‘All that way on the bus?’ Sandro set down the water and the glass. Sighed and poured.
Luisa’s mouth turned down, just a little. ‘I know,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, I know. She wanted to go. She wanted to show it to me.’
‘Oh, I tried the estate agent,’ said Sandro, absently. Luisa looked at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t back from lunch, they said. Running late, they said he’d call me back. Galeotti. Go on.’
He visualized the man, his flash car. And clients like Marisa Goldman on his books, the agency’s letterhead on her desk at the bank. No wonder he didn’t have time for Sandro. Was Marisa Goldman moving house?
‘He never called, though.’
Luisa sighed.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Giovanna Baldini – I told you about her, right? She was at school with me.’ Sandro nodded, waiting. ‘She lives in the flat above. We went in. We talked to her.’ Luisa took a sip of the water and mopped at her forehead, pale and damp with sweat. ‘She knew a bit about the flat – and – and in the end she got the concierge to talk to us.’
‘The drunk you talked about?’ said Sandro. ‘And?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘So it turns out, the flat wasn’t his at all.’
Sandro looked at her and realized he had never really believed in Anna’s apartment with its nursery in the first place. What had he thought? That she’d imagined it? Or that her fiancé had? But it did exist.
‘No,’ he said. ‘So?’
‘So it’s been on the market, half furnished, in a terrible state, for years.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘The builders had been sent in, just today.’
‘Sent in by whom?’ Sandro stared at her, trying to work it out. The timing. When had Josef taken Anna to see this flat?
‘The new owners.’ Luisa sighed. ‘It wasn’t easy. You don’t understand, getting information out of these people.’ She pursed her lips. ‘The concierge took twenty minutes of Giovanna bellowing through his keyhole to even come to the door, then he didn’t want us to come in.’ She shifted in her seat. ‘I thought poor Anna was going to throw up in there. I had to make her sit outside in the end.’
‘Is she all right?’ said Giuli. ‘Anna?’
Sandro saw Luisa’s expression, remorse and apprehension mingled. ‘I think so,’ she said wearily. ‘I tried to get her to come here, but she said home was the Loggiata, that’s where he’d come to find her. She’s stubborn.’
You’re all bloody stubborn, thought Sandro, looking from one woman to the other. ‘What did the concierge say?’
‘Well, he blustered,’ said Luisa. ‘I think he spends too much of the day out of it to know a lot. Said the agent had been round last week with two yuppie types. He didn’t know if they’d agreed a price. So we went up and tried to talk to the builders. Only they were Moroccan and none of us speaks French even, let alone the other language they were speaking.’
‘Berber,’ supplied Giuli. Sandro looked at her. ‘What?’ she said. ‘It’s one of the Moroccan languages. Hassan at the Montecarla, that bar, he speaks it.’ Sandro looked back at Luisa, outdone.
‘She’s an asset,’ said Luisa, smiling wearily at Giuli, who now almost blushed. At least, Sandro thought, it was a considerable improvement on the pallor she’d had since she turned up at the riverside bar. And why had she spent so much time in the bathroom?
‘Agreed,’ said Sandro, temporarily putting his anxiety about Giuli to one side. ‘So. The builders?’
‘And it turns out they got asked to do the work this weekend; the deal went through end of last week. That’s all the builders knew, but the yuppies put down a deposit in cash on Monday and they were in.’
Sandro sat. ‘The concierge,’ he said slowly. ‘You told me he was a drunk – but what kind was he? I mean, just a bit of a slob, or all day every day drunk? So he wouldn’t notice if Anna’s fiancé was squatting in one of his apartments?’
‘I talked to Giovanna about that,’ said Luisa. ‘He might be drunk – and she said he usually is out of it – but she’s sharp as a tack. Said she’d definitely have known if someone was living in the flat. But the heating and water were off, for a start. She grumbled about it because it meant she had to turn up the heating in her place to compensate over the winter. It wasn’t habitable.’ She sighed. ‘Giovanna walks past the door a couple of times a day, and she’d never seen Josef.’
But if there was one thing Sandro had learned about the man, he was good at keeping a low profile. It wasn’t easy to fall off the radar like that, just the one sighting. As far as they knew he’d broken cover just the once, at the Loggiata, trying to get to Anna? That told Sandro that he was desperate, and scared. Where had he been hiding?
‘You showed her a picture?’
‘Anna had her phone,’ said Luisa, rubbing her eyes. ‘She showed Giovanna.’ Her voice was muffled.
She raised her head, and looked so tired Sandro said gently, ‘All right, angel. You need some rest.’
‘It’s not much of a mugshot,’ said Luisa, ignoring him. ‘But Giovanna was pretty certain. She told Anna off for losing weight since the picture, so she could tell that much.’
‘She has lost weight,’ Giuli put in, frowning. ‘Off her face, for sure.’
Patiently Sandro looked at the two of them, and waited for them to return to the point.
‘So he wasn’t living there,’ he prompted eventually. ‘But he got the keys – from somewhere, for at least two visits, with Anna, maybe more.’
They looked at him, and Sandro got up and went to the window, pushing back the shutters. They thought it was hot inside, but the air that entered was as humid, hot and stagnant as if he’d opened the door on a Turkish bath.
‘Who owned the place, then? Who sold it to the yuppies?’ He looked down along the dirty street, where the lights were beginning to blink yellow. They were beginning to congregate, on the corner: three dreadlocked kids, one dog. As he watched, one of them dropped a can to the pavement and stamped on it with a crack. Not too many yuppies here.
‘Some old couple, years back,’ Luisa said promptly. ‘Bought as an investment, hardly lived in recently, she’s widowed.’
She was watching him. For a moment, the pale, attentive oval of her face looked like a painting to Sandro in the circle of light falling from the wide, low shade.
‘Can’t see an old couple being anything but suspicious of a young Roma,’ he said thoughtfully. Thinking of the old lady at the Loggiata. Reading his mind, Giuli grunted agreement. ‘So how’d he get the keys?’ said Sandro.
‘The keys,’ said Luisa, sitting up straighter, a hand on the table and tapping as she did when she was thinking hard. ‘They were what worried her. Worried Anna. They were wrong.’
‘Maybe he stole them,’ said Giuli.
‘Maybe they were lent to him,’ said Luisa thoughtfully.
Sandro crossed from the window and leaned down over the table, feeling something take shape.
‘By the owner?’
Luisa shook her head slowly. ‘The keys he had weren’t the owners’ set, were they? A Ferrari keyfob? For an old widow?’
Sandro thought of Galeotti showing them round the flat in San Niccolo. His personalized number plate. His Maserati.
Giuli butted in. ‘I’ve heard stories,’ she said.
‘Stories?’ said Sandro.
‘Stories about estate agents,’ she said. ‘And what they get up to in those empty apartments they’re selling.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro, more tetchily than he meant. ‘We’ve all heard those stories. But what’s the connection with Josef? Where’s he been hiding? And what has he done?’
*
Bitch, thought Roxana, following her superior’s customized Cinquecento – stripes from end to end, red on white – through the automatic gate. Where did Marisa Goldman get off? Bitch.
It had had Val shaking his head all over again; Marisa was a weird one, all right. It was as if she had no need to make people like her, she wa
s above all that. Even if Maria Grazia was right and she wasn’t as wealthy as she wanted people to think, she certainly acted like it. Entitled, that was the word for the way Marisa acted.
And here was Roxana, doing her a favour, regardless.
‘No,’ Marisa had said, watching Roxana and Val.
‘But it’s him,’ Roxana had said.
‘Yeah, it is,’ Val had said, looking at Marisa curiously. ‘It’s Gio. Josef, from the Carnevale.’
Roxana had felt her brain whir as she said it. I knew it, a small voice was insisting, I knew there was a connection. But the rest of it was just crazy static. It didn’t make sense.
‘Seems like it,’ Val had said. He had shrugged. ‘Weird, huh?’ Giving every impression of not understanding the weirdness of it at all.
‘We should call him,’ Roxana had said decisively, and that was when Marisa had been galvanized into action. ‘Cellini. I have his number somewhere.’
‘No,’ she’d said. ‘No way, not on company time, not on company phones.’
‘But it’s him,’ Roxana had said.
‘You didn’t recognize him?’ Val had been looking curiously at Marisa.
Marisa’s jaw had set. ‘A guy from the porn cinema,’ she had said, her voice flat and cold, not even a raised eyebrow.
‘I didn’t mean—’ Val had looked alarmed. ‘No, I just meant, he’s in once a week, you must have seen him.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ she had said. ‘He could be Il Cavaliere, Berlusconi, for all I care. I’ve given that detective enough of my time; I told him I might have seen him in with Claudio. Is it going to help the bank, looking for this – this guy? No.’
‘He was pretending to be Claudio,’ Roxana had said, to herself, her eyes on the picture. There was something about it – so cheap, so poorly reproduced – that had made her sorry. The girl’s face, she looked so happy hanging on to this – fake. Pretending to be Claudio? It didn’t make sense.
‘I guess maybe it’s this girl that’s looking for him,’ she had said slowly. ‘Although he didn’t say it. Sandro Cellini.’ She felt in her jacket pocket: was that where she’d put his card?
Staring each other down like cat and dog, Marisa and Val had paid her no attention.
‘All right,’ Roxana had said. ‘I’ll call him when work finishes.’
Reluctantly, Marisa had shifted her gaze and nodded stiffly. ‘Only an hour to go,’ she’d said, the expensive gold watch sliding down her smooth brown forearm as she raised her slim wrist to look at the dial. ‘You can follow me on your Vespa. To my place.’
I can, can I?
Now the automated gates swung smoothly closed behind them as Roxana dismounted on to the gravel path. The air up here was different. It was different for the rich, all right. It smelled of roses and wet grass; a sprinkler was rotating beside the big, square villa, a glittering rainbow behind the flowerbeds.
There were two cars parked against the villa: the Cinquecento and a little canary-yellow Punto. The other inhabitants of the villa must be away for the summer, as Marisa would have been if Claudio hadn’t been so inconveniently killed. Or inconveniently killed himself.
Marisa was still in the car, tapping something into her mobile. As Roxana watched, she climbed out and briefly her long-legged frame stuck in the car’s low-slung door; she looked uncomfortable, wrong, awkward. And for a second Roxana wondered whether it was all made up, all an illusion. She hadn’t gone with Paolo on Thursday, Val had said. What if this wasn’t really her place and Marisa was housesitting, she was squatting, her boyfriend and his yacht didn’t really exist at all, it was borrowed, all borrowed? What next? She’d got her tan at a campsite, her clothes from a discount outlet?
Marisa put the phone away. ‘Paolo,’ she said briefly. ‘He’s in Elba.’ And strode past Roxana towards the villa’s vast door.
Sweetly Val had whispered to her as they’d left Marisa’s office, ‘I’ll call him. The private detective guy.’
And he’d quickly gone to the spot by the door where you got the best signal and dialled the number, while Roxana had looked from her counter at Val hunched over his phone, then at the closed door to Marisa’s office, and back again at Val. Urging him on.
It had been almost a relief when he’d hung up, shaking his head, and hurried back to his post. ‘Engaged,’ he hissed, sliding back into his seat. ‘Busy guy.’
Roxana had realized she wanted to talk to Sandro Cellini herself, anyway. Not here, though, not in the toxic gloom of the bank, where everyone could hear everything she said.
Why was that? she asked herself, hurrying across the gravel after Marisa, who was impatiently holding open the heavy door. The scent of roses and jasmine was almost too much, along with the hypnotic motion of the sprinkler and the sense that there were servants, discreet and well-trained, hovering just out of sight.
Why did she want to talk to Sandro Cellini? There’d been something in the man’s eyes, something of her father’s look as he stood in the cantina by his jars of nails, turning some part of machinery over in his oil-stained hands and working out what it did and how to fix it.
Damn, thought Roxana, and in a moment of panic she stuffed her hands in her pockets, looking for it. Had she given it to Val? Cellini’s card. Would he be in the phone book? Roxana was in the phone book, sensible ordinary people didn’t have any problem with being in the phone book – and then there it was, dog-eared but intact, in her shirt pocket.
‘Coming,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’ And slipped inside.
Marisa had the ground floor of the villa: cool, even in weather like this. They came into a wide, dim hallway, pale flagstones on the floor, two sets of double doors on either side of it. There was a smell of polish, of wood and leather and cold stone: all seemed chill, clean, empty of life.
‘Hello?’ Marisa called out, her voice high-pitched and strained. Roxana saw her look down and as her eyes adjusted she noticed that a small neat suitcase stood beside a console table. Marisa’s shoulders relaxed just a little. ‘Ah, Irene?’
The doors on their left opened. ‘Hello, Marisa.’ Irene Brunello stood there a moment, looking from Marisa to Roxana with weary doubt. She seemed much smaller than Roxana remembered from her occasional visits to the bank, sometimes with a young child in tow. Smaller and more uncertain, but dignified.
‘You remember Roxana?’ said Marisa with a stiff gesture. ‘She wanted – she just wanted –’
‘I wanted to say I’m sorry,’ said Roxana, taking a step towards Irene Brunello then stopping abruptly. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Irene Brunello stepped back hurriedly, disappearing into the room, leaving the doors open behind her. There was a quick intake of breath – surely not impatience? – then Marisa went in after her. After a moment’s hesitation Roxana followed. This was a mistake.
Irene Brunello was blowing her nose, and pulling on a jacket. ‘Thank you,’ she said, not looking anyone in the eye. ‘Miss Delfino, Roxana, I didn’t mean to – thank you. It’s just that I haven’t got used to – to this, yet. My mother keeps calling me. The police keep calling me.’ She sat down abruptly on the sofa.
Marisa seemed rooted to the spot.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Roxana asked desperately. ‘A glass of water? A glass of – anything? Brandy?’
‘I’m driving,’ said Irene Brunello, pushing her handkerchief into her pocket. ‘I – it’s time for me to go back to the children. I can’t make arrangements for the – for the – for Claudio’s funeral, they say I can’t do that yet. I have to tell the children.’
Roxana sat beside her and took her hand. It felt cold. ‘Your mother’s with them?’ she said.
Irene nodded. ‘At the seaside,’ she said, with such desperate mournfulness that Roxana felt like crying herself.
‘You don’t mind if I have one?’ said Marisa, her back to them. Roxana heard something clink and smelled whisky.
‘They’ll be all right, for a bit,’ said Roxana. ‘They’ll be asleep by
the time you get back, won’t they?’
Irene looked at her, struggling to regain composure.
‘You can’t tell them at night,’ said Roxana, knowing she was right. ‘You have to do it in the morning.’
Irene frowned. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re right.’
Marisa came over and sat on the opposite sofa, nursing a large tumbler of amber liquid on her narrow knees.
‘The police called?’ she said, her tone made careless by the whisky.
‘They came by,’ said Irene, sitting there with her hands in her lap clasped so tight the knuckles were white. ‘I went with them to our apartment. There was nothing, I told them, nothing was out of place, everything was normal.’ There was a tremor then to her voice. ‘The gas and the water were switched off, just as we always leave them, there was no sign that anyone had been there, but they took things from his desk, anyway.’
‘Things?’ said Marisa distantly. ‘Do they know anything yet?’
Roxana tensed: the question seemed so brutal. Irene Brunello looked at Marisa curiously, as if she didn’t know her. ‘I don’t think they do,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘They just ask me questions. More questions. They never answer any.’
‘What questions?’ Marisa took another slug from her tumbler, and Roxana stared at her, willing her to shut up. Saw the greedy expression in her eyes and it occurred to her that Marisa was a drunk. Maybe she usually had it under control, maybe she was just good at hiding it.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, keeping hold of Irene Brunello’s hand. ‘You don’t need to go over it again.’
Irene showed no sign of having heard, staring at the long window open on to the grass and the rainbow shed by those sprinklers spinning to and fro. ‘I don’t think I would like to live here,’ she said and turned to look Marisa in the eye. ‘It’s too quiet. I need to hear – something. To hear other people. The children.’
Marisa looked away from her, down into her glass. She could pretend to be embarrassed by the non sequitur, but Irene was right. It was too quiet out here.
Detaching her hand gently from Roxana’s, Irene sat up very straight. ‘The questions didn’t make sense to me,’ she said. ‘They asked me if we had money worries, then if we’d had a windfall recently. They asked me if the bank was in trouble. They asked me how Claudio was behaving when there was talk of a takeover of the bank, a few months ago.’
Dead Season Page 25
