Pietro asked the next question. ‘How had she been? Since she’d arrived?’
‘Normal, for her,’ said Castrozzi. ‘She was a woman with a lot of – struggle in her. She fought against something, I don’t know what. She didn’t talk very much, but the muscles tell you their story. I understood she would have episodes of stress. She once said to me that massage was her lifesaver.’ Castrozzi stroked the pillow abstractly. ‘She said it stopped her thinking.’ She exhaled, a sigh, almost angry. ‘Anyway, when she arrived she was tense, as always. The second day I could feel the difference. It wasn’t simply the massage, but it was her ritual, of letting go.’ She hesitated. ‘But that last day. That last massage was not normal.’
They waited for her to go on. The atmosphere in the room was hushed, the lighting low, the scented air subtle, but for a second Sandro had the sense that it could suffocate, turn claustrophobic in the blink of an eye: he had the urge to run up the stairs and throw open the door.
‘Maybe it was because – well, I don’t know. When she came down the room was empty. There was another massage booked in halfway through, in the next cubicle, but when she arrived it was just me and Lucia. We knew each other well, there was no need for any preliminaries and she wasn’t a talkative woman – but still. There was something constrained about her. Tense.’
‘She gave no explanation?’ said Pietro.
Castrozzi shook her head. ‘She undressed very hurriedly, lay down. It was as though – I don’t know. As though she wanted to run away.’
Sandro heard himself murmur in agreement: the feeling he had had himself the moment before. He wasn’t sure about all this, about these feelings. They seemed very real, very concrete, but they weren’t facts, were they? But there was a crossover: what Castrozzi had said about the muscles having a voice, those were feelings.
Castrozzi glanced at him and went on. ‘She did seem to relax, eventually. After about – well, until the next client appeared.’ Her expression was anguished. ‘It’s not ideal, massaging two side by side.’ She put a hand up to the curtain behind her as if to show how insubstantial it was. ‘But sometimes it is unavoidable. We keep the curtains closed, and as a rule clients prefer not to talk, it was just that this time –’
Sandro leaned forward on the hard white chair. ‘You saw the other client?’
The masseuse shook her head. ‘The curtains were closed. I only heard her,’ she said. ‘And that was when I felt Lucia grow tense. The junior masseuse, the one with the other client, was temporary, from Denmark. Perhaps she didn’t really understand our rules, perhaps – we were very quiet – she didn’t know we were there. Anyway, they weren’t talking loudly, it was whispering, and I couldn’t exactly stop and reprimand them without making things worse.’
Sandro and Pietro exchanged a glance. ‘Were they talking Italian?’ said Pietro.
Castrozzi looked puzzled. ‘Yes, of course, the Danish masseuse spoke Italian and English as well as her first language.’
‘So you understood what they were saying?’
Castrozzi’s face clouded. ‘I didn’t eavesdrop, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s not what we mean,’ said Sandro patiently.
She gave him a hard look then waved her hand. ‘The patient was murmuring. A kind of monologue, rambling. I tried not to listen because, to be honest, I felt she was not quite well. Some of our patients unravel a little here. But,’ she took a breath and they let her go on, ‘she was saying over and over that you could never escape your past. That people come back to you, like ghosts. That she had seen a ghost here, and the ghost had said things she didn’t understand. And as I was massaging Lucia, instead of the muscles relaxing, they were becoming more tense, more and more tense.’
‘Do you think,’ Pietro was diffident, ‘in your opinion, was it the woman or what she was saying that was disturbing Lucia Grenzi?’
Castrozzi had pushed herself off the massage bed and was standing, rubbing her forearms in an anxious movement. ‘I think it was both. I was on the point of stopping and suggesting I come to Lucia’s room to resume the massage. And then the patient discovered the masseuse was Danish and her voice became louder. She almost started to rant – she was calling the woman names. She kept saying vipera, over and over again. It was as though she was a different person.’
‘You told this to the coroner?’
The masseuse shrugged, uneasy. ‘I just said she had been tenser than usual. I mean, discussing another client –’ She took a pace away from them, then back. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Do you know who that other client was?’ She stared at them. They stared back. Deadlock.
‘Did she – was she perhaps a day visitor?’ Pietro tried. ‘One of those who come in just for a treatment or two?’ The masseuse shrugged. ‘It wasn’t,’ and Sandro could hear in Pietro’s voice the same strain of keeping his temper, ‘a woman we know was using the swimming pool on that day, a woman with long white hair?’
‘I didn’t see the patient,’ said Castrozzi carefully, ‘but it wasn’t that woman.’
‘How do you know?’ said Sandro, intent at last.
‘Because that woman had a foreign accent, northern – perhaps, in fact, even Danish – and the woman we heard in the next cubicle was certainly Italian, rather well-spoken too. And because I encountered the woman with long white hair in the lobby on my way down to Lucia. She was very rude: she pushed in front of me as I was coming in for my shift, practically knocked me over. She seemed fired up about something. Muttering to herself.’
‘What time was this?’ asked Pietro, ‘Did you see where she came from? From the swimming pool?’
Castrozzi shook her head. ‘She smelled of alcohol, though, so perhaps she’d been in the bar.’
‘There’s a bar?’ said Sandro, unable to restrain his surprise.
‘Even in hospitals they have bars, this isn’t rehab,’ said the masseuse stiffly. ‘Look, I didn’t see the client and I didn’t recognise her voice, so I can’t swear to anything, of course. I can only give my opinion. She wasn’t one of my regulars, if I knew who –’ She broke off. ‘Of course we have a log of all bookings.’ Stiffly. ‘It’s confidential.’
‘This is a murder investigation,’ Sandro reminded her softly, and her eyes widened.
A pause, then she spoke. ‘This murder investigation – do you think the woman in the next cubicle who said she’d seen a ghost, was she the victim?’
Sandro shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s not. From what you’ve told us, that’s one thing we can be sure of. As to who she is …’
An idea began to form, a possibility. He stood up, quickly, before it dissipated, and hastily Pietro followed suit.
‘You’ve been most kind, Miss Castrozzi,’ said Pietro. ‘I, we, appreciate –’ and he held out his card. ‘If there’s anything else …’
She nodded, looking down at the card, the frown still there.
Hurrying down the dim, warm corridor with its soft diffused light, Sandro said mildly, ‘They all seem awfully keen on respecting the privacy of the clientele, from Dottoressa Scarpa down. D’you think we’re going to need a warrant to look at that log of spa bookings? Or the hotel register?’
Pietro made a sceptical sound. ‘Well, we can try,’ he said cautiously. They climbed the stairs into the cool pale light of the lobby, where they stopped a moment.
‘Would you ever come to a place like this?’ said Sandro, looking around. No voices raised above a murmur, figures moving beyond layers of glass in white bathrobes, outside on the heated terrace.
‘Well, Gloria’s always saying …’ Pietro’s voice petered out: he cleared his throat. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘It makes me think of – you know when they describe heaven, when you’re a kid, and you think, hold on, doesn’t sound like much fun?’
Sandro nodded, smiling at Pietro’s sheepish expression. ‘Nor me –’ he began, and then in his pocket the mobile throbbed. Around them nothing changed, no one looked arou
nd, but he knew he was supposed to go outside to talk in anything resembling a normal voice.
The clean, dry chill of the air on the forecourt struck him all over again. It was like Pietro said: heaven didn’t feel that welcoming.
‘Hello? Hello?’ the voice gabbled. ‘Is that Cellini?’
‘Calm down,’ said Sandro. It was Gorgone.
Gorgone sounded different: he sounded terrible. He sounded like the drugs had worn off or the therapist had died or the bank had gone bust.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if it means anything, if it matters.’
‘It usually does,’ said Sandro, ‘when it sounds like this. What is it, Gorgone?’
Through the big glass doors of the entrance he could see Pietro standing there. He looked like a boy on his first day at school, lost. Obedient and lost. He saw him jump a little, then scrabble in his pocket, remove the mobile from it. He held it to his ear. Saw him turn and begin to walk further inside the hotel.
‘She – I never thought – I didn’t mean – I had forgotten, truly.’
‘Start from the beginning,’ said Sandro.
‘His daughter,’ said Gorgone desperately. ‘The prince’s daughter from – back then. Back there, Sant’Anna, La Vipera. I didn’t even remember her name, the daughter. I met her on the stairs of my building – can you imagine that? Months ago, in the spring – I can’t remember exactly when. She said she had been recommended the shrink by a hospital in Florence.’ A ragged sort of gasp. Sandro wondered at the man. He’d seemed so bland and composed, so confident. Perhaps it only took a chink, a hole in the fabric he’d woven around himself – like Lucia Grenzi.
‘You had an affair with her father,’ said Sandro quietly. ‘Isn’t that it?’
‘I – I –’ Gorgone stammered, didn’t answer. ‘She seemed quite … She asked me if I could recommend a spa. It was all very civilised. I told her about La Serenita. I assumed, I thought – how was I to know the other woman would be there, how was I to know?’ he gabbled. ‘I just wanted to get rid of her and I said the first place that came into my head that wasn’t one of ours. God knows I didn’t want her at one of our wellness centres.’
‘You didn’t know Nielsson was in the area, either?’
A silence, as of horror. ‘Johanna? How could I know? I kept away, I kept my distance, that was the agreement when we all went our separate ways, that was what we decided.’ Sandro heard him swallow, the sound of a child caught out, the dry mouth of a liar. ‘I didn’t see her. I didn’t see Johanna.’
‘That’s not quite the truth, is it?’ said Sandro, sensing only that.
‘I didn’t.’ Gorgone was insistent. ‘She phoned, Johanna –’ He broke off and when he spoke again his voice was broken, horrified. ‘It wasn’t long after but, I swear, I’d forgotten all about Salieri’s daughter. Johanna said she was on her way through Italy. She asked if I knew where – people were, I couldn’t even remember the names, I told her I thought the Italian girl, Grenzi, was in the Dolomites.’ He broke off and Sandro heard him swallow again. ‘She said she was “doing the rounds”.’
‘What did she mean by that?’ Sandro interrupted him swiftly and Gorgone gave a frightened gasp.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know – I’m not a mind-reader, am I?’ A pause, but Sandro said nothing and Gorgone went on. ‘Catching up with people, that’s all. And I – I –’ he was gabbling and Sandro could imagine him doing the same to Nielsson, a gabbling torrent of evasions and half-truths ‘– I told her I couldn’t see her, I was too busy. She laughed and said she was coming anyway and so I went to America. My receptionist will tell you, she came and I was gone. I was thousands of miles away, I can prove it.’
‘No doubt you can,’ said Sandro drily. ‘Why didn’t you want to speak to her?’
‘Those days,’ he said, pleading, ‘dragging all that up, I don’t know, perhaps she was feeling the need to – have closure. We can’t be held accountable for those days, can we?’
Closure, thought Sandro. What did that mean? ‘I don’t know,’ he said, still dry. ‘That depends on what you did.’
Gorgone didn’t seem to have heard. Sandro had seen this phenomenon, years of therapy that served to convince the subject they need take no responsibility. He controlled his anger: he let Gorgone speak.
‘And then she turned up. The daughter. His daughter. I couldn’t remember her name.’ As though wondering how much else there was he might not remember.
‘Benedetta,’ said Sandro. ‘Her name is Benedetta.’
*
Giuli looked out of the window and saw Luisa at the door of the building, staring at the brass nameplate. ‘Second floor,’ Giuli called, and then Luisa looked up, in some kind of daze. Giuli retreated inside and pressed the button to admit her, again.
What had happened now? This Nielsson murder had done something to Luisa, to the quiet sensible pair she had come to think of as her parents. What had she been thinking of, calling Luisa? It was only that she had felt suddenly out of her depth. Still wobbly from vomiting in the concierge’s icy privy, climbing the narrow scented stairway had brought on an access of vertigo – and walking into the small apartment everything had swirled around her. The faces scrutinising her, this woman no better than she should be insisting on being allowed to poke around a lady’s apartment.
A noblewoman’s apartment. Because it hadn’t only been the faces of the concierge and the cobbler staring at Giuli, this upstart. Even in the tiny lobby she’d been greeted by a full-length painting of a woman in a long red dress, pearls in her hair, the kind of thing you saw in a museum – and as Giuli followed the concierge into the small sitting room, thirty other faces gazed down at her from the walls. Ancient heavy gilded frames, popes and cardinals and princes, lapdogs and olive groves and tapestries, velvet gowns and a treasury of jewels, all in oils, all crammed in to a sitting room barely bigger than the concierge’s.
‘I’ve just got to –’ Turning from them with hands suddenly trembling. ‘Can I open a window a minute?’
And it was there, standing in the clammy air – she no longer knew if the storm was brewing in the atmosphere or in her own head – that she dialled Luisa. She saw the Neapolitan with her pomegranate-coloured hair mutter to the cobbler. What could she say in front of these people? Come. Help me. When Luisa had answered, Giuli was flooded at first just with gratitude, that she answered, that she was there, but almost immediately she heard a weakness in Luisa’s voice that seemed an echo of her own, and she checked herself.
Luisa said she was all right. That she was at home. Her voice steadying.
The Neapolitan had started a muttered argument with the cobbler. He had put a restraining hand on her forearm and her voice rose, shrill.
‘Would you mind?’ Giuli half-whispered. ‘Could you just come?’
‘Where are you? Who are those people?’
‘They’re just – they’re helping.’ She gave the address hurriedly. When she hung up they had fallen silent again and were looking at her suspiciously. The room loomed, its coffered ceilings too high for the narrow walls, and she stepped back into it, under all the painted eyes.
How could you imagine a child in here? There was nothing for a child to play with. It was dark, it was crowded. A child would be frightened.
There wasn’t a sound.
The kitchen was a galley, you could barely turn around in it, and it smelled stale, unpleasant. An old lady’s kitchen, dust thick on the counter, a row of glass jars with bleached and desiccated herbs. Giuli found herself thinking for some reason of Enzo’s mother’s kitchen, the warmth, the air fragrant with good things. One child between them and him grown but theirs was a family, right enough. She might be dying but there was life. Here there was no life.
‘Seen enough?’ said the concierge, but Giuli had knelt and was opening the fridge. If there was a child there would be orange juice, there would be chocolate puddings from the supermarket, there would be cheese strings. If she h
ad provided a grandchild for Enzo’s parents – and the thought barely checked her, she was past all that, wasn’t she? – that was how their fridge would look.
But Signora Ticino’s fridge, a small old model that wheezed and shuddered as she opened the door, held only a withered lemon and a tub of margarine – and still it smelled of rancid neglect. Giuli felt a warning growl from her stomach as the sourness rose to her nostrils and abruptly got to her feet, and that was when the buzzer sounded. Luisa had been quick.
Behind her the concierge was saying something about knives.
She hurried past the staring pair to the lobby and pressed the buzzer to admit the caller without checking who it was, and then of course she had to run, awkward in her hurry, blundering through the sitting room to lean out.
She heard Luisa’s breathing on the stairs, laboured, and panic set up under everything else, for the things she put her through, and then Luisa was there in the doorway.
‘It’s her,’ said Luisa. ‘Ticino. She’s Ticino.’ She looked past Giuli and nodded perfunctorily at the Neapolitan and the cobbler, not asking why they were there.
‘It’s who?’ said Giuli.
‘Mrs Cellini,’ said the cobbler from behind her, sounding uncomfortable. ‘Salvatore,’ said Luisa stiffly. Giuli turned to catch him bowing.
‘You know each other?’ growled the Neapolitan, affronted.
The cobbler bowed deeply. ‘Mrs Cellini used to send customers to me,’ he said. ‘From Frollini?’
The concierge subsided fractionally. Of course, Luisa knew everyone, thought Giuli.
‘She was living here all that time?’ said Luisa, ignoring her. ‘Benedetta was?’
The man shrugged.
‘Benedetta?’ said Giuli, unable to understand. ‘Isn’t that –?’
Luisa shot her a glance, a tiny nod. Benedetta was the woman admitted to the hospital after an overdose, whose brother Luisa had been talking to in casualty. Who lived out there in Sant’Anna. Things slipped, half-fell into place. ‘I thought she was Salieri,’ said Giuli.
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