Property of Blood (22 page)

‘The ankle thing’s just an excuse.’

‘Yes. I wouldn’t let on that you know. It must be a relief to her to have a ready explanation for her distress. There’s not much privacy for her between the hospital, the journalists, and us.’

‘I think you’re right. The ankle it is then. I have to go. Thank you.’

What did she thank him for? She always seemed as glad to see him as he was to see her. He walked, more slowly now, to his car, wondering whether to go straight to the Palazzo Brunamonti and try for an interview with the son, or whether it would be wiser to have a talk with Patrick Hines first. The trouble was that he was quite certain Hines would be very wary of interfering between Olivia and her children and particularly wary—if not downright frightened—of crossing the daughter, who would be quite capable of coming out with a doctored version of the events of a certain afternoon. And if she called him as a witness? What could he tell other than that he had seen Hines leaving the house and found the daughter pretty well naked when he went in. No. It would have to be Leonardo. But how—

‘Marshal?’ He was standing right there by the car. T hope you don’t mind. I saw you going in when I arrived and I’ve been waiting for you. Can we talk a moment?’

‘Of course.’

They walked slowly on to the end of the line of cars and then began circling the edge of the car park. They had almost completed two circuits before the Marshal permitted himself to prompt his silent companion.

‘I’m sorry…’ Even then there was another long pause before he said, ‘My mother has talked about you. I feel that she trusts you.’

‘I was the first person she really had contact with. It’s probably nothing more than that.’

‘Still, she does trust you so … Please help me to persuade her to stay here a little longer. There are things I need to put right at home. Things—some at least that you already know—that I mustn’t let her find out about.’

The Marshal had to remind himself of Leonardo’s shock and grief, his devastating pain, in order to check the urge to say it would have been better not to have let them happen.

‘I know what you mean but you can’t do it. It’s more than likely that she’ll find most of it out anyway. What’s more important to think about now is that she’s in a very weakened state, and nothing, absolutely nothing on this earth, could damage her more than your trying to prevent her going home. It would confirm everything in that newspaper article. Confirm the suspicion hovering in the air all around her that the two of you chose to abandon her in favour of your inheritance.’

‘But that’s not true. It’s not what I wanted: I was ready to give up everything I had but Caterina … I even thought of selling the business—there’s a competitor who’d buy us out tomorrow—but Patrick said it was out of the question. She’d built it up from nothing and we mustn’t lay a finger on it. He suggested a mortgage on the palazzo but Caterina wouldn’t sign because it was Brunamonti property and not my mother’s. My money and Elettra’s wasn’t enough. What was I to do? I should have dealt with it better, I know, but it’s not true that I wanted to abandon her and keep the inheritance.’

‘If you say so. I have to give you the benefit of the doubt. I imagine your mother would rather have died than live to face such an idea. Many people do die during kidnappings. Those who survive have only a slim chance of complete recovery. If you don’t go in there now and tell your mother you want her home—and then get her there by tomorrow—if you don’t behave like a son should, you’ll destroy that slim chance for ever.’

‘But it’ll work so much better if I can sort these other problems out first. After that—’

‘There is no “After that.” There’s only now, the one moment in her life when she is not the strong, competent person you imagine but a damaged, vulnerable woman whose only hope of recovery depends on you.’

He knew he had no right to talk to this man in such a way but he couldn’t stop himself. The fear that churned in his stomach drove him on. The broken woman in the hospital bed took on Teresa’s face. He was pleading for her as if to his own sons because he couldn’t live forever. ‘Besides’—he was clutching at straws now as he felt his lack of effect—'the doctor has discharged her. Hospital beds can’t be taken up for no reason.’

‘I’ve already talked to the doctor. It can be arranged. We are paying for the room.’

Horrified, the Marshal tried to look Leonardo in the eyes. He had felt from the first that this was a candid person, and his honesty shone out in his eyes. Only now the eyes were blank and darkened as they had been on the day he’d collapsed in the courtyard. The Marshal felt he was staring into the windows of a roofless house. He was unreachable.

‘You don’t know how difficult my sister can be. She’s very jealous.’

“Yes.’ The Marshal knew a great deal more than her brother did about the extent of her jealousy but neither he nor anyone else would ever tell it.

‘She’ll calm down, given time. If my mother came home now and saw… the rows, the tension would be unbearable…’

Unbearable for you presumably, thought the Marshal, but he didn’t trust himself to speak.

‘There’s her missing jewelry and clothes and I don’t yet know what else. And I can get the maid back but I can’t sack the porter …’

‘Yes’— the Marshal tried to keep his voice free of expression—'she might wonder at the reluctance to part with ransom money coupled with the expense of a porter, I agree.’

‘I released everything I had, but I’ve told you it was nowhere near enough! Caterina said they would have killed her. She said they might well have killed her already. Why not?’

‘That’s not how kidnappers work. An inadequate payment, it’s true, does sometimes result in some evidence of violence to the victim so as to extract more money.’

‘Elettra blames me. I couldn’t force Caterina to sign away the house.’

‘Did you try?’

‘I didn’t insist. She becomes hysterical when crossed. My mother and I always tried—my father’s death … myfather … I can’t explain, it’s too complicated. Besides, it’s true what she said—the State has paid up for well-connected victims in the past. She thought we were being treated as second-class citizens and that’s not right. Everything my mother worked and struggled for all those years would have gone. I wanted to save it for her if I could. And I have. When she does come home she’ll have everything she had before.’

Except a son, the Marshal thought, because however hard she tries to believe you, however much she loves you, she’ll never trust you again because of this moment.

All he dared say was, ‘Please take your mother home. Do it now.’

‘I think Elettra—my mother’s closest friend—might ask her to go and stay with her for a week or so. If she won’t stay here, that would be the best thing, I think.’

‘It would at least be better than the hospital, but please—’

‘I think Elettra will manage to convince her, if only because Tessie’s there.’

‘Yes. I only hope she never finds out why Tessie’s there. I don’t know your mother well but from the brief contact I’ve had with her, I think your failure to protect her little dog could well do more damage to your relationship than your protection of your heritage could mend. She has been a very good friend, the Contessa Cavicchioli Zelli.’

‘Elettra’s all right, but she knows nothing about kidnappings and it wasn’t her business to tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, even if she was helping. Caterina said—’

At the completion of their third turn around the car park the Marshal’s patience was at an end. Tour sister,’ he said firmly, ‘has no knowledge or experience of kidnappings either, and she wasn’t helping. She was hardly the ideal person to take advice from in the circumstances.’

‘I don’t think that’s true, Marshal. She was all the family I had left. She was the person most deeply involved. Who else should I have consulted? You? You couldn’t have done much to help, could you?’

‘No, no … Are you going in to see your mother now?’

’I don’t think I will. The way she looks at me … I did what I could … it really hurts, I don’t mind telling you. I’ll come back another day.’

‘Salva!’

‘What?’

‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’

‘Of course I have. You just said we should talk to Toto’s teacher another day.’

‘I said
you
should. You might as well not have been there!

I don’t think you’re interested in that child’s future at all.’

‘I am. I know I tend to leave things to you. I know that.
¹

‘I just don’t understand you. You insisted on coming when I could see you were tired and upset.’

‘I didn’t say I was upset.’

‘What’s that got to do with it? Wait here a minute, there’s a bit of a queue.’

‘You’re not shopping now? Can’t we get home? The children …’

‘I’m going to buy some strawberries. It’s the first time I’ve seen them this year. Toto will be waiting there, worried sick. I’m not having any more upset today. Enough’s enough. We’ll have a nice supper and watch a film or something. Wait there. And for goodness’ sake don’t block the entire pavement.’

Like that woman with the little girl. Small children, small problems. But then they grow up … If he wasn’t to go inside the shop because it was crowded, how could he help blocking a pavement that was less wide than he was? Cars hooted at him when he stepped off it so he walked on a bit to the corner of Piazza Santo Spirito, where he could get out of everybody’s way near the newspaper kiosk. The headlines advertising all the papers were more or less the same.

ANOTHER ARREST IN BRUNAMONTI CASE

There he waited, tired and, as Teresa had said, upset. Why had Toto got himself into this mess when he had brains enough to prevent it? It’s such an impossible task to understand other people. How did Teresa do it? Sometimes, when he came in after work, she had sized up the mood he was in without so much as turning round to look at him. So, she would know what to say to Toto. Wouldn’t she? ‘Brunamonti case another arrest’… The Contessa, her head sunk in the pillows, her dry eyes filled with pain … Her answer to all her children’s problems seemed to have been more help, more love… but it hadn’t answered at all. No one could tell you what was best to do for your children. So much of it was luck and guesswork. He was grateful, as Teresa came along and slipped her arm through his, that he didn’t have to guess alone.

‘Salva! Look at that headline. You didn’t tell me they’d made another arrest.’

Nobody had nursed any illusions about capturing Puddu and his accomplice, presumed to be the one the Contessa called Woodcutter. The two guards captured in their drugged sleep were the ones she called Fox and Butcher, who, she said, had been on duty that night. The network of tunnels through the brush, coupled with Puddu’s intimate knowledge of the terrain and the help he could demand from other Sardinians in the area, gave the men still up in the hills too big an advantage. There were only two of them. They were silent. They were invisible. Their pursuers were many, visible, and audible. The search went on for days but the Captain’s hopes were pinned on night surveillance of places where they could safely seek food and of the motorway running below the hills where they might be picked up by other members of their clan. They weren’t high hopes because these men who still had the centuries-old skills of the bandit also had twentieth-century technology. There was no need to risk a near approach to a farmhouse if you could use your mobile phone to summon food, clothing, batteries, money to a well-hidden cave. For weeks, the only sign of life from them was a package posted to the Contessa Brunamonti containing a valuable ring wrapped in a piece of brown paper torn from a bread bag. The Contessa informed them of its arrival but claimed she had thrown away the envelope it had been posted in. It hardly mattered. The posting must have been done by some collaborator, and the postmark would be useless information.

Then, one day, they inadvertently came near enough to their quarry to cause them to move off in a bit of a hurry, and the small covered clearing where they had been eating still bore traces of their presence: a half-full flask of wine, some rinds of sheep’s cheese, and, most valuable of all, a polythene bag containing a dirty T-shirt, treasure for the dogs. The Captain was well aware that Puddu wouldn’t have been fool enough to leave the T-shirt, no matter what his hurry, and that on discovering his accomplice’s mistake he would split off from him. This proved to be the case. The dogs were racing towards the accomplice when he boarded a car driving south on the motorway. There was a chase during which the car’s tires were shot at and their quarry injured in the shoulder. From a prison hospital bed, he apologized to the Contessa Brunamonti and her family in front of TV news cameras. Under interrogation, he remained silent as to the likely whereabouts of Puddu. Of the three men who had taken the victim out of the city, no trace had been found, and against the photographer, Gianni Taccola, there was not, nor was there ever likely to be, a trace of evidence.

A year had passed and the lime trees were in flower again before the Marshal happened to see Olivia Brunamonti. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and he was strolling through Piazza Santo Spirito with Teresa’s arm through his. They were on their way to a discount store in San Frediano to buy a new fridge. The old one was on its last legs and they had decided to replace it now rather than risk having it breathe its last in the August holiday when they would be unable either to do without it or to replace it.

He was the one to notice the wedding group outside the church. He was soppy about weddings, according to Teresa, who disapproved of the excessive expense and mundanity of them.

‘But it’s still a nice ceremony,’ he said, as he always did, ‘and that’s a lovely girl. Just look at her.’

Teresa looked. ‘That’s the Brunamonti girl.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, it is.’ It was. ‘She does look nice. White suits her.’

‘Marshal! I’m so glad to see you again!’ The Contessa Cavicchioli Zelli, smiling, breathless, and dogless, was hurrying away from the wedding group to join them.