The Marshal and the Murderer (4 page)

'Raw glaze. You need experience to handle it.'

When the pots were packed and the Marshal was settled in the passenger seat Berti went back to lock up. Through the rear-view mirror the Marshal saw him pause just inside the door, staring towards the wall intently, then take a comb from his pocket and run it carefully through his thick grey hair.

Two

They drove through the rain in silence for twenty yards or so. Berti drove very slowly and with what seemed exaggerated care, glancing every few seconds into his rear-view mirror. No doubt, the Marshal thought, he was worried about breaking his plates if he had to brake suddenly.

'That's Moretti's place.' It was on the left like Berti's studio and, as he'd said, just round a curve in the road. "1*11 have to turn round here.' He drove into a lay-by in front of the gates of an enormous old house that stood well back from the road almost opposite the factory, its stuccoed facade stained dark yellow in the rain.

'Robiglio,' he remarked with a snigger, 'and his seven-lavatory mansion,' and glanced at the Marshal as he changed into first. When the Marshal offered no comment but maintained a pop-eyed silence he lifted his hand and rubbed the thumb and forefinger together. 'A millionaire.'

When a space appeared in the traffic he nosed out slowly and turned to park in front of Moretti's ramshackle factory which had a high terrace giving on to the road with steps leading up on each side of it. A big stocky man wearing a knitted cap and with a piece of sacking over his shoulders was up there heaving some bulging plastic bags about in the rain.

Berti got out of the car and called out: 'Moretti in?'

The man pointed to their left and went on heaving the bags. The Marshal got out and they climbed the wet stone steps.

'In his office,' Berti said, opening the door of what was hardly more than a shack detached from the rest of the building.

Moretti was there, standing by a trestle table littered with orders and invoices. He turned and was about to greet Berti when he saw the Marshal and remained silent.

'I've brought my stuff,' Berti said, and with a sly look at the Marshal: 'And somebody who wants a word with you.'

'What can I do for you?' Moretti was small and wiry with a shock of red hair. He looked the Marshal straight in the eye.

'Just some information. This is your factory?'

'Mine and my brother's.'

'I'm trying to trace a Swiss girl; Monica Heer. I believe she sometimes came here.'

'What of it? She wasn't working for me.' He shot an accusing glance at Berti.

I'm not suggesting that she was, and in any case I'm not interested in who she was working for. I'm trying to trace her, that's all.'

'How do you mean, trace her? What for? If she's in trouble with you people it's nothing to do with me.'

He wasn't hostile, only brusque, but there was something aggressive or even defiant in the way he continued to look the Marshal straight in the eye.

'It seems she's missing,' put in Berti, rubbing his hands slowly together, his little eyes taking in everything in the cluttered office. 'She hasn't been seen since Friday.'

'Well, she's not here. You'd better get your stuff up there, they're more than halfway through loading.' He picked up a pair of dusty reading glasses and put them on, letting them rest almost on the end of his nose as though he never wore them for long. Then he took a blue invoice from the pile as if to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, their talk was over. When the Marshal didn't follow Berti out he looked up and said: 'If there's nothing else ... I have to have all these invoices ready by tomorrow. You'll excuse me, this is a busy few days for us.'

'That's all right,' said the Marshal blandly, "there's nothing else . . . Except that I was wondering if she came here on Monday morning ..."

'Monday morning . . .? I suppose she could have done since we're ready to fire.'

'She could have done? Surely you'd have seen her?'

'Not necessarily. I only came in for half an hour to talk to some buyers. I took them round a couple of other factories and then to the restaurant in town. We were in here, so for all I know she could have been inside, throwing.'

'Somebody would have seen her.'

'I doubt it, not on Monday. The point is, when we're about to fire and the last pieces are drying out we usually take a long weekend. All my men are on piece work except the apprentice and they work all hours when we've a lot on, then take a bit of time off when we're firing. That was when the girl used to come round, to use the wheel when the throwers were off. Once everything's dry and we're ready to load the kiln everybody mucks in and helps. This is a small place, run on family lines. Monday there was nothing doing, the place was empty.'

'You mean the girl could have just walked in here? You don't lock up?'

'Lock up? No, never, there's no need . . .' Moretti ran a hand through his disordered red hair, hesitating as though embarrassed by what he had just said and wondering how to justify it. 'In a place like this there's nothing to steal ... I do lock this office up with a bit of a padlock but I don't know why I bother since there's never any money here.'

1 see. Well, I'll let you get on, then . . .'

The Marshal decided he'd better get some background information from his cheery colleague at the Carabinieri Station in the town before getting involved any further. He always liked to sniff about on his own first, with no preconceived ideas, but these people seemed to live in a world of their own whose workings were foreign to him. Even so, when he spotted Berti carrying the last of his plates into the factory he followed him, partly in the hope that some workman in there might have been around on Monday despite what Moretti had said, and partly because he was beginning to feel certain that something had happened to the girl who, if he were to believe all he'd been told, had got off a bus outside Berti's studio and disappeared into thin air.

When he got inside the gloomy building Berti had vanished and there was no one else in sight. The place was like a maze. There was no understanding how it was constructed. So many crooked passageways, rickety wooden stairs, rooms that led into each other and brought you back to where you started from. He began to believe that the girl could have been in here without anybody knowing it. After rambling about aimlessly for some time without coming across a soul or hearing anything other than the sound of his own footsteps he found himself in a long high room that seemed almost empty, so that it was impossible to understand what normally went on there, if anything. There were windows all along one side of it, all of them dirty and one or two of them broken so that the rain was coming in. In one corner of the room stood an old bath full of bits of clay covered with water, and nearby a box containing coils of thick wire. Then a great empty stretch and at the far end a group of large white shapes. The Marshal approached them, curious, but even seeing them close up he was none the wiser. Huge plaster shells, rough on the outside and smooth on the inside. He touched one of them tentatively. It was damp and very cold. Then he heard muffled voices coming from directly beneath him and started down the nearest staircase. On the floor below there was no one and he was obliged to wander through three or four other rooms before finding his way down to the next floor, losing himself and the spot the voices came from. At last he heard them again and entered a room almost as big as the one two floors above. But this one was full and busy. In the centre of it was a huge kiln with piles of broken bricks and what looked like some sort of crumbling red cement around its gaping mouth. The rest of the room was filled with row upon row of dark, big-bellied pots, many of them almost as tall as the two men who were lifting them one by one and carrying them to the mouth of the kiln. One of the men looked up without interrupting his movements.

'If you're looking for the boss, he's in his office.'

'No.' The Marshal stepped back out of their path. 'I was looking for Signor Berti.'

The man nodded in the direction of the kiln. The Marshal waited until they had deposited their burden and then went nearer and peered into the gloom. A boy was crouched inside the entrance sorting through piles of biscuit-coloured tubes and fitting castellated tops on to them. Behind the boy, Berti was passing his plates through to some chamber beyond from which muffled voices issued.

"That's the lot?'

'Two more.'

'Saggar's full!'

'I'll pass you a shelf.'

'The boss won't like it . . .'

'He won't know.'

'He'll know if he sees as much as one spot of glaze on any of this stuff . . .'

Ignoring the complaining voice, Berti came forward to the crouching boy. 'Give me four props and a shelf . . .' Then he saw the dark figure of the Marshal blocking the light at the kiln's entrance, as round and heavy as the jars piling up around him. 'You'll get yourself dirty there. I'll be out in a minute.'

Indeed, the Marshall on glancing down at his black greatcoat found that there were large patches of iron red dust on it. Nevertheless, he stayed where he was. He was feeling uneasy and instead of asking questions as he had intended he went on standing there, observing everything with big troubled eyes. In any case, he was convinced that if anybody here had something to hide these people would stick together like a family. You could tell it even from the way they worked, or rather went on working. Usually when a uniformed caribiniere appeared in a place unexpectedly, however innocuous the visit, it had the effect of breaking up whatever was going on if only for the sake of curiosity, but here his presence had no effect at all. He wasn't one of them and so didn't matter. In the end all he asked of the two men lining up the big jars by the kiln was: 'How many of you work here?'

'Counting the boss?'

'If you like.'

'Eight, then. There's a hairline crack in the rim of that one.' Already he had turned away to concentrate on the job in hand. 'No- the one beyond . . . that's it. Give it a rub down, will you, and let's hope it doesn't open up in the fire.' Then he did turn back to the Marshal but only to say, 'I'll have to ask you to move, do you mind?'

'No, no . . .'He backed up as carefully as he could and was glad to see Berti emerging with his slow, spidery steps from the kiln.

'Well, did you find out whether she was here?'

'No.'

Berti picked up a bit of rag from a dusty windowsill and wiped his hands. There was a strip of wood lying on the sill with four or five little figures on it modelled in red clay. One of them was a crudely worked head with spiky hair and big ears, the mouth no more than a gaping hole. Berti picked it up and sniggered. 'Looks like Moretti.' He set it down again with as much care as if it had been one of his own pieces.

Perhaps the apprentice had made the things. The Marshal was no judge but he reckoned the boy was about fifteen and a bit old for such childish work, unless it was a joke. It was true that the comical head bore a strong resemblance to the factory boss.

'Shall we go?' The Marshal had no intention of trying to find his way out of the maze without Berti. He was annoyed to find that after only two turnings they were out in the rain again.

Moretti nodded to them without a word as they passed the open door of his office shack and went down the steps, ducking their heads against the rain. The man with the woollen hat and the sacking round his shoulders was still heaving the big plastic bags, some of which had burst and were oozing smooth red clay. His huge wet hands were red with cold.

They got into the car. Almost opposite, a white Mercedes was nosing slowly out at the gates of the big house and the driver was peering fixedly over the steering-wheel at them.

'There he is,' sniggered Berti, 'and you can bet your life he needs those seven lavatories, he's so full of'

'I'd be grateful if you could give me a lift into the town.' The Marshal found Berti more than a little repellent but he didn't fancy a walk along that busy road in such filthy weather. 'Though I shouldn't be keeping you from your work.'

'There's always time for work. It's only five minutes of a drive.'

He started the engine and without looking at the Marshal added: 'You mustn't mind Moretti. He's a bit of a rough diamond but he's a worker. And in any case he's had a hard life . . .'

The Marshal made no comment. As they drove away he looked back, through the raindrops dribbling down the car windows. Up on the terrace the man with the sack round his shoulders had stopped work and was staring after them, grinning.

On their short journey to the town centre they passed a number of factories as small as Moretti's, though many of them were built of new red brick, and the landscape seemed to the Marshal to consist of nothing but row upon row of wet orange pots that appeared luminous against a livid sky.

"Morning, everybody! 'Morning . . . 'morning. How are things? 'Morning . . . Tozzi! Good morning to you! I've brought a visitor, colleague of mine from Florence, so I hope you're going to feed us well . . . Signora Tozzi, how are you? I'm fine myself, never better, never better! This is Marshal Guarnaccia from Florence - ah! Now, that's what I call a roast, look at that! We're frozen. Never been so glad to see a roaring fire.'

A big open log fire was set in the middle of the restaurant's kitchen which was the centre of frenetic activity at this busy lunch-hour. Despite the coming and going of waiters and the harassed cooks with red shining faces, Niccolini, the Marshal of the little pottery town, insinuated his big athletic figure, conspicuous in its black uniform, into the fray and took off his leather gloves to warm himself at the fire where beefsteaks and pork chops were sizzling and spitting. Marshal Guarnaccia remained on the other side of one of the two counters that gave on to the dining-rooms.

'Come on in, Guarnaccia! Come in here and warm up - is that minestrone in that steaming cauldron? It is. We'll have a bowlful of that for a start, get the blood circulating . . .'

But the Marshal remained where he was, looking about him, until he was rescued by the proprietor, Tozzi, who came towards him wiping his hands on a clean cloth. A tall, severe-looking man with iron grey moustaches and a decidedly military bearing.

'Giuseppe Tozzi. Pleased to meet you, Marshal.'

'Guarnaccia.' The Marshal shook his hand.

'Now then . . .' Tozzi looked briskly round the restaurant like a general about to give battle orders. 'Our Marshal eats in the main dining-room as a rule but I'm wondering-' He turned to address Niccolini who was pottering about the kitchen and looking into all the bubbling pans without pausing in his cheery monologue. The Marshal noticed that the people bustling around him looked cheered by his presence. It evidently didn't bother anybody, least of all Niccolini himself, that nobody had time to answer him.