A Florentine Revenge

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A Florentine Revenge Page 21

by Christobel Kent


  ‘When is the baby due?’ asked Luisa before she could stop herself. Her voice sounded hoarse and unpractised, she could hear it, as though the words were so weighted with fear and longing that she could hardly pronounce them. Emma heard it; she gazed at Luisa and suddenly all the animation, the vivacious chatter evaporated. ‘June,’ she whispered, and Luisa thought of the hospital in the heat when her baby had been born, the hair sticking to her forehead as she laboured; she took Emma’s hand. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said, clearing her throat to disguise her emotion. Emma’s head tilted to one side and she looked into Luisa’s face as if trying to understand something. She straightened, nodding a little. ‘Yes,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I – yes. It is, isn’t it?’ Behind them Lucas Marsh emerged from the bedroom holding a piece of paper.

  ‘Can you have it sent over to her?’ said Emma, taking the paper from Lucas and handing it to Luisa. ‘I hadn’t thought, really. Could you put it in a taxi or something?’

  ‘A taxi, yes,’ Luisa murmured, taking the paper, hardly glancing at the printed lines, only taking in a telephone number and an address. She stood up hastily, feeling awkward at the way she’d spoken to Emma Marsh, feeling she might have gone too far. She found herself face to face with Lucas Marsh, saw his face blank with a lifetime of hiding and covering up, and suddenly she felt a surge of anger. He has to tell her, she thought, or what kind of life can they have? The same kind Sandro and I have had, for fifteen years.

  ‘I think you know my husband,’ she said to Lucas Marsh, before she could think about it. ‘Sandro Cellini? He’s a policeman.’ And Marsh turned pale, before her eyes, and she knew he understood that if he didn’t tell his wife, she would. She saw Emma look from Luisa to her husband, and back again.

  ‘Really?’ she said, startled. ‘How’s that, darling? Italian policemen?’

  ‘Oh, it’s – I met Sandro a long time ago,’ said Lucas slowly. ‘It’s a long story, isn’t it, Signora Cellini?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luisa, looking at Emma. ‘I think I should leave your husband to tell it to you, don’t you? I have a delivery to make, after all.’ And she put a hand to Emma’s cheek. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  And as she pulled the door shut behind her, the last thing Luisa saw was the look on Emma’s face as she turned towards her husband. She’s young, she told herself. She’s strong. She stood a moment outside the door, unable to move; at the end of the corridor she heard the hiss of lift doors opening and hurriedly she stepped away from the door and began to walk away. Before she had gone far, though, she heard Emma Marsh say, ‘What?’ on a note of rising disbelief that made Luisa close her eyes briefly in an attempt to blot it out as she wondered, What have I done?

  20

  The hands that held her upper arms behind her were not rough but they were strong, a man’s, she was sure, and for a second, twisting in his grip, Celia panicked. In the dark it crossed her mind that surely this was a crazy place to mug someone. Even if she wasn’t exactly sure where she was it was no more than a stone’s throw from the Via del Corso, and she didn’t look a natural victim, always took care to carry no expensive handbag, no jewellery – didn’t even have any jewellery, she thought savagely in a moment’s self-pity. Oh no, no, she raged in that same instant, thinking of all the things she’d have to replace, driving licence, permesso di soggiorno, and the money, the money, damn it, and around her the dark facades gazed down, unmoved.

  Then at once Celia became aware both that her assailant was speaking her name and, quite distinctly, that she knew him, even in the dark, she knew him, knew the hands, knew his smell. ‘Celie,’ he said urgently, ‘Celie, it’s me.’ And as she twisted to face him, he slackened his grip. It was Dan.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, furious. ‘Bloody hell, Dan, what d’you think you’re doing?’ He had his arms around her in what would probably have seemed a lover’s embrace to a passer-by and he let them drop. He backed off.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not sounding it; his voice was ragged with something more like rage. Celia felt shaken, in a sweat from the struggle and the proximity of his body.

  ‘I should hope so,’ she said, peering at him in the poor light. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Are you seeing him?’ he said furiously. ‘That guy?’ Suddenly Celia felt anger boil up inside her.

  ‘What guy?’ she said, knowing he meant Gabriele. ‘And anyway, what business is it of yours?’ she went on, almost shouting. She saw his face, unhappy, ashamed. ‘Dan, you’re not – are you jealous?’ He looked down, and she saw that he was. Dan, jealous. She was stunned. ‘I – I’m not going to talk to you about this,’ she said, still angry, but not frightened any more. ‘Not here.’

  At the end of the alley she saw the glimmer of a streetlight and turned towards it, setting her back to Dan. It seemed unfair, this ambush; had he followed her down this alley, had he waited until she was alone? She stopped abruptly and felt him at her back; she remembered the man she thought she’d seen that afternoon in the snow, as she talked to the Marshes in a doorway. She turned to face him; she could see him now in the distant glimmer of the streetlight. ‘How long have you been following me? This is creepy, Dan. Really.’ She said it to hurt him, but she was confused; it was creepy.

  ‘I – I – It’s—’ Dan stammered, looking around him, and as she looked into his face Celia felt the tension ebbing. This is Dan, she thought. Come on.

  ‘Well?’ she said, more gently. He looked down.

  ‘Are you seeing him, though?’ he muttered.

  ‘No,’ said Celia immediately, ‘No. I mean, I don’t think – no.’ None of your business anyway, was what she thought. Dan nodded sheepishly.

  ‘Was that why you were following me? To find out who I might be seeing?’ It was extraordinary; he’d never been the jealous type even when they were together. There’d been nothing he couldn’t shrug off with some light irony or a joke; she’d never seen him angry, only ever wirty in the face of failure, or adversity, or pain. His own, or other people’s. Had Allegra dumping him affected him so badly? For a moment Celia felt a spasm of jealousy that Alegra had managed it where she had failed, quickly succeeded by remorse. She had a brief and sudden vision of Dan metamorphosed into an ageing depressive, one of the city’s great diaspora of rootless, maudlin expatriates, drinking too much, moving from one seedy bedsit to the next, sponging off friends, unable to return home a failure.

  But something in Dan’s look gave her pause; it was sad but not self-pitying, wary, a little calculating; it told her, this was more complicated than being dumped by Allegra. He looked at her for a long moment in the dark street and then he shook his head. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t talk about this here.’

  The nearest bar turned out to be the Cantinetta where only hours earlier she’d sat with the Marshes; the evening rush was on, the little marble tables in the wine bar filling up with tourists, locals at the bar sipping contentedly and gossiping, but by some fluke the back room was half empty.

  Dan got them each a glass of wine; Celia stared at hers but she wanted a clear head and only took a sip. Dan stared into his, his expression gloomy.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘I – I don’t know why I grabbed you like that. I just – when I saw you kissing him—’

  ‘I wasn’t kissing him!’ said Celia indignantly. ‘Well, I was, but – he – I – look, he’s just a friend.’ She felt guilty on several counts; for being evasive like this with Dan, for using Gabriele, for not knowing any more how she felt about either of them. Gabriele was just a friend, but suddenly Celia felt she couldn’t have managed without him these past couple of days.

  Dan took a slug of his wine and sighed. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘it’s none of my business.’ He turned the glass in his hands, frowning. ‘It didn’t start out like this,’ he said slowly. ‘I wasn’t following you. I was following him.’

  ‘Following Gabriele?’ Celia was bemused. This was weird.

  ‘Is th
at his name? Your chauffeur?’ He allowed a hint of bitterness into his voice but seemed to regret it immediately. ‘Sorry’ He looked up at her. ‘No, not him. I was following your client. And his new wife.’ His voice wasn’t bitter any more, but dark and determined.

  ‘Lucas Marsh?’ This should, she realized, have struck her as weird too, but somehow she was not surprised. ‘How do you know him? How do you know she’s his new wife?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dan slowly, a little defensively, ‘I think anyone could tell she was a – what d’you call it? – a trophy wife, couldn’t they? Twenty years younger, gorgeous, full of life. Young blood.’

  ‘You’re making him sound like Dracula,’ said Celia, meaning it as a joke, but then she thought of Lucas Marsh’s pallor, that strange coldness, and she was chilled, afraid for Emma. ‘She’s not like that, anyway,’ she said quickly, defensively. ‘She’s…’ She searched for the right word, to show him ‘She’s clever. And good. She’s a good person.’

  Dan nodded. ‘Well, maybe. Whatever you say. You were always kind, Celie. Kinder than me.’ The unfamiliar softness in his voice as he pronounced her name seduced her; it brought back those long evenings they’d spent in his flat among the piles of books as the light faded, and she wondered if that was his intention. She steeled herself.

  ‘But it wasn’t a guess, was it?’ She searched his face. ‘What do you know about Lucas Marsh?’

  Down by the river Jonas stamped his feet in the snow and edged closer to the brazier. He liked the snow, didn’t mind the cold. He looked at his hands, red-knuckled and swollen like a cheap cut of meat, and felt nothing but contempt for the passers-by in their furs, picking their way through the slush and complaining. If he half-closed his eyes he might be at home, roofs loaded with snow like sugar on gingerbread. With grim pride he thought of the housing project where he’d grown up, rows of decaying concrete blocks on a windswept plain, not a tree to soften them, snow on the ground for six months of the year. Don’t know they’re born. I’m never going back.

  Hesitantly a beefy kid in a ski-jacket stopped and held out a euro for some chestnuts; not a bad game this, money for old rope, and idly Jonas thought perhaps he shouldn’t dump the brazier back in the lock-up in Galluzzo he’d stolen it from along with the sack of chestnuts, it’d be a living, wouldn’t it? Carelessly he scooped a handful into a cone of newspaper and turned his back on the kid. He looked up at the big windows of the Palazzo Ferrigno with satisfaction; he doesn’t know, he thought. He thinks he’s safe. Lucas Marsh had been very careful not to tell them his plans, where he’d be when, but he hadn’t counted on Jonas covering every eventuality, had he? Trace the guide, get hold of the schedule. And after twelve hours covering this place Jonas prided himself that he knew it inside and out, knew he could walk straight in, even knew where to get out again in a hurry. And since that plane came down we’ve known where he is, every minute. A nice weekend away with the wife, make the drop and back to his plush hotel with no one any the wiser. Only Lucas Marsh didn’t make the drop, did he? Didn’t pay up. He thought of Lucas’s face beside the river, staring into the water as though he might jump in himself.

  A figure walked from window to window above Jonas’s head, a small, upright figure silhouetted against the light. Jonas wondered if she’d know him again out of the brown overalls, if that was why she was looking down at him now. The boss. Jonas didn’t like bosses, he was a free spirit, and that was why this kind of thing suited him. He was glad he was out on his own now; when the others had got impatient he had just shrugged and let them go, drifting off their separate ways. He’d promised them they’d get paid and they were too scared of him to argue, he’d made sure of that. He’d get the money, would meet them in some truck stop a couple of weeks on, give out the cash and the whole business would be done with.

  Jonas stamped his feet and turned away, looking down towards Le Cascine, the park a great dark shape lying like some soft, dangerous, sleeping animal along the bank of the river. He thought about that empty swimming pool in the rain and ground his teeth; it should have been so simple. But what the hell; so what if he’s dead? Just give me the money. The thought of it made Jonas twitchy, and he moved his body from side to side, his jaw clenching and unclenching. He couldn’t suppress the feeling that they should never have got into it, the guy doesn’t know what he’s got himself into, doesn’t know the rules of this kind of game. Jesus. He ground his teeth with frustration, felt the pressure build in his head at the thought of business badly done. Why should he be waiting around like this? Jonas wasn’t a drone, a worker, a slave, he wasn’t born to put on an overall and doff his cap to a boss, not like the old days.

  He glanced up again and saw she hadn’t moved, standing up there quite still in outline. Jonas mulled over the way she’d looked at him in that grand room; suspicious, arrogant, as if he was no more than an animal. He could feel her eyes on him now and he looked away down the street with the cap pulled over his eyes, slumped his shoulders to give himself that useless, defeated look that could make anyone invisible. It had been a mistake, he was willing to admit that, but he’d got away with it, hadn’t he, bleeding the radiators right there in front of her? He felt a bubble of triumph swell his chest.

  She moved away from the window and Jonas thought, Well, wouldn’t do any harm, would it? Make sure she can’t identify me. Just to be on the safe side. He felt something at his. side, a soft, shuffling presence, and he started, his hand going automatically to his pocket and the blade he kept there. Jesus, don’t do that; he rounded on the newcomer and glared, furious at being taken unawares. Oh, Christ, she’s back. His rage kindled and caught; it’s all your fault. Bitch.

  With weary relief Celia set her bags down on the top step, the timed landing light ticking away in her ear, urging her on. Patiently she teased the recalcitrant lock, pushed open the door, flicked the light switch, and the rough, soft terracotta floor and clean white walls emerged from the warm darkness. Home.

  She could still hardly believe what Dan had told her. You didn’t expect a news story to come to life like that; you didn’t expect to wake up and find yourself a part of it. And this was a story that had, intermittently, haunted Celia for fifteen years; it was embedded in how she felt about the city, it appeared in her dreams. She thought of the assumptions you have about people, the things you believe them capable of, the past you attribute to them; she thought about Lucas Marsh and her insides coiled and tightened at the horror of what had happened to him.

  Celia’s hands were stiff and cold from the walk home; outside the snow was still falling, soft and silent, and it had added an extra air of unreality to her dazed passage through the streets. Dan had wanted to walk her home but she had been quite sharp with him, in retrospect; it wasn’t his fault, after all, but he had given her a shock and she wanted to be alone. With a sigh she set her bags on the kitchen table, put away the water and milk she had picked up from the baker’s, on autopilot it seemed, put the kettle on. At times like this, she thought wryly, what you need is a nice cup of tea, and just as, by association, Kate’s worried smile sprang into her mind, the phone rang.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Kate’s voice was sharp with concern, and Celia sat down abruptly on the sofa by the phone, suddenly feeling quite overwhelmed with gratitude for Kate’s persistence, her motherliness, her very existence all that way away with her immaculate kitchen and her noisy children and her bloody dog. Celia wiped an idiotic tear from her eye.

  ‘Fine,’ she croaked, turning the sound into a laugh. ‘Well, actually, not so fine, it’s a bit – it’s all a bit weird out here.’

  ‘Weird?’

  Celia sighed. ‘Tell me,’ said Kate kindly, and Celia told her. She told her everything; everything Dan had told her about the murder of Lucas Marsh’s child, the discovery of Bartolo’s body, told her sister everything she herself had speculated about the Marshes since their arrival. As she talked a kind of sense began to emerge from what had, when Dan first told her, seemed unbel
ievable. Lucas Marsh’s coldness, his more-than-ambivalence about the baby Emma was expecting, his fear. Emma’s sense that she barely knew her husband.

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ she’d said to Dan. ‘I’m sure of it. His wife – his new wife. Emma has no idea.’

  As she repeated it all to Kate, with sudden clarity Celia understood why Lucas Marsh had employed her, to keep Emma busy; she saw the darkness and violence that he was trying to hold at bay and she stopped. There was a stunned silence.

  ‘My God,’ said Kate, and Celia heard fear in her voice. ‘My God.’ She fell silent again and Celia could almost hear her thinking, putting two and two together.

  ‘It’s been in all the papers here, too,’ she said, and in that moment Celia remembered the newspaper Emma Marsh had bought in the market and the small, indistinct photograph of Lucas Marsh’s dead daughter she’d glimpsed on the front page. How long could she keep it from Emma? Kate’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

  ‘He wasn’t called Marsh, though,’ she said, calculating.

  ‘Dan said he changed his name.’

  ‘How does Dan know all this?’ Kate’s voice was sharp again, probing, and Celia found herself grateful for the brisk pragmatism that had throughout her life alternately infuriated and comforted her.

  ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘I didn’t know him then. But he told me he followed the investigation, or at least the public reaction to it, for – well, it’s hard to explain – sort of poetic reasons. He thought it was a kind of crisis point for the national psyche.’ She put the words in ironic inverted commas, but actually, they had rung true. She paused, remembering her arrival in Italy all those years ago, the city a ghost town in the August heat whose dwindled population crept out of their shuttered houses to learn the awful news, their faces pale and crumpled with shock as they read the newspapers. ‘And it was terrible.’ Galluzzo had been shunned in the immediate aftermath; the swimming pool still was. She passed it often on the bus to Siena, its crumbling facade derelict, weeds sprouting through the tiles of the pool, and wondered why it was still there.

 

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