Dead Season (18 page)

And there was something about Luisa – her voice, her solidity, her capable hands – that made it seem almost a possibility. Anna Niescu obediently sat.

‘Are – are we all going?’ Her eyes went from one of them to the next: at anxious Giuli, grave, unwavering Luisa. At Sandro.

‘We didn’t want you to feel alone,’ he said, not looking at Luisa. ‘As you haven’t got – anyone.’

Anna didn’t protest at that. But a little colour was coming back to her cheeks. ‘That’s nice of you,’ she said. ‘That’s kind.’

‘He’s bringing you home with him, after,’ said Luisa. ‘To us. Until you feel – ready.’

‘After,’ repeated Anna, with diffuse terror.

Sandro took her hand. ‘What do you want?’ he asked gently. ‘Do you think you’d like us all to come?’

It only occurred to him fractionally too late that he was putting more stress on her, obliging her to make choices. Anna looked at them again: Giuli, Luisa, Sandro. He could see a different variation of anguish in each woman’s face.

‘You,’ she said, stopping at Sandro. ‘Just you.’

‘Good,’ he said, getting to his feet, showing nothing of the sudden terror he felt himself. There was a pinpoint flush on Giuli’s cheeks, the shame of a child not chosen at school.

It was nine o’clock. Pietro had said he’d be waiting for them at the pathology lab from nine-thirty. The body had been moved there from the morgue, now that the official identification had been made.

‘Do you have a bag?’ he asked Anna, refusing to hurry her. ’You go and get your bag. Perhaps a few overnight things, just in case.’

When she was gone, Luisa turned on him. ‘You bring her straight back to me,’ she said, in an agony of frustration. ‘For heaven’s sake. Anything could happen. In her condition.’

Giuli was frowning hard. ‘All right, Giuli?’ he asked.

‘It’s all wrong,’ she burst out. ‘It’s not fair. I thought you’d find him – I told her you’d find him, and you did, only he’s dead. It’s like a horrible trick. Why should it be him? You don’t know it’s him.’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ said Sandro, his heart like a stone in his chest. ‘That’s why I’ve got to take her.’

Giuli subsided, all the fight gone. ‘She was talking, last night. About the place he’d made for her, she said. Like a – a nest, he’d built for her. A view of the hills, she said. Where’s she going to live now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sandro, feeling Luisa’s eyes on him. He knew she was wondering whether they’d have their own view of the hills, from that rusted balcony in the Oltrarno. He thought of something.

‘Look, you’re right,’ he said, lifting his battered briefcase, rummaging in it. It was just a distraction, but who knew? They didn’t know anything, really. ‘It won’t do any harm – to know more about him. It might help her. Even now he’s—’ And he looked quickly across at the door through which Anna had disappeared. ‘Even if he’s dead.’ He found it: the paper with the address she’d given him. He thrust it at them, and it was Luisa who took it.

‘This is it. The apartment’s address.’

He saw Luisa frown down at it. Why hadn’t he gone straight there? He couldn’t remember, only that he’d had his doubts, straight off, about this dream home of theirs. Brunello had taken Anna there only that one time. She’d gone back looking for him when he disappeared, but she hadn’t got in.

‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Giuli slowly. Slowly, her eyes on Luisa.

‘I’ve got the day off,’ said Luisa impatiently. ‘I’m not going home to twiddle my thumbs.’

‘Us, then,’ said Giuli, and her eyes were almost bright now. ‘What shall we do?’

The door opened in the corner of the room, and turning his head Sandro saw Anna edging through it, encumbered by a small holdall. He got to his feet.

‘Well,’ he said quickly, ‘just go to the apartment, ask a few questions, neighbours, porter if there is one. Look around, see whether anyone knows anything about the man there. Why he might have – done what he did?’ He frowned. ‘If maybe he was in any trouble. You might even get inside the place.’

Sandro’s suggestion had been just to keep them busy, stop them worrying. But then, as he turned to help Anna with her bag, Sandro found his own curiosity stir as he thought about what they might find. And as they stood on the doorstep, Luisa grumbling that he should have brought the car, Sandro responding automatically that there wouldn’t be any parking over there and what was wrong with taxis, Anna standing small and quiet between them and thinking God knew what, his curiosity hardened into something else.

Because the family home – the big comfortable apartment that he imagined Claudio Brunello inhabited with his handsome, sensible wife and two children – Sandro knew now that it would hold no secrets, even supposing he had the brass neck and cold ambition to barge in on Irene Brunello in her grief and ask to look around. It was the wife’s territory: she went into its corners with her brushes and dusters, she emptied its drawers and its pockets. But the place that Claudio Brunello had bought, or rented, or borrowed, furnished or otherwise, with its nursery being worked on, its neighbours, its views: it seemed to Sandro that
that
might be the place, the place where you’d find answers.

The taxi appeared, edging around the double-parked corner with difficulty, and Sandro had to raise an arm to advertise their presence.

Answers? To what? And quite suddenly it came to Sandro that he didn’t believe that Claudio Brunello had committed suicide. Not for a moment.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

R
OXANA WAS EARLY, BUT
Marisa Goldman was earlier.

More surprisingly, so was Val. He was in Claudio’s office, and two policemen were talking to him.

Marisa came out of her office when she heard Roxana pass through the security doors, and standing in the doorway, she seemed frightened. Pale under the tan, and there were details – tiny things, a crease in the silk shirt, no earrings, a ragged nail on one hand – that if you knew Marisa, gave her away. Because Marisa was always perfect. She’d broken her arm in three places a year ago, riding pillion on her boyfriend’s motorbike, and Roxana had heard that when she’d come round from the operation the first thing she’d done was to ask for her make-up bag and her earrings.

‘You’re next,’ she said, turning her head to follow Roxana’s gaze with her eyes. ‘They’ve talked to me already.’

Roxana set down her bag: she could see one police officer, leaning forward, hands steepled on the desk, sitting where Claudio would have sat. Late fifties, bags under his eyes. The other she could only see in profile, a younger man with a crew cut, staring from one face to another with dogged intensity. Val had his back to them: he looked like a small boy, sitting very still. As she watched, he nodded, and she could see the tanned back of his neck above the crisp shirt.

Roxana turned back to Marisa, and was shocked all over again.

‘Have you been here all night?’ she said, aghast. ‘You look – um—’ She stopped.
You look terrible
. ‘What did they ask you?’

Marisa was staring, distant. ‘They asked how he had been, that sort of thing. Had there been any unusual stress, had he any reason to – to—’ She faltered, ashen. ‘I don’t suppose they want us to – to confer,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’ll ask you what they asked me, and then you’ll know.’

‘Right.’

‘And that’s just the beginning,’ said Marisa, with what might almost have been grim satisfaction. ‘The Guardia di Finanza’s called.’ The force that policed financial crime. Roxana swallowed: Marisa continued. ‘They’ll be in when this lot are gone.’ She looked at her watch. ‘And the manager of another branch to – to liaise with them.’

‘What branch?’ asked Roxana, curiosity getting the better of her.

‘Giorgio Viola, from Sant’Angelo,’ said Marisa shortly.

Sant’Angelo: Roxana had been seconded to that branch briefly, just after she started with the bank. Viola: vaguely she recalled a sad, fat man. That’s probably him, judging from Marisa’s pursed lips and expression of distaste.

‘They’re closing him down, aren’t they?’ said Roxana.

‘Yes,’ said Marisa, rubbing her eyes with a slim hand. ‘I believe so.’

‘Right,’ said Roxana, ‘I’ll look forward to that, then.’

Looking down her long nose, Marisa seemed at last to focus on Roxana, and her expression. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Roxana,’ she said flatly, ‘I mean, they’re hardly going to take you for anyone significant, are they? It’s not that, anyway, they were perfectly – perfectly civilized.’ Her dismissive tone wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘I’m – well. It’s all been rather stressful.’

‘Yes,’ said Roxana, startled by any admission of weakness at all, conciliatory. ‘Yes, of course, you were – he was – I mean, you knew him very well. Of course.’ She could hear herself, sounding like her mother, once upon a time.
There, there
.

The tone was not lost on Marisa: she drew herself up. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘She’s staying with me.’ And Roxana got a glimpse of how she’d look when she was old. Grim-faced and gaunt. ‘Irene Brunello’s at my place. I – we didn’t get much sleep.’

Roxana stared. ‘Maybe you should take the day off,’ she said slowly. ‘I mean – you were on holiday anyway, weren’t you? We can manage.’

‘No,’ said Marisa quickly. ‘
No
.’

Maybe Marisa
had
been having an affair with him; had she and his widow sat up all night, thrashing it out? Maybe she was the woman – but no. The woman who’d phoned was Irene Brunello. Was there another woman, who had hired the private detective? Roxana’s head ached with trying to make sense of it, and with the undertow of panic that had woken her at four. Ma, and intruders, and whether anything was safe any more.

‘How is she?’ Roxana ventured. Then thought about it, the little family smiling in the photograph on Brunello’s shelf: stupid question. ‘She must be in a terrible state. What about the children?’

Marisa let out a shaky exhalation. ‘She didn’t stop crying all night. I could hear her. She didn’t want to go back to them, she said, back to the children, till she’d got it out of her system. They’re with her mother.’

There was a pause, during which Roxana thought about the children, in their happy ignorance, playing on the beach. She could not have guessed what Marisa was thinking.

‘She asked if she could stay with me.’ Roxana stared – she couldn’t imagine Marisa providing comfort. It might be because after his wife, Marisa had known him best – God knows. The idea that Claudio and Marisa might have had an affair grew. Marisa went on. ‘What could I do? I couldn’t say no.’ She moved her head to and fro as if in pain. ‘Paolo’s stayed on the yacht. I mean, if he was here, it would be different – but I couldn’t say no, could I?’ Pleading, her eyes met Roxana’s. Was she expected to answer?

Irene Brunello would have been better off in Galluzzo, squeezed between Ma and her at the table, prowlers or no prowlers, was all Roxana could think. She’d seen photos – on the iPhone, Marisa showing off their new interior decorator – of her superior’s big, cool marble-lined apartment overlooking the city, with gardeners, maids, not a stick of furniture that cost under a thousand euros and none of it comfortable.

‘I didn’t know you two were even – close,’ she said cautiously.

‘No,’ said Marisa, looking at a point somewhere over Roxana’s shoulder. ‘She – I don’t know. I have the feeling she – she wants something from me.’ She shifted her gaze reluctantly to look directly at Roxana.

‘Wants something?’

‘I think the grief is making her imagine things. I think she thinks I know something. Some explanation of – what has happened.’

‘They still think he killed himself? Why would you know anything about that?’

The struggle for patrician reserve on Marisa Goldman’s fine-featured face was visible.
Why
, she was asking herself,
why must I talk about this?
The police had made her talk about it, hadn’t they, aristocrat or not? It seemed to Roxana that Irene Brunello wanted to stay with Marisa because she’d been her husband’s other woman, either professionally, or something else – who knows how grief can hit; you might even find yourself reaching out to Marisa Goldman. ‘Do you know anything?’ Roxana asked, cautiously. ‘Were you and he – was there anything between you?’ It would explain the extremity of Marisa’s reaction.

‘What?’ Marisa looked horrified. ‘Do you think that’s what she thinks?’

‘Well,’ Roxana spread her hands, trying not to shrug. ‘What else?’

Marisa passed a hand over her forehead, and her hair – expensive, tawny, usually not a strand out of place – was ruffled by the unguarded movement, briefly giving her the appearance of a disturbed person. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘What if Paolo hears about this?’

‘So you were? Having an affair?’

Would her billionaire kick her out? Marisa, homeless: she could always go back to her mother in Turin. Roxana couldn’t be even a tiny bit gleeful. It was all too grim.

‘I was
not
,’ said Marisa, turning on her. ‘No, no, no. That is
not
what I meant. He and I never, ever – there was nothing.’

So all she was worried about was that there should even be such a rumour, was it? Roxana didn’t know what to think. If something had ever happened – well. He was too much of a family man not to have regretted it pretty quickly. Expressionless, Roxana stared at her boss, feeling that things had shifted, somehow. That if she were a different person, this might be her chance, to seize power, or at least to take a step towards it.

Behind them in Claudio’s office there was a scraping, the sound of chairs pushed back. The clock said eight: they should have opened ten minutes ago. Everything was going to pot.

‘We should open up,’ Roxana said.

Marisa stared at her uncomprehending, then her expression cleared. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well, I can do that.’

‘There’s the cash delivery to receive,’ Roxana said. ‘It should come in fifteen minutes or so, and the ATM’s been playing up.’

Marisa’s expression hardened, as if she suspected Roxana of twisting the knife. Had she ever had to do anything so menial as signing off a cash delivery?