Eleanor Sachs slipped off the stool and crossed her arms.
‘One condition.’
Pallioti raised an eyebrow.
‘If I show you this tape,’ Eleanor Sachs said, ‘and you find this Massimo, I want you to take me with you to meet him.’
Pallioti smiled. ‘I can get a copy of it from the television station.’
She shrugged. ‘True, you can. Of course, by the time they futz around and find it and then get it up here to you, it will take the better part of a week. And then, after that, you’ll have the pleasure of watching the whole uncut four hours looking for something I can show you right now in five minutes.’
Pallioti thought about it for a moment. He eyed her.
‘Two conditions.’
‘Which are?’
‘One. If I, we, find him, and you come with me, you can’t harass him afterwards. No phone calls. No letters. No turning up unannounced insisting he’s your grandfather – unless he invites you.’
Somewhat to his surprise, she nodded. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That’s fair. What’s the second one?’
‘That you don’t say a word – nothing about Il Spettro, or salt, or anything else, unless I let you.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘You drive a hard bargain.’
Pallioti smiled. ‘It’s the only one on the table. As you say, I can wait until Monday and have the tape sent from Rome.’
‘And view it without the benefit of my expert advice.’
He nodded.
‘All right,’ she said, throwing her hands up. ‘All right. Uncle. You win. I’ll get the tape.’
She disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Pallioti to wonder which uncle it was, exactly, that Americans always called on, and why?
The video was grainy. Eleanor Sachs apologized repeatedly for the poor quality of the picture.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s a copy of a copy. I left the original – well, the original copy – at home. This is my travelling edition.’
Pallioti leaned forward to get a better look at the TV.
‘Here,’ Eleanor said, jumping up, ‘maybe this will help.’
She pulled the blinds down on the big windows. The definition improved immediately.
‘I know it by heart,’ she said, coming back and pushing papers aside as she perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Sorry. I forget it makes a difference to other people.’
The newscaster was a pretty woman in a blue dress who managed to mention medals and awards at least a dozen times in a minute and a half without ever actually saying what they were for, while a parade of surprisingly dapper and athletic-looking old men – and women – marched by behind her. Watching them, Pallioti felt a pang of sadness, then anger, for Isabella and Caterina. They should have been there. They should have been allowed to grow old.
The scene cut away from the parade itself to the ceremony. There were a few seconds of the President giving what sounded like an interminable speech. Rows of ageing partisans were seated behind him. Miraculously, none of them appeared to be asleep. Next were clips of individuals receiving their medals. Their names were called out. This would have been where Bruno Torricci got his information. A salute was given as each stepped forward, then the bright ribbon and gold medallion was finally pinned to their chest. Some remained resolutely stony faced. A few smiled. Others were moved to tears.
Eleanor picked up the remote and fast-forwarded.
‘Honest,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing here to miss.’
The camera sped through more people getting medals, then to something being sung – almost certainly the national anthem – then to a number of flags being raised and lowered, and finally to the President’s reception at the Quirinale.
She put it back to regular speed. A minute later, Pallioti spotted Giovanni Trantemento. He was standing by himself. Neither Maria Valacci nor Antonio were in sight. Sensing the camera, Trantemento moved off, giving it a hunted glance. Then, a few seconds later, he appeared again, this time in a group.
‘Here,’ Eleanor said. ‘Look.’
There were four old men, all linking arms. The woman in the blue dress bore down on them, as determined as a tidal wave. Brandishing her microphone, she asked inane questions about ‘how they felt on this great day’.
Giovanni Trantemento looked as though he wanted to escape. He tried, but failed, thanks to a white-haired man in a tuxedo that strained across his bull-like chest who held him determinedly by the shoulder. Sensing the inevitable, Trantemento wilted. When the blue woman asked how they knew each other, the bull with the white mane gave a shout of laughter and declared into the microphone that they had been comrades.
‘Brothers-in-arms!’ he shouted. ‘One for all! All for one!’
The man standing on the other side of him, Roberto Roblino, beamed and nodded in agreement. On the end, a small slightly hunchbacked figure, incongruously wearing a beret, as if he had confused Italy and France, scowled at the camera. Then he smiled a toothless smile.
‘So, there’s Roblino and Trantemento.’
Eleanor Sachs froze the frame, then rewound it, causing the anchorwoman to scuttle backwards like a demented crab.
‘There.’ She pointed at Roberto Roblino. ‘See? I always thought there was kind of a resemblance, you know, to my dad, and maybe to me. But,’ she added, laughing, ‘I guess I think that about half these guys. At least he was handsome.’
She was right. Pallioti saw that in life, Roberto Roblino was hand-lucretia Some, and like his white-maned comrade, apparently vigorous. Unlike Trantemento and the little fellow on the end. Together, the four of them looked less like the ageing Musketeers than some kind of allegory – Bonhomie and Health framed by Ill-Humour and Shrunken Old Age.
‘So,’ she went on, ‘if Nosferatu there is Giovanni Trantemento, alias Il Corvo, alias Giovanni Rossi, then my bet is that this guy has to be Massimo.’ She jumped up and tapped at the white-haired shouter in the tuxedo. ‘Unless, of course, he’s someone else entirely.’
But already Pallioti knew he wasn’t. Already he could feel something, stirring and shifting in his gut. Caterina had described Massimo as ‘beefy’. She had also talked about his friend with a ‘misshapen back’. It might be a coincidence. But he didn’t believe in coincidences. He leaned forward, trying to get a look at the man’s face.
‘I showed this to Roberto Roblino, by the way,’ Eleanor Sachs was saying. ‘That’s why I thought it was so weird, when you told me at the restaurant. Because he didn’t point out Trantemento, although he eventually gave me his address, and he wouldn’t tell me who this guy was. He’s definitely a candidate,’ she added, tapping the white-haired man in the tuxedo. ‘Right height and everything. I couldn’t tell if he looked like my dad enough without meeting him. But,’ she added, making a face, ‘Roblino claimed he couldn’t remember his name. Can you believe it?’
Pallioti glanced at her. He thought of Giovanni Trantemento who never talked about the war, and of Roberto Roblino, who talked about it all the time – but said nothing. He thought of all the unopened plastic bags and Signor Cavicalli. People collect for two reasons. Because there is something they want people to know. Or because there is something they don’t. He’d stake his reputation that in Giovanni Trantemento’s case, it was the latter – and that Massimo knew all about it. So, yes, he thought. Yes, he could absolutely believe that Roberto Roblino had suddenly forgotten his comrade’s name. What he didn’t know, was why.
‘Did Roblino say anything?’ he asked. ‘Anything about’ – he gestured towards the screen, the shock of white hair, the beaming face, cheeks still red and weatherbeaten – ‘that man? Anything at all?’
Eleanor rolled her eyes. ‘Roblino said he didn’t know him that well, never had. Which I didn’t buy. Would you? But I definitely got the sense he didn’t like him. When I pushed, Roblino stonewalled. Clammed up. Then when I asked about Il Spettro, he gave me Trantemento’s name and address, so I thought I’d just ask Trantamento, and I dropped it. Not that that w
orked out,’ she added. ‘Now this guy—’ She touched the troll-like creature in the beret. ‘I do know who he is – not a grandfather candidate, I don’t think. At least I hope not.’
‘Oh?’
She nodded. ‘Roblino said he was called Pecorella. Piccolo Pecorella, actually.’
Little Lamb. The same boy Caterina had seen with Massimo in the monastery’s tool shed. Looking at the frozen image on the screen, Pallioti wondered if the choice of names was quite as random as Signora Grandolo thought. Il Corvo had certainly been fitting. Perhaps whoever chose the names for their particular GAP unit had a sense of humour. Or was clairvoyant. Piccolo Pecorella, the boy Massimo called his ‘mascot’, certainly seemed never to have grown much. Caterina had thought that he might have had a hunchback or an injury. But apparently he had survived the war despite it. Because as of eighteen months ago, he was alive and kicking.
‘If Massimo’s still with us,’ Pallioti said, ‘this Little Lamb, he’ll know where to find him. If he’s still alive himself, that is.’
‘Oh, he is,’ Eleanor Sachs said. ‘Believe me. At least as of last week.’
Pallioti looked at her.
‘Roberto Roblino gave me his name and address, after some arm-twisting,’ she explained. ‘I got the impression he did it because he thought it might shut me up.’
‘And?’ He tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. Suddenly, he very much wanted to talk to Little Lamb. To ask him about Massimo. And how to find him.
‘And,’ she said, ‘old Pecorello lives not too far from Siena. Right down the road, so to speak. I thought if I couldn’t get Giovanni Trantemento to tell me who the fourth guy was, well, maybe the lamb would. I’ve tried a few times. Most recently just a few days ago. Silly me, thinking the death of his old friends might have softened him up.’
‘It didn’t?’
She shook her head.
‘Just the opposite. He was pretty nasty. He yelled at me and hung up. When I called back, his daughter yelled at me. Said he was sick – and he didn’t ‘grant interviews’.’
Pallioti smiled.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think he’ll grant an interview to me.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
La Masseria Poggio Alta lay, perversely, in a valley some twenty miles east of Massa Marittima. In other words, Pallioti, thought, nowhere.
They had a fast drive down to Macereto before turning off the highway and driving into what could generously be called wilderness. Within a mile the road narrowed abruptly and began to climb, winding its way up a small mountain covered in beech and scrag oak and thickets of thorn. In these hills, last night’s sleet had come down as snow. Drifts of white lay in the hollows. Below them, the Merse tumbled through a steep ravine, its brown current swirling past dead logs and boulders. Above the leafless arms of the trees, the sky was grey and heavy. It was twenty minutes before they saw another car. An ancient Fiat swerved around the corner, coming straight towards them, appearing to play chicken until it ducked back into its own lane and passed them with a long plaintive wail of its horn.
‘Jesus.’ Eleanor Sachs closed her eyes briefly, her small hands spread flat on the road atlas open in her lap. ‘No wonder Italy’s farms are in decline. The farmers are probably all killed in road accidents.’
Pallioti glanced at her. While he had pinpointed the Little Lamb’s whereabouts, she had vanished into the cottage’s bedroom, changing out of her leggings and sweat shirt into jeans and a denim jacket topped by marginally brushed hair. Now she looked a little pale, and as if she possibly regretted their mutual decision that although they had taken her car he should drive and she should navigate. Pallioti took his foot off the gas, tapped the brakes, and slowed down. He did not regret allowing her to come along – it was only fair after all – but it was not exactly kosher.
Eleanor Sachs shook her head, smiling. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re like a kid who’s run away from school. You’re happy.’
‘Yes,’ Pallioti replied, because he was.
‘Well, I hope, after coming all this way, that Little Lamb isn’t a big old let-down.’
Pallioti shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. He won’t be.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I have a feeling.’
‘Ah.’ She thought about that for a moment, then she asked, ‘What if he yells on the phone because he’s gone completely gaga?’
‘Then we’ll talk to the daughter.’
‘I warn you, she’s very scary.’
‘Yes.’ Pallioti smiled. ‘So am I.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eleanor Sachs looking as if she was about to say she didn’t believe him. Then she thought better of it and leaned back in her seat.
The Little Lamb, whose real name turned out to be Achilleo Venta, lived with his daughter, Agata, on what had probably been the family farm for generations. The road had finally deigned to come down out of the hills, and descended into a broad valley. The Masseria Poggio Alta, which appeared to be as grandly misnamed as its owner, lay down an unfinished gravel track, and if the tilted sign at the head of the drive sign was to be believed, was not only a fattoria dedicated to the production of ‘artisan pork products’, but also a B. & B.
Pallioti stopped in front of a fence and water trough and killed The engine. He opened his door. There was no sound at all in the farmyard. The same stillness that had infected Florence hung over the valley, pressing down on the tiled roofs, hushing the babble of a thin stream that ran along one side of the yard. Then Pallioti closed his door, and the silence exploded in a volley of high-pitched squeals. The noise erupted from the barn closest to them, and was followed by a frantic rustling that sounded like nothing more than a scurried stampede of rats.
‘What the—?’ Standing by the passenger door, Eleanor started.
Picking his way to the nearest shed, Pallioti looked over the gate. In the shadows at the back of the barn, he saw several dozen piglets huddled together in a bank of straw. They stared at him, blinking.
A faded agriturismo sign directed them along a path that ran from the end of the yard to the house. The bottom floor, which would undoubtedly once have been a barn itself, was now given over to a garage. The dented rear end of a white car poked out of it. A small tractor was pulled up alongside. Pallioti made out the shadow of a motorcycle leaning against the inner wall. Given the diversity of transport parked here, it was likely that someone was at home. A steep flight of stone steps ran up to the portico. He was contemplating whether to ring the large metal bell that was mounted on the wall beside them, or simply march up and hammer on the door, when a voice shouted, ‘Chiuso! ’
Pallioti looked around. He could not immediately see where it was coming from.
‘Chiuso! ’ the disembodied voice shouted again. ‘Closed! Closed for the season! We only open in the summer.’
Eleanor plucked his sleeve. ‘Up there,’ she hissed.
Looking up, Pallioti could just make out a tiny wizened face peering over the balustrade. Pallioti mounted the steps, feeling Eleanor right behind him. He suspected she was afraid she might vanish, be swallowed by pig muck, or the pigs themselves, if she strayed too far from his elbow.
‘Signor Venta?’
It was not, Pallioti saw as he climbed the steps, that the old man had shrunk yet further. Instead, he was now in a wheelchair. A rug was tucked over his knees. A cane was propped against the wall beside the house door.
‘I told you, we’re closed!’
The old man was tussling with the brake on his chair.
‘We’re closed!’ he said again as Pallioti reached the head of the stairs. ‘What are you? Deaf?’
‘No. A policeman.’
Pallioti leaned down and released the brake. The old man looked up at him. It was like being stared at by a tortoise. Milky eyes peered out of walnut wrinkles of skin.
‘A what?’
‘Policeman,’ Pallioti said again.
&nbs
p; Achilleo Venta grasped the wheels of his chair and turned it sharply towards the house door. There was certainly nothing wrong with the muscles in his arms.
‘Well, she’s not here,’ he said. Pallioti presumed he was referring to his daughter. ‘I don’t know where she is. She does all the books. You’ll have to talk to her.’
‘I’m not interested in the books,’ Pallioti said, mildly. ‘I’ve come to talk to you.’
‘Me?’
The old man had been reaching for the door handle. A pair of knitted mittens, secured by safety pins, just as his nephew Tommaso’s often were, dangled from his cuffs. His naked fingers paused, claw-like, in mid-air.
‘What have I done?’ he asked, his voice suddenly plaintive. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
He twisted in the chair and squinted up at Pallioti.
‘You don’t look like a policeman.’ Suspicion pinched Achilleo Venta’s face. His hand darted forward and closed over the doorknob. The next thing they would see, Pallioti thought, was probably a shotgun barrel sticking through the red-shuttered window. He took out his credentials.
Signor Venta let go of the doorknob and snatched them. With palsied hands, he held them very close to his face, studying them. He looked several times from the photograph to Pallioti before he handed them back.
‘Who’s she?’ he asked.
‘She is my assistant,’ Pallioti said quickly. ‘Professor Sachs. We’ve come a very long way to talk to you, Signor Venta,’ he added. ‘I wonder if it might be at all possible that you could give us a few moments of your time?’
For a moment, Achilleo Venta seemed to consider this, as if his day were filled with things much more urgent than sitting on his balcony in the cold looking over his empty pig yards and waiting for his daughter to come back from wherever it was she had gone. Finally, he nodded.
The inside of the farmhouse was not as bad as the outside suggested. A long front room was furnished with sofas and a scrubbed pine table and chairs and backed by a wall of windows that looked down onto a scraggy patchwork of fields. In the closest, a number of giant sows rooted happily. The next was dotted with the metallic humps of pig arcs.
The Villa Triste Page 38