‘There is something else,’ she said, finally. ‘But I don’t understand it. I mean, how it fits. What it means.’
Pallioti resisted the urge to smile. Policemen like being right just as much as anyone else.
‘And what might that be?’ he asked.
Eleanor Sachs regarded her hands for a moment. The blunt rounded nails were painted exactly the same colour as her lips, a paleish sort of pink. She folded and unfolded her fingers, flexing them as if they were stiff from cold.
‘The salt,’ she said finally. She looked up at him.
‘The salt?’
‘Yes.’ Eleanor Sachs nodded.
‘I thought you just told me the housekeeper told you, in Roblino’s case, and Trantemento was a guess.’
Was that what she had been lying about?
‘Yes,’ Eleanor Sachs said. ‘That’s right. But that’s not it.’
‘No?’ Pallioti wondered what on earth she was talking about now.
‘No,’ she said, sliding her glass aside and leaning forward. ‘Look,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know if this means anything, or if you already know. If you do, I’m sorry. But by the winter of ’43 to ’44, the Germans were getting really frustrated. It was the start of what some people call the Terror. The partisans were causing serious problems – and threats, civilian reprisals, none of it, was doing much to slow them down. So the Nazis did what they’d done with the Jews. They put a price on their heads.’
‘On the partisans’ heads?’ Pallioti felt his hand move towards his pocket, towards the soft shape of the little book he had taken to carrying there.
Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Food was really scarce by then. Sugar and salt were almost impossible to get. So, that was it.’
‘What was what?’
‘The price.’ She picked up her glass and drained the rest of her wine. ‘That’s what you got,’ she said. ‘For betraying a partisan.’ She put the glass down and stared at him. ‘You ratted one out, and the Germans gave you five pounds of salt.’
Chapter Thirteen
30 January 1944
Donata Leone died. Three weeks ago. She went downhill quite suddenly. Sometimes it happens that way. I’ve seen it before. And yet, I admit, I had allowed myself to think that she was getting better, that somehow she would survive. She had become my friend, and I miss her.
On her last night, I sat with her, holding her hand for a very long time. I was looking out of the window, telling myself it was almost dawn and watching for the grey haze that seeps through the sky. The truth is, I wasn’t thinking about her at the time, even though her fingers were clasped in mine. I was thinking about last year, when we were still officially ‘in the war’ and everything was still halfway normal. And then I was thinking about our childhood, and the skiing holidays, and how I had never really enjoyed skiing itself, but how I did enjoy the chalets, and the hotel, and sitting in front of the fire all together at night with the snow falling outside. All the times when winter was something to look forward to. That’s what I was thinking of, when something made me look down, and I realized she was dead.
She looked so much like Issa – like a thinner, paler version of her – that for a moment I thought, ‘This is what it will be like when Issa dies, when they finally catch her and shoot her, or when she slips in the mountains and falls. She will look like this.’ I reached down and smoothed Donata’s hair off her forehead. Then I did something I have never done before. I opened her bedside locker, and took out her handbag, and found the little comb I’d seen her use, and combed her hair. She was proud of her hair. At the end of her life she had nothing left. I wanted, once more, for her to look beautiful.
After that, I stood up. The ward was quiet – sounds of breathing, sleeping, the occasional juddered moan of a dream, a footstep in the hall outside. No one was watching me. No one saw. I looked down at Donata, then I lifted the sheet gently over her face, and turned away, and walked through the doors and down the hall and into my cupboard, still carrying her handbag.
The honest truth is, I don’t know if I meant to steal it. I don’t know what I meant to do. Perhaps I was going to list her belongings in my ledger. But then it occurred to me that it was pointless, because she had no family. All of them had been killed in the bombings in Genoa. I knew their ages, their names, what they did. And I knew that all of them were dead. So I kept it. I told myself she would have given it to me, as a gift. I put her handbag under the pillow on my cot.
That night, when I went home, Issa was there. She and Papa were full of the news – eighteen of the nineteen members of the Great Council who voted last summer to get rid of Mussolini had been shot after some kind of so-called trial in Verona. More men hailed for their bravery, all now dead. Our new dawn did not last long.
Mama said nothing, and I did not want to talk about it, either, so it was not until after we had eaten that Issa pulled me aside and told me the radio had arrived. She took me up to her room and showed it to me.
Looking at it, I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I murmured, ‘I don’t know how you can sleep with that under your bed. It’s like sleeping on a bomb.’
And to my surprise, Issa nodded.
‘I don’t like having it here.’ She laughed, but I could see she didn’t think it was funny. Then she said, ‘You were right. I don’t care what they say about wanting to help, it’s too dangerous for Mama and Papa. But I don’t know where else to go.’ She sighed. ‘At least I know I can trust them.’
I looked at her closely. There were circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were hollower than they had been the last time I saw her. Perhaps it was because of Donata, but I felt a pang of fear. A white bright flash of it, like lightning. I didn’t realize until that moment how I have always depended on Issa to be stronger than me. Stronger than all of us.
‘You look tired.’ I sat down beside her.
‘There’s been arguing.’ She smiled, but again I could tell she didn’t think it was funny. ‘The men argue. They’re like rats, cooped up in the city. I want to go back to the mountains. But there’s no point until the snow clears, and this—’ She leaned down and patted the box. ‘This is more important. Something’s going to happen.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know what. But the Americans, they’ve made us understand. It’s coming soon.’
She was right. It was in the air. Everyone could sense it. The bombing had become more intense. Livorno had been all but destroyed, and train lines were being hit everywhere. This time the Allies seemed to be aiming a little better, because supply lines were seriously damaged. It was one of the reasons food was so expensive.
But I was not thinking about that. I was worried about what she had said, who it was she couldn’t trust. I wanted to ask her about the arguing, but before I had a chance she said, ‘You have to start remembering, Cati.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You have to start remembering everything you see. And counting. Count everything and remember it.’
Like the drops, I thought. The sticky drops of time I’d counted on that last day when I’d had my wedding dress fitted. Then I’d resisted, and failed, because at the hospital it was something the hysterics did – walked up and down and wrung their hands and counted – steps, nurses, beds, windows. That way madness lies. Now I was being ordered to make a wilful effort to be like them – to unhinge my mind for the sake of the Allies. Enrico, doubtless, would say it was my duty.
I almost laughed, and would have shared the joke with Issa, but she stood up, stretched, and ran her hands through her hair.
‘Papa’s going to help me,’ she said. ‘We’ll find somewhere to take JULIET. Somewhere—’ She smiled and shook her head. I knew she was going to say the word ‘safe’, and that the other joke was that there is nowhere safe. So instead she just said, ‘Somewhere away from here.’
And that was when I opened my mouth and the words came out.
‘I can help.’
Issa stopped and looked at me.
‘I
can help,’ I said again.
And so it began.
For once, Issa did as I told her and came to the hospital the next afternoon. I found her sitting on my cot when I finished my rounds after teatime.
‘Budge up,’ I said quickly, and before I could think about what I was doing, I pushed her aside and reached under the pillow and pulled out Donata Leone’s handbag.
I knew Donata’s address, and that her apartment was in an attic, because while we had sat sewing, she had told me all about it. Told me about her room, and the books that were in it, and The few things she had been able to salvage from the ruins of the house in Genoa. She’d recreated it in words, I think, the sanctuary she had made for herself, because she was afraid she was never going to see it again.
Now I was giving it to Issa. I handed her the keys.
‘No one knows she’s dead,’ I said. ‘There’s no one to tell. I didn’t enter her in the ledger. She had no family. The room will be empty.’ Then, as an afterthought, I pulled out Donata’s papers and her ration card, too. I looked at her printed name. Donata Maria Leone. There was no one in this world who would miss her.
‘Here.’ I put them quickly into Issa’s outstretched hand. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you can find a use for these.’
That is how I became a thief.
Eight days ago, we found out what we had been waiting for. The Allies made a second landing some thirty miles south of Rome. The fighting is intense. German troops are moving south, and JULIET needs to know all about them. So we hoard scraps of information, anything we can find, so she can send them off to ROMEO in what I call her ‘love letters’.
Donata’s room was a great success. It worked just as I had hoped. Issa and Papa simply walked into the building, climbed the stairs and used the keys. JULIET was quite happy there – she needs to be somewhere high up in order for her antenna to work properly. But the problem is that it is too dangerous to transmit more than once or twice from the same place. GAP has kept its promise to ‘bring the war home’, never let the enemy sleep safely in his bed – in particular by throwing hand grenades at German officers in the station last week, and again a week ago, outside the Excelsior. As a result, Fascist patrols are greatly increased. Everyone is suspicious of everyone. And the Germans can trace radio signals. They are good at this.
So, if JULIET is to continue, she must move frequently.
Unfortunately, there are few buildings we can get to now where we won’t attract attention. Mama had the idea that she would prowl through the city herself, looking for places JULIET could transmit from – she says no one ever sees ladies ‘of a certain age’, especially if they carry a shopping bag. But I couldn’t let her do that. So I have sunk to the lowest of the low.
Quite a lot of people are dying just now, one way and another. And when they do, before I make the entries in my ledger, I rifle their belongings. I get their addresses from their papers or wheedle it out of them in conversation, and if they lived alone or I find that their family has fled or died, I steal their keys and give them to Issa. If I think they will be useful, I also steal their papers. And their clothes. Their worn boots. Their gloves and woollen socks and overcoats that smell of cigar smoke or perfume. I have not been caught out yet, but if I am, I will lie. I will say I have no idea where the papers or the keys went. I will say that things get lost in hospitals. I will say that it is sad, but in difficult times, people steal.
Issa hugs me and tells me that all of this has made me a heroine for Italy – a true partisan. But I don’t feel like that. I feel like a liar and a grave-robber. I feel like a crow, picking the bones of the dead.
Chapter Fourteen
The night before, as he had walked away from the cafe after meeting Eleanor Sachs, Pallioti had been of two minds. He very much doubted that she was a murderer. But his instincts still told him, with some certainty, that she had been lying.
He could call Enzo, who would run a background check on her, and pull her in and question her, and generally make her life miserable. He could do nothing, and see what she did next. Or he could carve a route between the two – run a background check and then wait.
He found himself inclined towards the last of these, partly, he realized, because he liked the game. Liars interested him, especially when they had gone to the lengths Eleanor Sachs had. He had no idea what it was she was really after, but he would find out eventually – if only because she would tell him. Liars always told, in the end. If you had enough patience. Because at heart, they were showoffs.
He had pondered the paradox of that – that half the thrill of any con was showing how you did it, thereby destroying what you’d built – as he’d made his way to Saffy’s gallery, moving through the night streets of the city like Jonah through the belly of the whale.
He was still considering, even as he arrived and had a glass of champagne stuck into his hand, how they might verify the connection between Roberto Roblino and Giovanni Trantemento. Eleanor Sachs’s game, whatever it was, was probably irrelevant. But the connection between the two old men, if it existed, was not. He’d sipped the wine, and had been on the verge of accepting the dreary reality that either he, or more likely Guillermo, would have to spend some considerable time on the phone and/or in a library and online in order to see if they could back up a single thing the good Dr Sachs had said, when a potential solution had presented itself in the unlikely guise of Maria Grandolo.
‘Alessandro!’
Despite the fact that it was November, Maria was wearing a wisp of a dress. She might have the brains of a peahen, but they were definitely housed in the body of something, well, just short of a goddess. Her legs, which were perfect, went on for approximately half a mile. Her stomach was flat. Her hair shimmered and her face was a perfect oval. But what really interested Pallioti about her – in fact, the only thing that interested him about her – was that, while he was as bewitched as any man for about three minutes, that was it. By minute four, the idea of actually having sex with her was invariably replaced by an almost panicky desire to flee.
Maria had clasped him by the shoulders – she was stronger than she looked – and kissed him rather too enthusiastically on either cheek.
‘Alessandro!’ she’d exclaimed again, demonstrating that she did, in fact, know his name.
‘Hello, Maria, you’re looking well.’
‘We have been on holiday! One last one before the horrible winter. Beautiful! We took over the hotel. You should have come! Such fun. The spa. I tried to get Seraphina, but you know what she’s like. Work! Work! Work! Just like you, Alessandro.’ She paused and took a breath. ‘But at least you’re here tonight,’ she added. ‘Seraphina didn’t tell me. If I’d known I’d have invited you. We’re going for dinner afterwards.’ Maria had named one of the glitzier restaurants in the city. ‘Let me see if they can add another place!’
She had whipped out her mobile as Pallioti began to protest. Then, quite suddenly, he had remembered the organization Saffy had mentioned – something run by Maria’s family that dealt with the partisans – and stopped in mid sentence. He could, of course, have used his not-inconsiderable clout to contact whatever the group was and ask for help. But that would have made it official. Which would have meant potentially public. Which was not only un-Florentine, but an anathema to the notoriously private Grandolos.
Maria had looked slightly startled when, instead of protesting, he’d smiled, put his hand on her elbow, and said, ‘How delightful. I’d love to join you.’
Later, he’d told himself it was a small price to pay, and if nothing else, would give him a chance to make up for Sunday by spending an evening with Saffy and Leo, both of whom had spent the next hour glancing at him as if he had gone off his head.
As he expected, the dinner had been loud, the restaurant pretentious, and the food ordinary. But the experience hadn’t killed him, and he had got what he wanted. Maria, flattered that he deigned to speak to her at all, had been more than helpful. The eagerness with wh
ich she’d made a call even before the first round of champagne had been poured, had made him feel a heel. But it had borne fruit. As soon as he arrived at the office the next morning, Guillermo handed him a slip with an address on it and informed him that he had an appointment with a researcher at Remember The Fallen.
Now he was standing outside a suite of offices in an expensive and anonymous building not far from Piazza D’Azeglio. If he had been expecting genteel eccentricity, elderly ladies in cardigans or little old men in fusty tweed suits juggling manila files, it looked as if he was going to be disappointed. The young woman who greeted him was crisp and professional. She smiled brightly and extended a well-manicured hand.
‘Ispettore,’ she said. ‘We have been expecting you.’
The room he was ushered into had several sofas, low tables with magazines, and what was obviously her desk. On it sat neat stacks of papers, a potted orchid, and a large computer. There wasn’t a manila file in sight. It could have been the outer office of an upmarket psychiatrist, a lawyer, or an estate planner.
‘I am Graziella Lombardi,’ she added, as she crossed the thick blue carpet towards a closed door. ‘The administrator. I would be happy to help you, of course. But our Director has insisted that she would like to meet you herself.’
She rapped on the door – which, like the rest of the room, was painted a pale golden colour, its mouldings picked out in pale blue – pushed it open, and said, ‘He is here, Signora.’
Pallioti heard a murmured voice. There was the sound of someone getting up from a chair, then the door swung open and the Director of Remember The Fallen stepped into the room.
She was wearing a sweater of pale pink, lipstick that matched it, and a single strand of pearls. Her white hair framed her face in loose abundant curls. Pallioti had no idea how old she was, and understood at once that it didn’t matter. The woman who was extending her hand to him put paid to any idea that youth and beauty were connected.
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