Authors: Christobel Kent
‘Not her,’ Sandro groaned. He could feel his headache returning.
‘Well, if you’re not interested . . .’ She made as if to stand up again.
‘Go on,’ he said.
Luisa patted his arm. ‘She says that someone over there’s not paying his bills. She says that Sir Martin Fleming knows everything, that in the Middle East he always had his ear to the ground. And she said his wife was sick – only I think what she was really saying is, she’s a drunk.’ Sandro digested this information. Luisa sat back, content. ‘Your turn.’
‘There was this room-maid there,’ he said eventually, looking at his wife sidelong. ‘She got fired. Resigned, rather, that was the story, after an accusation of theft. I wanted to talk to her, only she’d gone to work as a cocktail waitress.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Luisa, with deep scepticism.
‘Long story,’ said Sandro, revising what he’d intended to tell her. Truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure of things himself. He needed more coffee. And something to eat.
‘How about I get dressed and we get some breakfast on your way,’ he said. ‘Do me good to get started early.’ He tried to remember if his office at the San Giorgio offered any opportunity for a lie-down later.
The office. Briefcase. What had he got from Cornell and put in the briefcase? CV, okay. He really needed to get a grip. What had Mariaclara said? He found that trying to remember anything about the statuesque cocktail waitress with Luisa there brought him out in a sweat. She really had been very good-looking.
Luisa looked at her watch. ‘Get a move on, then,’ she said. ‘You need a shave.’
Twenty minutes later they were at a warm corner table in Rivoire, and the elderly waiter was fussing fondly around Luisa. The shop, practically next door, had a tab. She waved him away with affectionate impatience, and pushed the
brioches
and
caffè latte
she’d ordered across to Sandro. He set his briefcase on the table. The pastry was still warm, and full of apricot jam. Sandro paused a moment, eyes closed in bliss. Nothing, it seemed to him, had ever tasted so good: maybe it was worth the hangover.
He paused, suddenly self-conscious. ‘You not eating?’
In response Luisa pulled her jacket tight round her. Since the breast reconstruction she’d seemed uncertain about her figure as she never had before. ‘You know what I think,’ he said, ‘about that.’ He hoped she did know.
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘You’re making a mess,’ she said.
Brushing crumbs off his suit with one hand, he pulled Giancarlo Vito’s CV out of his briefcase with the other and set it on the table. Luisa caught the
caffè latte
before he knocked it on the floor.
‘My predecessor,’ he said, taking the coffee and giving her the document in exchange. A photograph was clipped to the top; he saw her put a finger to it, tracing the man’s jawline. Crew-cut, big chin, that bulge of trapezium muscle Sandro had noticed at the party.
‘Good-looking,’ she said, and sighed. ‘You talked to him at the launch.’ She ran her eye down the first page then handed the document back. ‘How did he die?’
‘They’re talking about drugs,’ said Sandro, flipping up the photograph. ‘The Carabinieri.’ He frowned. ‘They’re being
cagey, actually. Even more than usual.’ Alessandra Cornell had said they wouldn’t tell her anything.
There was a note under the photograph –
This is the one
– and it was signed,
Gastone
. Sandro was not even aware of having been considered and found wanting by Bottai; he’d thought it was Cornell’s decision. So Bottai had handpicked the private detective. A young buck. Born 1982 in San Casciano, went into the army. Released on grounds of ill-health in 2007, then he resurfaces as a surveillance expert. One of those boys who fancies himself a mercenary? Or likes guns, or the camaraderie, or the pension, or the Military Academy? Because who signs up for the army, in this day and age? He wondered what kind of ill-health had got Vito an honourable discharge: not so easy to get out of the army. A drug habit would have stuck fast, but his references were glowing.
Transforms himself into a computer whizz – or so his CV said; employed on a freelance contract for four years by the Stella d’Argento. Their address was on the CV. He turned and looked out of the window; Piazza Signoria 36: he could practically see it from here. Sandro pondered how they would receive him if he turned up asking questions. They might think he was looking for a job.
‘Maybe I could call Pietro,’ he said.
‘But it’s a Carabinieri case.’
‘Yes.’ He could see the tiny edging of white at her parting. He put a hand to her cheek. ‘You should have been a cop,’ he said, with the faintest of smiles, and opened his briefcase to put the CV back inside, thinking, I could call Falco. The
carabiniere
he’d dealt with over the missing girl, three years back. Falco. He
paused, looking up at the ceiling. Falco had even hinted then, hadn’t he, that he owed Sandro one.
‘What’s that?’ said Luisa sharply, and hearing her tone he jerked his head back and blinked.
‘What’s what?’ He looked down at his briefcase: she was pointing, then her hand was inside it and pulling something out, a fat magazine of glossy pages that he’d never seen before, spilling open in front of them. Horrified, he put both hands out in an attempt to close it, to cover it, but it was too late.
A top-shelf job. A pornographic magazine. A lipglossed blonde, hands splayed against two huge breasts.
He saw Luisa’s face. Too late.
*
The sky was overcast and the mothers trudging up to the entrance of the big school in the Via della Chiesa were trailing umbrellas and raincoats as well as their children’s overstuffed backpacks. These were the early ones, the protected ones, the children equipped with snacks from the baker’s, their mothers bending to kiss them, wipe their noses, straighten their clothing, issue last-minute instructions.
Giuli knew the school well because for a year, in a previous life, she had been temporarily housed in the
casa popolare
opposite. She got out her phone to check the time: eight-fifteen, no messages. Her guess would be that Rosina, for all her good intentions, would take it down to the wire. She would be here eight-forty, unwashed, shouting at the children and at any member of the school staff who challenged her timekeeping.
Two hookers in twelve hours. Maybe someone was trying to tell Giuli something.
Last night, Enzo’s reaction to her suspension had startled her with its violence, on the pavement outside the Granduca. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he’d said. He’d actually been angry – with her, as much as with them. ‘Don’t be stupid. How can you take it seriously?’
‘How can
they?
’ she’d said, faltering at the rage she heard in his voice. ‘Look, I’ve been suspended. I’ve got to take it seriously.’
They’d fallen into silence then, looking up at the hotel’s façade. It had once been elegant, with pillars and art-nouveau mosaic, but neglect and decades of pollution from the Via Senese had left the Granduca the worse for wear.
‘Come in with me?’ said Giuli.
He shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’
She took his hand, looked down. Her engagement ring was loose on her finger, as if it belonged to someone else. ‘I’ve got to talk to a hooker,’ she said. ‘You think I want to be taken for one myself?’
The look on his face twisted something painfully inside her. Lines of anxiety etched his forehead, weariness – and doubt. But when she turned, still holding his hand, he followed.
The receptionist wore a frogged jacket and cap, even if he was in need of a shave. With a jaundiced look he had directed them through an archway to the bar. The room was still grand – a long curved slab of green marble, soaring ceilings, painted ladies in the Liberty style, with their hands raised to support garlands and arches – but the furniture had seen better days.
They ordered fruit juices and Enzo’s unease took on an air
of desperation. Three men in suits, their ties loosened, were standing with their backs against the bar, surveying the room. In the low chairs arranged in groups, an elderly woman was pouring camomile tea very slowly, a middle-aged couple were gazing into each other’s eyes over small glasses of something sticky, and a single woman in a red skirt leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. She had a clutch-bag in her lap and her long skinny legs and high sandals were stretched out in front of her; even from a distance, Giuli could see the scuffing on the heels. A coffee cup sat on her low table, its contents long since drunk. She had a star tattoo under one ear.
‘See you outside in ten minutes,’ Giuli whispered to Enzo, resting her cheek against his. He didn’t need telling twice.
‘You’re Bruna,’ she said, sitting down opposite the woman in the red skirt.
Bruna looked down from her examination of the painted ceiling, but she didn’t move her long legs. ‘So?’ she said, sliding a glance across the room.
Giuli followed her gaze to the men at the bar. ‘I won’t take up much of your time,’ she said. ‘And that lot need another halfhour, if you ask me. They’re still discussing how much you’d charge for all three. And the one on the left is trying to work out how he can cry off without being laughed at.’
Bruna looked at her stonily. ‘How much time?’ she said. ‘It all costs, you know.’
Giuli hesitated: Sandro hadn’t authorised payment. She took her business card out of her pocket. ‘Come along to the office tomorrow,’ she said. ‘You want me handing over cash in front of this lot?’ Bruna took the card and examined it. ‘You know
the Palazzo San Giorgio?’ said Giuli. ‘You saw a client there, maybe this time last week?’
The girl stared at her. Girl. She was thirty, at Giuli’s guess, and the next ten years would turn her into an old woman.
‘Maybe,’ said Bruna. She looked down at the card. ‘Why does this . . . Sandro Cellini Investigations want to know?’
‘Who was it?’ said Giuli. ‘Could you describe him to me?’
‘I don’t kiss and tell,’ the girl said. ‘Bad for business.’ She gave the men at the bar another glance, with a hint of invitation.
‘The house detective there,’ said Giuli carefully. ‘I hear you were on friendly terms. I hear he saw you to the door, just like a gentleman.’
Bruna straightened, drawing in her legs. ‘Giancarlo?’ she said. ‘He’s not a bad guy.’ Her hand closed around the business card, crumpling it.
‘Wasn’t,’ said Giuli. ‘Didn’t you hear? He died.’
Outside on the Via Senese, Enzo was standing, hands in pockets, as the cars passed. ‘That was eight minutes,’ he said when she emerged, and hugged her.
‘I don’t like to mess around,’ said Giuli.
As Giuli had stood up from the table, Bruna had been straightening her skirt studiedly, getting lipstick out of her clutch, but the eyes were dead, concealing fear.
Giuli had got to sleep about three, lying there listening to the rain start. Did Enzo know what it was like, to be judged, never to get away from where you came from? Enzo lived his life looking forwards, and he thought that was how everyone should be – particularly when what was behind you was nasty.
But his parents had loved him, their odd-looking only child; they’d taken him everywhere with them, and had never raised a hand to him.
Eight-twenty-three. A warm drizzle had set up on the Via della Chiesa, and Giuli hadn’t brought an umbrella.
Enzo was right; he always was. But there were things she couldn’t say, because they’d freak him out. Drugs: he had no idea. Giuli tried to imagine his face if she were to put it into words.
It’s not like I haven’t been tempted.
Speeding on her
motorino
through the Piazza Santo Spirito at night and turning her head so she didn’t see them doing their deals, only to catch the dreamy look on the face of someone who’d just taken a hit.
And when the cold-water shock of betrayal hits you, when someone you trusted and you thought trusted you won’t even meet your eye to let you defend yourself – what’s the first demon that climbs into your head, as though it was yesterday and not four years since your last fix? That feeling. Like love, that feeling when the chemical unfurls like smoke through your body, when you close your eyes and everything’s warm and safe.
Like love, only easier.
There was a flurry of arrivals at the wide steps of the school. Through the glass doors Giuli could see a noticeboard in the hall, artwork stuck up. Still early for Rosina, but all the same, Giuli moved in, closer, so as not to miss anyone. A woman turning from her children gave her a hard look, suspicious of an unaccompanied female hovering at the school gates. Giuli took a step back, bumping into another mother, holding a child by each hand. Her hair was tied back, her coat buttoned, the two children – a girl and a boy – awkward but neatly turned
out, each one clutching a greasy paper bag of
schiacciata
. The woman was Rosina.
Tethered as she was by her children, there was no escape. Giuli had only to wait as Rosina bent to kiss them, administered rough instructions about eating their dinners and saw them inside. They looked back at Giuli and their mother together on the steps, and Giuli read the fear in their eyes as clearly as she’d seen it in Bruna’s.
‘Why did you do it?’ Giuli said, under her breath. She was holding on to Rosina by the sleeve. People were looking, and Rosina tried to pull away. ‘Let me guess, you wanted a better life. Well, guess what. Me too. Difference is, I’m not going to shit on anyone else to get it.’
The woman stopped pulling. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said sullenly.
‘You told Massini – the Director – you told her you’d seen me shooting up.’
From the way Rosina paled, Giuli knew the old cleaner had been right. ‘She told you,’ Rosina said. ‘The Director. She said she wouldn’t.’
‘You think they’re on our side?’ said Giuli, suddenly weary. ‘Once a junkie, always a junkie, that’s how they think. Once a hooker—’ She stopped. This wasn’t good. She mustn’t say this. She mustn’t believe this. ‘Who told you to say you saw me taking drugs?’
Rosina shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said, looking around desperately. ‘She said . . . they’d take the kids away.’