The Innocent

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘This apprentice,’ interrupted the marshal firmly,

  accepting his chicken from Sonia and reaching for the bread. ‘He must have money or how could he afford to be here at all? He must have rent to pay and if he doesn’t eat much, he still eats.’

  ‘That’s not the way it is. Listen. He used to work in a shoe factory, somewhere near Tokyo, don’t ask me to pronounce the name. He told us they have a raffle every year for the workers and the prize is a trip to Europe. You must have seen Japanese people, poor-looking, coming out of Gucci loaded with bags? They’re factory workers shopping for their friends who didn’t win the trip. Stuff here costs a tenth of what it costs in Tokyo. Anyway, that’s how Issino first came here and he decided that he wanted to come back so he saved every penny and here he is. He’ll stick it out, too, not like Akiko. We were all surprised that Akiko left but Peruzzi was beside himself. Best apprentice he’s ever had, walked out, just like that. You probably heard about it—no? Well, anyway, whichever way you look at it, it’s all skill that’s going out of the country. Our grandchildren will have to go to Japan to find a pair of Florentine shoes and to China for a bottle of Chianti—no, no, you can’t sit with us. The marshal and I are having a talk.’

  The printer and the packer had arrived together.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Pollo alla cacciatore.’

  They settled down at Santini’s table and shouted for Sonia.

  ‘Excuse me a minute.’ Lapo got up reluctantly. The four outside tables were occupied now and people were piling inside as all the workshops closed. ‘I’ll have to let Sonia go back inside. Let these other two places go, but keep mine. I’ll be back so we can talk a bit more. I always like talking to you. Eat up, now.’

  The marshal thought that Lapo liked talking to anybody and wondered at the patience of his hardworking wife and daughter. But the day was hot and sunny, the company lively and the chicken very tasty indeed. So he ate, thinking of the quiet Japanese boy in his long apron, trying to square what he’d seen of him with Lapo’s description. He replayed their encounter in his head as he chewed. The failure to be provoked by silence had thrown him but, apart from that which, after all, could have been the respectful good manners of a different culture, what was there? A worried look at the odd shoe, a glance behind him. He had no money. He ate over there at his workbench almost every day. Peruzzi wasn’t paying him.

  He flagged down Lapo who was carrying away dirty plates.

  ‘This apprentice … strictly between ourselves—and what you tell me I won’t hear—he’s living there behind the workshop, isn’t he?’

  Lapo shrugged and raised his eyebrows without a word.

  ‘All right. Come back for a minute when you can. I need to ask you something else.’

  While he waited, he mopped up every last trace of sauce with his bread. He really should bring Teresa and the boys. Giovanni’s birthday was coming up …

  ‘Right you are, Marshal. What can I tell you? Oh—you’ll not cause any trouble for Issino?’

  ‘For living there? No, no … It would be Peruzzi who got in trouble, if anything.’

  ‘And you know he can’t afford to get upset, what with—’

  ‘I know. Don’t worry about that side of it. What I want to know is about the other apprentice, the one who’s gone. Does Issino have a girlfriend, that you know of ?’

  ‘Issino? No. He used to hang out with Akiko—they were good friends—but I never saw him with a girlfriend.’

  ‘And this Akiko. Did he have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Akiko? Don’t you know Akiko? Did you never get to see her? Prettiest Japanese girl I’ve ever seen, like a doll. Bright as a button, though, and tough. I’m surprised you were never introduced. Must have been jealous, wanted to keep her to himself, eh?’ He winked. ‘I’d have done the same myself. Peruzzi always said—’

  The marshal stopped him. ‘I’m going to wait until you’ve finished here and then we need to talk seriously. Don’t say anything to anyone else.’

  ‘What’s the matter? I haven’t offended you, have I? Just my little joke, about him being jealous. I meant nothing by it. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? I hope you’re not going to tell me something’s happened to Akiko.’

  ‘I don’t know, yet.’

  ‘I’ll be back.’ Lapo took the marshal’s plate and went about his business. The marshal took out his phone and called Forli. He was pretty sure he would be eating on the terrace of the big restaurant on the hill behind the hospital city with his colleagues and had no qualms whatever about interrupting him.

  ‘What? Ah! you’ve found out something, then. Yes, certainly Mongoloid would include Japanese. I’ll get something from London in a day or two—and given the state of the body, you’ll have a problem if somebody has to try and identify her so we’ll need those results whether you’ve got a name or not. Keep me informed!’

  He waited for Lapo. The clattering of plates and the rowdy talk faded comfortably into the background as he examined the fragments of a picture in his head. Two young people from the other side of the world, so determined to learn a skill. A thin young man in a long canvas apron, a young woman as pretty as a doll. And tough. He didn’t understand but he would find out. She might be a Japanese girl from the other side of the world but she had died here on his territory, in his quarter. He would find out.

  Five

  Walking back, he made detours through a number of shadowy back alleys, so narrow that the sun had never warmed them nor the street cleaner wet them. Illegal posters hung in tatters from the walls, parked mopeds blocked his way, soft-drink cans rolled away from him into hollows in the paving. He’d eaten early, with the workmen. It was still quiet. Metal grills were down over corner shops and from behind half-closed shutters above him came the signature tune of the one-thirty TV news, the cheerful clacking of cutlery, snatches of conversation. He needed the walk to burn off the vin santo and biscuits Lapo had insisted on, and to think things over a bit, if you could call it thinking. Just picturing things, really. A pretty Japanese girl …

  A sweet little face, Lapo had said, and a trim figure and she liked to dress well, not showily but well. And that was the marshal’s problem … She came from Tokyo too, like Issino, but from a well-to-do middle-class family who had sent her to Florence to prepare her doctorate in art history. She had returned home after the first three months, told her parents what she had really been spending her time on and then come back against their wishes and without their support. She had paid Peruzzi for her apprenticeship and, after that, had lived frugally for a year, sleeping behind the workshop and eating a sandwich, at her bench or in some square or park. More recently, she had been producing finished work for Peruzzi and was living in a little place of her own. When the marshal had been perplexed by her leaving a good family, a comfortable life and a respectable, dignified line of study, suitable for an intelligent young woman, Lapo had shaken his head. Akiko couldn’t stick the life her parents desired for her. She had always been a tomboy and wanted to work with her hands. The family was very conservative. Her older sister had been married off to a businessman in an arranged match and was dying of boredom in a fancy house with two small children in the country, miles from Tokyo. Her husband worked in the city and appeared when it suited him, usually tumbling drunk from a taxi after midnight. Lapo reckoned Akiko had the right idea:

  —She wanted out. She hated Tokyo and she loved it here, so why not? She wasn’t just learning a craft, she was learning the business. Peruzzi exports to Tokyo, you know, exclusively to one shop. We all thought she’d have taken over managing the workshop one day—not that Peruzzi would ever retire but ever since the heart attack … well, you can imagine it’s been on his mind.

  —Of course … and he hasn’t your luck, I mean, no children? I thought he mentioned a son, once … that time when there was the business of his car being burned.

  Now I think about it, I could have sworn Lorenzini said he wa
s so relieved it was the son who came to us to do the report for the insurance company.

  —It would have been. He does a lot for his father but it doesn’t include learning to make shoes. He’s an accountant and a successful one. Done very well for himself. Peruzzi’s face turns pink with pride at the mention of his name, worships the ground he walks on because he went to university. Are you going to have a coffee and wait for him? He’ll be back from the hospital any time.

  —No, no … I’ll come back another time. Remember, not a word to anyone.

  —Don’t you worry about that.

  But why that odd look? Was it a look that that said ‘You’re not one of us’? A look that shut him out? If it was, then this was going to be a difficult case. Lapo talked on because he was a talker but he wasn’t his usual self. His voice had been subdued:

  —Can you be sure it’s her you’ve found? That she didn’t just go off ? Sorry … you’d know, of course. Only, we all thought she’d gone to Rome. She had a friend there. Peruzzi said that was bound to be where she’d gone. Anyway, I’m not going to talk to anybody about this, you can rely on me, and Akiko was very discreet herself. She never talked about her private life, she wasn’t that sort, so you don’t need to worry. None of us knew anything about anything until she’d gone and Peruzzi was so upset—if we had we’d have been pleased for her, pleased to think she’d be staying with us. We were fond of her. Anyway, as I say, you don’t need to worry about me saying anything. I’m sure you’ll do your duty, whatever happened. Poor Peruzzi. His heart attack and now this. He said there’d been a row though he didn’t say what about. Nobody dares mention her name since she disappeared. He had big plans for Akiko. Of course, this puts a different light on the matter. What a nasty mess, especially for you. You’ve got to deal with it and it could get very unpleasant.

  —It’s my job.

  But Lapo was right. He wasn’t looking forward to dealing with this. He liked these people, even the ferocious Peruzzi. Admired him, anyway. And Lapo, if you could keep him off politics, was a good soul. He had seemed distressed, or, at least, ill at ease:

  —What is it they say, Marshal? Until you’ve eaten a kilo of salt with a man, you don’t know him. Poor little Akiko.

  I can’t quite believe it, even now.

  There was no mistaking that he’d been relieved when the marshal got up to go.

  As he walked, he puzzled over those expensive clothes … Peruzzi was always difficult to deal with but if he’d been letting his apprentices live in he’d have something to hide. He was also deeply upset about the girl and it looked as though he was about to be even more upset when the marshal approached him about what had happened to her. There was no doubt that the shoe was hers. The first finished shoes she’d ever made, Lapo said. The reason why they looked patchy was that they were made from leftover scraps of leather. That also explained the lack of a maker’s name. She’d been very proud of them. Her belt did have the maker’s name, though. A distressed Peruzzi with something to hide and another heart attack waiting to happen was going to need careful planning, very careful …

  So, those expensive clothes …

  Of course, if Peruzzi was paying for them, it didn’t necessarily mean …

  These things happen. Men of sixty-odd, even seventy-odd, who’d set up house at the usual age, been content with a humdrum marriage, taken by surprise by a belated passion. The marshal had seen a few of them in his time, families broken up, businesses or careers in the army or in government ruined.

  Later, in his office, talking it over with Lorenzini, he was moved to complain again, ‘What is the matter with everybody?’

  ‘Who do you mean, everybody?’

  ‘Well, Peruzzi—if it was Peruzzi—and if it wasn’t, then it was still somebody, wasn’t it? Some rich man making a fool of himself, spending money on that young woman, and Esposito, too—if we can believe Di Nuccio—wrecking his career, and …’

  ‘And?’

  And the captain. Better not mention that one.

  Lorenzini waited for the rest and when it didn’t come, he said, ‘Must be the spring.’

  ‘It’s summer by now,’ returned the marshal crossly.

  It was summer. Summer uniform and shirtsleeves in the office. That was a relief because the heat continued excessive for June. The builders were clearing out and that was an even bigger relief. But on Friday afternoon Lorenzini put his head in at the marshal’s door looking worried.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I think you should come up and see.’

  ‘Have they finished or haven’t they?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They have finished.’

  As they climbed the stairs to the dormitories, the marshal grumbled, ‘I asked you to keep an eye … I can’t be everywhere.’

  ‘No. It’s just that the last few days … We’re a man short now, remember, and I can’t be everywhere either. I go home at night, so … Besides, the structural work looked all right. I checked… .’

  ‘Well, then? What’s the problem?’

  ‘Just the tiles.’

  ‘The tiles? What the devil do the tiles matter—as long as they were cheap!’

  ‘They were cheap … and we agreed they should do the wall in the kitchen, behind the cooker, as well …’ Lorenzini stood back to let the marshal go into the bright new bathroom. He practically exploded.

  ‘Pink?’ Captain Maestrangelo wasn’t one for exploding but the marshal could imagine him on the other end of the line, his face dark with annoyance. ‘Pink?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re telling me nobody noticed?’

  ‘They’ve been using the toilet down here. They had to tile the floor before they could put the new one in up there.’

  ‘For God’s sake, your men were getting water from there in buckets. You told me so.’

  ‘No, from the kitchen. It was easier.’

  ‘But you said the kitchen’s pink as well!’

  ‘Only one wall and that was the last thing they did, this morning.’

  ‘And what excuse did they give?’

  ‘None. The budget was what it was. Nobody specified anything except that they should be the cheapest available. It was a job lot of seconds.’

  ‘So they’re faulty as well?’

  ‘Nothing you can see.’

  ‘You can just see that they’re pink! How pink? Pale? Quiet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, God … The general will have to be told.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not appropriate, not appropriate at all.’

  ‘No.’

  Church bells were ringing. Warm laurel bushes perfumed the morning air coming in at the open window. Whenever he had a problem to work on, Sunday morning was the time for it. The small, tinny church bells spoke of quiet streets where only the bars selling fresh cakes remained open, ready to parcel up glazed apple tart in fancy paper and trailing gold ribbon to take to Gran’s for Sunday dinner after Mass. The dominant cathedral bells spoke of a mixture of churchgoers in Sunday clothes and tourists with bare red shoulders hung with cameras. Smells of incense, sun cream, beeswax, hot dogs, perfume and pizza by the slice. The criminal fraternity could be assumed to be sleeping in and the marshal’s desk was as clear as his conscience.

  What was her name again? He had to look in his notebook. Akiko. Lapo hadn’t known her surname. He scanned his scribbled notes. Pretty as a Japanese doll, intelligent, tough. Gave up family, financial security, presumably friends back home. Followed her own path. Self-confessed tomboy. Wanted to work with her hands. So … he closed the notebook … she had fetched up on the left bank of the Arno among the Florentine artisans in a tiny square with no real name. An odd thing that Lapo had told him the other day was that one of the little side streets right there had once been known as Japanese Corner, but that was five hundred years or so ago and nobody seemed to remember exactly why there were so many Japanese here then.

  Occasionally, she ate a go
od meal at Lapo’s but most days she ate at her bench, if it was raining, chatting in Japanese to Issino, or took her sandwich and went for a walk to get a bit of exercise. The marshal was forced to admit to himself that, whatever had happened to the Japanese girl, he had mentally absolved the apprentice of any involvement in it. He was so … contained, so correct, so innocent in his attitude. That had to be wrong. That was, practically speaking, racist and he mustn’t act on it. He must ignore that impression and enquire into his movements in the same way as into Peruzzi’s. The trouble was, he felt rather the same way about Peruzzi. His instinct told him that Peruzzi had never been guilty of anything worse than a sharp temper and a tendency to drive people out of his shop, refusing to sell them anything if he didn’t like them. A tendency he shared with countless other artisans in the city. It was understandable, if you thought about it. What was less understandable was the girl’s story. He went over it again in his head. That arranged marriage of her sister’s … she liked it here and she wanted out … why not? Well, why not? Because something was wrong. Something didn’t fit. It was difficult to get at exactly what it was because he kept on being distracted by cultural differences. Now, that was no good. He just didn’t believe it would help because, surely, the things that mattered were the things that made all people the same, like greed, selfishness, jealousy. Sex and money, money and sex … Cultural backgrounds only provided different dressing for the same thing.

  ‘No, no …’ He spoke suddenly aloud and got up to walk over to his map and put his finger on the little nameless square. Then he walked to the window and parked himself there.

  No. Because a freethinking, parent-defying tomboy who wants to learn to work with her hands and make her own way in life does not want a sugar daddy who buys her expensive clothes. At that rate she would hardly have lived for a year behind the workshop and the clothes themselves would have been different. Not navy-blue linen. And not those plain white cotton knickers from a department store, either.