Dead Season (23 page)

‘I liked the girl,’ Sandro had said.

‘The girl,’ Pietro had said, pondering. ‘The younger woman, you mean?’

Sandro had allowed himself a smile. ‘They’re all girls to me. But yes. Roxana Delfino. I spoke to her – when I thought my guy was your guy.’

Pietro had nodded, distant. ‘What a set-up,’ he had said. ‘That place is on the way out.’ Sandro grunted agreement.

Pietro had gone on, ‘The Guardia di Finanza’s on the case. In there, in the bank this morning, I hear. Just after we left.’

‘Really? That was quick.’ And Sandro had felt a pang, for Signorina Roxana Delfino.

‘Yeah,’ Pietro had said, avoiding his gaze. And at his expression Sandro had felt a small pulse start in some distant part of what was once his policeman’s brain: the beginnings of a trail, like a porcupine quill in the woods. There was something Pietro hadn’t told him. Yet.

‘They closing the place down, or what? The Guardia, shutting the bank down, I mean?’

Pietro still wasn’t quite looking at him. ‘Who knows?’ he had said. ‘They said they’d have a look. Could mean anything, couldn’t it, with those guys? Tape across the door and frozen assets, or just a coffee and a chat, or something in between. They said they’d keep us – what did they say? In the loop. It’s a suspicious death, after all, that’s our territory.’

‘Suspicious death now? What happened to suicide?’

And Pietro had sighed. ‘Well. All right.’ Still sounding cagey. ‘So he didn’t get the girl pregnant, he isn’t her guy. We were kind of going down that road, as motive for suicide.’

‘I never went along with that,’ Sandro had pointed out.

‘No,’ Pietro had said. ‘OK. But he was a bank manager. If the Guardia see fit to talk to us about the state of that bank … He might have got himself into all sorts of trouble, and this seemed like the only way out.’

Sandro had grunted. That kind of information might take its time getting through, to say the least. ‘Anything new? Anything at all? The injuries: I don’t see how it could have been a hit and run. I just don’t see it. How about DNA?’

His old friend had shifted uneasily. ‘There are – difficulties, just now. It doesn’t quite add up.’ He had stopped, and Sandro had taken pity.

‘It’s OK,’ he had said. ‘I know, I’ve got no uniform, no right to know. Plus, this isn’t even my guy we’re talking about. It’s OK.’

And they had both looked away, anywhere but at each other, over at Anna sitting in the corner patiently, at the dust motes on the unwashed windows, the car park, the traffic moving snail-slow on the motorway a hundred metres away.

‘I’d give you a ride,’ Pietro had said, breaking the silence eventually, nodding down to the patrol car sitting in the laboratory’s car park. ‘But I’m pushing things as it is. Matteucci’s started grumbling. Who are you, to get all this attention? Abuse of privilege, blah, blah.’

‘Bastard,’ Sandro had said reflexively. He’d have to wait, then, for Pietro to decide to tell him whatever it was. Pietro had just grunted again.

In the cab home, though, Anna sitting beside him, clinging to the side of the car as they bumped over the flagstones of the city’s empty backstreets, Sandro had grown anxious. Was Pietro telling him to back off? Was he pushing his luck? The last thing he wanted was to get Pietro into trouble – serious trouble – just as he was thinking about taking early retirement. He had caught the driver eyeing them curiously in his rearview mirror, putting it all together: police call, pick-up from the pathology lab, pregnant girl, man old enough to be her father. What sense could it make to him?

In the doorway Luisa had said nothing, just clucked despairingly at the sight of Anna, pale and exhausted, and shushed her into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind them.

Sandro had heard tentative sounds from the kitchen: Giuli trying to make herself useful, nervous of putting things away in the wrong place. But he hadn’t gone in, he had stood in the dim hall, between the coats hanging along one wall and the ugly landscape Luisa’s mother had given them at their wedding on the other, for the moment not ready to move.

There was information in his head but unfortunately it hadn’t come in the shape of facts arranged in useful, neat columns: more like a swarm of wasps, circling and scattering, forming and reforming.

In no particular order: Liliana, seller of oranges; the old woman behind the reception desk at the Loggiata; the Russian girl; Josef: Albanian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Romanian – which was he? Did it even matter? The apartment he was planning for his little family, with its nursery. How had he got his hands on such a place?

And, incidentally, the apartment with a long, rusted balcony and a view of the hills that he and Luisa (too old to be newly-weds) would almost certainly never move into. And the more impossible it seemed, the more angry it made Sandro, that he was such a failure, that he had not provided for this eventuality.

The Banca di Toscana Provinciale too. Why had Anna’s fiancé chosen that bank of all banks? How had he come up with that name, Claudio Brunello?

And apropos of nothing, apropos of the dead man in the morgue who no longer had anything to do with Sandro, now that he turned out not to be the father of Anna’s baby, he had thought of a smear on a man’s pale-leather shoe, in the white glare of a forensics tent in the August sun. He thought of the dusty earth under the trees.

What was the connection?

Now Sandro dialled Pietro’s number, and it went straight to answerphone. Damn: was he being screened out? Or being paranoid? Slowly he hung up. Think.

Folding his arms, Sandro frowned, remembering the bank’s gloomy interior, Claudio Brunello’s bank. The dusty marble flooring. And that faded, cheesy poster on the wall: a man in a suit holding out his hand and in the background a cartoon of people in a bank queue, dreaming of a house with a garden.
Look ahead! Get in line!
It was something from another age.

‘Sandro?’ Giuli called from the kitchen, her voice high and anxious.

‘Coming,’ he said.

She was standing behind a chair, hands resting on its back.

Sandro’s frown deepened. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, fidgeting. ‘Just – wondered what you were up to out there.’

‘Something’s up,’ he said.

‘It’s just the heat,’ Giuli said, and let out a sigh.

‘It’s not the boyfriend? He hasn’t – let you down, or anything?’

To his relief she smiled, broadly. ‘No. No! He’s great. Enzo’s great. Luisa said she wants him to come over.’ She opened her mouth to say more, then closed it again. She smiled.

Sandro pulled out a chair and sat, heavily. Giuli was right: everything seemed more of an effort in this heat, even sitting down. ‘Wants to inspect him, you mean. Sure he’s ready for that?’

Still she looked relaxed. Not that, then.

‘So, what?’

She pulled out another chair and sat. Sandro could see food ranged along the kitchen counter, a Russian salad, some cold fried veal cutlets, peperonata. He realized he didn’t even know what time it was: the clock said one-forty. They must have stopped at the
rosticceria
en route for this stuff.

‘She should eat,’ said Giuli, and the anxiety was back on her face.

‘Luisa?’ Sandro felt a lurch. Had she looked ill?

‘Well, her.’ She caught his expression. ‘No, no, not Luisa. You should have seen her out there this morning, she’s a killer. Knocking on doors. Giving them hell.’

Sandro smiled faintly. His Luisa, a killer.

Giuli went on earnestly, ‘But Anna, I meant. Doesn’t she have to eat?’

The heat gathered in the room, stealthily. Sandro could see the oppressive afternoon hours awaiting them; any kind of activity, even animated discussion of anything seemed inadvisable, lest it raise the temperature. Sandro put his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat at his temples, and leaned back.

‘I’m no expert,’ he said. ‘I think she needs rest, more than food. She needs peace and quiet and nothing to worry about.’ He grimaced. ‘Fat chance.’

Giuli nodded thoughtfully. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘I can get down to the Loggiata. Tell them she needs looking after, she can’t do their beds any more. Well,’ and she compromised, seeing him pull a doubting face, ‘for the time being.’

Something occurred to Sandro. ‘Pass us a plate,’ he said, nodding towards the side.

‘We’re not waiting for Luisa?’

‘Well, we can lay things out, can’t we? We can manage that.’

Giuli smiled, impish. Meaning, not even that.

As they were putting the plates out, wondering why they didn’t look right, Sandro said, ‘And you could have a word. While you’re over there.’

‘With the Russian. Dasha.’

‘Her, yes. But how long’s she been there? Was she there when Josef first came on the scene?’

Giuli frowned. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Could you maybe talk to the old lady, too? The owner.’

Luisa appeared in the door, looking weary. She puffed her cheeks and sighed. ‘Poor kid,’ she said. Then frowned at the table. ‘You two,’ she said, gently shoving Giuli aside and going round, straightening, setting mats, getting out napkins. She laid an extra place, for Anna.

‘So she knows she’s welcome,’ she said, when Sandro looked at her. ‘So she knows she’s staying.’

‘Have you two been talking about this?’ He shook his head in mock disapproval. ‘She’s moving in, is she?’ It was the only thing to do: he could see that. Luisa had got there first, as usual.

‘There’s the spare room,’ said Luisa.

‘Just as well we’re not living on a building site in San Niccolo yet,’ he said. She said nothing, but he knew she’d noticed that ‘yet’.

‘I’ll ask,’ he said. ‘About a loan. I will.’

‘OK,’ said Luisa comfortably. Not pushing it. ‘And what was that you two were plotting when I came in? Something about the old lady?’

‘The old lady at the Loggiata. Your mother’s pal. Apparently, she didn’t make Anna’s beau too welcome, when he first put in an appearance. That’s what Anna said.’

Luisa pursed her lips, pulling out a chair, and as she sat down Sandro saw her shoot a glance at Giuli.

‘Just being protective, perhaps,’ she said. ‘Looking out for her kid’s interests. It sounds like she more or less took that girl in when she had nowhere else to go.’

Sandro nodded. ‘She’s not – it wouldn’t be that he might not be Italian?’

‘Is that what you’re thinking?’

‘It’s a theory,’ said Sandro cautiously. ‘In that he told her his name was Josef, to begin with. Does that sound Italian to you?’

‘And the old lady not welcoming him with open arms would confirm that, because she’d be likely to – have her prejudices?’ Luisa seemed merely interested. ‘Well, I don’t know. I would guess that, like any older person – like us maybe,’ giving him a sharp glance, ‘she probably wishes that everything was as it was when she was young. But to be honest, I don’t know her that well, she might be a – a member of the Greens, for all I know. She was just one of Mamma’s friends.’

‘I don’t see any harm in Giuli talking to her, anyway,’ said Sandro warily. ‘Asking her what she thought of him. Old ladies – you know. They have sharp eyes.’

‘And sharper tongues,’ said Luisa. ‘I’ll come too.’

‘I can manage.’ At the sound of her voice – quiet, calm – they both turned to look at Giuli. ‘I can talk to her, Luisa. I’ll say you sent me, if you like. But you should stay here.’ Sandro saw her eyes shift to him. ‘What if Anna wakes up, and there’s no one here? She needs you.’

Luisa looked from one to the other, knowing when she was beaten. Set two hands on the table, indicating the places laid to either side of her. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘This veal doesn’t look bad, for August. Are you going to eat, or not?’

And it was when they’d sat down, obedient at last, that she got to it. Her eyes were on Giuli first, who was lifting a forkful of salad to her lips, a look that meant something and the fork stopping in mid-air.

‘Giuli’s got something to tell us,’ she said. ‘Well, something to tell you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Sandro. Oh, no, was what he was thinking.

‘Yes,’ said Luisa, and she raised her water glass. ‘Giuli’s got some good news.’

*

The city glittered under the late-afternoon sun.

He parked up under some trees, his preferred spot, known only to the select few. A neatly kept row of mulberry trees on a ridge overlooking Scandicci, a stone bench. Someone could be bothered to tend the trees but he never saw them do it: he never saw anyone here, perhaps because the view – below, the sprawling suburb’s tower blocks baking in the heat, the distant industrial profile of the Pisan plain fell far short of Tuscan perfection. But the trees’ big, glossy leaves and heavy canopies gave excellent shade, and the ridge got a nice breeze.

Not that the breeze touched him today. He sat with the engine running and the air-con going full blast. Top-of-the-range climate control: this car had everything: WiFi, Bluetooth, seats that remembered your shape and massaged you in just the right places, two months old and his pride and joy. He could have gone back to the office – but he liked his car better. The furnishings were more tasteful – and there was no one in his car to tell him where he should be, no interfering menial to ask him had he called so-and-so yet, frown at him every time he stepped outside for a cigarette.

A cigarette, that was it. That was what was lacking. He felt in his breast pocket: the pack of Marlboro Lights was reassuringly full. Save it. He wouldn’t smoke in the car: save it, luxuriate in the delicious blast of cold air a while longer.

August. He shouldn’t be working in August anyway. Did anyone? No one but losers, and he wasn’t a loser. Could sell ice cream to a Sicilian, snow to an Eskimo. There was no one to sell anything to, though, in August. Only losers, who didn’t have the money for what he was selling anyway. Go away, he should have told them, you can’t afford it. It would have been a mistake to have kept the office open if there hadn’t been the one big sale that would justify it.

He put two fingers inside his shirt collar to ease it. Trouble? Maybe. The single glass of Friulian Chardonnay glowed comfortably in his stomach, complementing the salade niçoise. His favourite, on a hot day: he’d choose a nice salad niçoise over a
bistecca fiorentina
as his last meal, any day of the week, not to mention salad was better for the maintenance of the six-pack. Any day. A
ristretto
with a shot of grappa, and all it needed was that cigarette to top it off. He could almost taste it now. His last meal.