The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  ‘You’ve got my number?’ the waiter kept saying to Sandro. ‘Anything I can do, you can call me?’ Sandro knew with leaden certainty that DiLieto would call him again, possibly at regular intervals for the rest of his life, when he didn’t have the price of a drink. He’d patted him on the arm, slipped him ten euro. ‘Wouldn’t mind talking to that camomile tea lady,’ he said, more to comfort the man than because he had any expectation. ‘If you spot her in the street, say.’

  ‘Will do, maestro, will do,’ said DiLieto, with dismal gratitude, and they let him go. It had been awfully quiet, after he went; they’d slid out of the restaurant, the padrone’s farewell a great deal more muted than his welcome. Luisa overtipped, out of guilt.

  ‘So what’s next?’ Giulietta had said cheerfully, on the street outside Nello in the rain. Was this like a game to her? All Sandro had been able to think of was that he had to tell Lucia Gentileschi what he’d discovered. Then he remembered that he’d been supposed to meet Paolo Massi at his gallery and suddenly he was filled with rage at the man, the smooth, greedy fake. Anger that he should have been directing elsewhere, no doubt, but of all the characters he’d encountered in the preceding three days, it was Paolo Massi that was drawing his anger.

  ‘I’d better go and talk to Lucia Gentileschi,’ he said, mentally booting Paolo Massi out of the picture.

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ Luisa had asked, her head tilted like a bird’s. ‘I mean, what can you tell her? What did he actually see?’

  ‘It happened, though, didn’t it? Claudio lost the plot and groped a girl. Even if Beppe didn’t see it, there was a witness; witnesses, no doubt, a whole terraceful. God knows who might come forward when – well. If it turns into a different kind of investigation.’ He shied away from saying the word, murder. ‘And I don’t want Lucia to hear it from them.’

  Luisa persisted, bravely. ‘But it’s a bit of a leap from a grope to – I don’t know, doing away with the girl?’

  He put his face in his hands. ‘There were dark places,’ he said, ‘in Claudio’s past, in his mind, too. We don’t know what he might think, where he might think he was.

  ‘If only we could find her,’ he said. ‘Alive or dead.’ He looked up. ‘She’s out there somewhere.’

  ‘So give yourself a bit more time,’ said Luisa gently. ‘Talking to Lucia won’t get you to her.’ She smiled faintly. ‘And are you going to just let Massi off the hook? Because if you don’t go and stick pins into him, I will. If he’d come forward when she didn’t turn up for their rendezvous instead of just scuttling off home to his wife and saying nothing, then we’d be in a very different position now, wouldn’t we?’

  Sandro looked at her with admiration; she was a slow-burner, all right, Luisa, his little glowing furnace of a wife, but she sent out sparks. He felt one of them kindle and take. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You always are.’

  So now she and Giulietta were off to the Via dei Bardi on their wild goose chase after the mad old cat lady, and he was sitting here in his parked car staring at the Boboli, as if it was going to tell him all the answers.

  Sandro shifted his gaze, and found himself staring instead into the darkened windows of the gallery, where Paolo Massi had spent all day working. There in the window was a desk, a great ostentatious carved thing, right in the window so that everyone could see the great man at his labours, and he in turn could amuse himself by watching the passing trade.

  Luisa was right; he needed to get Paolo Massi in front of him. He’d seen men like him before; a slimy little wife-batterer from Prato who’d had an alibi for the time his wife was pushed down the stairs; a businessman who’d paid a market-stallholder to kill his wife for the insurance. He’d nailed them both, and others like them, because if there was one thing Sandro knew how to do, it was take a liar and shake him upside down until the truth came out.

  Why did he hate Paolo Massi? Sandro felt his adrenaline rise as he surrendered to the feeling. Massi, so apparently high-minded, so noble-looking, but underneath it all, only interested in money. And sleeping with his students too, it seemed. But mostly money. Pietro hadn’t liked him either, and neither had Lucia Gentileschi. Only Claudio had been taken in by him, it seemed; they must have had some kind of relationship, however sporadic – why else would Massi’s wife have called on Lucia with her condolences? Poor Claudio.

  Why couldn’t it have been Massi, not Claudio, up there molesting Veronica Hutton? In his head Sandro assembled a makeshift series of events, the girl finding out about another woman, perhaps, and threatening to expose his affair with her, threatening to bring the business down? The business he’d snatched back from under the noses of the Guardia? But he’d been in the gallery all day, even if she’d probably walked right past it on her way to the Boboli. Had that been why she came through this gate? Now, that was an interesting idea.

  But there was the wife and her alibi; would she lie for him? There was Antonella Scarpa. Somewhere in his head a clangour set up, of things wrong, things discordant.

  His train of thought was derailed as a fire engine roared past, so close in the narrow street that the car wobbled, then another; and it dawned on Sandro that he’d been hearing the blasted things for hours now, in the distance while they’d sat in Nello, but closer now. The clamour of the fire engine bells, police sirens. What was going on? Wearily Sandro pushed open the door and climbed on to the pavement.

  Up ahead the fire engine was stuck in the narrow canyon of the Via Romana. Behind the fire engines a car in the pale blue livery of the Polizia Statale had come to a halt; ahead the fire engines had been held up by a truck up on the pavement, and someone was sounding a horn with relentless aggression. Sandro walked the few steps to the stationary police car, leaned down and tapped on the window. He didn’t recognize the man who turned an expressionless face up to him from the passenger seat.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked humbly. ‘All these sirens.’

  The man looked away from him, through the windscreen, and seeing that they weren’t going anywhere condescended to answer. ‘There’s some flooding,’ he said warily. Sandro ducked his head further and saw that he recognized the officer beyond him at the wheel, vaguely, what was his name, Roberti? Alberti?

  ‘Commissario Gioberti?’ he said tentatively, and the man turned his head, gave a microscopic nod.

  ‘They’re closing the bridges,’ the senior officer said curtly. ‘A part of the weir at Santa Rosa has disintegrated, washed away. Water’s coming up under the Uffizi and they’re trying to pump it out, and the Rowing Club’s under water.’ He expelled a breath explosively. ‘Hope you’re not in a rush to get home, Cellini, because you won’t get back to Santa Croce tonight, not unless you can call up a helicopter.’

  Ahead of him the truck lumbered off the pavement and the fire engines lurched ahead; the two policemen in the car turned their heads away and his interview was terminated. Closing the bridges? Stuck in the Oltrano, south of the river? He tried to get his head around the idea, and didn’t know where to start. He called Luisa.

  When Iris emerged on to the Piazza Signoria, Jackson close behind her, it was as she’d never seen it: completely deserted. On the far side a temporary barrier had been set up across the entrance to the great galleried space of the Uffizi.

  ‘We could go to your place,’ said Jackson hopefully. ‘No danger of flooding there, huh?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Iris, shaking her head. ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’ And ignoring him she got out her phone, removed Ronnie’s sim card, wrapped it, replaced it with her own. Laboriously she tapped in a message while he watched, then she put the phone away.

  ‘Who was that to?’ he said, and she frowned.

  ‘None of your business,’ she said.

  ‘Listen Iris,’ said Jackson, and this time he wasn’t cocky or wheedling or angry, just desperate. ‘Don’t be that way. If this is about Sophia – I – she – she wasn’t anything. We were just –’

  ‘Just fooling around,
yeah,’ said Iris, angry more than anything because he thought she cared. He thought all this was about Sophia. ‘Why don’t you tell Sophia that she wasn’t anything?’ She folded her arms across her body. ‘Look,’ she said, relenting, because why would she even let him think she was angry? She wasn’t angry. ‘Look, can’t you understand that this isn’t about that stuff? It really isn’t. We’re in a mess, this is too serious for us to be just playing around trying to be detectives. There are things we know that the police should know, simple as that.’

  ‘They look kind of busy,’ said Jackson, nodding towards a Carabiniere vehicle parked under the statue of Neptune, an officer leaning on the side under a military raincape and talking urgently into his radio.

  ‘You’re making excuses,’ said Iris. He looked at his feet.

  ‘OK,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll go,’ but she went on as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘And I know that whatever her mum thinks, Ronnie’s probably dead. . .’ and although she planned to say it in that casual, hard way, she found she couldn’t, and she had to swallow. ‘But we need to find her. I need to find her. She’s my friend.’

  Jackson looked up at her, his face frozen with reluctance. ‘I still think it would be better if you came with me,’ he said stubbornly.

  ‘I think maybe you should take the sim card, too,’ she said, ignoring him to fish in her purse for it.

  ‘Jeez, no,’ said Jackson, alarmed. ‘How’m I going to explain that? Oh, I just found it lying around? They’re going to think I had something to do with it.’ She looked at him patiently.

  ‘Jackson,’ she said, ‘come on. You can’t go on running away. I – I’ve got my stuff to do. Take it.’ He took it.

  ‘Are you going to be OK?’ he asked, ducking his head. ‘I don’t think you should go on your own.’

  She held up the message she’d sent. ‘Sandro’ll meet me there,’ she said. ‘He’s a good guy. Look, you take his number, yeah?’ His shoulders lowered in defeat, Jackson took out his phone, no longer so magical to Iris, and tapped in Sandro Cellini’s number.

  ‘So you know where the Carabiniere station is, yes? At the Boboli?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, hands shoved in his pockets, scruffy backpack slumped over his shoulder, grungy waterproof, hair already plastered flat under the rain. Iris almost felt sorry for him. ‘I’ll call you?’ he said quietly. ‘Later?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, and he sighed. As she watched him trudge away she infuriated herself by thinking, He probably hates me now. Bossy bitch. Can’t be helped.

  Jackson didn’t look back to watch her go; he wanted her to believe in him. It made him feel more – resolute, was that the word? Just to look ahead. He turned off the darkening and empty Piazza Signoria towards the Via Por Santa Maria, the main drag from the Ponte Vecchio to the Duomo, to head across the bridge.

  Only there was a police barrier, and the other side of it, where the Piazza Signoria had been deserted, the Via Por Santa Maria was thronged, as packed as a cattle pen. He reached the barrier and was allowed past, though he had no idea how he was going to get any further. Wondering what the hell was going on, Jackson felt his blood stir; this was something after all? This was a challenge. Jackson worked his way to the corner, with a lot of apologizing for his backpack; it was more or less dark by now, and the rain was still coming down. He had to fight his way through umbrellas and as he made his painfully slow progress he could tell that the crowd was half excited, half turning to frustration and anger. ‘Cazzo!’ he heard an Italian man grumble, as Jackson trod on a foot, and an angry face turned towards him.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, gee, sorry,’ He looked left, down towards the Ponte Vecchio, and saw that it was empty, the passage blocked. It didn’t make sense. He could see a carabiniere on a horse, upright under the rain in a raincape, and thought hopelessly of his mission. They really were kind of busy just now, weren’t they? Could there be another Carabiniere station this side of the river?

  Someone must have heard his American English, because at his elbow he heard a voice say, quietly, ‘They’ve closed the bridges.’ He turned his head.

  ‘Some kind of precaution,’ said Sophia, six inches away from him. Her face was washed out, he thought, like she’d been crying, but she looked steadily at him. The Japanese girl – Hiroko? – was standing next to her. They looked at him, unsmiling, his judge and jury.

  ‘Right,’ he said humbly. ‘I’ve got to get to the Carabiniere station, or some kind of police station. Iris – we found some things out.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, Jackson,’ said Hiroko, and he thought, clutching at straws, that he heard the trace of kindness in her voice. ‘We heard on the radio the Uffizi was flooding and we came down to see what we could do.’ The crowd jostled them, but Hiroko held her ground patiently. ‘Look around you,’ she said. ‘Who’s going to have time to listen to you?’

  ‘I’ve got to get to the police station,’ said Jackson stubbornly, and for the second time that day, he felt like crying. Only this time he didn’t.

  ‘Lets get out of here,’ said Sophia; her voice was different, wasn’t it? Grown-up. ‘We can’t do anything stuck here. Let’s find somewhere to sit down, and you can tell us, instead of the Carabinieri.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jackson, giving in. ‘Why not?’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Still Sitting In The dark, Sandro reflected that this was the most familiar of situations to him. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Pietro, inhabiting the warm seclusion of the patrol car almost as if it was a chamber of his own brain, and thinking. This was where the girl went in; he’d seen her pass below his own window on her way here on All Saints’ Day. He’d stood there wondering if it had been a terrible mistake, who did he think he was, setting up on his own, his life was over and he’d better admit it, and there she’d been running past with her whole life ahead of her. Or so she’d thought: Veronica Hutton.

  Was it a terrible mistake? For a moment Sandro felt an awful tug of longing, for Pietro to open the car door and climb in beside him just like nothing had happened; to say, like he always used to, Where to next, capo? And he knew that tug when it came; it was the very thing he’d been dodging since his father had followed his mother to the grave close to fifty years before. It was grief, and Sandro was on his own with it.

  Where to next? Sandro gripped the steering-wheel of the stationary car as if he thought it might take him somewhere of its own accord. Think. What had he learned, categorically, over the previous forty-eight hours? That he was afraid of death. That Veronica Hutton had been here.

  There was at least incontrovertible proof of that, not merely the word of an alcoholic barman, on the camera suspended above the Annalena gate.

  Sandro leaned back, hands still on the steering-wheel, and gazed sideways out of the car window. Had it been a thrill for Veronica Hutton, to pass so close to where her lover was working? Was she thinking only about the time they would be alone together? Or was she planning how to charm the old painter into giving up his secrets, his gossip, his history, so she could just casually impress Massi with her insider’s knowledge?

  Another fire engine drew alongside, slowed to get past, sped on. Sandro fretted; where was Massi? He decided to tell Luisa what was going on, while he waited.

  The line crackled as it rang, and not for the first time since the rains began and he started investigating Claudio Gentileschi’s last hours on earth, Sandro had the overwhelming feeling that something catastrophic was in the air, literally. Flooding; chaos; everything coming apart at the seams. Claudio Gentileschi a fraudster, a faker, a molester of young women, a killer. But Luisa sounded cheerful.

  ‘It won’t kill us,’ she said simply. ‘We can sleep on Giuli’s floor, we can stay with my aunt Alice in Galluzzo, we can book into a hotel, for heaven’s sake. It’s hardly high season. And, anyway, you know what they’re like, it’s probably all just an exaggeration.’ She tutted. ‘I mean, whoever heard of them closing all the bri
dges?’

  Was she enjoying this? He didn’t mind if she was. ‘Massi hasn’t turned up yet,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s stuck on the other side. I’ll be here.’

  ‘OK,’ said Luisa. ‘We’re nearly at the Cat Lady’s place.’ She took a breath. ‘Hope she’s at home.’

  ‘You’re not tired, are you?’ said Sandro, anxiously. ‘You’re feeling all right? You’re dry?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Luisa. ‘I’ve got my boots, my raincoat – I’m looking forward to pinning this Fiamma DiTommaso down, if you must know. I told you she did a runner when I tried to talk to her in the garden?’ There was a pause, and Sandro grunted. Luisa did sound OK; she probably needed to take her mind off – things. ‘Giuli’s looking after me, anyway,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you.’

  ‘Should I pick you up?’ said Sandro, helplessly. Luisa laughed. ‘How you going to do that?’ she said. ‘If they’re closing the bridges, the only way to get anywhere’s going to be on foot. We’ll come and find you.’

  As he hung up, out of the corner of his eye he saw a whole golden window of light extinguished, and he turned his head to look. Opposite the Galleria Massi was a shop that sold carved and gilded light fittings, a window display with a scarlet silk-spread bed and boudoir lighting, now dark; as he watched a stocky woman came out and reached up for the iron shutter to the window to close up. She had a defeated look about her; she must be struggling, thought Sandro, if she’s got to come in and open the shop on a November Sunday. Hold on, he thought, didn’t Luisa say something about the shop opposite? Hold on. He climbed out of the car.

  ‘Evening,’ he said, and she looked at him, keys in hand and the shutter half-down.

  ‘Yes,’ she said suspiciously. Sandro briefly considered a story about needing a wall sconce before dismissing it. He merely nodded across the street at the gallery. In his pocket the damned phone pipped at him, again; he ignored it. How could a man think straight with these bloody things firing off messages every five minutes?