Dead Season

by Christobel Kent

  As he waited, Sandro looked. It was hard to tell because of the white tent over it, but the body had probably been at least partly shaded by the trees. In these temperatures, he supposed that hardly made a difference; his gaze swung from the white plastic structure to the glittering heat haze above the big bridge. Below it, the river was low and greenish brown, clogged with weed; on the far bank he could see immobile figures sunbathing down where grass and reeds abutted the water.

  At his feet the patchy grass between the oleanders was littered with debris from passing cars: cigarette packets, a fast-food carton, flyers from a restaurant. A child’s doll lay among the litter, the face smudged, the pink dress greying. No place, he supposed, to stop the car and go back to retrieve that doll, even if the child was howling.

  The forensics guy was stripping off his latex gloves, and Pietro was shaking his hand. As the man walked back to his car, he gave Sandro an incurious glance; Sandro didn’t recognize him but then he was young, only thirty perhaps.

  ‘Where’s your partner?’ asked Sandro, trying not to sound surly. ‘You’ve got a partner on this, right?’

  ‘Matteucci,’ said Pietro with a weary smile. ‘Sent him off to clear his head, get a glass of water. I thought he was going to throw up: he’s not used to this. Came from a desk job in Modena.’ He loosened his collar. ‘And I can do without him breathing down my neck.’

  Sandro nodded towards the tent, ‘When did you find him?’

  Pietro nudged his cap back on his head, his forehead gleaming with sweat; over his shoulder on the barracks wall Sandro could see a tower with the red lights of a digital display, reading forty-one degrees. You could die out here, thought Sandro. He stepped further into the shade of the thin trees, the earth gritty and dusty underfoot. You could hear the river, a sluggish gurgle fifty metres to the south. The air was thick with mosquitoes.

  ‘About ten this morning,’ said Pietro wearily. ‘A kid in a high vehicle, some kind of people carrier, on their way to the country, he saw it. Seventeen years old. Got completely hysterical, according to the parents; they thought he was imagining it, or making it up, or it was just a drunk sleeping it off. Same thing everyone else obviously thought. But the kid just wouldn’t shut up, until they called the police.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sandro, thinking. ‘Anything yet?’ He nodded towards the forensics man, climbing into his car. ‘Preliminary findings?’ He knew there would be some. ‘Time and cause of death?’

  Pietro grimaced. ‘Cause of death? Well, you’ll see.’

  ‘Ah.’ Sandro was in no hurry to go in the tent. ‘Time?’

  ‘He’d been there a while – I mean, considering. Three days at least.’

  Sandro tilted his head back and looked up through the branches at the pale blue-white sky. ‘Considering?’ he said. ‘Ah. You mean, considering he’s out here in the open. Thousands of vehicles must have passed him, in three days.’

  ‘Maybe four,’ said Pietro.

  Sandro stilled his head, searching the sky for cloud – real cloud. A good tower of raincloud building to the west over the Apuan Alps, cumulonimbus, the signal of the blessed summer rainstorm.

  ‘So, Saturday or Sunday,’ he said, still staring up. ‘No earlier than that?’

  ‘The heat makes it hard to tell,’ said Pietro, his voice so low Sandro had to strain to hear. ‘That – oh, you know. Accelerates decomposition. Especially in the dirt, and with the humidity.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sandro.

  ‘Pathology’s coming back to get him, anyway,’ said Pietro. ‘We’ll know more when they’ve autopsied him. Insect activity should do it. And there’ll be a toxicology report.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Sandro. ‘It’s just – well. My guy was seen Friday night. If it’s more than five days, then it isn’t him.’

  But it’s still someone, he thought. It’s a husband or father.

  ‘Have you been in touch with the family?’ he said.

  ‘Trying to trace them,’ said Pietro. ‘Got a home address and phone number but there’s no one there.’

  ‘Assuming it’s his ID, not stolen, then I think they’re in Monterosso,’ said Sandro, jerking his head north. ‘It’s in the Cinque Terre. Holiday house. He’s supposed to be on holiday. He’s not supposed to be here.’

  Pietro shook his head, barely perceptibly. ‘I think it’s his ID,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t look like a mugger: not wearing those shoes. Silk socks too, for that matter.’

  The forensics guy’s car revved, his hand came out of the window in thanks to a car that was allowing him out, and he was gone. Watching the car disappear into the traffic, Pietro narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you want to see the body, then?’ he said. ‘They’ll be here for him soon.’

  With reluctance they both approached the tent. A rectangle of the white plastic sheeting that served as a door flapped idly in the air displaced by the cars; there was nothing as merciful as a breeze. Sandro could see something behind the flapping plastic, dark on the grass, and he had to concentrate to keep walking, one step after another. Not good, approaching a body from this end, with all the faces already ranged in your head, the expectant, anxious faces of those who’d loved him, however misguidedly.

  He bent and entered. Involuntarily raised a sleeve to block his nose. The smell was horribly familiar, the putrid smell of proteins broken down, of humanity turned to carcass. He moved inside, to the left, allowing Pietro in after him, turning on a battery floodlight as he entered. They squatted beside him: beside the remains of the man.

  This was what Pietro had meant about the heat and the time of death. He’d been shielded from the sun by what there was of the foliage, but where it had got to him there was – decomposition. The body discoloured, just beginning to come apart. Sandro looked away.

  Identification might be difficult. It depended: some people – some wives – could tell their loved one from the shape of his hands, or his hair. He leaned in.

  A devastating injury to the back of the head, was what he saw. Hair black and crusted with dried blood, and a depression in the skull.

  He didn’t reach out a hand to touch the man, to turn him; that wasn’t allowed. He just knelt, an elbow in the dirt, his face hovering a centimetre or so above it and close to the dead man’s. He could smell it. More trauma over the temple.

  Had he changed to come into the city? Out of the holiday T-shirt, the shorts. The trousers were bloodied too, below the knee, fine grey summer-weight wool. The leg at an odd angle, as though that had also been broken; out of nowhere Sandro had the image of a piece of scaffolding pole held in two hands being brought down to cut the man off at the knees. Where had that come from? Sandro realized with amazement that it had happened to him, years back.

  Twenty-five years back, interrupting a robbery in a warehouse. A gorilla of a guy had come around a packing case swinging for him with a metre of steel pole and making animal sounds. Luckily for Sandro the guy’d been so high on amphetamines that he hadn’t been able to focus properly, and the glancing blow had only resulted in a three week bruise. Pietro had got him out of that one, neatly cuffing the man as he staggered in the aftermath of the swing while Sandro lay cursing on the floor.

  One shoe was off, lying with the sole uppermost: Sandro leaned down close. ‘Is that blood too?’ he asked. The pale leather was stained. ‘Doesn’t look like blood.’

  ‘It’ll be analysed,’ said Pietro. He kneeled, pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, drew them on and applied a finger to the dusty black on the shoe’s sole; it left a powdery greyish residue on his fingertip. They both looked at it, staring as if their lives depended on it. For longer than was necessary: to avoid looking somewhere else.

  Then Pietro sighed, and raising one knee he bent down and delicately turned the head, just a degree or two. Over the ear Sandro saw something, matted.

  ‘The oleanders would have concealed the body quite effectively,’ he said.

  Sandro, sitting back on his haunches, nodded.


  ‘Is that why he’s here?’

  ‘We’re thinking perhaps – hit and run.’

  Sandro stared at his old friend.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It happens,’ said Pietro wearily. ‘You know it does. The injuries are severe. Consistent with being struck by a car.’

  Sandro scratched his head. Rocking back, he raised his upper body a little to peer through the tent flap and over the oleanders. The traffic was moving slowly, the sun glinting off a rooftop.

  But he was supposed to be on holiday,’ Sandro said. ‘Shouldn’t have been here.’ And stubbornly, ‘I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Pietro. ‘The man was under a lot of pressure, wasn’t he? Money troubles? They’d be the least of it.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Sandro felt unreasonable anger rising in him.

  ‘I’m saying,’ said Pietro, ‘that we should consider the possibility that he – he walked into the traffic. Deliberately, maybe at night, maybe he waited for just the right kind of car, one of those big bastards with tinted windows that’s got hit and run all over it.’

  Sandro kept staring. ‘As a way of killing yourself? With the river right over there? With paracetamol in every pharmacy?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted it to look like an accident,’ said Pietro, his turn to sound stubborn. ‘You never know,’ he went on. ‘Suicide – it’s like everything. People are scared of doing it one way and not another. A personal thing.’

  ‘And no one stopped.’

  ‘Like I said,’ said Pietro. ‘We know it happens. At night, no witnesses? They’ve done surveys, you know. Ninety-five per cent of Italians say they wouldn’t report the accidental killing of a house pet on the roads. It’s something like fifteen per cent if it’s an adult and there are no other witnesses, and you know you can inflate that because some of those who said they would go back and help are lying. Different if it’s a kid.’ He straightened. ‘If he got knocked over the crash barrier and into the trees. Well. Looking back, maybe you could persuade yourself nothing had happened.’

  Sandro was still shaking his head. ‘If you say so,’ he said. ‘I still don’t buy it. Why here?’

  Belligerent, even as he said the words, Sandro thought, I’m too old for this. Too old to be standing in the particularly livid glare of the inside of a forensics tent, a glare that had illuminated his nightmares for the best years of his life, along with that particular smell of fusty plastic and preservatives, and of decomposing humanity. Too old to be picking a fight with his best – his only – friend. And abruptly he pushed his way out through the flapping plastic.

  Pietro came out behind him, a gloved hand on his shoulder. Outside, even the gaseous miasma that rose from the overheating traffic seemed like fresh air, compared with the stench inside the tent, and both men took deep gulps until they began to cough. A woman in the passenger seat of a red convertible brought to a temporary standstill, twenty-five perhaps, though made up to look older, turned and stared at them with distaste. The car’s driver, a tanned, well-preserved man approaching fifty, looked ahead resolutely through dark glasses.

  Sandro turned, one way then another, still thinking it over, suicide or – something else; still: why here? To the east, the blue hills of the Casentino, Pontassieve and beyond, from where you could stop and look back at the city as he and Luisa used to do, picnicking, and see right through the crenellated tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Hectares and hectares of forested hillside, untended olive groves, silent valleys where a body could rot to nothing unobserved.

  ‘It’s madness, isn’t it?’ Sandro spoke as if to himself. ‘Here?’ he said. ‘Why not – Christ. Why not somewhere less – less—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pietro gently, ‘it’s a shithole. But we both know that people sometimes take themselves off to places – to terrible places, far away from home. To do this.’

  Pietro stood in uneasy silence, waiting for Sandro to come to his senses. A siren whooped once and they both turned towards the sound; a blue light revolved on an unmarked van’s roof, stuck in the traffic coming towards them from the city. At the sound the cars began, reluctantly, to edge out of the way.

  ‘That’s pathology,’ said Sandro flatly.

  ‘Look,’ said Pietro quickly, in an undertone. ‘If he’d got himself – into a situation. With the wife, and the pregnant girlfriend. Running two homes?’ And Pietro shook his head wryly. ‘The wife might have been asking questions, the baby about to be born, the money—’ And he stopped. ‘You can see.’

  ‘Luisa wants us to move,’ said Sandro suddenly. ‘She’s found this apartment. D’you think I could get a loan, at my age?’

  Taken aback, Pietro said nothing, but then again, he didn’t have to. His expression was enough. ‘Sandro—’ he began, aghast.

  Sandro nodded slowly. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Suicide because of – the money. It’s always the money. Not wanting to let her down.’ He’d been stupid, hadn’t he? Instincts were sometimes the wrong things to pursue. He’d let Anna’s sweet, hopeful little face get between him and the facts. ‘Right,’ he said slowly.

  Pietro was raising a hand to indicate their presence to the pathology van. ‘Monterosso, you said?’ Sandro gazed back blankly. ‘The wife?’ said Pietro patiently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandro. ‘Monterosso. He’s supposed to be on holiday.’ He thought of the weeping woman who would sooner or later emerge from the room in the police morgue that smelled of bleach and preserving agents and the sickly topnote of decay. ‘A house called Le Glicine, overlooking the sea. His in-laws.’

  ‘And we’ll need your girl, too,’ said Pietro. ‘The other woman. When the wife’s been. She’ll need to ID him too.’

  ‘My girl,’ said Sandro and for a moment he set his hand before his eyes, wanting darkness. ‘Yes.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘IT WAS HIS WIFE,’ Ma said triumphantly.

  ‘What?’

  Roxana was sitting in an expensive new wine bar this side of the Uffizi – ten euros for a plate of sliced meats and a single cold glass of Greco di Tufa – and trying to relax. She didn’t usually drink very much, let alone at lunchtime, but today was not like other days. This month, in fact, was not like other months. Today Roxana needed something to click the little worry switch off in her brain, and wine seemed like a reasonable start. She’d just taken the first sip or two, just felt the beginnings of an effect – felt the shoulders drop, started to look around at the other customers, appreciate the sophisticated air-conditioning, because clearly that ten euros had to be paying for something other than two slices of finocchiona and three of salt ham – when her phone went.

  And it was Ma. ‘Hey, Mamma.’ She set the glass down. She’d stopped calling her mother by her first name; there’d been enough confusion of roles already.

  But Ma sounded her old self, completely: bristling, sharp, certain. ‘I’ve remembered.’

  ‘Remembered what?’

  ‘It was the wife,’ she said. ‘Yesterday. His wife phoned.’

  ‘What?’ This was the old Ma, too, making no concessions to those trying to follow her train of thought. ‘Whose wife? You mean the woman who phoned yesterday?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Ma, exaggeratedly patient. ‘I told you I was just tired, you know. You were putting too much pressure on me. That was why I couldn’t remember.’ A pause. ‘And I found the paper I made a note of her name on.’

  ‘Whose wife, Ma?’

  ‘Well, your boss’s wife, of course. That was the confusion. I know she’s not exactly a friend of yours but she did ask for you by name.’

  ‘Signora Brunello?’

  Roxana knew her, of course. Gracious, pretty, pampered, with the plump little children she tugged behind her impatiently. On holiday in Monterosso, her darling Claudio grilling fish on the barbecue, children splashing in the blue shallows: why on earth would she be calling Roxana at home?

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’ve
told you.’ Ma spoke sharply, as though Roxana was seven years old, and the summer holidays stretched for two months ahead of them and her temper was fraying. ‘Irene Brunello, wife of your boss, left her number and said, please could you call back when you got home.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Roxana. The supercilious girl behind the cold counter looked across at her with vague interest, and Roxana shifted to half-turn her back, her mind working furiously.

  Brunello’s wife calls. A private detective comes looking for Brunello. Had it been a mistake to talk to that man? Roxana’s stomach clenched. But she had trusted him; even now, she trusted him.

  ‘Give me the number, Ma,’ she said. Then, hearing the huffy silence, ‘Please.’

  Violetta Delfino read out the number, in the cut-glass accent that had served her so well for fifteen years as a hospital secretary. Roxana took a gulp of the wine, too recklessly; it made her giddy. How had Irene Brunello got her number? From the book? She was surprised the woman even remembered her name.

  ‘Thanks, Ma,’ she said, apologetically. Meaning, Sorry I doubted you.

  ‘And there was someone in the garden,’ said Ma defiantly. As if she knew exactly the way Roxana was thinking. ‘I went out there this morning and I saw footprints. I didn’t fall asleep and dream it, as I know you were wondering. I’m not—’

  ‘Footprints?’ They could have been Roxana’s footprints. ‘You’re not stupid, Ma, I know that.’

  ‘Gaga, I was going to say. Senile. I’m just old, and – and, well. You wait, my girl. You wait. You think you’re in charge, you are the one that manages everything. And suddenly it’s all different. Suddenly you have to take care, to be afraid. Soon they’ll be talking to you like a baby, feeding you mush on a spoon.’

  The food hadn’t tasted like ten euros’ worth, after that, though it had been fine. Roxana had cut her lunch break short by a good twenty minutes, paid up and headed for the door, the pretty girl’s eyes on her back. Didn’t she have a mother?

  Once outside, within a millisecond she regretted leaving the air-conditioned wine bar. The heat was something else. It probably reached its daily maximum at three in the afternoon, especially in the Via dei Saponai. The street of the soapmakers, how illustrious was that, in the great city of the Renaissance? But it led south off the Via dei Neri and the sun shone straight down its length. Fine in the winter; in the summer, though, it was deserted, a scalding thoroughfare to nowhere. No wonder business was bad.