The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  ‘Here,’ said Scarpa, and she stopped. Even she looked chastened now. They were in front of the steel gate of the Circolo Rondinella, the poster advertising ballroom dancing now no more than tattered pulp hanging from the wire.

  Sandro pulled at the gate; it was locked. Silently Scarpa pointed to a gaping hole in the wire fence, then held it back as Sandro climbed through. Too old for this, he felt dread take hold, but before he could even complete the thought he felt something shift beneath his feet.

  ‘Stay there,’ he said sharply over his shoulder to Antonella Scarpa. ‘Call a fire engine, call an ambulance, but don’t move.’ She nodded mutely.

  ‘Where?’ he asked. But she just pointed, helplessly, towards the ants’ nest of broken palings and half-collapsed plasterboard behind the clubhouse of the Circolo Rondinella. ‘Somewhere there,’ she said.

  And then, as he took a step, a sound cut through the roar of the water underneath Sandro, the tinny, high-pitched sound of a ringtone, incongruous and familiar, the theme tune of some ancient TV cartoon show Sandro couldn’t place.

  He moved towards the sound, around the side of the cabin and there it was, down a half-collapsed wooden walkway, the screen of a mobile phone blinking up at him in the dark as it rang. ‘Tiger Man,’ a tiny voice sang. Sandro reached for it and as he moved something came at him from the dark, took hold of his arm and held on for dear life.

  Letting out an exclamation, Sandro struggled to free himself and saw beside him the painfully thin, upturned face of Tomi, Comic-book Boy, hair plastered all around it. He was holding a torch, its beam now directed at his own face, and he was making sounds.

  ‘What?’ said Sandro, holding the boy tight, looking him full in the face. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The dog,’ said the boy distinctly, rearing and struggling to escape eye contact. ‘The dog. Help him, Claudio’s dog.’

  ‘Where’s the dog?’ Sandro asked, and the boy shone the torch towards a battered door at a crazy angle near the far end of the disintegrating jetty, fastened shut by a brass padlock. And then below them something clattered and loosened, and the whole structure swayed. Bodily Sandro lifted the boy; he weighed next to nothing, all wire and bones; he hauled him back, across the terrace, pushed him out through the fence.

  ‘Give me your torch,’ he said, leaning through after him with his hand out.

  ‘My phone,’ said the boy, clinging to the fence, but Sandro was already gone.

  It’s all right, he told himself as he moved down the broken boards that had once formed a path, there are other sheds underneath, they’ll go first.

  He came to the phone and picked it up, put it in his pocket, but then when he straightened up his feet couldn’t get a purchase on the splintered wood, greasy with days of rain, and he slipped. Sandro heard his own breath whistle out of him as he went down, but he was all right, he slid down three, four feet and then he was at the door.

  Torch between his teeth, Sandro fumbled in his pocket for the keys, the blasted keys, while with his other hand holding on to some upright that might or might not represent something solid in this disintegrating rubbish heap. He was on his knees, rearing backwards to counteract the steep angle. The key went in.

  She was at the back, more like a heap of clothes than a human being, like a sack of drowned animals, dead weight. Ankles, wrists protruding, bound with picture wire. Feeling a terrible pressure in his chest, Sandro reached for her, pulled her up; he thought she must weigh twice, three times, what the boy had. He slung her across his body; he couldn’t manage a fireman’s lift. He held her to him like a great child, and then he moved.

  With each impossible step back up towards the far-off yellow gleam of the embankment’s lighting, Sandro felt the whole structure under him being dismantled by the weight of the water and he knew that she was dead, that soon he would be too. Only he kept on, and underneath him the ground held, and then they were at the wire, and through the wire and on the pavement leaning against the low wall. And Sandro collapsed, the girl on top of him, and he held her against him as he sobbed.

  There was no ambulance, there was no fire engine, but Antonella Scarpa was still there. ‘No one answers,’ she said, blankly, staring down at him – at them. ‘Get Luisa,’ he said, and he bowed his face over the girl’s, his cheek, unshaven, against her cold, soaked one.

  And it was Luisa, his Luisa. Afterwards it seemed to Sandro that when his wife took hold of the girl’s wrist in hers, some mysterious exchange took place, from Luisa’s warm beating heart to the girl’s blue-veined arm, cold as marble. His Luisa brought her back to life.

  She had to say it three times, before he stopped shaking his head and allowed himself to believe her. ‘She’s got a pulse,’ said Luisa. And they sat there on the soaked stone of the Lungarno Santa Rosa, Sandro and Luisa holding the cold child between them, until finally the ambulance did arrive.

  ‘She can’t have vanished into thin air,’ said Jackson, and it turned out that he was mostly right.

  In the bald, bright light of the central chandelier, the Massi’s salotto was revealed in all its disarray, a wall of books thick with dust, a ragbag of crudely coloured throws torn off the sofa in their struggle, and all the hanging things jangling, but Anna Massi was not there.

  Thumping at switches, Iris and Jackson blundered through the flat until every door in the place was thrown open and every space blinked back at them under overhead light, but they found only that Anna Massi was not in the small nun’s cell, or in a neat, anonymous marital bedroom, or in the small, crowded bathroom.

  It was only when they returned to the salotto and Iris realized that the long window had not been open before, and when the sounds of raised voices alerted them to the fact that something was happening in the street outside, that they came out to look for Anna Massi on the balcony. And failing to find her there, looked down into the street to realize that people had gathered not because something was happening but because something had happened, and they were gathered around that something.

  Which was Anna Massi, who had not vanished into thin air in one sense, but in another, and was gone, beyond hope of return.

  Chapter Thirty

  In The End, Serena Hutton flew in from Dubai on the Wednesday. Iris had sat in Sandro Cellini’s warm kitchen at close to two in the morning on Sunday, listening to him make the call, drinking camomile tea and thinking of Ronnie in her hospital bed. She had been airlifted across the city to Careggi by helicopter with Sandro and his wife, but Sandro had found the time to call Iris first to tell her. She’s alive, just. I have found your Veronica, and she is alive.

  Ronnie had lain pale and quiet next to a Roma girl with stomach pains and a drip and a half dozen members of her extended family hovering anxiously, batting away appeals from the nurses for some of them, at least, to go home. Ronnie had had only Iris.

  Approaching the bed, Iris had been frightened; there were things she didn’t want to think about. Massi, and his wife, stuffing cloth into Ronnie’s mouth and bundling her into a dark place, quarrelling over what was to be done with her. Five days in the rain and the cold and the dark, with the smell of chemicals and paintstripper and the dirty river.

  At first it had seemed that Ronnie was still unconscious; her eyes were closed, and her hands very straight at her sides with the palms turned upwards. Even like that, Iris felt herself unclench at the sight; it was still Ronnie. On her cheek, which was smudged and grubby, her eyelashes still curled, ridiculously long, and suddenly there was a new picture in Iris’s head, Ronnie at the mirror, leaning in to put on mascara. ‘Ronnie?’ she whispered. Nothing. She tried again. ‘Ronnie?’

  Ronnie’s mouth moved; her tongue came out and she licked dry lips. Then she seemed to struggle and Iris felt herself panic, looked around for a nurse. She wanted to run. The spasm stopped, and Ronnie opened her eyes, tried to raise herself up, and failed. Iris put an arm around her shoulder and put the straw in her water glass to Ronnie’s mouth until Ronnie put up a
hand to say, that’s enough, and Iris took the glass away, busying herself. Ronnie’s gaze settled on Iris, and she let out a small sigh, and relaxed back against her piled pillows.

  ‘’Syou,’ she said, eventually, and lifted her hand, gesturing; it took a minute for Iris to understand what she wanted. She took Ronnie’s hand. ‘Iris.’

  ‘It’s OK, Ronnie,’ said Iris, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘I shouldn’ – shouldn’t. . .’ Her lip trembled and she controlled it. ‘I was so stupid, Iris,’ she said, searching Iris’s face.

  ‘Only a bit,’ said Iris, holding her hand tighter. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  Ronnie sighed, like a small, tired child, and let her eyes fall shut. Then suddenly they were open again, wide with alarm. ‘God,’ she said, struggling back up to prop herself on her elbows, tangling herself in the drip. ‘Mum’s not here, is she?’

  Iris felt herself smile, hugely. ‘Ronnie,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

  And by the time Serena Hutton did arrive, wrestling with a pile of designer luggage, red-haired with her sharp little face, complaining about the cold, the inefficiency of the airport, the uselessness of Italian hospitals, it mostly was all right. She walked in, and Iris walked out.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Ronnie had said, when Iris had gone in to the hospital to warn her, and she’d sighed. ‘I’m used to her, you know.’ Weariness, Iris realized, was not something she’d heard in Ronnie’s voice before, or acceptance, and almost never gratitude. She was different but, then, everything was. The world turned.

  Jackson left the same day, a flight to Rome and then all the way across Europe, across the Atlantic, back to the New World. He had an errand to run first; Iris said she’d come as far as the house, for moral support. Lucia Gentileschi’s house.

  It had been Sandro Cellini’s idea. He had summoned the two of them to his office, on the Tuesday.

  The city had been in a strange mood; the skies had still been low and grey and the river still yellow but the waters had dropped, dramatically. All sorts of debris had been cast up on the mud-plastered embankments – shattered boards and bicycle wheels and dirty plastic bags – and traders had talked in hushed voices on their shop doorsteps about how bad it might have been. Sandbags were still stacked against the Uffizi’s river facade.

  ‘Both of us?’ said Iris, on the phone.

  ‘Si, Iris,’ he’d said with weary patience. ‘Tutte le due’. He spoke to her in a mix of Italian and English now; it didn’t seem quite real that they’d only known each other a week. She could hear tiredness in his voice; she knew there was something going on at home, with his wife. She wasn’t well. ‘I want you to come with him,’ said Sandro. ‘Because when he’s with you, I think he is more of a man. Not so much a boy.’

  It had taken her aback; Sandro had seen them together no more than twice, had spoken to Jackson alone once. But she was beginning to understand that he was an observant man.

  ‘You have spoken to your mother yet, Iris?’ he said, straight away when they arrived, fixing her in the eye. The three of them were standing in his small office, in San Frediano; Iris would have liked to be back in that kitchen of his but he’d said, quickly, no. Not home. Perhaps his wife was in bed.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, with a hint of defiance. Would he understand, if she tried to explain how it was between her and Ma? That they had to be careful; there was just the two of them, and Iris had to be independent, for both of them. Perhaps he already understood; it wouldn’t surprise her. She relented. ‘I need to be sure of what I’m going to do next,’ she said quickly to Sandro. ‘That’s all.’

  He’d left it at that; beside her, Jackson had been listening, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Jackson,’ said Sandro, with stern kindness. ‘Now.’

  Sandro had given Jackson a padded envelope containing six old sketchbooks, and the address of Claudio Gentileschi’s widow, and told him to go and talk to her. ‘He spoke to you,’ Sandro had said roughly, clapping Jackson on the shoulder. ‘You liked him. That will mean something to her.’

  When he arrived with his bags in the Piazza d’Azeglio, ready to go, Jackson had stood square in front of her, folded his arms across his chest and said bluntly, ‘Come with me. Please. You’d like the States.’

  She’d shaken her head, smiling, because now she knew. What was going to happen next. ‘I like it here,’ she said.

  It was a cold, bright morning, and Iris waited with Jackson’s bags on the pavement in the Via dei Pilastri, in a thin slice of sun that fell on her between the eaves of two huge stone buildings, like a blessing. When he was gone she’d call Ma and tell her. Tell her she loved her, and that Antonella Scarpa had found her a place on another course and she was staying here.

  Under the great trees in the Piazza d’Azeglio, unknown to either of the two young people, Sandro watched Jackson and Iris emerge from the huge, ugly house of the Contessa Badigliani. He couldn’t have said what he was doing here, only Luisa was at the shop and he couldn’t seem to sit still at the moment. There was no way, she had said, that she wanted to mope around at home, no matter what the doctor said about taking it easy.

  So he stood and watched as the two figures rounded the corner of the square, side by side but with no point of contact between their bodies, and disappeared down towards the Via dei Pilastri. Then he set off after them, unseen.

  This is what private detectives do, he thought, mocking himself, but the sense of unreality with which he had embarked on his new career had gone. He had completed a job; was that it? He was too old and too disillusioned to expect anything like professional satisfaction, whatever Pietro had implied.

  ‘We’d have you back in a shot, you know,’ he had said on the phone only this morning; typical of Pietro to give him space, to leave things to settle.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ Sandro had said, smiling to himself. ‘And I wouldn’t go. I like things better this way.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Pietro, relieved. ‘How’s Luisa?’

  Which had been a harder question to answer.

  Maresciallo Falco had not given Sandro space. The carabiniere had phoned personally, Monday afternoon, and asked, politely, if Sandro would have the time to pay him a visit, to update him on the case. After the morning he’d had, not to mention the thirty-six hours without sleep, he should have said no, but blearily he’d kissed Luisa, who had been filling the washing machine and refusing to talk, said he’d be back in an hour, and walked down there, across the roaring Arno, to the Boboli. His senses had seemed sharpened by the lack of rest; he looked at everything he passed – the yellowing trees, the dirty pavements, the overflowing dumpsters – as if he was seeing them for the first – or last – time.

  ‘You look rough,’ had been the first thing Falco had said as Sandro entered his office. The carabiniere was sitting back in his chair with a sheepish look the cheerful insult attempted to disguise. He’d then gestured to the chair opposite him and Sandro had sat warily, not knowing what to expect. There was a degree of discomfiture on either side; Falco had underestimated Sandro, and knew as much, and in his turn Sandro found that he didn’t relish this unfamiliar position on the moral high ground. If Falco ended up feeling humiliated, there’d be trouble.

  But then the Maresciallo had begun to speak. Haltingly at first, but quite soon with something verging on enthusiasm, at least for a carabiniere, Falco had gone through the case with him, and it had slowly dawned on Sandro that the man actually admired him for what he’d done. He’d shifted in his chair; listening to praise had always made him uneasy, even in the force, but when Falco finished abruptly by standing, stiffly, with his hand out, Sandro had taken it.

  Of course, Sandro had been there to hand over what he knew about Veronica Hutton’s disappearance to the investigative body concerned, and he obliged. He told Falco about the Scuola Massi’s forgery racket, but when it came to Claudio Gentileschi’s part in it, Sandro hesitated. Was it their business, after all, Claudio�
�s death being under the jurisdiction of the Polizia Statale, rather than the Carabiniere? He felt the tug of old loyalties, to his force, as well as to poor dead Claudio, unable to defend himself, unable to explain. Sandro’s first duty was to protect his client, Lucia Gentileschi, but, then again, there were new alliances to consider. There was his new career.

  Eventually he had taken a deep breath, and explained his position to Falco, who obliged him with a pair of palms face up: it was understood; it would go no further. Sandro could see that the quiet bargain struck left him in the weaker position once more, but curiously enough he was happier that way. And Lucia was safe. Antonella Scarpa wouldn’t implicate Claudio; she’d said as much, although otherwise she was co-operating fully with both the Guardia della Finanza and Carabiniere investigations. He hoped she’d escape prison, although he imagined there wasn’t much Antonella Scarpa couldn’t handle in life.

  It hadn’t been perfect, he’d got it wrong time and again, yet when it mattered, he’d got it right. By the skin of his teeth, but sometimes that was all you needed, and the job was done. And although Sandro hoped that next time it might be just a matter of following someone’s cheating husband, he knew that next time, he’d do better.

  As Iris waited on the sunny pavement for the boy to come back out, her broad lovely face was tilted up, eyes closed, to catch the sun. Sandro realized with joy that he didn’t have to worry about Iris March.

  He watched the boy come out, saw them call a cab, saw her help him in with the bags and lean down to kiss him goodbye on the cheek, saw her wave at the departing taxi. Saw her pull her coat around herself, and walk off towards the river with her mobile pressed to her ear. And only then did Sandro walk across the road and ring at Lucia Gentileschi’s door.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In The Small, Clean, featureless room, Sandro held Luisa’s free hand as she lay on her side with the narrow plastic tube that was taped to what they called a port on her pale forearm. They were lucky, he told himself. This was what lucky was.