The Marshal's Own Case (16 page)

‘It was in that area, yes.’

‘Then I’m not surprised. I hate driving over there myself. Well, if you want to talk to my mother-in-law you can, but if you don’t mind I’ll have to get someone else to take you round to the house—she’s already gone to supervise lunch and I have to take a client to the restaurant. I hope you’ll excuse me.’

‘Of course.’ He was only too glad to excuse her. He had to talk to the woman alone.

The same man who had first greeted him took him out of the door he had first entered and round the side of the building to the two-storeyed house attached to the factory. The front door was opened by a very young maid and the grey-coated man went away.

‘Will you wait here?’

The Marshal stood, hat in hand, in the entrance while the maid tapped on a door on the left and went in, leaving it ajar.

He heard the girl announce his arrival in a low voice but all he could see through the crack in the door was the end of a large table where the little girl with dark eyes and long blonde hair sat silent and still before an empty plate. He got an impression of chill formality despite what must have been an everyday family meal. There wasn’t even the faintest smell of food. Then Signora Fossi appeared and closed the door behind her.

‘Oh, it’s you . . .’ She was surprised and a flicker of fear crossed her face but she composed herself at once. She didn’t ask him why he was there, gave him no lead at all, only waited, her eyes watchful.

‘I’ve just spoken to your daughter-in-law.’

She was immediately alarmed. He saw a red flush appear on her neck and she opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it.

‘I understand your son returned home.’

‘He did. There was no need to have bothered you. I’m afraid I’m an anxious sort of person and my heart isn’t all that strong. My son has the same weakness. He had rheumatic fever as a child.’

He understood that this was a plea for sympathy. She would have liked to say, ‘Go away. Please go away and leave us in peace.’ How much did she know? How much did she only suspect or fear? He didn’t, he couldn’t, feel any personal sympathy for this woman who appeared to him now even less prepossessing than at their first encounter. But the man was her son. He couldn’t get away from the thought. Her son. And then there was the unhappy young wife. Of the silent child behind the closed door he tried not to think at all. He had to do his job and the steadily rising flush on the face and neck of the woman before him told him that his job lay here.

‘I told your daughter-in-law I was looking for her husband as the possible witness to a road accident.’ He gave her a moment to digest this before adding, ‘The truth is that I think he may be a witness to something much more serious. I don’t think I need to tell you what.’

He could see an enormous energy building up in her and despite his great bulk he felt she would have been capable of thrusting him bodily out of her home could there have been anything to be gained by it. She still didn’t utter a word.

‘I have to speak to him. In cases like this we use the utmost discretion. You told me you were very close to your son and I imagine you know all the facts about his private life, facts his wife may not be aware of. If he comes forward he’ll be protected in that respect, his name won’t be published. If he tries to run away . . .’ He left the threat unspoken, watching for her reaction. It didn’t come. His threat hadn’t worked, he could see that, though he couldn’t be sure why. He would have to lay it on thicker because it was plain that she was only waiting for him to leave so that she could act and her first act would be to telephone her son.

‘I might as well be honest with you,’ he lied. ‘I must speak to your son at all costs. I have the number of his car and all stations and airports have been alerted. Don’t do anything that will make things worse for him.’

A bead of perspiration formed near the grey hair on her temple and rolled down her powdered cheek. She didn’t say a word. From behind the dining-room door came the faint chink of cutlery. The solitary child was eating.

Nine

H
e pulled up, leaving the engine and wipers on and switched on the radio. ‘Anything?’ The rain hammered on the car roof.

‘No sign of him yet.’ The Marshal’s colleague out in the village sounded excited. The Marshal himself was subdued.

‘He should have got there by now. He left Via Baracca a good twenty minutes before I arrived, without finishing his business.’

‘His mother did call him, then?’

‘He received a call. He took it in an office alone but I imagine it was her. You’re sure he couldn’t have approached his house—on foot, say—without your boys spotting him?’

‘Impossible. I promise you he hasn’t come back here. Where are you now?’

‘Half way back. I’ve just stopped in the Piazza delle Cascine. It’s the road he takes, so his wife said, and the people at the agency in Via Baracca confirmed it. Piazza Puccini, Via delle Cascine, then straight up through the park to Ponte alla Vittoria and the road out to Scandicci. It avoids all the traffic in the centre . . .’ And he repeated, ‘He should be there by now . . .’

‘But he isn’t. Listen, you know your own business best but have you thought of the station, the airport?’

‘He thinks they’re being watched.’

‘He thinks . . . Well, as I say, you know your own business best. There’s nothing much we can do here except go on waiting and watching.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘No need to thank me! I must confess we’re rather enjoying it. The last time anything happened round here was when Nardi’s pig escaped and that was nearly two years ago!’

‘Keep in touch, every ten minutes or so.’

‘Right—Wait a minute. I’ve thought of something. It’s only just crossed my mind but Fossi may well be armed.’

‘A pistol?’

‘That’s right. He has a licence, all regular. It’s because of their having so much valuable stock.’

‘Then surely he keeps it somewhere in the factory?’

‘Most of the time, yes. But I know he goes armed when he’s delivering stuff to the buying agency because their insurance only covers it from the moment it arrives in their hands.’

‘I see. Thanks for the warning. He hasn’t . . .’

‘What’s that?’

‘I was just wondering . . . you said nothing much happens out there but has Fossi ever, by any chance, reported a theft of some sort?’

‘He did once, yes, but not here. That was when he decided to apply for a licence to carry arms. Happened in the park somewhere, so he didn’t report it here but I heard about it. I’m surprised he still uses that road, he’d have done better to take a more frequented route instead of going about with a gun he probably doesn’t know how to use. Still, if I remember rightly they didn’t get away with much.’

‘I see.’

The Marshal broke radio contact and then called his own Station. It was Bruno who answered.

‘Is Ferrini back?’

‘He’s just come in. Shall I put him on?’

Ferrini’s voice sounded faintly puzzled but he didn’t ask any questions right away.

‘They’re fixing up the photos. They reckon they can have him presentable as a respectable member of society by tomorrow. Will that do? It takes a bit of time.’

‘That’s all right. Listen, I want you to call Carla—he won’t be awake but let it ring until he is. Ask him . . . Ask him if in the days when Nanny went with him he ever paid, or tried to, with a present rather than money.’

‘If I can wake him, I’ll ask him. Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘But . . . Where are you?’

‘In the park finding Nanny. At least, I think that’s who I’m finding . . .’

‘But how? I mean how did you—’

‘Because of a dispute over two adjoining gardens up near Via San Leonardo . . . It was all a long time ago and it’s a long story. Call Carla for me, will you?’

‘Right away. But don’t you need any help?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Stay where you are and I’ll call.’

He stared out past the fast-clicking wipers at the dripping trees and the puddles around the edge of the tarred piazza. It was raining so hard that even in the early afternoon it was beginning to grow dark. The radio crackled into life again and Bruno’s voice said, ‘Marshal, your wife’s in the office. I think she’d like a word with you.’

‘Put her on.’ He’d missed lunch again, and this time he hadn’t even remembered to tell her.

‘Salva? Are you all right?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance . . .’

‘Today of all days, and I’d made something special. Well, I can save it for supper, I suppose. You will come home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But Salva, the boys—’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen . . .’ And his voice sounded so heavy and so distracted that she gave up and went away.

What did she mean, anyway, ‘today of all days’? She’d sounded hurt. It was already something that she’d sought him out, given the way things were, and now he seemed to have upset her. He perhaps ought to call her back. But he didn’t. He sat there, listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the car, brooding. Fossi had set out on this road. The man from the agency had seen him. They’d set out together and driven one behind the other as far as Piazza Puccini when Fossi had turned right and taken the road through the park. But he hadn’t come out the other end. He knew he couldn’t go home. And he was armed.

Ferrini interrupted his brooding.

‘I’ve talked to Carla. He was like a zombie but I managed to get through the fog.’

‘Well, was there ever a present?’

‘More than once. Apparently his wife kept the purse strings so he didn’t have much ready cash to play with. He once gave her a silver fruit bowl, that was all. Lulu, on the other hand, screwed quite a few presents out of him and wanted money as well.’

‘What presents exactly?’

‘I don’t know. Knick-knacks of all sorts—’

‘But silver?’

‘Yes, silver, fairly valuable.’

When the Marshal made no answer, he asked, ‘That is what you wanted to know?’

‘Yes. I wasn’t sure, you see . . .’

‘You’re all right, are you? I can come straight down there if—’

‘No. No . . . at least, yes, come as far as the entrance near the Ponte alla Vittoria. Bring somebody with you. I’ll call you in if anything turns up.’

‘We could call in more cars, comb the whole park area . . . dogs . . .’

‘No.’

‘What if he should be armed?’

‘I think he is.’

‘Then surely all the more reason—’

‘No.’

Ferrini, realizing he was talking to a brick wall, agreed to come down as far as the entrance and wait.

The Marshal put his little black car in gear and moved off slowly. The man had driven in here and never come out at the other end. He probably had a pistol. A respectable man with an ingenuous wife. A little girl who had finished her lonely meal and was doing her homework. They knew Carlo Fossi but they didn’t know Nanny. Nanny who had walked back into Lulu’s flat to take his clothes and retreat to the world of Carlo Fossi, only to find . . . What? To know that, he had to find Nanny. Perhaps there wasn’t much time and yet he drove very slowly. His head told him to hurry, that if Nanny had remained in the dripping, deserted park it was because he didn’t intend to live long enough to be Nanny the witness. He wanted to die as Carlo Fossi. And still the Marshal drove slowly, feeling as heavy and dispirited as the sodden, dripping trees around him. Another call came from the watchers of Fossi’s house. Nothing.

He was driving at random. He passed the Little Zoo. Once they had taken the boys there to see the scurrying hairy baby pigs and the chattering monkeys. Now the place was gloomy and deserted, the sandy enclosures empty and full of puddles, the animals sheltering somewhere from the relentless rain. His windows were steaming up. He wound one down a crack and drove on. He passed the racecourse. The rain here was heavy with the smell of horse dung but there was neither horse nor man in sight. When he reached the end of this avenue he would be at the Indian, where they had sat the other day looking at the river. The end of the park. There he could turn and drive up the next avenue. But before he reached the Indian he braked very gently and reversed to the right, sliding the car on to a bumpy patch of grass among untended bushes. He switched off the engine. He had seen the tail-end of a car, parked like his own, off the road in the bushes. A large steel-grey car. He got out, leaving his door loose to avoid noise, and moved forward through the tangle of wet brush. The rain covered the noise of his footsteps, the wet gloom of the dreary afternoon half hid him. He drew level with the boot of the car that had pulled off on the opposite side of the road. A steel-grey Mercedes, the number plate he was looking for, and a grey-suited figure slumped forward over the steering-wheel.

For some time the Marshal stood there motionless in the rain. Carlo Fossi dead would mean the little blonde girl need never know . . . But Peppina? What would happen to Peppina? Then he gave a start. The slumped figure had surely moved, the shoulders had just perceptibly lifted. The Marshal took a step back and concealed himself better.

The shoulders moved again and then the head was flung back against the headrest. The greying fair hair was a little too long. The figure settled and once again became motionless. The Marshal waited, trying to think of a way out for Peppina if what he thought might happen did happen.

With a shock he saw the figure jerk upright. The car door opened and the man got out. He seemed to be in a daze and walked unsteadily as though he’d been sitting stiffly for too long. It was too gloomy to make out more of his face than that it was thin. He walked round to the boot and opened it, took out some sort of hold-all and walked away from the car, leaving both the door and the boot wide open.

The Marshal moved forward cautiously, not understanding. Maybe he was making for the river. Maybe he didn’t have the gun with him after all, but the hold-all? He was forced to pause at the end of the bushes where the gravel space around the Indian opened before him. There was no more concealment. But the man had vanished.

There had been no cry, no splash, and surely no time for him to have reached the river bank. Where could he be hidden—unless he was simply standing behind the big monument? The Marshal gave up concealment and walked forward towards the turbanned prince under his pagoda-like shelter. He walked round to the other side. An empty bench. Wet gravel, a view of the swollen river. Nothing else. Then, from the right, he heard a voice.

Was that it? Had he arranged to meet somebody? He began to walk across the gravel towards the sound. There, near a footbridge crossing the Mugnone Torrent, a dry ditch in summer but swollen and racing now, stood a dilapidated yellow building that had once been a coffee-house but had been out of use for years. The voice was coming from in there, urgent but not angry. He couldn’t make out the words. The first window he found was boarded up so he made for the front of the building, thinking all the time of that hold-all. The saw? Lulu’s bloodstained clothing? The front door was also boarded up and the whole of the façade was plastered with tattered posters and sprayed with graffiti.

‘In this world of thieves and scoundrels, we are squatting
. . .’
A huge handwritten notice, partly obliterated by the rain.
‘Since 1975 this building has been scheduled for
renovation. Years have passed and the Left-wing alliance . . .’

The Marshal had a vague recollection of some group claiming to be anarchists occupying the place until some trouble with the police had put an end to their stay. There must be some way in. The voice stopped and then started up again in a different tone—or was it a different voice? A false drawl about it, close to the softened male voice of a transsexual but not the real thing. Quietly, he returned to his car and called Ferrini. ‘Don’t come in there. Wait outside.’

He stumbled over clumps of soaked grass, a collapsed armchair with a puddle in its sagging seat, a pile of tin cans. There was another, smaller door hanging loose on its hinges. The place had probably been used by tramps after the squatters. He stepped inside and, adjusting his eyes to the deeper, windowless gloom, found himself in a tiny theatre.

Facing him on a low platform was a small cinescreen with a dark rent in the centre of it. Two dozen or so low armchairs probably left over from the days of the coffee-house were lined up in front of it. The peeling, dusty walls were stuck all over with old photocopied sheets of information and big handwritten posters full of giant exclamation marks like the one outside. It was too dark to see what they said. There was only one source of light and that a feeble one. It came from the crack beneath a small battered door on the other side of the room. Behind the door the voice or voices continued their earnest talk which the Marshal could now make out better.

‘Of course I shan’t go away. I can’t go away now, can I? Now that you’ve seen to everything. Tell me you like this dress. You always did like it. Tell me it turns you on. It does, doesn’t it? I can see by your eyes! Tell me!’

The Marshal pushed the door gently.

The light was coming from a big electric torch standing upright on the filthy floor. He recognized the dress at once. The glittering trail of sequins, the plunge from shoulder to waist. He recognized the stance, too. The face turned towards him over a raised shoulder, one hand on the hip, the black hair swinging behind. And most of all, the fixed, dazzling travesty of Lulu’s famous smile.

The Marshal’s quiet entrance seemed to create no disturbance. The glittering figure, lit theatrically from below, twirled provocatively for his benefit, then stopped, laughing softly.

‘You should say you like my dress, you adore it. That’s what Nanny would say. If you kicked him in the teeth he’d only look at you like a beaten dog and say “I worship you”—in a voice just like that—“I worship you, Lulu!” Can you imagine?’

‘Can I talk to him?’

‘To Nanny? Suit yourself. You’ll find him a bore but I can’t leave him now, you understand that?’

‘Yes.’

The room must have served as some sort of dressing-room or perhaps even a bedroom in the days of the anarchists. Most of it appeared deep in shadow because of the torch which illuminated the tall figure and a circle of grimy ceiling above where a broken electric cord dangled. Then the torch was snatched up from the floor and placed on a cluttered little table with a spotted mirror propped at the back of it. The figure seated itself and the black hair fell in a heap on the table like a crouching animal. The face dimly reflected in the mirror was still caked with make-up but framed now by a straggle of fair greying hair. The eyes reflected to the Marshal’s gaze were haggard and the brilliant smile was gone as though wiped away. He was looking now at Nanny.