A Dark Song of Blood (14 page)

There had been several air raid alerts in the past few hours, and only the day before the police station at Monteverde had been hit by errant bombs. “Why don’t I drive you there?” Guidi suggested.

It was raining, dark and close to the curfew when they reached the address. Little was visible of the house except that it looked like every other house front along the Via Nomentana, a lonely spot where the remains of a brick kiln marked the old city limits.

Guidi rolled his window down. “Who really lives here?” he asked.

“My mother, I told you. Why?”

His resentment was up. Guidi didn’t know what to do with it and grew bold. He said grumpily, “I just don’t want to be driving you around to your lover.”

Francesca was a melancholy presence in the small car, faceless but for the glare from an incoming truck’s headlights. The headlights were blackened into slits by paint, and only cut a sliver of murky yellow across her cheek. “Why, what would that be to you? It’s not like I have to answer to you about my life.”

After she stepped out, and the house absorbed her, Guidi remained in the car. Chilly rain came in through the open window, and still he looked out toward the house. Francesca knew Antonio Rau well, that was clear. A look, a word half-said, the way they brushed past each other in the hallway. Three times Guidi had seen him, and he did not like him. Rau was her lover, or her contact with the underground, or both. Three times he’d been about to face him, and only the awareness that Francesca was involved dangerously, to the immediate risk of the household, and he’d have to act upon it, had held him back. The Germans were the enemy, now more than ever – it
wasn’t that. But where
that
put him with Bora, Guidi didn’t even want to think.

Back at Via Paganini, Pompilia Marasca, candlestick in hand, met him on the stairs as soon as he walked in. She said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” one hand on her hips and hard to avoid.

“It’s almost ten o’clock. Can’t it wait?”

“As a good citizen, I don’t think so.”

In the semi-darkness Guidi looked without interest at her skin-tight black dress. “Well, what is it?”

“It’s that new, Jewish-looking visitor that you have at your apartment. Three days now he’s been coming and going freely, whatever he comes here for, or whomever. Don’t you think the neighbors watch? People are being turned in to the Germans for less than that.” Her eyes narrowed and she spoke through graciously rounded red lips. “You ought to tell the young lady to mind her acquaintances, before somebody does something unneighborly.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Guidi said dryly. “Continue to keep an eye on things.”

Careful to keep her candle steady, Pompilia took a reticent step back. “If nobody acts on it, what good is my observing things?”

17 FEBRUARY 1944

On Thursday, Bora, back at work for the past two days and limping again, phoned SS Captain Sutor to invite him to lunch.

Sutor sounded wary. “What’s the occasion?”

“Other than rejoicing about our parade of Anglo–American prisoners yesterday? I’m headed to see what damage the Allies did yesterday to the Colosseum and the Protestant Cemetery. Since I’ll be passing by on my way to St Paul’s Gate, I thought you might want to join me.”

“Why should I want to join you? I don’t give a fig about those old ruins. And you, I thought you’d have little taste to see what bombs do after Aprilia.”

Bora kept his temper. “I hear Montecassino was far worse. Well, don’t let me take you away from your job. If you change your mind, I will be at the Colosseum at 1200 hours.”

And indeed, at noon it did not surprise him to see Sutor’s Kfz 15 drawing near his Mercedes on the Palatine side of the Colosseum. “I’m glad you could make it after all,” Bora said, pointing to damage on the venerable archways, and to the pumice-packed scaffolds around the Arch of Constantine.

“What are you going to do, tell me the story of the Colosseum?”

“If you wish. It was not my intention, however. We don’t know one another, I thought, and probably should. Our positions in Rome are similar enough.”

Sutor removed his cap long enough to slick his blond hair back. “You get around much more than I do, it seems to me.”

“Only because I speak the language. But I don’t fraternize much.”

“Well, what’s keeping you?”

“Force of habit.” Bora looked straight at Sutor, and neither man had his mind on the ruined walls. “After five years of married life it’s awkward to start again.”

“Why are you telling me all this? I’m not your confessor.”

“No, but you’re well introduced.” They began walking around the formidable arena, unhurriedly. “Let’s face it, Captain. You’re about my age, have been here longer than I... There’s a party, the day after tomorrow, at Dollmann’s house, and I’m sure we’re both invited.”

“So, you’re looking for a lay. Why, don’t you trust Dollmann’s judgment in the matter?” Sutor grinned at his own joke. “Maybe you should try your secretary, Major. She’s a nice piece.” Seeing that Bora kept a friendly mien, however, “I
do
know most of the women who’ll come to the party,” he ended up boasting. “What are you looking for?”

Bora shrugged. “A well-built woman. Athletic, you know. Not fat, but nicely built.”

“Is that all?” Sutor laughed. “I can’t believe you’re so simple in your tastes!”

“The physical is all that matters when there isn’t to be more than that, Captain.”

“Blonde or brunette?”

“I have no preference.” Bora kept silent a while, wishing he could believe a small part of what he was saying. His left arm hurt. He still ached from the bruises of the air raid, and the shrapnel fragment in his leg had reawakened all the pains of his September wounds. Letting Sutor prod him, he did not rush to answer. “Since you insist,” he said when they’d come nearly full circle around the Colosseum, “speaking of secretaries, I was thinking of someone like the poor Reiner girl. As you know, I’ve been handling the paperwork for her parents. I had a chance to see photos of her. One can’t judge her personality, but the appearance was attractive.”

Sutor’s wariness was up, and immediately down again. His feline blondness made him look smarter than he was; of this Bora was convinced. “She was a damn pleasant girl,” he said.

“Well.” Bora stepped away. “Here’s my car, and there is yours. Should we continue on to the English Cemetery or go to lunch?”

“Wait a minute, Major. What’s the last word on how she died?”

Bora walked to his car. “You heard the doors were locked. She must have killed herself after all. Cemetery or lunch?”

“That can’t be all.” Sutor held him back. “You know something else you’re not saying.”

“I don’t. And I’m truly sorry I brought up the issue.”

“Then there is something else. Look, I knew her
well
; I think you ought to tell me.”

“It’s not my place to tell. Please forget the matter, and if it’s all the same with you, let’s drive to St Paul’s Gate.”

Sutor kept Bora from closing the car door. “No. Lunch. You said lunch, and lunch it is.”

At the restaurant – he had insisted on going to
Dreher
’s – he resumed the argument. “Now that you brought it up you must finish it. Come on, what has emerged from the investigation?”

“I am not the one in charge of it. It’s Inspector Guidi, of the Italian police.”

“How do I get in touch with him?”

“You embarrass me, Captain. Why would you want to become involved in an ugly story? You know policemen and their stupid questioning.”

“So what? Do you think I couldn’t handle questions by him?
I
may have information he’s interested in. I have nothing to hide. Hell, I’ve got a career to think of!”

Bora looked down, with the excuse of unfolding his napkin. He thought of the sad rooms of Via Tasso, and his heart was sick at Sutor’s words. “I will give you Guidi’s number. But kindly do not tell him how you got it.”

That evening Guidi stayed at work until late. At his return home, Francesca was the only one still up, reading
Città
in the saint-strewn parlor. It was as good a time as any, and Guidi reported the gossip he’d heard from Pompilia the night before.

Francesca slapped the magazine on her knees, her bony cheekbone like a blade against the dark upholstery of the armchair. “Why don’t you listen to the gutter, since you’re at it?”

“If gossip creates danger to the Maiulis, I’ll listen to the sewer.”

“Ha!” She regained some humor. “Can’t you tell she’s jealous? Just as you are.”

“Why in the world should I be jealous?”

“Because I haven’t told you whether I like you.”

“Neither have I.”

It was clever of him. Francesca lost the advantage, and for a moment they stared at each other without a word. Then she took up the magazine again, turning the pages in haste. “Anyway,” she said, “if it’s Rau who bothers you, he’s neither Jewish nor the
father.
”

“But you do know him. Should anything go wrong, the Maiulis will be in trouble.”

Francesca teased the magazine’s first page, tearing little pieces off it. “Is it forbidden to know someone who comes for his own business? You’re the policeman. If anything goes wrong, it’s because you’ll make it go wrong.” Her voice, not cold but distant somehow, Guidi would remember many months later, when all this was already a part of the past forever. “And how much do you report to your German friend about us?”

“He never asks.”

That, too, would change.

18 FEBRUARY 1944

On Friday morning, Guidi noticed the renewed stiffness in Bora’s walk. Other than that, he was his usual self. No trace of worry about the battle for Cassino, raging in the nearby south.

“Major, I got a call from Captain Sutor, through his interpreter.”

Bora smirked, walking to close the door of his office. “So, will you meet him?”

“Next week. While you were away, I also visited the Reiner apartment again. So far, the strongest evidence that someone went through it is that we found no letters, no scraps of paper with notes or numbers or scribbles on them. Only receipts from a couple of stores.”

“Not everyone keeps correspondence around,” Bora intervened. “
I
don’t.”

“Just hear me out, Major. They might have removed evidence, though we don’t know for example whether the pillowcase was missing to begin with, or what a missing pillowcase means. But there were still minute bits of ashes here and there in her room. People are burning anything they can find in their stoves, I agree, but only in her bedroom did I find these.” Out of his
pocket, he showed a small clear glass bottle, in which were dust-like remnants. “They aren’t just cinders from the outside. I think paper was burned in her room at some point.”

Bora remembered the impalpable ashes he’d noticed on her windowsill. “If that’s the case,” he said, “it can only have happened
before
her death. A third party would have disposed of any documents elsewhere.”

“Well, let’s assume that for some reason she decided to get rid of letters, addresses, whatever else. Prudent, you might say, for an embassy employee. But it does point out her desire to
hide
something, or her fear that her belongings might be gone through.”

Bora sat on the corner of his desk, his left leg extended – bandaged, from what Guidi could tell through the tightness of breeches at the knee. He took from a manila envelope a batch of letters, holding them up for Guidi to see. “These are the originals from which I translated for you. Even when writing home, she was careful not to mention her boyfriends’ surnames. Was it correspondence she received from someone else that she worried about?”

“Possibly. And there’s something else, too. I’m just curious, but what is stored in the vacant apartments up and down from her own?”

“Office supplies of some kind.” Bora replaced the letters in the envelope. “Nothing of importance, or else we would not keep them in a house without porter or security. I expect I could gain access to those spaces.”

“Please try. So far, all we really know is that she came home some time before seven o’clock on 29 December, changed, and by eight she was lying four floors below her window. If she killed herself, for whatever reason – fine, we’ll have to be content with that. But if someone did her in, he wouldn’t be so idiotic as to leave his glasses behind.”

“Or damning correspondence.”

“And even if it were true that Merlo left his glasses, Major, on that night he might have just been headed for the apartment
to retrieve them, and ran into the scene of her death. It’d have been enough to make anyone sick.” Guidi watched Bora walk to a plainly visible wall safe and put the letters inside it. He said, “Either way, I’m being squeezed. I can’t openly pursue Merlo, but can’t exonerate him either. Whatever is going on between the head of police and Merlo’s faction, I’m in the middle. The other cases coming my way are chicken manure,
nothing.
I make work by handling small black-market rings, spiteful neighborhood disputes and the like. They got me here for one reason only, as far as I can tell – to prove Merlo’s guilt and take the rap for it.”

Bora took his place on the desk corner again. “Which does not exclude that Merlo might be guilty. I will check into the vacant apartments, and so much for not making promises. I will stick my neck out and locate Merlo’s optician, too, one way or another.”