by Karen Swan
A sudden rumble made her shriek; it sounded as though the tunnel itself was moving, heaving itself up and shifting. ‘Sorry,’ she squeaked, covering her mouth with her hand and feeling embarrassed as it subsided again within a few seconds. ‘That . . . that really startled me.’
Nico, who had rushed back, stared down at her, blinding her with his torch. ‘It is the subway.’
‘Right. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’
‘No.’
He hesitated, before turning and continuing down the tunnel.
‘So, where does this lead to then?’ she asked.
‘It is a surprise.’ She thought she could hear a grin – suppressed excitement, even – in his voice.
‘What’s down there?’ she asked, stopping and pointing her beam in the direction of a new tunnel that led off sharply to the right.
‘We don’t know yet. It has not been mapped.’
‘It’s almost curving back on itself.’
‘Cesca, you must come this way. This is the tunnel which has been investigated. You will be pleasantly surprised, I think. I have—’
‘But I think—’ She turned off the beam of her headlight and squinted. ‘Yes, look. There’s light over there.’ She pointed towards a faint haze, almost indistinct even in this pitch blackness. It would have been all but impossible to spot in daylight.
Nico, still standing where he had stopped, shook his head. ‘Cesca, we cannot go there. It may not be safe.’
‘But why not? The parts of the tunnel we’ve been through so far have been in excellent condition. Relatively speaking.’
‘That is not to say they all are. I already told you – the damage or weakness cannot necessarily be seen by the eye. We need to bring down the 3D scanners first. Now come,’ Nico said, sounding impatient and beginning to walk again.
‘But it’s literally just coming from around that bend there. It’s not far and I can clearly see there’s nothing in the way – no rockfalls, no cracks . . . I don’t think.’
‘This way.’ Nico’s voice was firm and he was still walking, clearly thinking she would follow. Clearly not knowing her at all.
She was almost at the bend before he realized she wasn’t behind him.
‘Cesca!’ His footsteps echoed loudly as he ran, the beam of his torch bouncing up and down with every bound as he charged furiously back towards her. ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ he demanded, taking hold of her arm. ‘Do you have any idea of how reckless this is? This entire structure could come down at any moment.’
‘Well, it will if you keep shouting like that,’ Cesca said, defiant. ‘Besides, if it’s stood here for two millennia, it hardly seems likely it’s going to collapse right now.’
‘It has stood here for two millennia because it was undisturbed. You have no right to charge about down here as you like. You are not even supposed to be here. I only brought you because—’ He stopped suddenly, his breathing heavy.
‘What? Why did you bring me down here, Nico?’
He stared at her, at a loss for words. After another moment, he shook his head. ‘This was a mistake. We will go back.’ He turned to walk away.
‘It’s not been undisturbed,’ she said to his back.
He stopped again and looked back at her, frowning, almost scowling now. ‘What?’
She pointed to a space in the roof, just ahead. ‘I think there’s some sort of access point there . . . I can hear voices.’
‘What? Where? Let me see.’ He ran past her, angling his beam upwards. A round hole squirrelled a short distance upwards towards a primitive sort of manhole cover, iron handholds in the walls as before. He reached up for one and swung on it, testing its strength against his weight. It groaned weakly in its bracket, tiny stones skittering down the surface. He looked back at her. ‘You must get back.’
‘But—’
‘Cesca, I am not asking you. Get back.’
The tone of his voice dissuaded her from arguing this time and she did as she was told.
‘Further.’
She stepped right back, at least ten metres away from him now, the blackness wrapping its damp arms around her. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Check it out, of course. But if it starts to give way, you must run back the way we have come. Follow the string. You understand?’
‘Look, maybe this isn’t a good idea,’ she said, not liking the way she could hear more stones falling. They were only tiny, but what was it he had said about them sloughing off like plaster? That train had sounded as if it was just behind the next wall and all those years of vibrations . . . Surely that was what had instigated the sinkhole to open up in the first place. The walls of this tunnel could be paper-thin . . . He’d been right. What the hell had she been thinking, charging around down here as though she was in the Famous Five? ‘I’m sorry, all right? Let’s just—’
But a grunt of effort told her he had already lifted himself up, his beam of light swinging upwards and now boxed in the overhead cavity so that only a faint glow showered down. She could hear the dull clang of his boots on the iron bars of the steps as he slowly, carefully, climbed, testing every bar first before he committed his weight to it.
‘Nico?’ she asked.
There was no reply. He was out of sight. The footsteps had stopped now and she could hear more grunting, a faint pounding. She looked behind her, swinging the beam of her torch around, checking she was alone. She knew it was stupid to think otherwise. Of course she was. It was a secret underground tunnel. Aloneness was the one thing you could guarantee down here. Still, it felt more forbidding to be standing here alone in the dark.
When she looked back again, the glow from his torch had gone. ‘Nico, are you okay?’ she asked, walking forwards a few steps. ‘Nico—?’
‘I’m right here.’
Cesca stopped below the access hole and looked up. He was lying on his stomach, somewhere dark, one arm reaching down to her. ‘Come up.’
Allowing him to grab her by the wrist, she managed to get her feet on the first rung.
‘Mind the second one. It is very loose,’ he cautioned, just as another stream of stones slid away.
She climbed as lightly as she could, her heart beating as fast as a brigadier’s drum. Nico helped to pull her up through the manhole, which she could see now had been covered by half-rotten planks of wood nailed to an iron frame. With just her head and shoulders through, she looked around curiously. They were in a dark room. A cellar, perhaps. It smelled damp, with stacked wine bottles gleaming like nocturnal creatures’ eyes. Overhead, footsteps sounded thunderous, muffled voices falling through the cracks of the floorboards, a door rattling lightly on its lock.
Nico was already prowling the room. He picked up a bottle of chianti, appraising the label.
‘Where are we?’ she marvelled, just as there was a sudden shout, very close, coming from behind the door. She gasped and looked up as in the next instant it swung open, a body silhouetted in the frame. Startled, Nico dropped the bottle, glass shattering on the stone floor, and there was an ear-splitting scream. A light was switched on, flooding the room and dazzling them both.
‘Francesca?’
Hurriedly, Cesca turned off the beam on her head torch and looked up.
‘Signora Accardo?’
Dinner hadn’t been on the cards for this evening, but then neither had breaking and entering into the basement of the osteria. Besides, Signora Accardo wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.
They had to sit at a table indoors; the osteria was busy with the first sittings of the evening and every table outside had already been taken. Cesca watched the ceiling fan rotate, trying to feel some relief from the oppressive heat; she was baking in the boilersuit and wished she could take it off. Her apartment was only a few metres from here. She could be home, changed and back again in minutes . . .
Nico – having insisted on paying for the bottle he had dropped – had ordered another bottle for them, his fing
er tapping on the stem of his glass, his eyes roaming the dark room. He didn’t speak and she knew he was angry with her for wandering off. She could see that he was also restless, wanting to talk further to Signora Accardo but, as ever, she was manning the front-of-house operations of the restaurant. She kept bustling past every few minutes, nodding in their direction to indicate that she would be over any moment, any moment now . . .
‘Well, that was a turn-up for the books,’ Cesca said, trying to break the ice. ‘Who’d have thought the tunnel would have led here?’
He looked at her, his eyes coal-black and inscrutable. ‘It had to lead somewhere.’
‘Well, yes, but . . .’ She faltered. ‘I wonder if Signora Accardo knew about it?’
‘How could she not? It was in the middle of her cellar floor.’
‘I suppose lots of people don’t bother investigating things like that, though, do they? They just assume it’s to provide access to the sewer or something and leave it. After a while, they probably don’t even notice it and then, after another while, they forget—’ She was wittering, she knew.
‘Yes, yes, I get the picture,’ he snapped.
Cesca’s shoulders slumped. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off like that.’
‘No. You shouldn’t,’ he shot back, his dark eyes shining.
‘But it turned out okay, didn’t it?’
‘Luckily for you,’ he said hotly. ‘It easily could not have been the case. You were lucky.’
‘Okay, I said I’m sorry. I get it.’ She looked away, hating that his anger upset her.
‘No, I don’t think you do. Do you think those protocols are there for no reason? Do you think I have not lost people before because they too thought they knew better? You could easily have been killed, Cesca. We both could.’
‘Okay, Nico! You’ve made your point. How many times can I say it? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ She sat back, chastened, feeling like she’d just been pummelled. ‘Jesus, you’re always so mad at me.’
‘Yes! Because—’ He stopped, looking away. His finger began tapping faster on the glass.
‘Because what?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘It’s sport to you?’
Signora Accardo appeared, a steaming plate in each hand.
‘Here,’ she said, setting them down and pulling out the spare chair. ‘Osso bucco.’
Cesca smiled weakly. Nico’s anger had completely taken away her appetite, not to mention she was already over-heating in this damned boilersuit. Couldn’t she just have had a salad?
‘Thank you, Signora. It smells incredible,’ Nico replied, his eyes bright again. ‘Please – I know you are busy, but what can you tell us about the tunnel? Did you know about it?’
‘Of course! It was used as a bomb shelter in the war.’
‘Did you ever go down into it?’
‘Me? No. Umberto, though . . . for a while he grew the mushrooms.’ Signora Accardo had dropped her voice, her eyes cautioning.
Nico looked across at Cesca, anticipating he needed to explain. ‘The mushroom farms were illegal, set up in the disused underground tunnels; not only in the old quarries here in Rome, but also in other cities across Europe, such as the catacombs in Paris. The dark, damp conditions are perfect for cultivation and the farms difficult for the authorities to find. But there was a big crackdown in the 1980s and most of them were closed down.’
‘Since then . . .’ Signora Accardo shrugged. ‘Why go down there? Dark, dirty, cold.’
‘When was the last time your husband accessed the tunnel?’ Nico asked, cutting the meat on his plate.
‘It was not for him to go down; it was for others to come up.’
‘Which others?’
Signora Accardo’s eyes flickered towards the piazzetta.
‘From the palazzo?’ Nico asked.
‘The princes. They would always be chasing down there as children. We could hear them from the cellar sometimes.’ She smiled, shaking her head indulgently at the memories. ‘They would sneak out from here, knowing we would not tell.’
‘So Vito knew about it?’ Cesca murmured. ‘That’s interesting. Elena says she only knew about the service tunnel.’
‘That is correct. This tunnel—’ Signora Accardo said, lightly stamping her foot on the floor. ‘—Was blocked up from the private palazzo tunnel twenty-eight years ago by the Visconti, after his brother died.’
Nico frowned. ‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘To stop the memories.’
‘There must have been a security risk to the palace too,’ Cesca said thoughtfully. ‘If the princes could get out, surely thieves could get in? They have one of the most important art collections in Europe behind those walls,’ she remembered.
‘Where do the tunnels lead to, do you know?’ Nico asked.
‘All over. Some to the garden—’
Nico’s eyes slid across to Cesca.
‘—Some to the piazzetta here too.’
‘You mean there are other buildings with access points like yours?’ Cesca asked.
‘Of course.’ Signora Accardo looked at Cesca, her expression darkening. ‘Yours, for example.’
‘Mine?’ The access point would lead out into Signora Dutti’s apartment, then, as she occupied the ground floor.
‘The Damiani estate still owns all the properties in the Piazzetta Palombella.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Cesca said.
Signora Accardo shrugged, wiping her hands on her apron and making to stand. She could see a couple outside looking for her. ‘Eat. I bring you secondi.’ She left again.
‘Well, that was interesting,’ Cesca said, watching her go.
‘Yes.’
‘But you look disappointed.’
‘Only in that the tunnels are not as new to find as we had hoped.’
‘You mean in terms of archaeological treasures?’
He shrugged.
‘Well, at least you still get to map them. That’s got to be worth something. You can add them to your big 3D underground map and fill in the gaps – so to speak.’ She laughed at her own joke.
Nico watched her, observing how she lifted her hair up to cool her neck.
‘What?’ She felt self-conscious.
He looked away, shaking his head, his eyes back on the palazzo. ‘Nothing.’
She sighed, frustrated. ‘There’s obviously something. You keep looking at me as if . . . as if you hate me.’
‘I do not hate you,’ he refuted. ‘I just don’t . . .’ His voice tailed off again. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Like you don’t understand my clothes, you mean?’
He leaned in towards her suddenly. ‘You cannot say what you said and not expect it to make a difference,’ he hissed. ‘What am I supposed to think?’
She groaned. ‘Look, I already apologized for calling you annoying. I told you I was drunk.’
‘Not that.’
‘Then what?’ The way he looked at her . . . Cesca went very still, feeling cold fingers begin to creep on her skin. ‘What did I say, Nico?’
‘You said . . .’ He inhaled and held his breath, his eyes probing hers. ‘You said you killed someone.’
The air sucked out of the room as though on vacuum, the ceiling fan as loud as an aeroplane. Her eyes dropped from his to the floor, the walls, outside – anywhere so that she didn’t have to look at him and see the expression in his eyes.
‘Cesca? It does not make sense. I do not believe it. But why would you say it?’
She felt herself tremble, tears filling her eyes. It had been a long day. She was tired. This was all too much. ‘I didn’t. I never said such a thing.’
‘Cesca, you did.’
‘No, I didn’t. I know I didn’t,’ she said, getting up and pushing the chair away so forcefully that it clattered to the floor. She ran from the restaurant, but she didn’t go to the haven of her apartment, not to fifty metres from here where he could simply follow her. Instead, she rou
nded the corner and dived into the warren of tiny streets, running as fast as she could, trying to get lost.
She knew she hadn’t said that thing, because it was wrong, a lie. She hadn’t killed someone.
It had been two.
Chapter Thirty
Rome, May 1982
‘Isn’t that Phillipe Santana in the third row?’ Vito murmured in her ear.
Elena didn’t need to turn her head to get a good look. The Damiani family box gave them a bird’s-eye view from which no one could escape their scrutiny. Not that she bothered to look. The point of sitting up here was to be looked at. ‘Is it?’
‘I think so.’ He paused. ‘I thought they were in Verona.’
‘How so?’
‘The hostile takeover I told you about.’
She shifted in her seat. ‘Oh yes. Of course.’
‘We should try to speak to them afterwards.’
‘Mmm.’
The lights dimmed and the hum of conversation dwindled to silence at the first stray touch of bows on strings as the velvet curtain rose.
‘Do you want the programme?’ he asked, leaning forwards again.
‘It’s Così fan tutte, Vito,’ she sighed. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times. I know it better than that soprano.’
The stage lights rose and she inclined her head as she always did when something had to be endured. She had perfected the art of sitting like a statue. She could still every part of her body so that the only part of her moving was her heart – which was ironic, given it was her heart that felt so completely dead these days. Sometimes she thought she was like a black bear, able to lower her heart rate so that it barely beat at all, drifting into a sort of hibernating state, alive but not awake.
Behind her, the door opened and closed again: Vito making the toilet break he couldn’t during the interval when everyone clamoured to talk to them; a blade of light falling over her seat and the front of the balcony.
She let her mind drift, blocking out Despina’s mischief on stage and thinking of what needed to be done tomorrow. There was a meeting with the Red Cross scheduled to discuss fundraising initiatives for the growing Ethiopia crisis, as well as lunch with her publisher friend Max Everstein, who was in town for three days – a lunch at which he would no doubt beg her to agree to that book idea of his, even though they both knew the answer would be no. Then she had a fitting with Mr Armani at 3 p.m. for an AIDS benefit next month; drinks with Christina and Sigmundo at 7 p.m., followed by dinner at the embassy with the new American ambassador to Rome. She hoped Maria had brought out her white pantsuit for the lunch – it always needed a good few hours to hang before she wore it; she would need to check when they got in.
