The Villa Triste (38 page)
Signora Grandolo was waiting for him, just as she had promised. On the telephone half an hour earlier, she had not seemed surprised to hear Pallioti’s voice. Instead, after remarking that she was delighted to hear from him, she had listened, and then simply said that she would be happy to stay on at her offices and share with him any records Remember The Fallen had from the Villa Triste. She would, she had added, wait in the building’s lobby, now that the receptionist was gone, in order to spare him ringing the after-hours bell and waiting, and getting soaked. Rain had not been forecast, but as he left the Cavicallis’, it had begun to pour.
Now, he opened the door of the official car he had requisitioned, ducked, and ran for the entrance. Little cascades dribbled down the steps and formed pools on the pavement. He stepped in one, soaking his socks. Signora Grandolo held open the heavy glass door and gestured him in.
‘Not cats and dogs,’ she said. ‘Elephants and giraffes. I have always hated the Florentine winters!’
The glass panels swung closed. Their footsteps sounded like Morse code on the marble floor as he followed her towards the elevator. There did not appear to be another soul in the place. Whatever went on in these offices clearly ended promptly at 5 p.m.
‘Thank you again,’ Pallioti said as the doors pinged open.
He couldn’t believe that she didn’t have something better, or at least more interesting, to do on a rainy evening than guide a befuddled policeman through computerized records. He could, of course, have asked someone on Enzo’s investigation, insisted that they drop what they were doing and chase his particular wild goose. But it would have taken days. And annoyed everyone to boot. And besides, he didn’t even know what he was looking for. Possibly nothing at all.
But he doubted it. The thing that had been niggling at him had not gone away. He should be as satisfied as the Mayor. As optimistic as Enzo, who was currently winging his way through this storm to Bari, confident that in a day, or two or three at most, they would place Bruno Torricci in Florence and wring a confession out of him and tie this case up neatly with a bow. But he wasn’t. And he couldn’t think of any of those things. Instead, all he could think of was Signor Cavicalli’s face. And those plastic bags. Paid handsomely for. Never opened. Locked in a safe.
‘Graziella’s gone home,’ Signora Grandolo said as she bent to unlock the doors. ‘It’s tedious, to have to do this, but we had a break-in here a few years ago. Well, not really a break-in, a burglary of opportunity, while Graziella had gone around the corner for lunch. Now I don’t go downstairs without locking up. Our records aren’t valuable,’ she added as she led him across the front room and into her office, ‘but they are personal.’ She glanced at him. ‘May I take your coat?’
The curtains on the big windows had been pulled, shutting out the rain and the city night. A vase of roses sat on a side table. With the rug and the upholstered chairs, the bookshelf and sofa, Signora Grandolo’s office looked more like a personal sitting room. A pair of glasses had been left on the coffee table, a scarf was folded on the edge of her desk beside a teacup. A pile of mail was held down with a silver letter opener. It occurred to Pallioti to wonder how much time exactly Signora Grandolo spent here, since her husband died.
She closed the closet door and returned to her desk.
‘Please,’ she said, gesturing towards one of the chairs, ‘bring it close enough so you can see.’
The computer was already on. A click of a key brought the screen to life. She reached for a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
‘Thank you so much again,’ Pallioti said. ‘For doing this. I could have gone through official channels to access these, but—’
‘It would have taken forever.’ Signora Grandolo smiled at him over the top of her glasses. ‘Yes, I know. I’m afraid I took shameless advantage of Cosimo’s connections to get us as many complete ‘in-house copies’ as I could. The archives are impossibly slow. And often rather confused.’
She turned to the computer.
‘It was Villa Triste you said you were interested in?’
‘Yes,’ Pallioti said. ‘Yes. If you have—’
‘Well, we have some bits and pieces. What I could get hold of. Not all of it, believe it or not, is computerized yet. And quite a lot is missing. They’re nowhere near as complete as the Red Cross or the CLN papers.’
‘You’ve seen them? The originals?’
‘Of the Villa Triste? Oh yes.’ She glanced at him. ‘Unfortunately. In the early days, when Cosimo first started this, right after the war – well, of course we were a few light years from the digital age. Someone had to go and do the sifting and digging. They didn’t even have microfilm then.’ She shrugged. ‘Frankly, I much preferred the original paper.’
‘You?’
Pallioti tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. He didn’t succeed. Signora Grandolo smiled.
‘I worked for him,’ she said. ‘I was a secretary at the bank. That’s how we met. As for the archives, well, it wasn’t glamorous. Quite the opposite – dark and dusty. I volunteered because Cosimo felt so strongly about all this, and, well, women will do anything when they’re in love.’ She smiled, and added, ‘The secret of your power. As if you didn’t all know that.’
She tapped a command on the keyboard.
‘To be honest,’ she said as the page loaded, ‘the Villa Triste records always gave me the creeps. I suppose I expected bloodstains on the pages or something. But I also suppose we should be grateful for them. So many of the people we were interested in passed through there. Having them to hand certainly made searches faster. Not,’ she added, ‘that I’ve looked at them in ages. We don’t need these much any more – we’re admin now, mainly. For the monuments. And for care homes. The occasional pension arrangement. That kind of thing. The searching has been over for a long time.’
She swivelled the computer towards him so he could see the screen.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘we scanned full pages in. Even in that hellhole, their good Nazi-Fascisti handwriting was immaculate.’
It was. Upright black-ink letters marched across ledger pages, as neat and precise as an old-fashioned accountant’s. Which, Pallioti supposed, had been exactly what this was. A massive accounting of the beaten, the tortured, and the dead. She was watching him.
‘What is it exactly,’ she asked quietly, ‘that I can help you with, Dottore?’
Pallioti sat back in his chair.
‘I’m looking for the records from a specific date. Well, two. The first is 14 February 1944.’
‘Valentine’s Day.’
‘Yes. Yes,’ he said again. ‘Something happened. An attack. Assassination attempt, by a GAP unit, on the German consul and a pair of SD officers. At the Teatro del Pergola. Three men were arrested.’
Signora Grandolo looked at him for a moment. Then she nodded. ‘Well,’ she said, turning to her computer, ‘let’s see what we can find.’
She tapped for a few moments, her fingers moving swiftly over The keys, then stopped, waiting for the screen to load. A few seconds later, she said, ‘It seems to have been an unusually quiet day.’
Pallioti leaned forward.
‘There’s no trace of them?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes. They’re here. Three of them. It looks as if they were Saint Valentine’s only customers. I always have thought he was a very strange choice, for the Day of Love.’
‘And their code names – are they recorded?’
‘Their code names?’ She glanced at him. ‘You mean from GAP? No, never. They never gave them away. That was the point. If they were arrested they gave their own names, or the ones on their papers. The defence was usually that they were just ordinary citizens, in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Of course, that was exactly what Giovanni Trantemento had said – that Il Corvo and Beppe, he and Roblino, would claim they were just in the wrong place, and Massimo that he had never seen the woman Lilia – Issa – before. What was it Caterina had called it? A perverse kind of gift, the ability to deny even those closest to you – to say, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
‘Here,’ Signora Grandolo said, ‘you can see for yourself. They were arrested in the late afternoon, all three at the same time. Does that sound right?’
He nodded. She swivelled the screen again. Leaning forward, Pallioti saw the three names entered clearly, as if in a school attendance book. They were recorded as having been arrested in Via Pergola at 4.10 p.m. and arriving at Villa Triste exactly thirteen minutes later.
Signora Grandolo read out loud: ‘Giancarlo Menucci, Piero Balestro, Giovanni Rossi.’
Pallioti heard the names fall like rain. Like stones dropping into a deep, dark pool. He did not recognize them.
‘They arrived at the Villa Triste on the afternoon of Valentine’s Day,’ Signora Grandolo continued. She clicked at the keyboard. ‘And were removed three days later. On the 17th, at 8.40 in the evening, and put on a transport to the labour camps.’
Pallioti sat still for a moment. The timing matched too well. Two of them had to be Giovanni Trantemento and Roberto Roblino. Il Corvo and Beppe. In which case, the third man was Massimo. He leaned forward.
‘What would have happened,’ he asked, ‘if they had escaped? Would that have been recorded?’
Signora Grandolo laughed. The look she gave him, the rise of her finely plucked eyebrows might as well have said, ‘Are you kidding?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, that wouldn’t have been recorded. No one “escaped” from the Villa Triste. At least officially.’
‘And unofficially?’
She shrugged. ‘It would simply have been entered like this – that they were put on a transport.’
‘Pass the buck down the line if they didn’t appear at the other end?’
She nodded. ‘Something like that. In the meantime, they would have hunted them down. And killed them. They were diligent about it. Often beyond reason. Escapers weren’t just bad for morale, they were a personal insult. Not to mention an affront to order.’ She gestured towards the neat-lined page on the screen. ‘The Nazis and the Fascists, among the other things they had in common, shared a disdain for loose ends.’
Pallioti thought about this for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Could you check? Can you cross-reference to see if you have any further record of them, of those names? If, say, anyone came looking for them after the war, or if they appear anywhere again in your database?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
Signora Grandolo flexed her fingers for a moment, then began to tap out commands. The screen changed, and changed again. She watched it, frowned, and typed in another command. The screen changed yet again. Finally, she shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t seem to be finding any record of them in our databases. None at all. Just this.’
She tried a few more commands, then shook her head. Her hands stilled. The screen had returned to the pages showing the records of Villa Triste for the second week of February 1944. The names stood out on the neatly lined page. Giancarlo Menucci. Piero Balestro. Giovanni Rossi.
Signora Grandolo turned towards Pallioti.
‘Are you sure these are the men you are looking for, Dottore?’ she asked.
Pallioti stared at the computer. In his mind’s eye he saw the icy street, the coal cart, two men, their faces grimy with dust. He saw the sleek German car swing around the corner and glide to a halt. He heard the click of boot heels, the snap of salutes, doors opening, the rapid fire of shots. The sound of a woman running, and another crack as she fell. He heard Signor Cavicalli’s voice, felt the featherweight of his hand.
The shooting at the Pergola Theatre, and anything at all that pertained to Radio Juliet
.
Signora Grandolo sat very still. She laced her hands on her desk and looked down at them.
‘You know,’ she said, finally, ‘in my line of work, I find sometimes that the greatest danger is seeing what I want to see.’
Her eyes, in the lamplit room, were so dark they appeared almost black.
‘It doesn’t happen so often any more,’ she said softly. ‘Frankly, there isn’t much opportunity. But when I first started this kind of work, I wanted so badly to help. To find at least some trace of the father or the mother or the daughter or husband. To say, “Yes, they were here.” Even if it meant they were dead. Because it gave people something. Something to hold onto when everything else had shattered. It allowed them the rest of their lives, freed them – knowing what had happened. It’s a peculiar kind of prison,’ she added, ‘not knowing.’
She smiled.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But you see, I think we are a bit the same, you and me, Dottore. We want to be the ones to provide the key. Lift the bars. Have the power to make that prison vanish. I’m sure the church would insist that it’s a monstrous act of ego – the refusal to settle for “I don’t know.”’
She unlaced her hands and looked down at her plain gold wedding ring and the small engagement ring that sat above it, the only jewellery she wore.
‘My husband,’ she said after a moment, ‘Cosimo. He was a wise man. Small. Very ugly. Quiet. But no one’s fool.’ Signora Grandolo looked up again. Her eyes met his. ‘He warned me,’ she said, ‘early on, when I started this work. He said I could do more harm than good, seeing connections where they didn’t exist.’
Pallioti could hear a clock ticking in the room, and behind the heavy curtains, the spat of rain against the windows.
‘Of course,’ Signora Grandolo added, ‘I didn’t always listen to him.’
‘And did you regret it?’
She thought for a moment, then shrugged.
‘Usually,’ she said. Then she smiled and added, ‘But not always. Let’s say, nine times out of ten.’
Pallioti ran his hand over his eyes. The tiredness that had plagued him more and more often recently had crept back, tiptoed up like a beggar child and pulled his sleeve. It whispered that he had not eaten, that Enzo was on his way now to solve this case, that he had better things to do. Pallioti gave the waif a morsel of reward by admitting it was probably right – then ruined that act of generosity by adding that he didn’t care.
