The Marshal's Own Case (15 page)

He’d been too embarrassed and distracted to take it in at the time, but he’d taken it in by now all right. So all he said was no.

Ferrini was looking at him now, waiting for some sort of decision. Up till now he had just moved doggedly ahead because he didn’t know what else to do, without thinking, without hoping, without reacting. Now, quite suddenly, tired and disgusted, mostly with himself, he lost impetus. It was against every rule of a policeman’s work. If you have to question a hundred people you question a hundred people. You don’t give up after the ninety-ninth. The probability of the first person’s giving you what you’re after is no greater or less than that of its being the last. There was no case for being more hopeful at number ten than at number ninety. It meant nothing. He was just tired, that was all. And Ferrini was ill. He glanced at the window. It was still raining.

‘They say we’re due for a change,’ Ferrini offered, catching his glance, ‘and I suppose it can hardly be a change for the worse.’

‘No . . .’

‘You look the way I feel. You shouldn’t drink coffee after taking a lot of aspirin, should you?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. I could do with one. If I fall asleep in the car, give me a prod. Do you know something? I’m beginning to hate the guts of our friend Nanny. Do you realize that if he hadn’t tarted himself up as a woman in that photograph—’ he poked at it angrily with his finger—‘we could have cut the other two off it and slapped it on the front of the newspaper. WILL THIS MAN PLEASE COME FORWARD?’

‘He wouldn’t have come.’

‘No, but I’d have felt better. Well, shall we go?’ He stood up and buttoned his raincoat.

‘You wouldn’t feel better.’ The Marshal was staring at the photo. The man’s ill-made-up face, Carla’s dazed, slightly drunken stare, Lulu’s dazzling smile. ‘There’s the wife, a child . . .’

‘I know. I was just letting off steam. I wouldn’t do that to anybody, especially not the child. I’ve got three myself. Imagine, what a thing to find out about your father.’ He had lit a cigarette but, perhaps because of his ’flu or the aspirins, he at once made a grimace of distaste and stubbed it out in the ashtray which the Marshal had found for him when they’d first started working together. Still, the Marshal didn’t move.

‘What about the labs . . . Could they doctor it? I mean, clean up the face a bit, substitute another man’s shoulders with ordinary clothes?’

‘Easily. And he still wouldn’t come forward. Even if we’re only talking about a witness—and we can’t be a hundred per cent sure of that, though he doesn’t sound much like a suspect compared to our late friend from Milan—no married man could afford to risk being a witness to a case like this. Ruin his life. And think of the risk. With Peppina inside, wherever he is he feels safe. If he sees his picture in the paper, however cleaned up and under whatever pretext, he’s bound to scarper.’

‘Yes. I wasn’t thinking of the paper. Just notifying our stations throughout the province . . .’

‘That’s a thought—or bung him in the missing persons’ bulletin and cover the whole country just in case. It
is
a thought. Slow, mind you. We’ve missed this month’s.’

The Marshal shrugged. ‘We’ll do both, anyway. Send it to all stations in Tuscany and get it into the bulletin.’

‘Will you see to it or shall I?’

The Marshal frowned. He didn’t answer straight away. Then he said, ‘You do it . . .’

When Ferrini left, the Marshal sat on, trying to remember something. The missing persons’ bulletin, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, had some painful association for him that he couldn’t name. What was it? Why should he not want to think of it? Something to do with that wretched kid from Syracuse? Unhappy as the thought was, it wasn’t that. The little girl who got lost . . . but she’d never been put into the bulletin, her mother had come that day. That day . . . the day they’d last gone to the department store where Totò— that was why. He tried to dismiss the problem of Totò from his mind and think of work, but he couldn’t. Nobody had mentioned the episode since, but though he had never been home long enough to know exactly how the land lay, he knew well that things weren’t mended with Teresa after the cat business. He’d been getting home at four in the morning and the first two nights she’d pretended to be asleep. She always did do that on the rare occasions when he had to be out late but, given the way things were, he’d been offended. He’d even made a bit more noise getting to bed than he needed to, in the hope that she’d turn over and speak to him. Then last night she really had been asleep and he was even more offended. They couldn’t just go on like that. This case wouldn’t last for ever. Sometime life had to go back to normal, but already too much time had elapsed. The problem had gone under the surface and he had so little talent for talking about things that he would never be able to manoeuvre it back to a level where it could be sorted out openly. What, when it came down to it,
did
he have any talent for? Not for solving a case like this, evidently. The first time he’d been given a case to run and a fine mess he’d made of it. The thing was completely out of control. It wasn’t as though he’d made any sort of considered decision. Peppina hadn’t been arrested because he in his great wisdom thought he was guilty. One minute he’d been bumbling around in the rainy darkness and the next minute a charge for murder had been brought against someone he was convinced was innocent. And now that he ought to be trying to get the thing back on the rails, here he sat worrying about his own problems instead of thinking about . . . What was he meant to be thinking about? Where had he been up to when his thoughts had rambled off . . . The bulletin. But that had turned out a dead end. Forget the bulletin. But he didn’t. Not trusting even his memory, though it didn’t often fail him, he got out the daily sheet for the date that the lost child had been brought in. There was nothing. Nothing at all. So why had he connected the two things? Perhaps he was just tired and muddled through lack of sleep. He slid the sheet back in place and was already thinking about Teresa again when it came to him that he just might have told her that the boy from Syracuse ought to be reported missing down there and that in doing so he might have mentioned the bulletin. So, at least that little mystery was solved.

‘There’s a carabinieri station not two minutes away from
your house.’

He hadn’t said that to Teresa? How could he have? The face he’d said it to appeared in his memory as a blur. An unpleasant face that he couldn’t put a name to.

‘A friend recommended you.’

That was it. He’d settled the dispute over the boundaries of two gardens and this woman . . . a dreadful woman. Her son was missing.

He pulled the daily sheet out again and looked at the date. It was before they found Lulu, and he’d been missing some time if he remembered rightly. But who was he? What the devil was the awful woman’s name? Hadn’t he started typing the particulars before sending her away to report it somewhere else? He began searching through his drawers but he knew as he was doing it that there was no point. He could see himself quite clearly ripping it off the typewriter and throwing it away as he said, ‘There’s a carabinieri station not two minutes away from your house.’ But where? Something like Via dei Fossi . . . or was Fossi the woman’s name? Why, oh why, had he thrown the damn thing away?

‘Marshal?’ Bruno put his head round the door. ‘I’m going to do the shopping, so if there’s anything you want . . .’ He stared in amazement at the growing heap of paper on the Marshal’s desk.

The Marshal, catching his eye, growled, ‘Somebody has to keep things in order round here.’ And went on making a mess.

‘Well, if there’s nothing you want—’

‘There’s plenty I want but you won’t find it going shopping! I want the name of that wretched woman who came in here saying her son was missing for a start!’

‘That one you were annoyed about because we should have sent her away?’

‘You don’t mean you remember her?’

‘Well, I remember because you were so annoyed—’

‘Her name and address! What was her name and address?’

‘That’s what you were so annoyed about. That we didn’t ask her, otherwise we’d have known to send her away.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He went on with his useless rummaging.

‘Have you nothing better to do than stand there?’ he asked, since Bruno didn’t leave.

‘The shopping . . . but if you want I could call Scandicci and ask someone—’

‘Scandicci?’

‘That’s where you said she should have reported—’

‘Scandicci . . . silver, they made silver gifts! Well, don’t just stand there. Go and do the shopping.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And don’t call me sir.’ But Bruno had got out at speed.

He called Scandicci.

‘Silverware? That must be Fossi.’

‘That’s it—I thought Fossi was the name of the street.’

‘That’s because they’re in Via del Fosso. We have a Station just round the corner—’

‘That’s the one. Can you give me their number to save me time?’

The marshal of the tiny Station was out when he called but his brigadier knew the family well enough.

‘Signora Fossi?’ He laughed. ‘You mean it’s true that she came to you as she said?’

‘Yes.’

‘She said she had, but we hardly believed that even she would take her story anywhere but here.’

‘You mean it wasn’t true? The son wasn’t missing?’

‘Oh, as to that . . . He slides off every now and then and with a mother like that, who wouldn’t? It depends what you mean by missing.’

‘He came back just as usual?’

‘Certainly he came back. Saw him myself in the bar this morning. The Fossi woman is our pet pain in the neck. She’s round here every other day complaining about something and I don’t know how many times she’s reported her son missing. The first time we took her seriously, put him in the bulletin and everything, but after five or six episodes we stopped bothering. Probably got a fancy woman somewhere, know what I mean?’

‘Yes . . .’ It was what he’d suggested himself, now he remembered.

‘God knows why she picked on you when we sent her packing. You’d have thought she’d try the police or something.’

‘She said I’d helped a friend of hers with some minor problem.’

‘And you sent her packing too, I imagine?’

‘Yes, but I’m not so sure I was right. You say you saw him this morning?’

‘In the bar. He usually nips out for a coffee about ten and so do I.’

‘I’ll come out there. Will the Marshal be back? Say in about half an hour?’

‘He’ll be back well before then. I’ll tell him. What was the name again?’

‘Guarnaccia.’

The traffic was heavy. It always was on that road which, once you were out of Florence, was lined with factories. Traffic lights one after the other, one of which he all but went through on red because his mind wasn’t on his driving. It was on his conversation with that Fossi woman. She had said a number of things which, at the time, hadn’t made much sense but which were beginning to. Her son’s little jaunts. She’d seemed to be defending them. Set in his ways, she’d said, because he’d married late. And she was the one who’d convinced him to marry. When the Marshal had suggested another woman she’d said, ‘Certainly not. He doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.’ And she had been quite certain, certain enough to be convincing. She knew.

He didn’t stay long at the sleepy little carabinieri station, only long enough for a courtesy visit and directions to the factory. When the marshal there offered to accompany him he said, ‘I’d rather go alone. I want it to look as casual as possible.’

‘You really think . . . ?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I can’t believe it. I mean, he’s such a respectable character . . .’

It was a new red brick factory. There were a number of them, some in brick, some in concrete, all of them incongruous eyesores in what was still an agricultural village. The green-painted iron gates of the silver factory stood open. A van and a small car were parked on the gravel near the main entrance. It was a small place with no porter’s lodge. The man who noticed him and asked what he wanted was obviously one of the workmen. He left the Marshal waiting in what looked like some sort of showroom. There were shelves and shelves of silver ornaments, the sort of thing people gave as useless and expensive wedding presents.

‘Can I help you?’

He turned and saw a blonde young woman whom he realized must be the daughter-in-law. She was expensively well-dressed and carefully made up, but in the split second before she spoke and offered him a businesslike smile, the Marshal saw a face that was unhappy, unhappy, but not frightened.

‘I understand you wanted to speak to my husband?’

‘Is he here?’

‘I’m sorry, he’s not. Can I be of any help—nothing’s happened, has it? You’re not here because—’

‘No, no, don’t worry.’

‘I suddenly thought . . . a road accident . . .’

‘No. Don’t alarm yourself.’ Although . . . He and the marshal round the corner had cooked up a story about a bag-snatching but a road accident would do just as well. ‘As a matter of fact, there has been an accident but your husband wasn’t in any way involved. I was hoping that he might come forward as a witness.’

‘He never mentioned seeing an accident. Where did it happen?’

‘Well, of course, it might be a mistake.’ Perhaps he should have stuck to the bag-snatching. ‘Someone took the number of a passing car but you know how these things are. They get the number wrong or the car turns out to be a different colour . . .’

With no further demur she gave him the number of her husband’s steel-grey Mercedes. As he wrote it down she said, ‘It’s odd that he shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘Might have gone out of his mind—or—could he have told anyone else in the family when you didn’t happen to be there? After all, there’s no reason why he should do more than mention it in passing. He wasn’t involved.’

‘I suppose he could have told his mother . . .’

‘Then perhaps I could have a word—unless you’re expecting your husband back any minute, in which case . . .’

‘No. He planned to have lunch with our agent and then they had business to discuss—that’s not where it happened, by any chance? On Via Baracca? It’s such a terrible road. I know Carlo always cuts through the park to avoid the worst of it.’