A Murder in Tuscany

by Christobel Kent

  He went on. ‘If she hadn’t answered the call.’ He held up the mobile. ‘It’ll be on here; they’ll find it eventually, they’ll resuscitate it. Even the police at Pozzo Basso.’

  ‘The call? What call?’

  ‘The text, saying, at a guess, Meet me at the Liberty, the usual room. Something like that.’

  Cate stared at him blankly. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Only the text wasn’t sent by the person she thought had sent it: Niccolò Orfeo wasn’t waiting for her at the Liberty, no room had been booked there.’ He looked at her and she remembered Vincenzo saying just that. ‘Did you know Niccolò Orfeo had left his phone behind here, last week?’ said Sandro.

  She gazed back at him, starting to shake her head, then stopping. Remembering Luca coming to the kitchen door one night, Monday night? ‘Luca – yes. Luca asked if anyone had seen it.’

  ‘And had anyone? A cleaner?’

  ‘Anna-Maria? No. No one, as far as I know,’ she said falteringly.

  ‘But someone did find that phone,’ Sandro said. ‘Someone found that phone; perhaps that someone already had a shrewd idea that she was having an affair, or perhaps they looked – he or she looked at the messages and worked it out from there.’

  Cate stared at him. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘Hold on. Wouldn’t he have told Loni he’d lost his phone?’

  Cellini looked at her contemplatively. ‘Do you think he would, really? No direct communication, all this secrecy; Orfeo’s not a man who bothers to keep anyone informed about his business, about these minor irritations. Not even his lover; she could just wait for his next call, as she’d always done. He’d instructed Gallo to find it, and he expected it to be returned to him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Cate; she saw that he was right.

  Sandro Cellini pressed on. ‘Perhaps finding that phone was what started it all off: perhaps if Niccolò Orfeo hadn’t been a careless, lazy man who always had other people to clean up after him, to pick up what he left behind – then perhaps Loni Meadows would still be alive.’

  There was a silence. ‘It’s getting dark,’ said Cate, feeling the low grey sky pressing down on them. ‘It’s not even midday, and it’s getting dark.’ She swallowed. ‘Alec Fairhead said she got a text, after dinner.’

  Cellini looked down at the phone, still in his hand.

  ‘That someone laid the ice. An outlandish idea; crazy. But crazy ideas sometimes work. Maybe they thought, it’s an experiment; not my fault if she drives like a madwoman.’

  ‘But then you’d have to make sure she went out.’ She spoke dully and at last she understood.

  ‘Poetic justice, isn’t it? Using her own – weaknesses. Her recklessness. Her adulterous relationship.’ The words were heavy and unforgiving, and Cate looked up at the detective sharply.

  ‘So,’ said Sandro Cellini. ‘Was there enjoyment in the planning? Possibly. Was it someone obsessed, or someone clever, someone precise?’

  ‘They’re all clever,’ said Cate numbly. ‘All the guests are clever.’

  ‘And what about the others? The workers. Luca Gallo’s a smart guy too, isn’t he?’

  ‘Luca?’ Cate took a step back.

  ‘If you pushed him hard enough, could he do something like this? Because she did push him, didn’t she? Bawling him out for everyone to hear.’

  ‘That was over Mauro, though,’ said Cate. ‘That wasn’t Luca; Luca was just sticking up for him.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Sandro, ‘Mauro,’ and he sighed, a long breath out. ‘He knows the roads, does he, this Mauro? Has his own vehicle. I need to talk to him, don’t I?’

  ‘He’s not well today,’ said Cate, wondering why she felt the need to defend Mauro, just for Nicki’s pleading look. ‘Luca’s gone down to check on him. Look, Luca’s a good guy, a decent man, and Mauro’s not clever, he’s not calculating. He couldn’t stand her, but – but – it’s just not him.’ And she stopped, defeated.

  Sandro Cellini was looking at her, oddly intent. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Yes. Well, you know him, I suppose, and I don’t. That’s the thing, you see,’ and he was almost talking to himself. ‘He said I was a funny sort of detective, your Per Hansen. Maybe I am. All I can do is add things up, get facts and add things up. And hope I still know when I’m being lied to.’

  He looked lost for a second, his eyes on something far away. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Now, she can tell so many things about someone. Just from one look. It strikes me you’re a bit like that, Miss Giottone. Do you know if you can trust someone, from one look?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Cate. But she thought of Tiziano, and felt as though a stone had lodged in her chest. ‘It depends.’ She hesitated. ‘So, what?’ she blurted, feeling desperate. ‘What reason did Tiziano Scarpa have to hate her?’ It was very quiet suddenly, in the lee of the hill; nothing but the tiny sounds of the snow settling in the hollows of the wide landscape around them.

  Sandro Cellini seemed to be weighing something up; Cate noticed that his lips were losing their colour, and he was shivering steadily, but eventually he spoke. ‘You like him, don’t you?’ he said. Cate wrapped her arms tight around herself, frowning. He sighed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Her husband – Giuliano Mascarello, human rights lawyer,’ the words spoken with great contempt, ‘he defended the human rights of the man who was eventually proven to have set the bomb that killed Tiziano Scarpa’s father and left him in a wheelchair.’

  She looked at him a long moment, absorbing this. Saying nothing, only feeling the cold, wet wind around her legs.

  ‘Tiziano was out that afternoon,’ she said, her mouth dry. ‘He can get down the road if it’s dry. He went down to the farm to see Mauro’s dogs and he says he saw Mauro, but Mauro was very drunk.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sandro, ‘that’s almost an alibi, I suppose. Almost an alibi for both of them. Shame this Mauro was drunk. Has he got the shakes this morning, then? I wonder if he’ll remember.’

  Cate felt as though her brain had slowed in the cold, as though nothing made sense any more. Tiziano? Sandro Cellini stood there, very still it seemed, his arms thrown around himself, and then she saw it was to stop himself shivering. His eyes seemed to burn dark.

  ‘You’re freezing to death,’ she said. ‘Have you had anything to eat today?’ He shook his head just barely.

  ‘Come back to the castle,’ she said. ‘Come to the kitchen.’

  He stared at her a long moment, unfocused, and she couldn’t tell if it was the cold deadening his brain or if in fact his mind was somewhere far off, adding it all up.

  Then he nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Caterina Giottone.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  GIULI HAD WATCHED THE television weather report after the morning news and she knew that it had snowed right across the country, down as far as Rome. There’d been footage of beaches down the Tyrrhenian coast, with snow on the fallen umbrella pines. Freak weather conditions, it said. More snow this afternoon.

  It never snowed in Florence, was the theory. The reality was worse; a wet kind of sleet had fallen heavily in the night, and the gutters were soaked and slushy as she splashed through them on her motorino to the Pasticceria San Giorgio, out among the modern apartment blocks of the Viale Europa.

  It was Sunday, and the San Giorgio was Luisa’s favourite pastry shop. But as the pouty girl at the counter loaded her little cardboard tray with raspberry tarts, miniature rum babas and tiny sfogliatelle stuffed with ricotta and candied peel, Giuli felt only anxiety – and some childish resentment – at the prospect of Luisa’s face at the door of the apartment. This argumentative, loving, childless couple might be about to split up after a lifetime together. But it wasn’t going to happen, not if Giuli had anything to do with it.

  ‘Enough,’ she said belatedly to the girl still heaping up profiteroles; there was enough cake for a starving family, and she had a shrewd idea neither she nor Luisa was going to have much of an appetite this chilly Sunday morning. Somewhere over towards
the Isolotto, where the big villas backed on to the green river, she heard church bells beginning to ring.

  As the girl curled ribbon round the package, Giuli pondered her strategy; she was still pondering it on the street outside the apartment, as she listened for Luisa to answer her ring.

  The face that greeted Giuli at the door to the flat – Luisa’s handsome, dark-browed, lively face whose new thinness Giuli, like Sandro, could not adjust to – was set and defensive. Wordlessly, Luisa stepped aside to allow her inside the hall; the place was cold and underlit. Typical, thought Giuli; she’s off first thing in the morning, Sandro’s not around, so she turns the heating down, never mind if there’s snow on the hills. And then, as she followed Luisa towards the familiar kitchen – chequered laminate on the surfaces, ancient fridge, Tyrolean-style carved wooden cupboard all framed in the doorway – Giuli thought of a plan.

  The place was scoured cleaner even than usual, and Giuli, sharpeyed, detected signs of a fretful night. Luisa was prone to emptying cupboards and scrubbing when in a state over anything. Well, she thought, that was all to the good.

  She waited until the small cups of coffee were on the table and the package carefully unwrapped – with a sigh from Luisa – to display the cakes like little jewels.

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re a good child,’ Luisa conceded. ‘Thank you for coming over.’

  ‘You’re off in the morning then?’ Giuli kept her voice bright, as if it was only cause for celebration. ‘Wow. What an opportunity!’ Luisa gave her a sharp look, and Giuli picked up her coffee cup. ‘Have one of these sfogliatelle,’ she wheedled, ‘I know they’re your favourite.’ Luisa sat down with another sigh, and placed the little cake, ruffled as a party frock and dusted with icing sugar, on her plate, and looked at it. Giuli could tell she was building up to tackling the subject of her stubborn, childish, jealous husband, and got in first.

  ‘Look, Luisa,’ she said. ‘This is more of a – a bribe than anything else. The cakes.’

  ‘Bribe?’ Luisa gave her a sceptical look.

  ‘I need your help,’ Giuli said. ‘Well, if I’m honest, Sandro needs your help.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ She didn’t believe a word of it; Giuli persisted.

  ‘It’s this case, down in the Maremma. In the castle keep, or whatever the word is; the American woman dead in her car. He – ’ and she improvised, ‘he’s out of his depth, he says. These weird artistic types, and he’s got enough on his plate trying to untangle the how and the why down there. He says he needs my woman’s eye on it.’ She rolled her woman’s eyes at that. ‘He needs a judge of character, he says. To look over it all again, just to look at their resumés and their photographs, see what my instinct tells me. But I – I just don’t think I’m good enough.’

  Giuli didn’t know if that was true. But it was true that she’d be better with Luisa on her side, and she spoke with conviction.

  Luisa looked at her levelly, her eyes saying, I know what you’re doing. But she couldn’t resist. She picked up the sfogliatella and took a bite, and downed her espresso. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m already packed, and I suppose I’m not doing anything else this morning.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Giuli, suppressing a smile at the dusting of sugar on Luisa’s upper lip. ‘We’ll have to get over to the office. If you don’t mind.’ And helped herself to a rum baba. Her favourite.

  Giuli gave her a lift on the motorino, Luisa helmetless and risking prosecution. She’d started to laugh outside on the pavement, looking at the decrepit machine, at the snow, at herself in a neat, smart woollen coat and polished leather shoes. ‘We could walk,’ said Giuli, eager to say the right thing. But Luisa was in a reckless mood, for once.

  ‘What would Sandro say?’ she muttered, and that seemed to decide her. ‘Oh, well, no vigile would dare fine an old lady like me, would he? Let’s get going.’

  The narrow streets of the winter city were gloomy in the sleet, unusually empty on this bitter February Sunday; empty without Sandro too. Giuli took a roundabout route to avoid the vigili, down the highsided, shadowy curve of the Via delle Terme, out in front of the rosepink scalloped windows of the Palazzo Salimbeni, a quick dash across the Tornabuoni and into the gloom of the Via dell’Parione. Zipping carefree across the river on the Ponte alla Carraia, a brisk wind blowing and her spirits lifting, Giuli felt the warm pressure of Luisa’s hands on her waist, like a blessing.

  Luisa had found Sandro’s offices for him, but had hardly been back since, Giuli knew that. She’d had a lot on her plate, with the operation and the chemo and the funny moods it had brought with it, but it did occur to Giuli that it wouldn’t do any harm for her to see the place. So she could see Sandro a bit more clearly too, somehow.

  Of course, before she was through the door Luisa was tutting at the state of the windows. Peering down into the builders’ yard full of plastic piping, registering, with her sharp eye, the little sliver of the back of the church of the Carmine that compensated for it.

  ‘We do clean,’ said Giuli, standing guiltily at the doorway with hands behind her back like a schoolgirl in the Direttore’s office. ‘It’s just – maybe not often enough.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Luisa, running a finger along the chair set for visitors at Sandro’s desk. She plumped herself down. ‘So,’ she said. ‘What does he want us to look at?’

  Files spread on the desk, Giuli pulled up a chair beside Luisa, leaned across her and turned on the computer. The ancient machine always took an age – and a lot of humming and whirring – to present her with a request for the password. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Luisa.

  ‘Have you got one of these at home?’ Luisa asked, out of the blue.

  ‘No,’ said Giuli, ‘I wish.’

  ‘Maybe I should get into it,’ Luisa mused.

  ‘Maybe you should,’ said Giuli bravely. ‘Email’s a great thing. Free, you see. And sometimes – now say, if you wanted to say anything to Sandro, you could put it in an email. That sort of thing.’ Luisa compressed her lips.

  ‘Don’t you know the password?’ she said. ‘Go on.’

  Giuli typed it in.

  Luisa watched her fingers on the keyboard. ‘LUISA66?’ she said gruffly. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Giuli. Hesitated. ‘What’s the 66 mean?’

  Luisa’s eyes were closed, and when they flickered open Giuli thought there was something softer there, something more forgiving. ‘That’s the year we met,’ Luisa said. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

  Giuli checked the mail. There was one from Sandro: she could hardly believe it: it was as though he’d been party to her plan all along. These are just notes, it said, just in case. (In case of what? thought Giuli). But I want you to go back over the stuff you’ve got: concentrate on the characters. Do some more checking on the internet.

  ‘Told you,’ said Giuli. Idly skimming the notes. ‘Right,’ she said to herself, ‘so Orfeo was the man. The secret lover, right.’

  Luisa snorted. ‘Not Niccolò Orfeo?’ she said with scorn. ‘I could have told him all about Orfeo. Lecherous old bastard.’

  Giuli drew her head back to take in Luisa’s expression. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘You see? You could have saved him a fair bit of time. With both those cases, as a matter of fact: your woman’s eye.’

  And then, without allowing herself to think, Giuli asked the question.

  ‘You’re not – um – having a – a – an affair with Frollini, are you?’

  Luisa gave her a long, blazing look, and said nothing.

  ‘I have to ask,’ said Giuli, clinging to what courage she had.

  And then suddenly the anger went out of Luisa. She let out a long sigh of resignation. ‘Giuli,’ she said gently, ‘you’re young. You’ve seen a lot – but there are things. Things you don’t know about.’

  ‘Like love?’ Giuli heard the tremor in her voice.

  ‘Like getting old. Like seeing the end of your life take a jump closer.’ Luisa hardly seemed to take
a breath before going on, her voice getting quieter, her eyes dark in her paper-white face. ‘There were things I saw – people I saw. In the ward at Careggi. Women younger than me. I saw their children, I saw them come in with bandannas, bright scarves around their heads, I saw them being brave for their husbands. And they died all the same.’

  There was a long silence: and you’re still alive, Giuli thought with gratitude, but did not say.

  ‘I’m not having an affair with Frollini,’ said Luisa into the silence, brisk as a teacher. ‘I’m fond of him, but he’s a vain old fool, and not my type, besides.’

  Giuli laughed, despite herself.

  ‘Do you think I’m going to go down on my knees and tell Sandro he is the only man I have ever loved, ever in my life, or ever will love? Even if it happens to be true. But I’m going to New York. I’ve never seen New York.’

  Giuli sat dumbly, eyes round with unshed tears.

  ‘Now let’s get on with it.’

  When she came back with another cup of coffee for each of them from the bar along the street, Giuli found Luisa in front of a patchwork of papers and photographs, laid out on the side table, a list of names in alphabetical order. She unpacked another little sugar-dusted cake from the package Luisa had insisted she take away with her – ‘Ridiculous waste,’ she’d said, not unkindly, ‘they’ll only make me fat’ – and slid it on to the saucer with the caffè macchiato that was Luisa’s favourite, setting everything in front of her at the table. You need feeding up.

  ‘He says, take a look at that Gallo too,’ Luisa spoke without turning round. ‘The manager of the place.’ She tapped a brochure for the Castello Orfeo, where there was a photograph of a round-faced, smiling man with a beard. Giuli stood at Luisa’s shoulder, looking down at the picture.

  ‘He looks nice, doesn’t he?’ said Luisa. ‘A nice man, who enjoys his food. A kind man.’ She studied the face. ‘Sandro thinks someone set ice on a dangerous road, and called her out on some – pretext in the middle of the night, knowing she was a reckless driver. Would that man do that? A kind hardworking man who’s worked in that place for eight years without a moment’s trouble?’ She closed the brochure. ‘I don’t want it to be him.’