Bitter Remedy (29 page)

He went for another reluctant sip, and said, casually, ‘Seen Niki recently?’

‘Dear Niki. He’s so busy at work, then rushes over here to be with me as soon as he has a minute. I am often afraid he’ll have a car accident.’

‘That would be terrible,’ said Blume.

She wrinkled her forehead at him then and squeezed a few more drops or water from her hair onto her loose-fitting T-shirt. ‘You loathe Niki, don’t you? I thought when I saw you get out of his car that there had been some sort of reconciliation. Lending his car is just the sort of generous thing he would do.’

‘I have seen the way Niki bosses you about. It is the mark of a bully and a violent man. You know what I’m saying.’

Silvana ran her tongue over her bottom lip, and sighed. ‘Niki only does that for show. It was because you were there. When we are on our own, he is the sweetest guy on earth.’

He thought of her chubby, childish handwriting. ‘Isn’t he a bit old for you? And when I say a bit, I mean a lot?’

‘Age can’t stop you loving, but loving can stop you ageing,’ said Silvana, looking at him earnestly.

‘New Age cant. You found that platitude on the internet, probably with a picture of two old wrinklies dressed in white staring at a sunset, holding hands, and figured you should learn it to explain the fact you’re throwing yourself away on a creepy little criminal almost twice your age.’

‘You would be far more attractive if you were kinder.’

‘Kind like Niki who beats you?’

‘He does not hit me.’

‘I saw it, for God’s sake.’

‘You never think you might have mis-seen?’

‘No.’

‘Always clear-headed, are you?’

Blume sat back and let out a long, long breath, releasing a lot of the tension in his chest. This was so frustrating. Why was this woman not responding better to him? ‘Just say the word and I can get you out of here.’

‘Where would you take me. To your house?’

‘No! I mean, there would be room, but no, of course not. Wherever you wanted to go.’

‘In Rome? I have been to Rome. I studied there.’

‘You should have found someone there and stayed.’

‘I did. I found a boyfriend there, too. An older man. Almost drove Niki to distraction. They never met, which is probably a good thing.’

‘You like older men?’

‘Yes, Commissioner, I do.’

Blume averted his gaze and began looking around the room for something to look at that wasn’t her face, legs, bare shoulder, the way the T-shirt fell away when she leaned in.

Everything in the room seemed to be made of wood: the walls, the parquet floor, the cherrywood shelves stocked neatly with dark orange bottles in the style of a ninteenth-century chemist. The bottles had handwritten labels on them identifying their contents. The writing was not a stylized calligraphy but again those bulky, childish letters. The room smelled of pine and vanilla. In the centre, a table contained a pile of articles, the pages black around the edges and in the middle from inexpert photocopying.

Then he remembered the exercise book, which he had left in the car.

‘I brought your notebook back, the one with the stories? You left it the other day, and I’ve been meaning to return it, but what with one thing and another . . . It’s in the car. I can fetch it.’ He stood up.

‘Never mind. You can do that later. Or just leave it in the car, since it’s Niki’s. Did you read the stories?’

‘They are . . .’ He wandered across the room to look at the collection of herbal bottles and avoid her questions. ‘I don’t think I am your target audience.’

‘Don’t you have children?’

‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

‘Well, then.’ She stood up and skipped over the room to where he was. ‘I’m hoping to have them published as soon as I find a decent illustrator.’ She brought her hand up to his brow and furrowed her own. ‘Are you feeling all right, Alec? Because you don’t look well.’

‘I may have a touch of the flu,’ he admitted, pulling back. ‘It’s been trying to break through for the past 24 hours.’

‘I could give you an elixir or an infusion. Would you like that?’

He nodded, then asked, ‘What’s the difference?’

‘An infusion is made with water, but for the delicate flowers we don’t boil the water like when making tea. We leave the flowers suspended in water for several hours in the sun. We do use boiling water for the woodier plants, like hornbeam. And for the tinctures, we use Italian brandy. Tomorrow night is special because there is going to be a super-moon, when the moon is both full and nearest to the earth. It looks huge in the sky and its influence is enhanced. Tomorrow will be an ideal night to make tincture.’

She pointed to the first bottle. ‘Remember this yellow one? Agrimony. It’s an autochthonous plant. Autochthonous means it is native to Italy.’

‘I know what autochthonous means,’ said Blume.

‘Really? I had to ask Papà to explain. Anyway, not all of them are native. My father grows this in his herb garden. Actually, he’s grown all of them except for the tree one, which was already here.’ She swept her slender arm through the air to indicate the large outside world.

‘And what’s it for?’

‘It cures people who look cheerful, but are tortured inside. People who fear the unknown. That’s not you, though, is it?’ She laughed. ‘I mean you don’t look all that cheerful on the outside either.’

‘I am extremely cheerful on the inside.’

She looked at him and bit her lip as if considering this as a real possibility before passing on to the next bottle. ‘Now this one here is centaury, or
Centaurea minore
to use the Latin. We prescribe it to people who can’t say no to others, people who are a bit weak-willed and get exploited. I have prescribed it to myself, actually.’

‘Any improvement?’

‘I think so, yes. I feel a good deal stronger than I used to.’

‘So you let Niki bully you less?’

She ignored his question. ‘This here is chicory, which a lot of people eat anyhow. It’s for people who are very possessive and will even hurt others to make sure they stay under their control.’

‘Presumably I would have learned about this on the course.’

‘Yes. I was going to teach all that. Another time, I suppose.’

Blume leaned against the wall, which was pleasantly cold to the touch, and folded his arms, watching her. ‘It is a shame you had to cancel it,’ he said. ‘What was it again? Some problem with the licences from those bureaucrats at health and safety?’

She nodded.

‘And the
vigili
came down and ordered you to close down the wing of the house you had done up, right? And so you sent out the emails cancelling the course, the one I failed to read.’

‘Yes, that’s what happened.’

‘Funny thing, though,’ said Blume. ‘I happened to bump into Fabio, the
vigile
. Literally bump into him as you may have heard. And, well, he denied doing any such thing. He never executed any order from the ASL to shut you down.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She stood still for a moment, and her shoulders seemed to tremble. He was torn between the desire to put his arm around them and the wish to push home an advantage that he had not yet turned into an insight.

Silvana took a wicker chair, carried it over, and sat down close to him so he was looming over her as he stood there. He felt like a bully.

‘Do you want to know why I told that little white lie?’

‘I am interested,’ said Blume.

‘It’s funny, but with you I don’t feel so embarrassed; but in front of those people, you know, the others who didn’t get their emails, I felt humiliated and stupid. The truth is that Niki, who was never enthusiastic about this whole herbal enterprise of mine, suddenly decided to tell. He told me it was either the course or him.’

‘And you chose him?’ Blume asked incredulously.

A tear ran down the side of her nose. She flicked it away with her little finger and smiled at him. ‘I know you don’t understand. You made that perfectly clear in the car park.’ She gave a resigned laugh. ‘I realize Niki might not seem much, but . . . he is so much part of my life now. He always has been. I don’t want him to go away. It would break my father’s heart, too. They have known each other for years – but you knew that, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I found out.’

‘Look . . . The thing is I couldn’t bring myself to marry him, even though he wanted me to. I was waiting for Mr Right, except how am I supposed to find Mr Right in this place?’

‘Maybe by starting a Bach Flowers course and seeing who’d turn up,’ said Blume.

‘Exactly! Which is why he put his foot down at the last moment.’

‘Is he as faithful to you as you are to him?’

‘I know, I know.’ She looked at him as if pleading for his understanding, but once again, of Niki, not herself. ‘He has that nightclub. He calls it Niki’s Nightclub. I mean that’s its name.’

‘A narcissistic name,’ said Blume.

‘Is that how you see it? I see it as sort of innocent, the sort of name a child would choose. I think it’s sweet, really. Look, I know temptation lies in his way, and I know he gives into it now and then, but I believe him when he says the only person he really wants is me. He even offered to close the nightclub down once, as a sign of good faith.’

‘And you didn’t accept?’

She looked at him uncomprehendingly for a second. ‘No! What would Niki do here? It’s what he does, and he’s good at it.’

‘I’ve seen the nightclub. It’s a bit squalid.’

‘Exactly. He spends no more on it than he needs to. He takes out of it what he can. He knows it won’t last forever, and does not want to invest in it.’

‘What does he want to invest in instead?’

‘More beautiful things. Perhaps the villa some day. In me. When the time is ripe. But first I want to teach him some tenderness and respect.’

‘Is the time almost ripe, do you think?’ said Blume. ‘I only ask because Niki has fled.’

His comment hit home. She sat back in her chair, mouth slightly open, then recovered her poise. ‘Niki, fled? He’ll be back.’

‘I am not sure that he will, unless he’s caught. And if you want us to catch him, then maybe you should consider telling us everything you know.’

‘Who is this “us”?’

‘The authorities. The police.’

‘I thought you and I were getting on better than that.’ She stood up, and turned so that the sun streaming in the window lit up her hair with auburn highlights and bathed her in golden light. He still felt an ache of loss in himself and a shudder of regret at images of her and Niki together, her father looking on, nodding his walnut face in satisfied agreement.

‘I don’t understand why you say Niki has
fled
,’ she said, with rather more scorn than he had imagined possible from her. ‘All you mean is you cannot find him at this moment.’

‘The corpse of a woman has been found in town, at the bottom of a gully.’

‘Really?’

He interrupted, ‘Do you know Nadia?’

‘A Romanian girl, friend of that one who ran off.’

‘Nadia has gone missing, too.’

Even in shock, she was elegant. The weakness in her knees caused her to sway sideways, like a dancer executing a flexing exercise. She reached out for the back of the chair, but by the time her hand had arrived, she had already collected herself enough merely to touch it, as if for luck. But her face was still drained of colour. A part of him that he did not like that much felt vindicated and satisfied.

‘First Alina, now Nadia. Surely you see some sort of pattern?’

She nodded.

‘Not that he necessarily . . .’

‘When did Nadia vanish?’

‘Last night or early this morning. I have not established exactly when.’

‘You have not been asking around town yet? In case someone has seen her. Or Niki, for that matter.’

‘I’ll be dealing with that later. What I want you to do now is come with me.’

Silvana took his hand. ‘Thank you for being so good to me.’

Gently he disengaged his hand from hers. ‘I don’t think I am being good to you, and I have not finished yet.’

She went back to the shelf and distractedly pulled down a bottle. ‘This, is helianthemum, or rock rose. It stops panic attacks.’ She took a glass from the shelf below and half filled it. ‘You don’t mind?’ She drank.

She moved on to the next jar. ‘This is autumn gentian. It’s for people who have lost all hope and feel depressed. And this one here, is an infusion of mimulus, which is also for panic and fear. I am going to mix them.’

‘I thought that the other one you just showed me was for panic and fear.’

‘Rock rose cures fear of the unknown. Mimulus cures fear of the known. The first is an Alpine flower, but my father manages to cultivate it in the cold garden, the part under the black cliff. The second is not a native to Italy, and so my father grows that, too. I mean, he grows them all, but those two are especially hard for him. Down towards the end of the row there is another tincture of beech. I think maybe you should try some.’