The Killing Room (22 page)

This was his case. Carlsson and Vito had died violently, but elsewhere. Athene Morris was his responsibility.

But Cornell just shook her head dumbly.

‘At her age,’ said Sandro, almost to himself. ‘She’s close to ninety. Did no one think—’

‘It’s up to the residents,’ said Cornell, faltering. ‘If she’d requested care . . . I hadn’t thought. She was early to sign up, all paid for. Perhaps we should have a clause—’ And she broke off, staring at the slumped figure. Perhaps even, thought Sandro grimly, reflecting on what she had been about to say, no one over seventy-five, in case they die on the premises, and cause upset.

‘I left late,’ Cornell said, swallowing. ‘After midnight. I was on the terrace talking to Gastone and her light was on.’

‘You were outside?’

‘He was smoking a cigar,’ she said absently, leaning back to look down the corridor. ‘Smoking’s only permitted in the guests’ rooms.’

‘He has a room,’ said Sandro.

‘But he’s not a guest,’ said Cornell shortly. ‘It’s not a . . . it’s a provisional arrangement. He has his office in the city.’

‘Is it true his father bought him into the business?’ He spoke distractedly. Athene Morris’s hand quivered in his, nothing even so strong as an answering squeeze.

‘What does it matter?’ Cornell said, agitated. ‘Yes.’

What did it matter? Sandro wasn’t sure. Bottai had the physical strength to dispose of an inquisitive journalist. And what about the envelope that implicated the Palazzo? Containing Athene’s bracelet, and those initials.

He couldn’t think. ‘So some time after midnight Morris
turned off her light and went to bed. It must have happened in the night.’ Again the tremor under his hand. ‘Where are they?’ Sandro muttered to himself, his eyes ranging the room in an agony of impatience.
She could die
.

The room was cluttered: all the pale perfection covered over, decorated. It made Sandro think of one of those little summerhouses in Russia, he must have seen one in a film or a magazine, little stuffed rooms, hung with bright embroidered cloths, shawls and fringing. A life, crowded into this space. One wall was covered with bookshelves, old books, a hundredweight at least that must have been shipped, from somewhere. On a shelf a row of Chinese cups in porcelain so fine it seemed almost transparent in the sun that fell on them. On another a curious little assortment of objects: a gold pillbox, a brooch. A pair of man’s cufflinks. Did they mean something? Memories, perhaps.

Beside the bed was a small hexagonal table of dark wood – old, like everything. A teacup with unappetising grey liquid in it, a ring marking the polished surface beside it. A book, with a bookmark just emerging from it. He turned a little, still holding her hand, looking. Bathroom: a door opposite the bookshelves was ajar.

‘Did she have a sitting room too?’ he asked.

Cornell started at the question. ‘Hers is the smallest apartment,’ she said haltingly, ‘but they all . . . yes. Over there.’ She jerked her head back across the anteroom, to what he imagined must be a door opposite. ‘She doesn’t have cooking facilities, only . . . well as a hotel room. It’s one of a range of options we offer. Fully equipped kitchen, down to a kettle and mini-fridge.’ She blinked.

Sandro heard the siren then, the sound that he’d been listening for without knowing it.

‘You’d better go,’ he said. ‘Tell them where to come.’

And after all the drawn-out agony of waiting, it seemed that they were inside the building and up the stairs within minutes, their voices loud and echoing along the corridors to where Sandro waited, frozen, her hand in his.

‘Hold on,’ he heard himself muttering over and over, like an incantation. ‘They’re coming, hold on.’ And still she said nothing.

They had to take her hand from his in the end, and physically move him out of the way: three of them crowding into the room and seeming to fill it with their neon orange jackets.

‘Does she speak Italian?’ The paramedic addressed herself to Cornell, who just shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know.

‘Yes,’ said Sandro, and Cornell had looked at him with blank surprise. He didn’t even bother being offended.

The woman in her fluorescent jacket had leaned over the bed then and talked to Athene Morris softly while the younger of the male paramedics, a gawky youth, had applied some kind of monitor to the old woman’s forefinger, a cannula in the back of the blue-veined hand. There was no response that Sandro could detect but by now he had stepped right away from the bed and was standing behind the small bedside table. He looked down at the paperback book: a title in English, Charles Dickens.
Our Mutual Friend
. He found his mouth trying to shape the words, which meant nothing to him, viewed from above, their vowel arrangements too foreign. He stared at the bookmark. Fleming
had talked to him about Dickens. Was that only last night?

A mask went over the old woman’s face and they manipulated a stretcher under her, with some difficulty. Then there was an awkward shuffling and manoeuvring of the laden stretcher in the enclosed space that knocked over a lamp and propelled Cornell ahead of them out into the corridor. Would it fit in the lift? Sandro found himself wondering. Would they use the stairs? And then abruptly they had gone, leaving him behind with the pieces of the broken lamp in his hand.

The sitting room was larger than the bedroom. At first sight it looked merely rumpled, untidy. A magazine was folded open on a low table, a single tumbler beside it with a sticky varnish of brandy, a small sofa with the indent of its last occupants, and a cushion on the floor. Sandro picked his way to the window and opened the shutter. He looked down on the upper terrace: Bottai stood there, talking to the sandy-haired engineer, Ian Cameron. He turned back to look at the room. At a small writing table an elegant balloon-backed chair lay on its side.

He stared at it.

The apartment held its breath around him, all these odd possessions, these rugs and mirrors and paintings, a red glass ashtray, a silver inkwell – all of them, it suddenly seemed to Sandro, waiting to be disassembled, packed up, sent to nephews or nieces, fingered and sold at auction. Thrown away. A life.
Let her live
, Sandro suddenly, fervently wished, let her live for now, let it not be yet. And he realised they would be waiting for him. She might already have gone.

He closed the door behind him.

Chapter Twenty

A
S WAS HIS WAY,
Enzo came straight out with it.

‘If you’re having second thoughts,’ he said. ‘About getting married. You have to say.’

They were in the office. It struck Giuli as Enzo spoke how provisional everything still looked in it. A single chair for visitors, which Enzo had pulled round to her side of the desk, three books on the shelving unit, and the window dusty. It could all be dismantled in a second. Giuli jumped to her feet, grabbing the cloth they kept on the sink, and began to rub at the glass. She had her back to him.

‘Can we not, please,’ Giuli said. ‘Not talk about that.’ She could sense him sitting very still.

‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘So tell me. You think it was her? Vera. That got the . . . Rosina, to tell lies about you.’

‘I need to talk to her,’ said Giuli, glancing quickly back over her shoulder.

Enzo was staring at her computer screen, unfocused. She went on rubbing at the glass, slower now. A little way along the
backs of the houses of the Via del Leone – their yards filled with junk; here washing hung to dry, there a stack of rabbit hutches – a great overgrown mimosa stood in brilliant yellow frothing flower. It glowed against the blue sky.

‘All right, yes, I think it’s her. But it’ll have to wait.’ Dully she remembered Elena Giovese. Who was she kidding? She hadn’t forgotten for a minute. The yellow blossom was so bright it left an after-image when she turned away. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ She leaned back against the windowsill

‘What’s more important than sorting this?’ said Enzo, looking up at her, then, frowning, back at the screen. ‘That is, if you’re sure it’s her?’

Plonking herself back in her chair beside him with a sigh, Giuli looked Enzo full in the face. Took his hand between hers. ‘It’s something I have to do on my own, you know that?’ she said. Enzo knew she had a past: just because she didn’t want to rub his nose in it, did that mean she was shoving it under the carpet?

He looked back at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’ And took a deep breath. ‘Is it work that you’ve got to stay put for?’ He gestured at the computer screen, where the picture of Ian Cameron’s bridge still sat. ‘Because I’ve got the afternoon. I can help with that, and you can go and talk to her. I can even answer the phone.’

She’d told him what kind of mess Sandro had found himself in. Giuli couldn’t get Enzo into that. Could she?

‘I was just doing some background for him,’ she said slowly. ‘On the inmates – I mean, the residents – of the Palazzo San Giorgio. You know what Sandro’s like, he can tell if someone’s lying to him face to face . . . well, at a hundred metres. But he
doesn’t have a clue how to do a proper web search. I don’t even know if he’s got a computer there . . .’ She paused.

‘
Tesora
,’ said Enzo patiently. ‘Even you have to agree that’s something I can manage.’ He frowned. ‘Computers. Internet searching.’

She felt shy suddenly at that
tesora
. Could she really be his treasure? ‘Well,’ she said, awkwardly. She calculated: she could get over to see Elena Giovese on the way. ‘Vera does do a shift at the English-language bookshop afternoons.’ Then, ‘You have to email the links to Sandro, I said I would. I don’t know if he’s bothering to look at them, you know him.’

Enzo removed his jacket, draping it carefully over the back of the chair, and began to fold his sleeves back with that gesture she loved, meticulous, precise. When he’d done, he stood stiffly.

‘So what are you waiting for?’

*

Had Luisa thought for a minute it might be Sandro they were loading into the ambulance? Maybe.

‘What is it? Who is it?’ It was Marjorie Cameron pressed against the glass this time, inside the limousine. Juliet Fleming sat, small in her corner, so still it seemed to Luisa she was conserving her energy.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ said Luisa automatically, and Magda Scardino gave her a contemptuous glance.

‘Perhaps Alessandra has called the ambulance because she’s got a migraine?’ Magda said. Professor Scardino wasn’t well, Fleming had said. Was this his wife’s way of dealing with fear?

They pulled up at the kerb some distance behind the ambulance. Therese Van Vleet, who hadn’t said a word, climbed out first, pale and silent. Luisa waited until they were all out before following. Magda Scardino walked straight inside.

There was a moment, a long, long moment when she couldn’t see him; she looked from face to face – the doorman, anxious, the paramedic turning as he edged the stretcher out through the doors – and then he was there. Sandro.

He didn’t say anything, he barely looked at her, but then he moved his hand, down at hip level, a shushing, calming motion, and she knew he was telling her, wait. She stood back; her clients went inside, and she remained on the pavement. The stretcher came out and then she looked down: it was the old woman. Luisa saw the thin white hair plastered to a pale forehead, the fine profile under a mask. Athene Morris.

‘Someone going with her?’ The stretcher was inside now and the paramedic looked up from his clipboard, to the two of them.

‘I’ll go.’

Alessandra Cornell stepped out into the street and they both gazed at her. The attaché looked older, a sharp line between her eyes. She looked weary and her mouth trembled, uncertain. But it was the first time Luisa had liked her.

‘Will you . . .’ Cornell addressed Sandro, but she didn’t seem sure of what to say next.

‘I’ll sort things here,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.’

Cornell climbed in, awkward in heels, and the ambulance set off, its siren beginning uncertainly as it headed down the steep stone street. Uphill, the limousine waited at the kerb for
Luisa: the driver had instructions to take her back to the shop.

Sandro suddenly seemed drained, now that they were alone. In silence they looked down where the ambulance had disappeared with its fragile burden into the red-roofed city: it appeared so serene from here, just the hint of a haze as the temperature rose. They had once dreamed of moving not far from the Palazzo San Giorgio, to a green corner of San Niccolò with a view of a belltower. The afternoon was warm and Luisa could smell damp earth and roses; abruptly the longing for a garden overtook her. Even a balcony would do.

Sandro took her hand. ‘Was that grim?’ he said. ‘How were they?’

‘Strange,’ said Luisa. ‘I wonder about something.’ She hesitated. He waited. ‘Therese. The other women were gossiping about her in the bathroom; they all seem to know about her husband’s involvement with Vito. The . . . games. Magda Scardino certainly hinted that Vito was making money out of them, one way or another. Blackmail? And so many of these . . . mishaps . . . seem to be about her. The dog. The mess. The purse—’

‘Lino found the purse.’ Sandro interrupted her. ‘It was in the foyer, it had fallen behind a table or something.’

Luisa nodded. ‘Fallen?’ Sandro frowned, waiting. ‘Even the magazine in your briefcase, it sort of points in her direction, doesn’t it?’

‘What are you saying?’ he said, but she thought he knew.

‘Do you think she might be doing it herself?’ But now she’d said it, Luisa felt uncomfortable. ‘I . . . well, actually, I like her. I think she’s trying to be a good person, and she seems so young. But . . .’ She looked around, anxiously. At the wheel of
the limousine, the driver had his head down over a newspaper.

‘But she’s unhappy,’ Sandro finished for her.

‘Isn’t there some kind of medical term? Not self-harm, or that proxy thing. But something like that. She wants the attention, or the sympathy, or something.’

Sandro nodded. Luisa saw him working it through in his head. ‘It can’t be too much fun in that marriage,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘And leaving the purse . . . if they’re really going broke, that would figure.’ Then he looked at her. ‘A man was seen coming out of Vito’s house,’ he said. ‘The night he died. Lino didn’t see the Van Vleets coming back that night.’