Juggling the Stars (11 page)

'That's correct,' Morris said, taking the plunge. ‘Not since I came to dinner here, in fact.' If only the damn girl hadn't left the house in that stupid tracksuit he wouldn't have to worry about this at all. Only a halfwit ran away in a red tracksuit. He felt quite angry with her.

Bobo was exchanging glances with the mother when the telephone rang and Morris was so tense now he started in nervous surprise, a twitch of all his right arm and shoulder. If Massimina …

It was Antonella to ask somebody to come and take her place at the hospital. She couldn't stand it any more.

‘How is the old lady?' Morris asked Bobo in a low, respectful voice.

‘ln coma,' he said with relished grimness. “Dying.'

'I'm sorry,' Morris said (if he'd had a hat he'd have been holding it in his hand - he could see it now). ‘All these things coming together one on top of the other,' he commiserated as Signora Trevisan put down the phone. ‘I don't know what to say.'

The woman looked about to burst into tears and dispatched Paola at once to take over from Antonella. All at once, seeing those damp eyes, Morris felt genuinely sympathetic. Still, if only they'd let him court the girl in a regular conservative fashion, none of this would ever have happened.

Inspector Marangoni was bulky and somewhat aggressive. Having been obliged to drive out of Quinzano under a blazing sun, he was obviously determined not to show any excessive deference to the Trevisan family, however miserable their plight might be. He sat down hard in the inevitable straight-backed chair and addressed himself exclusively to Morris. Beside him sat his assistant, small and slim; a dry, expressionless, olive face with quick eyes. Morris was pleased to notice they were both sweating quite as much as he was.

‘Parla italiano, Signare, capisce tutto
?' The others watched.

‘He really speaks very well,' Signora Trevisan began.

‘Please allow me to carry out the questioning alone. Signora. To satisfy regulations I must have the answers from the young man's own lips.'

Morris smiled, deferential and indulgent together. ‘I speak fairly well. If there's anything I don't understand, I will say.'

‘You have some kind of documents identity card?'

Morris felt inside his leather case and produced his passport. ‘Her Britannic Majesty … requests …' Most decent of her.

‘Permesso di soggiorno
in Verona?'

Tm afraid I don't have it with me at the moment.'

‘It's not important.‘ The inspector paused, staring directly into Morris's eyes. ‘So, you had some kind of relationship with the missing girl?'

‘I wanted to have. Her mother forbade us to see each other.'

Signora Trevisan opened her mouth to objects but the inspector hurried on.

‘You never had any intention of running away with the girl?'

‘Not at all. In any case, Massimina is still seventeen, so any kind of elopement would be considered a crime.' He smiled.

'Technically speakings yes.' The inspector leaned over and whispered a word to his assistants who was scribbling notes.

‘Did you ever talk about the idea?'

‘She did, but I was against it, I was of the opinion that her mother would come round.' He looked up blandly at Signora Trevisan in a gesture of reconciliations but her face was hard. So much the worse for her then. ‘I thought it was best to give it time.'

‘And when was the last time you saw Massimina?'

‘A month ago now. More. When I came to dinner here.'

‘You haven't seen her since then?'

‘No,  nor spoken.' He felt a muscle tremble in the corner of his eye.

The inspector exchanged another word with his assistant.

‘Signora, I would like to have a word with Signor Duckworth on his own, Signor Duckworth, would you mind stepping out into the garden for a moment. We can talk there.'

‘Not at all.' But standing up, Morris felt his bowels almost dissolve away inside him. They knew he had seen her Friday evening, then. Stan had said something. Or Gregorio. How could they forget a red tracksuit? How could he ever have imagined they would forget it? He must keep cool. He could say he was afraid they would think him involved, perhaps. Damn it, why had he posted that stupid letter before coming here? If it wasn't for that, if he could intercept it maybe somehow, there still wasn't anything they could really nail him for. Only a few lies. But when the letter arrived… and then if that Signor Cartuccio went and saw something in a newspaper …

‘Signor Duckwort.' They sat, incongruously, at a small marble-topped table under a lattice of wistaria that gave a green fishbowl feel to the air, hushed and cool. 'I must warn you that Signora Trevisan has informed us that you lied to the family on a number of counts when you spoke to them about your private life and that she considered you a person not to be trusted - at all. Bobo, Signore Posenato, that is, supports this testimony.'

Morris could barely conceal a sigh of relief. He pushed a hand into blond hair for a moment, covering his expression, and tried to settle his features into a look of mildly irritated resignation.

'That's perfectly correct. I lied to them about my job and my prospects and my father's position.'

‘And may I ask why?' But there was already a faint grin on the heavy man's face. Morris could see it under the glistening sweat.

'They're rich. I thought they'd be very negative if I told them how precarious my circumstances really are. So I blew things up a bit. I thought by the time the relationship really became serious, if it did, I'd be bound to have a better position.'

The inspector grunted, the assistant dropped his head to hide a smile as he scribbled.

‘I had no idea they'd be so suspicious as to go and check up on everything. I mean, you don't …'

‘No, quite. Signor Duckworth, I have just one or two other questions to ask you while I have you on your own, and then you're free to go.'

Plain sailing. ‘Go ahead.'

'There is no possibility that Massimina is pregnant, is there?'

Morris was surprised, genuinely, and showed it with a start. ‘Not at all. Absolutely out of the question.'

‘Excuse me, Signor Duckworth, but my job sometimes obliges me to ask unpleasant questions.'

Marangoni found a handkerchief and rubbed it thoughtfully over a big damp waxy face. He was suffering. He was thinking of his nice air-conditioned office. And his teeth were bad, poor man. If Morris had had teeth like that, he would have gone to the dentist tout de suite and paid whatever it took.

‘So you weren't having sex?'

‘No, no. To tell the truth, she's more Catholic than the Pope. She wouldn't hear of it. Her idea was to get married right away. Hence our engagement.'

‘Quite, good. Second, then, do you have any reason at all to suppose that Massimina may have taken her own life?'

Morris shook his head quickly. ‘No, not that. She isn't that kind of girl.'

'Think about it, Signore, did she have any reason to be upset recently?'

Morris made a show of thinking. ‘Well, I know she was very depressed about failing her school exams, and also about her grandmother being ill. I mean, really down. I got the impression her grandmother was her only real friend in the family and the others just felt she was a bit of a dunce and bossed her around all the time.'

At which point Morris suddenly realized that if he was supposed not to have spoken to the girl for as long as a month, he couldn't have known whether she had failed her exams or not, nor her reaction to the grandmother's illness. But he kept on bravely.

'Then I suppose she was rather upset about not being able to see me. Certainly she wrote a couple of desperate letters. All the same, I still don't think she …'

‘Could you show us those letters, Signore? Every scrap of evidence helps.'

‘Er, I've only got the one still I think,' - and written before the exams dammit - 'I'll try and bring it to the
Questura
this afternoon.' Where the hell had he put the thing? And why had he spoken of more than one letter so casually like that? Tell the truth, for God's sake, where you could. Otherwise you made them suspicious for nothing.

‘We'd be very grateful, Signore. Just one final question. In your opinion, where do you think Massimina is now?'

Morris shrugged his shoulders, pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair in a comprehensive gesture of doubt.

'I've no idea. I know what I'm afraid of, obviously, but I really wouldn't know.'

‘And what are you afraid of?'

‘Well,' Morris hesitated, ‘some kind of awful sex murder, don't you think?'

There was a long silence.

‘You don't think she may have been kidnapped?'

‘Well, yes,' Morris said after a moment's thought. ‘I suppose she could.' And he added puzzled, ‘Are they really
that
rich?'

‘I believe so,' Marangoni said quietly.

The inspector asked Morris where he would be able to contact him if necessary over the coming days and Morris explained that this could be something of a problem. He'd finished teaching now and had arranged to go on a trip with friends who were driving to Turkey. The inspector considered this for a while and then said he saw no legitimate reason for asking Morris to stay, but he would be grateful if he could keep in touch by phone every few days or so, so that they could call him back to Verona in case of any unexpected developments. A routine arrangement, the inspector explained. Any problem with money and he should feel free to call reverse charge.

Fine, Morris agreed, he would do that. But then he said that maybe he wouldn't go away after all now, he wasn't sure, with this awful affair going on. Even if he hadn't seen the girl for a month and had given up hope more or less, he still felt very attached. He was in a dilemma really whether to go or not. Either way, he would be over at the
Quesiura
this afternoon to let them have Massimina's letter to himself and he would let them know his movements then. At which Marangoni and his assistant seemed quite satisfied and went back into the house to have a word with Signora Trevisan. Strange, Morris was thinking, that nobody seemed to know about Massimina's having taken that money out of the bank. You'd have thought that was the first thing they'd have checked up on. Unless she'd been lying to him of course.

Morris refused the Trevisans' invitation to lunch, then accepted when half-heartedly pressed (one was obviously never going to eat well with Massimina). They sat down to a table of two roast chickens, courtesy of Bobo & Co. no doubt, and ate in almost complete silence, what conversation there was being restricted to the most formal possible (which at least allowed one to savour the food).

Only when Morris was leaving did Signora Trevisan say she would like to excuse herself if she had offended him in any way, and Morris said, no, it was really he who owed an apology and he said if there was anything he could do for them over the coming days he would be happy to do it. He thought for a moment now they might at least have the decency to ask him to stop over regularly and share their news and suffering, seeing as he was supposed to be in love with the girl. But they said stiffly, no, there was nothing he could do to help, and so Morris hurried off on his remaining errands.

All afternoon he was in a state of what might best be described as battle-action calm; a frenzied, maniac calm, aware of the tiniest detail, the world of forms, bodies and movement impressing itself every moment on his mind with photographic sensitivity and precision his head racing with thoughts. Yet at the same time everything he did was done calmly and carefully., walking a tightrope as it were, with life and death in mind. In short, Morris was enjoying himself.

Getting off the bus at Ponte délia Vittoria, he walked the back streets through to Dietro Duomo, waiting twice behind corners to check they hadn't for some reason sent someone to follow him. The air was dense with heat and unpleasant smells drifting up from gratings and garbage. The cobbles were hot and the winding alleys behind Via Emilei had a fetid tang to them. But in a few days he would be by the sea with any luck. He could get himself a tan, loll on the beach and sort out everything carefully and in peace. Because it was a long road ahead of him now. At two fifteen Morris climbed the broken stairs of Via Accoliti Number 7.

‘Getting the ferry from Brindisi around the thirtieth,' Stan told him, sipping wine through iceblocks. He was cross-legged in his underwear. ‘Be great if you could join us. Well be in Rome the week before that at the Emmaus commune. Ill give you the address if you want to pick us up there.'

Morris had some teaching that was going on for a little while, privately, he said. But he might just be able to make it if he pushed things. It would be fun.

‘Oh Morris,' Marion Roberts said. She was painting something on the wall. ‘I read something in the paper about you. Weren't you involved with that girl that's disappeared? What's it all about?'

She was smiling broadly through her traffic-light make up, delighted naturally to have found out something about his private life. Why was it that everybody wanted to know about your private life? As if Morris, for example, could care less whether Stan went to bed with Marion or with the Pinnington girl, or the pathetic Simonetta - or even all three. Or none. He absolutely couldn't give a damn. He had no interest in Stan's exploits. Whereas other people thought they'd nailed you against the wall somehow the moment they'd discovered you had a girlfriend. And Morris remembered the amusement of some schoolfriends who had once found his mother's photograph in his wallet and danced round and round refusing to give it back.

‘No, the papers really rather blew it up. I went out with her for a bit a while back, but I haven't seen her for ages. Somehow they seem to have got it into their heads we might have run away together.'