Dead Season

by Christobel Kent

  She shook her head. ‘I said, we were careful with money, always: that didn’t change. I said, Claudio dealt with all the money matters. I said, Claudio took everything seriously.’ She was sitting very still and Roxana saw that it was becoming harder and harder for her, not breaking down. ‘He was honest. He was an honest man.

  ‘It wasn’t the normal thing, to go to the big supermarket in La Spezia, because it was cheaper. Only I think now that was an excuse. He never went to the supermarket, he was coming to Florence to meet someone, and he knew I would be angry, so he told a lie. He was coming to Florence all the time.’ The words came out in a rush. Roxana saw Marisa was very careful not to raise her head.

  ‘They said that?’ asked Roxana gently.

  Irene shook her head. ‘They said they’d been in contact with the mobile phone company and at ten o’clock someone had called Claudio’s mobile, from Florence, on a prepaid phone, bought God knows where, not registered. They asked me if I recognized the number.’

  ‘Did you?’ Marisa’s eyes were fixed intently on Irene now, and Roxana wondered for a second whether she’d been brought out here to play the part of good cop in Marisa’s planned interrogation.

  ‘I know it wasn’t your number, Marisa,’ said Irene. ‘It’s all right.’ The two looked at each other with a strange sort of calm. Irene turned back to Roxana.

  ‘I didn’t recognize it,’ she said dully. ‘But I don’t have a good memory for numbers. When all you have to do is press a button on the phone, you don’t need to remember a number any more.’

  She looked at Roxana. ‘I wonder,’ and as she said this she tilted her head stiffly as if to relieve some pain. ‘Did I leave too much to him? Would a good wife have known all about bank accounts and mobile phones and takeovers?’

  ‘You did know,’ said Roxana gently, not knowing where the words were coming from. ‘You knew your husband inside out, he relied on you for everything. You were a good wife. You are a good mother.’

  On the far sofa Marisa made a stifled sound and got to her feet, stalking back to the liquor cabinet on her long legs.

  Irene didn’t even turn her head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I don’t know anything any more. How could this happen to us?’

  ‘Terrible things do happen,’ said Marisa, leaning back against the cabinet with her newly filled glass in her hand. ‘We manage not to think about them, that’s all.’ But her voice was cool and distant.

  Irene Brunello did turn her head then and looked at Marisa for a long moment, before getting to her feet, smoothing her skirt carefully, buttoning her jacket. When she spoke her voice was steady again. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘If I leave now, I will be – will be home by nine. At the sea, I mean. By nine.’ She smiled tentatively down at Roxana. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘It was good of you.’

  Roxana stood too. ‘You know how to get hold of me,’ she said. ‘If you – if you need – if I can help.’

  ‘I know how to get hold of you?’

  ‘You called my home. When …’ And Roxana saw Irene Brunello’s face crumple.

  ‘I did,’ she said, ‘oh, I did.’ Catching a sob in her throat. ‘When I didn’t know where he was, I was desperate.’ She passed a hand over her face. ‘What was I thinking of? I called Inquiries for numbers all over the place, anyone I could think of.’ Her hand stopped at her mouth, covering it. ‘God. I talked to your mother.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Roxana, wishing she hadn’t said anything. ‘Of course you phoned. We would all have done the same.’

  She didn’t even bother to look over at Marisa to recruit her. Marisa wouldn’t have called anyone. Irene’s shoulders dropped, as if she was close to exhaustion.

  Gently, Roxana put a hand under her elbow, guiding her towards the door, edging her out, Marisa watching their every step without moving until they were out in the hall. Then Roxana heard the heavy clunk of the tumbler put back down on the sideboard, and at the front door Marisa appeared beside them. Irene picked up her bag.

  While they’d been inside, the light had faded and in the dusk the roses glowed against the luminous green of the grass, the sprinklers only audible as the faintest rhythmic swish.

  ‘Goodbye, Irene,’ said Marisa lightly, and leaned forward just slightly as to accept a formal kiss.

  Irene came no closer, only held out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Marisa,’ she said and Roxana wondered if they would ever see each other again, these two. At a memorial service, at the funeral? Perhaps the police would never solve this thing: perhaps they’d never release the body. Claudio would stay in a police morgue forever. Marisa stepped back, her eyes very black.

  ‘He liked you,’ said Irene, turning to Roxana. ‘Claudio did. He worried about you.’

  Roxana didn’t even know what to say. Worried about me? And knowing that if she opened her mouth she would burst into tears, she just bobbed her head, except that she could feel the tears anyway. Irene leaned in and pressed her cheek against Roxana’s. ‘It never meant anything, you know. She never meant anything to him.’

  Roxana froze. Claudio. She was talking about Claudio?

  Irene drew her head back, just a fraction, her face so close she might have been about to kiss Roxana. ‘She was here,’ she whispered. ‘The maid – she has a maid, the girl doesn’t like her-told me, before she went. Here all the weekend. Her boyfriend-her boyfriend with his yacht. He has told her to leave. But I can’t even be pleased about that.’ And then abruptly she stepped back and straightened her shoulders.

  The little yellow car waited on the gravel and Irene made her precise, determined way towards it, but halfway there something stopped her.

  Irene Brunello set her handbag down on the gravel and knelt beside it, looking inside, then peering, then scrabbling. Roxana could hear her hurried, shallow breaths, and then the high tinkle of a phone from somewhere in the jumbled contents of the bag. She could feel her own hands clenched into fists as she willed Irene to stay calm.

  He’s dead, she wanted to say, nothing’s going to bring him back. The worst has already happened.

  Irene straightened, got to her feet, the mobile in her hand and half the contents of her bag on the gravel. ‘Hello,’ she said, breathlessly, ‘hello?’ Then, dully, ‘Oh. Oh, it’s you. Yes.’

  Roxana hurried across to help gather up the contents of the bag while there was still light. Fumbling about on her knees, she couldn’t help hearing the conversation – or one side of it – being conducted over her head. Then she stood, holding out the bag.

  ‘Who?’ Irene was saying, sounding tormented. ‘No, no. I’ve no idea who that is. No, we weren’t buying property, no. I don’t know this man.’ She was holding one hand over her ear, and she swung round to look into Roxana’s face with incomprehension. ‘How much?’ Her voice went up a note in panic. ‘No. I don’t know anything about it, he didn’t tell me anything about it. Please.’

  Over Irene’s shoulder, Roxana could see Marisa on the doorstep, four, five metres away, arms folded and the tumbler in one hand, her face sallow in the dusk. She could hear the urgent crackle of a voice talking to Irene and wanted to say, shut up, leave her alone. He was a good man. He was.

  ‘I can’t talk to you about this now,’ Irene said, with a desperate attempt to sound calm. ‘I don’t know this man and I have to go home to my children now.’ And she clicked the phone shut.

  Still holding out the handbag, Roxana said nothing. Irene took it, dropped the mobile inside, slung it over her shoulder and walked in silence to the car but at the door, as she climbed in, she looked up at Roxana. ‘I don’t know what they meant,’ she said. ‘The policeman said another man was dead and there may be some connection.’

  ‘Another man?’

  There was a sudden silence, except for the evening song of the birds in the trees, thousands of them, it seemed to Roxana, in all this luxurious expanse of garden and trees and shrubs, filling the air.

  ‘A man, a man,�
�� said Irene, her face upturned. ‘Found dead at Bellosguardo beside his car, they thought a mugging at first. He had the cutting in his pocket, from the paper. Where Claudio’s death was reported.’ She was very pale, the thought of another death, another family bereaved, making her face a blank of fear. ‘An estate agent.’

  ‘A coincidence,’ said Roxana, trying to think. Trying to make sense of it. ‘Surely it could be just – I don’t know.’

  Did people cut out random pieces from the paper? But Irene’s expression suggested that there was no room for the possibility of coincidence – that this was bad news, and everything was horribly connected.

  ‘They asked if we were buying a property,’ she said as though talking to herself. ‘The police. They said Claudio had – they said he had – the Guardia di Finanza said—’ And she stopped. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t think about it.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Roxana, taking hold of her arm. ‘Call me later. Call me tomorrow. Call me any time, Irene. This will be all right.’

  ‘He said that,’ said Irene Brunello, and Roxana knew she wouldn’t call. ‘He said that. But I don’t know if it can be all right.’ Roxana stepped back and Irene pulled the door closed, wound down the window. ‘Goodbye, Roxana,’ she said.

  Who told her it would be all right? Watching the slow movement of the automated gates opening, the blink of the tail-lights as the car disappeared, Roxana could only think, ridiculously, of Sandro Cellini.

  ‘Don’t,’ she called back to Marisa, her hand poised over the button that would close the gates again. ‘Leave them. I’m going too.’ Going home to see Ma, to pay the handyman, to sit a while in the dark until she felt safe again. To call Sandro Cellini.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Marisa, arms folded across her body again in that pose of hers that said, Come no closer. ‘That could have been worse,’ she said with a stiff smile as Roxana leaned down to pick up her helmet.

  ‘You think?’ said Roxana, pulling on the helmet, horribly uncomfortable in the heat; for a second she longed for the motorino rides of her early teenage years, hair flying in the wind along the coast road, arms round some boy.

  Could it really be true, what Irene had said about Marisa’s boyfriend? Was it some way of – lashing out? Or had Roxana just imagined it, had she misheard? One thing was for certain, she wasn’t going to ask Marisa.

  Would she even say thank you? Thank you for coming, for talking to the bereaved woman, for diluting the grief? Of course she wouldn’t.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Marisa. Roxana gawped.

  ‘She hates me,’ said Marisa.

  It was the whisky talking. Marisa drained the glass.

  ‘You could do worse than Val, you know,’ she said then, looking down her nose. Her languid voice was only slightly slurred. ‘It’s all about family, you see, about connections. He’s got his own apartment, all he needs is a wife, and he likes you, I can tell. He told me today he’d sold the motorbike, can you imagine that? Growing up: this has made him grow up.’ She paused, her huge eyes gleaming as she gazed up to the darkening sky. ‘You’ve got nothing,’ she said, ‘no security, if your family’s not connected, that’s how things are. Particularly now.’

  Roxana stared at her: there was too much to argue with in this little speech for her even to get started on it. Particularly now – what? Particularly now we’re all out of a job? He likes me? She hadn’t even thought about that. And looking at Marisa she thought, you’re probably not even my boss any more, I don’t need to be polite to you. But she found she didn’t want to be rude either.

  ‘I don’t need Val,’ she said, swinging a leg over her Vespa. ‘I’ve got a family.’

  ‘I’ll let you know when we re-open,’ called Marisa, ‘keep in touch,’ as the gates began to close behind Roxana. She raised a hand in acknowledgement and turned her head just slightly. Marisa stood there on the porch of the villa that wasn’t hers and seemed in that moment to Roxana to be absolutely alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS IRONIC, THOUGHT Luisa, lying in the dark, that when her baby had died she had thought briefly in the dreadful, mad, dark months that followed – the only time in her life when she’d lain in bed, day after day, this very bed – that it had been the lack of a maternal instinct in her that had caused her baby to die. Even though the doctors had explained their daughter’s syndrome to her, more than once, even though they’d told her it was nothing to do with her, it was a fluke, still she’d thought it was because even though she’d waited and waited she’d never at any stage of her pregnancy really felt like a mother.

  Ironic, because now she was lying awake fretting over two younger women, neither blood relations, as though she were indeed their mother. Anna Niescu and Giulietta Sarto: the one waiting, passive and hopeful, for her baby, and the other, who had spent her life turning away from normal family life, deciding now at the very last moment that a family might be what she wanted after all. Was ironic the word, or should it be tragic?

  Next to her Sandro shifted. She could tell from his breathing that he was a long way from falling asleep.

  ‘You know I’m working tomorrow?’ she said. He grunted. Fine, was what the grunt meant.

  They were past that, both of them; Sandro was past being jealous of every moment she spent in the shop, and Luisa was past throwing herself into work so that she didn’t have to think about the cancer. It now seemed like a crazy phase. She’d even been to New York. Her boss Frollini had taken her for the collections, no doubt just a misguided attempt on his part to cheer her up, to tell her he needed her, she wasn’t on the scrapheap yet. It had caused trouble for a bit, but they were past that now too.

  Over thirty-five years Luisa had learned to interpret her husband, who was a man of few words. Fine, was what the grunt meant: fine, let’s not talk. He would be thinking, behind the closed eyelids; the occasional impatient exhalation, the movement of the arm, on top of the sheet, then back by his side, told her that much. And they both had plenty to think about.

  Of course, they had no idea what was going through Giuli’s head, not for sure: Giuli was as tight-lipped as she had ever been about her private life. Work, she could do, scrubbing floors, sorting out the computer, answering phones, taking histories from her clients, either for Sandro or at the Women’s Centre. She thought she was playing it close to her chest, but Luisa could see. Something was happening in there: she was pale, she was fidgety, she was distracted. Then there was the tenderness she showed around Anna, the softness in her voice when she talked about Enzo, the engagement, making things formal for the first time in her chaotic life. For God’s sake, she must have thought, could it happen? Am I too old?

  Luisa shifted on to her side. Sandro exhaled.

  Or was this just Luisa superimposing her own fears, her own regrets on the poor kid? That would be the look she’d see in Sandro’s eyes if she did nudge him awake, turn on the light in the humid room, and say, actually, not fine at all, actually, let’s talk. Giuli’s a tough cookie, he’d say, wearily rubbing his eyes and blinking at the clock on his side of the bed. Giuli knows what she’s doing.

  Luisa lay still. Maybe. Maybe she does.

  Anna Niescu, on the other hand. Luisa wished she could believe the girl knew what was coming. The birth was one thing – and Luisa found herself squeezing her eyes shut in the dark in an effort not to remember any detail of how that felt – getting that baby out safely was one thing. Dealing with whatever was waiting out there for her to learn about her beloved fiancé was another.

  The three of them had sat there under the light as it grew dark outside, Sandro’s scrawled pages of notes between them, shuffled around the table like cards. Each of them thinking silently about Anna, whose fate they were deciding, moving slowly around the old-fashioned kitchen of the Loggiata, trying to get comfortable in her narrow bed.

  By nine they still hadn’t eaten anything, so Luisa had sorted out a plate of good market ham, some bread turning hard in the heat, a
jar of pickled vegetables, even though no one had asked for food. Sandro had doggedly forked his way through a plateful, only pausing to ask, halfway through, ‘Did they have figs at the market? The black ones?’ Luisa had said she’d get him some tomorrow in her lunch break; they’d eaten those figs when they went away on their honeymoon, and August always reminded him of them. A short season, a week or so, a short life – twelve hours, barely enough to get them to the market before they dissolved into their own juices.

  Giuli had only picked at the food, but Luisa had said nothing.

  Sandro had set it out for them while they listened in silence, both their hearts sinking, Luisa could tell by looking at Giuli’s face. Anna’s fiancé Josef was not a bank manager, of course he wasn’t.

  ‘We know his name now,’ he’d said.

  Anna’s beloved was Josef Cynaricz, a Roma who’d started life in southern Poland and passed through a transit camp outside Ostia three years ago, a gypsy boy whose DNA the police had on file. No one’s idea of the perfect son-in-law. Someone was keeping him quiet with the loan – or promise – of the apartment at Firenze Sud. What was he keeping quiet about?

  ‘Not for any good reason,’ Sandro had said, frowning. ‘The DNA. There was no evidence of criminal activity, none.’

  She’d never known him take issue before, seriously take issue, with some of the sleight of hand carried out by what he’d always thought of as his force, the Polizia dello Stato, one to which, despite the fact it had forced him into early retirement, he had always remained fiercely loyal.

  Now, it seemed, his loyalties were beginning to shift.

  ‘I don’t think she’s stupid,’ Sandro had said stubbornly. ‘He might be a traveller but nothing she’s said about him makes him sound like some fly-by-night, love ‘em and leave ‘em type.’ He had slapped a hand on the table, surprisingly loud. ‘He’d be long gone if he was. He stuck around till the eighth month, for God’s sake. Why go now?’