The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  In some remote corner of her calculations, Iris registered, there was a place for Antonella, wasn’t there? But she didn’t have time to think about that now.

  ‘It was him,’ she said. ‘Yes. Sandro – the detective – he called the airline. Massi was booked on the same flights.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Jackson, awestruck. ‘So you were right. Wow.’ He stood up, brushed his hand through his hair. ‘That’s – wow. I mean, how does that fit in? I mean – Massi, why didn’t he. . .?’ He stopped. ‘Huh. Well, I guess he wouldn’t say, would he? If she just didn’t turn up for the flight? He must have thought, shit.’

  Iris said nothing, seeing Jackson, focussed for once, putting himself in Massi’s shoes.

  He was nodding. ‘He must have thought, no one needs to know. It doesn’t mean – jeez.’

  ‘So he’s kept quiet all this time,’ said Iris, ‘even though he had – at the very least, what they’d call crucial information about her disappearance?’

  Jackson looked uncomfortable. ‘I – well, I can kinda see how it might pan out. The longer you went without saying anything – I mean, it would be his job, his wife, on the line, wouldn’t it?’

  He stopped, and stared at her. ‘You think he did it? Did – something to Ronnie?’ He looked incredulous, shaking his head. ‘Massi, and rough stuff? Nah.’

  She frowned: although she now hated Paolo Massi, Iris could see Jackson had a point. ‘I’m not sure.’ And because there was Claudio, too. The old painter.

  ‘You want that coffee now?’ said Jackson. ‘I’m sorry, only my head just isn’t working without it.’

  Iris gave in, knowing she was just putting it off. ‘OK.’ And she needed a coffee, too. What time was it, even? When had she last eaten? She didn’t know.

  The kitchen was narrow and dark, lined with expensive wooden cupboards. This wasn’t an apartment where the tenants were expected to cook anything. She stood in the door, and he handed her a cup, American coffee from a percolator, tasting bitter and watery.

  ‘Jackson,’ she said at last. ‘Your old painter.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Jackson eagerly, ‘Claudio. I mean, where does he fit in?’

  ‘Sandro thinks she did meet him. That morning.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jackson faltering.

  ‘You liked him, didn’t you?’ said Iris.

  ‘Liked?’ said Jackson.

  ‘He died,’ said Iris.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  But How Much Further does this take us?’ asked Sandro, despairingly. He put his head in his hands on the crisp white tablecloth. Luisa tutted.

  ‘Get some food down you,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock and none of us has eaten since breakfast. No wonder you can’t think straight.’

  They were at Nello, the last place in the world where despair belonged. Sandro couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about Nello; a tiny little hole-in-the-wall trattoria, it had been the place he and Luisa always used to come when they were first courting. He’d long assumed it had closed down; he should have known better, because places this good never closed down.

  Luisa had let Sandro call the girl, Iris March, to tell her – she’s got to know, he said, come on – but the minute he’d hung up she’d taken charge in the pale clear light of Claudio Gentileschi’s abandoned studio.

  ‘You’re white as a sheet,’ she said. ‘Don’t think. Don’t do any more detecting, I forbid it. You need food.’

  And obviously Luisa had not forgotten about Nello at all, because after they’d locked the sad, empty room up carefully behind them, with an unerring instinct Luisa had frogmarched them around the corner around the corner, from his new office! – and there it stood, after all these years. Nearly three on a Sunday afternoon, and twenty years since they’d last been here, but the old padrone–still in charge, his eyebrows a little wilder, his moustache a little whiter – had greeted Luisa as though it was only yesterday.

  At Nello you didn’t even order, food just arrived. While they waited Luisa called the Kaffeehaus; and of course it turned out that, yes, she’d been right, they’d still had the tables and umbrellas up on Tuesday, it had been a beautiful day. Sandro heard her cajole someone into giving her a name and number for the waiter who’d been working the terrace. He saw her get her little gold propelling pencil out of her handbag, and the dark red diary she’d bought every year since he’d known her, and write it all down.

  Without even pausing for breath, Luisa called the number, and Sandro heard that she had all the right words available to persuade the waiter that, yes, maybe he’d call by for a coffee with them, he wasn’t working today.

  When she had secured her result Luisa put the pencil and paper away, and beamed at him. Sandro felt perhaps more useless than he had ever felt in his life.

  ‘You’re hungry,’ said Luisa. Then, as if the chef had somehow been privy to the entire exchange, all at once risotto with pumpkin was at the table, a basket of bread, wine and water. The world reasserted itself.

  Sandro’s plate was nearly empty, it seemed, before he drew a breath; Giulietta had already finished hers, although Luisa was taking it slower.

  He fished in his pocket for his own notebook and stub of pencil. ‘So what have we got? She was having an affair with her teacher, was planning to go off to Sicily with him that afternoon only he says he was in the gallery the whole day. And as far as we know the last person to see her was still Claudio.’

  ‘He was meeting her at the Kaffeehaus at 11.30,’ said Luisa. Laboriously he wrote it down. ‘So we need to talk to the waiter who was working the terrace,’ and she looked down at her notebook, ‘Beppe. Who should be along shortly.’ She prodded at her risotto.

  ‘And we need to talk to Cat Lady. She ran off like a scalded cat herself, and there’s something funny about that timing, if you ask me.’

  ‘What?’ said Sandro.

  Luisa poured herself a glass of wine and sipped it slowly.

  ‘She handed the bag in at five, but she’s only ever there at lunchtime. By one, one-thirty, Veronica Hutton was already missing, wasn’t she? She’d failed to turn up for her flight. My guess would be, the bag was chucked into the bushes at the same time Veronica Hutton was – what? Attacked? Abducted? And Cat Lady might have been a witness.’

  ‘No love lost between Cat Lady and the Carabinieri, that’s for sure,’ said Sandro, writing.

  Abducted? She must be still there, he thought; that was what was giving him the headache. The Carabinieri can’t have searched the place properly; Veronica Hutton must be in there somewhere. Because how the hell would you get her out, kicking and screaming? Holding a gun to her back under a raincoat, like in the movies? Could Claudio have calmed her down, got her to walk out with him through the Porta Romana gate? Everything in him resisted the thought that Claudio had had anything to do with her disappearance.

  But if she was still inside the Boboli, she’d have to be dead. This was what he had not wanted to think about, and he said as much.

  As if reading his mind, Luisa went on. ‘So assume he, or whoever, got her out of the Boboli? There’s the other gate, the one without the camera. And if you know the place, well, no doubt there’s any number of alleyways. There was an old lady I used to know whose garden was behind a hedge down at the Porta Romana end and if she ever fancied a stroll in the park she just popped through.’

  Raising his head from the page he was writing on in an attempt to process this information, Sandro saw Luisa pour more wine. Was it his imagination, or was she just pushing the food around her plate? ‘Eat up,’ he coaxed, and she gave him an impatient look.

  ‘And what about Claudio, then?’ she said. ‘I know you; you don’t want to talk to Cat Lady exactly because she might have seen the whole thing; she might point the finger at your beloved Claudio.’

  Sandro looked away, because she was right. ‘If I was still in the force,’ he said slowly, ‘we’d assume the boyfriend did it.’

  ‘And only the wife as a
libi,’ said Luisa. ‘That gallery’s very near to the Boboli.’

  ‘The sidekick from the school was there, too,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Antonella Scarpa.’

  Luisa stroked her cheeks thoughtfully. ‘We saw the place,’ she said. ‘This morning. Galleria Massi. He could have been in and out of the Boboli in ten minutes, no one the wiser, couldn’t he? You haven’t even spoken to the wife yet.’ She turned to Giulietta. ‘Wasn’t there a shop right opposite? She’d see any goings on?’

  ‘He was very quick with his alibi,’ said Sandro. ‘And I didn’t believe any of that, about his wife always popping down with a bit of lunch for him.’ He frowned. ‘Particularly if he was supposed to be at the airport at two.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luisa, sitting up straight. ‘That’s true. I bet she was never there at all.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be meeting Massi down there in a bit,’ said Sandro thoughtfully. ‘I’d really like a look in that place, his gallery.’

  The old padrone was at the table, with the bill.

  ‘Caffe?’ he asked, and as Sandro was about to answer emphatically in the affirmative, there was a discreet creak and the restaurant’s door opened. A slight, faintly seedy-looking individual slipped inside, darting a sheepish glance at the darkened kitchen and the padrone, who was bristling at the after-hours intrusion.

  ‘Beppe?’ Luisa intervened quickly. The waiter from the Kaffeehaus.

  ‘Four coffees,’ he said, reluctantly, because he had the certain feeling that this camp, skinny, apologetic little man had come to bring him bad news.

  Iris thought he’d be upset, but she hadn’t expected this.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m crying,’ he said, hopelessly, wiping his eyes with the back of a sleeve. ‘This is stupid. I hardly knew the guy.’ Iris didn’t know what to say; it was almost as if he was crying for himself.

  ‘I can’t believe he’d do that,’ Jackson went on, ‘walk into the river like that. He was such a – such a great guy, he – he was full of stories, y’know? Talking about his wife, and shit –’ He swallowed, stopped, cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. I mean, I liked him. How can you be so wrong about someone? He’d had such a life.’

  ‘Jackson,’ said Iris gently. ‘You only met him once.’ He stared at her.

  ‘I guess I did,’ he said, dully. ‘I did feel like I knew him, though.’

  Was that Jackson all over, though, thought Iris, just jumping from one fascinating new person to the next? Yesterday Sophia, today Iris; it didn’t make her angry, even.

  Looking at his crestfallen face, Iris hardly knew how to say it, but she felt she had to. ‘What if he’d done something – I don’t know, by accident, to Ronnie. Or if his illness – he had Alzheimer’s, Sandro said.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jackson, blowing his nose on the tissue she got for him. Her last one; Sophia’d had the rest.

  ‘Alzheimer’s,’ said Jackson, sitting back on his chair. They were in the window again, although below them the piazza seemed deserted now. ‘I guess Alzheimer’s explains anything, does it?’ He frowned.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Iris honestly. ‘It seems to be a pretty bad deal.’

  ‘He drowned?’ said Jackson. ‘You don’t think she could be – he could have taken her with him?’

  ‘Into the river,’ said Iris, as that image returned to her, of Ronnie rolled over in the river, caught in branches, turned face up under the rain by some tidal bore. ‘I don’t know.’ She forced herself to consider. ‘Wouldn’t they have – found her by now?’

  ‘Massi did know him,’ said Jackson suddenly. ‘Knew Claudio, I mean.’ He frowned. ‘Or his wife did, said something like that. When I went back to ask him? Um, last night?’

  ‘Last night?’ She felt the flush threaten. The truth was she’d forgotten that bit. Standing in the Piazza Pitti waiting for Jackson to run back to her, and the rain had started up again. She’d told him to go back and say something to Massi.

  ‘Did he say he’d tell the police?’

  ‘He said I should give them a statement myself,’ said Jackson. ‘He said it was a really important piece of information, but he was kinda insistent it should come from me.’ He made a face. ‘I guess he’s right, too. I guess I do need to talk to them, eventually.’

  ‘Did he know the guy was dead?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Well, if he did, he didn’t mention it,’ said Jackson, frowning again.

  ‘They were still in the gallery? When you caught up with them?’

  Jackson nodded. ‘It was dark in there,’ he said slowly, ‘but the car was still parked, up on the pavement. So I knocked, and I looked in the glass and there was a light on, right at the back. They must have been having some kind of big discussion because they didn’t hear me at first then I knocked again. Massi came and let me in, and Antonella stayed out the back, putting stuff in boxes, there’s some kind of a storeroom and a yard out there. The gallery’s weird, it goes back so far it’s like a tunnel. We only saw the showroom, didn’t we?’

  It seemed a hundred years ago, that first week, when Massi had showed them around the gallery, telling them this will be where we show the best work produced on the course. A big room with downlighters and dark red walls, Massi’s own massive seventeenth-century desk in the window, artlessly strewn with engravings and heavy art books. He must like sitting there, she remembered thinking, like some Renaissance noble, some patron of the arts.

  Jackson went on. ‘He turned on the lights when he saw me; they’ve put up some of the work already, did you know that? For the show?’

  ‘I wonder if Antonella knows,’ said Iris, not thinking about the end-of-course show, imagining instead the tunnel with Antonella standing at the far end, in the shadows. ‘You know, for a second the other day I did wonder if there was something going on between her and Massi.’

  ‘Antonella?’ Jackson sounded disbelieving. ‘No way. It’s just the work with her.’

  ‘They spend a lot of time together,’ said Iris. ‘How could she not know? Didn’t you say he told her he was going to Sicily?’

  Jackson shook his head. ‘I don’t think she cared, one way or the other. I think all she cares about is the art, and maybe the business. She polishes that damn old printing press every five minutes, she stays late doing his books. I’ve seen her.’

  There was something about the dismissive way he said it that annoyed Iris. She realized she liked Antonella; or had liked her, anyway. What was wrong with caring about the art, anyway?

  ‘I wonder what he said to her, when he didn’t go to Sicily after all?’ Iris puzzled. ‘She never said anything to us about Sicily.’ In fact, she had told the class almost nothing; none of their business why he was going to be away for the week. Or why he was back earlier than expected. ‘She just said he was hanging the show.’

  ‘She does what she’s told,’ said Jackson. He sounded contemptuous.

  ‘Not always,’ said Iris, angrily, thinking of the line drawing of Ronnie that Antonella had stuck up on the wall in the studio. And then the obvious explanation came to her. It wasn’t really any good at all, was it? What if Antonella had put Iris’s drawing up there to make a point, to show Paolo that she was a woman, after all, not just his workhorse, and that she knew what was going on?

  ‘Baby,’ said Jackson, cajoling, putting out a hand.

  ‘No,’ said Iris, and she flipped his hand away, and got to her feet. All of a sudden she felt so overwhelmed with fury and disappointment that she couldn’t look at him; she stalked away from the window, stiff-legged, to the door. She didn’t even know who she was furious with: Antonella for being a fool after all, Massi, Jackson, Sophia; even Ronnie. With herself.

  ‘Why don’t you do something useful and speak to the Carabinieri, like Massi told you?’ she said as he stood there in the window, shoulders slumped. Iris knew she should be kinder but he was occupying too much room in her head, and she wanted to be on her own. There was stuff she needed to do – well, one thing i
n particular – and she wanted her space back to do them.

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Jackson. ‘What have I said now?’

  ‘This is serious,’ Iris said angrily. ‘If your friend Claudio did something to – did something with Ronnie, then there’s a chance they might be able to find her. The Carabinieri have to start doing something; we can’t do this on our own. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Can’t you come with me?’ said Jackson.

  The pleading note in his voice made Iris want to slap him. She reached abruptly for her bag and managed to drop it. It emptied itself out, a mound of sweet wrappers and receipts and Tampax, and as she knelt to sort through it Iris felt the flush come back, like an old enemy, scalding her face. ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered.

  He was on his knees beside her, helping her; ‘I’m all right,’ she said, scooping stuff up in her hands and dumping it, dust and old envelopes and her purse and – and what were all these little bits of glass and junk? Iris sat back on her heels.

  ‘Hey,’ said Jackson, reverently, peering into his cupped hand. ‘Hey, what’s this?’

  ‘Give it to me,’ said Iris, and thinking it would be a tampon or something and he’d be trying to embarrass her, she grabbed.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ said Jackson, and there was a new note in his voice, curious, excited. He held it up between thumb and forefinger. ‘Look.’

  It was a tiny rectangle of plastic, scuffed and dirty, a centimetre by a centimetre and a half, with a gold square inset, and a minuscule circuit board.

  ‘It’s a – it’s a -’ Now she remembered, the blue glass from Ronnie’s phone, the scraps of plastic she’d scooped into her bag yesterday.

  ‘It’s a sim card,’ Jackson said it for her.

  She raised her head. ‘It’s Ronnie’s sim card?’ she said, disbelieving.

  In the silence that followed as they stared at it the cold wet air outside seemed to be full of sirens, and then another sound, closer, and more urgent. Someone was battering at the door downstairs. They crossed back to the window and leaned out, looking down.