The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  There was a silence. ‘And then you gave her his number.’

  ‘Yup.’ He spoke defiantly. ‘Monday. Look, he seemed fine to me, what was I to know? He was something. She took the number.’

  ‘This was Tuesday?’ He nodded. ‘Tuesday morning, at your place.’

  She’d run off with a painter? There was Lucian Freud, he was eighty-something, and girls threw themselves at him. Or – Jackson hardly knew this guy. He could be – crazy. She stared at Jackson. ‘Have you seen him since, this guy?’

  Slowly, Jackson shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Do you have his number?’

  ‘Should I call him?’ he asked.

  Duh.

  She watched while he flicked through icons and data on the slick screen. He held the phone to his ear, his expression perplexed. She could hear a mechanical voice and Jackson passed her the phone for confirmation. There was the message she’d often heard but never quite understood, something about the number being unavailable or inactive or unreachable. She hung up; she could hear Ma’s voice. What kind of a cooked-up story is that?

  ‘Listen,’ she said, carefully. ‘You should tell someone. I mean, like, someone else. Tell the police.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? The Italian police?’ His voice was contemptuous.

  ‘What is your problem with the police?’ she asked. Between the hedges the light was draining out of the air and she couldn’t really see his face properly, a pale oval with shadow pooling where the eyes should be. ‘Have you been in trouble?’

  ‘You know how easy it is to get a police record in the States?’ he asked brusquely. ‘Under-age drinking’ll do it. I don’t like ’em.’

  She felt his resistance to her, and it had a weird effect. The prickly, angry Jackson roused her somehow, more than the laid-back, likeable Jackson. It seemed to her dangerous that he should have this effect, some kind of primitive, unstable thing, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘OK,’ she said, quietly. ‘But tell someone. Maybe tell Massi, first, yeah? He’ll go with you, to the police, he’s good, you know. He’ll talk to them for you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jackson. ‘OK. Yeah, I will.’

  In the fading light Iris squinted down at the fleshy pad of her thumb, still hurting her, and impatiently she pulled it out, whatever it was, held it up to her face. A shard of fine blue glass, a metallic corner.

  ‘What is that?’ she said, distracted. ‘It looks like –’

  ‘Looks like a bit of screen,’ said Jackson with casual expertise, ‘Someone’s phone, I’d say. Like – hey – that colour –’

  ‘Blue – Ronnie’s phone’s blue glass,’ said Iris, dropping to her knees, groping for where she’d put her hand down the first time. ‘There’s other bits.’ She scraped them up, splintered glass and plastic mixed with leaves, and not knowing what to do with them, she shovelled them into her bag, down there with the pencils and sketchbook and loose change.

  The loudspeakers crackled angrily over their heads. ‘Shit,’ said Jackson, looking around, ‘come on, look, the sun’s down. Didn’t she say something about sundown?’ He tugged at her. ‘Come on. Or we’re going to be in here for the night.’

  In the near dark Iris got to her feet, and she saw that he was right. ‘I think we’d better run,’ she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Though They Came Back the way they’d come, in the near-dark everything was horribly different. They ran faster and faster, saying nothing, the gravel skidding under their feet the only sound. Iris felt as if she was in some sort of nightmare in which she was being chased, her heart in her mouth. The hedged alleyways and twisted trees of the big garden were suddenly full of dead ends and strange sounds and there was a kind of damp mist coming up, smelling of stagnant water.

  Ronnie, thought Iris as she ran, chest burning, had Ronnie been here? Did someone bring the bag in here, some mugger? But he hadn’t taken her purse, or her money, or her phone. Ronnie’s phone had been smashed, with force, stamped into pieces. Someone had taken it and smashed it against a tree or a rock, until it was destroyed. Ronnie wasn’t sitting up in any honeymoon suite; that dream was over.

  What did people tell themselves, when their kids, their friends went missing? Did they cling on, like Iris was doing, to any story but the most likely one, that the person they loved was dead? Iris wanted to be alone, to look inside the bag, to sort through the pieces without Jackson looking over her shoulder. She forced herself to go faster while he panted to keep up, just a shape behind her in the dark. I could get away, thought Iris, could Ronnie? And felt grateful for once for her big lungs, her muscles, the muscles she’d learned to draw, tendons and hamstrings, her heart pumping.

  The yellow lights of some windows appeared to their right, those houses backing on to the gardens, then the wide avenue lit yellow by streetlamps, and Iris realized that by sheer luck or gravity they had found their way back to the gates. She slowed, getting her breath back.

  The gates were closed; a chain had been locked through them and a board had been put up against the plexiglass of the small ticket booth, but behind it there was a light still on. In a panic, Iris battered on the door, and the woman emerged, face like thunder. After a flurry of angry Italian she let them out, even more reluctantly than she had admitted them, banging on the sign and its clear instructions, last admission, the gates will be shut at sunset. She shooed them through the gate, clanging it shut behind them.

  They stood a moment in the street, Jackson still panting. ‘You’re good,’ he said, with breathless admiration. ‘You’re fast.’

  ‘For a fat chick,’ countered Iris, back against a damp wall as she leaned to get her breath back. She looked back at the gate, the dark trees the other side of it. A car passed; they were back in civilization, it wasn’t even late. Beside them the window of a gallery glowed with light.

  ‘Hey,’ said Jackson, softly, and she tensed as she heard him shift into a different gear, after the running, the panic. She knew what he was going to say.

  ‘You’re not fat, baby.’

  She hadn’t expected that, though, not that word; it made her angry, and she pushed herself away from the wall.

  ‘Do you call everyone baby?’ she said, irritated suddenly, hands on her hips in front of him. ‘Is that an American thing?’ But he stood his ground, hands in his pockets, and looked at her. She could see his chest moving up and down.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘Not everyone. Though I can’t speak for all Americans, sure.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Iris, hearing herself, like a sulky child. ‘I just –’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Jackson. ‘Baby.’ She stared at him, then laughed, and suddenly his cheek was next to hers, his ribcage against hers and one of his hands was in the hair on the back of her neck, and she had no idea what to do.

  Behind Jackson a car slowed, then bumped up over the kerb on to the wide pavement and with the engine sound so close he pulled away quickly, his cheek instantly gone from hers as if it had never been there, the hand gone from her hair, and Iris just stood, stupidly, mouth open.

  The door of the car opened and a small woman with cropped hair climbed out, opening an umbrella as they stood there, and Iris laughed with disbelief, because it was Antonella Scarpa. Antonella, like the cavalry, come with her usual brisk efficiency to – what? To save her? To offer her a taxi service home? How did she know where to find them?

  Antonella turned and saw Iris and made a sound that was almost a laugh back at her. Antonella Scarpa never laughed. Jackson, beside them, took a step back like a wary male animal straying into unfamiliar territory. As she saw the small movement of retreat Iris felt irrationally victorious, as if she and Antonella had won some kind of fight together instead of just bumping into each other in the street.

  Then the passenger door of the car opened and Paolo Massi climbed out and the feeling was gone, as if it had never been. Iris just felt like some teenager whose p
arents had turned up early at the disco; deflated, angry, frustrated. Of course, Massi knew she was over here, he didn’t think she could take care of herself.

  ‘Ah, Iris,’ he said uneasily, his surprise completely unconvincing. ‘Of course.’ And was ready with a cover story. ‘Come to pick things up,’ he said, ‘from the gallery.’ He nodded towards the yellow-lit window and for a second Iris thought he was making even that up, then she remembered, they’d been here the second day, to see finished work, the school’s gallery. But, still, it was a cover story; Massi nodded to Jackson, who mumbled something, as much a guilty kid as Iris.

  ‘Jackson’s going home now,’ Iris lied, and she was surprised to hear how clear and confident she sounded.

  ‘OK,’ said Massi warily. ‘Would you like a lift, Jackson? Or perhaps you, Iris, too, I can take you, Antonella can manage here.’

  Because, of course, there wasn’t really anything to pick up from the gallery, was there? Massi had come to find Iris, maybe his wife had sent him, maybe she’d have to go back there and eat another terrible meal, and – No, thought Iris, no way.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘I’ve – got some stuff to do. Shopping, and stuff.’ She improvised hastily. ‘There’s nothing in the fridge at home.’ She wished she hadn’t said that: the unfinished bottle of champagne haunted her.

  ‘I’ll walk with Iris as far as the river,’ said Jackson. He went on earnestly, ‘We’ll be fine, Mr Massi.’ And Iris saw Paolo Massi frown. He didn’t trust Jackson, thought Iris. Was he right?

  As they walked away, not hand on hand, not arm in arm, but stiffly keeping step on the narrowing pavement, Iris had to stifle a nervous giggle at the thought of Antonella and Massi staring after them. When they were out of sight, in the wide space in front of the Pitti, she stopped.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Massi.’

  ‘What?’ said Jackson warily.

  ‘You were going to talk to him. Tell him about the painter she was meeting, your Claudio, Massi might know him, we might –’

  Jackson stopped at the sound of her voice. ‘Yeah,’ he said slowly, ‘I guess I should do that. Only –’

  ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘Go back now.’ They were opposite the bar where they’d drunk champagne that afternoon.

  ‘OK,’ said Jackson. ‘Only – I kind of wanted to come with you.’ He ducked his head, looking at her from under his fringe, not cocky, not too cool, just waiting. Wanting her to say yes.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, knowing that she would have to turn her back on him and walk away in the next three seconds if she wanted him to go. She stayed where she was.

  ‘Run and tell him,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’ And she watched him go, fast as a track star suddenly in his tattered sneakers down the Via Romana. He had his jacket pulled around himself, head down, and Iris watched him go, terrified and breathless with longing at the same time.

  Her phone bleeped, new message. It was from Hiroko.

  I am here, it read, if u need a bed again 2nite. The girls want 2 talk.

  But it was too late.

  I’m ok 4 2nite, she punched back in. Can we talk 2moro?

  Message sent, it said. Iris felt suddenly winded at the thought of what she might have agreed to, and as if to confirm the feeling there was a sudden rush of wind that fluttered all the awnings along the facade facing the Pitti Palace, a soft ominous patter that seemed to come up towards Iris from the river. And as Jackson reappeared, still running, the rain began again.

  The bank statements, then the keys; and that wasn’t all. But no address.

  ‘They were in the drawer,’ she said. ‘Just at the back of the drawer.’ Sandro nodded.

  ‘I didn’t really look at them,’ Lucia Gentileschi said. ‘I tried them in the door downstairs, but they didn’t work, I just thought, old keys. I don’t know what I thought; it didn’t occur to me that –’

  ‘No,’ said Sandro, ‘but they’re something. They’re going to help us.’ He held the keys up, one by one. A Yale key, for a street door; a front door key, E-shaped; a small key, such as for the small padlock often used for a letterbox. A standard set of keys, just like Sandro’s own; just like any Florentine’s.

  Weighing them in his hand, Sandro looked across at the desk; he could tell from the particular kind of mess Lucia Gentileschi had left there that she had begun her search methodically, then had lost control.

  ‘We begin again,’ he’d said gently.

  ‘You,’ Lucia said. ‘Could you do it?’

  There was nothing personal in the desk; nothing at all. There were insurance policies – on the apartment, on both their lives – pension documents, one relating to employment in Verona, another in Milan; the pensions were tiny. That stopped Sandro short; how could anyone live on such a pittance?

  Lucia arrived with tea.

  It was very far from his usual thimble of heart-jolting coffee, but Sandro took the cup anyway, a wide, shallow bowl-shaped cup. She moved a small table in front of the low sofa and set down another cup for herself and he could see that it caused her pain, the sight of two cups.

  Sandro took a sip and set it down, went back to the desk. He looked at the piles he had made, looked back inside the rolltop.

  ‘Nice desk,’ he said, thinking.

  ‘Claudio made it,’ said Lucia. ‘Out of elm. The only thing he ever made, ten years ago or so.’

  ‘Really?’ said Sandro, awestruck, ‘Mamma mia.’ He put a hand to the curved wood, the joints, leaned down and looked inside. Ten years ago, he mused, and then he saw it, in the back, a marquetry square of coloured woods that might have been just decoration, but why put it there? Inside, at the back, where no one could see it? He put his head inside the desk.

  ‘It took him a year to make,’ said Lucia behind him. Sandro contorted his heavy shoulders to get his hand inside and ran his fingers over the marquetry, different coloured prism shapes; pressed it. It gave, and clicked back against his hand; the panel moved. It opened. Sandro jerked his head back.

  ‘What was that?’ said Lucia quietly.

  ‘It’s a. . .’ Sandro cleared his throat, ‘there seems to be something else. Hidden. A secret compartment – these desks, perhaps. . .’

  Lucia nodded, minutely. ‘Please look,’ she said.

  He reached in. The compartment was about the size of a folded newspaper but no more than a couple of centimetres deep; it contained a brown envelope. Sandro looked at Lucia.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  In the envelope was a passbook for a bank account. A deposit account in the name of Claudio Gentileschi, opened in 1997 with an initial payment of 1,500 euros, in cash. Sandro flipped to the last page; the most recent payment had been at the end of August, for 1,000 euros. But what stopped Sandro in his tracks was the total, with interest, at the end of August 2006: 800,000 euros. Sandro stared at the figure. Mutely, he held it out to Lucia.

  She stared, shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, no, no. That’s not ours. That’s not our money.’

  ‘You didn’t know about it?’

  ‘We are not rich,’ said Lucia. ‘We live on Claudio’s pension, we get by.’

  Despite himself Sandro shook his head, thinking of the tiny sums the pensions yielded.

  ‘Where did it come from?’ she asked. ‘How did he get it?’ Sandro shook his head, not really answering her, looking through the pages. Payments every two, three months, always in cash, always about the same sum. No outgoings, but it was a high-interest account, there would be a penalty for withdrawals, and standing orders not allowed. He would have had to have the bills paid from the regular current account.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He closed the book, looked at the front; not the same bank as the current account, the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, but the Banca Toscana. Opened the front page again; a branch in San Frediano, in fact, the one on the corner of the Via del Leone and the Piazza Tasso.

  Had Claudio been blackmailing somebody?

  �
��There wasn’t anything – any compensation?’ he asked. ‘After the war? I know there were some reparations. . .’ He paused, ‘Anyone – from then? From the war, who might have wanted to help him?’

  ‘No,’ said Lucia, ‘no reparations to us, but Claudio wouldn’t have taken the money if there had been. He would never – never – never have –’

  And as he looked into her fierce pale face, the wild thoughts Sandro had been entertaining about the Holocaust, lurid stories of blackmail and ex-Nazis, suddenly seemed silly and melodramatic, much too easy. And in the silence that followed Sandro heard the rain start up again, soft at first but growing, a rush of wind. Raindrops slapped with sudden violence against the wide expanse of glass that Claudio must have envisioned full of light, and Lucia turned towards him.

  ‘He was killed,’ she said simply. ‘Claudio was killed because of this money.’

  Sandro felt suddenly very cold, as if he would not get warm, would never be warm again. Regular payments, a bank account, as though Claudio had a job, behind his wife’s back. But what kind of a job would he have to hide from his wife?

  ‘You’re shivering,’ said Lucia, and she put a hand to his cheek; he flinched at the cold of her fingertips.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

  ‘You have a fever,’ she said. She put a hand to his jacket and squeezed the fabric, ‘You’re soaked,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you say? You could have – could have borrowed –’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Sandro repeated, as if all other words had suddenly deserted him. He made an effort. ‘Leave this with me,’ he said, holding up the bank book. ‘If you can give me the keys, too?’

  With compressed lips Lucia plucked the keys from the table and held them up to him.

  ‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ she said. ‘My husband is dead; it’s too late for him. I won’t be responsible for making your wife into a widow, too.’