Fault Line - Retail (37 page)

Poor old Terry. I’m sure he was looking forward to our boys’ night out. But I never made it to Pozzuoli.

Vivien was waiting for me at the Vesuvio. I didn’t see her as I entered. She was in the bar area that adjoined reception. The man on the desk told me I had a visitor and, turning round, I saw her rise from a sofa into a golden shaft of filtered sunlight.

She was looking sombre and drawn. Her hair was slightly shorter than I remembered and maybe a fraction of a shade darker. She was wearing a simple flared blue skirt and belted white T-shirt. There was scarcely a trace of make-up. But that made no difference. Her beauty, if not unaltered, was certainly undiminished.

I walked slowly towards her, struggling to decide how to greet her. A kiss? A handshake? A simple hello. Nothing seemed right. And nothing, in the end, was what I settled for.

‘I’m sorry … about your mother, Vivien,’ I said, surprised by how hoarse my voice sounded. ‘I suppose … Greville’s told you everything?’

‘I’m not sure, Jonathan.’ She looked at me coolly. ‘That’s why I’m here.’ It was, her tone suggested, the only reason she’d come. ‘Can we talk?’

‘Of course. Shall we sit down?’

‘Not here. Outside. In the air.’

‘All right.’

We headed for the revolving door that led out on to the street. Before we reached it, the man on the desk called out to me.

‘Ah, Signor Kellaway. If you are leaving …’ I looked round at him. ‘There is a message for you. The caller said it might be urgent.’

‘I’ll wait for you on the other side of the road,’ Vivien said, pressing on towards the door.

I went back to the desk and was handed a small V-monogrammed envelope. Inside was a note addressed to me. ‘
La Contessa Covelli telephoned. The address you require is Salita Penitenza 33
.’

‘Can you show me where this is?’ I asked, proffering my street map of the city.

The man peered at the note and then the map before marking it with a cross. ‘You will go there, Signor Kellaway?’

‘Probably. Why?’

‘It is … not a good area. You should be careful. It is not a place for’ – he smiled – ‘
la bella signora
.’

‘Don’t worry.’ I smiled back at him. ‘I won’t take
la bella signora
.’

He nodded. ‘
Bene
.’

Vivien was leaning against the wall by the bridge that led across from Via Partenope to the Castel dell’Ovo and the Borgo Marinaro, apparently oblivious to the surging traffic and the ambling sightseers. I crossed the road to join her.

‘Was the message from Greville?’ she asked me at once, her eyes concealed from me now behind sunglasses.

‘No. It wasn’t.’

‘Really?’

‘No,’ I said, more emphatically. ‘Why should you think it was?’

‘Because he knew I was coming to see you. Maybe he wanted to make sure you’d toe the party line.’

‘The party line?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don’t, actually. Look, Vivien, what happened to your mother was—’

‘Why did it go wrong, Jonathan? Why did she end up dead?’ She turned away from me, suddenly close to tears. ‘I’m sorry. I was determined not to do this.’ She took a couple of deep breaths, then faced me again. ‘An anonymous phone call to the police which Greville believes this man Thompson made ruined everything, he tells me. Is that really how it was?’

‘Yes. But for that, I think Muriel would have been released unharmed.’

‘Down there?’ She nodded to the harbour below us. Its café-lined quays were crowded with people. Pleasure craft bobbed gently at their moorings. Sunlight shimmered on the water. ‘Where Greville was waiting for her?’

‘It’s what was agreed. It’s almost certainly how it would have turned out if Gandolfi hadn’t intervened.’

‘And whose fault was it that Gandolfi intervened?’

‘Whoever made the anonymous phone call.’

‘Really? It doesn’t go any deeper than that?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You don’t want to admit it, do you?’

‘Admit
what
?’

‘For God’s sake.’ She sounded exasperated. But the tremor in her hand as she looked away and rubbed her forehead hinted at something beyond exasperation. Her grief was tinged with anger, directed, apparently, at me. ‘Can we walk, please? Moving … seems to help.’

‘Sure.’

We headed east, towards the Excelsior and the triple-arched canopy of the Immacolatella Fountain, with Mount Vesuvius looming ahead of us across the bay. Vivien wasn’t dawdling. I had to stride out to keep pace with her. ‘It’s our fault,’ she said decisively, as if the point was unarguable. ‘If we hadn’t helped Strake blackmail Luisa, Uncle Francis wouldn’t have murdered him and there’d have been nothing to interest Gandolfi all these years later. And Paolo, much as he might have resented being cut out of what he saw as his rightful inheritance, wouldn’t have felt so badly treated by the family whose good name he’d protected. Yes, it’s our fault all right, yours and mine. We started this. And we never once warned my mother how embittered Paolo had cause to be.’

‘No one could have foreseen what it would lead to, Vivien. We weren’t to know he had connections with the Camorra.’

‘Greville knew. Or at least he suspected it. I blame him too.’

‘And there’s no actual proof Paolo was involved.’

‘Yes, there is. The phone call. I’ve heard all about Gandolfi’s visit to the villa from Jacqueline. A lot else too. You seem to have been more open with her than you ever were with me.’

‘Just a—’

‘Forget it, OK? You trust her. Everyone trusts her. Apparently, I have to trust her as well.’ There was a strand of guilt in the harshness of her tone – guilt for being far away when her mother needed her. ‘Thompson couldn’t have made that call without help, Jonathan. He
had
no reason to suppose Strake had ever come to Naples, let alone been murdered here. There’s no plausible way he could simply have stumbled across the information. Somebody must have told him. And from what Jacqueline tells me, it’s doubtful he could string together a sentence in good
or
bad Italian. He’d have needed to be instructed what to say. By the same somebody.’

‘Paolo?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Because his share of the ransom money wasn’t enough for him. It probably wasn’t much, anyway. No. He wanted blood. And when he heard Thompson was looking for him, he saw a way to get it. He’d have known Gandolfi was still on the force and would spring into action once the call was made. And he’d have known how the people holding Mother would react if they had cause to suspect the police had been called in.’

‘You’re suggesting he deliberately sabotaged the deal?’

‘Yes. And it worked, didn’t it? He got what he wanted.’

‘Vivien, this is—’

‘The truth. That’s what this is.’

We’d reached the fountain. She turned aside and stopped, staring out to sea, wondering, I sensed, just how it must have felt for her mother as she thrashed and floundered and drowned out there in the darkness.

‘She couldn’t swim,’ she murmured, hugging herself to suppress a shudder. ‘Not a stroke. How can the magistrate say that’s not murder?’

‘It’s a technicality.’

‘I want Paolo found. And brought to book.’

‘I’m sure Greville will do everything he can to achieve that.’

‘Do you know where he is, Jonathan?’ She looked round.

‘Me?’ My instinct was not to tell her about Countess Covelli’s message. Not yet, at least. I needed to think very carefully before taking any action. ‘How would I?’

‘Jacqueline mentioned that you’d asked Countess Covelli for help in tracing him.’

‘I did, yes. But—’

‘I spoke to the countess a few hours ago.’

‘Really?’

‘She said she hadn’t been able to find anything out.’

What was Vivien thinking? What was the look in her eyes that I couldn’t see behind the dark glasses? ‘The message at the hotel was from her,’ I said, weighing my every word, as I felt Vivien was also doing. ‘She wants me to phone her. So she can tell me she’s drawn a blank, I suppose.’

‘Or to tell you where he is.’

‘But you said she—’

‘I’m not sure I believed her.’

‘Why would she lie to you?’

‘I don’t know. But there’s something between you, isn’t there? Some … bond.’

‘Is there?’

‘This terrible thing Luisa’s supposed to have done. The reason the countess ended their friendship. You know what it is, don’t you?’ She raised a hand to forestall my reply. ‘Don’t deny it. She’s probably sworn you to secrecy. And I don’t want to know, anyway. Nothing like as much as I want to know where Paolo is. Promise me you’ll tell me if you find out.’

‘What would—’

‘
Just promise me
. Your word, Jonathan.’ She took off her glasses and looked directly at me, squinting in the bright sunlight, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. ‘Give me your word, if not for Mother’s sake, then for the sake of what you and I once were to each other.’

I couldn’t do it. The deceit was more than I could stomach. I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘I’m not going to promise you anything.’

‘Because you already know.’ Understanding flashed in her gaze. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what the message was. The countess has told you where he is.’

‘If I knew, I’d inform Greville.’

‘And I’d have to hope he thought I could be trusted with the information. No, Jonathan. Tell
me
. Tell me now.’

To pretend any longer that I didn’t know was futile. ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to look Paolo in the eye when he denies being responsible for my mother’s death. And I want him to know he’s not going to get away with it.’

‘I suspect Greville would say confronting him now was unwise.’

‘And Greville’s your boss. So, whatever he says goes. Is that how it is?’

‘Of course not. But it would be unwise. You must realize that.’

‘I don’t care whether it is or not. I want Paolo to understand how much I hate him for what he’s done. I’ll find out where he lives one way or the other. According to Jacqueline, the countess said she was going to ask Valerio Salvenini. So, he must have supplied her with the address. Well, I can charm it out of him if I have to. Or you can take me to it now. It’s your choice, Jonathan. You have to decide … which is the least unwise course of action.’

THIRTY-THREE

THE TAXI DRIVER
dropped us in a small piazza off Via Toledo, explaining to Vivien – whose Italian was far better than mine – that it was the closest he could get to our destination.

The city sloped sharply uphill from there, towards the heights of Vomero. The buildings were tightly packed along narrow, steepling streets, many divided by lengthy flights of steps. Washing hung from balconies, while, below, merchandise piled outside shops contested pavement space with double-parked scooters. Grubby, bright-eyed children scurried everywhere. It was late afternoon, clammily hot on sallow-shadowed Salita Penitenza. There was a pervading smell of blocked drains and a garbled jangle of music and jabbering voices from the open windows around us. It was, as the desk clerk at the Vesuvio had warned me, no place for ‘
la bella signora
’.

It didn’t look like Paolo’s natural habitat either. And ‘
la bella signora
’ was there at her own insistence. A few adult idlers cast us leery glances as we climbed the winding steps, examining chipped and faded number-plaques on walls in search of 33.

We found it eventually, partially obscured by fencing round part of the steps that appeared to be under repair, though no repair work was taking place. There were five bell-pushes clinging to crumbling stucco beside a decrepit doorway. Four had names of varying legibility recorded next to them. None of the names was Verdelli. Vivien prodded the nameless fifth. There was no
immediate
response and no way of telling if a bell was ringing anywhere. She gave it several more prods.

We were still standing there a few minutes later, wondering what to do, when a barrel-shaped old lady dressed in black, her girth expanded by a bulging shopping-bag, bustled past us and slipped her key into the lock. Vivien at once engaged her in conversation and she seemed neither to notice nor object as we slipped into the gloomy entrance hall behind her. A lot of eye-rolling and head-tossing accompanied her replies to questions about Paolo Verdelli. I couldn’t follow much of what she said, but the phrase ‘
ultimo piano
’ was clear enough. Paolo lived on the top floor.

‘I don’t think she likes him,’ Vivien said, as we started up the stairs. ‘She said something about him having noisy visitors and there were other things I couldn’t understand. Do you know what
mosconi
means?’

‘Haven’t a clue. You can ask Paolo.’

The house, shabby enough at street level, deteriorated still further as we climbed. The plasterwork was crumbling, with fragments of it lying on the landings and stair-treads. The light was dim, the atmosphere musty. Salita Penitenza 33 was a far and dismal cry from the Villa Orchis, as Paolo must have been painfully aware.

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ I asked, feeling I should give Vivien a chance to back out.

‘I’m sure.’

‘He may not be at home.’

‘Let’s find out.’

We reached the top floor, where it was marginally less gloomy thanks to a skylight somewhere above us. I made sure I was first to Paolo’s door. If there was to be an encounter with him, it would best be managed by me.

I realized something was wrong almost at once. The frame was splintered around the lock and, as I approached, the door swung ajar in response to the flexing of a loose board beneath my foot. There was a low buzzing noise from within that I couldn’t account for. I knocked on the door and pushed it open. ‘Paolo?’ I called.

The buzzing was much louder now. I noticed darting movements ahead of me. There were flies everywhere, swarms of them.

‘
Mosconi
,’ said Vivien from behind me. ‘I remember now what it means. The old lady was complaining … about bluebottles.’

‘Stay here,’ I said, advancing into the flat.