Vita Nuova (13 page)

He settled down and started reading. Paoletti’s past, he’d checked that already . . . the club that with such prices couldn’t make a profit, the system with the phone numbers at the cash desk. That brought it as far as pimping. With Paoletti’s history and Nesti and Piazza’s widower as witnesses, the charge would probably stick. But that other girl had disappeared. What about Cristina?

He interrupted his reading to call Don Antonino at the safe house and explain something of how things stood. Don Antonino was a sensible man and experienced. He might be able to help. And it was good to talk to somebody.

‘Will they know she’s the one who’s responsible?’

‘I can’t be sure; but if, let’s say, Nesti was the only unknown customer in the last few days, they’ll put two and two together, and if they do they can check what he looks like from the paper’s website. Besides, he used his credit card.’

‘We need to get her out immediately, then, but from what you say about their system of surveillance, we can get one of our helpers in there but he won’t be able to get her out. Your men will have to be standing by to go in. Or even better, send one of your men in under cover in the first place. Can you arrange that? Marshal? Is there a problem?’

‘Yes . . . yes, there’s a problem.’ But should he talk about it over the phone? Two children, locked in a room, abused and frightened to death. Poor, unimportant children. He remembered two more poor children, the ones who only became important when their small, incinerated bodies, lying in drawers at the Medico-Legal Institute, became a political football. He thought of his own two boys, healthy, happy, settled . . . until now, when he was about to spoil it for them. . . .

‘Hello? Marshal? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here.’

‘The line must have gone dead for a moment—it must be this storm. You said there was a problem?’

‘Yes, there is.’

‘Do you think you might have difficulty getting a warrant? You don’t believe the journalist’s story, perhaps? And yet you called me. What is it, Marshal? There’s no time to lose in situations like these, you know that, I’m sure, from experience.’

‘Yes. You’re right, of course. The problem is bigger than I said. There are . . . others in there. I have no proof but, unless I get a warrant to search the whole place the first time we go in, rather than just getting that one girl out. . . .’

‘The others won’t be there the second time.’

‘Yes.’

‘But surely you will get a warrant to search the whole place? You’ve done this before. It goes without saying that there must be other girls but, from what you’ve told me about the journalist’s visit, he should be able to give you more than enough evidence for a warrant.’

‘Yes.’

‘Marshal?’

What was he to say? On the telephone . . . was he becoming paranoid?

‘Marshal? We keep getting cut off. And what with this thunder I can barely hear you anyway. Perhaps the good Lord doesn’t want us to have this conversation! He probably agrees with you. It’s sometimes safer not to act at all than to act hastily. Best think it over. We’ll talk another day without the sound effects. Oh—now, I’m glad you called because I’ve been meaning to ring you about the business of that Albanian girl. I’m not sure I can keep our appointment for tomorrow. I really can’t get away, I’m sorry. Would the day after be all right? Any time in the afternoon that suits you. Four? Five? You tell me when you can see me.’

‘Four would be all right.’

‘Four it is, then. My goodness, I can hardly hear myself speak. Is it as bad where you are?’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘Well, it’s been far too hot. At least this will clear the air.’

He rang off.

So, he wasn’t being paranoid. There was no business about an Albanian girl. No appointment tomorrow. Don Antonino had cottoned to what was going on. There was nothing he didn’t know about the world he rescued young women from.

The lights blinked and another clap of thunder rattled the window panes. It would clear the air, Don Antonino was right about that. It might even clear the marshal’s head.

‘But it won’t clear this mess up,’ he muttered, staring down at the newspaper. Well, what was done was done. He folded the paper and put it aside.

He then spent a long time composing the first paragraph of his report. It was complicated, and he was no great hand at explaining things. After twenty minutes of writing and rewriting, starting the story at one point and then another, he deleted the whole thing.

For some time he stared at the blank screen and then reached for the phone.

After three thirty, they’d said at the switchboard. He tried again, but Nesti was still not at his desk. He took up
La Pulce
and turned to the estate agents’ pages. On the instant, his anxiety was fizzing in every nerve. Should he try the bank manager? Even worse. The captain? Out of the question. He’d already decided that. The flat itself, so that when he talked to Teresa tonight, he could say . . . ? No. The captain was the contact for the flat.

The jobs section. It couldn’t all be about cleaning and babysitting.

It was, though—apart from personable young people between eighteen and twenty-five to work in publicity— meaning ringing doorbells and putting advertising leaflets into people’s postboxes. Pages and pages of dead-end jobs, most of them clearly aimed at illegal immigrants willing to do what nobody else was prepared to do for wages nobody else would accept. He turned the page. This looked better.

Expanding business, Florence, seeks qualified personnel.

Delivery boys, warehouse staff, office staff, also part time. . . .

Immediate employment! Sign on to one of our free courses
. . . few places still available . . . secretarial work—computer
studies—English—Spanish—Italian. . . .

‘
Italian? Ah. . . .’

If you are an unemployed non-European immigrant with
valid permit. . . .

‘Hmph.’

Pizza delivery—must have own moped. . . .

Barman with experience in hotel work. . . .

Well-established detective agency! Minimum age 30, for
investigative work, telephone interviews national and international
correspondents. Good business background, excellent
computer skills, English, dynamic personality. . . .

What, after all, did he know how to do? What could he offer? He could just about manage one programme on the computer. What else? He couldn’t think of anything.

He wouldn’t qualify for even the humblest of jobs that the poorest immigrants did.

He thought of Teresa looking after his mother all those years. Nobody would do that now. These days somebody from the Philippines did it.

Earn up to 800 euros a month part time. Choose your own
hours.

18–25 yrs, must be personable . . . sales experience.

That eighteen-to-twenty-five line cropped up a lot. Eight hundred euros, evidently on commission, no fixed salary. And, in any case, how could anyone live on 800 euros a month? A lot of people paid that in rent. Perhaps he should be looking at flats for rent instead of wasting his time. . . .

The thunder was more distant now, but the rain went on beating heavily against the windowpanes and it was getting darker and darker. It was still hot and sweaty in the little office, but he shivered, thinking of all the sad people out there in the wet, looking for work, however badly paid, for a permit to stay, for somewhere to live, for some way to get a foothold on life. . . .

Whilst he had all of it, everything his poor peasant father had wanted for him, a solid, comfortable home, a good, steady income, a wife and family, security, respectability, everything. And he was about to put it all at risk.

Eight

T
his time he typed a page and a half of his report before deleting it. It wasn’t clear. There was no proper sequence to it. He wasn’t much good at this anyway, but today he was so tired. . . .

Tired or not, there was no time to lose. The fear that anything he did and anything he didn’t do, anything he wrote or didn’t write, might spell disaster for those children blocked him. But he would do it. He had to do it. The thought of those rich men with particular tastes . . . he couldn’t abide that sort of thing . . . a seven-year-old. . . .

‘Your little independent ways.’

Was it arrogance? Was that what made him think he knew what should be done, what could be tolerated and what couldn’t? He wasn’t conscious of it, but that didn’t mean anything. Who was he to decide what other people should or shouldn’t do?

‘The Tyrant of Syracuse!’’

His sister, Nunziata, had called him that. She was laughing at him when she said it, so she was only joking. . . .

‘You always had to be the boss.’
She wasn’t joking. He’d decided for her where she should convalesce, mobilizing his contacts in the hospitals here without even bothering to consult her.

‘Your little independent ways.’

It was only because he was worried about her. He hadn’t meant any harm. Teresa, at least, understood, didn’t she?

‘But what if she doesn’t want to?’

He hadn’t consulted Teresa either, though, had he? And who was supposed to nurse Nunziata through her convalescence? The same person who’d nursed his mother. How dare he even suggest it? What gave him the right to make a decision like that? Being a man? And then the women in the family took the consequences and did the donkey work. How could he have dared. . . .

And it wasn’t the first time she’d faced him with it.

‘You spend all day ordering those poor lads around and
then you come home and start. . . .’

What had it been about, that time? He couldn’t even remember; but, even so, the words might have been burned into his brain, they came back to him with such clarity. He could hear her voice saying them, as though she were in the room.

Wasn’t he supposed to give his carabinieri orders? Didn’t he do his best for them? He’d thought he was doing his best for Nunziata too. . . .

In the heat of his agitation, he got up, frowning, and went to the door of the duty room. Two faces looked up at him, waiting for his command.

When he only stood there in gloomy silence, they exchanged the briefest of glances and stood up, looking puzzled.

The senior man said, ‘At your orders. . . .’

They waited.

‘No, no . . . carry on. I was just wondering. . . .’

What had he wanted to say to them? Do you think I’m a tyrant?

‘Isn’t Lorenzini back?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Carry on.’

As he withdrew, he heard them murmuring.

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘Bad-tempered because his wife’s away . . . so, go on. What did she say?’

‘Wait. That’s the patrol car. One one seven. Come in, one one seven. . . .’

Back in his office, the marshal felt so wretched that he turned to the computer, hoping that anger and irritation would override his feeling of shame as he wrote the daily orders for tomorrow.

Somehow or other, he had to get through the rest of his day and then go back to his quarters and call Teresa. He would apologise. He would let her decide what to do about Nunziata.

But he didn’t get the chance. At half past eight, when he was showered and changed, she still wasn’t there. He sat with the portable phone in front of the television with the sound turned off, calling and calling, and each time that he gave up and rang off, he imagined her coming in the door at that very minute, missing the call, and he’d try again.

But still it rang and rang, and in his mind he pictured it ringing on that low cupboard thing in the darkened entrance. Where were they?

Picnic lunch at the beach and then out to supper? They were having a fine time of it while he was struggling here! They could have been invited by Nunziata’s friends from the flat opposite. Teresa had mentioned them the other day . . . Di Luciano . . . the children played together so—well, he hoped to goodness that was the case and that they weren’t out wasting money in some pizzeria with all the financial worries he had now. The gnawing pain gripped his stomach again

The phone rang.

That must be her! And about time! Forgetting all about his apology, he picked up and answered in a temper.

‘Hello!’

‘Guarnaccia? Nesti.’

‘Oh. . . .’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Tired, I suppose—I told you to get some sleep. What was the big hurry to get home to an empty house? I had a good long sleep—and then I paid a little visit to your colleague out there. Piazza. He—’

‘What did he say?’

‘To me? Nothing, as you can imagine. I’m surprised you didn’t go round there. He might have talked to you. He looked scared to death, though, so he knows plenty. I told you he would.’

‘Leave him alone, Nesti, please.’

‘This story’s big, very big. And he knows all about it, believe me. If you’d seen his face this morning—’

‘Nesti—’

‘Is he a friend of yours? Is that it? Or somone you owe?’

‘No.’

‘Just protecting our own, then. Didn’t Cristina tell you about the children—’

‘Leave him alone—at least for the moment. Please.’

‘For the moment? You’ve got something, then, have you? All right, listen: I’ll leave him alone for the moment—but keep me informed. I mean, if this thing’s going to break, big-time, I want to be the only journalist there.’

‘When are you not the first one on the scene?’

‘Not the first one on the scene, this time, the
only
one on the scene. And it’s not going to be that easy, now that the story’s out. I’ve been straight with you, remember, I didn’t mention your name—even where you’d agreed to it in the part about Paoletti’s past.’

‘Hmph.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means you didn’t need to. Carabiniere source . . . who else could it have been? The Paoletti case is mine.’

‘What is the matter with you? I should have thought you’d be grateful. If I hadn’t turned up that background stuff on Paoletti, where would you be with your case?’

‘Nowhere.’ Where he’d like to be. He was being unfair. Nesti didn’t know about the list in Piazza’s filing cabinet, though he was smart enough to guess something of the sort was likely to exist—in which case he ought to be treading more carefully and not just thinking about his own. . . .

There he went again! Now he was deciding how Nesti should do his job, run his career. Who was he to criticize? Nesti was a very experienced journalist—and he, at least, still had a career in front of him. He was doing himself some good, while— ‘Guanaccia?’

‘What!’

‘Oh. I thought the line had gone dead.’

‘No.’

‘But I take it you’re not overwhelmed with enthusiasm about my interview, even though I did keep your name out of it—I hope you approved of my tie, at least. Hand-woven raw silk. I bought it specially.’

‘Tie . . . ?’ There was no interview in the paper!
‘Tie?’

‘You didn’t even see it, did you? I’d have called you to tell you to switch on, but I didn’t have a minute.’

‘You’ve done a television interview? About this case?’

‘Only on the regional news at half past seven on three, but it’ll be picked up by the national news tomorrow, you’ll see.’

‘Nesti. . . .’ What was the use? The thing would take its course. He’d felt all along that he couldn’t control it. He ended the conversation and sank back against the coolness of the leather sofa, staring at the silent flickering of the television, still clutching the phone. He forced himself to concentrate on the images on the screen, trying to make sense of them, promising himself to follow this film, or whatever it was, until there was an advertising break. Then he’d try Teresa again. She had to come in sometime. The boys shouldn’t be out too late, holidays or no holidays. They were still growing. They needed their sleep. She really ought to— No! He was doing it again. What about criticizing himself, for once, since he’d failed to get anywhere with his report and had been forced to give up out of tiredness. Concentrate on the television—another thing he was incapable of, according to Teresa. Was that the man in the antique shop? It was. The other man was terrified of him. You could tell just from looking at his face how his stomach was tightening till it hurt and he wasn’t breathing properly. In sympathy, the marshal tried to take a deep breath for him, but all the sympathy in the world couldn’t help him to follow the story. It wasn’t his fault, because he’d missed so much of it when he was on the telephone. They were quarrelling now, the frightened man and his wife, shouting, you could tell by their mouths and their attitudes. But how was he to supposed to follow it? He couldn’t hear a thing they were saying.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He zapped the sound back on and immediately zapped it off and tried Teresa again. Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing. Damn!

But almost on the instant he tossed the phone aside, it started ringing. She’d come in the second he’d rung off, just as he’d imagined!

‘Guarnaccia?’

‘Mr. Prosecutor. Good evening.’

The call only lasted a few minutes and apart from an obligatory ‘Yes, Mr. Prosecutor’ here and there, the marshal said nothing.

When it was over, there in the semidarkness, he sat still for a long time, not thinking, his mind in neutral. Random thoughts, irrelevant, disconnected, surfaced and vanished, the way they do when you’re falling asleep. He hadn’t done anything about that stuff in the washing machine. It must be nice to have a little girl who thought you were the only person who could blow up water wings properly. That wasn’t the frightened man’s wife. The woman who worked in the antique shop maybe . . . blonde. Credits. It must be later than he thought. Had he eaten . . . yes, a sandwich in the bar . . . or was that. . . .

He went on sitting there because if he moved, connected up to reality, he wouldn’t be able to cope.

But even as he sat there, the poison that had entered his ear was working its way through his system. He felt cold.

His voice had been quite different this time, the tone of it. Last time, it had been high-pitched with annoyance and apprehension; now it was low and insinuating and full of menace.

‘Some of these people have a great deal of power and no
scruples.

‘You know well enough what the risks are.

‘Nothing more than a witch hunt, when all’s said and done.
A journalist is one thing but in your own interests.

‘People with a great deal of power and no scruples would
crush you.

‘It goes without saying that I’ll do what I can to protect you.

‘From one day to another, to wake up and find yourself posted
to some desolate village at the end of the world.

‘You don’t deserve it, your family doesn’t deserve it.

‘Come to my office tomorrow and we’ll talk about what can
be done for you.’

Drop by drop the poison seeped through him, and his only reaction was to think he was very, very tired. And so he got up and walked through the flat, locking up, closing shutters, leaving the windows open for the night air. It hadn’t rained enough, even now. The heat was steamier than before and there seemed to be more mosquitoes. He went to bed and fell asleep as his head touched the pillow, but it was the tense, superficial sleep of a guard dog. A breath would have woken him.

When he opened his eyes it was still dark. He remembered no dreams. His head was clear. There was no need, as sometimes happens, to wait for realization, for the cause of the pain squeezing his chest to come to the surface. It was as if a part of him hadn’t slept at all but only waited for the rest of him to wake up, ready to act. It was half past four in the morning. He got up and made the bed. Washed, shaved, and in uniform, he stood and looked at himself in the bedroom mirror as though at a stranger. And if he never wore this uniform again? Who would this person in the mirror be then? Hundreds of people knew him as the marshal, but how many people knew him as Salvatore? ‘The marshal’ would be whoever took over from him. People soon got used to a new face; he would be forgotten. All that was going to happen was what must happen anyway when he retired, so what did it matter?

He wouldn’t accept a posting to ‘some desolate village at the end of the world.’ He would find a way to keep his family here where they were happy, where Teresa was settled and the children had a good choice of schools.

On his way to the kitchen to make himself some coffee, he looked at each room in his quarters as though for the first time. It was very nice, of course, spacious and comfortable, but it wasn’t his own, was it? Teresa was right. They had to think about the future.

He put the coffee on and waited for it to percolate. The army used up your life and then you were on your own. That was the way it was.

He drank his coffee standing in the kitchen with the window and outer shutters open. The Boboli Gardens brought a lot of dampness. Oxygen, too, though, and the sawing of the crickets on summer nights which had once been the sound of his loneliness now seemed one more part of a life that was slipping away from him.

Well, it was sad, but there were worse things. Beaten women and abused children, for example. And besides, the army didn’t own the Boboli Gardens. There were hundreds of flats overlooking them. He closed the shutters with a bang, rinsed his cup, and went to open up his office.

It was cool in his little room at this hour. The computer behaved itself. He typed for more than an hour without stopping. He didn’t try to make a work of art of the thing, connecting facts and ideas. He just started his story on the nineteenth of August and went on until he got to today. What difference did it make if he couldn’t make a convincing, logical case? If somebody wanted to hear what he had to say, they would listen and act. If nobody wanted to hear. . . .