The Villa Triste

by Lucretia Grindle

  One of the crime team was backing out of the jeep. She put a foot down, her white bootee testing for the ground, then stood up, clutching a handful of plastic evidence bags. As Pallioti approached, she looked up and smiled nervously. The girl looked barely old enough to be out of school. He’d noticed that was happening more and more often these days. Peering through the door she had just emerged from, he saw a shotgun case resting across the back seat. It appeared to be still zipped up.

  He nodded towards it.

  ‘Is the gun inside?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl nodded. ‘It was zipped when we found it.’

  ‘Ammunition?’

  ‘A box of cartridges. In the glove compartment.’

  Pallioti nodded. He didn’t bother to ask what kind they were. At least one of Balestro’s rifles, he was sure, would take .22s, the most common ammunition in the world. The same that would be found in the gun beside his outstretched hand, and in his head. They would discover that he bought them all the time. There would be at least one box, probably more, somewhere in the house. His gloves would probably come from the same place, if it was a decent hunting shop.

  ‘Salt,’ he said, looking back at the girl.

  ‘Dottore?’

  ‘I’d like you to look for salt.’ He nodded at the jeep. ‘Any traces at all you might find. In the mats, the seats. Anywhere in the car. It’s especially important.’

  She nodded, trying not to appear confused. ‘Salt?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Pallioti said. ‘Salt.’ Then he walked away.

  In the house, Enzo Saenz was going through Piero Balestro’s desk. He was back in jeans, the suit he had taken to wearing apparently a thing of the past. At least for today. Frowning, head bowed, his ponytail tucked into the collar of a leather jacket under which a shoulder holster was plainly visible, he looked less like a police inspector than a thoughtful and rather meticulous criminal. Only his hands, encased in the standard white latex gloves, gave him away.

  Pallioti stepped into the room. Again, he had the same sensation he had had upon entering the driveway this afternoon. The place looked exactly the same, but was different. He had noticed this before in the homes of the recently dead. A sudden change in the air. A shifting of molecules. Demoted from the status of possession to mere object, things became denser, duller, colder.

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  Enzo shrugged.

  ‘Hard to tell. About this? I would say, no. About some strange transfers of significant sums from Cape Town to a bank in the Cayman Islands, probably.’

  Pallioti thought of the winking eye of the security camera, the shine of the electric gates and the battery of locks on the front door.

  ‘He was afraid of something. Or someone.’

  Enzo glanced up.

  ‘Well, my gut instinct, looking at this lot, is that he might have had reason to be.’

  ‘He said something about “clinics” in South Africa. He worked for a drug company there. At least initially.’

  Enzo picked up another sheaf of papers from the rolltop desk and flicked through them.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘couple that with the fact that when I asked the maid why, if she was so worried, she didn’t go looking for “Papa Balestro” or call the police, she told me that she’s not allowed to go out of the house or use the telephone, and’ – he shrugged – ‘we’ll see. I’ll want the Finanza to take a look at all this. It may not do us much good. But at least they’ll owe us a favour.’

  ‘Ammunition?’

  Enzo nodded. He put the papers down.

  ‘Four boxes upstairs in a locked drawer. There’s also a safe. Set into the floor under a wardrobe. Very professional. I’ll have it open by evening. But frankly, I doubt there’s going to be anything in it for us. I found the gun licences, too,’ he added. He turned to face Pallioti. ‘They’re all in order,’ he said. ‘For the shotgun and the rifles. No small arms. On the other hand, if it was a souvenir, he probably wouldn’t have registered it. Would have just kept it in a box somewhere, to remind him of his glory days. Which might be why he used it this morning.’

  ‘So you think that’s what happened?’

  Enzo waited for a moment. He looked down at his white-gloved hands, then at Pallioti. In the late sun that streamed through the big windows his eyes were not brown, but tawny, almost golden, like a bird of prey’s or a cat’s.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘After what you told me the other night, and what Guillermo told me before I came down here, yes I do. I owe you an apology, Maestro. I think you were right all along. When the theatre thing went wrong, the three of them were arrested and someone, probably Massimo, saw a way out. He seems to have been the ringleader. They did a deal and were allowed to escape. The price was the radio network. I think they thought they’d got away with it, and to be fair’ – Enzo shrugged and looked around the room – ‘it looks like, for a long time, they did. But things catch up with people. I don’t know if it was the medals, or before – but they fell out. Maybe someone wanted to come clean, developed a conscience, even if it was late in the day. More likely, I think it was the medals. We know Trantemento didn’t want anything to do with them, but I’ll bet the other two did. Maybe that explains the money in the safe, at least some of it. We know Trantemento wrote Roblino’s letter. I’ll bet he wrote Balestro’s, too. For a price. Maybe someone was blackmailing somebody. Or maybe they were all black-lucretia Mailing each other. Or there was something in this book Massimo was talking about that caused a stink. Getting the medal certainly would have helped publicize that, by the way.’

  ‘Any sign of it? A book manuscript?’

  ‘None,’ Enzo said. ‘It might turn up, or, like most books, it might have got no farther than his head. The truth is,’ he added, ‘we’ll probably never know what happened between these three. But yes. Yes. I think you had the bones of it right. Massimo killed the other two. It explains why they didn’t fight. Why they let him in. Then on Saturday when you came calling, he knew it was over. From everything you’ve told me, he doesn’t sound like the type to let anyone else take control. So he decided to do the honourable thing. Or the easy thing. Or whatever you want to call it. I’m open to suggestion,’ Enzo said. He looked at Pallioti. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I’ll wait until after the medical examiner is done. But if you’re asking me what I think—’ He nodded. ‘That’s what I think.’

  ‘And Bruno Torricci?’

  ‘A bigoted scumbag who can’t spell and probably makes his living pouring cement for the Camorra, but for once, about this, he was telling the truth. He didn’t kill anyone.’

  Pallioti nodded.

  ‘And the salt?’

  Enzo shrugged.

  ‘The ME thinks he just put it in his pocket. She’s probably right. The others? Making them eat it?’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows? He was a savage bastard? Something they did sixty years ago, some supposed “betrayal” that’s been bugging him? They were probably up a mountain somewhere and the others wouldn’t let him salt his sausage and he’s never forgotten it. That’s what these guys are like,’ he added. ‘If they were you and me,’ Enzo said, ‘if their minds worked the same way ours do, they wouldn’t go around shooting people.’ He shook his head. ‘But honestly?’ he added. ‘Why the salt? The chances are, we’ll never know.’ He smiled. ‘One of the first things you taught me, Lorenzo. We can’t know everything.’

  Pallioti nodded. His undercover officers had taken to calling him Lorenzo at about the same time he’d started calling them the Angels.

  Someone shouted from upstairs. Enzo shouted back, then excused himself.

  From the sitting-room doorway Pallioti watched Enzo Saenz take the stairs two at a time. Then he walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

  The maid was sitting at the table. A uniformed policewoman was making tea, using the same pot and cups that had been on the tray on Saturday. She was murmuring into a radio clipped to her shoulder as she reached for a sugar pot, opene
d a drawer and found teaspoons – something about a social worker and immigration. The dog, who had been untied some time ago and returned to the house, slumped in front of the huge stove. All of them looked up as Pallioti came into the room.

  The maid’s face was tear streaked. Looking at her, Pallioti could not decide if she was fifteen or thirty-five. The policewoman offered him tea, but he shook his head. A row of canisters stood beside the stove. Methodically, he opened each one.

  ‘Salt,’ he said, when he had finished. ‘Where do you keep the salt?’

  The maid looked at him.

  ‘No,’ she shook her head.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. No salt. Only a little.’

  She got to her feet, opened a cabinet, and handed him a small cardboard shaker that looked as if it might have been stolen from a fast food restaurant. Full, it could only have held a few tablespoons.

  ‘There isn’t any more in the house?’ Pallioti asked.

  ‘No.’

  She took the shaker out of his hand and replaced in it the cabinet.

  ‘Papa had blood pressure,’ she said. ‘Salt not good for you.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘Bravissimo! Bravissimo, my friend!’

  All rancour forgotten, the Mayor was apparently Pallioti’s best friend again. In fact, Pallioti had not heard him sound so ebullient in years. If he was not careful, he might rise straight out of his chair and begin to bounce around the ceiling. Or at least drop the phone.

  They had just received news from the Finanza that the haul of papers taken a week ago from Piero Balestro’s desk and safe had indeed led back to a major drug company which had been a focus of attention for some time concerning the illegal sale of tainted drugs for the treatment of HIV in several African countries.

  The safe had also coughed up quite a lot that was of significant interest to Immigration. Piero Balestro’s clinics apparently ran a lucrative sideline in the sale of babies for adoption. The maid, who, it turned out, at a best guess was only seventeen, had probably been one of them. Immigration and the social services were still trying to sort that out. In the meantime, Interpol, Europol, the FDA and FBI in the United States, and several other Pols, Feds and tax agencies were all equally delighted.

  In addition, if all that were not enough, Cesare D’Aletto was riding high in the mezzogiorno. The journalist who had first come up with the neo-Nazi angle and whom Enzo had talked to early in the investigation had turned out not to be blowing hot air after all. Closer examination of Bruno Torricci’s girlfriend had revealed that she had once worked for the IT company supposedly implicated in messing up ageing partisans’ benefits. Having come to an agreement with them to leave quietly in return for a hefty cheque, she had moved on to her present job freelancing as a ‘software specialist’ for the company that had installed systems not only for Brindisi, but also several other southern policing divisions. There, she had used her not-inconsiderable skills again, most notably to install several ‘back doors’ through which various operators, including herself, had been able to access the systems and information databases concerning pending and ongoing operations and investigations.

  That was how Bruno Torricci had known about Cesare D’Aletto’s suspicions concerning the gun that had killed Roberto Roblino. He’d merely used the information to taunt D’Aletto and Enzo Saenz and waste their time and patience. And as far as anyone could tell, that was about all that had happened so far. The police in the south had been embarrassed, sent on wild goose chases and plagued by leaks to the media. But the scope for more dangerous mischief was obvious.

  Having put a stop to it had made Cesare D’Aletto a hero. Rumour said he’d been offered a significant promotion and agreed to accept it only on the grounds that he could stay in the south and ‘finish the job he’d started’, which only made him more of a poster boy. In his most recent press conference, he’d made a point of publicly thanking Enzo Saenz and Pallioti, both for their help and for ‘providing an extraordinary example of exemplary policing’.

  The upshot of all this, according to the Mayor, was that Florence had banked enough favours to last for several decades, Pallioti’s new division was being spoken of as ‘an Inspirational Model of Cooperative Law Enforcement for the Twenty-First Century’, and his own critics had been kicked so far into the long grass that they would have to mount a safari to find their way out.

  ‘Bravissimo! ’

  He dropped the phone. There was a shuffling of papers, then another, ‘Bravissimo! ’

  ‘Anything you want, my friend,’ the mayor said, finally taking time to draw breath. ‘Now is the time to ask!’

  Pallioti looked out of his window. From where he was sitting behind his desk he could see a bright early December sky and the grey top of the palazzo on the opposite side of the piazza. What could he say? That he would like Enzo and the magistrate to revise their opinions concerning the death of Piero Balestro, which had now been definitively listed as a suicide?

  Without a shred of evidence to the contrary, that was hardly likely to happen. And even if it did, the Mayor would doubtless argue that it was deeply undesirable. Two homicides had been solved, wrapped up and tied with a bow. And if what had finally been given to the media was a little vague – well, that was deemed to be, if not preferable, at least more palatable, than the unpleasant truth – that three ageing and decorated heroes were in fact brutal traitors who had caused countless deaths and unknown suffering and then lived long, and by most measures fruitful, lives before they finally fell out and killed each other. For a start, the families, and not just Maria Valacci and Roberto Roblino’s housekeeper, would go demented.

  Since receiving the news of his cousin’s death, Little Lamb had suddenly become Massimo’s greatest defender. Pallioti had broken the news himself to the old man, driving straight there after leaving the Balestro house. Agata, who had been tending the pigs at the time, had seemed slightly stunned. Her thoughts had rather obviously flown straight to the bank account and the property. Achilleo Venta, on the other hand, had burst into tears, his fragile shoulders shaking as his gnarled hands had gripped Pallioti’s.

  An hour later, as he drove down the rutted drive and turned towards Florence, Pallioti had thought that it was not the first time his job had given him cause to reflect on the very strange nature of love. He doubted it would be the last.

  ‘It is sad, my friend, this squabble between our Holy Children. I know you are not happy.’

  The Mayor knew him too well. They had been friends for a long time.

  ‘Sometimes,’ the Mayor went on, ‘sometimes we compromise for the greater good.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pallioti said. ‘Sometimes we do.’

  After agreeing to have lunch, at the Mayor’s expense, and saying goodbye, Pallioti picked up his pen and began to drum it against the edge of his blotter. His mind ran over the conversation he had had with Saffy the night before. So far, she was the only person who seemed as troubled as he did by the idea that Piero Balestro had suddenly, after all these years, been so unhinged by Pallioti’s visit that he had waited twenty-four hours before having a violent, and apparently unique, attack of conscience that left him moved to fill his pockets with salt and drive out and shoot himself at dawn with a gun no one could remember him owning.

  Of course, she had agreed, it was possible. Anything under the sun was possible. Massimo might also be revealed as a private but dedicated family man, and a model altruistic doctor committed to healing the poor.

  Except he hadn’t been.

  His will left nothing to charity. The young woman who kept his house had been little better than a slave. He had left a wife and two children in the States without speaking to them for years, and spent his time – first in Zimbabwe and then in South Africa – not selflessly healing the sick, but instead selling them black-market drugs at ridiculous rates and possibly in exchange for babies. She had no problem, Saffy had said, in believing that he might have killed the other two, especia
lly if they were going to ruin his little book debut. But it would be a cold day in hell before she would believe that a man like that performed a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the space of two days and took a gun to himself. For a start, she insisted, his ego was too big.

  Pallioti, of course, agreed. But they had also agreed that there was no evidence that pointed to much of anything else. A track through the woods and a few broken twigs that led, metaphorically and otherwise, only to an empty road – where someone might have parked, and someone might not have. The fact that a pair of gloves had been found in the driver’s side pocket of the jeep and that the ones he had been wearing – which did indeed have a powder burn – did not match the brand he usually bought. No trace of salt in the fabric of the seats or the carpet, or anywhere else in the jeep. Even Pallioti had to admit it didn’t add up to the proverbial smoking gun.

  Still, the conversation had left him feeling better. They had poured the last of the wine and changed the subject. To the sales from this show and the subject matter of Saffy’s next one. To the apparently fabulous hotel Maria Grandolo’s family had co-opted for their autumn break. To whether or not Saffy and Leo would finally rent a villa by the sea for next August, and if so, whether they should opt for Agrigento, which was closer and would allow Pallioti to come for weekends, or Sardinia which was reliable, or somewhere in Apulia, which, since her holiday, Maria was now championing vigorously. Secretly, Pallioti hoped they would nix the last option. The idea of having Maria Grandolo stalking him down the beach and turning up half naked in the swimming pool was enough to make him volunteer for August overtime.

  He considered the papers on his desk. There were the final details of the fraud case that needed to be cleared up, and the pile of information Guillermo had amassed on Roberto Roblino, Giovanni Trantemento, and Piero Balestro. It included copies of property deeds and tax forms and, in the case of Roblino, even import and export licences. There was also a copy of the original Red Cross report Eleanor Sachs had dug up. She’d faxed it, with a note promising that it had been legitimately copied and not stolen. Pallioti slid it out and stared at it. Eleanor had been right the first time, it was hardly worth it, just a few sentences.