Authors: Christobel Kent
The man shook his head. ‘Widowed. Ten years.’
The doors stood open and both men contemplated the view in silence. Ten years, thought Sandro with horror.
‘At least you get a sight of the outside world,’ he said. Opposite was a wall whose stucco had gone in places, and an unruly plant had rooted in the mortar. It had little white flowers; by comparison the orchid looked like it was made of plastic. Sandro could smell someone’s dinner cooking, heard a clatter of pans from across the street and felt an itch to be out of here. Home.
‘Long day for you,’ he said. ‘Eleven in the morning till midnight, Ms Cornell told me.’ Would a widower – Sandro shrank from the word – even have anything to go home to?
‘I can manage,’ said Lino.
Sandro skated over the prickliness of the reply. ‘All these events,’ he said. ‘Last night, for instance. Some talk on, wasn’t there?’
‘Renaissance medicine,’ said Lino, still looking out into the street. ‘Dottoressa Tassi, a lady from the university. A colleague of the Professor’s.’
An old man was leading a small fat dog. As they watched, it manoeuvred itself into defecating position, hindquarters quivering over the kerb. The owner affected not to notice, just gave the lead a tug and they walked on. Sandro thought of the maid upstairs cleaning mess off a door. The dog was gone, but the shit was still around. A man was dead.
‘Do they eat here, after?’ said Sandro casually. ‘Cook for themselves?’
Lino gave him a scornful look. ‘You must be kidding,’ he said. ‘They’re out every night.’
‘And you can’t really relax until you’ve seen them all off the premises, I suppose. Or signed them back in.’ Sandro spoke nonchalantly, but Lino gave him a sharp look.
‘They have their own keys,’ the doorman said. ‘It’s not a prison.’
‘I expect they like to have the door held open for them, though,’ said Sandro. The smell of cooking was irresistible: his stomach emitted a little growl.
Despite himself, Lino cracked a wintry little smile. ‘Who you waiting for, then? Whoever it is, I can send them along to your office if you like.’
‘My palatial accommodation,’ said Sandro.
‘I’ve got a chair in a cupboard,’ said Lino, nodding towards a door cleverly concealed in some panelling. Sandro pulled at the handle, curious: it was indeed a cupboard, with a narrow padded bench barely big enough for an adult to lie on. He closed it again and behind him Lino sighed. ‘But you’re right. When they come back from the restaurant in their cabs they like the taxi driver to see a doorman.’
‘Last night, for example?’
Lino frowned. ‘Last night, last night, I don’t know. Why d’you . . .’ Something dawned, and he gave an uneasy laugh. ‘Giancarlo? You think someone here . . .’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You’ve got a screw loose. It was a drugs overdose, I heard.’ He turned to look out through the long glass doors
to the garden at the back of the foyer, where the guests were congregating on the terrace under Cornell’s window. Sandro could see Magda Scardino practically on tiptoe, trying to get her husband’s attention. ‘This lot? They wouldn’t know how, would they?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Sandro. ‘Just humour me, though. I’m interested. Best to be prepared, if the Carabinieri come back again.’
‘All right,’ said Lino stiffly. ‘Let’s see. The talk ended at eight, eight-thirty. Dottoressa Tassi, very, ah, very nice,’ and he smiled wistfully. ‘She said she’d be back tonight for the unveiling, colleague of the Prof’s. They came out in dribs and drabs afterwards, heading off for their dinners.’ He had brightened. ‘Miss Morris never goes out, not too nifty on her feet and she feeds herself off the freebies anyway. Nuts and that, and she’s not rich like the rest. She’s up later than most, just pottering around – she likes to come down and say goodnight, for example. Up and down in the lift, never locks her door. Hoping for visitors.’
‘Lonely,’ said Sandro.
Lino nodded. ‘The others – well, the Camerons were first out, they’re early eaters. I heard them come back around eleven. Then the Flemings and the Scardinos, they seem to get on . . .’ He paused, ruminative, eyebrows raised.
‘You’re surprised?’ Sandro put in lightly.
‘She’s high-maintenance, that one,’ Lino said, his mouth turning down. ‘The Prof’s wife. Just the thought wears me out.’ Sandro smiled, and the doorman went on doggedly. ‘The couples came back separately. The Flemings on the back of the
Camerons, as far as I remember. And Sir Martin likes to smoke a cigar on the doorstep before he comes in.’
He had relaxed now. Witnesses, in Sandro’s experience, needed to do that before you could rely on what they were telling you.
‘The Americans are the late birds. Mr and Mrs Van Vleet – Therese.’ He shot Sandro a glance. ‘She’s a good person. I was sorry about the dog, she loved that little thing.’ He smiled a touch sadly. ‘Once said to me – she looked at me and you could see how she’d have been as a little girl – said she could imagine living without her husband, but not the dog.’
He frowned then. ‘I swear it never got past me. She was always letting it off the leash in the garden, and some of the others didn’t like that – the Prof’s wife for one, complained of the mess. But hearing it yapping, like it was having some fun . . . well, this place needs some of that.’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro, more heartfelt than he’d intended. ‘Did they blame you?’
Lino shrugged, uneasy. ‘I told him, ask the old lady down below, it could have got out down at the bottom of the garden. Dogs can be very determined, and you can hardly blame the thing, stuck in here. A terrier, too, bred for rabbit holes. But he wouldn’t lower himself. Vito. Oh, he smiled and held her hand but he didn’t do a blind thing to find it.’
Sandro took a step to the threshold and breathed the sweet evening air. He thought of the old lady down below, watering her plants. ‘You were saying. The Van Vleets were out late last night?’
‘They didn’t go out till ten. I didn’t see them get back in. I often don’t. He likes the nightlife.’
So, the Van Vleets not accounted for. ‘And Lludic?’ Arrogant, lazy, predatory were the words that sprang to mind when he thought of the sculptor, sitting at the bar during the launch party, waiting for women. ‘I suppose it’s like the old lady, you don’t go out to eat on your own.’
‘Oh,’ said Lino slowly. ‘Oh.’ And his hands came out from behind his back.
‘What?’ said Sandro.
‘He did go out,’ said the doorman, and cleared his throat. ‘But he didn’t come back. At least, not until nine or so this morning.’
In the window of the workshop opposite, Sandro saw a girl’s face swim out of the darkness, looking out into the street. There were footsteps and then Giuli was there in the doorway.
*
Luisa dropped her bag inside the door of their apartment; she didn’t look at her phone.
She could have done without Frollini turning up as she’d come up from the storeroom buttoning her old coat. That hadn’t escaped him: Enrico Frollini could tell if a suede shoe had been finished in France or in Italy, never mind what he thought of a coat already five years old with a button missing at the neck.
It had only given him a moment’s pause though. Full of plans. Telling her he’d been talking to people – to that windbag Gastone Bottai, he meant – and that he thought there was a nice solution to her – what had he called it? – her
downsizing needs
. Rubbing his hands together, but he wouldn’t tell her his solution. ‘Tomorrow morning, nine-thirty sharp.’
Men, she thought, fuming. It’s all plans and meetings and programming this and scheduling that – and who does the actual work?
And she could have done without Marina Artusi ambushing her as she’d walked through the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, shoving her arm through Luisa’s as she entered the big tranquil space framed by loggias, the route home Luisa always chose when she needed calming down.
Behind them the Piazza San Marco, buses endlessly circling, an army barracks opposite a monastery and permanently occupied by tourists and soldiers. Ahead of them the huge, gloomy Piazza d’Azeglio, where the roar of the ringroad competed with the din of the children’s playground. And in the middle . . . this. Always empty, the long portico of the Ospedale degli Innocenti always soothing. Not this evening, though.
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she’d said crossly in the dingy bar on the corner of the Via della Colonna. She’d been manoeuvred into having a coffee, but she had refused to sit down. ‘You’re asking the wrong person, Marina.’ She downed the little cup, and picked up her bag. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the place, anyway. A lot of very respectable people. The man had just been fired, he just went on a – a binge. An accident.’
Marina Artusi snorted. ‘Accident? That’s not at all what I hear. And as for respectable. Well, that’s a matter of opinion. I heard some of the residents are having a little trouble actually coming up with their payments, having to draw in their horns, somewhat. Send things back to the shop, if you understand me. And old Athene Morris. A
grande horizontale
, if ever there was one – you know what that means, Luisa?’
Luisa stared at her stonily, but she couldn’t help but think back with a saleswoman’s reflex. Professor Charles Scardino’s transaction had gone through straight away, not even a security check, even though the dresses had come to more than five thousand euros. So if anyone was in financial trouble, it wasn’t them.
Marina Artusi carried on gaily. ‘But I’m sure Martin knows the ins and outs, anyway; tell Sandro to ask him. There was a big extortion case in Damascus when we were there – blackmail, a man found hanging from a dam – and Martin told me, oh, months before it came out, that a certain government minister would be implicated.’
Back home now, Luisa pushed open the windows. Sandro said he’d be back late.
‘You just tell Sandro to get Martin Fleming on his side. Martin knows everything.’
Luisa had slapped down her money then, buttoned her old coat, and thanked Marina Artusi with elaborate courtesy.
The woman had caught up with her at the door. ‘It’s always a pleasure, Luisa,’ she said. ‘And if you would just find out from Sandro if it’s true? That Juliet Fleming isn’t well. Not well at all. Of course, they call it an illness, these days, don’t they?’
Luisa had left her standing.
Sandro’s message had come in as she put her key in the apartment door. A long shower, she thought, hanging up her coat.
Chapter Ten
T
HERE WAS A MURMUR
, non-committal, uncertain, then firming up into hesitant approval. Oh God, thought Giuli, with the heart-sinking certainty of her own ignorance as the veil dropped. What is it?
They were in a courtyard at the back of the Palazzo San Giorgio. On the podium now, the blonde woman who had introduced herself as Alessandra Cornell was holding up a hand for quiet. Giuli darted a pleading glance at Sandro: how long was this going to go on? They hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, he’d just hurried her through, apologetically explaining her presence to a succession of stiffs along the way.
It was a big chunk of marble, was what it was, maybe five tonnes of the stuff. Smoothed on one side, as smooth as a pebble from the sea, with a soft indentation in its side, a hollow you wanted to put your hand in. On the other side it was as jagged as though it had just broken away from the rockface. The sculptor just stood there, looking surly.
There was a spatter of polite applause and Giuli looked
around covertly, wondering which of this lot had brought the hooker in. Middle-aged men: could be any of them. The tall pale one with the high forehead and the bitch for a wife? Professor Something. She had given Giuli a filthy look as Sandro led her inside, which made Giuli think she wouldn’t be up for a threesome, somehow.
Someone stepped up to her from behind.
‘Ah, just a quick word.’ Alessandra Cornell seemed nervous all of a sudden, tapping too loudly on her microphone. ‘You all know Giancarlo Vito left us at the weekend.’ Giuli saw her fix on Sandro, the Bottai guy glaring at her. ‘And now perhaps some of you do not know but . . .’ She faltered, then pulled herself together. ‘We are not sure of the circumstances, but it seems Giancarlo met with an unfortunate . . . an accident, or possibly . . .’ She cleared her throat. ‘He passed away last night.’
So that was what Sandro hadn’t told her.
There was an anxious murmuring, but not, Giuli thought, any great shockwave: they already knew, or most of them. An ageing woman with grey-blonde curls clutched at her husband’s arm, the bitch-wife stood up taller, chin in the air. Sandro shot Giuli an apologetic glance. It came to her that she hadn’t told Enzo her own bad news yet either.
Alessandra Cornell was hurrying on. ‘However, we have a new Head of Security in Mr Sandro Cellini, a man much respected in the community and among his ex-colleagues in the Polizia di Stato. I am sure he will make himself known to all of you.’ And she stepped down, flushed.
‘So there’s upstaging for you.’ The voice was a woman’s, ironical. Half turning, Giuli caught a thick tangle of black hair
tied in a knot, creases around the eyes. She doesn’t belong here, either. Shorter than Giuli, maybe five years younger. Was it her Giuli had felt step up behind her?
‘Mr Lludic won’t be too happy about that.’ The woman tipped her head on one side. ‘What d’you think of the piece? Do you like it?’
‘It looks like he didn’t get around to finishing it,’ Giuli said, defiantly. There was something about the way the younger woman was looking at her, wary conspiracy, old knowledge shared. So when she spoke, Giuli knew what was coming.
‘It’s Giulietta, isn’t it? Giulietta Sarto?’
Behind her – all around her – Giuli could feel eyes on her.
‘You don’t know me,’ she said, before she could think about it.
*
Bottai had shifted as many of them as he could bully into the library. Giuli, white-faced and in conversation with the girl from over the road, had stood her ground outside, dismissing Sandro’s pleading glance with a stiff shake of the head. Once inside, Sandro had stationed himself at one end of the bar, to give himself as low a profile as he could while still able to see and be seen.