Dead Season (22 page)

Maria Grazia’s voice sharpened. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s more than that.’

‘Brunello’s dead,’ said Roxana abruptly. ‘My boss. They found him dead. The Guardia’s in the bank, looking at the books.’

‘What?’ An intake of breath. ‘What does that mean, they found him dead? What – suicide?’

Roxana found herself shaking her head. Why was that everyone’s assumption? Because it was more probable than – the alternative? Or more acceptable?

‘An accident?’ Maria Grazia corrected herself.

‘They don’t know.’ Roxana heard the dullness in her voice. ‘Looks like he was hit by a car – or something. Look, I don’t know the details, I – I—’ And then she couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s – it’s scary, to tell the truth.’ She didn’t even know it, until she said it.

There was a silence: she could almost hear Maria Grazia thinking. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I can imagine.’

‘The branch is all over the place, uniforms looking at everything, shut in his office and telling no one anything. We get a private detective in one day, looking for Claudio – next thing we know, he’s dead and the Guardia are turning the place upside down.’

‘Hold on,’ said Maria Grazia. ‘What private detective?’

Roxana sighed as her thoughts settled on the man who reminded her of her dad. A nice guy, in all this. He’d given her his card. Could a private detective really be a good guy? Other than in the movies.

‘He was looking for Claudio.’ She frowned. ‘Someone – some client was trying to track him down. I had the impression it might be a woman, though he didn’t say that. It doesn’t seem – maybe it was just a coincidence.’ His name came to her. ‘He was called Sandro Cellini. The private detective, I mean, though, God knows, that’s the least of our troubles, if Claudio was having an affair.’

‘Wow,’ said Maria Grazia reverently. ‘And I always thought that place was so sleepy.’

Roxana went on, ‘No one knows what’s going to happen next, I’m even feeling sorry for Val, you know? And Marisa looks freaked. Completely terrified.’

Maria Grazia snorted, unsympathetically. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, her.’ As if that said it all.

Roxana sighed. ‘I know. You’d have thought Val and I would have more to worry about, it’s not as if she needs the money. I was beginning to wonder—’ And she stopped.

‘Doesn’t need the money? I don’t know about that. What were you beginning to wonder?’ And something in her old friend’s voice alerted Roxana.

‘She’s got money, though? That Torinese countess business.’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Maria Grazia wearily. ‘Her family’s got a stuffy old apartment in the Piazza Carlo Felice. Very nice, been in the family donkey’s years, but that’s it. No country house, no private income. Why d’you think she hangs on for dear life to any man with money that comes near her?’ An explosive sound. ‘Why d’you think she works in that dump?’

Right, thought Roxana.

‘Sorry,’ said Maria Grazia, reading her mind. ‘I just – I just don’t like women like Marisa.’

‘I was beginning to wonder if
she
was having an affair with Claudio. Claudio – Brunello, that is, the boss. She was so upset. Upset in a weird way, as if it was going to reflect on her somehow. Frightened.’

There was a long pause. ‘I see,’ said Maria Grazia slowly. ‘D’you know, I don’t think that’s how she works. It’s not like he’s going to keep her in the style she wants, is it? A bank branch manager.’

‘Was,’ said Roxana sadly. ‘He’s not going to keep anyone now, is he? There’s his family.’

Roxana stayed there after Maria Grazia had hung up, leaning against the wall. Lunchtime now, she should eat, but she had no appetite. This heat. The alley in front of her shimmered in the sun, the bent figure of old Signora Martelli, still dragging her trolley, stepped out into it from the side door of the church. Roxana wondered how she – and all the other old people stuck here – could stand it: the air shiny with pollution and humidity, the smell of the dumpsters practically palpable. It occurred to her that church might well be the best place to be, dark and cool.

The old church, cheek by jowl with the porn cinema: how did that work? Did the customers call in on their way home to their wives? Was it even a sin? Impure thoughts: that was the one that came to mind.

The porn cinema, the Albanian with his bag of takings: it was him, all morning – never mind the Guardia, they’d just been a distraction – he was what had been haunting Roxana. Gone missing. She’d taken his money on occasion, and had let her eyes slide over the scribbled and indecipherable signature, but she couldn’t even remember the account name. Something anonymous, as you’d expect of a backstreet porn cinema, a set of initials. A regular was a regular, you didn’t make the usual checks, and it wasn’t as if he was putting in thousands, which would require them – not that they always did – to ask their provenance under money-laundering legislation. A few euros, a modest deposit, and porn cinemas were legal, even if they were not to.

Roxana’s taste. Was he her responsibility? In some obscure way, Roxana couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was.

‘Done a runner with the takings,’ Maria Grazia had said. He wouldn’t get far on the takings from the Carnevale, that was for sure. Unless he’d been creaming it off for years; unless something else was going on. Pushing herself away from the wall, Roxana stood stock-still on the pavement and felt the sweat cool on the back of her neck. Unless it was all connected.

What was bugging her was that she’d never known his name, and the person she wanted to ask was Claudio Brunello. Serious-faced Brunello, frowning down at the figures, watchful Brunello, who had a word for all his customers:
How is your son getting on at university? Have you managed to find a buyer for your apartment yet? How’s business?
He would have known, had Roxana asked,
What’s happened to the Albanian with his cashbag from the – um – cinema? You know the one. What’s his name again?

But Claudio Brunello would never be walking back into the bank with a kindly smile, would never prop his umbrella carefully in the corner and straighten his tie before sitting down. And the more she thought about that, the harder it was for Roxana to get rid of the idea, however foolish it might seem, that there was a connection. Between Claudio Brunello and the Albanian. Two disappearances.

The security guard from the bank rounded the corner in his little car, parked it illegally up on the pavement. He shielded his eyes and then, recognizing her, raised his hand.

Reflexively returning his greeting, Roxana registered a hesitation in the man’s stance when, instead of heading for the cool wine bar for a little plate of something daintily presented, Roxana stepped off the pavement and into the dumpster-choked alley.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

I
T HAD SEEMED TO
take Anna Niescu an age to climb the two flights of stairs to the flat, time for Sandro to reflect, with increasing desperation, on a number of things. On how long Anna had before she gave birth to this baby, and on all that had happened to worsen her situation since he had sat in his office and listened to Giuli helping her up the stairway with kindness and encouragement. Now the roles were reversed: Giuli was waiting upstairs with Luisa, and Sandro wasn’t doing half as good a job at easing poor Anna’s burden.

‘Nearly there,’ he had said under his breath. Beside him Anna had paused and in the half darkness he saw her face. Dark-browed, intent; as closed-off and alone as an icon.

They hadn’t really been able to talk in front of Anna, he and Pietro, and Sandro just couldn’t bring himself to leave her on her own in that horrible place. He knew all too well what Luisa would have said to the suggestion.

Besides, his duty was only to his client; he wasn’t a police officer any more, nor an impartial seeker after truth. That was the theory, anyway, and even if most people would laugh long and hard at the thought of the Polizia dello Stato as truthseekers, at least Pietro fitted the bill. A good man.

‘He’s a good man,’ was just what he’d said to Anna earnestly as she had flinched at the uniformed figure coming through the door. ‘You can trust Pietro. I mean, really.’ Thinking, as the gust of disinfectant and the decay it was supposed to mask entered the room with Pietro,
I’ve got to get her out of this place
.

Pietro hadn’t disappointed: perhaps he’d looked at Anna Niescu and seen his own daughter’s sunny features somewhere in the little oval face, the shiny black hair. He’d taken her hands in his and spoken gently.

She was sure, had been all Anna would say, over and over, absolutely sure it wasn’t him, and in the end Sandro could see that Pietro had believed her. His old friend had sat back in his chair, musing.

They had both been thinking the same thing, Sandro had felt it. That it couldn’t just be coincidence. That there must be some connection.

‘When did your fiancé tell you his name?’ Sandro had asked gently. ‘Do you remember? When he first told you.’

‘Oh, straight away,’ Anna had said, and he had seen her brighten, just fractionally, before fading again abruptly. Had Sandro been glad that she was learning to be wary of hoping for the best? All he had felt was a leaden sort of guilt. She had gone on, looking down into her lap, ‘As we were walking home from the fruit stall, that first time. He shook my hand and everything.’

Liliana, Sandro had thought. I should talk to Liliana, who sold them those oranges.

‘And?’ Pietro had asked.

‘Well, he said, I’m Josef,’ she had said, faltering. ‘I suppose it was only later he told me – that was his middle name. The name his mother called him.’

‘He told her his mother was foreign,’ Sandro had said, by way of explanation.

‘French, sounds like,’ Pietro had said, ‘or North African,’ and Sandro had nodded; the way she had said it sounded French, the accent on the second syllable. There were so many nationalities, washing around the city. English, American, French. And now Albanian, Somali, Korean, Ukrainian, Chinese. To begin with it had been hard to tell them apart; an Englishman could turn out to be from New Zealand, a dark-skinned Romanian might be mistaken for a North African. Names helped.

‘And later?’ Sandro had prompted. ‘When did he tell you – his full name?’

She had frowned effortfully. ‘The third time, I think. If the oranges was the first time. He came to find me at the hotel the second time, two days later, but I think perhaps he wasn’t made very welcome.’

Sandro had pursed his lips judiciously, thinking of the desiccated old lady at the reception desk. Had she been looking after Anna’s interests, or protecting her investment, her cheap labour supply? Both, perhaps; he had made a mental note,
send Luisa back there. Get her to talk to the woman
.

‘We went for a meal together.’ He had seen a fierce blush beginning, at the base of her neck. ‘And then he gave me a telephone, my telephone, so that we could – so that he didn’t have to call the hotel.’

‘And the third time you met?’ The blush had been building, and Sandro made his voice as soft as he could.

‘It wasn’t the third time, it was the fourth. We were walking in Fiesole, he told me. He told me he worked in a bank, his name was Claudio Josef Brunello, he had a good job.’

She had bobbed her head down, and Sandro had seen the glow of her cheek, her mouth set. Had it been the third meeting, or the fourth, or the fifth, when the child had been conceived? This was what she had been waiting for them to ask, and this, he could tell, was the first time it had occurred to Anna Niescu to feel shame.

Had her Josef been lying to impress her into bed – or had the deed been done, and he desperate not to lose her?

‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Anna,’ he had said in an undertone.

Behind him, Pietro had cleared his throat.

‘You’ve been through a terrible experience,’ Pietro had said, leaning forward, both of their heads close to hers now. ‘I’m so sorry that we had to bring you here.’ She had been stilled, head down and thinking. ‘But this man,’ and Sandro hadn’t known Pietro could speak so softly, ‘this dead man you just saw. He had a family. It seems, he was a good man, and at this moment there is no explanation for his death.’

Anna had raised her head to look at him suddenly, the flush already cooling on her cheeks. Pietro had gone on. ‘There may be a connection. That’s all. There may be – what you tell us may help us to find – to find out what happened.’

She had shifted her gaze to Sandro, then back, looking from one weary, anxious face to the other. ‘A connection?’ Then a hand had come up to her mouth. ‘You think this man—’ Her eyes flew to the door, then back. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident?’

They had just looked at her sorrowfully, and her eyes had widened.

‘Do you think my Josef – what do you mean, a connection?’ She’d sat forward, rigid, hands either side of her on the chair and the hard mound of her stomach in her lap like a boulder she couldn’t shift. ‘Is he in danger? You must tell me. Is Josef in danger?’

The extremity of her anguish had frightened Sandro; he could only think of the child crammed inside her, the panic transmitting itself, a flood of chemicals. ‘Shh,’ he had said, desperately searching for calm. ‘Please, don’t worry. We don’t know anything at the moment. There’s no reason to think that – your fiancé is in danger. We’re just trying to understand. That’s all.’

He had turned to Pietro. ‘Not now,’ he’d said. ‘This isn’t helping. There may be no connection at all.’ And brusquely Pietro had nodded, knowing that the words were principally for Anna’s benefit.

‘Go with Sandro, now,’ Pietro had said, searching the girl’s face. ‘He’ll look after you.’

He hadn’t needed to say to Sandro,
I
’
ll call you later
. He’d known enough to say nothing more. But at the door they had exchanged a look over her head. There was plenty to talk about.

Pietro had called them a taxi. ‘Oh,’ he had said, almost an afterthought. ‘I – we were in the bank this morning. His bank. A chat – with the colleagues.’

‘Right,’ Sandro had said. ‘And?’

Pietro had shaken his head. ‘We took statements,’ he had said. ‘None of them thought he was suicidal. Terrible shock to all of them. All came up with stories as to what they were up to that weekend. Actually, they looked scared stiff, all three.’