. Unpredictable. That's what he is, unpredictable. I never know what to say to him.'

'That's because he's artistic and you're not.'

'Hmph.'

'And whatever you say, I'm fond of the lad. He's so cheerful, so full of enthusiasm for life.'

'I didn't say I wasn't fond of him,' grumbled the Marshal, 'he's just a bit of a handful, that's all.'

'Well, in a few months he'll be gone. I'll get the cake.'

The storm had been over for some time and given way to such a brilliant sunset that the rooms were filled with the pink glow of it as if with some artificial light.

'We'll sleep better tonight,' the Marshal's wife remarked when she was clearing away the supper things. 'That storm's cleared the air beautifully.'

It was true that they fell asleep more easily than they had done for some time but, even so, the Marshal's sleep was troubled and at one point he found himself struggling with what he felt was a very nasty situation, though he wasn't sure exactly what it was. One thing he was sure about was that he didn't want to answer the telephone because he knew that the Prosecutor was on the other end of the line boiling with rage. The worst of it was that, even without picking up the phone, he was getting the full blast.

'Have you seen her clothes? Look at them, man, look at them!'

And the Marshal went through Clementina's pitiful selection of clothes again and saw, to his horror, that all the buttons on them were bright blue. What's more, there was still a button missing from her only cotton dress and as he picked it up, Linda Rossi said in his ear, 'You see, I told you.'

How could he have failed to notice the bright blue buttons before? He thought he'd looked through everything so carefully. He began to sweat with embarrassment at his stupidity and the doctor looked at him sadly and said:

'We can't move the body, you know.'

The Marshal sweated even more. That the body had remained in the flat all this time because of his failure to notice the buttons . . . and in this heat, too, though there had been the storm . . .

'She'll sleep better,' his wife said.

Clementina was in her bed. He was relieved that she was only asleep and not dead. The important thing now was to keep her alive or he stood to lose his job.

The phone went on ringing so there was a telephone in her flat, after all, but he refused to answer it until all those boxes of clothes had been removed.

'Will you sew the other buttons on her frock? I have to sit here with her or she'll die. She's very frightened.' He was pleading with Linda Rossi and the German girl but they didn't understand him. The girl went on crying and Linda Rossi only stared at him and said: 'Why don't you answer the phone?'

'I can't.'

'The phone,' she insisted, grasping his arm.

'I can't!'

'Salva!*

He opened his eyes, wide awake.

'The phone, Salva. Do you want me to answer?' She had already switched the bedside light on.

'No, no.' He reached out and picked up the receiver, glancing at the alarm clock. It was a quarter to three in the morning.

CHAPTER 8

'Guarnaccia.' His head was still so full of his dream that he was both surprised and relieved to hear young Bruno on the other end of the line and not the Prosecutor.

'There's a call for you, Marshal. Says his name's Franco and that it's urgent—he says you gave him this number and that—'

'Put him through.'

'Marshal? It's me. I think you'd better come round here right away.' The big barman's voice was as soft and calm as ever, despite the urgency of his message.

'What's happened?'

'There's a man trying to get into Clementina's flat— he's probably got in by now. I saw him climbing up the scaffolding and since they've been and taken those seals away—'

'I'll be right there.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Just keep out of sight and watch.'

'Right. And if he tries to leave I'll stop him.'

What was the use of saying the man could be dangerous? Franco had been running things round there in his own way for years and there wasn't time to argue with him now. The Marshal hung up and struggled quickly into some clothes.

'Where are you going?' His wife was alarmed.

'Out. Don't worry.'

When he stopped at his office to pick up his holster, Bruno was there, fully dressed, and he had woken Dj Nuccio who was on his way down from the dormitory, cursing sleepily.

'You can't go by yourself, Marshal,' said Bruno earnestly, as though it were the Marshal who was only eighteen years old, not himself. 'I thought I should wake Di Nuccio, too.'

'Mph. Let's go.'

Unpredictable as ever, but the boy was right. They took the van.

'Turn into any side street before you get too near the square,' ordered the Marshal.

They did the last brief stretch on foot and it was difficult to prevent their footsteps from echoing so that they had to slow down as they neared Clementina's house.

Whoever had climbed up the scaffolding was still in there. They saw a pale flash of torchlight pass across the window and vanish. Then Franco's bulky frame emerged from the shadows.

'He's still up there,' he whispered.

'Go back home.'

'But, Marshal—'

'Go back home, and quietly.' There was no need to add that. Franco retreated as silently as a big cat in the jungle.

'Shall I start climbing up?' whispered Bruno.

'No.' The last thing he wanted was a National Service boy getting hurt. But what was he going to do? Thanks to the Prosecutor, he no longer had the keys to the flat, and while they could catch their man easily enough by waiting down there in the shadows, he wanted, more than anything, to know just what he was doing up there where there was nothing to steal and where the evidence, such as it was, had already been collected. He was hardly the ideal person himself to be swinging around on scaffolding. Before he could decide, the street door opened and he whipped round to grasp the arm that came round it.

'It's me.' Young Rossi's face appeared bleached white in the shadows. 'There's someone up there. I just called your number but they told me—'

'Be quiet. Go back up to your flat and stay there—and don't make a noise on the stairs.'

But Rossi had felt slippers on and vanished as silently as Franco had done, leaving the street door ajar. The Marshal began to fear that, sooner or later, some little noise would bring the whole neighbourhood out to collect under Clementina's window once again, and any confusion would make it that much easier for the man to get away. As if to confirm his fears, a light went on in Pippo's flat, opposite. He made a sign to the boys to keep still and silent, hoping they were invisible in the shadows under the scaffolding. They watched the lighted window but no face appeared there. They heard a bout of coughing, a flush of water and the light went out.

The Marshal touched Di Nuccio's arm and pointed upwards.

'But try and surprise him,' he murmured, 'I want to know what he's doing.'

Di Nuccio began to climb and a shower of raindrops was released from the torn netting. The Marshal watched him anxiously, knowing it must all be wet and slippery, but Di Nuccio was careful and avoided the soaked planking which would otherwise have made his climb easier. He made no noise.

The Marshal could feel Bruno's disappointment, though his face was barely discernible. He sent the boy round the corner at the end of the building to wait out of sight in case the intruder slipped through their fingers. Then he stood himself inside the street door and waited, hoping that Di Nuccio wouldn't have occasion to fire a shot and wake up all the neighbours.

The wait seemed inordinately long. The streets were so silent that he heard a train whistle and screech as it pulled into the central station on the other side of the river. Then nothing except the sound of his own breathing. He peered up through the blackness of the staircase. After what seemed half an hour but couldn't have been more than three or four minutes, the lights came on and he heard Di Nuccio's voice two floors above. So there had been no struggle, no drama. Di Nuccio had managed to surprise him, just the sort of job he would enjoy. Once he heard their steps begin to descend he started to breathe more easily and began climbing the stairs. They were so steep that he made slow progress—but why were the others coming down even more slowly? Much too slowly. He heard Di Nuccio mutter something angrily and a sound of protest from the captive. He paused to listen and realized at once that their slowness and the dragging noise of one pair of footsteps meant that they'd caught the blackmailer with the limp. But a second realization, that he was exaggerating his slowness on purpose, didn't come quickly enough. Before they came into view, the automatic timer controlling the dim stair lights clicked off, and as the Marshal felt about on the flaking plaster of the wall for a switch he heard a thud followed by a gunshot, of deafening loudness in that confined space.

'Marshal!'

He was already thudding up the stairs, having found a lightswitch.

Di Nuccio was getting slowly to his feet, holding one shoulder with a bloody hand.

'The window . . .' His face was greyish.

The Marshal passed him, sliding the Beretta from his holster as he reached Clementina's flat. But the man was already out on the scaffolding. Lights were going on in every house in the street and people were banging shutters open to hang out and call to each other, 'What's happened?'

'Damn!' He could start shooting in the darkness at the risk of hitting a by-stander. The man was swinging down towards the platform of planks below to his right.

'Bruno!' It all depended on him. He was a well-set-up lad and could defend himself, but the man swinging down on the scaffolding looked more like a gorilla than anything human. He couldn't see Bruno because of the planks and the netting but he heard his running steps and the fugitive heard them, too. He set off at a limping run along the platform and it wasn't his limp that stopped him but the rainwater left by the storm. He skidded and fell heavily on his hip. His head hit a joint in the metal poles with a crack that would have broken any normal skull but he wasn't even stunned. As his impetus took him over the edge of the platform he called out, trying to the last to save himself, but his clutching hand slid off the edge of the slimy wood and he fell, sending the hanging net swinging outwards and crushing the upturned face of Bruno who had just arrived below.

The Marshal was sitting with his hands planted firmly on his knees, staring with big, troubled eyes at the white wall in front of him. His hat was on the formica chair beside him. The other chairs in the corridor were all empty except one at the far end where a grey-haired woman sat crying silently, every now and then dabbing her cheeks with a rolled-up handkerchief. The lights in the corridor were dimmed and the occasional loud remark of some invisible nurse sounded incongruous in such a hushed atmosphere. At the end of the corridor there were double doors with two round windows labelled 'Operating Theatre. No Admittance to Unauthorized Persons'.

Was that where Bruno was? He had no idea. He had been alive when the ambulance came, but he had lain so still in the road beneath the blanket that Pippo's wife had brought down that it didn't seem as though he would ever move again.

Franco had stood there looking down at the huddled form and said, 'Poor kid. He looks bad.' And then with typical insouciance he'd added, 'Hadn't you better call in reinforcements to take your customer away? You'll be wanting to go to the hospital with this lad.'

'He got away,' the Marshal had growled.

'Like hell he got away,' said Franco calmly, 'I've locked him in the lavatory at the back of the bar and two of my regulars are standing guard. Oh, don't worry, he's not armed, I checked. But I thought you'd want to dispose of him before the ambulance arrived.'

A nurse came hurrying along the corridor and the Marshal got to his feet. But she walked straight past him and spoke to the silently weeping woman who stood up and followed her. Even in her grief she was visibly embarrassed because she hadn't had time to dress herself properly. The Marshal saw that she wore no stockings and was pulling her cardigan over her chest to hide what was perhaps a none too clean old frock in which she did the housework. Had her husband had a heart attack? Probably. And now maybe he was dead The nurse had led her into a small, brightly lighted room and closed the door, but he heard some low murmurs of explanation broken into by the woman's wail of grief and fear. Then things quietened down and the corridor was silent again. Once, he thought he heard the squeak of a trolley and half rose to his feet, but no trolley appeared.

They had given Bruno oxygen in the ambulance. What did that mean? Someone had said, 'Don't worry. I've seen people come through worse than this.' It was a funny thing that ambulance men, while looking so sound and reliable, always had a cheerful air about them. Why should that be? It seemed unlikely that they were chosen for it. Perhaps it was something about the job itself, but it was odd. Postmen were a bit like that, too, but that wasn't the same sort ofjob at all . . .

The Marshal's head gave a sudden jerk. Had he been falling asleep? Di Nuccio was coming along the corridor with his arm in a sling. He was still extremely pale but, apart from that, he looked fit enough.

'How are you feeling?'

'Fine. It was only a flesh wound. Could have been worse, the way that gorilla smashed me when the lights went off.

Even so, it's not going to be much fun admitting that he made me shoot myself in the shoulder, whatever the circumstances were. How's Bruno doing?'

'I don't know.'

Di Nuccio sat down next to the Marshal.

'What are you doing? Get a taxi and get yourself to bed.'

'I can't leave till we know about Bruno.'

'You'd be better off in bed. It could be all night.' But he let Di Nuccio go on sitting there because otherwise he would be sitting there alone, waiting for the nurse to come for him as she had come for the weeping woman to say . . . No! Bruno was young and healthy and full of life. He would pull through.

'Bruno'll make it,' Di Nuccio said, as though reading the Marshal's thoughts. 'He's as fit as a fiddle. He lent me those dumb-bells of his when he was going through his muscle-building phase and I couldn't do a tenth of what he could do.'

But the Marshal thought to himself: What good are muscles if your brain's damaged? He didn't speak, only went on staring at the wall in front of him. There were a lot of things going through his head but he was dumb. The effort of speaking grated on his nerves. He wanted Di Nuccio to go on talking to fill the silence, but not about Bruno. He wished, not for the first time during this case, that Lorenzini were with him. Young Brigadier Lorenzini was only the same age as Di Nuccio but there was something more solid about him, somehow.

'Do you think there's somewhere we could get a coffee?' Di Nuccio asked.

'What . . .?'

'A coffee. Or even a glass of water. I'm feeling a bit off.'

The Marshal turned to look at him and was filled with remorse. The boy was on his last legs. Even if it was only a flesh wound, he'd lost a fair amount of blood and should have been in bed resting, instead of which he was sitting here waiting for news of Bruno and keeping the Marshal company. And the Marshal had only wished Lorenzini had been there instead.

'Stay where you are,' he said. 'There's some sort of vending machine in the waiting-room along there. I'll get you a drink.'

'I'll go.'

'Sit still.'

After the artificial gloom of the windowless corridor it was a shock to find that dawn had broken. The glass-fronted waiting-room was filled with a pale pink light that made the rows of empty chairs look squalid in contrast. Because of yesterday's storm the sky seemed much higher and purer.

The Marshal fished for coins in his pocket. The machine offered a choice of coffee or hot chocolate and he had a feeling that in his condition Di Nuccio would be better off with hot chocolate, well sweetened. He also had a feeling that Di Nuccio wouldn't thank him for it so he pushed the button for coffee.

Coming back along the corridor, he saw that Di Nuccio was slumped back in his chair as if he were asleep, but when he reached him he saw that the boy's eyes were open.

'Here, drink this.' He gave him a small paper cup and took a sip from his own. It was only then that he thought to ask, 'What was he doing when you climbed into the flat? Did you manage to surprise him?'

'Our friend the gorilla? I did, but I should have got there two minutes earlier, even a minute would have done it.'

'What was he doing?'

'Burning something.'

'Burning what?'

'Paper. And it's no use asking me what paper because there's no hope of finding out. He was in the kitchen when I climbed in at the bedroom window which he'd forced and left open, and I smelled burning right away. But whatever it was he'd already burnt it in the kitchen sink and turned the tap on it. It was probably only because the tap was running that he didn't hear me come in. I looked in the sink and there was nothing left of whatever it was except a little blackened water.'