Sandro took it, staring ahead. The windscreen was clear. The wind seemed to have dropped, ominously.
‘All right?’ said Pietro. ‘Come on, eat up. You haven’t had anything since this morning.’
Sandro looked into the bag and saw a limp piadina, the flatbread oozing melted cheese and a bit of curled ham. Reluctantly, he took a bite and a swig from a bottle of water Pietro passed him.
‘Something’s happened,’ said Pietro. ‘I may not be much of a detective but …’
Sandro shook himself. Swallowed. ‘I know what that – those foetal remains were,’ he said slowly. ‘Benedetta Salieri, Ticino, whatever, must have got herself pregnant while her dad was busy upstairs with Gorgone.’ He thought of the mattresses laid about the upper floors: more mattresses than there were people. ‘And they – I don’t know what. A five-and-a-half-month foetus.’
‘Jesus,’ said Pietro.
The smell of the food in the car was abruptly sickening and Sandro screwed up the bag and let it drop. He felt dull, stupid. ‘Luisa said that Benedetta had a homemade version of Nielsson’s tattoo. Martine Kaufmann had the same one. Christ knows, it’s fucked up. Horrible. Luisa says she thinks the tattoo is of a foetus. She said if you look closely –’ and he paused, his throat tight, squeezing his eyes shut. That was what she’d said, all those years ago. Those were the words that had evaded him for four decades, that Nielsson had whispered in his ear.
You can be the one. He’d begun to shake his head, but she hadn’t moved away, her hot breath on his neck. Give me a child.
‘You don’t think Lotti –?’
‘Impregnated Benedetta?’ Sandro felt cold. His mouth moved but his lips felt numb. ‘I think it’s a possibility. I mean, there may be DNA.’
Pietro growled in his throat. ‘And then what?’ But Sandro didn’t want to think, then what. Benedetta had lost the child, that’s what. Not under the care of a doctor, but in that dank farmhouse, and the child hadn’t got any kind of burial.
Pietro grabbed the paper bag from where it sat between them, opening the car door and depositing it in a bin two paces from the car. Then he was back. ‘Madonna santa,’ he said.
Sandro felt the weight of the laptop in his lap and mechanically began to stow it in the briefcase. He didn’t even know if Luisa had forgiven him because he hadn’t had the chance to tell her what he’d done. It only occurred to him as he zipped the briefcase closed that she had been asking his forgiveness, too. He hoped he would never have to tell her what they’d found in the fireplace of La Vipera.
‘So,’ said Pietro, and the engine roared into life, ‘Galluzzo?’ He brushed his GPS gizmo with a finger and it told him two hours, traffic moderate to heavy. Sandro sat back in the deep leather seat, stiff with dread.
Panayotis had been fizzing with it. ‘Such a great tip, boss,’ he’d said to Sandro. ‘I mean, it was a pig of a job, calling round all those places with just a number plate, and the van park where we eventually located it – just like you said – was one of the oldschool ones, no computerisation, no CCTV, just some old guy in a cabin, someone’s granddad, no doubt. But he knew straight away. Knew the number, described the vehicle. Paid in cash, an envelope with the number plate on it stuck through the letterbox.’
Sandro had been cheered immediately by the scenario: Panayotis finding out what legwork meant and the advantages of low-tech operations – someone’s granddad. Sandro’s ears had properly pricked up at the sound of him: his brain was obviously still as sharp as any computer.
‘So he didn’t see who left it?’
‘He said not.’ Which left a certain amount of room for manoeuvre.
Pietro had been jubilant. ‘You’re kidding. They found the camper? It’s going to be like Christmas.’
But now, as they eased on to the busy motorway, the outline of the mountains dark against the night sky behind them, the atmosphere in the car was more like the night before a funeral. The conversation with Luisa had sobered them both, and the thought of what they might find in that camper-van inspired more dread, in Sandro at least, than excitement.
South of Bologna the motorway grew busier, and the rain began to fall. At first a deceptively soft patter and then with a vengeance, by the time they hit the bottleneck as the road began to descend from the Apennines into the city, it was coming down like stair-rods. A nightmare drive under normal conditions – narrowing abruptly with constant roadworks, tight bends and trucks nose-to-tail, so close you could smell the diesel, you could hear the shriek of the brakes – in heavy rain it was a hellish rollercoaster.
Beside Sandro, Pietro was hunched over the wheel, his face pale in the dark and his knuckles white. Sandro could feel the tension right down his own arms to where his hands gripped the sides of the leather seat: he could feel the adrenaline battling his own tiredness, and God alone knew what Pietro must be feeling. He’d been driving for hours.
And then they were on the ring road, eight lanes, slow moving, brightly lit through the industrial outskirts of the city, and fractionally both men unbent. Pietro spoke.
‘I hope the guy’s still there,’ he said, his voice rusty, still not moving his eyes from the busy road.
‘Panayotis said he would wait for us.’
‘We could have sent the lads,’ said Pietro. ‘I mean –’
‘We’re here now,’ said Sandro. The thought had gone unspoken all through the long, dreadful drive: he knew Pietro had shared it, though. What were they thinking of? A pair of old lags insisting on getting the catch, serve them right if they ended up creamed under a truck.
Off through the tollgates, and they swung around the roundabout, turning back into town. Pietro lifted his hand to the horn, poised to startle some slow-moving oldster he’d cut up on the exit, but he never used it, his head jerking back, startled instead. ‘That looked like –’ Sandro sat up in the passenger seat but the car was behind them now and Pietro was shaking his head to focus. On to the scruffy congestion of the Via Senese and the tiredness began to catch up with them, and then there it was. Just as Sandro had pictured it, the very one, in fact, he’d had in his head. A piece of waste ground, no more than hardcore and rubble, on the edge of some scrubby trees, packed with six rows of camper-vans put up for the winter.
A Portakabin with a light still on.
‘This is it, then,’ said Pietro, and they climbed out. Stiff and weary and suddenly not ready, not ready at all. The door of the Portakabin opened and a wiry figure was silhouetted against the light.
*
By the time Giuli stood stiffly from the chair to thank Roberto Ragno, she understood that he had come to be forgiven, too. Don’t we all want forgiveness, she thought, laying her hand on his shoulder. Maybe that was the church’s secret. Giuli had never been in a church in her life.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, and her voice came out in a croak. ‘You did the right thing.’
It had been hard for her to concentrate since coming round in the chair with Luisa’s anxious eyes on her and that question she didn’t dare answer on Luisa’s lips. ‘You’re not sick, are you? You’re not.’ The hope in it, like the frightened leap in her own belly, that it was too early to acknowledge.
Five months. That was safe, wasn’t it? A baby could be born alive at five months these days. With the right machines. Her brain jumped and fired in panic: she wasn’t ready for this. She hadn’t been prepared for this.
Second trimester, Cinzia from Labo X had said, judging from the date of her last period and the amount of – whatever it had been – in her urine.
‘But I’ve never been regular, I’m not –’
‘Go to your own doctor, Giulietta,’ she’d said. ‘Get a scan scheduled immediately. At your age, that’s essential.’
‘But you mean I’m not – not –’
‘Liver function, heart, lungs, kidneys, everything we checked came back normal. You’re not sick.’
So it should have been easy to answer Luisa’s question. I’m not sick, I�
��m pregnant.
But then Ragno walks in. And once she said it out loud, she would be tempting fate.
Pregnant.
He sat down in the chair and almost immediately his hands in his lap were moving, restless. Looking around from side to side, as if he was waiting to be arrested. He was seventy, he’d lived a hard life: it was his time to go. Giuli set her elbows on the table, watching him. Would she be ready when it was her turn? Once upon a time she would have said she’d been born ready, but the trouble with getting clean and sober – her trouble, Ragno’s trouble – was that the world came into focus. You could see the clouds moving across the sky, the new green on a tree, a couple sitting on a bench with their arms around each other. And then you didn’t want to leave it.
Behind them there was a weird rushing sound, a clatter as something fell in the builder’s yard, rain struck the window pane with a rattle like gunfire and Ragno jumped in his seat. Even thunder, you didn’t want to leave.
‘So,’ Giuli said. ‘You do remember La Vipera.’
He nodded. ‘Before your time,’ said Ragno, then looked at her again. ‘Maybe not. Your mum had you already. You must’a been two, three. I remember you.’
Giuli stared at him. ‘You’re not going to tell me you’re my dad, are you?’ With horror.
To her vast relief, he laughed and shook his head. ‘Not that your mum was the perfect mum, neither. But – well, what’s the use? After all this time.’
But what? she wanted to say, but she overcame the sudden urge to reach across the desk and grab him and shake him till he told her. Did she love me? Did she ever love me? Giuli let it lie. ‘Let’s get back to La Vipera,’ she said and he shifted, uneasy.
‘She asked me if I had men,’ he said. ‘The woman there. Men with – I don’t remember how she put it – men with petrol in the tank. They were all women. They decided they were going to have their own little commune, grow their own kids, live without men. Only needed them for one thing. So she asked me to get some men.’
Giuli stared at him. Between them on the table was Benedetta’s scrapbook, full of pictures of babies. ‘And you did?’
Ragno sighed, relaxed a fraction. ‘It was daft,’ he said. ‘I thought it was a stupid game. I mean, they laid down these rules, got to be clean, got to be young, got to have it all in working order. Who knows that stuff even these days? Forty years ago, it was impossible, it was nuts, but who am I to argue? I managed to find a couple of guys to do it for money once or twice. But no one got pregnant and she told me not to come back. They had a local lad coming regular.’ He sighed again, and he looked down into his lap, where his hands had unclenched, lay open, the yellowing skin of the palms vulnerable.
‘The local lad would have been –’
The hands tightened in his lap. ‘I don’t want to talk to the police,’ he said. She just went on looking at him. He stood up abruptly then sat down again. ‘It was the guy they found dead,’ he said dully.
She nodded. ‘Lotti,’ she said.
There was a crack of thunder and Giuli turned to look out of the window, waiting for the lightning. Two, three beats later a soundless flash illuminated the plastic tubing in the builder’s yard, the orange showing black. In the silence that followed she could hear Luisa’s voice, low and earnest, from next door. She turned back to Ragno.
‘I saw him again,’ said Ragno. ‘I saw him here, in the city, maybe a month ago.’
Giuli laughed incredulously. ‘After all this time? You recognised him?’
He clamped his mouth closed. ‘I don’t want to talk to the police,’ he said, and she knew it was because she had sounded like she didn’t believe him.
Rain rattled the window pane again. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’re not going any –’ and before she could finish the sentence there was a great bang right overhead and the lights flickered, died. For a second they were in darkness, only the gleam from outside on Ragno’s face, and then the lights came back on.
‘So you’re sure it was him,’ she said carefully.
Ragno almost smiled, wearily. ‘We’d had a bit of – history in between,’ he said. ‘Lotti, he was a customer, wasn’t he? Until he started smacking the girls around.’ He shrugged, uneasy again, not comfortable with the role of knight in shining armour, thought Giuli. Which was to his credit. ‘Last time I’d seen him was maybe ten years ago, when he gave a Nigerian girl concussion and I said that was it.’
‘And when you saw him this time?’
‘There’s a bar open all August I go to – Rifrullo, you know it?’ She shook her head. ‘It was in there. He laughed at me when he saw I was sick. He started talking about the old days, said he’d been paying a visit to a friend from back then.’
Giuli felt a stillness come over her. ‘Do you remember a young girl, from the big house in Sant’Anna?’ she said. ‘A girl called Benedetta? You might have seen her there with her father.’
Ragno tipped his head back. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a long time ago.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe,’ he said, curious. ‘Slumming it, yeah. I remember a girl like that. Looking lost because her dad was having fun in the bushes with his boyfriend. You think that was the old friend?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Giuli, in despair, listening out for Luisa to finish her Skype with Sandro, but she was still talking. ‘Benedetta Ticino. She lives in the Via del Parioncino.’
He shook his head. ‘Rifrullo’s a bit of a hike from there,’ he said, dubious. ‘It’s over in San Niccolo, just inside the city gate.’
San Niccolo. She tried to remember who’d been there recently, when and why. Someone. Sandro. He’d been there to see Martine Kaufmann.
‘Can you remember the exact date?’ she said softly.
He looked into her face and she saw how yellow the whites of his eyes were.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. The weekend after Ferragosto, it was – 17th, 18th, something like that?’
Giuli’s head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool. They thought the woman, Nielsson, had died the second week of August, didn’t they? She couldn’t remember.
She pulled a piece of paper towards her and began writing, to look like she knew what she was doing. ‘That could be very useful to the police,’ she said.
‘Can’t you tell ’em?’ he pleaded.
She sighed. ‘I can tell them, yes,’ and as she said it she registered the silence. Luisa’s connection with Sandro must have gone down.
‘Can you remember anything else?’ she said, and slowly he shook his head, his jowls, loose with the weight he must have lost, wobbling. He stood up, reaching for his coat. He seemed limp with tiredness, but at the door he stopped.
‘It wasn’t all her,’ he said, and for a moment her heart leapt, but he was talking about someone else. Giuli got to her feet, took a step towards him. ‘It wasn’t all her. The other one dealt with the practical arrangements. I thought the Swede, Nielsson, she was just an airhead, if I’m honest: a frontwoman, if you like.’ He paused, Giuli was in front of him now. ‘I’ve seen women like her before,’ he said. ‘Born with it all, they mess about with this and that. They fuck ordinary folks over. I took her money, and I’m not proud of it, but if I hadn’t it’d have been a cats’ home or psychics or a homeopath. There’s always someone who’ll fleece ’em. But she wasn’t the brains.’ He was looking at Giuli in sorrow, now, as if he knew he wouldn’t see her again.
‘Who was then?’ The silence beyond the door struck her in that moment and she pushed the door open. Ragno’s hand was on her arm, detaining her.
‘Listen,’ he said, in the cajoling voice that told her some sentimental bullshit was coming. ‘It wasn’t your ma’s fault. She did –’
But she was shaking him off, ancient history. All she could see was the laptop sitting there open on the little table, its screen dead. Otherwise the room was empty. Luisa had gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
IF SHE’D STOPPED to tell Giuli what she was going to do, Giuli
would have talked her out of it. Or worse still, insisted on coming with her.
The symptoms she had described earlier had been circling in Luisa’s head ever since, refusing to make sense. All those years that Giuli was insisting, I’m too old, no chance. Saying she was menopausal, past all that. But what if she wasn’t?
Either way, she wasn’t in any condition to come where Luisa was going. Luisa’s reasoning rang hollow in her head, knowing what Sandro would say, and in that moment she could only remember her last sight of his face, moon-pale and sad, on a computer screen, freezing then dissolving into pixels.
Blinking away the image, Luisa circled her own kitchen, trying to remember where Sandro kept them. The hook-board beside the front door was the first place she’d checked but it had been empty. She surveyed the dresser. Right. She pulled at one drawer and papers exploded out of it. The world was against her: she felt like wailing. Pull yourself together. She tackled the next drawer more judiciously. Promising. Old pebbles, broken pens, a paperweight. Gently, she eased it open more fully, felt in with her hand towards the back and something chinked: a chain, clever Sandro, a dozen sets of keys on a chain. She tugged and they were in her hand.
Luisa hadn’t driven in thirty-odd years. She knew the exact date, in fact, because – that was the date. She’d driven herself to hospital, in labour. Sandro had been at work, it had been rush hour and she’d sat in traffic, bracing herself for the next contraction.
With trembling fingers Luisa sorted through the keys until she found the Fiat fob. Sandro would snatch them off her if he could see inside her head, but she folded them into her palm.
The car would be where he always left it. On the bridge, the rain whipping against her sideways, Luisa stopped, remembered her phone – had she even brought it? But there it was. A message from Giuli, what the hell, what the hell, and another from Sandro, businesslike. Bloody weather, see you later, almost at the tangenziale.
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