Authors: Christobel Kent
Sir Martin Fleming was at the far end of the long bookcase with a patient expression on his face and a tall glass in his hand; he was being talked to by the Australian engineer. The Van Vleets were standing with Magda Scardino: she had her hand on Therese Van Vleet’s arm, proprietorially. Athene Morris, leaning
on her stick, was managing to loom over Marjorie Cameron in the middle of the room. Cameron had certainly been pretty once, Sandro registered for a second time, in a soft sort of way: those fair curls, hazel eyes. Now she looked blurred, with unhappiness perhaps. Her nose was red even at this distance and he saw her dab at it. The Professor was talking to a woman Sandro hadn’t seen before, in angular glasses, and for the first time since Sandro had arrived, he looked happy.
He should have told Giuli about Vito. Never mind talked to her about her own troubles, only the very thought of the Women’s Centre filled him with a sense of doom. A nest of vipers – but then this place wasn’t much better. Sandro could see Magda Scardino eyeing him speculatively, her hand now on Therese Van Vleet’s waist.
Sandro already hated this room. Although large and notionally elegant, with a wall full of leather-bound books, alcoves, panelling and the long, gilded bar, it managed also to be claustrophobic. It was like a shuttered barn, a place for herded animals. He felt the barman looking at him.
‘You’re Mauro,’ he said.
The barman gave a little bow. All this discretion was giving Sandro a stomach-ache, and he’d drunk two glasses of Ferrari Brut that weren’t helping. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ he said. Sardinian, he calculated, from Mauro’s small stature and dark looks.
‘Stepping into a dead man’s shoes,’ the barman said, pushing the glass across to him. ‘Are you up to it, Mr Cellini?’
Not so discreet after all. ‘You didn’t like him,’ Sandro said, with a flash of insight.
Mauro looked down, passing a cloth over his bottles. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t much of a detective. Or at least, not unless there was something in it for him.’
Sandro leaned forward a little. ‘So I hear,’ he said. ‘The maid that – ah – resigned. I don’t suppose you know where she went?’ He held his breath.
Mauro raised his head and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Mariaclara? She’s at the Excelsior,’ he said slowly. ‘They gave her an excellent reference. She’s a cocktail waitress in the Terrace Bar.’
Sandro nodded, half turned to watch the room. Sir Martin Fleming was making his way between the tables towards them. Sandro lowered his voice and spoke quickly. ‘And what about the hooker? The one who got Vito fired?’
Mauro said nothing.
‘You know who she was brought in for?’
The barman began to shake his head, very slowly. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘You’ll get
me
fired that way.’
Fleming had been intercepted by Athene Morris. She represented a formidable obstacle, one hand on his shoulder.
‘
Giancarlo
might not have been much of a detective, Mauro,’ Sandro said, taking advantage of the breathing space. ‘But my wife tells me it’s about the only thing I
can
do.’ The barman almost smiled. ‘You’re a clever guy,’ Sandro said, easily. ‘Do you really think there’s no connection between this place and Giancarlo’s death?’
Mauro’s face closed up again. ‘I would leave it, if I were you,’ he said. ‘These are powerful people. They’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone.’
‘You know what you’re talking about,’ said Sandro. ‘Am I right?’
‘I worked at the Algerian Consulate and then the French Embassy in Rome for a while,’ said the barman. He folded a glass cloth and set it down. ‘Seven years, as a matter of fact.’
‘Ah,’ said Sandro, nodding. ‘Yes. The French kept you that long? You must be good. Special skills required.’
‘Let’s just say, I know a spy when I see one.’ And the Sardinian smiled.
Fleming had moved on; Athene Morris was staring after him, her colour higher than usual.
Sandro had Mauro’s attention now, and he leaned in. ‘Something’s wrong here, has been for weeks, don’t tell me you don’t know. Nasty tricks. And rather than solve it, Giancarlo had been sticking his nose in other people’s business. Feathering his own nest.’
Mauro hesitated, then sighed. ‘Lino recognised the hooker,’ he said quickly. ‘Quite a classy one. He said he used to see her working the Granduca lobby most evenings when he had a job there. Of course, if you look close. . . But you have to have a sharp eye to know a whore from a wealthy wife, sometimes.’
At that Sandro saw that Giuli had come into the big windowless room and was talking to the Australian engineer: the man who could spot a whore at twenty paces. She was looking longingly at the door.
‘Indeed,’ said Sandro.
‘Long black hair,’ said Mauro. ‘Tiny star tattoo under her left ear. Calls herself Bruna.’
Then someone was at the bar. Sandro turned and saw to his surprise that it wasn’t Sir Martin Fleming, but the woman Professor Scardino had been talking to. She was fortyish, thick hair streaked with grey and green eyes behind the rectangular glasses. Handsome.
Mauro bowed to her. ‘Dottoressa Tassi,’ he said, and bent over her hand, lips hovering in the Sardinian way. He straightened, and without being asked set a glass in front of the woman and began to busy himself with a cocktail shaker. ‘You came back for the sculpture? This is Mr Cellini, our new detective. The Dottoressa gave us a talk on Renaissance medicine last night. A colleague of the Professor’s.’ The one Lino had mentioned, then; the one he had a soft spot for.
The woman examined Sandro wearily. She looked unhappy to him, and he wondered why she’d come. She lifted the glass Mauro slid across to her in salute.
And then smoothly Mauro went on, ‘Sir Martin. Your usual?’ Because the Englishman had arrived at Sandro’s other side.
‘Juliet would like another whisky,’ said Sir Martin Fleming, and held out a hand to Sandro. ‘Mr Cellini. I don’t think we’ve met properly.’
His eyes were faded grey, slightly bloodshot in the weathered face, and his handshake was warm.
I like him
, thought Sandro, to his own surprise.
*
The sun was dipping behind the railway station of Santa Maria Novella and the air, oily with exhaust fumes, was still warm.
Traffic circled the roundabout below, the rough sleepers were unrolling their grimy sleeping bags on the sparse grass and a handful of Albanians were talking business by the taxi rank.
The couple nearest to the coach bays, four or five dogs curled on and around their bodies, seemed to have been sleeping there for days, at least since the police had last come round, the week before. They’re not even old, thought Donato, climbing out of the driver’s seat of his coach – the Airport Express, misnomer if ever there was one, given the traffic and the roadworks on the Firenze-Pisa-Livorno
superstrada
. He was waiting for his courier Joe, who’d gone for a coffee inside the station. It got a bit rank in the bus once the weather warmed up.
He’d seen the faces of the rough sleepers that morning, a man of twenty-five or so with dreadlocks and the girl not much more than a teenager. What kind of a life was that? Donato felt old. Maybe they thought driving a coach up and down the Fi-Pi-Li five times a day wasn’t much of a life, either. Maybe it wasn’t.
An hour until the next pick-up, the last of the day, and Donato lit up, to clear the air. Something smelled off, for sure, but it was tough to say what exactly, what with the dogs and the traffic and the unwashed humanity. Once someone had left a cheese in the bus’s overhead rack and it had been a good week of building stench before they noticed it. The couriers were supposed to check the bus inside and out, but they were paid peanuts just like him; who could blame them for scurrying off at the end of the day.
He saw Joe weaving his way back through the taxi rank, suspiciously bright-eyed and nodding to all the drivers. You could
get more or less anything in and around Santa Maria Novella station, and Joe looked like he hadn’t stuck to coffee.
‘Hey,’ Donato said. ‘When d’you last check the racks?’ He threw his cigarette on to the tarmac and, setting a foot on the coach’s step, registered the dreadlocked man in his sleeping bag raising himself up and yawning. Sleep all day, come awake when the sun goes down. Not safe here in the dark, those Albanians circling like hyenas.
‘Or the hold? Something stinks.’ Donato hauled himself back in, sat in his seat and pressed the buttons overhead that operated the hydraulic doors to the luggage compartments.
Joe had climbed on and was doing a manic sweep down the aisle. ‘Nothing here,’ he said, coming back, arms raised like a gladiator asking for his accolade. ‘And they always get in touch if it’s a suitcase they’ve left behind. Like, without fail.’
They heard the hiss and groan of the luggage compartment opening. On the sidewalk at the top of the station ramp a girl had come up, pulling a wheeled suitcase. She was eyeing them tentatively. Joe stood in the doorway, a hand on either side of the frame. Below them the bodywork panels were sliding out and up along the coach’s side, and from his seat Donato saw the courier’s face flatten in distaste.
‘Yeah,’ Joe murmured, stepping on to the tarmac, and Donato was there after him, a hand held up to the waiting girl.
‘A moment please,’ he said. They bent down.
‘It’s a big one,’ said Joe. ‘Excess baggage right there.’
It sat at the centre of the compartment, as though its owner had thrust it as far in as possible. You couldn’t see it unless you leaned right down and looked in: it might have been there for
days. Joe climbed in, his nose pressed into his arm, and gave it a tug that brought it into the lights of the station forecourt. A tag dangled from the handle, stained with something.
Donato started as the girl appeared at his shoulder, peering in with them. ‘Gee,’ she said, in a light, childish voice. ‘Something sure smells bad.’
Chapter Eleven
T
HE SUN HAD GONE
down. Elena had stood and watched its last rays shining silver down the length of the river below and wondered about Giulietta Sarto. The blue-grey dusk was settling over the city and lights were beginning to go on along the embankments. A woman came and stood beside her. In the gathering dark the huge sculpture loomed, concealing them from the Palazzo.
‘I’ve seen you,’ she said, startling Elena. ‘Just like a Vermeer, through the window.’ She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Juliet Fleming. We were at the embassy in Amsterdam for a while, have you ever been?’ Her Italian was very correct, although accented, but Elena just stared.
‘That’s how John described me,’ she said, before she could think.
The woman sipped at her glass of whisky; her husband had brought it out to her and slipped away again. ‘John?’
‘My . . . I came with him. To the launch. Weeks ago.’
‘I see.’ Juliet Fleming was looking at her with such calm
understanding, Elena felt as though she had worked the whole story out.
A girl came past with a tray of champagne glasses and recklessly Elena took one. Juliet Fleming’s tumbler seemed to be empty already and she set it on the tray. ‘Could you bring me another?’ she said, smiling gently at the maid, who bobbed. ‘Medicinal,’ she said.
‘Maybe you know him,’ said Elena, emboldened by the drink, and the smile. Why should she? ‘He’s a journalist. John Carlsson.’
‘Oh, John,’ said the Englishwoman straight away. ‘Oh, yes.’ Her gaze had settled on Elena, thoughtful. ‘He’s your lover,’ she said. Elena said nothing.
‘I haven’t seen John in a day or two,’ said Juliet Fleming, reaching for the glass the returning maid had brought her. ‘He does seem to find us all so interesting, goodness knows why.’ Her voice was thoughtful. ‘Anyone who wants to talk to Ian about his bridges . . .’ She tailed off. ‘He’s been away somewhere,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Elena. Because that was what he’d told her, too.
I’ll tell you about it when I get back
, was all he’d said on the phone, forestalling her questions. And never did.
But it seemed he hadn’t minded telling Juliet Fleming. ‘Down south, he said. Researching something. Bari?’ The Englishwoman held the glass against her teeth a moment. ‘But he’s back, isn’t he? He was here, when, Monday? The day Giancarlo went. Looking for someone.’
‘A woman?’ Elena wished her voice hadn’t sounded so small.
Juliet Fleming turned back to look at her. ‘Ah, I see,’ she
said, and for a brief moment she sounded tired, and kind. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that was it.’ Her hand rested, light as dry leaves, on Elena’s, then was gone. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said. ‘Journalists. Everything for the story, you know. They’re not a good bet. Never.’
Elena smelled the whisky and it made her feel sick, a little anxious tick-tick behind the thumping of her heart: he’d been in here. Had she been asleep, had she been at the hospital? Or had he come in the dark, so as not to be seen?
‘I haven’t seen him in more than a week,’ she said.
Small and grey in the dusk, Juliet Fleming cradled her glass. ‘He’s probably just . . . you know. Following a scent,’ she said. ‘I’m sure . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong.’
Only there was. Juliet Fleming’s whisky-softened gaze told her so.
It was then that Elena felt Danilo Lludic rather than saw him: smelled the tobacco and chemicals and felt the big bulk at her shoulder. Momentarily giddy with the drink, and her heart pounding from having just been talking about John, she leaned into him. Mistake.
*
No message from Enzo. She should have called him, not sent a text. Better still, she should have gone straight to find him and told him, face to face. Maybe Sandro was right, the world was going to hell in a handcart, and it was sending a text message as it went.
If she got a message from Enzo, Giuli thought, saying, it’s
okay – though she couldn’t have said what form of words, exactly, would work – then it would matter less. All of it. But as she waited, she felt like . . . she could hardly describe it. Like she wanted to scratch all her skin off, from shame. She could hear Sandro’s voice saying, stoutly,
What have you to be ashamed of? You’ve done nothing. It’s a lie
. But didn’t he understand? It wasn’t what you’d done, it was what you
were
.