‘Did he come here?’ she said, nodding at the narrow pavement below.
The girl said nothing, just stared down.
‘He wanted to see her.’ Still nothing. ‘You didn’t tell her.’
She took the girl’s silence for agreement. It was true: she was the same kind of animal Giuli had once been herself, hiding and watching, her survival dependent on never trusting anyone. Giuli couldn’t tell her, when you find someone you can trust, the world changes. Better to know whom you couldn’t trust, first. She said nothing.
‘That your boss on the phone?’ said Dasha, changing the subject, Giuli suspected deliberately. ‘You can look at the
telefonino
, if you want. You can turn back on.’
At the rough kindness in the girl’s voice Giuli shook her head. ‘Not my boss,’ she said. ‘My boyfriend.’
She didn’t use the word
fidanzato
. She wouldn’t even have used the word ‘boyfriend’, wouldn’t have surrendered any information at all a year ago. She was getting soft: it was asking for scorn, from someone like Dasha.
‘How you get your job?’ was all Dasha said and, holding the phone out, watching the screen illuminate, seeing two missed calls and a message, Giuli tore herself away from it to look into the girl’s eyes. What had she asked?
‘How did I get my job?’ she said. ‘That’s a long story.’
‘So you going now,’ said Dasha defiantly, arms folded. ‘Now I tell you?’
‘You told me nothing,’ said Giuli reasonably.
‘He’s hiding somewhere,’ said Dasha. ‘Scared of something. You want her involved in that? I see her looking at her phone, waiting for him to call, but he doesn’t call. I’m telling you, it is best for her without him. We can look after her.’ Cocked her head to one side. ‘Or you going to find your boyfriend?’
She eyed Giuli narrowly and indeed Giuli had been thinking, with tenderness, of Enzo, of maybe a snatched coffee with Enzo, to tell him what she’d learned, to show off just a little bit.
The look that Dasha gave her was so complicated, though, envious, a little malicious, a little suspicious, that it stopped Giuli in her tracks. This was business, this was serious.
‘No,’ she said. ‘First off, I find my boss. He’s not far away.’
She’d passed the pharmacy on the Via Romana on the way, and it was still open on the way back, and this time, without thinking, without knowing what she wanted, Giuli went in. It was an old-fashioned establishment, with little gilded drawers and glass urns behind the counter. Even as she crossed the threshold, the thought came into Giuli’s head that, if she was right, then this place might mean something to her for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be able to walk past it without thinking,
there
.
She asked for what she now knew she wanted; she tolerated the long, curious look from the pharmacist – a thin man, blue-chinned and prematurely old; Giuli had known his domineering blonde mother before him. He was involved, now; he was her accomplice, whatever the outcome.
Giuli felt slightly stunned as she walked out and back into the heat.
She stashed it right down in her handbag, wrapped tight, although if you looked hard enough, you could read the lettering through the thin plastic bag. Two minutes, it said, find out today in only two minutes. You could read that quietly, soberly, or ecstatically, depending. On how you felt about it. The trouble was, Giuli didn’t know how she felt about it.
*
Sandro had phoned home, after he’d talked to Pietro, but there’d been no answer. He hadn’t let it ring too long, though, thinking perhaps they were both asleep, in this heat, and he hadn’t tried Luisa’s mobile for the same reason. Nothing more infuriating than an over-anxious, needy husband when peace and quiet was what you were after. He wanted someone to talk to, though. So he’d called Giuli instead and left a message when she didn’t answer either.
‘There’s a bit of a park,’ Sandro said into the phone, leaning on the parapet by the river and looking across at it as he spoke. ‘Between the Ponte Alle Grazie and the Ponte San Niccolo, south side, some trees and a bar right over the water, one of those summer bars.’ He was rambling, he could hear himself, so he cut it short. ‘Meet me over there, if you can? I’ll wait. No need to call back.’
In the event, at least to Sandro, it seemed to take a good half an hour just to walk across the wide, deserted, sunlit bridge of the Ponte Alle Grazie. The heat was like a sledgehammer, out there in the open, and there wasn’t a scrap of shade. People only congregated on the bridges at night-time in August, gulping anything that felt like fresh air; now, there was barely a soul to be seen. Anyone with any sense hid in cool bars or shuttered apartments until the sun set, or merely stayed in the shade of the biggest, gloomiest
palazzi
in the narrowest streets.
While he waited for Guili, Sandro drank iced tea. He didn’t like it; it wasn’t cold enough, despite the name, and it was too sweet, but the look in the surly, underaged waiter’s eyes had told him ordering water wouldn’t do. Why had he chosen the place? Erected every July on this stubby forested outcrop of the embankment, the bar existed only for stranded tourists; it was packed up at the end of the summer and gone. Below it, on the green riverbank, a kind of beach set-up had been conjured out of grass huts and sunloungers on the sparse grass, and one or two diehard sunbathers were there, staked out.
The sun was low in the sky, and Sandro thought that soon, mercifully, the Guardia di Finanza would pack up and leave that dismal little bank for the day, and those haunted, fearful employees would scatter back to their homes, waiting in the shadow of the axe.
There was supposed to be co-operation between the services – the Guardia di Finanza, the Polizia dello Stato, the Carabinieri, even the Polizia Stradale – that was the theory, anyway. In the real world, though, people were jealous of their territory, they wanted the freedom to work over a job before they went public with it. In the real world, there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell Sandro would get anything from the horse’s mouth – the horse in question being the Guardia – and even Pietro would be lucky to get the full picture.
Setting his glass down on the sticky table, leaving his briefcase there on the aluminium chair, Sandro wandered to the edge of the abutment, stood under a skinny acacia and surveyed the length of the Arno. A little further down the parapet, a small man with an enormous camera was photographing something down below. Following the angle of the huge zoom, Sandro saw the elegant, snow-white shape of an ibis, its long beak poised to plunge into the green water.
There would be more evidence to gather. God knows how much – or how little – of it would be useful, under the circumstances. Dust full of scraps of cellophane and dead lighters, single shoes and old newspapers, a hundred thousand footprints and DNA traces and a whole lot of them rogue, from unregistered, unmonitored populations, immigrant or otherwise off the radar.
DNA: Pietro had mentioned it in a hurry, knowing full well he shouldn’t be saying anything. A DNA match. As Sandro turned his partner’s words over in his head, something on the far bank caught his eye. A blockish figure walking, just head and shoulders visible, from the direction of the Uffizi and, for that matter, the Banca di Toscana Provinciale. Sandro held a hand up to shade his eyes –there was something about the figure, its size, the shambling walk – and hurriedly he turned to the birdwatcher beside him, who looked alarmed at the abruptness of his approach.
‘Could I borrow that a moment?’ Sandro asked, as polite as he could without allowing any possibility of a refusal, already holding his hand out for the camera and its hefty telephoto lens. And the small man handed it to him, looking bewildered at his own compliance, unable to restrain a small intake of breath as Sandro raised a hand to adjust the focus.
Yes, thought Sandro. Coming into sharp definition, and moving with the slowness of the seriously overweight on the opposite side of the river in the direction of the African market, was Giorgio Viola, the manager of the first branch of the Banca Provinciale di Toscana that Sandro had visited, the station branch in the Vicolo Sant’Angelo that was soon to be closed.
Those were the eyes he’d seen above the computer screen in the office adjoining Marisa Goldman’s, the eyes he had recognized but hadn’t been able to identify before Goldman led him away, anxious, brown and buried in flesh like the sultanas in
pane del pescatore
.
Slowly he handed the camera back to the birdwatcher, who immediately took out a soft cloth from the camera pack on his back and began polishing and adjusting, emitting small sounds of distress as he did so. Sandro kept looking, calculating, even as Giorgio Viola turned away from the river and disappeared.
What had he been doing there? Helping the Guardia with their enquiries, Sandro assumed, helping Marisa Goldman, offering a semi-objective eye on the whole sorry business. Sandro rocked back on his heels. It was something worth filing away. He remembered the look of appeal in Viola’s eyes in his own dismal, run-down bank; the man’s willingness to help; the understanding of how little he had to lose. The Guardia might not give Sandro the time of day, but Viola probably would.
He turned to the birdwatcher again. The man looked at him now with undisguised apprehension. ‘You come here at night?’ Sandro asked. The apprehension turned to alarm. ‘No,’ said Sandro, wearily. ‘I mean, owls, that kind of thing? Night photography?’
‘Now and again,’ said the birdwatcher cautiously. ‘There are owls, yeah, mostly up there.’ Nodding towards the southern hillside behind San Niccolo, beginning to be defensive now. ‘No law against it, as far as I know.’
‘No, no,’ said Sandro. ‘I’m sure there isn’t, I didn’t mean – sorry to have bothered you. Thanks.’
He raised a hand and hurried back to the table. To his mild surprise, his briefcase was still there. Owls. He’d been told by someone, hadn’t he, that there were owls, below the Piazzale Michelangelo; suddenly he was overcome by a desire to hear them. To hear them every night, from that apartment with its long, rusted balcony, to sit there with Luisa and listen to them. Taking his mobile out of the briefcase, Sandro dialled Galeotti Immobiliare.
When Guili arrived, Sandro was gazing through the trees in a deliberate attempt to set aside the many frustrations and obstacles of his life just now and get on with the job. He was looking across at the far bank and calculating how far it was from Claudio Brunello’s bank to the place his body was found. Two kilometres, perhaps, not even that. A straight line along the river. He heard a sound at his shoulder and there was Giuli.
She didn’t look well.
Sandro jumped up, consternation tugging at him. Selfish old bastard, he could hear the voice in his head reproaching him, leaning on these women.
‘Giuli?’ he said, and at the concern in his voice her eyes flashed, but it was only a shadow of the indignation he would have expected. ‘Sit down, girl.’ He pulled out a chair and practically forced her into it.
‘The heat,’ she said wearily. ‘It’s just the heat.’ She’d barely set down her bag and the boy – ‘waiter’ was too dignified for him – was there at her elbow, with his insolent face.
‘Water,’ she said brusquely. ‘From the tap will do fine.’
The boy turned with contempt back to the stupid, flimsy, pine-built bar, and the moment he was out of earshot Giuli said, ‘He’s alive.’
For a moment Sandro found himself unable to process what she meant. ‘He – he—’
‘Anna’s fiancé,’ she said calmly, refusing to acknowledge the idiocy of the title
fidanzato
. ‘Josef.’
Sandro sat back, and for a moment all the things he had to talk over with Giuli found themselves shoved into a heap at the back of his mind. ‘He’s alive,’ he said blankly. ‘How do you know?’
She told him: not much information, more guesswork.
‘Dasha. She said he was scared. That’s all, then she clammed up, wants Anna to think he’s dead and gone. It’s obvious to me he came looking for Anna at the Loggiata, and Dasha saw him off.’
‘Scared,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘She said he was scared. Dasha. She saw him all right.’
‘Maybe Dasha was right,’ said Giuli. ‘To send him packing. Anna – in her condition. Best out of it.’
Sandro pondered, studying his hands. ‘Maybe he just wanted – God. I don’t know. Not to talk to her. To know she was all right.’ Why did he persist in the belief that Josef had to be the good guy, with so much evidence mounting against him? But he did. ‘I would. If I was in trouble.’
And something stirred, a certainty. He looked up, met Giuli’s eye. ‘He’s in trouble. In danger.’
‘Yes,’ said Giuli, and the tough set of her mouth softened into something more uncertain. More frightened.
Sandro buried his face in his hands, thinking. Josef was alive. And all he felt was afraid.
‘I don’t know,’ he said uneasily, raising his eyes and glancing across the river. ‘I don’t know about all this.’
‘No,’ agreed Giuli, frowning. Then, ‘What? What else has happened?’
‘The Guardia’s in there, in the bank.’
‘The Guardia?’ Her expression was blank. ‘Investigating them? And that might be connected to our case – how? Brunello’s not our client, you know, nor his wife.’
Sandro shifted uneasily, wishing he had Luisa here. ‘Shall we get back to the apartment?’ he said.
Giuli compressed her lips, reading his mind. ‘I’m not good enough, now you’ve got me here?’ she said. Then relented. ‘Anna’s at the apartment,’ she said. ‘Tricky to talk to Luisa with her there.’
Sandro sighed. ‘Yes.’
Painful, too, having Anna under his roof: painful both to have to contemplate her big belly, and to see Luisa take on another lame duck. Not that Giuli had turned out too badly.
The waiter returned with a greasy glass of water, setting it down in front of Giuli without a word.
‘Thanks,’ said Sandro. ‘That’s kind.’ He held the boy’s gaze until, uneasily, he turned and hurried away.
‘I’ll take her back to the Loggiata this evening,’ said Giuli, ‘and then you can talk. She’s tougher than she looks.’ She watched him, waiting. ‘So?’ she said. ‘The connection? Between the Guardia and Anna’s missing guy?’