The Viper

by Christobel Kent

  Luisa had gone to Sant’Anna. She hadn’t said where, but he knew. Logically, it would be the Salieri house, once she knew about Benedetta and her baby – but this wasn’t about logic any more.

  They hit the village at sixty, tyres hissing through the little square, a moment when a pothole tilted the heavy car and then it righted itself. The streets were dripping and deserted, the window of the bar was dark, when Sandro’s head turned, on instinct, remembering something someone had said about Maria Clara Martinelli and Bartolini in the bar, heads together. Thick as thieves. Bartolini who loved his sister. Martinelli who’d do anything for Bartolini. Who had said it? Luisa. And he’d been so busy realising that Luisa was confessing she’d told Nielsson she’d kill her that he’d hardly registered it.

  ‘She even found the bodies,’ said Sandro, half to himself.

  ‘What?’ said Pietro, and when Sandro waved him away, trying to think, trying furiously, his old friend let out an explosive sigh. ‘Talk to me,’ Pietro said. ‘Sandro?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Sandro, turning to him with an effort.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Pietro and Sandro flicked a glance across at him.

  ‘Where do you think?’ he asked. ‘We’re going back.’

  And then he had to look back at the road because the big car was through the village and out the other side, tyres hissing, and the streetlights were abruptly gone and a wall of dark rolled up to meet them. The two pillars at the foot of the overgrown drive that led up to the Salieri place flashed past. Sandro felt the big engine surge effortlessly, asking to be told, faster. One more bend. A spot of light no brighter than a glow-worm under trees appeared in the dense black of the wooded hill. Martinelli’s place. Sandro put his foot down.

  Pietro sat up, stubborn, gripping the sides of the seat as the car swung.

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand why. What would Martine Kaufmann, supposing she – supposing – what would she have to gain from it? From any of it?’

  Money.

  The answer was in Sandro’s head but he didn’t know if he’d said it out loud because for a second time stopped, nothing changed and then he felt it. Flung forward with shocking violence and, as he moved, seeing from the corner of his eye Pietro’s body jerking against the seatbelt and only then, as the car skidded violently under them, as he felt himself thrown towards the black glass of the windscreen, remembering to wonder if he’d fastened his own, before it hit him.

  *

  His awkward length pressed against hers on the hospital bed, Enzo stroked her cheek. Pale, pale, his pale beloved, paler than he’d ever seen her under the spiked aubergine halo of her hair that he loved, and when she opened her eyes so hopeless, brimming with tears, he lowered his cheek to hers on the hospital pillow.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, and he could smell her skin. That comforted him, that sustained him, the smell of his beloved. She closed her eyes and the tears leaked out, ran gleaming down her cheek. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said, with a pain inside him he couldn’t describe, ‘whatever happens, I love you.’

  Outside the rain had stopped.

  They waited.

  *

  Luisa heard it. They must have heard it inside too.

  A crump below them that echoed in the blind valley, the tinkling of broken glass. Luisa turned, stumbling. She backed behind the house, trying to locate a memory of that combination of sounds. Car crash: the sound was of a collision. She’d hardly passed a car on the way. Who would be coming up here?

  From inside she heard Benedetta’s whimper. ‘What – what is –? Martine, Martine …’

  She’d known, though, even before she heard the name. M for Martine. She’d isolated the face in her memory of the four of them standing in the Piazza Signoria, the small one, built like a gymnast, the northern cheekbones wide below pale eyes. The face she’d seen in the hospital corridor, the do-gooder with her charity work, the eyes looking, seeking, monitoring.

  ‘Luca was so angry,’ said Benedetta’s voice, ‘when I told him. I tried to say I wasn’t myself when I did it, to say what you told me. I blacked out, the therapist said, you block things out – just like you told me. He –’

  Another voice soothed, husky endearments. ‘Darling,’ it said, ‘sweetheart, listen, listen. You know what we agreed. There’s a way out: the best way out. You first, then me. It’s too late for anything else. It’ll be quick, the rope is quick, if we do it here –’ A little pause, a gasp. ‘You’ll be with her. With your baby at last, where she left the world, you’ll be here.’

  As the meaning of the words dawned, Luisa felt something flame inside her and she came out from behind the house. Unable in that moment to control what she did, to be quiet or circumspect, she ran stumbling around the house to the front door, the stone step, the rotten wood ajar. As she reached it, the explosion came behind her, and she recoiled, her hand still on the door.

  Through the trees Luisa saw it flash white and yellow below her, then she heard a new roar, of fire that leapt upwards, flickering: it was close, so close she could see the sparks rise in the air; it lit her. One bend below her, no more. And then smelling that other sweet scent, somewhere below the wet forest and burning fuel, mingled with acrid sweat: it was close. Luisa turned her head a bare centimetre and Martine Kaufmann’s face appeared out of the darkness inside the house, and something hit her hard, above the ear.

  Her face was on the floor, something slimy against it, dead leaves, dead animal. She scrabbled to get up, feeling her age in every joint and sinew, but Kaufmann was hauling on her shoulder, the fabric of her coat ripping in her fist as she was dragged into the house, and then she was on hands and knees and the door banged shut behind her. Luisa could hear Benedetta whimpering somewhere further inside. She swayed on all fours and looked up.

  Moonlight came from somewhere, leaking behind a shutter, and she could make out the faint outline of a staircase and, standing on it, Benedetta. Above the stairwell in the dark something swung, indistinct, something Benedetta could reach out and take hold of if she wanted.

  Doors opened off the hallway, dark apertures. The smell in here was musty, sweet-sharp, old leaves and damp, some long-dead animal, crawled in and unable to find its way out. How long would it be before they were discovered, as Lotti and Nielsson had been? When Benedetta reached out for the noose, what clue might Kaufmann come up with for Luisa’s presence? An ancient feud, her hatred of Nielsson.

  For a long moment no one said anything, long enough for Luisa to register a warmer flicker in the moon-glow, for the faint shouts from below to make themselves heard.

  ‘There’ll be police,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘There’ll be fire engines.’

  Martine Kaufmann stood over her, the wide cheekbones, the slanting pale eyes implacable in the gloom, the tattoo blue on the inside of her wrist. The image of an unborn child that none of them could ever forget. ‘They’ll be too late,’ she said, then drew back her foot and kicked Luisa in the head.

  The pain was shocking, and as Luisa felt her hands flutter out across the floor, her face down again, trying to hold on to consciousness, trying to brace herself for the next blow, she heard a sound from Benedetta, a choked gasp, and she reared back from it. She knew what she would see: the girl she’d dressed for her wedding who had for forty years been walking towards this moment, the moment when she could finish it.

  ‘No,’ she said, reaching out blindly, her vision full of stars, ‘no, Benedetta. No.’

  Chapter Thirty

  SANDRO DIDN’T KNOW the tall man bending over him, but he knew the woman at the man’s shoulder. It was Maria Clara Martinelli. Sandro was on the tarmac, one side of his face wet with blood, and water was rushing over him: he tried to push himself up.

  ‘No,’ said Maria Clara Martinelli, ‘don’t!’

  The man’s face was gaunt, blank with fear. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘I told you, Luca,’ said Martinelli ou
t of the side of her mouth, ‘it’s the policeman.’

  They’re going to let us die, thought Sandro, and he was scrambling upright, trying to get to his feet. Something gave under him, an ankle, but the man reached and grabbed him before he fell.

  ‘Where’s my – where’s Pietro?’ But as Sandro twisted to look for the car he heard an ominous sound, a sharp crackle, saw a quick, low, lethal flash, and then came the boom and he felt himself blown backwards, the man, Luca Bartolini, with him, and they were in the mud on the far side of the road. Sandro was scrambling up again.

  ‘Pietro – my friend,’ he said and something stung his cheek, he couldn’t stop it, tears were pouring down his face. ‘Please!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Martinelli, behind him now, her voice rough and frightened, and Sandro turned to look for her. Her face, streaked with smoke, seemed in that moment to him like an animal’s, when it lays its ears flat against its skull in fear. ‘We got him out. He’s in the house. We’ve called the ambulance.’

  Sandro was on his feet, unsteady but upright, and they were closing in on him. ‘Police,’ he tried to say, but the word wouldn’t come out right. ‘Po– po–’

  Putting both arms out, he flailed between them and began a hobbling run, swaying on the tarmac, zigzagging. He expected them to come after him, but he heard a phone ringing behind him, Bartolini saying something he couldn’t hear, a loud voice of alarm, and he kept on going.

  The tears wouldn’t stop, although he knew Pietro was safe.

  His fault: a life of failure and fuck-up. A car crash, beginning to end, and now he was going to lose Luisa. Hobbling on, he knew there were things badly wrong with his body but something prevented him from feeling them. There would be time for that. He rounded the bend, and there was La Vipera, and they were behind him now, they were coming after him. From down in the valley came the wail of sirens.

  *

  But Benedetta wasn’t on the stairs any more. Kaufmann’s arm was round Luisa’s throat now and she could feel her peripheral vision begin to go, a white halo round what she could see, the empty staircase. The rope, swaying. She felt something hard underneath her, digging in, and, twisting, reached for it, but the weight of Kaufmann’s body was too great: it pinned her to the ground, the pressure of her meaty forearm at Luisa’s neck like iron.

  She could hear sirens, now, too late, too late.

  And then somehow, miraculously, there was a second in which Kaufmann’s grip slackened, and in that second she heard Benedetta’s voice, shrieking, smelled her chemical breath, and realised she was on Martine Kaufmann’s back and hauling at her, pulling with her arms thin as a child’s, her counterweight no more than a bird’s. But in the brief respite, Luisa felt her hip shift on the slimy floor, and she managed to reach into her pocket and pulled it out from where it had been digging into her: Sandro’s torch. She twisted, trying to see where Benedetta was before using it, but she couldn’t, and then there was a grunt and Kaufmann was on top of her again.

  ‘You killed her,’ said Luisa, struggling, breathless under the weight. ‘You killed Johanna Nielsson so she couldn’t expose you to Benedetta. All that time persuading her you had been her friend, even to the point where she changed her will. Then you told Benedetta she’d killed Johanna and you were protecting her?’ She heard Kaufmann’s raw triumphant breath in her ear, all the confirmation she needed, but Kaufmann spoke the words.

  ‘She should have died in the hospital,’ she hissed. ‘She would have done if you hadn’t turned up, you busybody bitch. I’d have turfed those parasites out of their great palace and had the money and the world would have been free of one more nutjob.’

  But in that moment of exultation Kaufmann’s grip shifted, eased, and as Luisa felt her head fall back on the floor, she drew back her arm in one last hopeless effort, the torch in her hand, and brought it down as hard as she could where she thought Kaufmann’s head must be.

  There was a sickening crack as it connected, heavy as a cosh. For a second nothing happened, nothing. She was choking on that sweet flowery scent mixed with Kaufmann’s sweat – and then Kaufmann went limp.

  In the same moment, there was a splintering crash from behind her head and a swift movement of air past her, the grey rush and rustle as Benedetta flew by, and she heard Luca Bartolini’s voice, she heard him murmuring, darling, darling.

  She hardly had time to register her eyes filling, those tears for herself, alone, where is my – and then there was a commotion beside her on the floor, where Martine Kaufmann was beginning to struggle, and she realised there was someone else in the room, there was Maria Clara Martinelli. And he was there.

  Kneeling by her head, he smelled of ash and water and petrol. His face was streaked with smoke and blood and too close to focus on, but she knew him, she would know him anywhere. She would know him at the end of the world.

  ‘Sandro,’ murmured Luisa. ‘Sandro.’ And setting a palm on each side of her cheek, he answered her. ‘My love,’ he said.

  And then he turned and arrested Martine Kaufmann for the murder of Johanna Nielsson and conspiracy to murder Giancarlo Lotti.

  *

  The woman took so long to turn her head from the screen and look at Giuli that had it not been for the constant fierce pressure of Enzo’s hand in hers she would have pushed herself off the high hospital bed and run for the door, run and run, run herself into oblivion, into the white light, rather than wait one second longer.

  A heartbeat that didn’t even sound like a heartbeat, too fast, too light, too muffled in flesh and bone. You could put no hope in a heartbeat.

  The ultrasound technician’s lips were moving, her eyes intent, her face lit by the screen Giuli and Enzo couldn’t see. ‘I just have – I just have to be sure,’ she said, almost to herself. And then she turned, and smiled, and she turned the monitor, and she was there.

  The bridge of a nose, the starfish of a hand, the ridge of a perfect spine spooned against Giuli’s. There, cradled in her cocoon of flesh and blood built by Giuli’s body, despite everything, there, safe and sound, the ghostly chambers of her tiny heart beating. The child that had been lost was found.

  Afterword

  LUCA BARTOLINI CONFESSED first, before they’d even left La Vipera. Holding tight to Benedetta, staring down at Kaufmann where she sat restrained by Martinelli and Sandro to either side of her, her face white, her eyes burning.

  ‘I’ve always loved Benedetta,’ he said, his voice weary, ‘since she was a child – how could I not? So beautiful, so delicate, so loving. Of course, marrying my half-sister was out of the question. And mother –’ For a moment words seemed to fail him. ‘Every time,’ and when he spoke again, his voice had been weary with failure in a way that Sandro recognised instantly, ‘every time a crisis came I wasn’t here to help her. In Milan, all those years ago, to come back only when – when her life had been ruined and she had stopped talking and was about to marry.’ And then he twisted his head a little as if he was in pain. ‘And this summer. When she came to me and confessed.’

  ‘You helped her.’ It was Maria Clara Martinelli’s voice, rough and grating with an emotion Sandro couldn’t immediately identify. ‘You took her away, endlessly. Don’t you understand? You couldn’t always be there.’

  ‘That place,’ he said. ‘That place. Those women: Nielsson and,’ he gestured at Kaufmann between them, ‘and her.’ He leaned down towards her and spat, his aristocratic features twisting. ‘You. You took her child and burned it. You took an innocent like Benedetta and you twisted her. She branded herself at your insistence – your ideas of free love and some breeding paradise were never going to last, were they? She believed in love, and you gave her to men to rape. She believed in love – it would have saved her, but you took it away.’

  It seemed to Sandro then that Luca Bartolini looked at him a second, then the look was gone. Love, he thought. And Nielsson’s hand on him in the dim green room turned like smoke and was gone.

  Luisa spoke softl
y then, out of the gloom. She took a step forward. Sandro saw her feet, bleeding, he saw her white beloved face and heard a sound in his throat.

  ‘You didn’t make that scrapbook on your own, did you, Benedetta?’ On her half-brother’s shoulder, Benedetta, her face hidden, let out a little moan. ‘You had a friend to help you, didn’t you? You had Miss Kaufmann.’ Luisa held Bartolini’s gaze. ‘Did you know that? Did you know that friend she had made was someone she had known long ago, one of the women from La Vipera come back into her life?’ Sandro saw Bartolini move forward, an incoherent sound on his lips, staring at Martine Kaufmann. ‘I think Miss Kaufmann did more than help her stick pictures in an album,’ said Luisa, white-lipped.

  ‘I knew she –’ Bartolini was almost whispering. ‘She never said. She said a woman from the church. When she said she’d changed her will, that it was all to go to a children’s charity …’ His eyes swept the room. ‘I didn’t care what she did with the money if it helped her become herself again.’

  ‘How did you find out Lotti knew?’ said Sandro, and the man’s eyes settled on him, questioning. ‘You told Gianna Marte there were truffles up behind La Vipera, knowing she would tell him, knowing he would go up there. You made sure you and Benedetta were safely out of the way at the rehab centre when the deed was done.’ Under his hands Kaufmann struggled.

  ‘An anonymous note,’ Bartolini said, faltering. ‘It came in the post. It said, a friend of Benedetta’s.’

  ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ Sandro gave Kaufmann’s arm a tug, and she thrust her chin at him, aggressive. ‘Lotti visited you and dropped hints – and you wanted him out of the way. It would just take a nudge, wouldn’t it? Bartolini would do anything to save his sister from prison for a crime she didn’t commit. So you sent the note and got yourself an alibi by way of a little teaching stint at the other end of the province.’