Enzo weighed his mobile in his hand.
The man in the suit watched him: there weren’t many suits seen down here, south of the river. He had a crew cut and a briefcase that he carried as if unused to it. There was something rough about him, something hard-edged; he might have been an ex-con trying to better himself.
Enzo felt as though the city was shifting around him, drafts and eddies, roads dug up, traffic diverted, police on the doorstep: things were moving out of focus and for a second he had the distinct impression that he might one day look up and not recognize where he was.
He began to compose a text message.
*
In Sandro’s office, Giuli sat alone at the computer. She’d opened the windows when she let herself in because the place seemed stale and stuffy: she could hear the shrill sounds of children playing in the Piazza Tasso and the low murmur of voices passing in the street.
She’d typed ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ into the search engine, and had come up with a whole load of mystical, Tarotreading nonsense, home-made websites referencing crystals and poltergeists. Giuli scrolled down looking for something more convincing, all the while only becoming more and more sceptical: if dream interpretation was not a science but the equivalent of palm-reading, she wasn’t interested. Her phone bleeped with the arrival of a message and, frowning, she pushed it away. Concentrate. At last she got an online encyclopaedia entry, and settled back to read it.
Within ten minutes she was fidgeting on her chair, as if she was back in school. What was wrong with her, that facts just didn’t go into her stupid head? Partly it was because something else was in there, bouncing around, trying to make her hear it. Her meeting with Wanda Terni: what had it meant? The dream, the park’s long, empty alleys, and the rest. How well, after all, did Wanda know Flavia? Giuli had started out with a niggling envy, that Flavia had had this decent, thoughtful woman as a friend, that they’d gone for walks together: she’d had to tell herself, Luisa’s your friend now. Stop dwelling on the past, stop thinking everyone’s got it better than you. Even this poor dead woman. And then the envy had fallen away, because in the end Flavia hadn’t been able to tell her friend about whatever it was that had been eating at her.
But she’d told the nurse.
At the computer, Giuli sat up straight with the certainty: Flavia had told Barbara. Barbara might have refused to say what she knew, but that didn’t mean she knew nothing, and it didn’t mean Giuli had learned nothing from the exchange. Good. She looked back at the screen but she couldn’t bring it into focus; her mind was elsewhere, sifting through what she’d learned from Barbara and Wanda, deciding what was significant and what wasn’t.
‘A small thing,’ Wanda had said uncertainly. ‘But it was never something I associated with her, you see. That’s why it startled me. I’d never heard that sound before when I was with her, and when she got it out and looked at it, I thought, Wow, so Flavia Matteo’s joined the modern world.’
Back at the search engine, slowly, Giuli typed in, ‘palace dream interpretation’. Nothing useful. She typed in, ‘sword’.
Again the mystical websites: DreamMoods, WhatsYourSign. No thanks. She tracked her eyes down the page and it jumped out at her, a reference back to the online encyclopaedia:
Jung cautioned against blindly ascribing meaning to dream symbols without a clear understanding of the client’s personal situation. He described two approaches to dream symbols: the causal approach and the final approach. In the causal approach, the symbol is reduced to certain fundamental tendencies. Thus, a sword may symbolize a penis, as may a snake. In the final approach, the dream interpreter asks, ‘Why this symbol and not another?’ Thus, a sword representing a penis is hard, sharp, inanimate, and destructive. A snake representing a penis is alive, dangerous, perhaps poisonous and slimy. The final approach will tell you additional things about the dreamer’s attitudes.
A sword representing a penis is hard, sharp, inanimate and destructive. Well, sure, thought Giuli, gaining confidence. But does it have to be a penis? Can’t it be just – danger, say? Or a real sword? She realized that this was exactly what the entry was saying. Huh, she thought, unable to suppress a smile of satisfaction, I like this Jung. But the small glow of pleasure at understanding faded as she realized this only left her just where she’d started: needing to know more about Flavia Matteo.
Wanda … she rubbed her forehead and tried to get back to Wanda. Just a small thing, yes. She pulled her own mobile towards her. Flavia Matteo’s joined the modern world.
Her mobile didn’t recognize the number but the message displayed on the screen was unequivocal. All right, it said. You’re right, she’s dead and it can’t hurt her. I’ll tell you. It was from Barbara.
Giuli stared at the message thinking, but I already know. Don’t I?
The mobile trembled in her hands and bleeped, another message coming in.
Chapter Twenty
THE KITCHEN WAS DIM and cool now, and they were gone: Enzo and Giuli had gone home, and Luisa was in the bedroom, putting the ironing away. Taking her time: calming herself, and leaving Sandro to think. He heard her move slowly around the room while he sat alone at the table under the light.
He’d dropped Rosselli back in Santo Spirito. Climbing back into the car, Sandro had just been able to hear the sound of the baby starting up, a monotonous repetitive cry from the first floor, where the old woman had appeared in the window at the sound of Niccolò fumbling with his keys. Christ, he’d thought with something like admiration as he slammed the door on the sound, they’re programmed for survival all right. Those small bodies, you wouldn’t have thought they’d have enough energy to keep it up.
After that, he’d just wanted quiet. But then the text had come in: This is bad. I’m coming over to Santa Croce. Enzo had sent it to all of them. Staring at it, Sandro had felt his stomach churn, acid. Enzo had arrived first, Giuli, bewildered, ten minutes later.
White-faced, he’d blurted it all out. The vice squad had been called in in the aftermath of the break-in. They’d confiscated the big desktop that had been left behind, and they were looking at it for child porn.
After a tip-off: of course. That face, those half-blind eyes behind the glasses, fixed on socialist heaven. Wasn’t that just the type to download images of children being abused? It could be standard dirty tricks, someone hoping to rake up trouble for the troublesome Frazione. Sandro had glimpsed Giuli’s expression, though.
Enzo had looked desperate. Look her in the eye, Sandro had thought, but Enzo couldn’t, or wouldn’t. ‘I’ve never – I’ve never seen anything like that on them. But computers are – permeable. Stuff – people can download stuff in error, they can get infected.’ His words had come out, jerky and faltering. ‘I installed firewalls, I clean them regularly, I monitor them, but I – I can’t be everywhere.’
Sandro had seen Luisa look over at Giuli, and his wife had started talking quickly about Chiara then. Anything, maybe, to get off the subject of Enzo and computers and what he might or might not have known: anything to get that look off Giuli’s face. Luisa had told them she’d seen Pietro: she was worried about him. Chiara was off the radar and he was worn down with it, and she’d seen him doing some deal in plainclothes with a man she didn’t recognize. She’d hurried on with her story, glancing sidelong at Giuli as she went. Pietro – this with a worried shake of the head – had hinted his meeting was to do with getting background on the Frazione, but she was sure it was also to do with Chiara running off. Her hand to her mouth, hushing her own fears.
His wife was good, Sandro had thought, not for the first time, watching her keep a lid on her own anxiety, watching her work methodically through what she’d found out, and watching Giuli edge closer to her at the kitchen table, colour returning to the girl’s face.
And Niccolò Rosselli was definitely the child’s father apparently. Had it occurred to Sandro that he might not be? The relief he’d felt at the information had revealed to him that he hadn’t
wanted to contemplate the alternative.
Bastone, though: that was interesting. Luisa had got her teeth into him then, a subject altogether safer than child porn or Chiara. Maria Rosselli despised Carlo Bastone – but then she despised most people. A rich boy, whose family owned land down where they were going to build the new mall. A childhood friend, devoted to Rosselli – or obsessed with him? Admiring – or jealous?
But Luisa’s energy had begun to falter: she’d clearly still been thinking about Chiara. And whatever they knew, or thought they understood, was not enough. What had made life so unbearable for Flavia that she’d left her child motherless? Was Pietro only looking for his daughter or did he have information on the Frazione? Or both, as Luisa seemed to think?
Sandro just hadn’t liked it: he hadn’t liked the implication of dirty stuff on computers his nearest and dearest were involved with. He hadn’t liked a girl he’d known since she was a baby going AWOL. And he’d hated seeing that look on Giuli’s pale face.
‘Giuli,’ he’d said, and her eyes had slid away from him. She looked down, cleared her throat, looked up again. And had begun to tell them about a dream.
*
Pietro and Gloria sat in a corner of the small trattoria two doors down from their apartment, eating in silence. The place was busy – a long table of young women were having some kind of celebratory meal – but the elderly waiter in his frowsty black waistcoat kept darting anxious glances across at them: he’d known the policeman and his red-haired wife since their daughter was a baby.
As the waiter removed their plates, Pietro spoke.
‘I saw Luisa today.’ Gloria folded her napkin in her lap, waiting. ‘She said she saw Chiara.’
Colour flooded Gloria’s freckled cheeks. ‘What? Really? Really?’ She stopped, helpless as tears came into her eyes, helpless at her own stupid parroting. He took her hand.
‘Luisa said she looked fine. She said she looked very pretty.’
‘Pretty?’ Gloria felt her mouth tremble and turn down. She saw the waiter look back across his shoulder. ‘Of course she’s pretty, what’s that got to do with it? What did Luisa mean?’ She was confused: it wasn’t the right word, pretty, not for their tomboy daughter, not when all they wanted to know was, where is she? Come home and eat with us, be at our table.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Pietro, despondent: she felt sorry now as his face reverted to sadness. He cleared his throat. ‘You know Luisa. Trying to say something positive. Look …’ And Gloria did look, into her husband’s worried face. ‘She’s on our side. They both are.’
‘You haven’t spoken to him though, have you? To Sandro?’
‘It’s complicated,’ said Pietro, and his face closed tight against her.
*
They went home separately, Giuli and Enzo. That was only normal, she had her motorino and he had his little car, but this time she sped away without looking back as she usually did to check he was behind her. He would have noticed, of course; Enzo noticed everything.
The evening air was cool. She zipped through Sant’Ambrogio, the covered-market building locked up and the square quiet but not empty, a small crowd around one of the bars, a match inside on a big screen. She joined the traffic on the big, four-lane ring road and followed it down to the bridge of San Niccolò, over the river and up the curving sweep of the Viale Galileo to the Piazzale Michelangelo. The wide, flat space was thick with people: pavement artists, stalls selling soft drinks and souvenirs, the strolling crowds looking down over the glittering spread of the city. Giuli sailed on around the contour of the hill and the umbrella pines formed a canopy overhead: it was still warm enough for their resinous scent to hang in the air.
The smell of the seaside, of the plantations that led down to the sea, the silvered trunks falling over in the white sand. They’d had two holidays by the sea now, she and Enzo, but with an empty feeling Giuli found herself wondering if there’d be another.
An old woman on the top floor peered down as Giuli let herself in. ‘Where’s your fancy man?’ she cackled. Her idea of a joke: Enzo was nobody’s idea of a fancy man.
‘Ha, ha,’ Giuli said, unsmiling. It meant he wasn’t home yet.
As she let herself into the neat apartment, with its smell still new and unfamiliar, Giuli had the inescapable certainty that something here was broken, something in their life together. She switched on the light and Enzo’s orderliness gleamed back at her from the white walls, the red stools arrayed around the breakfast bar, just visible in the kitchen. All at once she could see how it would go, unreeling like a film ahead of her: into the bedroom, get a suitcase, put her stuff in it. He’d stand there in the doorway not able to say a word, she’d mumble something and run, into the lift and freedom.
But why, Giuli? She could see Luisa’s face, stubbornly uncomprehending. What’s the poor boy done?
Freedom. It’s just easier that way.
How could she explain? She was a stray, one of those mangy cats some old lady tries to take in and it’s fine for a while then it turns and scratches. Why would he want her anyway? Unless there was something wrong with him.
Enzo? You suspect Enzo? That’s what Luisa would say. Only Giuli had seen it in Sandro’s face too as they sat around the table, that flicker of doubt as his eyes passed over Enzo’s frightened, homely features. As he told them what the female police officers from the vice squad had come looking for. And something inside her gathered and clenched and mastered her, the old, old panic and fear and rage she thought had gone. They never went.
‘You’re a survivor of abuse,’ they’d told her in all those sessions, the red-faced man, the worn-out woman, the succession of weary therapists whose job it was to get criminals back out into the world again. And Giuli was a criminal still, just like she was a survivor, even though her crime had been to fight back at her abuser.
‘Childhood abuse is a kind of hard wiring; you mustn’t expect it to disappear. You have to manage it.’ Foolishly, Giuli had thought she was the exception. Working at the Women’s Centre as a kind of therapy, limited exposure, doing something positive to help women, some of whom had had similar lives to her. Working with Sandro, whom she knew – knew finally – would not ever let her down. These things would wipe it all out, because surely she deserved that, after thirty years?
Apparently she did not.
She should have talked to Sandro, but there’d been no time, no privacy, the four of them stuck under the kitchen light as if they were in an interrogation room. Damn it, she should have told them what she knew, now, about Flavia Matteo.
Only once the doubt was there, like the first crack in a crumbling wall, all she could think of as the panic screamed in her head was, I knew it, I knew it, I knew there was something wrong with it, I knew there was something wrong with me, he never wanted me. He’s one of them.
Because it was all too easy, working as a receptionist, dispensing a smile and a bit of patient kindness, sorting out Sandra’s computer systems for him and doing a bit of legwork on insurance fraud. All very well: child’s play, in fact. But letting someone into your bed, trusting someone with your love, your future – that was different.
They’d thought about having children themselves.
Behind her Enzo’s key turned in the lock and in that moment, miraculously, Giuli quieted. The suitcase was still on top of the wardrobe, this was still her home.
He’d held her hand and said, It doesn’t matter if we can’t have children. It’s just you I want. He’d looked at her with his brown eyes. Could it have been true? Hold your ground, something said quietly inside her head: that’s the answer. Hold your ground, don’t panic, look for the truth. That’s what Sandro would say, wasn’t it?
Giuli turned to Enzo.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and couldn’t believe how calm she sounded.
Enzo looked close to tears. She put her arms around his back, and she couldn’t believe how easy it was to comfort him.
‘I’m sorry.’
CHIARA SAT ON THE concrete balcony, concealed from the neighbours by the rattan barrier. He’d told her not to lean out.
‘They’re so nosy,’ he’d said, with that slow smile of his, fixing her with that intense, hypnotic look. They were in the bare kitchen together two days ago. He’d been getting dressed for work while she stared at him, feeling something that wound her tight, like hunger. Chiara thought, God, what must my face look like, staring at him like I could eat him? But she couldn’t stop herself from staring. His long body, his arms sliding into the shirt sleeves, the wiry hairs on his strong hands straightening the pale tie. Had she been in love before? She thought of the boys at the liceo: it had been nothing like this. Where was he?
He was out there somewhere in the dark. He’d come home when he was ready. She couldn’t control his movements, he’d told her that too, and she couldn’t question him, for fear – of what? Just fear. It occurred to her that fear was one of the things that tied her to him. In the dark on the balcony she felt herself flush.
‘I don’t want them seeing how beautiful you are. I don’t want them jealous. You know what neighbours are like.’ From somewhere above her Chiara could smell someone smoking on an upper balcony: she sensed them all around, trying to get a look at her.
The woman in the laundry had given her a funny look, Chiara was sure of it, but the flat had no washing machine, she had no choice but to take the sheets there.
‘I’ll get one,’ he’d said easily. ‘We’re just like honeymooners, aren’t we? These things take a while. Home-building: there’s time enough for that.’ And he’d smiled again. ‘Aren’t you pleased, that I don’t think of you as a little wife? You’re a lover, that’s what you are. We’re lovers.’
The thought sprang into her head: she shouldn’t have spoken to Giancarlo. She shouldn’t have said anything to him. She’d been told not to say anything to anyone about where she was. This was about them, the two of them, the lovers, it was their private world and they didn’t have to be told what they could do together. She’d thought Giancarlo would understand better than the girls she’d been to school with; anyway, he was a gay guy, he had to live outside the rules, didn’t he?
A Darkness Descending Page 26