Authors: Christobel Kent
‘She?’ Giuli pulled Rosina closer. ‘Nicoletta Farmiga? Is that who hates me that much?’
She saw confusion in Rosina’s eyes. ‘I don’t know who that is,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to tell them you threatened me. I could get witnesses. Anyway,’ and she looked down, ‘she said you were getting engaged. What do you need a job for?’
Giuli let the sleeve go and for a moment they stood there, eye to eye. Not Farmiga, then. ‘Whoever it is,’ Giuli said. ‘This
she
. You want to live in fear of her?’ Softly. ‘I’ve done nothing, Rosina. Remember that. You think about who you can trust.’
But Rosina had turned and fled, her tightly pulled greasy ponytail and narrow shoulders running, running away from her down the street.
Giuli watched her go, almost envious. Run, run, drop everything and run. If only she could.
Chapter Fourteen
‘H
ELLO, HELLO,’ SAID
E
NRICO
Frollini with that easy businessman’s smile, pulling off one of the gloves he wore until May ended, to ensure, Luisa thought as he took her hand between his again, that his hands were always warm. ‘The lovely Mrs Cellini, just the girl I wanted to see.’
Girl. Luisa had caught sight of her own face in the shop’s mirrored walls when she’d come in that morning and she had looked about a hundred. And that was after Sandro had talked her down.
Confronted by those breasts, she had felt as though she couldn’t breathe. Luisa had made herself believe it didn’t matter that one of hers was no longer her own, that it had been scooped hollow and refilled with jelly, that her nipple had gone. She had told herself that no woman should be defined by the disposition of a handful of fat and tissue. The magazine had told her otherwise.
Did she believe him? She had to, didn’t she? But he couldn’t have faked the shock on his own face, Sandro had never been
an actor. He had gibbered, stuffing the magazine back in the briefcase and out of sight.
Someone must have put it in there
, he said, his mouth slack. She’d asked him grimly who would do such a thing. And then he had told her all about what had been going on at the Palazzo San Giorgio. Jewellery missing, shit smeared on skirtings, doors being locked. A woman’s pet disappeared – Luisa even remembered the little dog, from the launch. Malicious, nasty stuff, that Giancarlo Vito hadn’t been able to get to the bottom of. Vito was dead – and now this.
A magazine slipped into Sandro’s briefcase, to let Vito’s replacement know it wasn’t over? To let him know who was boss? She felt slightly sick.
‘Is it jealousy?’ she’d said, without knowing exactly why. ‘Envy? Seems to me, it’s like a waiter spitting in the soup.’
‘You think it might be one of the staff?’ Sandro’s face had smoothed out, abstracted. ‘Maybe.’ Frowned. ‘Maybe.’
Luisa hadn’t got around to telling him she was thinking of giving it up. That that was why she had pushed him into this proper job, with the contract and the salary. Because she was getting too old to be standing around a shop waiting on girls young enough to be her granddaughters, girls who walked in carrying Styrofoam cups of coffee, who wore jeans that showed their backsides and got more pocket money than she earned in a year. And the worst of it was she’d always sworn she’d never get that way with customers. She didn’t want to be the envious bitter servant.
She’d folded her arms. ‘Who do
you
think is doing it?’
Sandro had taken a moment, still far away, and she’d gone on. ‘Marina Artusi thinks the guests are no better than they
ought to be, either. Drunks and con artists, was more or less her verdict. I told you.’
She’d got his attention then; he’d set the briefcase down. ‘And who exactly did she say couldn’t pay their bills?’
Now in the shop, Enrico Frollini leaned his head back and called up the stairs, ‘Giuseppina?’ He’d first employed Giusy, now knocking fifty, as a teenager and still treated her with robust impatience. Overhead they fell silent. Her boss smiled at her, a caressing look, but it only made her feel sick: she could still see that magazine’s slippery weight in Sandro’s hands. Thirty years on and her boss was still trying it on. Men.
‘Enrico,’ she said wearily. ‘Mr Frollini,’ and extracted her hand. ‘So why did you want me in so early?’
‘Sit down, Luisa,’ he said. She sat. ‘Look. I know you want to . . . scale back, let’s say. Take it easy. Let’s not talk about retiring. Please. I have just the thing.’ He beamed, leaned down confidentially. ‘Personal shopping,’ he murmured.
‘Personal shopping,’ she repeated.
‘You know what that is?’
She looked at him deadpan. Personal shoppers came in to the store, sharply dressed young women with hard eyes, bowing and scraping to their wealthy customers, and haggling hard behind their backs. Negotiating discounts, bullying shopgirls, taking kickbacks. Leading the customers round discount malls.
Luisa kept her voice steady. ‘I’m just not quite sure how it would work, in my case.’
‘I’ve done a deal with the new outlet,’ he said, ridiculously pleased with himself. ‘There’s a spa there. We can offer the
whole service, limousine and everything. You’ll be like a queen, Luisa.’
‘I don’t . . .’ Her throat felt constricted. ‘I’m not sure . . .’
But Frollini wasn’t listening. ‘And the Palazzo San Giorgio will be your first customers. I had the management on the phone this morning. Apparently they need distraction today. The residents.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I expect you’ve heard? Well, this way, we keep it in the family, so to speak. You and Sandro.’
‘You’ve talked to the attaché?’ He looked blank. ‘To Miss Cornell?’ she said patiently. Her contact, not Frollini’s, quietly cultivated, all for nothing.
‘No, no,’ said Frollini. ‘It was Gastone Bottai – my God, do you remember him when he was a boy? Always playing silly tricks.’ He tapped his chin. ‘He asked me over for a chat, a day or so ago, introduced me to a few people there. Never married, did he?’ He gave her a sly glance. ‘I think his father set him up at the Palazzo. Has a stake in the place.’
He turned in his handsome camel coat and gazed out at the street; he was going off on one of his reminiscences, or his pet bugbears, Luisa could tell. After more than half an hour’s exposure to her boss she often ended up wondering how his wife put up with him. Sandro was deeply suspicious of the man, and not without reason. Luisa supposed she might have ended up as one of his mistresses if she’d been a different sort of woman; it might have been easy. But she wouldn’t have wanted to be his wife.
Frollini was smiling to himself. ‘There are some charming women at the Palazzo, you know. Really charming. That Professor’s
wife, such good taste. Bottai introduced me the other day. She did urge me to keep in touch. I have her personal number.’
‘Indeed,’ said Luisa drily, remembering Magda Scardino in the red dress. He looked at her a little shamefaced and she wondered. How would he have described her to the charming ladies? Poor Luisa, only one breast.
And finally registering her expression, he faltered. ‘I thought you might enjoy it.’
Luisa never ceased to be surprised by men’s failure to get to grips with what a woman was likely to enjoy. But there was nothing she could do. ‘Of course,’ she said, and his face cleared, instantly.
That was the thing about Frollini: it was the reason he had so many friends, and the reason he’d live to a hundred if he eased up on the cigars. The clouds passed over so quickly, nothing abided to taint his sunny disposition – or to teach him anything useful.
‘Otherwise, of course, I would never waste your expertise out there among the – the . . .’ He frowned at his watch again.
‘Enrico,’ she said warily, ‘why do you keep looking at your watch?’
‘I ordered the limousine for ten,’ he said. ‘It’ll pick you up here.’
It was nine-thirty-five.
*
Sandro’s mobile rang just as Fabio Savino of the Stella d’Argento opened the black and chrome door of his office
to admit him. Sandro saw only that it was Pietro before he silenced it.
Pietro? He hadn’t heard from his old partner in the Polizia di Stato in weeks. He might have heard about Sandro’s new job – his wife and Luisa being thick as thieves – but Pietro’s instinct would have been to leave him to it for a bit. He might have heard about Vito’s death, too, even if it was a Carabinieri case. Damn, thought Sandro. He’d have liked to be having that conversation right now.
Instead, the Stella d’Argento’s Director of Personnel – we’re all directors now, thought Sandro – looked at him impatiently as he thrust the cellphone hastily back in his pocket, and turned into his office, leaving Sandro to follow him. Fabio Savino was a slight man in his late thirties in a good suit, and either he was prematurely bald or he shaved his head. A tough guy, but civilised, that would be the idea.
Sandro turned as he went in to nod his thanks to the receptionist. She bobbed back nervously: thirties, slim, dark, anxious. Sandro had had no great hopes of being seen – all he’d said was that he’d stepped into Vito’s shoes at the San Giorgio, and could he have a word. But the receptionist must have been on his side, because he was being shown in.
The room was dominated by a wide modern desk at which Savino had seated himself. Sandro lowered himself gingerly into a padded leather chair. He was aware of the briefcase in his lap: the magazine was still in there.
He blinked, trying to get the image out of his head – not the naked woman, but Luisa’s face. Who would do that to him? To her? The magazine had been in English, that was all he
had registered. Not quite all – there had been something else. Scuffed. A sticker on it from a news distributor.
He hadn’t been able to look at it again though, obviously. Not in Rivoire – he would have had to excuse himself to the toilet – and not in the lobby of the Stella d’Argento with the receptionist looking on, even if it did feel like an upmarket men’s club.
Savino cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know what you want,’ he said, before Sandro had a chance to open his mouth. ‘But Giancarlo Vito ended his professional relationship with us more than a month ago. When he took the job at the Palazzo San Giorgio.’
‘I’m sure you’ve already spoken to the Carabinieri,’ Sandro said. ‘I don’t want to cause trouble.’ Was it his imagination or did Savino look distinctly shifty at that? ‘You gave him excellent references.’ Cautiously he slid the CV out of the briefcase. ‘Did he get back in touch? After they . . . fired him?’
Savino sighed. His hands, clasped in front of him on the desk, opened, palms out. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘he wasn’t a full-time operative for us, ever. He worked on a few jobs. He certainly had impressive technical expertise – army training is very thorough.’
‘Do you know why he left the army?’ Sandro interjected quickly.
‘On health grounds,’ said the man, shrugging. ‘Leukaemia, I believe. When he came to us he was completely clear of it but he didn’t want to go back into the army. A fresh start. Quite understandable.’ Savino almost winked. ‘And that training is worth quite something in the outside world. Who can blame him?’ He resumed his expression of seriousness. ‘Anyway. We
had what you might call a semi-detached relationship – it’s not unusual, in the bigger agencies. It was convenient for him to have the connection with us, the letterhead. He was free to pursue other options in parallel.’
‘Other jobs? Competition?’
Savino shrugged. ‘As long as he was available when we called him in, the arrangement suited us very well.’ He pushed the CV back towards Sandro. ‘Needless to say, if we’d had any concerns about his professionalism we’d have terminated the connection.’
Only if there was a chance they’d become public, thought Sandro grimly. He couldn’t work this out. He knew there were some odd sorts in private security; there were temptations, after all. Maybe they all had some kind of criminal sideline. Blackmail, drugs, extortion. Illegal surveillance equipment. Arms. What might Vito’s have been?
‘It’s been terminated now, though, hasn’t it?’ He took the CV back, and held the man’s gaze. ‘He was murdered,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
Savino’s eyes flickered, and Sandro took his chance, leaning forward across the polished wood. ‘What was the last job he did for you?’
The Director considered him in silence. ‘Personal protection,’ he said finally. ‘More than a year ago. An industrialist from Milan and his wife on a business trip to Belarus. He’d worked for them before and they were very satisfied with him. All right?’
It seemed to Sandro he was telling the truth. ‘Since then?’
Savino shifted in his chair, looked thoughtful. ‘Then he went off on his own business, he might have been on holiday for all I know. Come to think of it he did have a suntan when he turned
up again in September. We didn’t have anything for him then. I told them. I told the Carabinieri I had no idea what he got up to in his own time. No idea. None of my business.’
He stood abruptly, and automatically Sandro followed suit. Time was up.
Emerging into the warm drizzle on the Piazza Signoria, Sandro already had his mobile in his hand, but he paused. The receptionist had followed him with those soft brown eyes and as the door closed to Savino’s office she had come around her desk to see him out.
‘Is it true he was murdered?’ she whispered.
Sandro inferred a soft spot for Giancarlo Vito, and shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t suppose you know where he went on holiday, last year?’ he had asked her gently, and with a glance at her boss’s closed door her soft eyes had flickered with confusion.
Putting the mobile back in his pocket now, Sandro walked quickly across the big piazza, back to Rivoire, around the side to the tiny dead end of the Piazza Santa Cecilia. The cramped space held the anonymous back entrance to a luxury boutique, ceiling-high stacks of shoe boxes just visible through a linen curtain, and a row of wheelie bins. The bit the customers never saw.
Sandro stood a moment among the overflowing refuse, his back against the wall, then quickly he took out the magazine. He registered that it was dog-eared, and unless it was the alley, that it smelled faintly of garbage. He didn’t look at the image, he looked at the line of print across the top. The price in dollars, no euro price. He turned it over and there was the distributor’s sticker:
Curtis Circulation
, it said.