The Drowning River (31 page)

It had even been raining in Sicily, she’d said. But surely even in Sicily it rained in November? What had she meant?

Iris had reached the restaurant called the Medusa, named, she
registered, after the statue of Perseus standing opposite it on the far side of the piazza under the Loggiata dei Lanzi. A delicate little figure, poised on one foot, holding up the gorgon’s head by the hair.

Above her she heard the sound of a window opening, and leaned back to look upwards. Forearms appeared on a stone balustrade, hands; she heard him clearing his throat. The underside of a chin; if she took a step backwards she’d see his face.

Instead Iris moved to the door. There were only two bells; she pressed them both. Jackson’s voice when he answered was blurred and indistinct, but he buzzed her up.

‘I know who it is,’ she said, coming past him into a big, beautiful room with a coffered ceiling, filled with watery light. The windows were all open, and it was cold, but you could see along the rusticated flank of the old civic palace all the way down to the great arched windows at the far end of the Uffizi, the windows that overlooked the river. As she spoke defiantly, Iris tried not to think about what that expression on Jackson’s face had meant, just at the sight of her on his doorstep. Before she’d said a word.

Surprise? Panic? Hangover? They’d drunk wine and some grappa last night, as well as the champagne in the afternoon; enough to give anyone a headache.

‘I know who Ronnie was going away with.’ Iris wanted to get a reaction out of him. ‘I know who the man was.’

‘Really?’ he said, blinking. ‘How do you know?’ Iris almost felt sorry for him, he seemed so unprepared, somehow. What kind of world did he live in, where you slept with one person, then another person, and none of it made any impression?

‘I worked it out,’ she said, dumping her bag on a massive slab of wood that, like some mediaeval refectory table, ran along the back wall of the room. It held a bust of a blind-eyed Roman noble, gazing out at the Palazzo Vecchio, and an empty pizza box. She rooted through the bag, flinging things out of it.

‘You want a coffee?’ he said, rubbing his eyes. She shook her head fiercely. Jackson took a bottle of water that stood on the refectory table and planted himself in a chair by the window.

She held up the box of paints, took long steps over to the window and held them up in his face. ‘These,’ she said. ‘Ronnie went out and bought these, for her little trip.’

‘OK,’ said Jackson, warily. ‘They’re good paints.’

‘They’re the best, according to Sophia.’ Was it her imagination, or did he shift a little at the mention of her name?

Iris went on. ‘But one hundred and forty-five euros? She wasn’t that rich. Who did she want to impress, buying the biggest set of the most expensive paints from Zecchi?’

Jackson shrugged. There was another hard chair opposite him, and angrily she sat in it, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. He watched her.

‘And going to talk to painters? Kind of private tuition?’

Realizing for the first time that she would have to tell him that Claudio was dead, Iris stopped abruptly and stared away from him out of the window. Something was going on in the Uffizi’s long rectangular courtyard; a rank of carabinieri were moving people backwards into the main piazza, cordoning something off. The sight stopped Iris in her tracks; she thought of the sirens she’d been hearing all day: too many of them, and the gathering chaos in the streets she’d walked through. What were the police doing out there? It must be the rain, she thought, and for a surreal and horrible moment Iris imagined that in all this upheaval, somehow Ronnie might be uncovered, some mudslide or tidal wave might sweep her wet, cold body up into the light. Was she accepting that Ronnie was dead? She stared, unblinking, out of the window.

‘Yes,’ said Jackson, impatiently. ‘And she’d asked Massi, too, hadn’t she? Extra work.’ He frowned.

‘Who would have been too much of a bigshot to come to her Halloween party?’ Jackson looked uneasy. ‘Apart from you, I mean,’ said Iris, wearily refocussing on him, overwhelmed with the hopelessness of it. ‘She told me, after the party, that she’d had enough of boys, they were useless. So she found herself a man.’

‘A man.’ He swallowed. Whether he thought of himself as a boy or a man, she didn’t know. So she went on, leaning to look up into his face.

‘Who was she flying to Sicily with that afternoon?’

‘Sicily?’ said Jackson slowly. ‘Someone was going to Sicily, I remember that –’

‘I found the overnight bag,’ said Iris. ‘It had her ticket in it. She was supposed to be coming back Friday evening, only she never got the flight.’

‘Sicily,’ said Jackson again, ‘I heard – Antonella – ’

Iris barged on. ‘And who could have got into our flat, looking for that overnight bag, anything that would link her to him? Who tried to sabotage Ronnie’s computer? Who knew I wouldn’t be there Friday night? Who could have got past old eagle-eyed Badigliani? Because you certainly didn’t, when you left at three o’clock this morning.’

Jackson looked down at his feet, murmured something.

‘What?’ said Iris, impatiently.

‘You could have let me stay,’ he said, and when he looked up at her there was an almost wounded look on his face. She bit back what she wanted to say to him. It could wait.

‘So who?’ said Iris. In her pocket her phone shrilled; it was Sandro Cellini.

‘It was your Massi,’ Sandro said, before she could even speak. ‘Your teacher; she was having an affair with your Director. Paolo Massi’s name was on the outward-bound flight, he didn’t show; and he cancelled the return, the same day, Tuesday. But he would have been on the Friday evening flight.’

‘Yes,’ said Iris, ‘I’d worked it out,’ realizing he might not believe her, talking to Sandro but looking at Jackson. ‘Can I call you back?’ She clicked the phone shut.

‘You know how I know it wasn’t you?’ she said to Jackson, softly. A couple of months ago, a couple of days, she’d have had to endure the furious blush, to fight back tears, but her face felt as cool as marble.

‘I thought it might be you, because you wouldn’t tell me what you were doing Tuesday afternoon. And you were so weird yesterday, so angry. Only I know now.’

‘You do?’ said Jackson, and it was his turn to feel the brick-red burn rise up his cheeks.

Go on, thought Iris, triumphant and miserable at the same time. Shame on you. ‘I talked to Sophia,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Jackson dully, and in that moment Iris lost the taste for it.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, and it really didn’t. Ronnie was what mattered; disentangling this whole mess was what mattered.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Do you know? Have you worked it out?’

Jackson spoke carefully, his flush disappearing as quickly as it had come. ‘Massi was planning a trip to Sicily last week, because I overheard him telling Antonella,’ he said. ‘He told her he needed to go and see a picture dealer.’

In some remote corner of her calculations, Iris registered, there was a place for Antonella, wasn’t there? But she didn’t have time to think about that now.

‘It was him,’ she said. ‘Yes. Sandro – the detective – he called the airline. Massi was booked on the same flights.’

‘Wow,’ said Jackson, awestruck. ‘So you were right. Wow.’ He stood up, brushed his hand through his hair. ‘That’s – wow. I mean, how does that fit in? I mean – Massi, why didn’t he. . .?’ He stopped. ‘Huh. Well, I guess he wouldn’t say, would he? If she just didn’t turn up for the flight? He must have thought, shit.’

Iris said nothing, seeing Jackson, focussed for once, putting himself in Massi’s shoes.

He was nodding. ‘He must have thought, no one needs to know. It doesn’t mean – jeez.’

‘So he’s kept quiet all this time,’ said Iris, ‘even though he had – at the very least, what they’d call crucial information about her disappearance?’

Jackson looked uncomfortable. ‘I – well, I can kinda see how it might pan out. The longer you went without saying anything – I mean, it would be his job, his wife, on the line, wouldn’t it?’

He stopped, and stared at her. ‘You think he did it? Did – something to Ronnie?’ He looked incredulous, shaking his head. ‘Massi, and rough stuff? Nah.’

She frowned: although she now hated Paolo Massi, Iris could see Jackson had a point. ‘I’m not sure.’ And because there was Claudio, too. The old painter.

‘You want that coffee now?’ said Jackson. ‘I’m sorry, only my head just isn’t working without it.’

Iris gave in, knowing she was just putting it off. ‘OK.’ And she needed a coffee, too. What time was it, even? When had she last eaten? She didn’t know.

The kitchen was narrow and dark, lined with expensive wooden cupboards. This wasn’t an apartment where the tenants were expected to cook anything. She stood in the door, and he handed her a cup, American coffee from a percolator, tasting bitter and watery.

‘Jackson,’ she said at last. ‘Your old painter.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Jackson eagerly, ‘Claudio. I mean, where does he fit in?’

‘Sandro thinks she did meet him. That morning.’

‘Right,’ said Jackson faltering.

‘You liked him, didn’t you?’ said Iris.

‘Liked?’ said Jackson.

‘He died,’ said Iris.

But How Much Further does this take us?’ asked Sandro, despairingly. He put his head in his hands on the crisp white tablecloth. Luisa tutted.

‘Get some food down you,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock and none of us has eaten since breakfast. No wonder you can’t think straight.’

They were at Nello, the last place in the world where despair belonged. Sandro couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about Nello; a tiny little hole-in-the-wall trattoria, it had been the place he and Luisa always used to come when they were first courting. He’d long assumed it had closed down; he should have known better, because places this good never closed down.

Luisa had let Sandro call the girl, Iris March, to tell her – she’s got to know, he said, come on – but the minute he’d hung up she’d taken charge in the pale clear light of Claudio Gentileschi’s abandoned studio.

‘You’re white as a sheet,’ she said. ‘Don’t think. Don’t do any more detecting, I forbid it. You need food.’

And obviously Luisa had not forgotten about Nello at all, because after they’d locked the sad, empty room up carefully behind them, with an unerring instinct Luisa had frogmarched them around the corner
around the corner, from his new office! – and there it stood, after all these years. Nearly three on a Sunday afternoon, and twenty years since they’d last been here, but the old
padrone
–still in charge, his eyebrows a little wilder, his moustache a little whiter – had greeted Luisa as though it was only yesterday.

At Nello you didn’t even order, food just arrived. While they waited Luisa called the Kaffeehaus; and of course it turned out that, yes, she’d been right, they’d still had the tables and umbrellas up on Tuesday, it had been a beautiful day. Sandro heard her cajole someone into giving her a name and number for the waiter who’d been working the terrace. He saw her get her little gold propelling pencil out of her handbag, and the dark red diary she’d bought every year since he’d known her, and write it all down.

Without even pausing for breath, Luisa called the number, and Sandro heard that she had all the right words available to persuade the waiter that, yes, maybe he’d call by for a coffee with them, he wasn’t working today.

When she had secured her result Luisa put the pencil and paper away, and beamed at him. Sandro felt perhaps more useless than he had ever felt in his life.

‘You’re hungry,’ said Luisa. Then, as if the chef had somehow been privy to the entire exchange, all at once risotto with pumpkin was at the table, a basket of bread, wine and water. The world reasserted itself.

Sandro’s plate was nearly empty, it seemed, before he drew a breath; Giulietta had already finished hers, although Luisa was taking it slower.

He fished in his pocket for his own notebook and stub of pencil. ‘So what have we got? She was having an affair with her teacher, was planning to go off to Sicily with him that afternoon only he says he was in the gallery the whole day. And as far as we know the last person to see her was still Claudio.’

‘He was meeting her at the Kaffeehaus at 11.30,’ said Luisa. Laboriously he wrote it down. ‘So we need to talk to the waiter who was working the terrace,’ and she looked down at her notebook, ‘Beppe. Who should be along shortly.’ She prodded at her risotto.

‘And we need to talk to Cat Lady. She ran off like a scalded cat herself, and there’s something funny about that timing, if you ask me.’

‘What?’ said Sandro.

Luisa poured herself a glass of wine and sipped it slowly.

‘She handed the bag in at five, but she’s only ever there at lunchtime. By one, one-thirty, Veronica Hutton was already missing, wasn’t she? She’d failed to turn up for her flight. My guess would be, the bag was chucked into the bushes at the same time Veronica Hutton was – what? Attacked? Abducted? And Cat Lady might have been a witness.’

‘No love lost between Cat Lady and the Carabinieri, that’s for sure,’ said Sandro, writing.

Abducted? She must be still there, he thought; that was what was giving him the headache. The Carabinieri can’t have searched the place properly; Veronica Hutton must be in there somewhere. Because how the hell would you get her out, kicking and screaming? Holding a gun to her back under a raincoat, like in the movies? Could Claudio have calmed her down, got her to walk out with him through the Porta Romana gate? Everything in him resisted the thought that Claudio had had anything to do with her disappearance.

But if she was still inside the Boboli, she’d have to be dead. This was what he had not wanted to think about, and he said as much.

As if reading his mind, Luisa went on. ‘So assume he, or whoever, got her out of the Boboli? There’s the other gate, the one without the camera. And if you know the place, well, no doubt there’s any number of alleyways. There was an old lady I used to know whose garden was behind a hedge down at the Porta Romana end and if she ever fancied a stroll in the park she just popped through.’