The kid set down the cups and picked his phone up again, incurious.
‘Saw nothing, knows nothing,’ said Pietro under his breath. ‘Not even freaked by it. It’s like two bodies found half a mile from here means nothing.’ They drained the cups, gave a nod that wasn’t acknowledged and were back on the pavement in under five minutes. ‘I blame those little screens,’ said Pietro, looking up into the black sky – not a star. The cloud was thick and low. ‘People don’t listen any more. They don’t watch. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’
And in the car back, rattling down into the city, they were still so mellow with the liqueur and the breakthrough that they’d sat in silence, he and Pietro, each separately going over what it meant. There was a brief heavy rain shower as they came into the city, the old wipers straining, but Pietro roused himself to comment on how much cleaner it made the windscreen, which was true.
Almost as an afterthought, as if the grimy windscreen had reminded him, Pietro said, ‘And the fireplace. Do we really want to call them out because we found a dead bird?’
A dead bird. Could that be all it was? It felt like something more, something sinister. But Sandro had just agreed. ‘Sure. We’ll see how we feel in the morning.’ And the wipers had flogged back and forth in the silence that ensued, opening their fan-shape of clear glass in the murk.
He had no desire to go back to La Vipera at all, not by night, not by day, not with a full forensics team behind him, and he had had a premonition, there and then, that if he did go back, he’d be alone.
He’d dropped Pietro off and driven on, in to the dark avenue of trees under the slope up to San Miniato, where there was free parking, and walked back down in the dripping dark, towards the light.
Lotti and Nielsson.
They had their list of suspects, but what good was it? Means, motive, opportunity and Sandro’s intuition – all of them lacking something. Princess Salieri, gaga. Benedetta Salieri, in hospital, even if you could imagine her strong enough to wield a knife. Prince Salieri, who was dead. Gorgone, who’d been in America in August.
The other women: Kaufmann and Grenzi and Mason. One busy with her painting and her church works, one somewhere in the mountains, the last in her seventies and in a commune on the other side of the world.
Maria Clara Martinelli, sitting in her house under the trees, freely admitting she hadn’t gone anywhere all summer and disliked both victims. But to tie a woman up and stab her in the belly? What made someone do that? What terrible place did that hatred crawl from?
The deaths were different. He held to that fact, tenacious. Connected, but different.
Bartolini, the brother: on retreat with his sister. Away in Greece. Find out why.
He heard Pietro clear his throat on the other end of the line, waiting, and Sandro sighed. ‘Old Lotti, the father, could have just hated foreigners,’ he said. ‘And hated free love. Plenty of people do, after all, and not just old farts in the country set in their ways.’
Free love. The idea made him pace towards the window, the phone held to his ear.
‘But –’ said Pietro.
‘But I don’t think it was just that, either,’ said Sandro. ‘I think –’ He hesitated. ‘I think we need to talk to Lotti’s cousin. Didn’t you say she was in San Frediano?’
He took down the address; they arranged to meet there. Then – who knew. Then back up to Sant’Anna, up to the big house. The princess and her children: the thought gave him a buzz he hadn’t felt in a long time.
There was business to clear up, though, first. ‘I was thinking,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ said Pietro. Sandro looked down into the coffee dregs and as he looked up there was Luisa in the doorway, something in her dark eyes, and then she had turned back in to the kitchen. He heard the click of the gas as she put on another pot. Mind-reader.
He’d thought of it, in fact, as he went to sleep, Luisa saying something or other he hadn’t listened to; in the grey dark of their bedroom he had thought of the inside of Lotti’s house. The gleam of the fading light on its surfaces, the neatness of a butcher’s parlour. And the telephone on the wall.
‘The landline,’ he said. ‘Remember Martinelli saying she noticed Lotti senior making the call all those years ago because they had a landline?’
‘Yes?’ Pietro knew enough to let him go on.
‘Lotti didn’t have a mobile, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I mean, I know those lads know their job but – did you, did they check the landline? Incoming, outgoing calls, say, the last few months?’
A pause that lengthened, then Pietro cleared his throat. ‘Ah. Yes. Well – I’m not sure about that. Let me check.’
The silence threatened to grow again: was this how it was going to be? Awkward silences? Not if Sandro could help it. He leapt in. ‘Any joy yet on the licence plate?’
‘Oh, that.’ Pietro brightened audibly. ‘Nielsson’s camper-van. Yes, as a matter of fact. Road traffic information comes in in dribs and drabs, you know. Cameras captured it at a tollbooth coming on to the ringroad in Milan and off again forty minutes later. Late June. Heading east. It was issued with a fixed penalty notice in Bergamo, which was paid locally, immediately, in cash. That’s all we’ve got so far, although numberplate recognition takes a while, especially with old vehicles. But probably between now and then she’d either been stationary or touring back roads. My money’s on that.’
‘Any images of the actual van?’
‘One fuzzy picture. It’s an old camper, turquoise trim, nothing special.’
Sandro grunted, and there was a silence.
It was still there between them: he regretted having told Pietro about Nielsson. He couldn’t work out if Pietro had understood or not. How could he, when Sandro hadn’t understood himself, not then, not even now. As if her hand had marked him, in a place no one else could see. He sighed and got his coat.
‘Luisa?’ She was in the bathroom, door closed. ‘I’m off.’
She caught up with him at the door. ‘Can’t we sit down and have a proper talk?’ she said, but he was so buzzed he just looked at her, almost blank, and she let him go. It wasn’t until he was out in the street that the thought recurred. She was acting funny. She wasn’t herself.
And as he set off, something Pietro had said last night about putting Luisa in the frame for Nielsson’s murder before he’d put Sandro there came back into his head. He’d almost given Pietro their alibi – at the seaside in early August – before realising it was a joke. But had Luisa known? All those years ago, had she known? Sandro stopped, turned, looked up at the window. But he didn’t go back and ask.
*
The cousin was an angular, hard-faced woman in a pinny who ran a hole-in-the-wall tobacconist’s on Borgo San Frediano that Sandro had walked past a thousand times and never entered. Sandro hadn’t smoked in twenty years, and he didn’t buy every tabachi’s other money-spinner, lottery tickets; nor, he thought as he entered the tiny space behind Pietro, was he in the market for the china shepherdess figurines alternating with statues of the virgin that seemed to occupy every shelf.
‘She says it’ll have to be at work,’ Pietro had said on the phone, calling him back. ‘She can’t take any time off.’
Flavia Lotti – the spinster daughter of Giancarlo’s uncle on his father’s side – stood grim-faced behind her racks of chewing gum and lottery tickets in her flowered pinny, against a backcloth of cigarette brands. The effect was enough to give anyone a migraine, even without the glare she was giving them. It occurred to Sandro that she hadn’t closed the place for mourning, as would have been traditional even twenty years ago.
There was nowhere for them to sit. ‘So, Miss Lotti,’ said Sandro, having opened by commiserating with her for her loss, which courtesy she listened to stony-faced, ‘when did you last see your cousin? Giancarlo?’
She shrugged. ‘Ten years?’ she said. ‘No, eleven. At my father’s funeral.’
Sandro
was startled. They lived barely ten miles apart. ‘You weren’t a close family?’ She made a face of distaste and said nothing. ‘But you asked him to your father’s funeral?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask him, he simply turned up.’
Sandro tried another tack. ‘We’re trying to establish a connection between him and the woman whose body was found with his.’ And he saw something, just for a second, an unmistakable gleam. ‘Do you know anything about her? Her name was Johanna Nielsson. Forty years ago, when you would have been –’ he hesitated, guessing ‘– a teenager, perhaps, did you visit the family then? In Sant’Anna?’
And finally, there behind her barricade of packets and boxes, something shifted: Flavia Lotti took a step forwards so that she stood in the space where customers would pay. ‘I never saw them,’ she said. ‘I had stopped going by then.’ Her voice had a new quality, something throatier.
‘But you used to?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He and I – when I was a child, five, six. Our parents thought it would be good for us. Giancarlo was eight years older than me.’ She stopped, a silence that grew. It seemed in that moment hazardous to say anything. Pietro and Sandro exchanged glances and waited.
‘I never married,’ she said. Still they said nothing. And she burst out, not loud but fierce, under her breath, ‘He was a filthy man. A filthy boy and a filthy man.’ And then she ran out of breath. They waited a beat, then another, then she went on. ‘I heard my parents discussing him: they had had words with his father. It wasn’t me – I –’ She gasped a moment, then seemed to reset herself; her face that had been bright with spots of colour on each cheek turned pale. ‘It was that he had been seen visiting that house, for sex with those foreign women, and his father drew the line at that.’
Behind them the door pinged and they turned to see a fat woman pushing her way in. There wasn’t room for all of them and for a moment they all stood there, unsure of what to do, until Pietro took the initiative and, with some jovial remark, edged sideways and out of the door. Sandro followed him.
On the pavement Pietro was bouncing on the balls of his feet. It was cold. He looked uncomfortable out of uniform. ‘No wonder they had him in for the Monster killings,’ he said. ‘Thoroughly nasty piece of work by the sound of it.’
‘So he molested her,’ said Sandro.
Pietro sighed. ‘She might have killed him herself,’ he said.
Sandro nodded. ‘You could hardly blame her,’ he said. ‘But Nielsson? She didn’t even know what the woman looked like.’ He chewed the inside of his cheek, wishing for another coffee. ‘It’s got to be someone who knew them both. If he was a regular visitor to La Vipera for sex, and Nielsson sanctioned it –’ He paused, thinking. ‘Would a woman kill someone, so long after, for rape?’
Pietro shrugged. ‘You fancy asking one of the women in your life? My guess is – maybe. Depends.’
He was right. ‘We’ve got a number for Mason, the woman in Canada?’ said Sandro. ‘And what about this mysterious Grenzi who runs the ski school in the Dolomites?’
‘Ah,’ said Pietro. ‘Well. About her –’
But then the door swung outward viciously, almost knocking him into the road, and the fat woman emerged, giving them both a funny look.
‘You were going to tell me something,’ said Sandro, ‘about the girl in the mountains. Grenzi.’ Although of course she wasn’t a girl any more, was she?
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he saw there was a missed call from Luisa.
‘There was a message about Grenzi from the station,’ said Pietro. ‘I’ll call them back from the car.’
‘Why don’t you do it now?’ said Sandro.
*
Comes home to roost, thought Giuli, putting her phone away in the bright panelled splendour of Rivoire in the Piazza Signoria. Doesn’t it? All comes home to roost.
Time had been when she had been the one to run to Luisa with her troubles. She’d depended on them too much. Over the years she’d been the one to take, taking love, taking their roof over her head, taking the job Sandro gave her, taking money, taking comfort and consolation. When she finally found the tears to cry for her own stupid, idle, hopeless mother, for the women she’d met in prison for murder herself, for the baby she was never going to have, Luisa’s shoulder had been the one Giuli had cried on. Never mind that Luisa had lost a baby of her own, and even when they’d found out Luisa had breast cancer (Giuli, who had not even a vestige of belief, almost crossed herself whenever she thought of that day, six years past and no recurrence, God willing), Luisa had been the one to comfort Giuli, not the other way around.
And when Giuli had found Enzo, she’d started leaning on him, too. However much she’d told herself, don’t depend, take nothing for granted, it’s not safe, she’d leaned on him and, stranger still, he hadn’t seemed to mind.
But now it was her turn.
‘Ey!’ The square, grumpy old barman of Rivoire, whose face only a mother could love, shoved the little cup towards her. He had a heart of gold, Giuli knew, and when she pulled herself together and smiled he scowled even harder, like one of those old American gangster actors. But the tips of his ears went pink.
Giuli had just got her ticket at the cash desk and handed it across the counter when her phone went.
‘I’ve been trying to get Sandro.’ Luisa had sounded breathless, unsettled. Even an edge of panic, and Luisa never panicked. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Aren’t they going back to Sant’Anna?’ she said. ‘You know this city, no signal worth a damn.’ Rivoire, a big open luxurious place with a wide piazza in front of it, was one of the very few exceptions. Was that why she’d come? In case a call came in from – someone? She’d even had her phone on loud.
The clinic had said they’d call if there was anything urgent. She hadn’t been thinking about the clinic, but perhaps deep down. Perhaps.
Deep down, she didn’t want to know.
‘What is it, Luisa?’ she’d said sharply. Because if she wasn’t firm Luisa would prevaricate, she’d draw back from the brink. ‘Luisa?’
It tumbled out in a miserable rush. Luisa had tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen. She wanted to stop him – she wanted to go up there with him, to Sant’Anna, but now he’d be with Pietro and how could they have a proper conversation –
‘What, though?’ said Giuli. ‘What’s actually worrying you?’
A silence. ‘I – I just got the idea that Luca Bartolini might tell him he saw me out there at Sant’Anna. Saw this madwoman wandering around.’ A pause. ‘Bartolini even said he remembered me from all that time ago at his sister’s wedding. What if he knows I’m married to Sandro? The old princess knows I am.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Giuli. ‘And isn’t the old lady gaga?’
‘He might – I might have messed up the investigation somehow. I don’t know.’
‘You just need to talk to Sandro.’ Giuli tried to speak gently, but the truth was Luisa’s fears and panic seemed to her unreasonable.
‘Before he goes back up to Sant’Anna,’ said Luisa, stubborn.
‘Okay,’ said Giuli. ‘Leave it to me.’
But she had no clue. How did she know how Sandro was going to react? Luisa had lied to him. That was a big deal. Luisa never lied. Never panicked.
There was too much to think about. There was Enzo this morning, awake at five and staring at the ceiling. Pale as a ghost at the kitchen table.
‘We’ll get through it, my love. We’ll get her through it.’
‘She’s going to die,’ Enzo said, as if she hadn’t understood, and she put a hand gingerly on his shoulder.
‘I know, darling,’ she said.
And then he’d got up all in a hurry, leaving his plate and cup untouched, grabbing his coat. ‘Got to get to work.’ Her hand falling back to her side, useless.
Giuli didn’t have to ask herself if he’d kissed her goodbye: he hadn’t. Flying down the stairs, away from her. She’d
gathered her things slowly, setting their small space to rights. At least he’d stopped worrying about her. But that was only temporary, wasn’t it? Unless –
Now, standing in Rivoire’s doorway, at the thought of all the precautions she must take, all the calls and lies and evasions and pitfalls waiting for her, Giuli felt a kind of clamouring, a dizziness. She felt the muscles in her face tighten and for a wild, irrational moment she wondered if the coffee had been poisoned, if someone was poisoning her.
She needed air – it was just that it was stuffy, the smell of coffee and sugar making her stomach roil. Once outside she paused, breathed and slowly things reasserted themselves. She had really thought she might faint: when had she ever fainted? All she’d put her body through and was the bloody menopause going to do for it? Something was still buzzing.
It was her phone again. ‘Sandro,’ she said faintly.
‘Bloody hell, this town,’ he complained crossly. ‘Missed call from Luisa, and I can’t get her back.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘she wants to talk to you. It’s really – she’s got very upset about all this. I know you’re busy but please.’
‘She’s not ill, is she?’ Now it was his turn to panic. Someone was talking in the background, and her heart sank as she heard the acoustic of the enclosed space and an engine. They were already in the car.
‘Sandro, she’s not ill. She wants to talk to you before you go back up to Sant’Anna. It’s important. Surely you can manage that?’ Her phone was doing something else now, a separate buzzing – she held it away from her face and saw there was an incoming call from a number she didn’t recognise. She rejected it. ‘Sandro? Are you still there?’ She could feel the sweat beading on her forehead.
‘Well, what, then?’ he said, sounding distracted, and when she hesitated, thinking she should just spit it out, he went on. ‘Anyway,’ he said, impatient now, ‘we aren’t going to Sant’Anna after all – something’s come up. All right?’ Giuli felt herself subside with relief. Temporary, she was sure. But relief. ‘Giuli?’
‘You’re back tonight, though?’
She heard him hesitate. ‘Maybe,’ he said cautiously. ‘It’s – we’re going up north. So we can’t be sure – but I’ll get hold of Luisa. I’ll keep her posted.’
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