Death in Autumn (11 page)

'A month before.' He saw and understood her relief as she heard the translation.

'Had he become violent?'

'He had begun to demand money, a great deal of money.'

'Did he threaten you in any way?'

'He . . . stole from me. Despite all my efforts he . . . even my Chinese vases, they were my mother's and he knew, he knew how I valued them and he stole them because I'd refused him money. I was trying to help him and he stole the very things that . . . They weren't the most valuable things in the house. He did it to spite me and I was trying to help him. There was no one I could turn to, you see. No man in the house, no one whose advice I could ask, and I'm an old woman, too old to know how to cope with a thing like that.'

'You couldn't be expected to cope, Signora. He needed professional help.'

'Professional help? Mainz is a small provincial city, Captain. If anyone had found out ... I wanted to protect him. I'd always tried to protect him.'

'Did all this begin when he was eighteen? When you told him about his mother and the money?'

'I .. . perhaps. I hadn't thought of it but it must have begun about then. Though he had always been difficult, secretive. I was wrong, then, to tell him. I've always tried to be fair, to do the honest thing, but in this world the dishonest people always come off best. If you knew what I've suffered in this past year! It was almost a relief when he went. I didn't know him any more, he'd become a stranger, almost a monster.'

'Were you afraid of him?'

She didn't answer at once. She was shaking her head as though wanting to deny it and her thin hands were fumbling at the clasp of her handbag. 'I beg your pardon.' She had got the bag open but seemed to have forgotten what she was looking for. Two big tears were rolling down her wrinkled cheeks, making pink runnels in the white powder.

The Captain passed her a folded white handkerchief and she accepted it, dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose.

'I just wanted him to be successful and happy, to have a clean respectable life like his father. You do understand?'

'I understand. Signora, it would be very helpful if you would identify your daughter-in-law, but if it would be too distressing for you to look at the body of the boy we found we can establish whether or not it is your grandson through his dental records. It's what we would have done in any case had you not come to see me.'

'But that would take time . . .' She was twisting the damp handkerchief between her fingers, forgetting to wipe the tears that continued to flow.

'It would take time, yes.'

'Then I'd rather know now, while I'm here. If you'll just give me a moment to pull myself together . . .'

'Of course. Would you like to eat something before we go?'

'I couldn't, no. I'd like a glass of water.'

'I can have some brandy sent up if you'd prefer it.'

She shook her head.

The Captain rang for the water and then went next door. The Marshal was sitting, still and impassive. The boy, now bolt upright in his chair, looked frightened and agitated. Perhaps the telephone call to his home had made him more aware of the reality of his situation. When he saw the Captain he jumped to his feet.

'You can't keep me here, you'll see. My father's arriving tomorrow!'

The Captain ignored him, asking Guarnaccia, who stood up slowly, 'Has he eaten something?'

'Coffee and a sandwich.'

'Then let's go.'

They drove out to the Medico-Legal Institute in two cars, the Marshal travelling in the second one with Sweeton. When they left the mild warmth of the broad sunlit piazza and began to climb the steps in the cold shadow of the big building the boy suddenly stopped.

'You can't force me to go in there if I don't want to.' He said it, unthinkingly, in English. The Marshal, though he had understood anyway, said nothing. He simply blocked the boy's retreat with his much greater bulk and they moved forward again.

The chilly, marble-floored entrance hall smelled depressingly of formaldehyde.

'Keep him here for the moment.' The Captain indicated a shiny wooden bench. 'We'll deal with the identification of the woman first.' He went to speak to someone at the reception window and after a brief wait a porter led him off down a long corridor, followed by the old lady and the lawyer.

'Sit down,' the Marshal said to Sweeton, but he himself remained standing, his big eyes on the boy who looked as sick as if he had already seen a corpse.

The others weren't gone very long before the porter returned.

'This way.'

When they joined the group in the storage room it was discovered that there had been a mistake. The boy's body had been removed to the dissecting room on another floor. They were taken up by a different porter who told them, 'The Professor's starting work on it when he gets back from lunch.' They stepped out of the lift on a corridor where the smell was much stronger.

'In here.'

'Just a moment.' The Captain drew the man aside to speak to him. 'We think it may be this woman's grandson. If the body could be partly covered so that she doesn't see that the head . . .'

'That's all right. I brought him up myself. The cover's still on. Do you want the clothes sending up? It will save you some time.'

'Yes, if you can manage it.'

'I'll just check that there's somebody here to look after you.'

He opened the door of the dissecting room.

The waiting group had barely had time to glimpse one corner of the dissecting trench straddling a trough in the centre of a tiled floor when John Sweeton doubled over as if about to vomit. He didn't vomit. Instead he swung round, butting the Marshal in the stomach, and fled down the corridor, his head still low.

'I'll see to him.' The Marshal had foreseen his flight, if not the blow to his stomach, and had already checked where the staircase lay. The corridor was a dead end. He ran heavily after the boy, who skidded to a halt when he found no exit, turned to see the Marshal bearing down on him and crashed through a door on his left, slamming it behind him. There was a metallic clang followed by a splintering of glass on a tiled floor. When the Marshal reached the door he found it bolted on the inside.

The porter joined him.

'What's in there?' the Marshal asked him.

'It's just a store room. It takes some people in funny ways. He'll likely calm down if you leave him be for a bit.'

'He can't get out through there?'

'It's just a store room. There's no window in there even.'

'Leave me alone, I'll see to him.'

'If you're sure you can manage.'

'I'll see to him.' When he was alone the Marshal knocked softly on the locked door.

'No!' the voice was hysterical and almost unrecognizable. 'You can't make me go in there.' You've no right!'

'And you've no right to shut yourself in there,' replied the Marshal stolidly.

'I'm staying in here as long as I want and you can't stop me!'

'I can break the door down.'

'You'll be sorry for this when my father gets here!' It was a child's voice saying childish things and the Marshal was pretty sure the boy was in tears.

'Your father won't get here until tomorrow. Are you going to stay in there till tomorrow?'

'I don't care what you say, I don't want to see him and you can't force me!'

The porter reappeared by the Marshal's side. He was carrying some clothing wrapped in polythene bags.

'You don't seem to be calming him down.'

'I'm not trying to calm him down,' growled the Marshal.

The porter left him.

'Listen to me,' said the Marshal loudly, his mouth close to the door. 'If you go on behaving like this you'll find yourself in worse trouble than you're in already.'

'I'm not in trouble! You can't prove anything and my father—'

'I said listen to me! Nobody knows yet how that boy died but if you go on like this we'll have every reason to think that you had something to do with it.'

'You're lying! You don't believe that, I had no reason to do it!'

'And how should we know whether you had a reason or not? You're giving us a reason to arrest you and after that, father or no father, it's going to take us a long time to prove what you did or didn't do—and you won't find prison any more comfortable than where you are now.'

When there was no answer the Marshal bumped his shoulder unhappily against the door which he had no intention of breaking down.

'Get away!' the boy shrieked.

'Open this door!'

'Wait . . .' There was a scuffling noise, a crunching of glass, and the door opened slightly.

Instead of letting the boy out the Marshal pushed his way inside and shut the door again.

'What are you doing? Let me out of here!'

'A minute ago you wanted to stay inside.'

The room was dark except for a faint grey light coming from a ventilator connecting it with the one next door. The boy had backed into the far corner between wooden shelving full of glass bottles, some of which he had smashed when he blundered in there. The Marshal could feel a lot of broken glass underfoot and a gleaming metal bucket was overturned in the middle of the floor. The room stank of disinfectant.

He took a step forward.

'Get away from me!' The boy was holding one of his hands as though it was hurt but it was impossible to see in the gloom whether or not it was bleeding. The Marshal picked up the overturned bucket and put it to one side.

'Don't come near me, I'm warning you—if you touch me . . .'

'That's enough . . .' The boy's pale face was just visible. His staccato breathing was that of a distressed child exhausted by crying. The Marshal was distressed himself. The only answer to this boy's problems was to get him home to his parents and offdrugs. But he had already got himself in too deep for it to be that simple. It was too late, that was the trouble. It always was too late If he had spoken his mind that night before they arrested Querci . . . But Querci had done what he did and nobody could change that. You couldn't do much to help people when it came down to it, and on top of that they looked at you as though you were the villain, like this boy was doing now. It would soon be Querci's turn to look at him in the same way. Well, he had wanted to frighten the lad and now he had.

The Marshal wasn't very good at the part he had decided to play and he stood there in the small dark room wondering what to do next. But the boy saw only the menacing bulk before him, its silence making it more menacing than ever.

'If I tell you what happened to Christian . . .'

The Marshal didn't trust himself to speak.

'You won't touch me . . .?'

'Tell me his name.'

'His name? I don't know, I swear to you, I only saw him that one time.'

'Christian's name, his surname.'

'I ... I don't know . . . what does it matter? He never said.'

'It matters.'

'I don't know. We never bother about things like that.

People just drift in and out. In any case, all of it was his idea.'

The boy sniffed and lifted both hands to his face to wipe it.

Seeing the dark smudge he left behind, the Marshal moved forward a little to get a closer look at the hand.

'Don't touch me! You promised . . .'

'What did I promise?' He stood still again.

'I'll tell you, I said I'd tell you . . .'

'Well?'

'It was Christian's idea, I swear it.'

'You've already said that. What idea?'

'About the woman who owned the villa. He said he could get money out of her.'

'To buy drugs?'

'Yes. He knew her. She was German like him.'

'And why should she give him money?'

'He knew something about her . . .'

'You mean he was blackmailing her?'

'It didn't start like that. . . We didn't—he didn't plan it. The first couple of times she just gave him money. I wasn't there, I swear it, I didn't know her. I never even saw her.'

'And she just gave him money.'

'She took him out for a meal as well. Maybe she . . . Anyway, it's true that she gave him money, he showed me the cheques. He said there was plenty more where that came from. Then the agent came up to the villa with an architect. They were going to do the place up.'

'Were you asked to leave?'

'No. At least, not until my contract ran out.'

'But Christian didn't have a contract, did he?'

'No. But he wasn't worried. He said she was doing the place up for him, that she expected to come and live there with him. I don't know if it was true or not. He was always making things up to make himself sound important. He was pretty crazy.'

'But you made friends with him. Do you speak German?'

'No. He could speak English, and French as well. He was brilliant at languages. Even so, he was crazy.'

'But you made friends with him,' insisted the Marshal.

'He was there, that's all.'

'And he gave you money.'

'He liked to make out he was somebody.'

'When your father arrives the Captain will want to know how much money he was sending you.'

After a pause the boy said, 'He'd stopped sending it.'

'He was angry with you?'

'I should have gone back in the spring to apply for University.'

'Didn't you want to go?'

'He wanted me to study law. I wanted to paint.'

'So you took money ofFChristian.'

'He lent me a bit, that's all.'

'Did he intend to live in the villa with the owner?'

'No. He said she was out of her mind if she thought he was going to bury himself in a dump like that with her. He said he was going to Amsterdam, that it was the best place to get dope, and he was going to get money off her to go, that she wouldn't dare refuse him because now he knew all about her and where her money came from.'

'How did he know?'

'He claimed she told him, but you could never tell when he was telling the truth and when he was fantasizing. Anyway, he said he'd arranged to meet her up near the fort and he asked me to take him because I've got a scooter. There are no buses back to Greve at night.'

'He promised you a cut?'