A Florentine Revenge

by Christobel Kent

  ‘Where are you?’ he said quickly.

  ‘No,’ said Luisa, catching her breath. ‘Where are you?’

  He wouldn’t tell her. ‘It’s better if you don’t know.’ He paused, then started again. He sounded contrite, but determined. ‘I tried the flat, when I heard your message, but you weren’t there.’ His voice was strained; he’s worn out, thought Luisa. She imagined her husband’s body, so strong once, running for fifteen years on anger and adrenaline; she realized she couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed, or even eaten properly.

  ‘You’ve got to come back,’ she said. ‘We’ll get through this.’ She told him she’d talked to Pietro, what he’d said about the things they were saying at the station.

  ‘I’ve got the car,’ said Sandro, and his voice was flat; the sound of it chilled her. ‘Look, I’ve screwed it up. Bartolo’s dead, the father, Marsh, he’s in a bigger mess than I am, getting himself involved with these bastards, that’s all down to me, my responsibility.’

  ‘No,’ said Luisa with urgency. ‘You did what you thought was right, they’ll understand that. Pietro understands.’ It was a lie; she made herself believe, though, that eventually he would understand. Sandro had to believe he could get back from this. ‘I understand. Even if there’s a trial, even if,’ she swallowed, ‘even if you have to go to prison for it. It can be done. We can do it. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’

  There was a long silence and Luisa made herself focus on the background sounds she could hear down the line, trying to get a picture of where he was. She felt as though she was betraying him as she listened, but she forced the qualm aside. She could hear a lot of traffic noise, a steady stream of cars, one after the other, slush, the regular rumble of heavy-goods vehicles, too. Not in the city, then. Somewhere above the traffic noise behind Sandro a church bell began a monotone clang summoning the faithful to Saturday evening Mass, a light, tinny bell, perhaps even recorded as they sometimes were in new, suburban churches. It was nothing like the deep sonorous sound of the old bells that would ring below her any moment, in the ancient bell-tower of San Niccolò. Did she know that bell? Some modern church. But even as she listened they began, the two sounds merging, one here in the real world, one in whatever bleak place Sandro was inhabiting, and she gave up.

  He paused. ‘I’ve got to protect Marsh,’ he said. ‘That’s all I can do now’

  ‘He’s going home tomorrow,’ said Luisa, pleading. ‘Is he really in danger?’

  There was a long silence, and when Sandro spoke his voice was deliberately brutal. ‘In Livorno, just last week,’ he said, ‘they found a torso in a barrel, washed up on the beach. A rich Milanese who didn’t pay his Russian dealer for his drugs on time, he thought they’d indulge him, he was busy at work. Two thousand euros, that’s all, the price of a secondhand car, and they killed him. They left one of his hands – the one with the wedding ring – in a padded envelope on the doorstep for his wife to find.’ Sandro never spoke like this to her, never told these stories. Luisa understood that the time to spare her such details was past.

  He went on, softer now. ‘I – I’ve had a call. I think I can get to him – to the man who was working for Marsh, the man who abducted Bartolo. His car’s been found. Of all the places—’ He broke off as though something had occurred to him, then started again. ‘I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do any more. I could stake out the Regale, or wherever they’re having dinner, but – but I’m going to go for the car. Maybe I can stop him before he can get to Marsh. Maybe I can stop all this.’

  Luisa’s first thought was, At least he’s not planning to kill himself. Her second was, He could get killed anyway, and she couldn’t stop herself interrupting him. ‘Not on your own,’ she blurted, begging without shame. ‘Get – what-d’you call it, get backup, just Pietro even, get them to help you, please. Just tell me where you are.’ She’d lost her grip; she knew it was hopeless. ‘They’ll find you,’ she whispered. ‘They’ll trace the mobile, the car, they’ll be looking for it.’

  ‘I’ve got to go now,’ said Sandro softly, and he hung up. Alone in the dark, high above the city, Luisa pressed the dead phone to her lips and began to cry.

  22

  In the bathroom Celia held up the green dress against her and tried to remember who it was who had worn red petticoats to the scaffold. Charlotte Corday? Mary, Queen of Scots? She could remember the picture in some ancient children’s encyclopedia, an engraving of a woman on the wooden platform with her chin in the air, head held high; no doubt the reality had been somewhat different. Could she do this?

  Celia had been too long out of the shower before dressing, sitting there on the sofa in a dressing gown listening to Luisa, and she felt cold. In the bathroom mirror she saw her own pale outline, her arms thin, her eyes wide and shocked. She was frightened. She wondered if she could go through with it; for the first time in her professional life she desperately wanted to run away, to give up. It was Emma who made that impossible, of course; her bright impulsiveness, her faith in a pair of new shoes, a party, to make everything better. Wearily Celia knew she couldn’t let her down. She’s so young, Luisa had said. Not much younger than me, actually, Celia realized with surprise; perhaps she should remember her age more often. What Luisa had said went around in her head, the message that Lucas was in danger, but the danger stubbornly refused to become real. She thought of the thick walls of the Palazzo Ferrigno, built to keep out assassins. She had to get going.

  Turning her back on the mirror, Celia stepped into the dress and pulled it up around her, drew up the tiny concealed zip and tied the ribbons loose in the small of her back. She felt the perfect cut of it comfort and enclose her; the lovely sea-green of the skirt floated, luminous and demure, around her hips, She began, frowning, to search for her turquoise earrings, a dab of lipstick; she brushed her hair and tied it back. Her arms felt very bare, and she dug in her wardrobe, grateful for the impulse that had at last led her to unpack – it seemed like a lifetime ago but must only be three days, Thursday, her day off. She found a little black satin jacket of her mother’s from some long-forgotten era, still sweet with ancient perfume, and slipped her arms into it. It was unreal, dressing up like this for a life that didn’t belong to her; for a moment, as she realized the jacket fitted exactly, she had an image from childhood of her mother leaning down to kiss her before leaving for a party.

  Suppressing her reluctance, Celia decided she was ready; she found the right shoes, pulled on her good coat and reached for the phone to dial a cab, only it rang before she could pick it up. Even before he spoke she knew it would be Gabriele. ‘I’m outside,’ he said. ‘You need a lift.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said, staring at her as she tucked her dress inside the car. ‘You look—’ He seemed lost for words, self-conscious; she could smell the tobacco on his breath but she surprised herself by liking it.

  ‘What?’ she said, pulling her coat around herself. ‘You’re making me nervous now ’

  Gabriele smiled then, his easy smile. ‘You look gorgeous, that’s all,’ he said mildly.

  Celia felt her cheeks burn, remembering the kiss, and looked out of the window into the dark. They drove in silence for a while, the traffic moving more freely now that the snow had stopped and the snowploughs had been round. But as they glided over the river abruptly Gabriele said, ‘I saw your ex this evening.’

  Celia stared at him. ‘Who – you mean Dan?’ Gabriele nodded.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Gabriele coolly. ‘I told you, I know everyone.’ Celia felt uneasy, wondering when he’d seen Dan, if he’d seen them together, and she felt, really, that this was ridiculous. Were they spying on her, the two of them? Was this what another relationship had to involve, all this hiding in corners, misunderstandings and jealous insinuations?

  Gabriele went on, apparently oblivious to her body language, her knuckles white as she held the coat together across her exposed neckline and her white sho
ulders. ‘I was just having a drink, not far from here actually, little place down there.’ He nodded towards the bridge. She knew the bar he meant, a smoky little subterranean place where the bar was always crowded with drivers and shopgirls and local tradesmen, where they turned to look at foreigners if they came in. Gabriele talked on as he drove, looking ahead, indicating, monitoring the street as he spoke. ‘Anyway, I came out and I saw him under the streetlight, that’s how I recognized him, the light was shining right down on him. Anyway, he was talking to this old girl on the corner, I thought she was – you know—’ He darted a glance at Celia, then went on, ‘On the game.’ He paused, musing, ‘But when I got up close she looked terrible, half her hair looked like it had been pulled out and a cheek-bone all caved in. Maybe he was, what d’you call it, doing research. Likes a walk on the wild side, does he?’

  ‘Look, Gabriele,’ said Celia suddenly, ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, and I don’t want to know. Dan’s nothing to do with you, is he? Or me, come to that, who he talks to, who he meets, it’s none of your business.’ Her voice sounded tougher than she had intended.

  ‘I didn’t—’ Gabriele’s eyes darted away and she knew she’d nailed him: this was about Dan, this was some roundabout way of doing him down. ‘Look,’ he said, sounding cornered, ‘I know that girl. Anorexic prostitute works out in Galluzzo, not far from where I live. Giusi, Giuli, something like that. Do you really want anything to do with a man who sees whores?’ He pulled up at the Palazzo Ferrigno. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, turning towards her earnestly. ‘Don’t you see? I want to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘I don’t need it,’ she said angrily. ‘I can look after myself. Just – just – don’t. Just don’t.’ Exasperated, she jerked the door open and climbed out on to the slushy pavement, in too much of a hurry to think about doing it elegantly. A paving stone tipped under her foot, soaking her leg with icy water. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said irritably, but Gabriele said nothing. She tried again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she knew she didn’t sound it, didn’t feel it, her voice still uneven with frustration. Slowly Gabriele leaned across and pulled the door shut. At her back Celia felt a figure standing in the arched gateway of the Ferrigno take a step towards her but she didn’t turn to go in. She just stood there and watched with a feeling of helpless regret as the car pulled away and her own words rang ridiculously in her ears. I can look after myself. Her heart dipping, she supposed that now she was going to have to find out if that was true.

  When they’d built the housing project down by the river in Galluzzo they’d made sure, it being a key problem in the city centre, that there was plenty of space for cars, and a neat, marked-up parking lot ran the whole length of the place. Sandro pulled in between a Mercedes and a van, both taller vehicles than his, and he was careful so as not to dislodge the burden of snow on his little car’s roof that so neatly disguised it. He turned to look back at it; the little Fiat had settled in so well it might have been there all week. Sandro knew it would all end soon, they’d trace the car or the phone, but it mustn’t happen yet.

  Turning away from the car, Sandro walked across the snow with his hood pulled up; he paused outside the Olympia Club’s gates, gauging the place with a policeman’s eye. He could see where some of the corrugated iron sealing the lower windows had been prised up; it might have been done by kids, or vagrants, or travellers. There weren’t many of those around here, though. He walked on, to his real destination; he could have taken a short cut by vaulting the fence around the Olympia Club, crossing the tennis courts and finding that gap in the link fence on the other side, but he didn’t.

  He had to go back to the main road; there was no pavement for the hundred metres back towards the city that he had to cover and the trucks roared past him, soaking his legs to the thigh with salted slush. Then there was a sharp, narrow turn down the dead-end that led to Bartolo’s place and Sandro turned down it without hesitation; if he felt any quickening of the heart rate as he approached the farmhouse there was little external evidence of it. He did put one hand deep into a pocket as though he was checking something, and the hand stayed there, but otherwise he trudged steadily onwards until he rounded the crumbling, defaced wall and then he stopped.

  The dead-end ahead of him was empty and silent and the snow covering it glittered yellow in the streetlight, virgin except for a line of footprints that ran ahead of Sandro’s own. Footprints he found himself following until he reached the railings that fronted a neat villa opposite Bartolo’s place, where a dark, wet rectangle of tarmac marked where a car had stood. The car itself had gone.

  From her window as she waited for the evening’s guests to arrive Paola Caprese saw the dark Mercedes draw up below and the girl step out; she leaned forward to watch – something about the scene drew her attention. She caught the driver’s profile as he moved off and she recognized him – she knew quite a number of the drivers, and he was handsome. The girl stood there in the snow, watching him go, and Paola felt sorry for her.

  Around her the palace ticked into silence, the wood settling; the place was almost empty. It was a fine balancing act, staffing this place, you couldn’t carry dead wood, and the guests wouldn’t know, would they, that they were drinking champagne in a ghost ship, a Marie Celeste of a place.

  Celia stood in the foyer and waited; she looked at her watch and saw that it was two minutes past seven. The concierge had come out from behind his glass screen – where he had, she saw, been watching the football on a tiny portable television – to inspect her as she stood in the great arched gateway. So much for security, was the thought that pricked her as she watched the concierge approach; he looked dozy, indifferent. He had not said, when she told him why she was here, whether the Marshes had arrived yet, and she assumed that they had not; the atmosphere of the place seemed too still and calm, as yet unruffled by the drama they seemed to carry with them. The concierge had ushered her in here and she was glad at least to be out of the icy, wet air; he returned to his post where she saw him dialling a number on an elderly Bakelite telephone.

  Celia felt cold suddenly in the great empty room, although it was warm, and she walked to the wide glass doors. Looking into the arched gateway, she saw the concierge in his gatehouse on her left, intent now on the tiny, coloured figures of the football players against their electric green background, moving ceaselessly to and fro. Then, as she watched, a shaven-headed man walked in from the street, rounding the corner easily, with confidence; he wore a long brown workman’s overall, buttoned like a coat, with his hands deep in the pockets. As he passed the concierge he nodded through the little glass window, but the concierge wasn’t looking and the workman didn’t break step, just walked on past.

  He made straight for a small wooden door in the wall beside the gatehouse that Celia hadn’t noticed before; it looked to her now like a service entrance of some kind. He reached for the handle, but it didn’t open; apparently it had been locked. The man turned away immediately, didn’t pause to rattle the handle or knock, and in retrospect that was the first false note his presence there struck. He headed straight for Celia; startled, she took a step back and he pushed through the glass door and past her. She only had time to record a vivid impression of bloodshot, pale blue eyes, a roughened complexion, but he came so close she could smell the cheap tobacco on his breath. She saw the glitter of an earring, a sharp quarter-profile, and for a fraction of a second she wondered, Have I seen him before? A gust of cold air came in with him from the snowy street; as the glass door swung shut behind him one of the wood-panelled doors inside the room creaked ajar, but by the time Celia turned for another look he was through it and gone.

  There was something about the little scene – not even a scene, it had lasted half a minute and what had happened? A workman had entered the building – that seemed wrong to Celia. What was it? Perhaps the silence; an Italian would certainly have made some kind of greeting, the language was loaded with such tokens of courtesy, pregh
o, permesso, salve. But she had an idea from his complexion, his light eyes, that the man hadn’t been Italian. Perhaps it was the fact that he disappeared so fast that left her feeling she could have imagined the whole thing, even down to the cigarettes on his breath. But then the door through which he had disappeared swung open and the administrator Paola Caprese came in.

  She inclined her head a little stiffly and held out her hand; Celia felt the woman’s gaze take in everything from the bare hand she offered in return – she’d forgotten her gloves in the rush – to the quality of her coat’s lining as it fell open, and she felt a weariness in this perpetual need to be presentable in Italy. But as she took the woman’s limp hand she saw that there was something a little distracted about her; she wondered if she had bumped into the brown-coated workman and had had to reprimand him for an unauthorized cigarette break.

  ‘There was a man,’ she said suddenly, ‘a workman, he just came in—’ She broke off, not sure what to say.

  ‘Yes?’ Paola Caprese frowned at her.

  ‘He – well. There was something not quite right about him. He was rather – he was rude.’ It sounded lame, but for a fraction of a second Paola Caprese looked uncertain. Then she bristled, taking offence. ‘Well, really,’ she said. ‘We do have workmen, yes, we don’t send them to finishing school. Is that what they do in England?’ And she laughed stiffly. Celia flushed, reprimanded.