A Darkness Descending (24 page)

‘Do you like them?’ she asked, and the girl nodded slowly. ‘Stand up,’ said Luisa. ‘Walk about.’ She gestured down the length of the shop: mirrors everywhere. The girl walked away slowly and, still on her knees, Luisa studied the mother’s expression.

‘They’re expensive,’ said Luisa with the girl out of earshot; she grasped for her smattering of German. ‘Does she look after her things?’ The mother turned towards her eagerly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she’s a good girl.’ She glanced through the window towards her husband, standing now in his smart coat with his back to the window, hands clasped behind him.

‘Well,’ said Luisa. ‘I expect her feet won’t grow any bigger.’ The mother smiled sadly. ‘And the quality is very good.’ Luisa spread her hands and said no more: together they watched as the girl reached the end of the shop and stared at her reflection solemnly. Her back was to them so that she thought herself unobserved, but they could see her in the mirror, eyes fixed on the dark red boots. Luisa wondered if the mother could remember, even faintly as she herself could, a time when it seemed that anything could be solved by a new pair of shoes.

Then they both looked towards the window and as they did the husband turned, looked, nodded, and at last the mother smiled.

Luisa got to her feet, feeling a painful tweak under the arm as she supported herself, an ache in the back of her legs as the tendons straightened. Not young any more. But her earlier despondency had lifted.

Shepherding the small family – three now as the father, having come inside, was standing between them, his hand tentatively on his daughter’s shoulder – to the till and Giusy’s tender care, Luisa looked out of the window, and saw him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, and the four of them, Giusy and the German family, stared after her as she turned and bolted through the shop door. ‘Um, right,’ she heard Giusy improvise, ‘so … the boots,’ as the door swung shut behind Luisa.

Was he there? The stalls were crowded under the high vaulting of the market’s roof, cluttered with racks of purple and tan cheap leather, ugly scarves; stupid, dithering tourists hung about with cameras and backpacks. Luisa dodged and shuffled, desperate to get a view down the aisle, between the packed stalls. Which one had it been? She glanced back at the shop, trying to work out her line of sight, saw the faces staring at her, in the street in her cardigan. Turned back: and there … there he was, at the far end of the central aisle of the market, just where she’d seen him before. Looking straight at her, puzzlement dawning.

Luisa stood on tiptoes, to make herself more visible, raised a hand. Realized quite suddenly that she felt absolutely alive, something coursing in her veins that banished the weary anxiety of her morning; of her life. ‘Hey!’ she shouted, and although a number of heads turned, the young man knew she was addressing him. He shrugged, turned to someone next to him obscured by a tower of handbags, and said something. ‘Wait there,’ she called, and he laughed. She saw him laugh.

The quickest way, other than a parting of the Red Sea of tourists, was to run around the outside of the colonnaded marketplace past the bronze statue of the little boar, past the tripe stall. Luisa dodged and hurried, holding her breath until she was there and came up short right in front of him. She could smell his aftershave.

‘Hello,’ she blurted. He looked at her with faint amusement. She saw that the person beside him was not, as she had fleetingly hoped, Chiara, but a stocky, bearded young man. They were both dressed in the casual uniform of kids, market traders and students alike: hooded sweatshirts, plaid shirts on top, jeans.

‘Hey,’ he said, warily. Luisa became aware of the colour in her cheeks: she pulled her cardigan across her front.

‘You know Chiara,’ she said, straight out with it. ‘Chiara Cavallaro. I saw you talking to her yesterday. Here.’

The two men exchanged glances. Neither looked like trouble to Luisa, she had to admit: young, cheerful, open-faced. But what did she know?

‘You ran off,’ she said, holding her ground.

‘Ran off?’ The man shook his head slowly. ‘No. I didn’t run off anywhere.’

‘Listen,’ said his companion nervously, ‘I’d better—’

‘Sure,’ said the first man, jerking his head in a gesture of dismissal, ‘you get going.’ But as he reached the end of the next aisle the bearded young man turned back, and Luisa saw anxiety in his eyes.

The other young man stepped back off the raised stone of the market floor and thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, his back half turned to her. He turned back. ‘If I might ask, Signora. Is there a problem?’

‘I’m Luisa Cellini,’ she said, sticking her hand out stiffly. Nodding across towards the shop. ‘I work in Frollini. I’m a – a friend.’

‘Gianluca.’ He took her hand curiously, in a brief soft handshake, as if he didn’t understand the gesture. The young. ‘You’re a friend of Chiara’s?’ He looked dubious.

Luisa sighed. ‘I’ve known her since she was born.’ She felt weary suddenly as the adrenaline ebbed. ‘I’m a friend of her mother’s.’ She hesitated, knowing that the information might set her on the wrong side of the fence. ‘We’re – worried about her.’

‘Worried?’ Gianluca smiled warily. ‘I thought she was looking great.’

Luisa blinked: this was not the response she’d expected. ‘You—’

‘Didn’t you?’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘I mean, it’s a change, sure. But it seems to suit her.’

‘Yes,’ said Luisa. ‘But – you’re not – with her? I mean, you’re not her—’

‘Her boyfriend? No.’ Gianluca nodded in the direction in which the bearded man had disappeared. ‘I’m
his
boyfriend, Signora.’ Eyeing her for a reaction. Luisa was too tired, suddenly, to bridle, to say, You can’t shock me, young man. I work in fashion. And he seemed to see something in the drop of her shoulders.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Signora Cellini,’ he said, hands thrust guiltily back down in his kangaroo pockets. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. D’you – I don’t know, d’you want a coffee or something?’ He chewed the inside of his lip, eyes darting. ‘I’m a friend of Chiara’s, yes. And I guess – well.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got a class at eleven.’

‘All right,’ said Luisa impulsively. ‘All right. I’ll – I’ve just got to tell them, in the shop. Caffè La Borsa? Five minutes.’

Be there, she thought, meeting the anxious eyes of the departing German family as she pushed her way back inside the shop. As if somehow this kid with his hooded sweatshirt and his sexual freedom turning up meant everything, meant people looked out for each other and kids respected their elders and the world was on its axis still.

Be there.

*

The two men ambled up to the rusted iron railings in the cool bright morning as if they had all the time in the world. Vesna watched as they exchanged a handshake, and the dustbin man in his fluorescent orange jacket leaned down to look at the small handmade sign on the gate that informed the clientele that the hotel would be closed briefly for renovations.

Clientele: that was a joke. She’d made precisely two phone calls for Calzaghe to put off customers: that was the sum of their bookings for the next three weeks, never mind three days. And anyone who could be bothered to look as closely at the sign as the dustbin man had, would probably reckon that any renovation work was long overdue.

‘Just a couple of days,’ the policeman, Tufato, had said reassuringly. Not knowing whether to address himself to Calzaghe the sleazebag, puffing in his string vest with sweaty outrage, or to Vesna the foreign chambermaid. ‘You know, suicide – it’s a crime. Evidence must be gathered. A formality, in this case.’

She didn’t know where Calzaghe was: he had not appeared this morning. He was probably sitting on the sofa in his dead mother’s apartment, watching porn. He’d made enough remarks to her about how he liked to spend his spare time for her not to need to apply her imagination to the subject. Vesna in her turn had perfected a look of dead-eyed disinterest in response to such remarks: it seemed to work, for the moment.

The dustbin man looked up at her before walking away: at least
he
was a decent bloke. The man knew everyone and everything, and she’d never heard him make an unpleasant remark about foreigners. Quiet in his habits, modest: she liked them quiet.

The other man, however, remained; he was wearing a battered hat. Vesna stayed where she was on the porch, leaning on the railing. He held his head up, looking steadily at her, and the longer he looked, the more she thought, who are you? Come to ask questions, she decided.

The police had asked questions. Did anyone visit the dead woman? Did she make any calls? They had looked in her bag and found her identity card, a change of underwear.

No one had called for her. She had not phoned out using the hotel landline, but then who did these days? People had mobiles, only they hadn’t found hers. On the verandah, Vesna shifted uneasily. Should suicide be a crime? It was already a mortal sin, and if you believed in mortal sin, wasn’t that enough? But in her heart she knew there were reasons not just to let it go. To ask questions, to know – what? If a life might have been saved, restored if the right thing had been said or done at the right moment. Or not.

She stepped off the porch.

‘Can I help you?’

It was very quiet: from the other side of the boardwalk behind Sandro came the sound of a trailer being wheeled down to the sea, the slap of halyards against an aluminium mast, the slow, happy voices of the rich, indulging themselves.

‘Hello,’ he said, hands up at the railings as though holding on to prison bars.

The girl – woman, he saw as she walked towards him down the weed-clogged gravel, close to thirty – did have the pale look of someone confined inside all day. Slight but strong, in a maid’s button-through housecoat washed almost to whiteness from what might once have been pink.

‘The owner’s Calzaghe,’ the soft-spoken dustbin man had told him, his quiet voice betraying only the slightest hint of distaste, but it was enough. If a man smelling of the week’s fish-heads and rotten potato peelings looks like he wants to hold his nose when he says your name – well.

‘I feel sorry for the girl,’ the man had said. He spoke quietly, out of respect perhaps because they hadn’t got to the railings yet and the girl – woman – wouldn’t have been able to hear. ‘She’s a hard worker. I hope he keeps his hands off her, anyway. From Bosnia, I believe.’

Not Croatia then: an easy mistake to make, though possibly an unforgivable one if you were the Bosnian in question. Muslim? Sandro couldn’t tell: she had dark eyes but then so did an awful lot of Catholics. He took a step back from the high railings, took off his hat and waited.

‘We’re closed,’ she said, eyeing him, hands thrust defensively in the pockets of her overall. ‘For the foreseeable future.’ Her Italian was clear and uninflected.

‘I know,’ Sandro said.

‘You’ve come about her, haven’t you?’

They all knew. It comforted Sandro obscurely to be reminded that Flavia Matteo’s unnatural death sat at the heart of this small community and would not be ignored.
Just one of those things, none of our business, she was only passing through …
She had not passed, she had stayed, she would never leave this place. It was everyone’s business, it seemed, and that was as it should be.

Of course he would have come about the dead woman, he told himself roughly, guarding against sentiment. They must have had all sorts already: journalists, nosy parkers, ambulance chasers. Making something your business doesn’t mean you care, not these days. Everyone was everyone else’s business these days with the internet, and no one cared a damn. But leaning down, the maid tugged at a rusted bolt, straightened and let him through. She walked ahead of him without a word, straight-backed as a dancer.

Stepping behind her inside the hotel’s dim lobby, Sandro detected bleach, ancient cooking smells, and a grittiness under his feet on the speckled grey stone of the
pavimento.
If the question
Why here
? had seemed the significant one as he and Niccolò Rosselli had approached the seaside town, it grew even more insistent inside the Stella Maris itself. Why
here
?

‘Permesso?’
asked Sandro reflexively as he crossed the threshold, but there was no answer.

‘Like I said,’ said the chambermaid, ‘we’re closed. There’s no one home.’

The lobby was wide and shallow, in a wide, shallow building, two doors to left and right standing open in sunshine, a third in darkness behind a vast cracked Biedermeier reception desk. Above the desk was a row of dark wood pigeon holes with keys hanging inside them, and above that a broad staircase curved upstairs. They stood together in the gloom.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Sandro, and she almost smiled.

‘Vesna,’ she said, and he heard her surprise. He supposed people didn’t bother to ask: Americans might do, he supposed, they were friendly. But then, he couldn’t imagine Americans staying here.

‘Sandro Cellini,’ he said, and then, sacrificing subtlety for clarity, ‘I’m a private detective.’

She betrayed no response, only lifted a hand to indicate one of the sunlit doors. ‘Please,’ she said.

It was the dining room. Chairs were upended on a dozen small tables. She’d been in the middle of cleaning: greying muslin curtains were folded on a buffet table along one wall, a broom leaned against the long bare windows and dust motes sparkled in the clean sunshine. She’s probably not even going to be paid, thought Sandro, but still she’s working. With a swift movement Vesna took a chair from the nearest table and set it down for him.

‘I would offer you a coffee,’ she said. ‘But I am not permitted.’

‘Ah,’ said Sandro. ‘Not permitted by …?’

‘By my boss,’ she said. ‘Signore Calzaghe. One meal every day. If I require coffee I may have it on my break, in the town.’ She shrugged, eyes veiled. ‘It’s nice to get out anyway.’

They both remained standing: Sandro leaned forward and took another chair down. ‘Please,’ he said.

After a moment’s hesitation, she sat. ‘A private investigator,’ she said, turning the words over. There was, after all, some trace of her foreignness in the accent, a little sharp edge to the rolling ‘r’. ‘They already asked questions.’