‘His father was with him at the station,’ Mascarello had said.
‘On their way to a football match,’ Sandro had finished as that painful detail fell into place.
‘Yes,’ Mascarello had said curtly. ‘Well, that’s not the point. The point is, that I was the defence counsel. The accused, a political activist, rounded up at random – ’
‘I remember,’ Sandro had cut him off. The accused – the political activist – hadn’t been some peacenik from the Christian Socialists; he’d been a fully paid-up terrorist, an extreme right-wing member of a splinter group of the northern separatists. Mascarello had got him off; there’d been a lot of publicity around it. Suggestions that witnesses had been paid off and false alibis provided. The man had gone into hiding. Two years later his prints were found all over a bomb factory in the suburbs of Verona, by which time the ‘political activist’ was long gone, last seen in Syria, of all places. Though not as long gone as Tiziano Scarpa’s father.
Mascarello’s wheezing breath, and the tinny hum of the machine that was keeping him alive, had been the only sounds. ‘So you understand, ’ he’d said finally, gasping a little now.
Sandro had understood. They were a power couple; Mascarello’s money funded his wife’s glamorous bohemian lifestyle, they were photographed together, or certainly back then they had been. She might be as guilty as him, in some people’s eyes.
Was it enough of a connection? It was certainly something.
‘I’ll have to see if Tiziano Scarpa was in Paris last April, won’t I?’ he’d said reluctantly.
There’d been nothing much more to say after that. Sandro had been polite; informed his client that he would update him in the morning. And set off in the freezing dark to find Caterina.
Later, after they had driven slowly back up the hill, Sandro and Caterina had stood together under the wall lights of the castle.
‘I want to be of help,’ Caterina had said with lonely determination. She seemed tired and deflated, after all the talking he’d made her do.
Someone shouted something from a little way down the hill in the trees, where the music was playing, and they turned. ‘That’s the studio, Michelle Connor’s in there, and further down is Tina’s place. The
villino
, where Mauro was born. That’s got a studio too.’
The voice shouted again, and they both heard it this time. Caterina said, ‘They’re calling me. Someone is calling my name.’ There was the distant blur of motion, the figure of a man waved, then stopped, watching. Fairhead. Caterina didn’t move, jammed her hands further down in her pockets, and the man went back inside.
‘Go on,’ said Sandro. ‘Go. They like you.’
‘They’ll talk to you eventually,’ she said apologetically. ‘They’re just – ganging up, for a bit. They’ll come around.’ She frowned.
‘I know,’ said Sandro. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘Where will you go?’ Caterina asked. ‘You look tired.’ He turned and looked up at the castle, where the window of Luca Gallo’s office was dark now. Silhouetted against the moonlit clouds, the monstrous old place seemed to absorb light; Sandro found it hard to believe that the small comfortable bedroom was somewhere inside it, waiting for him.
‘I’m always tired,’ said Sandro, surprised at his own admission. ‘But the older you get, the harder it is to sleep. And there’s work to do.’
C
ATE STOOD IN THE lee of Michelle’s studio, a little way back up the hill, hidden from the light, and wondered if she should go in. Wondered if she had made a terrible mistake, talking to Sandro Cellini.
She’d sat there a full minute, struck dumb suddenly, as he re-engaged the gears and turned in the farmyard. He didn’t rush her, looking at the road ahead, waiting. Listening. Then nodding, patient, unsurprised. As if he already knew.
At school Cate had never been a goody-goody or a telltale; even now she hated to gossip. But sometimes you had to go to someone in authority, sometimes you had to take responsibility.
He’d taken in all she had to say, about Orfeo and Alec Fairhead and Per, about how they’d been the last to see her, about how Loni upset everybody, absolutely everybody. Sandro Cellini, quiet, attentive, patient, had interjected only once, when she had said Fairhead had known Loni Meadows before.
‘Knew her well?’ he had asked.
‘Beth said Alec had a book about her. His book.’ And Sandro had sat back in the driver seat.
‘Now tell me,’ he’d said. ‘What happened, that day, the day she died?’
And that was when Caterina had known he had a theory. He knew something.
And it had been as if she was thinking about it clearly for the first time.
‘It was an awful day,’ she had said. ‘I was dreading coming back in. Everyone seemed so – wound up. Every time you turned around, some kind of row seemed to have flared up.’ Concentrating. ‘It was mostly down to Loni, I guess.’
‘When did it start?’ Sandro spoke gently.
‘First thing: about nine. She was having a go at Mauro about cutting back some of the trees down by the
villino
, and he was ignoring her. We could hear that from the kitchen; she was – giving him orders, outside.’ Caterina had taken a deep breath, wanting to go on, now she’d started. Was this how detectives worked? It was like being hypnotized.
‘And then at coffee time, it was Luca. I was serving the coffee in the library: all the guests were there, for once. It was about eleven. We could hear her shouting at him in the music room, because she’d seen Mauro heading off in the pick-up across the valley, disobeying her, and that was supposed to be Luca’s fault.’ She had felt his eyes on her. ‘Some farmer across the valley needed help with his cows,’ she had said, faltering. ‘That’s what Ginevra said.’
‘When did he get back?’ Sandro had asked quietly. She had swallowed. ‘He didn’t – um – I didn’t see him come back.’ She had looked down. ‘I think he might have just got drunk, and stayed home.’
The detective had nodded.
‘And she was shouting at Luca Gallo?’
‘Luca was in charge of us, of the domestic staff,’ she had said quietly. ‘Mauro spoke to Luca before he went, he must have OK’ed it, and I suppose she blamed him.’
She had seen Sandro Cellini chew his cheek thoughtfully. His city face was pale under the yellow castle light.
‘They didn’t get on,’ he had said, and it wasn’t a question. ‘Her and Gallo.’
Cate had shrugged helplessly. ‘He’s great,’ she had said. ‘Luca works so hard. It’s getting him down, all this.’
‘And after that?’ Sandro had leaned forwards, arms draped on the steering wheel. ‘I need to get an idea of – the timing, you see.’
‘Well, there was supposed to be some kind of gallery trip, after lunch, to Siena. Only at coffee – Michelle wanted to go for her run and Tina said to Loni that she wasn’t going to go because she had something in the kiln she needed to keep an eye on. They were backing each other up. I’m not even sure who started it.’ She had looked at him. ‘Then Loni blew up all over again, said well, in that case, she’d cancel the minibus. And marched out.’ She had hesitated. ‘I heard her shouting at Luca again after that, up in his office. When I was in the kitchen making the lunches; his office is just upstairs, pretty much.’
‘So by lunchtime she’d had a go at pretty well everyone?’
Too right. ‘In the afternoon everyone seemed to be lying low.’ She had tried to think what she’d been doing herself. ‘Loni asked me up to bring her herbal tea at around three. She was on her computer.’
‘Ah,’ he had said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, the computer.’
‘I guess you’re going to look at it?’
Sandro had just smiled. ‘I don’t like computers,’ he had said.
‘And at dinner she upset Tina and Michelle all over again. Talking about the gallery in New York where Tina had had a show. Which reminded her of the blog, and she ran off crying.’
And suddenly Cate had felt close to tears. She hadn’t wanted to be doing this, spilling people’s secrets. She must have made some sound, because suddenly he had been looking into her face.
‘Caterina,’ he had said earnestly. ‘Thirty years in the police doesn’t teach you as much as you’d like. But I know when someone’s telling the truth. It’s all right.’ He’d turned his head, cheek against the window, and looked up at the castle. ‘What else?’
She’d stayed silent.
‘It’s just – there might be things you don’t even know you saw. Something might come back to you,’ he had said. ‘You said, they were all in the castle, all day. Then you said,
pretty much
, as though you weren’t absolutely sure. How could you be sure, you haven’t got eyes in the back of your head, I understand that. But think back again. The
afternoon, particularly; what did you see? Did anyone go for a walk, borrow the car for a drive?’
He had leaned forward then in the dark, peering at her intently.
Cate had felt suddenly anxious. ‘I don’t know,’ she had said, stammering. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m not asking you to take sides,’ he had said as they sat in his car, feeling the small warmth they’d generated between them over the journey evaporate in the great cold of the outside. ‘But you have already, haven’t you?’
And she realized that she had.
She stepped out of the shadow of Michelle’s studio and into the light, and saw that Alec Fairhead had been there all along, waiting for her.
There were two libraries in the castle, Caterina had said; one of which was a real library, as Sandro understood the word, containing books to be borrowed and read. The other was the great dark cold room where Orfeo had stood in chilly and hostile isolation, master of all he surveyed; a room Sandro would be happy if he never entered again. It had held a deeper, damper cold than any place he’d ever been; it represented everything that he found he hated about the Castello Orfeo.
Coming back inside he saw through the darkened music room that a light was still on in the old library, and Sandro passed the open door as quietly as he could, back towards the windowless corridor that led to the dining room and kitchen. He was still trying to work it out, the layout of the place: grand apartments at the front, staff quarters – the kitchen with Luca Gallo and Caterina’s apartments above it – in the sober, modern extension of the stables at the back. The dining room was here too, and just beyond it a room where any books written by guests were kept; one knew it wouldn’t be locked. He found himself hurrying.
It was a shabby little space, under-decorated and ill-lit, with a small, ancient television in one corner, and just like in the most
underfunded of school libraries, the books had rudimentary stickers on the back. Sandro found Fairhead’s book almost straight away; it was a short book, 150 pages, and there were English, German and Italian editions. In Italian it was called
Nascituro
. Unborn. He puzzled at that before turning it over. There were quotations from reviews on the back, all sombre and admiring; looking inside he saw that it had been first published fifteen years earlier. He slipped it into his pocket.
Coming back out of the room Sandro felt the corridor’s oppressive airlessness even more; although he knew perfectly well how to find his way back to the great hall and the music room, for a moment he thought it might be a trick, a labyrinth made to trap him. He could not imagine how these artists, these guests, could profit from a stay in this place; already he was finding that the atmosphere was stifling his own ability to think clearly, the great weight of the old castle above him, the narrow windows and the thick walls. He heard sounds too; creaks and whispers from the centuries-old stone and wood; he needed to get back to his room.
The music room and the great gloomy space of the library beyond it were dark when he came back past them, but as he stood in the great hall Sandro could hear something, the faintest of movements. Was anyone else in the building except him and Orfeo? He and Caterina had seen Gallo turn out his light; Sandro felt a stab of pity for the man. Caught between Mascarello and Orfeo, trying to keep it together; at least he had Caterina, a good girl if ever Sandro had seen one.
Were all the guests down at their party? Sandro had assumed so. He came up the stairs to the first floor, and there was light from under the door, where Loni Meadows had slept. Like the lord he was, Niccolò Orfeo had taken it as his due; he thought he could get away with anything. And although Sandro had planned to tackle the man in the morning, although all he wanted to do next was to go into the small room where his own things were waiting for him so that he could clear his head, he stopped. And knocked on the door.
‘What is it?’
The door was wrenched open: Orfeo stood, still dressed, but with his shirt open at the neck. Sandro could see greying chest hair. ‘Not now,’ Orfeo said peremptorily. ‘I’ll speak to you in the morning.’
Sandro felt the man’s eyes on him, looking him up and down, taking in the shabby jacket, the old trousers crumpled after the long drive. And for a second he felt as though without Luisa, without the certainty of Luisa brushing him down and straightening him out for the day, all the sense Sandro had of himself, all his pride, was so fragile that one sneering look from this man might turn it to dust. Then Orfeo made as if to shut the door again.
‘No,’ said Sandro, putting out a hand and staying the door. He felt the pressure as Orfeo struggled a moment, the man older but fit with summers of tennis, perhaps, or sailing. But Sandro had anger on his side. Orfeo might not have killed her. However much Sandro wanted it to be him, he had been in Florence that night. But Orfeo was hiding something, and he had got away with too much already.
‘No,’ he said again, hearing the policeman in his voice, and stepped through the door.
On the bed was a small overnight case; the clothes that had been there earlier – Loni Meadows’s clothes – had been unceremoniously dumped inside the wardrobe.
‘Don’t you miss her?’ he said, before Orfeo could say anything. ‘Didn’t you want some kind of keepsake?’ Orfeo’s mouth fell open, preparing some form of bluster, but nothing came out. His tanned, handsome face, his thick hair and moustache might all say, here is a powerful man, but his frightened eyes betrayed him, just as the loose skin at his neck gave away his age.
‘You can bully that poor Luca Gallo,’ said Sandro. ‘You might have some kind of hold over that buffoon of a superintendent of police in Pozzo Basso. But you aren’t paying me, you aren’t my superior, social or otherwise. You were sleeping with her, weren’t you? And now you’ve come back to make sure there isn’t any evidence.’ He paused. ‘You won’t find the Viagra,’ he said, deliberately coarse, seeing the man flinch. ‘I’ve already been in here. Did you come down that night? Did you send her a message?’
‘I was in Florence,’ said Orfeo faintly. Then, his voice strengthening, ‘You can’t talk to me in this way. I’ll have your licence removed.’
‘It’s only two hours from Florence,’ said Sandro. ‘One and a half in that car of yours, if you break the speed limit all the way as I imagine you do. You could be here and back in time to take your kid to school.’
Orfeo blinked and stared at him. ‘I have broken no laws,’ he said. ‘I was not here. I don’t know where she was going.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Sandro in frustration. Thinking, I’ll nail him. I’ll nail him for something. ‘Did you sit in the Hotel Liberty waiting for her? What did you do when she didn’t turn up? Did you even try to contact her?’
At the mention of the hotel’s name – for which Sandro thanked Caterina Giottone – Orfeo’s eyes widened, bloodshot. ‘I – Ididn’t – I was in Florence,’ he said again, and this time he seemed bewildered. ‘You can ask my son. I was there. We sat up until midnight, he was refusing to do his schoolwork and I said I’d stand over him until it was finished if I had to.’
Damn, thought Sandro, hearing a shred of truth in the desperate, faltering voice. Damn, damn, but it had been too late to stop. He had stood his ground. ‘We know you were having an affair with her,’ he said, forcing some certainty into his voice. ‘You were seen at the Liberty on many occasions, even if you thought you were not. It seems that half the staff here, the guests, indeed, had a good idea of what was going on. Her husband knew, for Christ’s sake. Mascarello knew.’ Orfeo’s lips tightened disdainfully. He didn’t care about Mascarello; the cuckold. ‘And she told the intern, Beth.’
‘Beth,’ said Orfeo coldly. ‘That one.’
Sandro seized on the dislike in his voice, allowed it to spur him on. ‘Perhaps you knew that. Perhaps they were too close for your liking, all that girlish giggling; perhaps you had Loni Meadows send her home to America?’ And as Orfeo turned away Sandro saw he’d hit home there at least; he pursued the advantage. ‘You can delete all those messages from your phone, can’t you, the ones you sent her, the ones she sent you? Did you come back for hers? Was that why you paid a visit to the police station at Pozzo Basso?’