Dead Season

by Christobel Kent

  The old guy who sold tourist knick-knacks in the Piazza Signoria had deposited his takings, and hadn’t batted an eyelid at the presence of officialdom. Surprisingly substantial takings: people were obviously out there, buying tat as if their lives depended on it, stuck in the boiling city. A young couple had come in with a baby, wanting to open a savings account for him. Go somewhere else, Roxana had wanted to say to them. Go to a bank that’s still likely to be around for his eighteenth birthday. And take him to the seaside, on a day like this. In a month like this: peering over the counter, she had seen the baby’s pale and perfect skin dewy with the heat.

  But all she had said was, nodding towards Marisa’s office, its door firmly closed, ‘Why don’t you come back after the holidays, and talk to our Gestore, Family e Business? She’ll come up with the right account for you.’

  The couple beamed down at the little head, nestled in a sling between them, and she understood that, really, they’d just been bringing him out to show him off.

  ‘I expect it’s hard to keep him cool, this weather,’ she’d said, then regretted it as they fell over each other to reassure her, they had air-conditioning, they’d read all the books, damp flannels to cool him, one thin sheet at night. If only they had anywhere else to go. They had all agreed it was too much, this heat, ninety-eight per cent humidity, it said in the paper.

  There had been a tiny paragraph in the paper, about Claudio Brunello’s death. Strange to see it there, so discreet a mention, with so little detail. The body of a man. The family have been informed. And then: The police are actively seeking anyone who might have been a witness to the accident, which is believed to have occurred between midday on Saturday and Sunday night.

  The bank closed at one p.m. on Saturday. Roxana now tried to bring the day back, to get more detail than she’d come up with for the police, but it was fuzzy. A phone ringing, early. Locking up, Val hurrying away to the river in his rowing vest, smiling up at the sun, the weekend awaiting them. The heat.

  Things had settled: the Guardia went into Claudio’s office to talk to sad, fat Giorgio Viola for half an hour that turned into an hour, then more. Weren’t they going to ask her any questions? Any real questions, not just, ‘where’s the coffee?’ It would appear not. Her headache had grown.

  Ma had called mid-morning, during a lull, fortunately. ‘There’s a man,’ she had complained, ‘phoned. He says he’s coming to fix the gate and can he come a bit later? He telephoned.’ She didn’t sound even slightly anxious about this man: Roxana sighed. Just when she thought she’d worked out what Ma’s problem was, it seemed to turn into something else.

  ‘Yes, I arranged it,’ she had said. ‘It needs a bit of TLC, that’s all. I’ll deal with it.’

  Listened to Ma grumble on a bit more; those footprints by the broken back gate came into focus as she half listened. She’d put them out of her mind, overnight; something that had seemed alarming in the dark would turn out to be innocent enough by daylight. Only she couldn’t quite think of an innocent explanation.

  ‘I won’t be late,’ she had finished: too many things competing for her attention.

  Not only the horrible fact of Brunello’s body, lying there two, three days in the heat – but something more amorphous that came with it. The feeling, something invisible as gas that had crept in here with the news and settled in corners, that things weren’t what she’d thought. That this place she came to every day – suffocatingly dull and reliable as clockwork – had secrets these men were trying to root out. And it had changed, in subtle and frightening ways that she couldn’t even put her finger on.

  Roxana had stood up the next time Marisa appeared.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she had hissed. ‘This can’t go on, can it? They’ll have to close us for a bit.’

  And at some movement beyond the door she had looked out to the street; you could never quite make out who it was out there, until you got up close. She had seen a flash of white trainers: kids.

  ‘It’s not good for business, is it? Having those guys here.’

  ‘They’re just doing their job,’ Marisa had said stiffly. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ Roxana had eyed her flatly: she was worried all right.

  ‘Have they found anything?’ They had both turned their heads towards the closed door that the three men hadn’t opened in some time.

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me if they had,’ Marisa had said, arms folded across her body and hugging herself. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to find. You knew Claudio. Claudio wasn’t dishonest.’ She had sounded like she was trying to keep up her own morale.

  ‘Are we going to – what’s going to happen to us? Are we going to lose our jobs?’ Roxana had been surprised by how little she cared.

  Marisa’s face had frozen. ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate – ah – that kind of talk isn’t appropriate, under the circumstances.’ She had drawn herself up. ‘Of course not. This is routine.’

  As if he’d heard, or sensed, what they were talking about, Val had suddenly appeared in the doorway, at Roxana’s shoulder, hands in his pockets.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Roxi,’ he had said. ‘Girl like you.’ He had been leaning his head against the door jamb looking at Marisa, and the look she had given him back had been startlingly hostile.

  ‘You tell her, Marisa,’ he’d gone on. ‘She’s employable anywhere. She’s a grafter. Work ethic.’

  Roxana had stared at him. He’d seemed to mean it.

  ‘Unlike you?’ Marisa had said, steely.

  ‘If you like,’ Val had said.

  Roxana hadn’t been able to work out what was going on, exactly: a kind of face-off. They had glared at each other a long moment and in the end, it was Marisa who had blinked first. ‘Back to your desk,’ she had said to Val. ‘This is a bank, remember?’ He had smiled and turned on his heel.

  ‘You can take an early lunch,’ Marisa had said peremptorily, turning to Roxana. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  Which was as close as she was going to get, Roxana had thought, to saying anything nice at all.

  The phone went within minutes of her getting out of there, walking away from the bank towards the river and just as the heat, shocking at first and then overwhelming, brought a sudden sweat to every pore of her body. Roxana stopped, dripping now with the effort of rummaging through her bag, overtaken by a stupid panic that was about nothing and everything. What had she spent all morning trying to put her finger on? What was she trying to remember? What was wrong, what was different? Was she losing it?

  This must be what it was like for Ma was the thought that came to her just before she saw the phone, glowing in the portable rubbish dump that was her handbag.

  ‘Maria Grazia.’

  She exhaled with sudden relief, her back against the warm flank of the nearest building, in the shade, looking down the length of a filthy, sunlit alley, the blank and crumbling façade of a church halfway down it, the lopsided sign of a boarded-up grocery. Just out of sight at the end of that alley was the porn cinema, one street back from the river. And then it came to her.

  ‘He turned up, then?’ Maria Grazia asked, her voice crackling and distant, people shouting in the background. ‘Your boyfriend with his cashbag? Or has he done a runner with the takings?’

  For a moment Roxana didn’t know what to say, so abrupt was the coincidence. Then she said, ‘No.’ She pressed her forearm against her forehead: could she seriously go back to work like this? She was drenched. ‘I mean, no, he never turned up.’

  ‘Well, if it was a movie,’ Maria Grazia said cheerfully, ‘he’d have done a runner with the takings.’

  ‘Life’s not like a movie,’ Roxana said automatically: an old joke between them, she the bank teller, her friend in the glamorous business of films. And besides, what takings? A couple of hundred euros on a good week.

  ‘Where are you, anyway?’ she went on.

  ‘Oh, just work,’ said Maria Grazia, sounding uncharacteristically vague. There was
a pause. ‘I was a bit worried about you, to tell the truth. Are you OK? You don’t really sound OK.’

  Roxana sighed, reluctant, suddenly, to go into the whole horrible mess. ‘I’m hot. The city’s a nightmare in August.’

  Maria Grazia’s voice sharpened. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s more than that.’

  ‘Brunello’s dead,’ said Roxana abruptly. ‘My boss. They found him dead. The Guardia’s in the bank, looking at the books.’

  ‘What?’ An intake of breath. ‘What does that mean, they found him dead? What – suicide?’

  Roxana found herself shaking her head. Why was that everyone’s assumption? Because it was more probable than – the alternative? Or more acceptable?

  ‘An accident?’ Maria Grazia corrected herself.

  ‘They don’t know.’ Roxana heard the dullness in her voice. ‘Looks like he was hit by a car – or something. Look, I don’t know the details, I – I—’ And then she couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s – it’s scary, to tell the truth.’ She didn’t even know it, until she said it.

  There was a silence: she could almost hear Maria Grazia thinking. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘The branch is all over the place, uniforms looking at everything, shut in his office and telling no one anything. We get a private detective in one day, looking for Claudio – next thing we know, he’s dead and the Guardia are turning the place upside down.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Maria Grazia. ‘What private detective?’

  Roxana sighed as her thoughts settled on the man who reminded her of her dad. A nice guy, in all this. He’d given her his card. Could a private detective really be a good guy? Other than in the movies.

  ‘He was looking for Claudio.’ She frowned. ‘Someone – some client was trying to track him down. I had the impression it might be a woman, though he didn’t say that. It doesn’t seem – maybe it was just a coincidence.’ His name came to her. ‘He was called Sandro Cellini. The private detective, I mean, though, God knows, that’s the least of our troubles, if Claudio was having an affair.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Maria Grazia reverently. ‘And I always thought that place was so sleepy.’

  Roxana went on, ‘No one knows what’s going to happen next, I’m even feeling sorry for Val, you know? And Marisa looks freaked. Completely terrified.’

  Maria Grazia snorted, unsympathetically. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, her.’ As if that said it all.

  Roxana sighed. ‘I know. You’d have thought Val and I would have more to worry about, it’s not as if she needs the money. I was beginning to wonder—’ And she stopped.

  ‘Doesn’t need the money? I don’t know about that. What were you beginning to wonder?’ And something in her old friend’s voice alerted Roxana.

  ‘She’s got money, though? That Torinese countess business.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Maria Grazia wearily. ‘Her family’s got a stuffy old apartment in the Piazza Carlo Felice. Very nice, been in the family donkey’s years, but that’s it. No country house, no private income. Why d’you think she hangs on for dear life to any man with money that comes near her?’ An explosive sound. ‘Why d’you think she works in that dump?’

  Right, thought Roxana.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Maria Grazia, reading her mind. ‘I just – I just don’t like women like Marisa.’

  ‘I was beginning to wonder if she was having an affair with Claudio. Claudio – Brunello, that is, the boss. She was so upset. Upset in a weird way, as if it was going to reflect on her somehow. Frightened.’

  There was a long pause. ‘I see,’ said Maria Grazia slowly. ‘D’you know, I don’t think that’s how she works. It’s not like he’s going to keep her in the style she wants, is it? A bank branch manager.’

  ‘Was,’ said Roxana sadly. ‘He’s not going to keep anyone now, is he? There’s his family.’

  Roxana stayed there after Maria Grazia had hung up, leaning against the wall. Lunchtime now, she should eat, but she had no appetite. This heat. The alley in front of her shimmered in the sun, the bent figure of old Signora Martelli, still dragging her trolley, stepped out into it from the side door of the church. Roxana wondered how she – and all the other old people stuck here – could stand it: the air shiny with pollution and humidity, the smell of the dumpsters practically palpable. It occurred to her that church might well be the best place to be, dark and cool.

  The old church, cheek by jowl with the porn cinema: how did that work? Did the customers call in on their way home to their wives? Was it even a sin? Impure thoughts: that was the one that came to mind.

  The porn cinema, the Albanian with his bag of takings: it was him, all morning – never mind the Guardia, they’d just been a distraction – he was what had been haunting Roxana. Gone missing. She’d taken his money on occasion, and had let her eyes slide over the scribbled and indecipherable signature, but she couldn’t even remember the account name. Something anonymous, as you’d expect of a backstreet porn cinema, a set of initials. A regular was a regular, you didn’t make the usual checks, and it wasn’t as if he was putting in thousands, which would require them – not that they always did – to ask their provenance under money-laundering legislation. A few euros, a modest deposit, and porn cinemas were legal, even if they were not to.

  Roxana’s taste. Was he her responsibility? In some obscure way, Roxana couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was.

  ‘Done a runner with the takings,’ Maria Grazia had said. He wouldn’t get far on the takings from the Carnevale, that was for sure. Unless he’d been creaming it off for years; unless something else was going on. Pushing herself away from the wall, Roxana stood stock-still on the pavement and felt the sweat cool on the back of her neck. Unless it was all connected.

  What was bugging her was that she’d never known his name, and the person she wanted to ask was Claudio Brunello. Serious-faced Brunello, frowning down at the figures, watchful Brunello, who had a word for all his customers: How is your son getting on at university? Have you managed to find a buyer for your apartment yet? How’s business? He would have known, had Roxana asked, What’s happened to the Albanian with his cashbag from the – um – cinema? You know the one. What’s his name again?

  But Claudio Brunello would never be walking back into the bank with a kindly smile, would never prop his umbrella carefully in the corner and straighten his tie before sitting down. And the more she thought about that, the harder it was for Roxana to get rid of the idea, however foolish it might seem, that there was a connection. Between Claudio Brunello and the Albanian. Two disappearances.

  The security guard from the bank rounded the corner in his little car, parked it illegally up on the pavement. He shielded his eyes and then, recognizing her, raised his hand.

  Reflexively returning his greeting, Roxana registered a hesitation in the man’s stance when, instead of heading for the cool wine bar for a little plate of something daintily presented, Roxana stepped off the pavement and into the dumpster-choked alley.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT HAD SEEMED TO take Anna Niescu an age to climb the two flights of stairs to the flat, time for Sandro to reflect, with increasing desperation, on a number of things. On how long Anna had before she gave birth to this baby, and on all that had happened to worsen her situation since he had sat in his office and listened to Giuli helping her up the stairway with kindness and encouragement. Now the roles were reversed: Giuli was waiting upstairs with Luisa, and Sandro wasn’t doing half as good a job at easing poor Anna’s burden.

  ‘Nearly there,’ he had said under his breath. Beside him Anna had paused and in the half darkness he saw her face. Dark-browed, intent; as closed-off and alone as an icon.

  They hadn’t really been able to talk in front of Anna, he and Pietro, and Sandro just couldn’t bring himself to leave her on her own in that horrible place. He knew all too well what Luisa would have said to the suggestion.

  Besides, his duty was only to his client;
he wasn’t a police officer any more, nor an impartial seeker after truth. That was the theory, anyway, and even if most people would laugh long and hard at the thought of the Polizia dello Stato as truthseekers, at least Pietro fitted the bill. A good man.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ was just what he’d said to Anna earnestly as she had flinched at the uniformed figure coming through the door. ‘You can trust Pietro. I mean, really.’ Thinking, as the gust of disinfectant and the decay it was supposed to mask entered the room with Pietro, I’ve got to get her out of this place.

  Pietro hadn’t disappointed: perhaps he’d looked at Anna Niescu and seen his own daughter’s sunny features somewhere in the little oval face, the shiny black hair. He’d taken her hands in his and spoken gently.

  She was sure, had been all Anna would say, over and over, absolutely sure it wasn’t him, and in the end Sandro could see that Pietro had believed her. His old friend had sat back in his chair, musing.

  They had both been thinking the same thing, Sandro had felt it. That it couldn’t just be coincidence. That there must be some connection.

  ‘When did your fiancé tell you his name?’ Sandro had asked gently. ‘Do you remember? When he first told you.’

  ‘Oh, straight away,’ Anna had said, and he had seen her brighten, just fractionally, before fading again abruptly. Had Sandro been glad that she was learning to be wary of hoping for the best? All he had felt was a leaden sort of guilt. She had gone on, looking down into her lap, ‘As we were walking home from the fruit stall, that first time. He shook my hand and everything.’

  Liliana, Sandro had thought. I should talk to Liliana, who sold them those oranges.

  ‘And?’ Pietro had asked.

  ‘Well, he said, I’m Josef,’ she had said, faltering. ‘I suppose it was only later he told me – that was his middle name. The name his mother called him.’

  ‘He told her his mother was foreign,’ Sandro had said, by way of explanation.