It was his plump daughter, stacking plates in the half-lit back room, who told him. ‘Dad’s gone to the bank. If you want to come back later, it’s stuffed pork roll today …’
In the warm light of the kitchen behind her mother was bent over the open oven door, basting the pork. Granny was parked in the corner behind her where she spent all her days since a tiny stroke had frightened her. She was peeling potatoes in the lap of her apron and dropping them in a bucket at her feet. Even at this early hour, the smell of the roast scented with rosemary provoked a sharp twinge of hunger.
‘No, no … Just ask him to call me this afternoon, and tell him …’
Pausing on the doorstep, looking out at the dark rain splattering on to bare plastic tables, he had to admit to himself that he was relieved to have had this opportunity of ‘throwing his hat in first’. Now, when he did talk to them, the air should have cleared.
As for being prepared for Peruzzi, how do you prepare yourself for a minefield? You tread carefully, that’s all. What did it matter anyway, now? To think that, only the other day, he’d been sitting here in the sunshine with a glass of wine in front of him and nothing more on his mind than a regular murder case involving a foreigner. No political or powerful connections, no distressed parents, no press harassment, no pressure from the prosecutor’s office, his only problem a bad-tempered shoemaker.
Hunching his shoulders against the heavy rods of rain, he made for the workshop. Thunder cracked above his bowed head, preparing him for Peruzzi’s flashing anger.
Akiko’s death had hit Peruzzi hard. His sharp gaze seemed without direction, as if he were wandering in a maze. The marshal himself had been obliged to wander through a maze to get to him because he wasn’t in the workshop. Surely, after all the grand talk about his son’s seeing to everything, he hadn’t gone to the bank with the others? Just for the chat and the visit to the bar? No, Issino had told him.
—In shop. Signora goes for coffee. This way please.
And instead of having to go out into the storm, walk some way down the street and turn back into Borgo San Jacopo, he had been sent down an ill-lit staircase and instructed to go left, right, right, along to the end, round behind cupboards, open door on right and up the stairs. The subterranean corridor was better lit than the stairs and if things had been as they should be, he’d have been interested by the shelves along each side with their boxes and lasts and stacks of new leather. But things were not as they should be and he went along with hardly a turn of the head to where, after a mistake that revealed to him Issino’s cubbyhole room and another ending in a store cupboard, he had hit the right door and come up to the surface.
The woman who looked after the shop had already come back from her break, cutting it short, perhaps, to dodge the worsening storm. He’d found her kneeling amid a scatter of shoes at the feet of a customer, making soothing noises. Peruzzi had been standing with a stack of boxes in his arms, looking out at the rain, so he hadn’t noticed the marshal’s arrival until he’d gone forward and touched his elbow. ‘We have to talk.’
Peruzzi had turned that distracted gaze to him then, but after five or six minutes, when he’d made a few sharp comments and the customer had left without buying anything, the shop assistant had suggested they sit down or perhaps go back to the workshop. The marshal still hadn’t gotten his attention.
Peruzzi, even more than the marshal, looked so out of place in the elegant, blue-carpeted shop, too big and lanky with his long apron and his workman’s hands. This other world was all soft lights and pale colours, and smelled faintly of perfume as well as new shoes.
‘The signora’s right, Peruzzi. Let’s go back to the workshop.’
But he got no answer and a blond young woman came into the shop to interrupt them. She was smiling, holding a dripping umbrella. The assistant hurried forward to take it but the blond customer was looking at Peruzzi.
‘Your apprentice sent me round. Have you made those moccasins?’
‘Yes, I have. Light-brown or dark.’
‘But I wanted a red pair and a blue pair like last year!
Don’t you remember? I came in at the end of April and you said they’d be ready at the beginning of June.’
‘Well, they are ready. They’re in the window, aren’t they?’
‘But they’re brown!’
‘I’ve only made brown this year. You don’t want moccasins in fancy colours.’
‘But, Peruzzi, you made them last year!’
‘Well, I’m not making them this year.’
‘You promised me. You said June.’ She looked for help to the shop woman who murmured, ‘I’ll talk to him. Come back next week.’ She signed to the marshal to get Peruzzi back to the workshop where he belonged.
Inspired by the thought of the shelves down below, he suggested, ‘Let me help you take all these boxes of shoes back down. I don’t suppose you want them cluttering up the shop.’
‘It’s not the shoes that clutter up this shop.’ No doubt the customers did. Still, at least they got going and the marshal followed him down, helping him with the boxes to be stacked on the shelves of the long corridor. The only way to engage Peruzzi’s attention in his present distracted state was through shoes. From that he could move easily enough to Akiko, then to Esposito and the quarrel.
‘Not there.’ Peruzzi took the boxes from him. ‘I’ve got this new system. Where there’s a size missing I leave a gap. That way … It was Akiko’s idea.’ He stopped, losing the thread of what he was saying, of what he was doing.
‘You miss her a lot.’
‘We had plans, you see. I offered to help them buy a house, did he tell you that?’
‘Peruzzi, I didn’t know about Esposito. I had no idea. He’s been with us seven or eight months but it’s not as though I was in his confidence. I wish I had been, I feel now I should have been, but there it is. And now he’s gone and I need your help.’
‘No. If you’re trying to accuse him of what happened to Akiko, no.’
‘I’m not accusing anybody, I’m trying to find out what happened.’
‘It could have been anybody. In a public park it could have been anybody at all. Some drug addict, somebody trying to steal something—and what if it was an accident!’
‘Don’t get agitated. Remember your heart—if it was an accident we have to establish that. We have to talk to Esposito and we don’t know where he is.’
‘He loved her. She was having his child and he wanted to marry her.’
‘But she wouldn’t marry him, would she? They quarrelled, you know they did. Why are you defending him? Santini said you blamed him. You told me yourself she was crying as she worked.’
‘She loved him.’
‘So why wouldn’t she marry him?’
‘Because she’d just got free! You don’t know what it cost her. The worst thing was leaving her sister but she gave up everything, money, security, her own country, everything for the freedom to live the way she wanted, think the way she wanted.’
‘And didn’t she want Esposito? If she loved him, like you say?’
‘She did love him. She would have married him, she told me that. But then they went down to Naples and she found out that she wouldn’t be marrying Enzo, she’d be marrying his entire family. She said she’d escaped from one cage and flown halfway round the world and into another. They don’t understand when they’re young that life gets hard. You need your family. I don’t know how I’d have managed on my own when my wife died. I’d have let things go. If it hadn’t been for my son I think I’d have gone, too. I had this heart trouble, even then. Life plays nasty tricks on you—I mean—who’d have thought little Akiko would go before me? We had such plans …’
The marshal placed a hand on his angular shoulder.
‘Think about your health, Peruzzi. As long as you’ve got that, there’ll be other plans. You thought you couldn’t go on when your wife died. But you did go on. And Akiko, you didn’t know that Akiko would come along
but she did come along, out of nowhere. So you just concentrate on keeping well and let me worry about Esposito. Let’s go up to the workshop and when we get there you can tell me about any other friends or acquaintance Akiko might have had, especially anyone outside Florence who might have come to see her that day. You mentioned a friend in Rome the other day, and Lapo said he’d heard that from you, too. Was it a man or a woman?’
‘A man. Somebody she knew when she was studying art history. I don’t know his name or anything.’
‘But they were still in touch?’
‘Yes, they kept in touch. She went down there not long ago.’
‘Then I’ll find him in her address book. You see I’m not just accusing Esposito—though—’
‘I only met him that once but I can tell you, he loved her. He wanted the child. He’d have looked after her.’
‘We have to find him, then we’ll see. This friend in Rome, too. Who’s to say it wasn’t him?’
‘Or an accident, like I said.’
The marshal had didn’t want to say too much, at least for the moment, but he had to take that hope away.
‘I don’t think so, Peruzzi. You see, we found her other shoe.’
When they parted company, the last thing Peruzzi said was, ‘When this is all over, I don’t suppose … I’d like to have those shoes—I’m not the sentimental sort, don’t think that. I just thought Issino might like them. Yes. You see—well, he could learn a lot, I mean, she’d not been here a year when she made them. It’s not that I—’
‘No. No, of course not. It might be some time but I’ll bring them to you myself.’
His carabiniere driver had already started the engine. Blue exhaust smoke hung low in the rain. As he got into the car, wetting everything he touched, the radio coughed into life.
‘Marshal? Can you go straight to headquarters?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘They wouldn’t say. Just that you should go there and that it’s urgent.’
‘Is Lorenzini there?’
‘He’s in your office.’
‘Tell him to call me on my mobile.’
When it rang, he kept his face averted and his voice low.
‘What’s happened?’
‘They’ve found him.’
‘Where?’
‘Rome. You’re going to have to go down there. They’ll tell you the details at headquarters but I’d better warn you: it’s not good.’
Eight
He was tired. So tired that in spite of the steepness of the climb he could feel his eyes closing and his heavy head dropping, even as he plodded upwards. He tried to prop his head against the rough wing of his seat but he couldn’t help his mouth hanging open. He hoped he wasn’t snoring. He did snore in trains, Teresa said. He shifted his shoulder a bit until he felt his head securely lodged, then went on with his exhausting climb up the gravel path. Beppe, the gardener, was still beside him but they were never going to catch up with the Japanese girl at this rate. She was much higher up and trotting faster than ever. In any case, it was so dark he could hardly make her out at all.
—You want to take those sunglasses off.
That was the gardener’s voice, though he couldn’t see him properly either. He tried taking off his dark glasses but it made no difference at all and the effort of trying to see in the gloom tired him even more.
—How much further is it?
Beppe didn’t answer. If it wasn’t his dark glasses that prevented him from seeing, what was it? The main lights in the carriage were off because everybody was sleeping but that wouldn’t account for it because it couldn’t be night-time in the Boboli Gardens. They close at sunset.
‘Sandwiches, coffee, mineral water, soft drinks!’
That was in the train. They don’t sell stuff like that in the gardens. The gardener said:
—This is a dream …
—I know that. I know, but I don’t want to go up there alone.
Where was the Japanese girl? And how could she run on this gravel without her shoes?
He didn’t ask the question aloud but the gardener answered anyway:
—She’s still wearing them.
—She can’t be wearing them. We’ve got them. She’s dead.
—She won’t be dead until she gets to the pool. That’s why I’m carrying this plant.
That explained why he couldn’t see the gardener. The plant was so big he was hidden behind it. They climbed for a while in silence and then the gardener said:
—The plant in her apartment’s dead. You didn’t water it.
—I couldn’t … I had to do so many other things.
—Other things can wait. If you don’t water a plant it dies. It can’t wait.
—But it was too late! It was already dead. I didn’t know about the girl. I didn’t know about Esposito. Why does nobody believe me?
—They do believe you. That’s why they’re all waiting for you. We have to turn right here.
Laurel leaves brushed against his right cheek, scratching him, but he kept it pressed against the seat wing, anyway, to stop his heading falling. They turned left and started climbing again and it seemed to be getting a bit lighter. When the marshal realised why, his heart began thumping hard and beads of sweat formed at his temples. He kept his eyes lowered, fixed on the gravel which was sliding below his feet like a river. It would have been impossible to turn back without losing his balance and besides, he realised now, people were coming up behind him and they were closing in, chattering, bustling, pushing. They must be journalists, people from the prosecutor’s office, the people from the train …
The light coming from the top of the path intensified, flashing, flashing, sending shockwaves through him. He pushed his head lower and squeezed his eyes shut but nothing would keep the light out and nothing could stop his inexorable upward slide towards the pool.
He was suffocating and his neck hurt. Despite his efforts to prop his head against the seat wing, it dropped down so that his chin pressed against his chest, blocking his windpipe. He couldn’t fight his way to the surface of consciousness enough to readjust it. He knew he must be snoring now and, what was worse, he couldn’t control the trickle of saliva he could feel was forming in the right corner of his mouth.
‘He must be exhausted …’
‘Can you manage?’
‘I think so … thank you. Excuse me.’
Comforting voices. If he’d been able to, he’d have moved his left leg to help them but he couldn’t. He wanted them to keep talking, to keep him in the cosy darkened world of the train but they fell silent and the background noise of the train itself wasn’t enough to hold him. It was fading and the world was getting lighter, flashing, flashing …
—You can see her now if you look up.
He didn’t want to but he had to. He had to lift his head, the gardener was right. He’d stopped breathing. With a choking snort he moved and his head swung away from safety, out into the void where the light was so bright. He was looking up the steep gravel path to the horizon but it wasn’t true that he could see her. All he saw against the glaring sky was an equestrian statue. It was the one that was always there, the gardener ought to know that, since he worked here.
—That’s her. Never walks if she can trot.
But when they reached the botanical garden there was no sign of the equestrian statue.
The gate was padlocked. They had to clamber over barbed wire and push through a high laurel hedge. He saw her standing with her back to him at the edge of the pool, looking down into it. She wasn’t as small as he’d thought. She was still wearing her shoes, so perhaps he could get to her in time, but he was walking so slowly, his legs as heavy as lead. He daren’t call to her, afraid she would trot away from him. He was getting a little bit closer. But shouldn’t her hair have been black? Or was he remembering the black hairy roots of the water hyacinth around her? No. She was Japanese. No Japanese ever had that long fair hair, curling down to the waist. How cou
ld he have got everything so wrong? Why couldn’t he even remember her name?
She and the pool were drifting away from him.
—Wait! I’m sorry! I just didn’t recognise you!
—I know.
Her voice was far away, cold and very sad.
—It’s because I have no face. Further and further away.
—Wait! Please wait! Akiko! Your name is Akiko! But it was too late.
The gardener said:—She’s dead now. Look in the pool. He didn’t want to look but they were all standing there waiting, Peruzzi, Lapo, Santini, everyone.
So he stepped forward into the bright light, his heart thumping, sweat rolling down his temples. He’d thought he was on the train already, but when he reached the edge of the pool they made him step up on the ledge and walk along it, trying to keep his balance, until they reached almost the end of the platform. Then they all climbed into the train and pushed along the centre aisle. The railway police were there as well as the carabinieri and a magistrate. They all stood back to let him through and somebody said:
—It’s his father.
He stopped at the edge of the pool of thickened blood.
The door of the lavatory had been broken down and stood leaning to one side. Esposito was hunkered down in the tiny space but his head was raised, leaning against the wall. His handsome face, seen in profile, was perfect. He was smiling. The marshal’s heart lifted. It wasn’t too late!
—Listen, Esposito, it’s going to be all right. I promise you. I’ll help you. We’ll all help you.
He talked to Esposito for a long time. He got no answer but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that, as he talked, the light felt warm and pleasant on his face and his breathing grew more gentle. Esposito understood the words which the marshal himself couldn’t hear all that clearly except in snatches.
The Innocent Page 12
