‘Some women like to make men wait and wait. Sometimes until it’s too late.’ This was spoken with some conviction and in the widest-awake tone yet, and Blume understood that some flighty woman had carelessly let drop the catch that was Maresciallo Panfilo Angelozzi.
‘The father, Domenico Greco, may have something to do with it, too,’ added the maresciallo, his outburst about women causing him inadvertently to volunteer information.
‘Yes, what about him?’ asked Blume.
To conserve energy for what now threatened to be a long to-and-fro, the maresciallo tried to keep his replies as economical as possible. ‘Came up here with Niki years ago. Before my time. All in my predecessor’s files. Better source than me, frankly.’
Blume stood up, and shook the maresciallo’s hand, a tactical move that had its intended disarming effect.
‘That’s it? You have no more questions?’
‘I think so,’ said Blume. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said the maresciallo and, on a generous impulse added some details for free. ‘He’s from Bari. Domenico, the father, I mean. Niki is from Molfetta originally. They already knew each other when they arrived. It took longer for the people in the town to accept Niki, but people liked the father straight away. The child helped.’
‘Silvana.’
‘Yes.’
‘No mother, you know. The father bringing her up alone, never asking anyone for favours. People felt sorry for him.’
‘He lost his wife, obviously.’
A sly look crossed the maresciallo’s countenance. ‘If only. But the truth of the matter is his wife ran away with a younger man. If she had died, people might not have been so embarrassed. For obvious reasons, Domenico never liked to talk about it. The details of the story were never well known to begin with. People have more or less forgotten now and he’s just called the gardener, sometimes “the Botanist”, because he knows so much about the trees and flowers and . . . grass.’ The maresciallo was winding down again. The daylight, attenuated though it was by the grime on the window, showed up all the lines of age and torpor.
‘After I check out Niki’s place, I am coming back to ask Domenico Greco a few questions.’
‘Is that really necessary?’
‘Am I disturbing something?’ asked Blume.
‘I think that is what you want to do.’
‘Perhaps if you just cleared up a few of my curiosities, I could just leave things alone.’
‘What curiosities?’
‘Greco’s wife running away, his origins in the south, how he came to be here, his relationship with Niki. His money.’
‘Money?’
‘Someone financed the refurbishing of part of the house. It might have been Niki, except Silvana tells me he did not approve. So maybe it was the old man. But if he’s just a gardener, where did he get the funds?’
The maresciallo stood up, and Blume was surprised to see he was quite a tall man though he walked with a stoop. He went over to an old filing cabinet, and came back with a folder that included, Blume could see, some printouts of newspaper articles and a fading photocopy of an avviso di garanzia.
‘These have nothing to do with me. My predecessor here was one of those overexcitable conspiracy types who see plots and criminals everywhere.’
‘Except here he was literally seeing criminals. Domenico Greco had a criminal record, right?’
The maresciallo looked offended and put the file out of Blume’s immediate reach. ‘He kept files on everyone.’
‘You have not added to them?’
‘Good God, no. I have more than enough to do as it is.’
‘So that file was never updated?’
‘Not since I came here, no.’
‘Which is how long?’
‘Twelve years.’
‘Have even you read it?’
‘Maybe, once, a long time ago. But Greco has never been a cause of any trouble, so there has been no need.’
Blume pulled the file towards him, and the maresciallo made no move to stop him. ‘I see there is an avviso di garanzia in here. What’s that about?’
‘It was issued by a magistrate in Bari a long time ago. It had to do with the disappearance of his wife.’
‘She ran away, that’s what you said.’
‘Actually, she disappeared. It was finally agreed that she had run away. To Australia, I think. A magistrate opened a case, and had to notify Greco that he was under investigation. So that’s the avviso you see there. Nothing came of it.’
‘A magistrate opened a case?’
‘The father of the guy the wife is supposed to have run away with accused Greco of murder. The preliminary court closed it down with a do-not-proceed motion. Or the man withdrew his complaint. I can’t remember. It’s in there.’
‘Can I take this?’
‘I’d prefer you didn’t.’
‘I can see that, but what if I did anyhow?’
The maresciallo looked stricken. ‘I was showing some professional solidarity, and now you want to cause me trouble?’
‘Not you: Greco.’
‘Leave the poor man alone, Commissioner.’
‘Did your predecessor keep a file on Niki Solito?’
The maresciallo ponderously shook his head, though whether it was to deny the existence of the file or to indicate that Blume was not getting it was not clear. Blume stood up, folder in hand.
‘I’ll bring it back, promise.’
‘Do as you please.’ The maresciallo placed his hands on his desk to indicate that he did not intend to move from where he was. ‘Just try not to mention me in connection with any agitation you are stirring up.’
Chapter 22
As Blume passed the repair shop, Alfredo the mechanic was standing there smoking a flaccid cigarette. He gave Blume a friendly wave. Blume waved back.
‘I am sorry to see you must walk everywhere,’ said Alfredo.
‘It clears the mind,’ said Blume. ‘And the streets are too narrow to drive.’
‘You get used to it. But no vehicle can get up to where you’re staying. Except a scooter. Are you going there now?’
‘As a matter of fact I am,’ said Blume.
‘You can borrow my son’s scooter,’ said Alfredo.
‘That’s very kind of you, but I prefer to walk,’ said Blume.
Alfredo flicked ash in Blume’s direction. ‘You are a very strange man, Commissioner Blume. I have never seen anyone make so many enemies so quickly. It’s a good job you’re not planning to settle here.’
‘Any news on the spare parts?’
‘On their way. I am giving your car absolute priority.’
They parted on the best of terms.
At the alimentari in the piazza, he had them make him up a long baguette with prosciutto and mozzarella. He bought himself a drinking yoghurt, three cans of beer and a packet of Molino Bianca digestives.
He had now had food enough until dinnertime. He hoped the princess would not object to his eating in his room. Too bad if she did. He had a day’s work ahead of him.
When he got back to the princess’s house, the front door yielded to a gentle push, only this time no smell of cooking greeted him, though the coolness of the air inside the building was pleasant after the heat.
‘Hello?’ He felt the sweat breaking out under his shirt, as his body adjusted to the sudden drop in temperature.
He called out a few times, deepening and steadying his voice so as not to sound nervous, but no one answered. Rather than go straight up to his room, he went down to the kitchen, and dropped his bag of shopping and the file on Greco on the table where they had eaten the night before. Calling out now and then, telling himself it was so as not to startle the princess but finding comfort in the human sound of his own voice, he began to explore.
A scullery off the kitchen was filled with potatoes, onions, strings of garlic, and bottles of wine and olive oil. Behind it, he found a small toilet and a backyard. He
returned to the kitchen, and absent-mindedly pulled out his lunch. Panino in hand, he returned to the entrance hall, and opened one of the two doors that led off it. He found himself in a cool, dark room filled with scrap metal, a heap of keys, and a pile of tarnished silver sitting on a broad table and a wall lined with gold-framed portraits, most of them uniformly black and indistinguishable under the 40-watt bulb whose light barely made it from the high ceiling. One painting, more modern and easier to make out, showed a young woman. It seemed unimaginable that the exterior of these very walls were hot to the touch as they baked in the excess of sunlight.
The second door led into a drawing room that seemed even darker than the first, if only for the completeness with which the light had been excluded from the two large windows. Wooden panel shutters closed them on the inside, and their defence against the light had been shored up with piles of books, which had the added benefit of killing all sounds from outside.
Here was a fantastically ugly chandelier from the 1950s, but it at least had room for five bulbs, three of which were working. Two of the walls were lined with old folios and books, some with broken spines, others intact, all of them well dusted. The room smelled of beeswax and cleaning fluid, and the table in the middle shone like well-polished shoes. Near the window sat a television, as old as some of the books. It was a huge ‘Pye’ set that must have cost a lot in its day, if only for the wood used in its manufacture. On the wall behind it, the sole painting in the room was a representation of Villa Romanelli in its heyday. The perspective was from the side, and showed two sides of the mansion and some of the box hedges in the garden.
Blume, feeling under observation, finished off his panino, and poked his head back out into the hallway and called out ‘Flavia’ (he could hardly go round shouting ‘Princess’, or even ‘Signora’ since she was, in fact, a princess. The first name option seemed the least embarrassing). The hall had considerable power of amplification. If she had been in, she would surely have heard him. He ducked back into the kitchen and grabbed the drinking yoghurt and a few digestives. He’d have preferred a beer, but he did not want to be caught walking about with a can in his hand. The yoghurt and biscuits were bad enough for, as Caterina had told him more than once, walking and snacking was a vulgar American habit. Her rule exempted ice cream, of course, since that’s what Italians did.
Back in the drawing room, or whatever its function was, he brushed biscuit crumbs off his chest and examined the spines of the books. One entire wall was given over to a collection of the laws of Italian states before Unification, a complete set of the acts of the two Houses of Parliament, what had to be the entire corpus of Piedmontese laws, constitutions, chapters, pragmatic sanctions, decrees, government programmes, customs, parliaments, proclamations, and enactments, commentaries on laws, and studies of the public, private, and canon law. The works on or by Cavour, Crispi, Davideni, Depretis, Garibaldi, La Marmora, Mamiani, Manzoni, Rattazzi, Ricasoli, Sonnino, Tommaseo, and Zanardelli were disposed in a defence-in-depth formation against the last remaining sunbeams that tried to filter through.
More interesting was a section, protected from the dust by a lattice of lead and glass, containing volumes and engravings on top of which a large pile of maps and plans had been heaped, some in better condition than others. Some showed old maps of Abruzzi, Latium, the Marches, Northern Campania, Algidus Mons, the Alban Hills, parts of Tuscany, and Molise. Others were more specifically local to Monterozzo, or ‘Mons Rudis’. Here he found plans and elevations of Villa Romanelli.
He took one out and unrolled it on the table, only for it to roll up again. He tried to hold it down with his bottle of yoghurt, and almost spilled the contents all over the plan. He gulped down the yoghurt and shoved the plastic bottle in his pocket. Then he remembered a set of lozenge-shaped weights he had seen on a lower shelf whose purpose had escaped him. It was very satisfying to roll out the plan of the villa and pin it down with a heavy iron bar in each of the four corners. He looked down at it, happy finally to have it all laid out before him like that. It fitted in with his plan for the afternoon, which was to map out an investigation not only into the missing Romanian, but also into Niki Solito and Domenico Greco. The way he saw it, at least two young women, Nadia and Silvana, were in danger, but he was not sure exactly how. This is what he would work out, along with a way of getting the men’s past to catch up with them.
The map made him feel more in control, too. He now had a God’s-eye-view of the mansion in the garden, which had been looming a bit too large in his imagination. It was not a blueprint but a drawing done after the house was built. The dimensions and functions of the rooms were indicated. There was the nursery, governess quarters, various guest bedrooms, bathroom, laundry room, utility room, billiard room, library, kitchen, drawing room, dining room, second dining room, antechambers, halls, vestibules, music room, reading room, hunting room, and so on. He thought of his own new-build apartment at the edge of the city. If the entire high-rise building were cut into sections, it would fit into the second floor of the villa, with room to spare. Three floors and then the basements, cellars, garages, stables, and so forth, which were not even counted. He examined the plan again and saw it was dated 1932. The basements were generically indicated as cantina except, he noticed, a section, located at the back of the house defined as laboratori, vivaio e serre. The laboratory and plant house also seemed to be located in the basements, which was odd, except that the princess had mentioned her uncle carrying out underground botany experiments of some sort. Evidently, the uncle had been a long-term resident.
He left the room without putting away the map. He retrieved his shopping bag, which now contained just biscuits and beer, and the Carabinieri file on Greco from the kitchen table and clumped up the stairs as noisily as he could, just in case, in spite of all the calling, someone was in the house after all.
In the bedroom, he cleared room on his small desk, pushed his suitcase under the bed, plugged in his phone, took out pens, the lined notebook, and the file on Greco. He got up and made his bed more neatly, moved the bedside lamp over to the table, and closed the door to the bathroom. He surveyed his workspace with satisfaction. He even had internet on his phone. He had all the tools he needed.
He decided to begin with the least likely source of information: the exercise book Silvana had left behind in the hospital. He had already glanced into it, and saw nothing of interest, and he had always assumed she had simply left it behind by mistake. But what if it contained some sort of coded message? A cry for help?
He opened it again, and studied the girlish handwriting. He noted again how she dotted her ‘i’s with little flowers. He read an entire short story about a knight in shining armour trying to pick up a bundle of blue flowers for his lady only to be dragged down into the water and dying shouting ‘Forget me not!’, which, Silvana wrote, is ‘how the beautiful little flower got its name.’
She had signed the story, as if it were her own. But he had a dim memory of having heard the tale before, which he was able to confirm with his phone and the internet. There was even a poem. Nothing wrong with retelling the story, he thought, but why bother?
The next story seemed to have talking trees in it, which, having no real beginning, middle, or end, he figured was a complete original. She wrote in a bulbous childish script with no hard edges, which after a while seemed to expand and wobble before his eyes. A few pages listed the names of flowers in English and Italian, and he spotted one or two doubtful translations. Weren’t you supposed to use Latin anyhow, since vernacular names were unreliable? It was beginning to dawn on him that Silvana, sweet and enthusiastic though she was, might be a bit . . . dumb seemed harsh, but he had given up looking for any coded messages. There was one more complete story, this one about a rabbit, and he was looking up Beatrix Potter on his smartphone when a text message came through from Caterina.
When you coming by? Call?
Serendipitous. That was exactly what he had planned to do next. He o
pened his notebook, uncapped a new pen, and was ready to call her. She was often angry with him, but always helped him if he asked. She might kick him out, but she never let him down. He called her. She began by complaining about his unreasonable demands, his cagey refusal to say what he was doing or where he was or who with. He let all this flow by, waiting for her to get to the point. Finally, she said. ‘Anyhow, against my better judgement, I got some info on a certain Greco, Domenico, aka Mimmo . . .’
‘Nothing on Alina Paulescu, the missing girl?’
‘Grateful as ever, aren’t you?’
‘I only meant . . .’
‘Forget it. If I had, I would have told you. No. But you did not give me much to go on. And even if you had, this sort of check can take weeks. So, are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re taking notes, too, I can tell.’
‘How can you tell that?’
‘You’re speaking in your writing voice. All serious, no humour. But before I start, are you trying to handle this guy yourself? Basically, what I am asking is if you’re trying to get yourself killed?’
‘No. Nothing like that. He’s old now, and a gardener.’
‘So what put you onto him?’
‘Well, he seems to have a lot of money for a gardener, and no one here is very curious, so I just thought I’d look into it.’
‘I think there is more to it than that. You are holding back.’
‘Maybe a bit, but the more you help me, the more you’ll know about it,’ said Blume.
‘That’s the only reason I am helping you in the first place. OK, get your pen ready. Domenico Greco, used to be known as “Mimmo il Mimo”. It’s an old nickname. He got it because when he carried out jewellery heists, he took care never to speak. He would just mime what he wanted using his hands and his gun.’
‘Armed robbery? When was this?’
‘This was at the end of the 1970s. He got done twice for it, but was suspected of being involved in many more than that. After he came out of jail in 1982, he married, seemed to settle down, and falls off the radar for years. He got a light sentence both times he was caught. Either because he corrupted the judge or because, given the historical period, the authorities were almost sympathetic to anyone who was not a separatist or brigatista.’
Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Page 17