The Drowning River (26 page)

‘If I had, I’d have walloped them,’ he said, with another scowl. ‘Heard ’em, mind you. I was finishing my
merenda,
around twelve, twelve-thirty. Bloody great crash, and a girl shrieking in English. Or German.’

Despite herself, Luisa raised her eyes to heaven; surely even an old misery like this would know the difference? And if only he’d been quicker on his feet. Unfortunately the old man caught her expression, and their time was up. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of people like you.’ And the door slammed shut behind him.

Giulietta stuck some gum in her mouth, considering the closed door. ‘She must have got out again, somehow,’ she said thoughtfully. She pointed down towards the gate and they wandered back as far as the empty pedestal. ‘Maybe it was her knocked it off, that what you’re thinking? In some kind of a struggle?’

Luisa bent and picked up a piece of terracotta from among the gravel. The hedge was relatively dense around the pedestal, but as she
straightened she saw that a hole had been torn through it out of sight, and fairly recently; behind the hedge was an extended stretch of dark, stunted wood, leading uphill. Someone might have come out here, hidden behind the urn – only they came out too suddenly, and knocked it off. Then they’d have had to make a break for it pretty quickly; down towards the Annalena gate, for example.

Luisa sighed, frustrated. ‘Sandro told me there was no footage of her coming out again.’ She slid her arm through Giulietta’s. ‘Up,’ she said. ‘Let’s get some height.’

At the top of the wide cypress avenue they turned and looked back down.

‘Plenty of ways out,’ said Giulietta. Her eyes darted across the expanse of trees, bordered by houses, the
viale
to the south, the higgledy-piggledy rear facades of the Via Romana to the west.

They folded their arms and fell silent. Below them the city lay under a blanket of cloud and drizzle, around them a bewildering number of paths led away through the dark green hedges.

‘Gawd,’ said Giulietta, scowling at the rain. ‘This weather.’

‘Yes,’ said Luisa, but she wasn’t really listening. The view across the soft green drizzled hills to the glinting facade of the little church seemed to have imprinted itself on the inside of her eyelids. ‘I don’t want to die,’ she said suddenly and definitely.

And all at once Giulietta’s scarecrow arms were around Luisa, then she sprang back, as abruptly as she’d bestowed the embrace. ‘You’re not going to die,’ she said, hugging herself angrily. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘Well,’ said Luisa.

‘You’re not,’ said Giulietta with certainty, and for a minute or two they stared at each other, before Giulietta broke the spell. ‘Are we meeting Sandro for lunch, or what?’

‘You hungry?’ said Luisa, who realized that she hadn’t felt hungry for days.

‘Starving,’ said Giulietta, cheerfully. ‘Isn’t there a bar in this dump?’

‘Yes,’ said Luisa, trying to remember the route.

‘Here,’ said Giulietta, and there was a signpost, Fountain of Neptune, it said, Forte di Belvedere, Vineyard, Kaffeehaus.

Vineyard? Luisa pondered the word; someone had told her about the vineyard.

‘Whys it in German?’ complained Giulietta. ‘Kaffeehaus?’

Luisa shrugged. ‘I think it’s modelled on something Austrian, you know,’ she said. ‘They go in for coffee houses, cake and all that, whipped cream.’

Giulietta brightened. ‘All right,’ she said grudgingly. Luisa remembered the struggle it had been to get her to eat a slice of bread, once upon a time.

As they came past the little row of stunted vines en route, Luisa spotted something that stopped her in her tracks.

‘That’s it,’ she whispered, pointing.

‘What?’ said Giulietta, impatiently.

‘Shh,’ said Luisa.

‘Cats?’ said Giulietta, not bothering to lower her voice. Because under the hedge beyond the little vineyard there were four or five cats in shades of grey, as if bred to the shadows, clustered around a bowlful of food. They made soft mewling, growling sounds as they competed for space. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the presence of humans.

‘It’s where the girl’s bag was found,’ Luisa said. Behind the vineyard, Sandro had said.

‘Cat Lady found it,’ she went on, thoughtfully. Giulietta snorted.

‘Loony, more like,’ she said, and Luisa put a finger to her lips. Giulietta followed her gaze; there crouched behind the hedge and opening a family-size tin of veal and liver was a woman in a cheap transparent mac, hood over her thin hair, bare legs in German sandals. She seemed almost as oblivious to the observers as her cats were.

Repelled by the woman’s appearance, Luisa struggled for sympathy. What made a woman behave like this? Out in the rain, feeding cats. Thwarted maternal feelings? The need to be needed. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Sandro needs me, she thought, and found herself wishing he needed her less.

‘Hello?’ she said and the woman turned her head sharply, in that instant echoing the half-feral movement of a cat’s head at the bowl. She scowled.

‘Are you – um. . .’ and Luisa searched her memory for the name, came up with it in triumph, ‘Signora DiTommaso? Fiamma DiTommaso?’ Cat Lady. ‘Are you the one, found the bag?’ The woman glared at them and turned her back, shovelling empty cans and Tupperware and spoons into a hessian sack and then, before they could work out what was happening, had set off at a lopsided scurry between the hedgerows and was gone.

‘Hey,’ shouted Giulietta belatedly. ‘What’s the rush?’ She turned to Luisa in frustration. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ said Luisa, thoughtfully, ‘I’ve got her address.’ And she patted the bag slung across her body.

Giulietta looked at her admiringly. ‘You’re doing this properly,’ she said.

Luisa looked her in the eye. ‘I’m not going to let Sandro fail on this one for lack of a bit of back-up,’ she said. ‘It’s his first job, since – well. All his life he’s been too proud to ask for help, or advice, and look where it got him last time; chucked out of the police, even though he saved two lives that time, if we count yours. A life’s work, and all he was trying to do was the right thing – but that’s not always the point, is it?’

She was ranting; Giulietta was looking almost alarmed. ‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘I just meant, you’re good at this stuff, that’s all.’ But at the sight of the woman’s disappearing back Luisa felt weary, suddenly, and it showed.

‘Come on,’ said Giulietta, taking her arm. ‘Kaffeehaus, this way.’

The elegant little building did have the odd Viennese touch, plush comfort to counteract the desolate look of the empty terrace where tables and chairs had been stacked to be put away for the winter. Inside it was cosiness itself; a small wooden bar and a curved bay window facing out across the city with little golden chairs set at round tables. Behind the bar a stout middle-aged woman in an apron and an elderly bowtied and waistcoated barman observed their entrance, possibly the only customers they’d had all week. Luisa felt revived just by the smell of wood and fresh coffee. She plonked herself at a table, and when Giulietta went to get two cups and fished in her ragged purse for coins, for once she didn’t remonstrate.

Giulietta took her time, rattling off questions at the old barman’s back while he made their cappuccini. While she waited Luisa took out the folder, a touch damp but intact, and withdrew the newspaper cutting.

When she got to the table with two brimming cups, Giulietta said, ‘Cat Lady’s got a screw loose, is their opinion, though she used to teach anthropology at the university, so I suppose she can’t be stupid. They say she’s here every morning, regular as clockwork, feeds the cats and talks to them, eleven till twelve-thirty, sometimes comes in here and asks for a glass of tap water at twelve thirty-five or so before she goes off home clanking like a rag and bone man with all her cans and forks and whatnot.’

A woman of regular habits, thought Luisa, musing on the similarities between Fiamma diTommaso and Claudio Gentileschi. Cautiously she sipped the cappuccino; she was fussy about her coffee, and if it was made with longlife milk she wouldn’t drink it – but it was good.

She set the cup down. ‘Did you ask them about Tuesday?’

‘Hmm,’ said Giulietta. ‘She was feeding the cats Tuesday lunchtime, says Roberta.’ She nodded at the elderly woman, who gave her a stiff smile. ‘Didn’t bother with coming in for her glass of water, though. Which was odd, as she’s a bit obsessive about it, and it was a nice warm day, Tuesday.’

Something or someone upset her routine, mused Luisa. Scared her off?

‘They were both working? Did you ask them about the girl?’

Giulietta nodded, plucking the newspaper cutting from Luisa’s hand; Luisa let it go, because there was something else she needed to check. She withdrew the carabiniere report. ‘Says here that Cat Lady brought the bag in at five,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Not midday.’

‘That her?’ said Giulietta curiously, peering at the grainy photograph of Veronica Hutton. ‘Doesn’t look dumb. Looks like she knows her way around.’ She peered at the bag. ‘What else you got in there?’

‘Nuh-uh -’ said Luisa, holding up a finger. ‘One thing at a time.’ Giulietta snatched up the cutting with a pout, and flounced to the bar with it.

Luisa turned and looked away, out through the big bay window at the red roofs in the drizzle, the windblown umbrellas on the terrace below them. In the back of Luisa’s mind an idle thought began to form, but it did not have time to take shape before Giulietta was back, plonked next to her and rummaging through the bag.

‘They’d already seen the photograph,’ she said, holding the buff folder aloft. ‘What have we here?’ Luisa shook her head, and held out a hand for the folder. Thanked God she’d left the post-mortem photographs of Claudio Gentileschi back at the flat. Giulietta was tough, but not that tough.

‘This isn’t a game, Giuli,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Giulietta, sheepishly. ‘Sorry.’ She put the folder down.

Luisa sighed. ‘You can look,’ she said, and after a moment’s hesitation Giulietta pulled the folder onto her lap and opened it. She stared, stared so hard Luisa followed her gaze to the dog-eared photograph that was clipped to the top of the folder.

Reverently Giulietta tugged the photograph from its resting place and held it up.

‘Giuli?’ said Luisa. Giulietta’s face was slack, afraid.

‘It’s never him?’ she said. ‘The suicide? Not our Claudio?’

‘Our Claudio?’ Luisa took her hand. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Our Claudio,’ said Giulietta, slowly. ‘Lives next door to the Women’s Centre in the Piazza Tasso. Our Claudio.’

As She Closed The door behind Sandro Cellini, Iris suddenly felt completely wrung out. She’d known immediately that she had seen him before. It had taken her a second or two to place him but then there it was; the dejected-looking man who had been standing bareheaded in the rain, at the gate to the Boboli gardens. And with familiarity had come a sudden rush of relief; the relief of not being alone, the relief of finding out that Jackson had been telling the truth and that therefore when she had believed him – and by shameful extension when she slept with him – she had not been making the most stupid move she’d ever made. Just the relief had left her feeling like a jelly even before Sandro Cellini had told her the old man was dead. She sat down.

He’d taken out his mobile and looked at it, just to cover the shocked silence. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said, ‘I’ve got to go.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I’m going to talk to your teachers.’

‘Teachers?’ she’d said, alarmed. ‘You mean Paolo Massi?’

‘Who else is there?’ he’d asked, curiously, and she’d explained to him how it worked, about Antonella Scarpa, and studio visits and life classes. He’d seemed to take it in, nodding intently, but he was obviously in a hurry, now. He apologized again; shook her hand. ‘Contact me,’ he said. ‘Please. If anything occurs to you.’

She’d liked him. Grumpy, suspicious Sandro Cellini, with his notebook and his way of looking at her under his eyebrows, impatient and solicitous at the same time. It had been weirdly comforting, having him in the flat, watching him look around curiously at the stuffed eagle in its case, the mounted antlers and the tattered gold damask curtains, then his look returning to her, Iris, with something like respect. That she could live in this weird Gothic set-up, without freaking out completely? She’d liked him, but even with him on the case, it wasn’t looking good, was it? And now he’d gone Iris felt the place reassert itself around her, settling and creaking.

The old man Ronnie’d gone to meet had been found dead; what was worse, it looked like he’d committed suicide. The conclusion was logical.

The doorbell shrilled, startling Iris on to her feet.

It was the contessa, on the landing. She was wearing a curious kind of housecoat.

‘Ha,’ the old woman said with hostility. ‘Another visitor?’

Iris folded her arms, not budging from the threshold to let her past. ‘Signore Cellini,’ she said, as icily polite as she could manage. ‘I think you know him?’

‘His wife,’ said the contessa with a contemptuous sniff. ‘I know the wife, a shop woman. I give her number to Mrs Hutton.’

‘So you know,’ said Iris, ‘that he’s trying to find out what happened to Ronnie. To Veronica.’

The old woman inclined her head. ‘He didn’t come to ask me,’ she said, her mouth set in an ugly line.

‘Do you have anything to tell him?’ Old bat.

‘How can he know, if he doesn’t ask?’ She sniffed again.

Something occurred to Iris. ‘On Friday night,’ she said, ‘did you see anyone? Did anyone call?’

‘Anyone, what do you mean, anyone?’ said the contessa, her eyes like a small, suspicious animal’s.

‘I think someone was in the apartment on Friday night.’

The Contessa Badigliani drew herself up. ‘Absolutely negative,’ she said. ‘Do you think I would allow any stranger into my house? My
concern for security is paramount.’ Her creaking, antiquated English made her sound mad.

Iris looked at her, because there was something about the way she said it. ‘Not necessarily a stranger,’ she said. ‘Did anyone come here?’