She whispered to him, as he opened the door for her, ‘I hope you won’t mind me asking but I saw a man with a bag leave in a police car before … ?’
And, though he didn’t give her much of an answer, he didn’t mind her asking at all. Life felt back to normal again.
After she’d gone, the marshal added the photograph in its frame to the things he had already collected: a diary, the address book by the phone, a folder with letters and packets of photographs. He took a quick look through one of the packets, sure he’d find the man he was looking for, but it was all shoes, or details of shoes with notes in Japanese on the back. A second seemed to be nothing but views of Florence so he’d have to go through it all later. Out on the landing, as he was locking up, his phone rang.
‘Guarnaccia.’
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. I don’t know if it’s important or not but you did say to call if I found anything …’
The woman from the dress shop.
‘It’s not that I’ve remembered anything particular … or even found anything, really, but it crossed my mind that—since that sweater was last year’s—you ought to check the stock house down via Romana. They buy up what’s left at the end of the season from shops like ours and sell it off cheaply. If she went there, they might well know her. It’s the sort of place where people rummage and chat. You know what I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not much, I’m afraid … I’m probably disturbing you for nothing.’
‘No, no. You did right to call me and I’m very grateful. Have you finished with your workmen?’
‘Oh, don’t! They’ve all gone but it’s only luck that you haven’t been called in to a murder here—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t joke when that poor young woman … I hope you find out what happened.’
‘I’ll find out.’
He went downstairs to the wet street and set out with a determined step for nearby via Romana.
A nice woman who was concerned and wanted to help.
A place where people rummage and chat. Life was definitely back to normal. He’d find out.
‘I’ll be right with you! I will—no! Don’t put those there! I’ve told you a dozen times to pack them in boxes! Nobody wants to look at sweaters in June! I’ll be right there!’
But she wasn’t. She was everywhere but. Every now and then her tousled grey-blonde curls and rattling earrings appeared above a rack of clothes, only to disappear behind teetering piles of folded jeans to protest at an invisible assistant.
‘I’ve told you! There’s no point in hanging things together because they’re the same colour! Divide them by size, for heaven’s sake! This rack’s supposed to be forty-two, forty-four and look at this! Look at it! Fifty-two! Is that woman still in that cubicle? Well, stay with her! What have I told you about—?’
Suddenly the curls and earrings bounced up by the marshal’s shoulder, and the voice cut to a stage whisper as audible as her yells. ‘You can see how I’m fixed—you can’t imagine how much stuff gets stolen from me in all this chaos but I can’t find a decent girl to help me—this one’s willing enough but she hasn’t the sense she was born with. She’s Romanian and, if you ask me, she doesn’t understand a word—’ She broke off and turned up the volume:
‘Put those bikinis back in that box! If you leave them scattered all over the counter like that there won’t be one left by the time we shut—not that box! Can’t you see I’ve written ‘scarves’ on the side with a black marker—on the other side, the other side—I know there are belts in it, I know that. That’s not your problem. Just put the bikinis in the box they came out of ! I think it says bras. Either that or accessories …’
Red nails clutched at the marshal’s black sleeve and the whisper this time was almost a growl. ‘You can see how I’m fixed. I can’t leave people trying stuff on and if I stay down near the cubicle, people come in and take things. I’m always saying you’ve got to have order, it’s the only way. You’ll have to give me some advice. D’you think I should install those whatsit cameras or will I not be able to afford it? She’s left that woman on her own again and she’s got at least four linen jackets in there. You’ve got to have order—I’ll be right with you. Stay there.’
The marshal stayed, obedient as a well-trained bulldog, the sole solid, stationary element in a boiling sea of rummaging customers, shifting clothes racks and sliding piles. The only time he moved at all was when a toughlooking young woman rammed him with a rack of glittery frocks.
He glanced at his watch. A quarter to one. With any luck things would quieten down soon and she would surely close, anyway, at one.
Things didn’t quieten down. There was more of a crescendo of noise and muddle culminating in the protesting customers being physically evicted and the door locked.
‘I’ve got to talk to the marshal … For goodness sake!’
When they’d all gone, she wiped her brow on a loose, flowery sleeve and said, ‘You can see how I’m fixed. You’ll have to give me some advice—I mean, just look at that damp patch, up there to the left of the door. I’ve already had it fixed twice and it’s back again. You could probably recommend a reliable builder, somebody in your position, you’d know the right sort … I’m exhausted with it all, I can tell you. Let’s sit down. This is supposed to be my desk and just look at it … Put that stuff anywhere—oh! Give me that silk frock. I’ve been looking for that for two days. It’s to go to the tailor to be shortened … have I lost the measurements? I have. There was a little yellow stick-on thing …’
‘Is this it?’ It was stuck to his sleeve.
‘Well, thank goodness for that. I could do with somebody like you working for me. I don’t think that girl speaks a word of Italian … not that she’s said anything but …’ She wound down after a while, like clockwork. The marshal, watching as the curls and earrings settled, wondered how old she might be. As old as, or older than, himself, probably, but the disorderly mop of curls, her plumpness and the room full of tumbled dresses in which frills and glitter were a dominant theme made her seem like an overtired child who would never get round to putting away her toys and dressing-up clothes.
He gave her some advice in the gravest of tones and she drank it in with equal solemnity. He could just see her telling her favourite customers about it:
—The marshal from the Pitti came here and he said to me …
And life would tumble along as before.
It turned out that the Japanese girl was a favourite customer. Not that she had a lot to spend but she was so pretty and trim and, of course, size forty—well, there’s always plenty of choice in a size that small, including model samples. She remembered that linen sweater, a lovely piece but it didn’t sell. Akiko had fished it out from under a pile of dark stuff—Most people like something more cheerful, you know, in the summer, especially for the seaside, but you could never get her to buy anything sexy or glamorous even though she’d have looked lovely …
—Being that size, she could buy a lot of the big designer stuff, Valentino, Ferré and so on, from the market in Piazza Santo Spirito on Wednesdays. They cut the labels and you get it for practically nothing …
This was all music to the marshal’s ears since it exonerated Peruzzi from having lied and, perhaps, from everything …
—I was sure she was in love. A baby would have made a difference, wouldn’t it?
Perhaps not from everything. He’d better ask.
‘Oh, yes, there was a man in her life all right, because she brought him to Domani, next door, and that was how she noticed this shop and started coming here.’
‘Domani?’
‘Domani. The Japanese restaurant next door. You wouldn’t have noticed it with the shutter down. It’s his closing day. Come back tomorrow. They’ll know all about her man. And then, when you’ve time, you’ll come back and see me again, right? Give me some more good advice. Wait a minute while I unlock the door for you … It’s right, what you said about lining up the racks so I
can see to the other end of the room when I’m down here. It’s like you say, you’ve got to have order.’
‘That’s right. Thank you for your help.’
So … Home to a good meal and, this afternoon, a thorough look through the stuff he’d taken from the flat, secure in the knowledge that the Japanese restaurant would provide what he might not find. The shops all had their shutters down and from above his head came the sound of the news and wafts of good dinners. Steam was rising from the road. He kept close to the wall away from the hot sun. In Piazza San Felice the nuns were ushering small children out of the infant school to their waiting parents. Droves of older children were coming towards him from the middle school in Piazza Pitti, so his own two were probably home by now.
But if Giovanni was at home, Totò certainly wasn’t. As he reached the big piazza, the marshal saw his son, not crossing over to the Pitti and home but bouncing towards him, his face alight, and he was calling out, ‘Where were you?’
The marshal stopped in his tracks, astonished. Totò had been so difficult for so long … but the sight of him bounding forward, like when he was a little boy and wanted to be caught and swung round by his dad … Smiling, he almost held out his arms in response. His son bounded straight past without seeing him. The marshal turned with a puzzled frown and saw Totò with his hands on the shoulders of a slim, fair girl. He was talking earnestly. She was listening with her head down, a head of long, loose curls that reached to her waist, like a Botticelli painting. Her arms were held stiffly by her sides, her fingers gripping the overlong sleeves of a dark T-shirt. The marshal turned away and walked home alone.
In the afternoon the waiting room was full, but a glance around the worried or hopeful faces told him there was nothing Lorenzini couldn’t deal with. He walked through with a polite greeting and shut himself in his office with the stuff from the Japanese girl’s flat.
As he sat down and drew the pile on the desk towards him, he was still thinking about Totò. He’d never been an easy child, not compared with Giovanni. It was impossible not to admire his intelligence and quickness, though. And now … you had to hand it to him, vegetarian or not, that was a lovely girl. His place at table had been empty again but Teresa hadn’t even had to look at him. He kept quiet.
It had been Giovanni who’d told them that the girl’s parents were separating and that, as soon as term ended, she was to move back to Denmark with her mother:
—He says he’s going to run away. He won’t, though, will he, Mum?
—Of course he won’t. And give me that T-shirt after. You’ve splashed tomato on it and I’ve still to do a dark wash. Does anybody want any more?
You thought your children were children for ever and then, all of a sudden, they weren’t. A lovely girl, but foreign. The Japanese girl had run away from her family and look how that had ended up.
His respect for his younger son was redoubled but he felt worried.
Small children, small problems, they say.
And if they suddenly stopped being children, the world looked completely different.
His son had run straight past, not even seeing him, and now he felt as lonely as if they’d both left home. After all, one day they would.
Just get on with your work, he told himself, opening the folder in front of him. No danger of that running away.
Of course, he’d have to retire when the moment came …
Everything in your life that seems so solid and permanent is really shifting underneath you without your noticing.
Lorenzini’s head appearing round the door was a welcome sight. ‘Visitor for you.’
It was Beppe, the oldest gardener, his face bursting with self-importance, peering through the fronds of a huge plant.
‘Come in, come in … what on earth have you got there?’
‘A Kentia. It won’t dirty your floor, there’s a plastic dish under it. We’ve had a delivery and I thought this would do nicely in here. I’ll put it near the window. It’s to say thank you.’
‘Thank you?’
‘You remember? That flat you suggested for my granddaughter? They’re moving in on the first of next month. Don’t overwater it. Now: what I’ve really come about is that shoe. You’d better come with me—we’ve not touched it. I said right away to Giovanni, I said, they’ll be wanting to take photographs like they did up at the pool. Am I right?’
‘I—quite right, yes. Where did you—’
‘Shall we go, then?’
As they started up the gravel path Beppe, despite his age, his girth and the steepness of the climb, chattered on, breathless. It was because of last night’s storm, you see.
We always have to check all the drains after a storm. It was one of those, look. D’you see?’
The pale gravel, only superficially dry as yet, was interrupted every few metres by a diagonal stone runnel leading to what looked like a tiny sepulchre at the side.
‘We have to go left here and go up the main avenue a bit.’
The main avenue was even steeper and Beppe fell silent for a while, catching his breath.
‘How much further up?’ the marshal asked.
‘Not far now. Where Giovanni’s standing guard. We thought he should stay there, just in case …’
The broad stretch of sand-coloured gravel rose to a glistening horizon crowned by the silhouette of a stone staircase and an equestrian statue. Huge fluffy white clouds drifted above in the deep-blue sky and everything smelled of wet laurel leaves.
Giovanni, the head gardener, stood back when they reached him so that the marshal could take a look. ‘We haven’t touched it. I suppose you’ll take photographs like you did up at the pool. You’re lucky. These drains may not be much bigger than your hand, but once you’re behind the opening they’re enormous. If it had been pushed harder it’d have gone down and you’d never have seen it again. Stuck like that with the heel caught, a fair bit of gravel and some leaves and stuff washed up against it during the storm so it wasn’t draining properly and we spotted it.’
‘I knew right away it was the one you were looking for,’ said Beppe, ‘and it is, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is.’ The marshal straightened up and looked about him. ‘The pool where we found her must be up there to the right. If our man went straight down this avenue, he didn’t taken the nearest exit, the Annalena one …’
Below them, at the foot of the main avenue, lay the biggest pool with its central island, the Porta Romana exit and the ring roads. That was the exit furthest from Peruzzi’s workshop, from Peruzzi himself, from Issino, from the Japanese girl’s flat, from her world. People who came into the city by car parked outside the city walls near the Porta Romana. The boyfriend, maybe … Rome. Who’d mentioned Rome? Lapo … or Peruzzi? Peruzzi, slamming the door, purple with anger, shouting:
—If she’s not in Rome, I don’t know where she is!
But Lapo had said something about a friend in Rome. Was all that anger really about loutish tourists or were they just a cover for Peruzzi’s jealousy?
—If you’ve got time to be running after young people who don’t know their own minds …
Anxious to get back to his office and those letters and photographs, he left as soon as the technician arrived on the scene. As his feet crunched downhill, he could hear Beppe, his breath quite recovered, elaborating on his story as he told it again.
‘The marshal knows my name and address if you need to get in touch with me.’
‘I don’t think I’ll need to do that—stand out of the way, will you …’
He quickened his pace. Back at the station he found the waiting room empty. He looked in at the door of the duty room where he could hear the crackle of the motorbike patrol calling in.
‘Everything all right?’
The young carabiniere at the console looked up. ‘Fine. All quiet.’
‘Lorenzini?’
‘He’s got somebody with him. A woman. She was crying her eyes out. I could hear her from in here but sh
e seems to have quietened down now.’
‘Oh, Lord, I bet it’s Monica … Listen, when he’s finished, tell him I’m in my office and I don’t want to be disturbed for an hour at least—and don’t put any calls through.’
‘All right.’
But when a weeping Monica had been shown out, the bike patrol had come in and a good two hours had gone by, he was still sitting at his desk, too shocked to speak. When Lorenzini at last opened the door, looking puzzled, the marshal could find no words and only stared at him, unseeing.
‘What’s the matter with you? What’s happened?’
The marshal dropped his head into his hands and rubbed hard at his eyes. Then, with a deep breath, he pulled himself together. ‘You’d better come in.’
Seven
‘Have you rung Borgognissanti?’
‘No.’
‘You haven’t talked to anybody?’
‘No.’ How could he explain? He’d been sitting there for goodness knows how long like somebody paralysed because once he moved, once he acted on what he’d seen, told somebody, it would become real. He’d been practically holding his breath, trying to stop the world turning. It was his responsibility, no getting away from that. His fault. And now there was Lorenzini drumming his fingers, his body tense with impatience.
‘I was thinking …’ he lied, ‘I don’t want to make things worse …’
‘How much worse can it get? She’s dead. What’s worse than dead?’ Lorenzini looked at him the way he always did when his aggressive good sense came up against what he referred to as Sicilianity. He had learned over the years to be patient but you could see he felt this was no time for treading tactfully around what he saw as his superior’s slow southern ways.
‘Do you want me to call? Or go over there? What’s the problem? We’ve got to move!’ He didn’t even try to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Can you imagine what will happen if the newspapers get to this first?’
The Innocent Page 10
