'No,' he said, 'I'll go on waiting here.'
CHAPTER 10
Gino made one last phone call.
'Di Nuccio? It's Gino ... at the Pensione Giulia, since I was passing . . . Listen, can you check two names for me against the list?'
There was no need to say which list. He read the names out from the blue register.
'They are? Thought to be in Rome, that's what I remembered seeing. Yes, here, or they were . . . nothing yet except to call Headquarters, and in any case they've got away, but there are two men here who will be the agents who are following them . . . No, I won't, except to tell them that they got away in a 500—yes, it must be because that would be about the time that they stole it, so if you'll give me the number . . . right . . . yes, I've got that. I'll tell them straight away so they can get after it, and then I'll wait here for the men from Headquarters and explain. Right, see you later.'
Gino tore the bit of paper from the telephone pad where he had scribbled the car number.
'Show me to the room quickly!'
Sirens could be heard faintly in the distance.
'None of this is my fault,' cried the proprietor, now thoroughly frightened. 'I called you right away. I'm covered.'
The two of them ran along the squalid strip of carpet that led to room number ten. The sirens were getting louder.
The two Digos agents who had been waiting tensely for two hours inside the room heard the frantic wail of the sirens and the two sets of running footsteps at the same time. The Couple they were following had six killings to their names and were known, on occasion, to use submachine-guns. The first agent had fired two shots before the door burst open. The other fired a split second later. By the time they saw Gino there was a small red hole like a third eye between the two mildly surprised blue ones.
'Bloody young fool!' screamed one of the agents at Gino as he fell, back and cracked his blond head against the door jamb. 'Bloody young fool?
The other, terrified out of his senses, was still firing uselessly against the wall.
The Marshal's last call came from the station at ten minutes past two. The woman had appeared suddenly at the pensione reception desk, her face covered in red blotches but her expression determined. He knew, even before she had ordered the taxi, that she was going to try and leave, defying him to stop her. When the receptionist had tried and failed to get her a seat on the afternoon flight she had asked for a taxi to take her to the station. The ticket she had shown the Lieutenant, although it had a couchette booking for Wednesday, was valid for three months.
'It's me, Guarnaccia. We're at the station. She's leaving.'
'What time?'
'Now, more or less. Does it matter now, anyway?'
'It might. We've found that she flew in to Pisa last Sunday. There isn't a flight out after the time the Dutchman war killed so she couldn't have left again until Monday morning at the earliest, which means she must have flown back to get to London in time to take the train she did. It also means she must have stayed somewhere on Sunday night. We're checking every possible place, but we're largely dependent on luck now, on hitting the right place early on. The Magistrate's train gets in at thirteen minutes past two. What time's her train?'
'In about twenty minutes.'
'I see. That makes it seem pretty hopeless. I'll go on with it, anyway. There's always the chance that her train might be late.'
'It already is late, curse it.'
That was just the trouble. He had followed her to the station where she had gone to try and change the booking for her couchette..
'Booking's closed for that train, I'm sorry. It's been taken off the computer. In any case, couchettes for Calais were booked up two days ago, so . . .'
If the woman had made a fuss or lost her temper, the clerk would probably have started serving someone else and ignored her, but she stood there staring at him, paralysed. Having got herself this far, she was evidently incapable of re-thinking or even of turning back. Sensing this, the clerk felt obliged to say something.
'Do you want me to check tomorrow night's train?'
She stared at him uncertainly. Taking her silence for assent, he tapped out the code and waited for a printed card to come out of the machine. When it did, he said: 'That's booked up, too. I'm sorry, Signora.'
Still she stood there, unable to take her eyes off him, willing him to get her on to a train. He scratched his head, staring down at the card.
'Can't you stay another day or so?' he asked, wanting to cheer her up a bit. 'Don't you like Florence? Stay with us a bit longer and I'll see when I can get you a couchette . . . weekend's difficult but Monday's often quieter . . . what do you say?' He even, recognizing her accent, tried to ask her in English: 'You like Florence? A beautiful city? A few days more, eh?'
The Marshal was standing to one side of the ticket window, a few feet away from her. He saw a bead of sweat break on her temple and trickle down towards her neck. The queue behind had begun to take an interest in the case and now a white-suited man pushed his way to the front to offer advice.
'Surely, if it's a matter of an emergency, the Signora could travel without a couchette.'
'That's true,' put in a woman, 'I've done it myself and it's not all that bad. Only as far as Paris, mind you, but even so . . .'
'Not on this train,' the clerk tutted and wagged his finger. 'Couchettes only. There are no ordinary seats. It's always possible that someone may cancel, of course, but I can't help you there. It means waiting until the train comes in and speaking to the chef-du-train ... if you want, though. I can check the Amsterdam carriage, there were a couple of places on that when I last—what's the matter? Don't look so frightened, I'm not trying to pack you off to Holland! All the carriages travel together as far as Thionville, in France; you could change to an ordinary carriage when they re-make the train tomorrow morning.'
'Poor thing, look at her, she doesn't look fit to cope . . .'
'Travelling gets worse every year . . .'
'She's in black, too; I think she must be bereaved . . .'
'What's the problem?' Another railway official had come up to his colleague behind the window. 'Here. Someone will collect this ticket at three. I'm going off. What's the hold-up here?'
'This Signora wants to take the Holland express, the nineteen-forty-one this evening, but the couchettes for Calais are booked up.'
'Well, her ticket's valid three months; she must go when it's not booked up.'
'I know, but it's the same tomorrow night, and ..." He indicated the woman's black garb and blotchy white face, so incongruous among all the healthy brown limbs and light summer clothes.
'Just a minute.' The second clerk hurried out of the booking-office and reappeared in seconds with a solution.
'Express two hundred,, the thirteen-twenty-seven Holland-Italian—no couchettes on it at this end but she'll get a seat and couchettes will be added further north. She'll have to change in Milan.'
'But surely, it's gone . . . ?'
'Should have done. Travelling seventy minutes late. It hasn't got here yet . . .'
The Marshal had been obliged to lose sight of her while he telephoned, not that it mattered now. After hanging up he made his way slowly through the crowds and potted palms to the board showing the composition and departure platforms of the principal trains.
'Thirteen-twenty-seven . . . platform ten . . . let's hope it's at this end . . . no . . . Basilea . . . Amsterdam . . . baggage . . . Oberhausen . . . here we are . . . Milan but first class . . . second . . . seven carriages and probably half a mile to walk . . .'
But still he didn't ask himself whether he was wasting his time.
As he plodded along the platform to its furthest point, he thought rather that the Lieutenant seemed to have undergone another change of heart and was hot for the chase again, which was odd.
The Marshal wasn't to know that, quite by chance, a young journalist, hanging around Headquarters on the look-out for a story, had spotted t
he Dutch Consul coming out of the Substitute Prosecutor's office and recognized him. With a bit of effort he had uncovered the whole story.
'It's got everything,' he had told his editor excitedly on the telephone. 'Family row, priceless heirloom, mistaken identity, ten-year-old mystery unravelled . . .'
Already the headlines were being prepared for tomorrow:
MYSTERY DEATH OF INTERNATIONAL DIAMOND MERCHANT! FAMILY SECRET BURIED WITH CORPSE!
The journalist and one or two of his colleagues had rushed to the cemetery, the goldsmith's home, and back to the Carabinieri Headquarters where they cornered the Substitute Prosecutor and the Lieutenant. The Substitute Prosecutor had practically snatched the Goossens file from the Lieutenant's hand.
'We've been investigating this for some days now, naturally . . .'
'And you have a lead?'
'Let's say we have a number of indications, all of which we are checking on very carefully.'
'Do you expect to make an arrest? What's to stop this woman leaving the country?'
'Up to now, I'm afraid, nothing.'
And since they knew there wasn't a train until seven-forty-one in the evening, they had all dashed off to the airport in Pisa.
'Express two hundred, the thirteen-twenty-seven from Rome, for Basle, Lucerne, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Calais is about to arrive at platform eleven, travelling seventy minutes late ..."
The Marshal was no longer alone. The Magistrate's clerk who was waiting for the Ambrosiano to arrive from Rome spotted him and came across to ask if he was there for the same reason. Then the Magistrate himself arrived and the three of them were together on platform eleven when the Holland Express pulled in. The Archiviazione had not been signed.
As they talked, all three of them continually glanced down the platform, wondering if at any minute a warrant would arrive.
The woman got into the train.
The platform was suddenly alive with trucks of newspapers, sandwiches and drinks, and a motor was coming along pulling a long baggage train. There was a huge stack of post to be taken on board; it would be some time yet before the train left. People got in and out or wandered along the corridors, blocking them with cumbersome luggage. A girl came up and asked the Marshal in German: 'The carriage for Oberhausen?' thinking, perhaps, that he was some sort of railway official.
He indicated the label saying Milano and pointed. 'Further back.'
In the operations room at Headquarters, the Lieutenant was pacing up and down nervously. Every now and then he would stop at one of the switchboards and say: 'Nothing yet?'
'Nothing. Do you want me to try places out in the suburbs?'
'I don't think so . . . Wait! I wonder if she would have dared try and use her own old passport? Not for the journey but in some not too particular hotel ... It would be out of date, since she had been officially "dead" for ten years and she would hardly have dared try and renew it even had there been time, which was hardly possible. She had had so little warning of the reburial. Try it! Because if she registered under a false name on Sunday night we've got her—and if she decides to claim it as her real name then we've got her for registering at the Giottino under a false one!'
They began to check under Simmons, the married name of Signora Goossens's sister, elicited from the goldsmith an hour earlier. If they could arrest her for a false registration they would have time to investigate the whole case. It was the one thing that would help them.
The Marshal had the piece of information they wanted in his top pocket, but he didn't know they were looking for it, and he didn't know the married name of the woman. He only knew her as Joyce Lewis, as mispronounced to him over the telephone by Gino. All Italian official documents are made out in a woman's maiden name.
The passengers were now shut into the train and many of them were hanging out of the windows, reaching down to try and touch the hands of those who were seeing them off. The baggage truck was trundling away and the food trolley was already out of sight down near the ticket barrier. The train was so long that it took three guards signalling in relays, each with a sharp blast on his whistle and his green sign held aloft, to start it. It slid backwards out of the station, almost noiselessly at first. The Marshal's last glimpse of the woman showed her sitting erect and still very tense, staring straight ahead of her, but, as if hypnotized by his intense gaze, she couldn't prevent herself from a rapid glance in his direction, and he saw the beginnings of a look of triumph in her frightened eyes.
The train picked up speed noisily as the carriages rolled interminably by. Most of it was out of sight round a distant bend by the time the last of the passengers, the ones in the carriages going to Amsterdam and Basilea, began to shout and wave.
The Magistrate and his clerk offered the Marshal a lift. He thanked them and said he would rather walk. He was so tired he would have to send Lorenzini for his car.
It was over, then, and he felt nothing except weariness and relief. His only desire was to get back to his Station, to his lads, to his own world. He had been struggling like a fish out of water, trying to cope with people he didn't understand and with work for. which he had neither the brains nor the training. Well, he had brought it on himself so there was no point in trying to blame anybody else.
He no longer knew or cared whether he had been right or wrong in his suspicions.
What made him look up as he crossed the river? He had forgotten all about the young Count. Nevertheless, there' he was at the first-floor window, looking out hopefully. No doubt the pale face had been there yesterday afternoon, too, as promised. But the Marshal was too exhausted to bother with him. Perhaps tomorrow . . .
He trudged down Via Maggio and was about to cut through to the left when he remembered the calls from the Pensione Giulia. He could ring when he got back to the Station, of course, but it might be better to call there now, so that once he got home he could sink into a chair and forget everybody. After all, this was supposed to be his free day! He crossed to the right of Via Maggio and carried on walking. The road was quiet in the heat, the shops still closed. Not a soul observed the heavy, plodding figure as it made its way slowly along the narrow pavement, or when it stopped, and after a quick consultation with a small black notebook, moved on again, its pace quicker and more purposeful than before.
'Stand back, please! Stand back! Do you want to come through, Marshal? Stand back! There's nothing to see. This way, Marshal . . .'
'What's happened?'
The whole of one side of the littered piazza was crowded with jostling onlookers. There were a lot of official cars and police cars, and an ambulance with its doors open.
The carabiniere on duty outside the Pensione Giulia looked disturbed. He was very pale.
'You don't know? But I thought it was one of your boys . . . Didn't they send for you?'
But the Marshal was already running up the stairs.
The crowd inside the Pensione seemed worse than outside, although everyone was there on official business. The Prefect was there, talking rapidly in an undertone to someone the Marshal had never seen before. Photographers and technicians were pushing their way towards the reception hall from along a narrow corridor, holding their equipment above their heads to facilitate their passage. The Marshal began to push along in the opposite direction. Nobody noticed him; nobody spoke to him.
The noise in room ten was deafening. There were a lot of uniformed men, all officers. The two Digos agents were still there, and one of them, white in the face, was sitting on the edge of a bed with a small glass in his hand. The proprietor was moving from group to group, expostulating to anyone who would listen:
'I hope you realize! I'm covered! Whatever happens . . .'
The only space was near the doorway where Gino's body lay covered with a grey blanket, blocking the entrance. A little of his untidy corn-coloured hair was visible, protruding from the blanket. With so much noise and movement in the room no one was paying any attention to the shape under the blanke
t, except for a tall, fair boy in uniform who stood beside it with his hands over his ears as if he couldn't bear to hear the words he was groaning, hoarsely and repeatedly, above all the other voices around him.
'It's my brother . . . It's my brother. . . It's my brother!'
An officer tried to lead him away, but the boy shook him off and then grabbed him by the lapels and screamed right into his face:
'It's my brother]'
CHAPTER 11
The silence closed in around the Marshal. He had switched on the living-room light and was sunk deep in his armchair, but the light was unaccountably gloomy and the silence seemed to be pressing down from above where no sound came from Di Nuccio and Lorenzini. Perhaps he ought to go up and see them but he couldn't face it. Were they, too, sitting listening to the silence that used to be filled by Gino's radio?
The Marshal had carried the radio, along with Gino's other personal belongings, over to the school. The brother was in the infirmary under sedation. When he recovered sufficiently he would make the train journey back to Pordenone and on to his own village along with the body. Another boy would be sent with him to stay and take care of him until he was well enough to come back to school, if he came back at all. It was pointless to send a boy home on compassionate leave if it was only going to cause a hard-pressed family extra work and expense, and isolate the boy from friends who were in a position to understand.
Gino's little bundle of property didn't amount to much when the Marshal placed it on the Adjutant's desk. To the Adjutant, the Marshal had felt he could unburden himself a little.
'I'm trying to understand,' he had said. 'I'm trying . . . but all these scandals we keep hearing about . . . politicians and such-like who, it seems, have been cheating us for years . . . between them and these spoilt brats who think they know all the answers and are too clever to care about killing off a few of us lesser mortals to get what they want. . . well, what I'm asking myself is, where does a lad like Gino come in? Why should he be the one? You didn't know him ... he wasn't clever or ambitious . . . but he was a good lad . . .'
Death of a Dutchman Page 19
