The Innocent

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘Yes.’

  Lapo had said it:—Good God, if I’d told what I know it’d be on the front page …

  The photographs lay spread all over the desk between them. Views of red roofs, domes and towers from Piazzale Michelangelo, views of the Arno valley from Bellosguardo, the Ponte Vecchio from the Santa Trinita Bridge, Peruzzi and Issino in their long aprons at the door of the workshop, close-ups of shoes, details of shoes, skeletons of shoes.

  And then a whole packet of pictures of him. Eyes alight, handsome face a little flushed, the same face as Totò when he’d bounded past his father today, the face of someone in love.

  ‘Telephone him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or, better still, send somebody round there and have him brought in. There’s no time to waste! He could disappear if this gets out!’

  ‘He already has.’ The marshal watched Lorenzini’s face. He’d known him so long. The more aggressive he seemed, the more upset he was. He was very upset now.

  ‘You’re right, of course, about the papers. It’ll be a scandal anyway, but as far as disappearing’s concerned, it’s too late. I said I haven’t told anybody and I haven’t, but since Captain Maestrangelo had asked me particularly to keep an eye, I felt I could call the signora without any sort of explanation and I did. It was a shock when she answered so … cheerfully. She seemed really pleased to hear from me but, of course, she realised right away that I wouldn’t call for no reason:’

  —Has something happened to him?

  —No, no, Signora …

  —It’s such a dangerous job. I can’t help worrying.

  —Nothing like that, I promise you. I just wanted to check something with him … a case we’ve been working on. How are you, anyway? I was sorry to hear about your illness.

  ‘She laughed and said she’d never been ill in her life. I got round that by saying I must have been mistaken, just an impression. I said her son probably worried about her falling ill, given that she was alone, the way she worried about something happening to him because he did a dangerous job. She didn’t pick it up, just said she missed him and was looking forward to his next leave.’

  ‘He didn’t go home.’

  ‘No. She hasn’t seen him since Easter when he brought his girlfriend home. She had a lot to say about that, said she was a lovely girl but—’

  ‘Foreign.’

  ‘Yes. They all did their best. It’s a big family and they all invited her. Not a day went by without there being a family dinner at one aunt’s or another’s but despite all the hospitality there’d been a quarrel of some sort. She said she wasn’t the interfering kind but marriage is difficult enough without the problems two different cultures are likely to cause. He seemed so head over heels in love, though, that her only hope was that it would wear off. She hoped I’d back her up if … if he confided in me.’ Lorenzini dropped into the chair in front of the marshal’s desk. His aggressiveness had dissipated as the full implications sank in. It was the man’s disappearance that made the case as bad as it could get. So he, too, fell as silent as the marshal for a moment. Twenty-six colour photographs of Esposito lay spread on the desk between them, handsome, happy and glowing with love.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake …’ was all Lorenzini could manage at last. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

  It rained again during the night, steady, heavy rain with distant grumblings of thunder. The marshal lay in the dark, his eyes wide open. Every so often a faint wash of light managed to get between the slats of the closed outer shutters and for a second he saw a paler darkness of long muslin curtain, then it all went black. Heavier curtains would shut the storm out. Or solid inside shutters. Each spent flash provoked an answering flicker of irritation. For God’s sake, how was he supposed to sleep? He hadn’t got to bed until one in the morning and tomorrow promised to be a long and heavy day. Teresa had only given him a bowl of the light broth she’d prepared for tomorrow with some bread in it and a sprinkling of cheese.

  —You know you always have nightmares if you eat late at night.

  Well, there was little enough danger of having any nightmares tonight, with the room lighting up like a firework display every few minutes, and on top of that he was starving. The stormy air was sticky and his thin cotton pyjamas felt like they were made of serge. Either they or the sheets were damp and creased under his back. He tried wriggling his shoulders to smooth things out but only managed to make more creases. He turned on his side and pushed the top sheet down. Four o’clock. It would be easier to sleep with the bedside light on than with this blasted flashing but he didn’t want to wake Teresa. Installing inside shutters would be an expense but surely a bit of a curtain wasn’t too much to ask! What was she thinking about? That thin stuff wouldn’t keep anything out. If you couldn’t be safe in your own house, where could you be safe?

  Should he get up and check on the boys again? She’d be annoyed if she woke up and noticed. She’d been annoyed when he went in before:

  —It’s after midnight. You’ll wake them up.

  —I won’t.

  —Well, don’t switch the light on. You know how you used to wake them up when they were small.

  —I never saw them when they were small. I was here on my own, wasn’t I? I missed their whole childhood!

  —Don’t exaggerate, Salva. And don’t wake them up.

  So he hadn’t switched the light on, just stood there in the doorway, listening to their breathing. He’d even resisted the temptation to cover Totò with his tumbled sheets since it was so hot anyway.

  You thought you could help them, protect them, but then it turned out that you couldn’t do a thing. They weren’t your children, they were just other people. You might as well not be there. It seemed as if every time that faint flash of light came it was a signal for the scene to play over again in his head. Totò bounding towards him, calling Where were you? Each time it played he wanted to open his arms and swing his laughing little boy round and round. But each time, Totò bounded past without seeing him.

  So he wouldn’t get up. He’d only disturb them. Teresa was right.

  —Don’t say anything to him. Promise me.

  With the next flash came the thought of Esposito, the one thought he really must keep out if he wanted any sleep at all. His first name was Lorenzo. His mother, on the phone, had called him Enzo. She was a widow but she sounded young, cheerful. Women got on all right without men around, getting in their way. But he couldn’t get along without Teresa …

  He’d lied about his mother being ill. That was going to go against him. There might or might not be evidence of him in her flat but DNA would prove if the child was his. There were the photographs and there were witnesses. That restaurant was packed last night, full of Japanese fashion people here for the menswear show. The owner had recognised Esposito from the photographs right away. Tomorrow he was going to have to go back to Peruzzi, Lapo, all of them.

  It was only natural that they’d all thought he was accusing Peruzzi to protect Esposito. We all protect our own, as Lapo said. Up to that point they’d been so helpful, so discreet, avoiding mentioning Esposito, trusting him. Lapo saying nothing more than:—What a nasty mess, especially for you … but I know you’ll do your duty.—Peruzzi, distressed as he was, swearing he wouldn’t talk to journalists. They’d been trying to help him and he hadn’t understood. He’d spent a long time closeted with Lorenzini, going over first, the timetable of events, as well as could be managed without a precise time of death, then the information he had failed to pick up on in the little square. Stuff that had been meaningless at the time.

  Peruzzi saying:

  —How can you be sure … but of course you’d know. And then:

  —I could have sworn she was in love … She was in love … the baby would have kept her.

  —I could have done a lot for them. We had plans. Did he tell you?

  Well, no, he didn’t tell me because … He bundled himself back into the damp, creasy sheets but they
were intolerable and he got up again. Because he didn’t feel he could confide in me. Because I don’t understand anything and my own wife is keeping me away from my son because I’d only upset him. If she’d been able to keep me away from Esposito we might not be in this mess. No. That was rubbish because, by that time the Japanese girl was dead. Before then, Esposito had been doing well.

  Lorenzini had talked to the men, not telling them why, asking them if they knew anything about Esposito’s girlfriend, especially Di Nuccio who was from Naples and had been the one to say Esposito must be in love. But all he knew was that Esposito used to go out fairly often, all spruced up, and then he stopped. He’d just assumed. Of course he hadn’t confided in any of them. He was an NCO and a newly made one at that, hardly likely to get pally with the men. Lorenzini himself was his immediate superior. Esposito was living in barracks, far from home and old friends. There was nobody. There should have been the marshal. The young man was under his care and if he had felt unable to confide in him, that was the marshal’s failure.

  ‘I’ll make you some camomile tea.’ The light went on.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Salva, you’ve been trailing around the room in the dark for the last half-hour and the sheets on your side look like a battleground. Make the bed and I’ll bring us some camomile. D’you want a bit of honey in it?’

  ‘Yes, and …’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Are there any biscuits?’

  In the morning it was still pouring down. The marshal had himself driven the short distance to the little square. The rain-sodden flags hung limp and dirtied. There were few people about. If he was going to have to spend his morning apologising for himself, he’d start with Santini, the restorer, and work his way up. By the time he got to Peruzzi he’d be better informed, better prepared. There was a spotlight glowing in Santini’s window, illuminating a painted kitchen cupboard and a well bucket full of fresh flowers, but nobody appeared when the marshal went in and the bell rang.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  The first room was as dark as the day. A dozen large decorated bowls stood on a long table and there was a small desk which the marshal looked at as he waited. It must have been very old because there was a worn patch in the middle at the front and a burned-in depression on the right hand edge. Somebody had spent a good many hours with his feet up, smoking a cigar. A man at peace with himself and the world.

  The marshal sighed and called out again, ‘Anybody there?’

  He knew there must be because he could hear violin music and work going on, sandpapering, he thought, somewhere behind.

  ‘Come back later. I’m busy!’

  The marshal edged his way down a corridor stacked with picture frames and half blocked by a marble sink leaning against the wall. ‘Santini!’

  The young restorer appeared at the end of the corridor in a rectangle of light. His old clothes were spattered with paint and varnish, his long curly hair tied back with a rag.

  ‘Oh, it’s you …’

  He turned back to the cupboard door he was working on, sandpapering away dark-green paint from its edges to show brown wood. He acknowledged the marshal’s presence beside him by reaching to turn off the radio.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ The tone suggested that, whatever it was, he wasn’t going to do it.

  The marshal followed the rhythmic movement of his hand a while, thinking. Then he laid his cards on the table. ‘Listen, Santini, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘About Esposito.’

  ‘Oh … that was his name, was it …’

  ‘Do you believe me or not?’

  Santini put down the sandpaper on a cluttered workbench and took up a rag that smelled of turps. He began rubbing in silence.

  ‘So?’ The marshal stood his ground, insisting.

  After a long wait, Santini at last threw down the rag and looked him in the face. ‘Yes. I believe you. You’re probably the only southerner on the face of the earth I would believe and I don’t know why I do but … If you want to know, none of us knew anything either, until she’d gone. He didn’t hang out around here and Akiko was very close about her private life. But then Peruzzi got so agitated and started talking. There’d been a row that had really upset her and Peruzzi blamed him.’

  ‘What was the row about. Do you know?’

  He took up the rag and went back to his rubbing. ‘All I know is what Peruzzi told me. Your man wanted to marry her and she wouldn’t, not even when she was pregnant.’

  ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘She was one of us, a real craftsman. That’s all.’ He took a soft dry cloth and rubbed with gentle strokes so different from his harsh voice.

  ‘It’s just that everybody who’s talked about her said she was so precise, organised, determined, too. What I mean is, these days, if a woman doesn’t want children …’ Santini snorted. ‘What people think they want and what they really need don’t necessarily coincide, do they? That’s when ‘accidentally on purpose’ kicks in. Natural forces care nothing for our half-baked ideas of how our lives should go. Life is what happens to us while we’re making other plans, right?’ He rubbed harder, then bundled the cloth up and threw it down on the bench.

  ‘You sound as if you learned that lesson the hard way.’

  ‘Is there another way to learn it?’

  The smell of turps was very strong. The marshal took a step back, waiting in silence.

  Santini dribbled thin, pale-green paint down the door, disturbed its meandering progress with the soaked rag, stood back to look. ‘Your next question is “Are you married yourself ?” No, I’m not. And no, I’m not gay. I have the occasional fling but … look around you. I rent two small rooms on the first floor and they don’t look all that different from this one. This is how I live, who I am. What sort of woman would marry me?’

  The marshal thought, a woman like Akiko. He didn’t say it. He couldn’t afford to put his foot in it again. Best put that one on the back burner until he’d done the rounds, heard everybody.

  Santini worked on in concentrated silence for some time. Then he looked at the marshal, ironic, almost smiling. ‘You’re thinking Akiko. I wish … No, that won’t take you anywhere, but thanks for the compliment. I could never have moved her in that way. Your man must have had something special.’

  ‘Did you meet him?’

  ‘No. Never saw him until he showed up that day in uniform and then it was only a glimpse. Good-looking. But that’s not what counts, is it? There are some men who can impregnate a woman just by looking at her. D’you know what I mean? Perhaps he’s one of them. What do you think? You should know.’

  He should know, but he didn’t. Behind Santini, a metal door stood open on a gloomy little courtyard, no more than a well in the building, where stone and marble sinks leaned against the dirty walls and old paint tins and buckets were clustered in the middle. The rain came on heavier, clattering, splashing and drumming on everything in its way. It was growing darker.

  Swish and clack, swish and clack, the printing press drowned out the noise of the rain. The fruity smell of ink filled the little front room where a young assistant was packing wedding invitations into white boxes.

  ‘He’s gone to the bank. He reckons it’s less crowded than Fridays but he’ll be hours, even so.’

  ‘He doesn’t send you? It can’t be much fun, at his age, standing for hours in a queue.’

  ‘No chance of him sending me. Nobody touches his money. Besides, it’s a gossip shop. And he’s usually had a coffee and a grappa when he gets back.’ His glance strayed to the open newspaper on a stool at his side, open at the football page. While the cat’s away … he would no doubt go back to it when the marshal left.

  ‘I suppose you know about Peruzzi’s Japanese girl?’ The marshal, too, shot a glance at the paper but there would be nothing in there until after tomorrow morning’s news conference.

  ‘Everybody’s talking about it and about …’ He
tailed off, shooting a glance at the gold flame on the soaked hat the marshal was holding.

  ‘About her carabiniere boyfriend?’

  ‘They say Peruzzi hasn’t heard from him for ages and that—’

  ‘That what? That maybe he killed her, is that what they’re saying?’

  ‘No! Nobody … that you’re keeping him away. You know … to avoid a scandal. That’s all. I didn’t mean …’ He was blushing and he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple prominent in his thin neck. He was very young, still had a trace of acne.

  ‘That’s all right. It’s only natural they should talk about it.’ The last thing he wanted was to frighten the lad. He needed all the friends he could get in the square now. Remembering the oldest gardener’s complaint, he was glad that he wasn’t wearing his black glasses. He hated the rain like a cat hates the rain but at least, in this weather, he could see without the streaming tears that sunshine provoked.

  ‘Anyway, you can tell him when he comes back that we’re not keeping this a secret, we just didn’t know about it until now and, you’ll see, it’ll be in the paper the day after tomorrow. So if he knows anything he should get in touch with me. All right?’ The young man’s face showed that it wasn’t all right, that the dead weight of anxiety that was hurting the marshal’s chest was communicating itself. The young man stared at him, uncertain how to answer. Say something casual …

  ‘Well, I’ll let you get back to your football. Pleased they’re back in the first division?’

  ‘If they stay there this time.’

  ‘They’ll stay there. It just needed Della Valle’s money. That’s what counts these days …’ That was the best he could do but he could hear the false note in his own voice.

  Swish and clack and out through the frosted-glass door into the rain. Adjusting his hat and turning up the collar of his black rainproof, he splashed through a puddle in the uneven paving to the huge open doors of the packing warehouse, knowing it was likely to be the same story there. Nevertheless, he called out and waited among mummified statues and bundled chandeliers in the high room until an old man appeared to tell him that the packer, too, had gone to the bank. He explained his errand and left. The printer and the packer were much of an age and were, no doubt, in the bar having a grappa by now. Santini, the restorer, was another generation. Lapo fell somewhere in between but it wasn’t difficult to guess where he would attach himself.