When he’d been removed, Ferrini and the Marshal looked at each other and then at the traveller’s cheques.

  ‘He might think better of it overnight,’ Ferrini said, ‘and then our troubles really start.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘We can keep him in a cell here for a day or two but once he’s charged we’ll have to move him to prison. The men’s prison won’t want him and the women’s prison will refuse to take him. In the meantime I’d say enough’s enough for one night, what about you?’ He slid the traveller’s cheques into an envelope and locked them away. Then he tipped the rest of Peppina’s stuff back into the handbag. As well as make-up and various crumpled bits of paper, there were cigarettes and a bottle of pills.

  ‘Do you think he did it?’ the Marshal asked.

  ‘Why? Don’t you? He could have this stuff back, I suppose . . .’

  ‘I’ll see to it. Then, as you say, enough’s enough . . .’

  It was difficult to hear anything down in the basement because of the noise from the generator right in front of the two cells. It was unbearably hot. The Marshal had himself let into the cell on the left and offered the handbag to Peppina who was curled up on the worn brown blanket covering the hard narrow bed. He sat up and snatched at it, clutching at once at the cigarettes and lighting one with trembling hands.

  ‘Thanks.’ He threw the packet down on the blanket and fished anxiously for the bottle of pills. ‘Thank God for that. I can’t sleep without them, can’t sleep a wink . . . oh shit!’ He crumpled up with his head on his knees. His sobs were dry, sobs of fear. ‘Oh shit . . . what a thing to happen to me. And all because of that bitch Lulu.’

  ‘Did you hate him?’

  ‘Lulu? Everybody hated her! Everybody!’ He looked up, pushing back his long fair hair with the lethal red fingernails whose effects the Marshal could still feel. ‘Listen, I swear to God I never killed her—besides it must have been a maniac, chopping somebody up like that, it makes me shudder to think! I’ve never harmed a fly, never. I’ve never been in prison either and I don’t even take drugs. There’s nothing against me and now this has to happen just when I wanted to get out!’

  ‘Get out?’

  ‘Out of this whole business. I’ve had enough. I never wanted to be a prostitute—what kind of life do you think it is? I’d decided to get out, start a little business on my own—well, nobody would give me a job, I know that— and now what will happen to me? I’ve had it. I know I’ve had it. Nobody will believe me, will they, because of what I am? I’ll be convicted because of what I am even though I never touched her. I never even saw her. That bitch!’

  ‘What was it about Lulu,’ the Marshal asked, ‘that everybody hated him?’

  ‘She had so much money. They’d pay anything to have her. She didn’t need to be on the streets, do you know that? With all the regulars she had and what they paid her she could have stayed at home, but she didn’t. It wasn’t enough that she had more than anybody, she had to snatch everybody else’s clients as well, just for spite. Do you know what she’d do? She’d come out and sell herself at half the normal price just to take business off us! Can you believe that?’

  ‘Had he no friends at all?’

  ‘You’re joking! All she cared about was herself and her body. She spent a fortune on herself. Nobody could touch her for looks. You have to admit she was beautiful but she was rotten all through. A rotten stinking bitch! And because of her my life’s ruined and over!’ He gulped down two capsules and dropped the bottle on the floor as he flopped over face down on the bed. The black silk stockings he wore were torn and laddered and the half bare buttocks were caked with mud. It was too hot in the tiny cell but, more for decency’s sake than anything, the Marshal adjusted his now dirty overcoat over the prostrate body and left.

  Bruno was waiting in the car at the main entrance. He started up the engine but the Marshal said, ‘I wouldn’t mind walking. I feel like a bit of air.’

  ‘But it’s still raining, Marshal, and you’ve forgotten to get your overcoat back.’

  ‘All right.’ And he got into the car obediently.

  Perhaps he’d got used to working such odd hours. At any rate he slept soundly through the morning until Teresa’s efforts not to make a noise in the kitchen finally woke him. He lay there for a while, feeling heavy and warm, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of Sunday, the smell of the roast just filtering through the closed door, the muffled voices of his family. He closed his eyes again for a few minutes and almost fell asleep, but then the insistent clamour of the bells of San Felice started up, followed closely by the more solemn and measured bell of the cathedral across the river. The minute he turned to look at the clock his face began to sting and the memory of last night flooded in to fill up his mind and destroy his moment of peace.

  ‘Are you awake?’ Teresa peeped round the door.

  ‘Just about. There’s a good smell.’

  ‘It won’t be ready for an hour yet. Shall I make you some coffee?’ Her eyes were fixed on his smarting cheek. He’d poured iodine into the scratches before going to bed and it must have looked a sight but she went away without mentioning it.

  He had a long shower and put on comfortable Sunday clothes, trying to recapture the normal peaceful feeling he had woken up with. It was no use. The image of the torn and muddy figure lying on a threadbare brown blanket intruded. What sort of a Sunday was he having in the tiny hot cell with the noise of the generator thundering for hours on end?

  During lunch, the boys kept glancing at his face but they had obviously been told not to mention it. All three of them were ostentatiously not mentioning it. He was hungry and ate a lot without saying much.

  When the boys were about to leave the table, Giovanni hesitated.

  ‘Mum, have you—’

  ‘Later. Go and study for an hour, both of you. Your dad’s tired.’

  ‘He’s only just got up,’ Totò objected.

  ‘Do as I say.’

  They went to their room.

  ‘What’s Giovanni want?’

  ‘Nothing. Have five minutes while I clear away. Do you want the paper?’

  ‘No. No, I’d rather be doing something. What about a stroll through the Boboli Gardens? The weather seems to be clearing up.’ A sharp mountain wind was driving away the ragged remains of last night’s cloud. It would be colder but brighter and more cheerful.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Or we could walk into the centre,’ he conceded, ‘if you fancy looking at the shop windows.’

  ‘It’s not that. I don’t mind, only I’d promised the boys . . .’

  ‘Promised them what?’

  ‘That we’d take them down to the Cascine with their bikes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, Salva, you know they never get a chance to ride them. You don’t want them to go on the road—’

  ‘How can they possibly go on the roads with the traffic there is in this city? It’s out of the question!’

  ‘I know it is. That’s why I promised to take them down to the park. I can’t let them go on their own because the roads around the Ponte alla Vittoria are so dangerous.’

  ‘Go on their own? Traffic or no traffic, they do not go in that park on their own!’

  ‘What are you so angry about? We’ve taken them before. It’s a nice walk for us and they can ride up and down to their hearts’ content on the cycle paths. They need some fresh air. Well, never mind, I’ll take them myself. Perhaps you should go back to bed . . .’

  One of her unfinished sentences meaning ‘Perhaps you should go back to bed if you’re so tired as to be in such a bad temper.’ She started clearing the table rapidly.

  Although he didn’t want to read it, he took the newspaper for camouflage and sat himself in the living-room, staring at the front page without reading a word. Within half an hour the three of them presented themselves, Teresa in a fur coat, the boys in anoraks with scarves tied tightly at their necks.

  ‘We’re off,’ she said.

  He got up.

  ‘Are you going to have a nap?’

  He got his coat on. ‘Where are my sheepskin gloves?’

  ‘In the drawer where they always are.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘Put a scarf on, there’s a cold wind.’

  And they all set off.

  Despite the cold wind, there were plenty of people in the park. The roundabout was going near the entrance and in the first little piazza there was a van selling slices from a whole roast pig on chunky sandwiches. They joined the families strolling down the pedestrian road running by the river and the boys took off at speed, racing each other along the cycle path. The smallest children on tricycles, plastic horses and pedal cars wound slowly in and out among the groups of strolling adults, calling to each other and their parents for attention. On the benches set along the road sat escaped husbands listening in peace to the football match, their little radios glued to their ears, their collars turned up against the wind.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Teresa asked, linking her arm through his.

  ‘I’m all right.’ After all, it was a different world here on a bright and windy Sunday afternoon. So far away from the world of last night. And yet his glance sometimes strayed to the right where untended brush grew in a tangle below the trees. Somewhere in there lay Peppina’s sodden fur, if someone hadn’t already found and made off with it. He wasn’t sure where it had all happened, having bumbled around so much in the dark. A bit further down, maybe . . .

  ‘They ought to do something about all that mess. Just look at it.’ Teresa was pointing in the opposite direction, to the far bank of the river where the Arno in flood had left its detritus dangling from the branches of trees overhanging the water. ‘All those plastic bags and all that filthy rubbish just left there. It could be so nice along here.’

  The boys came racing back, Totò well in the lead, his face red and his eyes glittering as he pedalled furiously. He always overdid everything.

  ‘Mum! Can we go as far as the Indian?’

  ‘If you like—don’t shout so much and slow down or you’ll exhaust yourself.’ But he was off again, almost crashing into Giovanni who had started to turn round slowly. ‘Race you to the Indian and back!’ They were soon out of sight.

  The two of them walked on at the same sedate pace as everyone else, pursued by the football commentary that occasionally broke into a roar of excitement or dismay.

  ‘We may as well walk as far as the Indian ourselves,’ Teresa suggested.

  ‘If you like.’

  But they hadn’t got there before a woman a little way in front of them gave an irritated shout and just managed to dodge Totò’s bicycle as the boys came racing back along the tarmac.

  ‘Beat you!’ yelled Totò. ‘That’s twice I’ve beaten you!’

  ‘Totò’ cried both his parents together. ‘What are you trying to do, kill somebody? Get back on the cycle path. What do you think it’s there for?’

  ‘But, Dad, you can’t go as fast as on the tarmac, it’s too cindery!’

  ‘Can’t you see there are people walking here, small children, too? Now do as you’re told.’

  ‘But everybody else goes on the tarmac! There’s nobody on that stupid cycle path except for us. It’s so slow, it’s all cindery. Everybody else—’

  ‘Do as your father tells you,’ interrupted Teresa, ‘or we go straight home.’

  Giovanni was already pushing his bike back through a gap in the low hedge. Totò got off and followed him, but when Giovanni mounted again and pedalled on, he carried on pushing his bike with exaggerated slowness to show how bad the path was, his reddened face sullen. He was the last to arrive in the circular piazza, where he went on pushing his bike in wide circles around the baldaquin-like monument sheltering the bust of a dead Indian prince.

  It was Teresa who suggested they sit down for a moment. As they settled on a bench she watched Totò unhappily.

  ‘I’m worried about him, Salva.’

  ‘He’ll be all right. He’s just sulking.’

  ‘It’s not that. I’ve been worried for a while now. I wanted to tell you last night but . . . I don’t know whether we did the right thing, following the teacher’s advice. Keeping him in all the time, I mean.’

  Giovanni was riding round in figures of eight. When Totò pushed by him he said, ‘Why don’t you get on your bike?’

  ‘I don’t feel like it.’ His face was still red and angry.

  ‘They’ve never quarrelled so much as they have in this last few weeks. Giovanni and his friend like to do their homework together in the boys’ room and they don’t want him. There’s a scene nearly every afternoon. I don’t know what you think, but my feeling is we’ve tried what she suggested and it’s only made him worse. I can force him to stay in but I can’t force him to study. He pretends to, but he’s just messing about. He only got five in Italian last week—and besides, he’s unhappy, you can see that. Maybe if we let him play out in the afternoons—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just for an hour to see if—’

  ‘No,’ he repeated, staring not at the child but at the sluggish brown river flowing past, ‘keep him at home where he’s safe.’

  Six

  Captain Maestrangelo put his head round the door just in time to see the Marshal coming along the corridor.

  ‘Ah. I was about to send someone to look for you. I have to go out shortly. Come in.’

  The Marshal obeyed.

  ‘Take a seat. I got your message first thing this morning—I imagine you’ve been pretty busy since then. I saw the Prosecutor just now as he was leaving. He was very complimentary about you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Certainly. You’ve seen the files of the other cases of this sort. Nobody was hopeful about clearing this one up at all, let alone in a matter of days.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ Why had he gone and made this appointment first thing? He should have waited, at least until after this morning’s interrogation . . . He pulled himself together and said, ‘The credit should go to Ferrini. I’d have been lost without him. He found Peppina.’

  ‘Peppina? Is that . . .’

  ‘Giuseppe Bianco. He calls himself Peppina.’

  Thank God somebody had found him an old track suit to wear for his interview with the Prosecutor. The lawyer had done all the talking, Peppina neither confirming nor denying without looking at him first. He had been trembling the whole time and on the verge of tears. The Prosecutor had regarded him throughout with undisguised disgust. The Captain was wearing a similar expression now as he said, ‘It seems he has a different story this morning from the one he told when you arrested him last night.’

  ‘Not altogether. He never denied having gone to the flat, only he said the victim wasn’t there, in which case he couldn’t have got in without breaking in and there were no signs of anybody having done that.’

  ‘So now he’s dreamed up an accomplice with keys.’

  ‘It could be true.’

  ‘The Prosecutor thinks not.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t agree? Surely it’s the first thing he would have told you had it been true?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But surely, a nameless, faceless client we’ve no hope of finding and checking on. It sounds to me like pure invention. A last-ditch attempt to sow a seed of doubt despite the evidence of those traveller’s cheques. It’ll do him no good, I rather think. Some of these lawyers are too clever for their own good.’

  ‘Yes . . . but he’s not faceless or even entirely nameless . . .’

  ‘What? You mean this mythical client?’

  ‘They call him Nanny. I don’t know why. I’ve seen a photo of him.’

  The Captain regarded the troubled face before him for a moment without speaking. There was never any way of knowing what was going through the fellow’s mind and even if you asked him it was a waste of time. The Captain knew this of old. The Marshal was none too bright and far from articulate but there was no getting away from the fact that he didn’t miss much and that the quieter he got, the nearer he was to whatever he was after. If he’d been capable of explaining just what it was he was after it would have been possible to help him, but he wasn’t. Some people laughed at Guarnaccia, and it was true that he was slow and had a tendency to bumble about in an absentminded way and to stare at you without answering because he hadn’t followed what you’d said. It was a lucky thing that he’d got into the Prosecutor’s good books, but he wouldn’t stay there long if he tried going off on some track of his own the way he sometimes did.’

  ‘Don’t get yourself in any trouble,’ he advised.

  ‘No, no . . .’

  ‘It’s not worth it.’

  The Marshal stared at him in a way that made him add, ‘I only mean . . . He probably is guilty, you know, in which case you’d be sticking your neck out for no good reason.’

  ‘If he’s guilty, yes.’

  ‘You obviously think he’s not. There are those traveller’s cheques, remember. The Prosecutor told me he’d already forged the second signature.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘You admit you signed these, copying Esposito’s signature?’

  ‘I . . . yes . . .’

  ‘And you expected to be able to change them? Don’t you know that they must be signed at the moment of exchange and proof of identity given?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what did you intend to do with them?’

  ‘I . . . he . . .’

  ‘My client has a customer, someone who works in a bank. He was to have taken the cheques that night which was why she—he had them in his bag.’

  ‘Would that be the one who was in such a hurry to disappear when the carabinieri arrived?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  That was a witness they would certainly never find. Funny that the lawyer should . . .

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the Marshal replied, ‘I wasn’t thinking anything. I just remembered that the lawyer accidentally referred to his client as “she”.’

 

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