The Questura was in the opposite direction. It was cold and felt like it might snow and he needed to watch what would probably be dozens of hours of CCTV tapes. But he didn’t care. He found what he was sure had to be Via Ragno, and then a damp tunnel lit by a few neon bistro signs that was the supposedly famous Via delle Volte. A shorter tunnel took him to Via Mayr. A line of cars moved slowly down it. He jerked to a halt as abruptly as if he had come to the banks of a river and stood watching as their lights caught the shuttered fronts of shops. Then he saw the one on the corner that was boarded up, felt the familiar prickle, and walked down the opposite pavement, resisting the urge to hurry.
When he stopped and looked up, he saw that the sign above the graffitied boards had been vandalized. Half of the letters were missing. But there was no question about it. It had once read MACELLERìA. Butcher. Beside it, the narrow mouth of an alley opened into darkness.
Enzo stood very still, watching the front of the deserted shop for perhaps five minutes. Then he slipped across the street and into the alley. Pausing to let his eyes adjust to the dark, he saw a van pulled toward the back, taking up almost the entire space. From the way it listed he could tell that it had at least one flat tire, if not a missing wheel. Either way it hadn’t moved recently and wasn’t going anywhere soon. He edged forward, feeling down the wall, until he found it. The door was sodden, half rotten, and unlocked.
* * *
Barbara Barelli leaned back in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and indulged in the luxury of pure rage. She had parked on the road and called Antonio, realizing almost as soon as she’d done it that it was pointless. At least she’d had the wit not to leave him a message, tick him off like some outraged schoolmarm. As if that would do any good. Finally she’d decided to walk in. Sniff the lay of the land. Light was falling out of the sky fast. By the time she got halfway down the drive and saw the buildings they looked black and white, as if not only life, but color, had leached out of them.
Standing there she’d remembered everything Antonio had told her. Every heartrending detail. About his grandparents. And his childhood. And how much the countryside meant to him. He’d been good, she had to hand him that. He’d sensed the dregs of sympathy and guilt, the legacy of her nice, liberal, middle-class upbringing. The vague, uneasy suspicion that people like her—and her parents, and the state, and possibly all of Italy—had not only been responsible for what the BR had done, but in some dark place had willed them to it. Had sent them out to rob and kidnap, kneecap and murder, by proxy. And then, of course, there was Angela. The stiffening corpse of love and obligation they’d stepped around so carefully for almost thirty years.
Barbara closed her eyes and heard herself laugh. She supposed, really, she had to hand it to him. Antonio had played her, well and truly. And she hadn’t even seen it coming. Not until it was way too late. Until he had her right where he wanted her. Ironic that in the end she and Angie should have that in common.
There’d been no sign of life at the so-called farm, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d hardly hang out a WELCOME sign. The car was probably behind the house, or in the barn, which sat to the left and was long and low and made of stone. Barbara remembered it from the property description. Outbuilding—possible use for conversion as vacation cottage. In some other universe, maybe. Vacationing here defied imagination. Just before she’d turned away, she’d thought she might have seen something, a movement in an upstairs window. But when she’d looked again, she’d realized it had been a mistake. Nothing but the last reflection of daylight playing on the glass. And yet, for all that, she was sure he was there. She could smell him, huddling in the dark. Waiting like a spider beside his baited web. Barbara was not given to histrionics, but as she’d walked back to the car she’d felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
After that she’d driven away, found a ratty little tourist bar on the road to Pomposa, and gone inside and sat at a table nursing a coffee and grappa—watching the sun set, such as it was, and wondering what the hell she should do. Her first instinct had been to wait until morning. The cops always did things at dawn, usually around four a.m., when the mind and body were least present, floating happily between life and the ether, and thus unlikely to respond well to loud bangs and lights and screaming and guns.
Barbara’d always considered that a bit cowardly, to be honest. Sort of cheating. All those big men with their combat gear eking out the last little advantage of surprise, doing everything they could to stack the odds. Not that she was necessarily averse to a little odds stacking. A win was a win, and she could certainly eke out twelve hours.
She’d about decided to do that, take a page out of their book and wait at least until first light before she confronted him, when she’d thought of the girl. Barely eighteen. Blond. Missing ten days. He’d known her name. He’d tracked her and stalked her on Facebook.
“Fucker,” Barbara had said out loud, causing the bartender to jerk awake. Then she’d stood, paid the bill, gone out and gotten in the car and driven back.
Now she hovered at the head of the drive, engine purring, foot on the brake. The car’s headlights spread into the dark, then wavered and gave up when they found nothing to hang onto. Night had dropped over this nowhere Antonio had chosen. Barbara flexed her fingers on the leather steering wheel. She thought of the card nestled in her pocket. Sitting in the bar, she’d taken it out, run her finger over its sharp edges and the discreet raised letters of its engraving. Alessandro Pallioti. The idea was deeply tempting—to call the number and shove all this into his elegant lap. Lean back like a fainting heroine and let him catch her. It was his job after all, and he was reputed to be good at it. She’d even liked him. But she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her style. Besides, there was more to it than that. You reap what you sow. She took her foot off the brake.
The big Mercedes bounced in the deep ruts of the drive. If she got stuck or messed up the undercarriage, Hedwige would frigging kill her. She loved these cars like they were babies. Rounding the curve, Barbara saw a faint glow in the lower windows of the house—in what must be the kitchen and sitting room. She reached the yard and swung around so she was facing outward, then opened the door. Wind swept in, blowing salt, chasing a handful of dead leaves and corralling them between the single bent tree and a broken stone trough.
When she finally got out of the car, she heard the distant echo of a bell and realized it had to be coming from Pomposa. It would be an electric carillon now, or maybe even a recording, tolling the memory of the faithful. Barbara closed the car door and took a breath. A feeling she didn’t want to name skittered up her back.
“Don’t be a baby,” she muttered.
She’d done things that were harder. Lots of them. In prisons. And courtrooms. And police stations. So what was the big deal? All she had to do was walk up and knock on the door.
* * *
Hearing Antonio’s name fade to nothingness, Anna had nearly given up. It had crossed her mind that she had to be insane. That all of this—stealing Kristin’s clothes and that poor woman’s wallet, dyeing her hair, coming here—all of it, was crazy. She should have taken the police child’s offer. Let him help her. Talked to him. Told him who she was. And what she knew.
Walking back up the hill and along the track, getting on the bicycle, and beginning the long ride back to the train station, she’d decided. She’d even stopped and turned on her phone. She’d turned it on twice a day, at seven a.m. and again at seven p.m., exactly as Antonio had told her, but there had been nothing from him—no text or email. Only a series of calls from Ken. Out here, there was not even a signal. But still her mind was made up. As soon as she was back on the train and could pick up a signal, she would call Ken. When she got back to Ferrara she would go straight to the Questura. This time she would tell everyone everything.
Then, standing on the little platform as the light bled from the sky, waiting for the thin gray line of the train to come slowly into sight, Anna had remembered
Antonio’s voice. Remembered exactly what he’d said as she stood there in the Excelsior, the perfectly ordinary sounds of people eating breakfast clattering around her. This is between you and me, Carina. No one else. Just us. Do you understand? Do you believe me? And she had thanked God that there had been no signal, no possibility of a call. No police station to walk into.
It was dark by the time the train pulled into Ferrara. Anna abandoned the bicycle at the station, left it in one of the racks outside the ticket office. Its owner, if he or she cared, would find it soon enough. Unchained bikes had been pilfered for rides to the train even in her day. She walked back to town on aching legs, cold rippling through her. The bells tolled eight as she reached Piazza Trieste.
Crowds were wandering through the night market, milling around the outside heaters and gathering under the porticos of the tiny shops that huddled below the southern wall of the Duomo. The smell of food made her almost desperate. Anna bought a sausage in a roll, and then another with cheese melting across it and bitter greens, chalky on her teeth. She ate them walking among stalls, watching the vendors who stood wrapped in sweaters and scarves and overcoats drinking from steaming paper cups, thumping their hands to stay warm and calling back and forth from their stands, which were as gaudy as the stands on any carnival midway. Lettuces and peppers were piled with livid orange carrots. There were pyramids of tomatoes and swollen bulbs of eggplant, their skins purple and glistening. For a moment she felt as if she had not seen color, or tasted food, for thirty years.
She bought a coffee and sat on the steps of the Palazzo Municipale, watching people drift back and forth under the arch, and thought of nothing. As exhaustion washed over her, she felt the same odd, familiar sense she had sometimes had as a child—that time had slipped away. That past and present were mingling like the water of muddy streams. Drifting, she let go. And felt herself spinning and turning. Any moment she might thud up against a bank, and climb out, and walk home to find her father waiting for her. See Nonna Franchi sweeping the steps. Signora Ravalli gossiping at the corner. Hear Barbara on the phone, shouting about schoolwork.
She started, spilling the dregs of the coffee. Cold bit into her. Getting up, Anna crumpled the cup and threw it away. Then, after using the bathroom in the bus station, holding the broken door of the stall, smelling the acrid stench of ammonia and piss that didn’t seem to have changed at all since she was girl, she threaded her way through the shadows, crept down the alley, and slipped like a stray cat through the broken door of the storeroom.
She’d left the Maglite under a bucket. Anna felt for it in the dark, then flipped it on, realizing as she did that she was so tired she could barely stand up. It didn’t matter if she was sleeping in a down bag with nothing but a hardware store two-bar heater for warmth, bed was all she wanted.
For a second, as she shone the flashlight at it, the far wall of the storeroom seemed to waver in front of her. The hatch was ajar. She thought she’d closed it this morning, but obviously she hadn’t. Careless. Although she doubted anyone ever came in here to notice. Still, as she pushed it open, putting the light in her pocket before she hoisted herself up and slipped through, she told herself she ought to be more careful.
Her feet hit the floor of the butcher’s shop with a soft thud. She was reaching back to pull the hatch shut when a hand closed over her mouth.
* * *
Anna Carson was stronger than she looked. She bucked, bit, kicked, and tried to elbow him in the stomach. Enzo gave her an A for effort, but he was better, faster, and twenty years younger. He had her facedown on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back in considerably less than a minute. He’d have had no problem doing it in the dark, but the flashlight helped. Especially when he found the blade stuffed in her pocket. It was damn near nine inches, and sharp.
He set it on the counter along with the light and wondered why he didn’t feel more triumphant. Or at least pleased with himself. He’d done it. Tracked her and run her to ground. Cornered her like an animal. But here in the weird shadowed light of a derelict butcher’s shop it hardly seemed like a big victory—more the tawdry end to a shabby little story of revenge and betrayal that he didn’t even understand. It was hard to look down on this woman and think of her as an enemy of the state. But maybe that had always been the advantage people like this had—the fact that they looked so ordinary. Just like one of us.
She didn’t swear or call him names or threaten to sue him, which surprised him a little, especially since she was American. She didn’t spit at him, either, which was virtually de rigueur. Instead she just lay there like a dead fish. His own very small penlight had given him just the briefest glimpse of the den she’d made for herself—the sleeping bag, the camping lantern, the tins of food, the opener and single spoon and bottle of water. The tiny little heater. The bucket and pack of wipes. It might have been the enviable nest of any homeless person, or even a particularly destitute student. Or more likely, an illegal immigrant who’d struggled from God knows what hellhole in Africa or Asia, come halfway around the world to find a so-called job working for nothing and living like an animal in The Glory That Was Europe. Nothing but the little white bear had given her away. He’d found it tucked on a shelf under the counter in the cold room in what had obviously been an effort to at least conceal, if not hide it, and for some reason he hadn’t been able to put it back. Instead he’d sat it on her sleeping bag, then gone into the main shop and switched out his light and stood so still beside the hatch that he might have been dead himself while he waited for her.
“Angela Vari, also known as Anna Carson, I’m arresting you for theft and trespass and conspiracy to kidnap. I will be transporting you back to Florence, in custody, where you will be questioned in the presence of personnel from the US Consulate.”
The announcement was as much courtesy as anything else, and drew no response at all. In fact Anna Carson didn’t make a sound until he took out his phone. Then she found her voice.
“What are you doing?”
The question was so bizarre that Enzo actually paused. What did she think he was doing? Phoning for Chinese food? He smiled. It wasn’t particularly pleasant.
“I’m calling for backup. From the police. To get us out of here because I don’t think you’ll get through that hole with your hands cuffed and I want to get back to Florence before dawn.”
“Don’t.”
She had twisted around and was staring up at him.
“What?”
“Don’t,” Anna Carson said. “Please. Please, whatever you do, don’t call the police.”
He had addressed her in English, but when she spoke it was in fluent Italian, and sounded so panicked that Enzo crouched down beside her. Her eyes were wide, enough of the whites showing that he was afraid they were about to roll back in her head. It was probably the influence of the place, but Enzo couldn’t help thinking of an animal, just before it was about to be slaughtered. An uncomfortable feeling ran through him.
“Why don’t you let me help you get up? You’ll be more comfortable.” He started to apologize in case he’d hurt her, then brought himself up short. She had after all been about to knife him. “Here.” He took her arms and helped her to her feet, conscious of trying to be gentle. Or at least not rough.
“Don’t,” she said again, as soon as she was standing up. “Don’t. Please. Please don’t call the police.”
“I am the police.”
Enzo looked at her. Had she forgotten who he was? Had she lost it completely? Regressed in some weird way? Or did she think she was going to get tortured? Beaten up? After thirty years of college and living in the States and watching the news on TV every night, presumably reading a newspaper—was she still really convinced that those kind of things happened in European police stations? The expression on her face certainly seemed to suggest it. The woman was terrified.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Signora Carson,” he said. “You’re safe. I promise you.”
&n
bsp; “No.” She shook her head, panic rising in her voice. “No. No. No!” she wailed. “You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
Enzo, who had taken his phone out again, lowered it.
“It isn’t me. It’s Kristin. He’ll kill her.”
Even in the weird low light he could see that her face was white. That high red patches had blossomed on her cheeks, making her look as if she had a fever.
“He’ll kill her,” Anna Carson said again. “Antonio will kill her. He will. He promised me.”
Enzo tried to keep the urgency—the desire to grab her and shake her—out of his voice.
“You’ve spoken to him?”
She nodded.
“Since he took Kristin?”
She nodded again.
“When? How recently? How many times?”
“Once. I called her phone. That day, after I saw him in that picture the girl took. I left a message on Kristin’s phone and he called me back. He told me that if I told anyone—that it was just between us—that I had to come for her, find him, and that if I told anyone anything, or went to the police, he’d kill her.”
The words came out so fast she was panting. Enzo looked at the phone in his hand.
“You have to believe me,” she said. “You have to. I know him. I promise you, I know him. He isn’t lying. He’s done it before.”
Enzo had turned the phone off. It had been against his better judgment, but he’d done it. The ghost of Aldo Moro was alive and well. He’d been all of two, but he was as haunted by the failure to save Moro as every other policeman in Italy.
After that they’d stood for a good minute or two in the butcher’s shop, he and Angela Vari, or Anna Carson, or whatever he was supposed to call the woman who now sat across from him on the opposite bed in his hotel room. Finally she’d said, “At least, please. Please, let me explain.”
The Lost Daughter Page 32