The Killing Room (6 page)

It was a risk. That her feeling – the feeling that had kept her with him through close to forty years of obstinacy and silences and bad temper, the feeling that her husband could actually do anything he put his hand to – was a misguided notion born of stupid romantic longing. Wanting something, as Luisa knew as well as almost anyone, did not make it so.

But what if Luisa, after a whole working life walking a shop floor in the service of other people, was the one who was too old to be someone else’s employee?

He was late, but then Enrico Frollini, handsome,
affascinante
, seventy-two-year-old owner of the chain of shops that bore his name, was never less than twenty minutes late. It was a matter of principle. It was a good job that Sandro, who’d never – to Luisa’s amusement and irritation – trusted her boss to keep his hands off her, didn’t know his wife was about to have lunch with Frollini. Particularly, perhaps, a lunch where she would announce that their relationship was about to cease to be a professional one.

In a two-thousand-euro grey suit – summer wool, end-on-end weave, just a shade flashy – he breezed through the door. She imagined that even on his deathbed Enrico Frollini would look immaculate.

‘Enrico,’ she said. She didn’t stand up. He took her hand and kissed the air a centimetre above her knuckles. ‘Madame,’ he said in an exaggerated, ridiculous French accent. ‘What a pleasure this is.’

Chapter Six

O
UT ON THE RINGROAD
near Firenze Sud – no more than a kilometre or two from the Palazzo San Giorgio but a world away – the unmarked van pulled out of the villa’s dusty parking lot and joined the traffic on its way north to the mortuary. The oleanders dividing the four lanes of traffic were ruffled by a light breeze; the sky was a brilliant blue. It was a beautiful day.

Simpering, the landlady had introduced herself to the returning forensics officer, to whom she’d taken a shine: ‘Valeria Maratti.’ She’d offered him a coffee. And at least that had got rid of her, temporarily, the three men – two in uniform, one in the hooded white forensics suit – had silently agreed, as the angular figure disappeared into the gloom of her downstairs apartment.

He died between eleven and midnight, was the preliminary conclusion. Blunt trauma to the skull. Death more or less instantaneous, which would be just as well for the killer, as the victim was more than equipped to fight back. No signs of a forced entry.

The body had been removed. The name he’d given the landlady had checked out, they’d taken away a computer. The apartment contained not much more than a wardrobe of ironed shirts and sharp suits, big in the shoulder. No clue as to next of kin, nothing personal, no photographs, the drawers of the cheap desk empty except for a single folder of paperwork. Tax forms, employment contracts, one signed only a month previously. Valeria Maratti insisted he had a mother, but there were no letters, no pictures. No doubt he’d invented her, to please the old woman or to get her off his back.

The sporting trophy on the chipped lacquer of the bookshelf said:
Iron Man Genova 2008, 3rd Place
. A single one-kilo handweight. ‘Don’t these usually come in pairs?’ the young
carabiniere
said to Captain Sandrino, lifting it in a latex-gloved hand.

This was only the third time they’d been out together, and his superior’s taciturn indifference still unsettled him. They found the other dumbbell in the garden, in the long grass: a skinny cat had been sniffing around it, high-bounding off when they approached. There were traces of blood and hair on one end.

The
carabiniere
had had to explain to the forensics boys that he’d thrown up in the toilet, had contaminated the scene. The older of the two officers, benign as a child’s entertainer in his white hooded outfit, had rested a gloved hand on his shoulder briefly. ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘Not just to the young ones. You’d be surprised.’ He bent over the shower tray, an old deep one that doubled as a hip bath, and delicately probed around the plughole with a fine metal scraper. The young
carabiniere
saw his nostrils flare.

‘Might have to look in the drains,’ he said, sitting back on his haunches.

*

The truck wedged in the vehicular entrance to the Palazzo San Giorgio had fallen silent by around twelve and at the back of the workshop Elena, absorbed in the task of removing blistered gilding from a tiny, fire-damaged Renaissance mirror, had forgotten all about it. But when she stood up from her work around two, unexpectedly hungry, she saw that it was still there. She strolled out into the sun.

‘Yes?’

She didn’t know where the bark had come from but it was gruff, irritated. Had someone heard her? Elena stepped back into the shadows of the shop. She watched as a man emerged from around the side of the truck, silhouetted against the sunlight. A bulky, untidy shape, grunting with exertion as he squeezed himself, undignified, across the truck’s wheel arch and into the road. ‘
Cazzo
.’ The standard muttered obscenity. He looked up and down the empty street, ready to be offended, then, scratching the back of his shaggy head, at the truck.

‘
Cazzo
,’ he muttered again, then turned, eyed her with interest.

‘What is it?’ she said. He looked at her, baggy-eyed with a hangover. Elena looked back at him, refusing to be intimidated. ‘That thing, on the truck. Do you know?’

As he regarded her from under his heavy eyebrows she couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or interested. ‘It’s a sculpture,’ he said.

‘Are you in charge?’ she asked. ‘Of getting it in there?’ He looked amused; there was something familiar about him with the smile.

‘In charge? I suppose.’

The way he was looking at Elena began to unsettle her: penetrating, curious. Forward, for a workman. ‘What?’ she said defensively.

‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ he said, watching her.

‘Should I?’ She hugged herself, irritated.

He put out a big hand, hairy at the wrist. ‘Danilo Lludic.’

She did know the name, dimly. ‘Elena Giovese,’ she said.

He turned and nodded at the shrouded object on the trailer. ‘I made it.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘If you say so.’

Then he laughed. ‘You’ve heard of me, right?’ She made a comic helpless face, and his voice turned a little sulky. ‘I did have something at the Biennale last year. Christ, Italy’s so parochial.’

‘I’m just a worker,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I haven’t heard of anyone.’ But then she relented. ‘You lived in New York,’ she said, watching his expression. What else? ‘Something to do with garbage? You make sculptures out of—’

‘Detritus,’ he said, still surly. ‘Garbage, yeah.’

Arrogant. There’d been some scandal or other, she dimly remembered: in one of the magazines,
Oggi
or
Gente
, his bear-like figure holding a hand up to shield his face from the photographers. A woman had accused him of something. ‘So it’s one of yours.’

He couldn’t disguise a look of crafty delight, like a boy having
pulled off an outrageous scam, and she thought he seemed closer to forty than fifty years old.

‘It is,’ he said. ‘Part of the deal. Specially commissioned.’ He stepped towards her, inspecting her.

Elena stood her ground. ‘Part of the deal?’

‘D’you want a coffee?’ he asked.

She jerked her head back towards her workbench. ‘I’ve got a lot on,’ she said. ‘Short-handed.’ He looked over her shoulder into the recesses of the workshop. ‘Some of us have to work for a living,’ she said.

Danilo Lludic’s eyes narrowed, preparing to sound off at her, but instead he laughed, a gust of tobacco and coffee on his breath. ‘I’ve seen you,’ he said, his interest growing. ‘You were at the launch, right? Not like them to invite a mere worker. Were you with someone?’

She felt her cheeks burn, her throat close up. ‘You have a deal with them?’ she said, arms folded. Not answering the question.

‘I’m to be a resident, too,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I believe I add colour. Artist in residence.’

‘Nice work if you can get it.’

He passed a hand over his forehead and his face fell, just a little. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it.’ He tugged at his hair. ‘And they’re beginning to make noises about the bar bill. I’ve only been there a month.’ He let his hair fall back, smiled wryly. ‘They don’t understand the artistic temperament. It’s like . . . like . . .’ He looked at her. ‘Have you ever been to Dubai?’

‘Dubai?’ She laughed disbelievingly. She’d seen pictures: skyscrapers and shopping centres and artificial islands; she’d rather take a holiday on an industrial estate. ‘No thanks.’

‘Yeah,’ Danilo Lludic said. ‘Well, I was paid to go there, too, but that was just a week. Not a bloody life-sentence. What is it about big money? I mean, really big money. It’s not that they’re boring, exactly.’ He looked up at the façade. ‘You know how you get so rich? You have to have . . . a one-track mind. You have to go for it, grab it, hang on to it. They’re monsters.’

Looking back down at her, he laughed, hugely.
‘We’re
monsters.’

And in that moment, his big mouth open red in the shaggy-bearded head, he looked it: alarming, voracious.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Elena mumbled, turning away from the sight, her head full of confused thoughts about that night, the night of the launch. She’d tried her best; she’d even had an interesting conversation, with an English scientist. He’d asked her about early varnishing techniques and had told her about his work, which had something to do with algae as far as she could remember. The scientist’s wife had been talking to John; when she found out he was a journalist, she’d dragged him over to meet her professor husband, ousting Elena with no more than a glance. Elena was getting used to it: journalists were useful. The wife had been unnervingly attractive. Finding herself looking at the back of the woman’s glossy head, she had left. John had come in late, smelling of scent. Whether it was the glossy woman’s, she had no way of knowing.

‘Come over, why don’t you?’ Lludic was talking to her back. ‘I mean, assuming these arseholes manage to get the thing into position. Six o’clock. Champagne reception. The grand unveiling.’

‘Yeah,’ said Elena. Anything to get rid of him. ‘I’ll dig out my ballgown.’

But he’d turned away: in the street someone was shouting and he was shouting something in reply.

And for a stupid second she wished him back.

*

Giuli sat outside Dr Massini’s office, waiting. She didn’t know why she was so nervous, but it had something to do with the speed with which her boss had agreed to see her. In the reception area Giuli had glimpsed someone she didn’t recognise until a heartbeat too late, by which time she was already headed on down the corridor; her nervousness had something to do with that too. They popped up, these faces, looking a hundred years older, scarred and lined, bloated and breathless. Drugs and disease.

She’d hoped for some breathing space; like with the wedding, she felt like she was being hustled into something.

‘It won’t be for long,’ Sandro had said, in the warm corner of the
trattoria
where he’d bought her lunch. He seemed distracted. ‘At least, I hope not. I’ve got to show willing, you know. With Luisa.’

‘That’s marriage,’ she’d said, dubiously. ‘And Enzo tells me I’ve got to eat.’ To look halfway decent in the wedding dress. Enzo knew her: a week of this stress and she’d be back to skin and bone, and at her age, that wasn’t a good look.

‘Delighted to hear it,’ said Sandro, lifting a finger for the waitress. Giuli could see his eyes on her. He’d ordered
pecorino e baccelli
, sheep’s cheese with young broad beans, olive oil and lots of pepper. Beef stew. Bread. He wasn’t going to mention the wedding, and she was grateful enough for that.

He pushed the beans towards her, and grudgingly she began to stab at them with her fork. ‘So,’ he’d said cautiously, watching every mouthful. ‘If you could take, say, a month’s leave. Could you call it compassionate? Someone’s died?’

It wasn’t just distraction, she decided: he was excited. She hadn’t seen Sandro like that in ages. A nervous energy.

‘I think they need me, actually,’ he’d said, almost apologetic. ‘At the San Giorgio.’ First-name terms already, thought Giuli. ‘I mean, it could turn out to be just nannying, but . . . there’s something wants sorting out there. There’s some sort of event this evening I’ve got to turn up for, to meet the inmates. The previous guy—’ And he laughed drily. ‘Well, it would appear he let the wrong sort of woman in. Among other things.’

Giuli had gazed at him, wondering if he no longer thought of her that way. It had been seven years; maybe now she could stop being an ex-hooker, ex-junkie, ex-anorexic. Wrong sort of woman. She’d really had that thought, even now.

He had leaned down and fished something out of his briefcase: a big glossy brochure. He pushed it across the table to her and she opened it, to show willing. A lot of photographs of terraced gardens, roses, four-poster beds, cute little modern kitchenettes. Something fell out and she picked it off the floor. A piece of paper with some drawing on it. It looked like a floorplan. Sandro tilted his head to get a look and she held it out to him.

‘My predecessor,’ he said. ‘Trying to get his bearings, I imagine.’ He laughed uncertainly. ‘It’s a bit of a maze inside.’ Frowning, he folded it and put it in his pocket, looked back at her. ‘So?’

‘I suppose I could use the wedding as an excuse,’ she said grudgingly, knowing she’d already agreed.

He’d relaxed then, settling back into the padded booth, and had helped himself to a large portion of beef stew. And Giuli had thought, well, Sandro’s pleased, Luisa’ll be pleased, even Enzo won’t be upset. Her husband-to-be had his reservations about her work at the clinic. That at least was the right decision.

But now, waiting in the empty clinic corridor, she wasn’t so sure. So much depended on the goodwill you’d built up, didn’t it? They could just come down hard if they didn’t value you, and that was what she didn’t want put to the test. The door opened with a jerk, and Massini was there, staring down at her through thick horn-rims.