The Drowning River

by Christobel Kent

  A row of lights flicked on, downlighting the dark-coloured walls, which were a kind of deep maroon. It was very cold. It occurred to him that they were practically underground, set back into the hillside, the great cold weight of earth and rock above them.

  Buying a little time, Sandro walked along the row of framed work, some ink drawings of architectural detail, charcoal, a couple of oils that seemed to him to be poorly executed, but what did he know? A drawing of a girl lying on her back, reading a book; he stopped in front of the picture.

  He turned.

  ‘You know a man called Claudio Gentileschi,’ he said. It was not a question; they both gaped at him under the sepulchral lighting. He focussed on Paolo Massi.

  ‘You met him a little more than ten years ago, at a reception at the synagogue, to which you were invited because your father was considered a friend of the Florentine Jewish community.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Paolo Massi seemed belatedly to recover his tongue. ‘Ten years ago? I – I – I have no idea what this has to do with, with your investigation.’

  ‘Claudio Gentileschi died on the same day that Veronica Hutton disappeared.’

  That would have to do; it seemed to have the effect of relaxing Massi, just fractionally. He inclined his head; it occurred to Sandro with the weight of inevitability that Paolo Massi was very happy for him to draw the obvious conclusions from that simple fact.

  ‘Ten years is a long time,’ he said with an attempt at a smile. ‘But the name is familiar, yes.’

  ‘Gentileschi’s widow says your wife called on her,’ said Sandro. ‘To pay her respects. On Friday night.’

  Massi’s smile was a little fixed. ‘My wife is very proper in these matters,’ he said.

  ‘But there had been a continued connection, obviously,’ said Sandro. ‘Between your family and theirs?’

  Massi opened his mouth, and closed it again.

  Reaching up to a hook beside the door to hang up her coat, it was Antonella Scarpa who spoke, over her shoulder, as if casually.

  ‘Claudio Gentileschi has sold the occasional piece of work through us, Paolo. Don’t you remember? He is rather a good artist, some beautiful drawings.’

  Slowly Sandro turned to focus on her; he didn’t believe a word of it. She slotted her arms into the sleeves of another of her white work-coats, her uniform. She was prepared.

  ‘His own work?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Antonella Scarpa, and he saw through her in that moment, standing there looking severely at him, hands in her pockets, trying to bamboozle him.

  You’re good, he thought, you’re good; is it love, or is it business, that makes you so good at lying for him? Across her shoulder he saw, through the window and out across the dark street, Gabi silhouetted in the window of her own shop, staring at them.

  ‘What I mean, Signorina Scarpa,’ he said, extemporizing, ‘is that I have information to the effect that for ten years Claudio Gentileschi has not merely been supplying you with the odd beautiful piece of his own work, as you put it. He has been a one-man production line of high-quality faked drawings, for you to sell on to your international customers. Your Germans, your Americans, your Russian billionaires with Riviera properties to furnish and money to launder – you must have been very happy indeed with the fall of communism, no?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ said Antonella Scarpa, calmly. ‘This is pure fantasy.’

  Sandro held her gaze. ‘You thought you could put anything over on them, ignorant Russian peasants, did you? Well, let me tell you, when they find out that you’ve been cheating them, you’ll find out there are certain things those Russian peasant oligarchs are very good at indeed.’ He withdrew the flimsy cardboard folder from his bag and took out one of the drawings he’d lifted from Claudio’s studio.

  ‘You weren’t scared of the Guardia di Finanza, were you? Bet you were pleased with yourselves when you saw them off. Scared now?’

  ‘They found nothing,’ said Massi, faintly. ‘There was no evidence of any – of any impropriety.’ Scarpa shot him a glance, and he fell silent.

  ‘He was a good man,’ said Sandro, surprised by the fervour in his own voice, as he defended Claudio. ‘How did you talk him into it?’

  Paolo Massi looked back at him, his jaw slack and weak, no longer the great patron of the arts, the Svengali to any susceptible, pretty student. No, thought Sandro, we haven’t even got to that yet, have we? The girls. First things first. He stayed calm.

  ‘I expect you used your father’s name, didn’t you? The old printing presses kept running through the war, the Jewish connection. With perhaps a hint of how he needed to make sure his wife, who was so much younger, would be taken care of after he’d gone?’

  Helplessly Massi put out a hand for the drawing but Sandro pulled it back. ‘Even if we can’t trace all the Renaissance drawings you’ve sold over the past few years, one or two should be enough, don’t you think?’

  Sandro moved on. ‘Are they out at the back?’ It felt as though he might almost have been speaking in tongues; it all came tumbling out, guesswork, improvisation, but even as he said it he knew it made sense.

  ‘Is that what you’re keeping there, the work you cleared out of Claudio’s studio, before anyone else knew he was dead? Pity to waste that investment you’ve been making in him all these years, and where are you going to get work of this quality?’ He held up the faded sepia drawing, Claudio’s life’s work. ‘A pity to waste it.’

  And how did they get in? To Claudio’s studio? Could Claudio have given them a key from the beginning, proud, private Claudio? Wouldn’t that have seemed like they owned him?

  But as the inconvenient questions posed themselves he noticed that Antonella Scarpa had moved to position herself between him and the door at the back of the gallery, down under the security light that he had watched from Gabi’s shop. He flicked a look back across the road towards her, his only ally, but the shop was dark now. Gabi had gone home.

  ‘I’d like a look in there,’ he said, easily. ‘If you don’t mind?’

  ‘And if we do?’ said Antonella Scarpa. He almost admired her; she had guts, at least. The fierce little Sarda in her white coat.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sure the police could persuade you, couldn’t they?’

  ‘I think they’re busy just now,’ said Massi, sneering; Sandro observed him try to puff himself up, like some creature trying to make itself appear larger when threatened.

  And with the two of them motionless and blocking him in in the near-dark, Sandro was just beginning to wonder what he would actually do if Luisa and Giuli didn’t turn up – or even if they did, would they be a match for these two? – when Massi’s telephone rang. And everything changed.

  ‘No way,’ said Sophia, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, my, God. No way, Jackson.’

  Too chastened to feel more than a tiny twinge of satisfaction, Jackson just nodded. At least this was an improvement; as they’d walked to the bar Sophia’s eyes had been fixed on him, switching from silent reproach to sullen anger and back again. Couldn’t blame her, could he? Sorry, Sophia; he tried it out in his head, but it sounded pathetic. So he said nothing at all until they were out of the rain, and then he told them.

  They were in a bar Jackson had never been in before, a back-street place that was long and narrow as a corridor, nowhere to sit, mirror along one wall dripping condensation and a shelf under it to rest your coffee on. The air was fusty with the odour of damp wool but ahead of them Hiroko had calmly threaded her way through the packed bodies and made a space. Jackson fetched coffee, struggling with the Italian, but nobody in this place spoke English.

  ‘So, Jackson,’ said Hiroko, placing herself square in front of him. ‘You have talked to Iris?’ He got the apologies out of the way, he seemed to have spent the day stumbling over his words what with one thing and another, while they stared him down. And then he came to it.

  ‘She thinks it’s Massi Ronnie was going away with,’ he said.
‘Actually, she knows.’

  ‘No way,’ said Sophia, round-eyed.

  Hiroko remained silent, waiting for his evidence.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ she said quietly when he’d finished – or almost finished. ‘I never liked him, from the beginning, too much fake. And he actually does not know so much about painting; he dated two of the Uccello drawings wrong, and the techniques of the mediaeval, he knows nothing, Antonella knows more than him.’ Jackson stared at her; quiet, polite, attentive Hiroko, had been thinking this all along?

  ‘Only this is not evidence,’ she said patiently. ‘The Zecchi colours, the trip to Sicily – well, I agree, there is some kind of evidence, but in a – in a court of law?’

  Jackson fumbled in his pocket, in a panic; could he have just stuck it in there? Had it fallen out?

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look? Here?’ They stared at the tiny square of plastic. ‘Anyone got a phone?’ he asked, and Sophia took hers out only she seemed to have an iPhone all of a sudden, just like his. He looked at her; she bought it because of me, he realized, and they cost twice as much here. Ah, shit.

  ‘No good,’ he said apologetically, bringing out his own, ‘y’know, locked? Both of ’em. No way you can get around the contract with the iPhone. Stupid, huh?’ He tried to smile at her, but ducked his head before she could glare back. Hiroko set her own phone on the counter, a modest, scratched little number. ‘Yeah,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘yeah, great.’

  Calmly she slid off the back, held out her hand for the card, slid it in over the contacts, replaced the battery, turned it on. The screen opened.

  ‘Message,’ said Hiroko, pointing to a small icon in the corner. ‘Answerphone message?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ said Jackson, itching to get his hands on the phone but not wanting to muscle in. Hiroko handed it to him wordlessly. Call info, missed calls, down, down, and there he was. He held up the screen.

  ‘Paolo,’ said Sophia, sceptically. ‘Well, it’s not as if it isn’t, like, about the third most common name in Italy or anything, is it?’

  Hiroko gave her a soft look of reproof. ‘You just have to telephone the number,’ she suggested. ‘And then we know.’ Jackson handed her the phone. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You do it.’

  Iris stopped outside the apartment building, soaked to the bone. She’d had to walk all the way, because something was up with the traffic – no buses, no taxis, nothing. She didn’t know if she’d even be able to remember the way, but she was here.

  At the crossroads a drain had burst, bubbling up through the grating like a geyser to meet a torrent pouring down the Via San Domenico from Fiesole. As she made her way through it the thought occurred to Iris that this was more than just another traffic screw-up, it was a full-scale natural disaster. Ma might be watching it on television; I could call, thought Iris, with longing. After; I’ll call after.

  Looking up at the building’s grim facade, she thought that it would be warm inside, at least. She didn’t want to start this thing by asking for something dry to wear, but what the hell. Too late now. She leaned on the doorbell, hard.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Giulietta Kept Asking Her how she was as they walked, half ran, back along the narrow streets in the dark. ‘You OK, darling?’

  And looking at her anxiously. ‘I’ll be fine,’ Luisa said, through numb lips. ‘When we get there.’

  The traffic seemed to be moving, slowly, though it was still chaos; at the end of the Via dei Bardi they came out on to the river. To get to the Via Romana they could have gone over the top from the Costa Scarpuccia, up the steep, steep hill and back down on to the Via Guicciardini, but Luisa had just shaken her head when Giuli pointed up there; she felt breathless enough as it was.

  Nothing to do with the damned stupid lump, she told herself, the breathlessness. It was to do with what she’d just heard.

  ‘We should call Sandro,’ Giulietta had said, straight away they came back out on to the street.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s get over there, now. It’s ten minutes, and I want him in front of me.’ And she took a breath of the blessed cold wet air, her nostrils still itching and full of that terrible stink of tomcat.

  Not dirty, though, she reminded herself, Fiamma DiTommaso wasn’t dirty; what was dirt, after all, but matter in the wrong place?

  Luisa, proud housewife, had never imagined herself even thinking such a thing. Fiamma DiTommaso might be an angry, eccentric old woman, but she was sane. And she had an excellent memory.

  ‘I was minding my own business,’ she’d said fiercely, clutching the cat, hunched over it on the sofa. ‘Setting out the dishes, clean dishes every day. I wasn’t looking up, just setting them out then pouring the pellets in, when I heard these footsteps running, skidding, they were, down from the Kaffeehaus. Might have been kids, they’re always hurtling around the place scaring the cats. Only the sound of the footsteps was louder, the breathing was heavier. And she was crying, and it wasn’t a child’s crying, nor yet quite an adult’s neither.’

  ‘Nineteen,’ said Luisa, not even sure if she’d spoken out loud, thinking of the sound of a terrified nineteen-year-old crying. All the daughters in the world cry out for their mother when they’re frightened. Luisa had cried out for her own, once or twice. ‘She was – she’s nineteen.’ She swallowed. ‘You couldn’t see a thing?’

  Fiamma DiTommaso shrank at that, defensively. ‘I’m not lying,’ she said.

  ‘I know you’re not,’ said Luisa, looking her in the eye. The woman held her gaze suspiciously a moment then seemed to relax.

  ‘I was concentrating on staying very still,’ she said. ‘I’m not always welcome there, you know. People don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ said Luisa.

  ‘I saw shapes, through the trees,’ said DiTommaso. ‘The girl was wearing jeans, I could see her legs in the tight jeans. And there was an old man, only, well, he was staying out of my line of vision, I could hear him kind of shuffling, like he didn’t know whether to stay or go. There was a woman in a kind of white coat, long, below the knees.’

  ‘Right,’ said Luisa, trying to imagine such a thing. An Italian woman wearing a white coat in November? Beppe DiLieto had said something about a headscarf – and a – had he said duster coat? It must be her.

  ‘Leave me alone, the girl was saying. Get away from me. And sobbing, like a child.’

  Fiamma DiTommaso frowned down at the floor. ‘Then it was the woman. Dirty old man, she said. Dirty, disgusting old man, what stories have you been telling her? Then the girl said, again, Leave me alone, she was crying, Get away from me. All over again, terrified.’

  She looked up from the cat then, eyes wide and blue, like some kind of Cassandra seeing into the future for a second. ‘And then the old man said, You heard her, leave her alone.’ She paused, still gazing up. ‘Poor old man, his voice was trembling, like he was frightened himself. Leave her alone, you terrible creature, he said. What’s she done?’

  ‘I don’t understand -’ Giulietta had leaned forward at that. ‘Who was attacking who?’ She turned to Luisa. ‘I thought the waiter said Claudio had been groping the girl?’

  ‘It was the woman,’ said Luisa softly, not knowing how she knew, but she knew. ‘The woman in the white coat. She set it all up; Claudio would never have laid a finger on that child. Beppe never saw it with his own eyes, did he?’

  Fiamma DiTommaso went on as if she hadn’t spoken, rhythmically stroking the huge dusty cat on her knee. It set up a loud purring. ‘Then someone’s phone went off, and the woman said, Give it to me, give it to me, you little b – ’ And DiTommaso broke off, biting her lips shut on the word. She took a breath. ‘There was some kind of struggle. Between the jeans and the white coat, I heard these horrible angry sounds, and something smashing, bash, bash, bash against a tree. Then the bag came flying over, through the trees, and landed right in front of me.’

  ‘So it wasn’t him,’ whispered Giulietta reverently. ‘Sandro was right. I kne
w it couldn’t have been old Claudio. Old Claudio wouldn’t have hurt a fly.’

  DiTommaso turned her head slowly to look at Giulietta. ‘Is that his name?’

  Luisa opened her mouth to say, Was, but closed it again. Giuli nodded.

  ‘It seemed to me like the woman had hold of the girl, at that point,’ said Fiamma DiTommaso. ‘Otherwise she might have come after the bag, she was furious when the girl did that. Their legs were very close together, the woman in the long white coat and the girl in jeans; that woman must have been strong.’

  ‘Not if she was angry enough,’ said Luisa, half to herself.

  ‘She started shouting things at the old man, then. He was trying to leave, maybe he was going to get help, because I didn’t think he would have left the girl like that otherwise.’

  Fiamma DiTommaso was pale now, as if with the realization of her own small share in the guilt. Doggedly she went on. ‘The older woman said, Don’t you dare leave. She said, I’ll tell them you touched her, you dirty old bastard, I’ll tell them, you did touch her, didn’t you? What will your wife say? Then she seemed to think of something. Oh, sorry, your wife’s dead, isn’t she, don’t you remember?’

  She paused, frowning. ‘I didn’t understand that, because if your wife was dead, you’d remember, wouldn’t you? It’s not something you’d forget.’

  And then Luisa had said, her heart heavier than she could remember it, ‘I don’t know.’

  Nearly there, thought Luisa as they came out on to the river, the home straight, down past the Palazzo Pitti – but then the sight of the river stopped her in her tracks.

  The water looked black in the dark but she could hear it roar; my God, she thought, it’s high. On the banks opposite she could see under the yellow glow of streetlighting that the Rowing Club’s terrace was under three metres of foaming water and above it a row of fire engines were parked under the great arches of the Uffizi. Closer, the seething torrent was almost filling the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, and a boat that had been moored under the bridge was no more than matchwood, no more than debris among all the rest, great branches from the Casentino, planks washed away from jetties and shacks further upriver, like the contents of some gigantic nest. Like the nest of some vast untidy bird.