The Marshal's Own Case (9 page)

‘Did you notice their faces?’ Ferrini had said. But he hadn’t noticed anything except that they all looked alike to him. What was he doing in charge of a case like this? Not that that was his fault. Even so, it was all wrong. He was out of his depth and the best thing he could do was to go to the Captain as soon as possible and tell him so. It was hardly even fair to Ferrini that he should have to work with someone so incompetent so that he had to do everything himself. Ferrini had said he was impressed by that business of the sink, but what would he have thought if he knew the truth? That when Teresa had first moved up here from Syracuse and started smartening up his quarters she’d nagged him for months to plaster up the tiny space between the sink and the wall in the bathroom. He’d never got round to it and she’d had to get somebody in to do it in the end. She said the dirty water trickled down behind and bred germs. He couldn’t for shame tell Ferrini that. The whole thing was ridiculous; he wasn’t a detective, he wasn’t trained for it and it wasn’t his job. The Station at Pitti was a quiet spot where he was expected to keep order in his district, settle the odd dispute between neighbours, send in reports from tourists who’d had their bags stolen, organize security for the big exhibitions in the galleries at the Palace. So what the devil was he doing in the park at one in the morning getting his feet wet to no good purpose?

The pale figure of Peppina crashed into the clearing with such suddenness that he had no time to move. He was so still as to be invisible and the running figure hit him full square, almost knocking the breath out of his body. The Marshal made a hesitant grab and then backed off as his face was attacked. His hesitation was caused by his confusion as to what he was fighting against. Peppina was almost naked, the fur coat having got lost during the chase. A woman’s breasts were pressing against his thick coat, a woman’s nails had gouged the skin near his eyes, but a man’s hand began closing round his throat and a man’s muscles were proving as strong if not stronger than his own. He started fighting the man but he had left it late and his hesitation might have been the death of him if Bruno hadn’t leaped forward and torn Peppina away.

‘Good lad!’ came Ferrini’s voice and the other two approached. Of course Ferrini had a torch. He shone it down on the writhing white figure. Bruno was astride the prostrate Peppina, struggling to get the hands behind the back and handcuff them. The others helped and Peppina was soon dragged upright and taken off to the parked cars.

The Marshal had recognized the face by this time. Peppina was the one who’d turned on him that night in the office:
‘Is looking enough or do you want to touch?’

Now he sat in the front of the car, conscious of his smarting face and of the strong perfume still clinging to the front of his overcoat. Peppina was in the back, handcuffed now to Bruno. Ferrini’s lad was following in the other car. Peppina had made row enough for ten at first until she saw what Ferrini was holding on his knee.

‘You threw your handbag away in the bushes when you were running off,’ Ferrini said. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t do a thing like that except by mistake, so I picked it up for you.’

And Peppina fell silent.

As they drove out of the park towards the yellow lighting on Ponte alla Vittoria, Ferrini slowed down.

‘Did you want a word with Carla? You said you’d ask him about identifying . . .’

‘He’s here?’

‘Over there, by the hotel. Do you want me to stop?’

Carla stood very still and upright. Long legs in white fishnet tights, a scrap of something lacey that didn’t quite reach up to the high breasts. One hand was placed on the left hip, the other hanging loose but motionless. The long white fur was pushed back from the shoulders and hung down behind almost to the feet. There was something different from the figures in the park that swung forwards from their huddled stance under the sheltering trees. There was no sign of life, no flicker of response to the dark falling rain, to the headlights that swept slowly over the still, white figure and passed on. They came close enough to stop and speak but the Marshal, unable to recognize even at that distance, the person he had talked to in a tidy little flat, hesitated and then said, ‘Drive on.’ It was the eyes. They had stared past him, past the cars streaming across the bridge, past the river and the floodlit palaces on the other bank, past everything. The blank and sightless eyes of a statue.

‘What time did you arrive at Lulu’s flat?’

‘I told you.’

‘And I don’t believe you.’

‘It couldn’t have been before midnight. I never go out before half past eleven.’

‘You went out before that. You went out to eat at Lulu’s flat.’

‘That’s a lie. I ate at the trattoria where I always eat.’

‘Who with?’

‘I can’t remember . . .’ Peppina was rubbing at his blackened fingers with a handkerchief but the fingerprinting ink only spread a little and didn’t come off. He was nearly naked but the Marshal’s overcoat was pulled around his shoulders. Ferrini had laughed at him but he had refused to have Peppina brought in uncovered. It had been Bruno who had inadvertently divested him of the fur coat when trying to grab him during the chase and now it was lying in a sodden heap somewhere in the park.

Ferrini’s interrogation wasn’t vicious, only insistent. He was too sure of his ground to have recourse to anger. No matter what Peppina might admit or deny, there was no getting away from the evidence lying on the desk between them. His handbag had contained, among other things, a packet of traveller’s cheques in the name of Luigi Esposito.

‘What about the money? There must have been some cash as well as these. Have you spent it?’

‘There was no money. I never saw any money.’

‘We’ve already fingerprinted the flat.’

‘I never said I wasn’t at the flat.’

‘And the handbag.’

‘I never touched her handbag. She’d gone when I got to the flat. I swear that’s true. I saw her the night before. She said she was leaving soon. When I went to the flat that night she’d gone.’

‘He hadn’t gone. He was dead. He died right after a meal, the meal we found on the table, the meal you shared with him.’

‘That’s a lie! I told you, I ate at the trattoria! You can check—and then I went to work at my usual place. I only went to Lulu’s flat after that and she’d gone!’

‘So how did you get in? Well? Come on, let’s hear it. You went to the flat at midnight and Lulu wasn’t there so how did you get in?’

‘I want a lawyer! I’m not answering any more questions.’

‘Please yourself. With or without your lawyer you’ll talk to the Prosecutor tomorrow morning and I hope you’ll have a better story ready because this one stinks. Take him away.’

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.