The Innocent

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘What a stink. Not the sort of job you want to be doing in the sun. Stagnant water’s a bad enough smell on a winter’s day.’

  ‘I just wish we’d had this water to play with last summer. In all the years I’ve been here—and that’s plenty—we’d never lost a tree before then. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘They say this summer it’ll be back to normal.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  A few bunches of water hyacinths, their soft roots dripping like long black hair, were tied into plastic bags half filled with green water to be taken to other pools. Beppe, the oldest gardener, small and round and brown as a nut, knew the marshal well. He offered him a bagful.

  ‘It makes a lovely pale-blue flower, like an iris. Take some. You’ve got a bit of garden. Make a nice little water feature for yourself.’

  ‘No, no … I wouldn’t have a clue … no.’

  ‘Only need to say the word, you know that.’ They trimmed the laurel hedges and raked the gravel around the carabinieri station in the normal way of things but it had never gone much further than that. The old gardener didn’t hurry away.

  ‘Bad business …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They say it must have been a murder …’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Giovanni thinks so. He says a child might drown in it but not an adult. That’s what he says.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Of course, there’s drugs … or drink, maybe. You get these young foreigners who drink too much. Away from home … We get a lot of them in here. Eating pizza, leaving litter …’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I suppose you shouldn’t be talking about it like this.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No offence meant—it’s just that in our job we like to have something to talk about while we’re working. It passes the time. Not another word, then. Right.’

  But he didn’t go away. The marshal, understanding what was wanted, talked to him, asking about his wife’s operation, his eldest daughter’s new house, his newly married grandchild who was still living at home, unable to find a flat so if the marshal knew of anything … The marshal knew of something. He was well aware that this would translate into all sorts of confidential information and dark hints about murder when the old gardener rejoined his mates. Before he did, he looked up at the marshal and whispered, ‘We’ve got a bet on. I reckon that, however she got in there—Giovanni thinks drugs, the others say she was pushed in—she probably slipped. Spirogyra. Very slippery stuff. Cracked her head on a piece of the statue.’

  ‘But there are no—’

  ‘Marshal!’ They’d found something. The marshal came forward into the light, stepping over the plastic hoses with care.

  A carabiniere was holding up a shoulder bag.

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘I can give you some rubber gloves if you want.’

  ‘No. Just open it.’

  They spread the contents on a plastic sheet. It was bad news. The bag contained nothing that could identify the drowned woman. No document, no wallet, no scrap of paper. When every zip compartment had been opened there was still nothing. There were some keys which were no help at all without an address. There was one of those pouches for loose change that the banks gave out free along with a little plastic bag of coins when the euro was introduced. There was a comb in a leather case and a ballpoint pen.

  The marshal took out the notebook he always kept in his top pocket and gave it to the carabiniere. ‘See if the pen works.’

  It did. ‘Is that a help?’ the carabiniere asked, surprised.

  ‘Yes.’ A functioning pen, a clean, unbroken comb in its case, coins in their pouch. He was willing to bet that if her entrance ticket to the gardens wasn’t in her missing wallet or one of her pockets it had been dropped into a waste bin, not on the ground. There were no sodden paper handkerchiefs here, no half-eaten—blast that woman! She hadn’t appeared to claim her bag.

  ‘Something wrong, Marshal?’

  ‘Yes! No. No … Call the oldest gardener over here, the one with the straw hat, putting his shirt on. Can you see him? Get him here.’

  The gardener approached, buttoning the check shirt over a round belly, his face alight with interest and self-importance. ‘Have you found a clue?’

  ‘What statue?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You said you thought she’d cracked her head on a piece of the statue.’

  ‘Well, I was just saying that, you know …’ He faltered, his face red. ‘I was just saying that. It’s not that I …’

  The marshal fixed his black gaze on the small round man. ‘What statue?’

  ‘The little lad with the fish, like the one at the Palazzo Vecchio. There was a bit of a fountain here once but it wasn’t much of a thing. Nice enough, you know, but it was only a poor copy so when it got smashed up nobody bothered. The bits are still in there—they kept this garden padlocked for a long while after that because of vandals—’

  ‘Padlocked? When was it reopened?’ The marshal was feeling for his notebook. Just one verified fact in this case would be something.

  ‘Oh, it’s a while, now …’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, my eldest was still at home, that I do remember. Might have been seventy-one—no, I tell a lie, it was seventy-two.’

  The marshal put his notebook away.

  ‘Have I said something I shouldn’t?’

  ‘No, no …’

  ‘You had me worried for a minute, there. I mean, I was just saying that about the statue. It’s not that I—you don’t think that I really know something—’

  ‘What are you talking about? I just wanted to know about the statue, that’s all, because you’re very probably right.’

  ‘I am? Well, I thought—nobody can tell what you’re thinking behind those glasses. You want to take them off when you’re talking to people.’

  ‘Sorry. You’ve been a help.’

  Beppe went off to rejoin his mates, no doubt bursting to tell them he’d been right, the marshal said so.

  The marshal stood looking down at the low green water and now he did take his glasses off. The flickering orange of a spotted goldfish drew his attention. It was swimming round and round something, the tip of which appeared just above the surface. He dried his sun-sensitive eyes, put his dark glasses back on and called to his carabinieri. They netted a marble fish and put it into an evidence sack. It had been the tail fin which was sticking up, impossible to tell yet whether the soft black strands wrapped round it belonged to the water hyacinths or the victim.

  Professor Forli would be as pleased with himself as Beppe. The marshal mentally took his hat off to them both.

  Later, listening to all this, Captain Maestrangelo gave all the credit to the marshal. ‘Now, is there anything you need? I know Lorenzini can be relied on when you have to be out but I hope you have enough men because—’

  ‘Oh, yes. Thank you. Yes. What I need is a list of persons recently reported missing. A young woman like that must have parents, a husband or boyfriend, a job. Somebody would miss her.’

  ‘I’ll see to that for you—was she wearing a wedding ring?’

  ‘I don’t know. There was no flesh left on her hands, so … If she was and it came off in the water we’ll find it.

  We’re sifting through everything near where the body was found. And, of course we’re still looking for the other shoe around the whole area.’

  ‘Odd sort of thing to carry away. Not a likely weapon, I take it?’

  ‘No, no. Quite a broad heel, rubber, too. No.’

  They were in the captain’s office and it was nearly eight o’clock in the evening. The scent of limes coming through the open window was almost overpowering. As was often the case in the afternoons, the captain was in civvies.

  ‘I’ll get the list of missing persons to you first thing in the morning, and we’ll put something in the newspaper and on the regional TV news.’

>   A carabiniere came in and interrupted them. The captain stood up. ‘If there’s anything else, wait for me.’

  ‘I will, if that’s all right. I wanted a word about Esposito.’

  Waiting alone in the quiet, spacious office, the marshal thought about Esposito. He’d just announced that he wanted to leave the army. The army could ill afford to lose him. His story was that he felt he should find work nearer home, in Naples, because he was an only son and his widowed mother was ill. The marshal had asked him what sort of work, what sort of career opportunities he thought he’d have in Naples. The young man had only looked at him with dazed eyes full of pain.

  Remembering Lorenzini’s mention of that suicide case—a young man who’d left a wife and child—which had, it was true been very distressing, he suggested, ‘Are you worrying about your mother? Do you need to get home for a few days?’

  ‘It would help, yes.’ He had looked so grateful.

  Well, it could have been the suicide case but if it was, he was going to have to toughen up. And if, on the other hand, Di Nuccio was right and a woman was the problem, well … the thing was to rescue his career now and hope he’d get over it later. Most people did. There were men who didn’t, not completely, and they ended up marrying somebody cosy and pleasant who didn’t provoke such strong feelings, maybe somebody a bit more like their mothers. There were those, of course, who never got over it, full stop. The sort that never got over anything. Couldn’t fancy the risk of provoking another catastrophe, threw themselves into work, lived like monks. That was no way to go on. A man should live like a man. The marshal remembered taking Teresa round when she and the boys first moved up here from Siracusa. They’d visited the Certosa Monastery, a museum now, and been shown round by a monk whose habit and breath suggested he had lunched a little bit too well. He had shown them the tiny cells with their bloodthirsty frescoes and hatches just big enough to admit a plate of food or a book. Then he’d leaned forward, breathing wine fumes, and told them in a confidential tone, ‘That sort of life … well, it’s not suited to us Italians.’

  Nor was it. The marshal gazed about him now, remembering that this barracks was once a monastery. There was still a bit of a fresco over the captain’s oak door … Thinking it over, he decided he’d be wise not to dwell on the personal aspect of Esposito’s problem with the captain but to concentrate on not letting the army lose a good man, serious, intelligent, with a bright career in front of him.

  It was the right thing to do. The captain decided that Esposito should be sent home for a couple of weeks on compassionate grounds, given his mother’s illness, and that, on his return, the captain would call him in for a pep talk about his career.

  ‘Thank you. I think that’ll do the trick and, if it doesn’t, well, you can only do your best …’ The marshal got up to leave.

  ‘I’ll walk down with you. I have an appointment on the other side of the river.’

  They went down the stone staircase and stood a moment in the cloister, waiting for the marshal’s car to be extricated. The voices of carabinieri echoed loudly round the rear courtyard as three other cars had to be shifted.

  ‘Keep more to your left and watch that pillar!’

  ‘You might have to move the jeep!’

  Their engines roared, unnaturally loud in the confined space.

  The captain’s mind seemed to be running partly on the worry of restoring the centuries-old flagstones of this, their only entrance and the chaos it would cause, and partly on Esposito’s future in the army.

  ‘In my father’s day young officers of good family served their country with us and didn’t even take their pay.’

  ‘Times have changed a bit since then.’

  The marshal’s car pulled up.

  ‘You might drop me on the other side of the river, Guarnaccia.’

  Bats dived under the bridge and swooped in large circles in a red sky, feeding on mosquitoes. The perfume of the limes hung too heavy, now, on the still air. The captain got out on the left bank and the marshal watched him disappear in the evening shadows of a narrow street—the one he had recently visited himself—without comment.

  The carabiniere driving asked, ‘Back to Pitti, Marshal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’m starving …’

  Four

  The marshal probably grumbled, though not always aloud, as much as anyone else. There was a perpetual voice of conscience, though, that warned him to count his blessings. Given the job he did, there was always ample scope for things to get worse. So he sat in his office on the morning of the first of June and did a bit of mental book balancing. Twenty-nine degrees was too hot for June, everyone said so. His men were having to cover their beds and belongings with cellophane every day and wash with a series of buckets. Builders were trundling wheelbarrows through the waiting room, taking out rubble and bringing in sand and cement. A thick veil of cement dust lay everywhere. It penetrated the marshal’s office and every file in every drawer felt chalky. Esposito had entrained for Naples and he was one man short. Neither an article in the local paper nor a brief mention on the regional news had produced any useful information about his drowned woman. There was no one on the missing persons list that was the right age.

  And to cap it all, after two hours of drudgery among his dusty files, he now had to face that woman. What was her name again … ? He fished out the appropriate report and blew on it with a sigh. Annamaria Gori. All right. Things could be worse: twenty-nine degrees was hot for the beginning of June but the nights were still cool so you could sleep. It was miserable for the men without their shower but it would have been a lot worse in July or August. What’s more, if the place weren’t full of dust and chaos, he’d be annoyed because the builders hadn’t started work. Given that they had started, they’d soon be finished. Then, Esposito was at least off his hands for a while and he’d done what he could. Might be an idea to give him a ring next week.

  Teresa had been very concerned:

  —I do hope you don’t lose him. There’s something about him, I don’t know quite how to describe it. I mean, all your boys are very kind and well-mannered to me but Esposito … he always looks as though he really means it, d’you know what I mean? Of course, he’s a beautiful-looking boy but it’s not just that. When you talk to him his face kind of lights up …

  I don’t want to keep him in the army because of his smile, for heaven’s sake!

  ‘Marshal? Somebody to see you.’

  ‘All right. Show her in.’ Keep remembering that things could be worse. At least the blasted woman had turned up at last—and, you never knew, he might get something useful out of her.

  He didn’t. On the other hand he did find out what she was doing in that garden. He should have noticed at the time that she identified the pool by the plant growing there.

  ‘I wish you’d told me before. I’m trying to find out how a woman died. It’s a serious matter.’

  ‘But it’s nothing to do with me, though, is it?’

  The two slashes of eyeshadow were bright blue today. It was difficult not to stare at them. Was she just slapdash or …

  ‘Tell me something, Signora. Do you ever wear glasses?’

  ‘No. I ought to but I don’t like myself in them.’

  ‘I see. And are you short-sighted or long-sighted?’

  ‘I can’t remember. One or the other. Roberto says when I renew my driving licence and they test my eyes I’d better get contact lenses, otherwise, if they stop me and I’m not wearing glasses, I’ll get in trouble.’

  ‘He’s quite right.’

  ‘Still, now I know you, I can come to you if I get in trouble, can’t I? I wouldn’t mind contact lenses but I couldn’t fancy putting them in and besides, you have to keep washing them and I’d be dropping them or losing them all the time. Wouldn’t you? Then he’d be annoyed.’

  ‘What does your husband do, Signora?’

  ‘He’s an optician. So you see, he’d be moaning at me every time
I lost them.’

  ‘And you don’t fancy wearing glasses. So you thought what you saw in the water might be a dog.’

  ‘I touched it, can you imagine? It was something disgusting, I could see that, and it stank, so I told that gardener he should see to it. I mean, I could have caught something!’

  ‘Sign here, Signora, will you?’

  ‘What does it say? Roberto says I should never sign anything without reading it.’

  ‘It says you’ve received your handbag and checked its contents.’

  She signed without reading it. As he showed her out, he suggested, ‘Next time, Signora, buy your plants from a nursery.’

  ‘Well, if I had, I bet you’d never have found that woman so you ought to thank me. They’re not flowering yet but Roberto’s already moaning on about the stone sink they’re in being too heavy for the balcony. He’s expecting it to hit the woman underneath on the head any minute, can you imagine? She’s a pain in the neck anyway, always moaning if Miranda puts the washing out. When did a few drops of water do anybody any harm? Still, if she keeps on being a nuisance, I can call you now, can’t I, after I’ve helped you?’

  Once she’d gone, the marshal sat himself down at his desk with a determined frown on his face. What he determined was that Annamaria Gori was to become Lorenzini’s exclusive client. Along with Nardi. They were all Tuscans and should understand each other.

  He picked up the missing persons list which one of Maestrangelo’s men had helpfully asterisked to indicate people reported missing in Tuscany. As he had expected, there was nobody the right age. Children got lost, or were abducted, unhappy teenagers ran away, often in pairs, to reappear after three days or so when the money ran out. Disappointeded older men, their personalities and their dreams eroded over the years, walked away in amazing numbers and never came back. Very few women in that age group. Young women in their mid-twenties left their husbands, changed their jobs. They didn’t need to escape, they could just go … except illegal immigrants. A very few young immigrant women escaped from the sex trade. Not nearly enough. If only she had a face … and hands, her hands could have told Forli so much. If only Forli would—