She knew it had to be arrived at rationally. Pulling the coffee towards her, Giuli thought without hope of Sandro’s diligence, the way he could just shift the irrelevant and the unreasoned out of the way, and focus. Trouble was, she didn’t feel rational, she felt like there was nothing in her body that was fixed, no ticking brain, no bone or muscle, only a jelly of hormones and panic – soft, frightened girl stuff.
She’d watched Enzo pack his briefcase with his back to her, transferring the USB keys from his pocket to the case as though they were the keys to Fort Knox. Zipping carefully, something deliberate about the way he wasn’t turning round. ‘I’m going to be a bit tied up this morning,’ he’d said, as he left, turning away too quickly on the stairs. ‘I’ll call you.’
She spooned some of the froth on her cappuccino into her mouth.
Of course it wasn’t him: he knew too much about computers, he’d have been able to hide it if it had been him. Plus, she knew him. This was Enzo, he didn’t have a bad bone in his body.
That wasn’t logic, that was emotion. That was love. Back to rational, OK? Look at his behaviour. Was he acting guilty? Some people might see guilt: he’d been horrified and panicky, he hadn’t been able to meet her eye.
Or had that been her, not meeting his? She took a sip, tasted the creaminess with gratitude, felt the kick of the caffeine.
He wasn’t acting nonchalant, that was for sure, and that would be worse; that would be cast-iron evidence of guilt.
The barman’s head lifted: Barbara stood in the doorway. From the look of her, Giuli thought the nurse might turn on her heel at the slightest provocation so she turned back to the barman, asked for two more coffees and took them, without a word, to the furthest corner of the small space.
‘Best to meet here,’ said Giuli warily as she approached. ‘Farmiga had a go yesterday. I don’t know what her problem is.’
‘Her problem is, she’s a bitch,’ said Barbara, and a flush appeared on her cheeks. She pulled at her collar and lifted the cup. ‘She hates the lot of us. Her latest man’s supposed to be giving her trouble, but she doesn’t need an excuse. I don’t know what she’s doing working at the Centre at all.’ Her smile was pinched. ‘Unless she’s a plant.’
Now it was Giuli’s turn to flush. Did Barbara think she was some sort of conspiracy theorist? It seemed to her that it was like everything evil in the world; if you were lucky, you could go through life not seeing it – the babies with cigarette burns, the abused nine year olds, the family men trawling the internet for sex, the bent policemen, the government working against the people. But once you saw it, you saw it everywhere. What was Farmiga doing working at the Centre?
‘Who’d have her?’ she said almost reflexively, although she knew plenty of them would. A woman like Farmiga was good news for a particular sort of man: he could treat her how he liked, she wouldn’t flinch. Did people see Giuli like that? She was tough enough.
‘Some good-looking Nazi,’ said Barbara. ‘Some tall handsome bastard full of testosterone.’ And laughed drily. ‘Who’d want one of those?’
Not me, thought Giuli, looking up startled because it was true, and because she hadn’t thought that someone like Barbara would want one either. Or Chiara. And for one tiny, warm second Enzo’s face appeared before her, frowning, serious, kind. True. Not rationally, but in her gut, she knew it: he was true.
She lifted her coffee to her lips and, suddenly queasy, set it down again untasted. Barbara’s face was pale and set.
‘It’s all right,’ Giuli said. ‘You don’t even have to tell me, not right out.’
‘I don’t?’
‘I think I know. I know why Flavia came to talk to you, I know what her – addiction was. I don’t know who – who else was involved, I don’t know how it started – but I know what she couldn’t give up.’
Barbara stared.
‘Same old, same old, wasn’t it?’ said Giuli. ‘It was love.’
*
If anything, Giovanni Bastone’s office seemed dustier, dimmer and more cluttered than when Sandro had first seen it. Remembering with surprise how deftly Giuli had taken control then, he wished she were with him this time, too.
The lawyer sat behind his heaped desk under the high coffered ceiling: all those ancestors, all that wealth, reduced to this dishevelled hulk of a man in his grand but decaying apartments. ‘Niccolò’ll be here – ah, soon,’ he said helplessly. ‘I don’t know where Enzo is. I’ve called him but his phone’s switched off or something.’ He looked grey.
‘He’s been a help, I imagine,’ said Sandro, still standing. ‘I’m sure he’ll be in touch, and we’ve an arrangement to go and see Niccolò. But it’s you I wanted to talk to.’
In fact, he’d said to Luisa, ‘I can talk to Bastone later, I’m coming with you.’
He’d known from the way she stiffened as he mentioned the hospital appointment that she hadn’t been going to say anything: he wouldn’t have put it past her not to turn up at all.
‘No way,’ she’d said firmly, turning in his arms. ‘It’s just routine, I don’t need you there. I don’t, caro, darling, sweetheart, I don’t. I can manage.’
‘On your own? On the bus?’ He didn’t set her free.
There’d been a fractional hesitation. ‘Gloria’s coming,’ she’d said. ‘I asked her the other day. She – she’ll drive me.’
And that had been that. Had she been lying? It wasn’t a question you could ask Luisa: in any marriage it was the question you waited longest to ask.
‘They won’t let us back into the Frazione’s offices,’ said Bastone now, and he seemed close to tears. Had this man ever practised as a lawyer? It came to Sandro that the qualification, the beautiful consulting rooms, the books and the panelling and the view of the piazza were all a distraction, a rich man’s toys.
And the money was why he’d come to Bastone. It all came down to sex or money: if anyone wanted to pull the Frazione down, it had to be because of money. ‘Some business interest or other,’ like Colonello Arturo had said. And was that why he couldn’t get the soldier’s face out of his head?
If it hadn’t been for the computer raid, it might not have occurred to Sandro. But who had access to those computers, real access? Rosselli, Enzo, Bastone. Would Rosselli want to bring down his own party? Drive his own wife to suicide? And Enzo? However much he liked the boy, had learned to trust him, Enzo was still an unknown quantity, Sandro had to remind himself of that. Enzo had the expertise.
But Bastone … He had known Flavia Matteo as long as she’d known Rosselli. Luisa had told him what Maria Rosselli had said about Bastone, and his family: tightwads, misers – not vulgar, though, heaven forbid. The old school of Florentine landowning semi-nobility: incapable of earning a decent living, selling off bits of land, cranking rents out of failing contadini.
So if what Pietro had turned up at the land registry was accurate, it looked like Bastone – or his family – had a financial stake in the Frazione’s downfall. Should it come about, and Sandro almost muttered the words superstitiously. He found himself hoping fervently that by some miracle this shambolic little unit, this ragtag mob of hippies and do-gooders and eco-recyclers, would survive to fight another day. Not for him, but for Giuli, and Enzo, and Chiara.
Chiara. The girl’s face appeared to him, fresh, dark-eyed, eager: when had he last seen her? When she’d thanked him for the iPod, a year ago? Children grow up, we have to get used to that. He thought of Luisa’s shoulders set stiff in his embrace this morning as she had told him: I woke up certain she was in trouble, I mean real trouble.
The Frazione was in trouble too.
Then Giuli had called, the phone ringing even as he unclasped his arms from around Luisa, to say that she would meet him in the piazza at eleven. She was on the trail of something: he had known better than to interrupt her with questions. The message had been the same as last night’s: he had to sort it with Niccolò Rosselli for them to go over the apartment with a fine toothcomb; Gi
uli still hadn’t said what it was they were looking for – and Sandro hadn’t asked. So Bastone would have to be dealt with first.
And if the lawyering was a kind of smokescreen for the fact that Bastone was so wealthy he didn’t have to work, where had the politics come into it? To assuage his conscience? A young man’s indulgence? Only now Giovanni Bastone was no longer young.
Sandro had called Niccolò straight after hanging up on Giuli. He had sensed Luisa listening from the kitchen.
Rosselli had agreed to the request without hesitation.
‘We would try not to – cause too much disruption,’ Sandro had said, taken aback. Could this man really have so little to hide? Or nothing left to lose.
‘Eleven’s fine,’ Niccolò had said. ‘My mother – my mother will take care of the child. Do you want me there, too?’
‘I – um – sure,’ Sandro had said, improvising. ‘I’m sure we’ll need your help, at least initially. It’s your apartment, after all, she was your wife. But if it becomes distressing—’
Like Sandro, Rosselli hadn’t asked what it was they’d be looking for. Which was just as well.
Now Bastone was looking at him with undisguised panic, getting to his feet from behind the desk. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved or slept in a week.
‘You want to talk to me?’ he said.
‘Sit down,’ said Sandro gently, although it was not his place. Obediently, however, Bastone sat.
Sandro remained standing, his hands on the back of a beautiful polished wooden chair. ‘Do you practise much?’ he asked, almost by way of polite conversation. ‘What kind of law is your speciality?
‘Land law and tenancy agreements,’ said Bastone, looking bewildered. ‘But I – no – well. My mother isn’t so keen on – I’m taken up a great deal with the Frazione. With helping Niccolò.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro. ‘And with family matters, I suppose?’
‘Family matters?’ Bastone was wary, at last.
‘Well, I understand your family owns a great deal of land. Your expertise must be useful.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said the lawyer stubbornly. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with – with Flavia.’
Something about the way he spoke her name. ‘It’s not just Flavia, though, is it? It’s more complicated than that now.’
Bastone seemed frozen behind the heaped desk. Did he read these dusty books? The photograph of the lawyer’s mother stood behind him on the shelf: it seemed to Sandro to display the kind of sweet smile that disguised selfishness, caprice, greed, jealousy. He noticed that there was another photograph further along, of three figures standing in an awkward group at some social function. Niccolò Rosselli, Flavia and Bastone, the pale woman at the centre all the more radiant somehow, even from where Sandro stood, for her dowdy, ill-fitting dress.
‘Are you an only child, Dottore Bastone?’
Bastone just stared as though he had renounced all hope of understanding Sandro’s approach. ‘I am,’ he said, barely audible.
Sandro inclined his head. ‘So your mother depends on you?’
‘It’s in the nature of the relationship.’ A fight back. ‘I don’t understand what you’re asking me.’
‘Does she mind your involvement with the Frazione?’
Uneasily, Bastone twisted his head on its broad neck. ‘She’s not interested in politics. She doesn’t understand – my relationship with Niccolò.’
So the mother was hostile: obviously, she would be.
‘Not interested in politics,’ Sandro said. Interested in money, though, I bet, for all Maria Rosselli said they weren’t the vulgar sort. ‘Did she just think it would be a passing phase? And now – it’s time to return to your responsibilities?’ Sandro paused. ‘I mean, as a landowner. I imagine she has exerted pressure?’
Bastone paled, and Sandro knew he was right. ‘It is true, isn’t it?’ he said gently. ‘That your family will become considerably richer if that road is built, the road the Frazione Verde opposes?’
Now Bastone was on his feet. Unperturbed Sandro continued.
‘I have information –’ and he took a breath, thinking of Pietro, of those dreary offices in the Via dell’Agnolo where taxes were estimated and historic ownership of patches of wasteground proven, ‘that the land registry shows the purchase of your terreno – your building land – is under way. The permissions have been granted for the commercial centre. I imagine the price goes up as each obstacle is overcome. The Frazione – against all the odds – the Frazione seems to be the only thing left in your way.’
There was a long silence: Bastone stood, pale but steadier somehow than Sandro had seen him before. At last the lawyer spoke.
‘In my way?’ He tilted his head, like a large, predatory bird, and for the first time Sandro could after all picture him in a courtroom. ‘My way is the Frazione’s way, you forget that. Flavia and Niccolò and the Frazione – they are my family.’ But there was a stiffness in the way he said it. ‘My mother—’ And he clicked his teeth, a sound of uneasy frustration. ‘My mother doesn’t understand.’
You bet she doesn’t, thought Sandro. His gut feeling about this man was shifting despite himself, but he resisted. There was something buried deeper than he had yet dug.
‘They might have been your family,’ he said, ‘a kind of family. But blood is thicker than water. It is hard to resist a mother, if you’re an only child. And all this—’ He looked around: the lovely long windows with their aspect on to the flank of the church, the polished wood, the great dark wall sconces. ‘Did she threaten to take all this away?’
From the look on Bastone’s face, he knew he was right.
‘Wouldn’t it have been enough to say, “Withdraw your support, leave them”? Were you funding them?’
Bastone stood very still. ‘Niccolò wouldn’t take money from me, even if I had it to give,’ he said. A question hung unanswered: Why not? Sandro pressed his advantage. It seemed to be time for the direct approach.
‘Did she demand that you bring the Frazione down? You had access to those computers. You seem to have allowed the vice squad in without a fight. Did you know what they were looking for? Did you know all along?’
The light shed through the windows was grey today, and standing in it Bastone was greyer still. ‘They said it was illegal material,’ he said, and his voice shook. ‘They said the thieves – the burglary – it was connected. They said they believed that whoever stole the computers made the tip-off. They had the correct warrants, all the documentation was in order, I was obliged—’ But Sandro interrupted him.
‘You were first on the scene of the break-in,’ he said. ‘It seems an extraordinary coincidence to me. First Flavia,’ and he saw Bastone flinch, ‘then the break-in, then the vice squad. The illegal material. What material is this? You know, don’t you?’
‘Indecent images,’ said Bastone, once more barely audible. ‘That’s what they said.’
Sandro thought of what Luisa had told him about Maria Rosselli’s haughty dismissal of Carlo Bastone. Not very intelligent: a boy who’d wanted Niccolò Rosselli’s life. And when he couldn’t have it? When Niccolò Rosselli refused to take his money?
‘You know,’ he said. ‘You know. What images?’
‘I did nothing to harm the Frazione,’ said Bastone, and Sandro saw tears, real tears, in the creases of his pouchy eyes. Saw the pudgy schoolboy whom no one would befriend. ‘I would never – never! I told Mamma. I told her that I wouldn’t leave the Frazione, she could do what she liked.’ He waved a hand helplessly, turned his face away from the grey light. ‘She only cared about money. Money is nothing.’
Easy for you to say, thought Sandro, but Bastone’s voice held the ring of truth. Carlo Bastone didn’t know what it would be like without money, so he probably meant what he’d just said. There was something he wasn’t saying, though: Sandro burrowed back through the exchange, listening in his head for the words that Bastone had faltered over
.
Flavia. He looked into Bastone’s eyes and didn’t even need to say it.
‘I loved her,’ said Carlo Bastone. ‘I’ve always loved her.’
And in the thin light of the great room he closed his mouth. He put one hand to it and then another, like a child trying to stop himself saying another word.
Chapter Twenty-Three
IT WAS THE RIGHT time to be going.
There’d been thick low cloud over the sea at dawn and the town was dull and sunless close to midday as Vesna turned towards the station. The season was over and done.
Calzaghe had said that as she wasn’t giving notice, she’d have to go without the previous week’s wages. Never mind that he’d have let her go at the end of the week without any warning, anyway.
He’d tried to inject triumph at his own cunning into the dismissal, but it had fallen flat. She had caught him looking up at the Stella Maris in sullen confusion, the striped police tape still flickering from the railings, as if only now realizing that the hotel was never going to make him his fortune. Vesna felt only relief as she walked away, her suitcase surprisingly light in her hand. She’d never been one to accumulate things: there’d be time for that. There’d be time and family and home, for that.
Outside the dry cleaner’s – his blind down, only open three days a week, now that September was almost over – litter was blowing in the street. As Vesna frowned at it, following a crumpled length of cellophane unfurling in the breeze, there he was. Coming around the corner after it in his luminous jacket, stabbing with a kind of pincer arm to catch the ribbon. He looked up, at her face then down at the suitcase in her hand. Vesna couldn’t help but feel rewarded by his transparent dismay.
‘You’re leaving,’ he said. Rubbed his forehead, leaving a smear. He took off a glove and looked at his hand: scrubbed, nails dean, observed Vesna.
‘Yes,’ she said. And smiled, the smile broadening at the thought of her escape. ‘I jumped before I was pushed.’
‘When’s your train?’ he asked abruptly.
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