A Darkness Descending (28 page)

‘Carlo always was a bit of a panicker,’ said Rosselli peremptorily, and Sandro could see the politician in him reasserting itself. But then he frowned. ‘A nasty turn? What d’you mean, a nasty turn?’

‘They said – the police said they’d had information that gave them cause to suspect that there might be –’ and he hesitated ‘– illegal material on your computer. Not the laptop the thieves took, but the big old office computer.’

‘Too heavy to steal,’ said Rosselli. ‘Not worth a thing.’ He didn’t seem to have registered the key information Sandro had been trying to impart.

‘So the police removed the big computer to examine it. They had the appropriate paperwork.’

And only then did it seem to penetrate. ‘Illegal material?’ said Rosselli, stopping abruptly. Ahead of them Sandro could see a corner of the Stella Maris’s faded sign. ‘What does that mean, illegal material?’

Sandro shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, Rosselli standing in front of him as though barring his way. Slow down, he thought. Let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s keep calm. But at the back of his mind the possibilities – none of them pleasant – gathered.

‘Well,’ he began slowly. ‘It could be one of a number of things – or it could be nothing. It could just be gossip, someone being malicious.’ He examined Rosselli’s face for fear or panic, and saw none. Not a panicker, this one. A rationalist? Or just cold-blooded.

‘Is there anything,’ he asked carefully, ‘that you would be worried about people seeing on those computers?’ Rosselli stared, and said nothing. Sandro tried again. ‘Any – illegally gathered information on political opponents, for example? Any background acquired, I don’t know, while gathering donations? Any names?’

Rosselli merely uttered a sound of contempt at the suggestion, so Sandro took another tack. ‘Anything – personal?’

‘Personal? Personal?’

Such as downloads or images – Sandro found he couldn’t say it. ‘Yours, or anyone else’s,’ he said. He thought for a moment. ‘Who else is there who uses the computer? There’s Enzo, I suppose. And helpers? Do you vet the volunteers?’

‘We don’t vet people,’ Rosselli said, his voice mild but his eyes unswerving. ‘We’re not that kind of party.’

God help you then, thought Sandro.

‘But we’re not naive. There are passwords, Enzo insisted on that: it’s not chaos, just because we’re progressive.’

‘Bastone,’ said Sandro, still thinking. ‘You’ve known him since you were a boy, yes?’

‘I trust everyone who uses those computers,’ said Rosselli, and he stepped out of Sandro’s path. Which didn’t seem to him to answer any of his questions, but something about the dangerous set of Rosselli’s mouth told him to drop it, for the moment.

‘In that case,’ said Sandro, ‘I’m sure it’s just troublemaking. It’s not as if you have no political opponents. And there’s the road, the mall, the financial interests there, to take into account too.’

Rosselli’s hands were jammed back into his jacket now, and with its pockets already misshapen from being stuffed with keys or books or wallet, he made an untidy silhouette. He stalked on into the sun with angry, hunched shoulders, and Sandro had to hurry to keep pace. As well as being younger, the politician had longer legs than him: as he scuttled behind the man, Sandro had the feeling of things flying apart, out of his control.

‘Whatever it is,’ he said, ‘we can sort it out.’

‘We?’ said Rosselli, barely looking at him. ‘We? You as good as accused me—’

‘Niccolò,’ said Sandro, feeling his temper rise suddenly – Luisa warned him about it, particularly with clients.
Don’t fly off the handle, I know you.
The only strategy he had to contain it was, the angrier he got, the more politely he spoke.

‘If at any time you would like to change your mind about needing my help,’ he said stiffly, ‘I mean, with your bereavement or with any other matter, then you must assuredly terminate our arrangement without obligation. I would only require the expenses already incurred.’

Niccolò Rosselli stared at him, his bristling jaw set.

‘And I most certainly accused you of nothing. Do you think I would have come with you unless I were on your side?’

Sandro almost convinced himself that this was true, until he remembered,
First suspect the husband.
Rosselli had been a hundred kilometres away when his wife died, hadn’t he? Did he have an alibi? Once a police officer, always a police officer. Sandro fell silent.

Rosselli held his aggressive stance a second longer and then he seemed to collapse. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry – I said that. All right. It is kind of you to help.’ He spoke awkwardly, unused to apology.

‘Are you sure you still want to go to the hotel?’ Sandro asked reluctantly. Thinking, there’s the chambermaid I need to talk to. I want – come to think of it, I’d like another word with that dustbin man.

We can always come back.
But the last thing he ever wanted to do was to come back here again. To think that, for a moment that morning in Cristina’s sun-filled bar, he’d contemplated retirement here, a little apartment overlooking the sea. What had he to do with the sea? He was from the city.

‘Yes,’ said Niccolò Rosselli. ‘I want to see where she died.’

*

Giuli stood at the gate of the Parco Strozzi, waiting in the sun. Its pale disc was high overhead: a month ago it would have been unbearable and she knew she should be grateful for the change. But the new cool in the shadows, the edge of freshness to the breeze, seemed to form part of a soft, accumulating sadness, gathering like mist in their little corner of the city. Summer would be over soon, and it was time to knuckle down. She looked at her watch.

Barbara had refused her: the worst of it had been the look of stony disillusion on her face when she’d heard what Giuli wanted.

‘I can’t tell you.’ She’d heard Giuli out and spoken tight-lipped, lighting her fourth cigarette from the stub of her third. ‘You know I can’t. Clelia will have said the same thing. I can’t believe she told you – anything.’

‘Oh, come off it,’ Giuli had exploded. She was blowing it, and she knew it: Barbara should be on her side, but she was no pushover. ‘The girl’s dead.’

‘Woman,’ Barbara had said. ‘And I’m protecting her. Dead or not. Protecting her, protecting her husband. This was over, this was no one else’s business. And besides, there was never any chance of her – her problem harming her unborn child. It wasn’t like that.’ And she’d stopped speaking, shaking her head furiously.

‘So what was it like?’ Giuli had asked, knowing she was pushing her luck.

‘Would you want God knows who knowing about every mistake you’d made, just because you happened to be conveniently dead? Would you want your child growing up knowing things about you you were ashamed of, without you being there to explain it? This stuff gets into the coroner’s court, it’s out there. It’s in the papers, it’s on the internet. You know that as well as I do. And once we blab – once they know we’d break all those confidences – who’s going to come here for treatment?’ And the nurse had flung the cigarette away in disgust, all reserve gone.

Giuli had tried the approach she’d used with Clelia. ‘What if they come after you, though? The
questura.
The coroner.’ She’d realized she didn’t even know who it would be. ‘The police.’

Barbara had said nothing to that. The doctors had been looking over at the sound of the raised voices. She’d kneeled to retrieve the cigarette stub and looked up at Giuli. ‘How will they know?’ Her voice had been steely quiet. ‘Unless you tell them?’

Giuli had stood in shamed silence. The woman had been right, of course. Who was Giuli to be asking for these confidences? Weren’t they right, all of them, better to let it lie? Just attribute it to post-natal depression. Barbara had got to her feet and their eyes had been level again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Giuli had said humbly. ‘I know it’s – difficult. I know you can’t afford to believe me when I say you can trust me – trust us.’

‘Us?

‘Sandro Cellini,’ she had said. ‘I thought everyone knew, I work for him part-time. He does a bit of private investigating.’

Barbara’s head had lifted at that bit of information. ‘I know who he is,’ she’d said. ‘Knew, I should say. When he was in the police, plenty of overlap among our clientele, even before you came along.’ She had given herself a little shake. ‘Not that I ever breached a patient’s confidence for him, either.’ Her voice had been subdued, though, somehow, just the ghost of a doubt in it now. She must have got on with Sandro, even if she wasn’t saying it.

‘We’re trying to help,’ Giuli had said, sensing an opening, weaselling her way in. She hadn’t liked herself for that. ‘Get Niccolò back on the rails. With the kid – the baby – and everything. It’s a bit of a mess.’

‘You think this’ll help?’ Barbara had asked. ‘Sincerely?’ She’d sounded only depressed now, all the anger gone.

‘Niccolò seems to think it will,’ Giuli had said. ‘What else can we do?’

‘He wants to know?’ Barbara had said. ‘He’ll change his mind.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘What if he ends up wishing he’d never asked?’ Barbara had rubbed her arms through the thin cardigan: it was cool under the cloister. The doctors had turned and gone inside, and she had stared after them.

Break over, Giuli had thought, feeling her chance slip away. ‘Do you really think it was post-natal depression that drove Flavia to suicide?’ she’d asked. ‘Or do you think it had anything to do with her – with whatever you treated her for? If you think this’ll only do harm, if you sincerely think –’ and then she’d cast about her for the right words, frustrated’ – there’s no one to blame.’

‘No one to blame?’ Barbara’s voice had been sharp. ‘It was suicide.’

‘Just because she did it herself,’ Giuli had said, ‘doesn’t mean no one’s to blame. Flavia spent her whole life working to stay on the straight and narrow, to keep it together, you know that.’ She hadn’t really understood it herself, but it was true. ‘Addiction’s a lonely business. But there’s always someone pushing the stuff, isn’t there? They say, it’s just the market forces, or whatever, don’t they? The people selling the latest thing. Internet porn or plastic surgery or speed or whatever.’

Barbara’s face had been pale as she’d stared back and for a moment Giuli had thought she was going to say something else. But then she’d looked away.

‘I’ve got to get back to work.’

As Giuli had made her way slowly out through the stone corridors, lost in uneasy contemplation, someone had stepped out sharply from a side door, as if waiting for her footsteps. It was Farmiga, the consultant, hard-faced as ever.

‘What are you up to, Sarto? You’re not working today, are you?’

‘I wanted a word with Barbara,’ she’d said.

‘I heard,’ Farmiga had said. Had she meant she’d heard the conversation itself? She’d eyed Giuli with an expression that had said, distinctly,
I never wanted you here
, and Giuli had gazed back, mesmerized by the woman’s undiluted dislike.

‘I don’t think I made her late,’ she’d said.

‘Don’t poke your nose in,’ Farmiga had said. ‘All right? Some people get what they deserve, and do-gooders like you trying to cover their mess up just make it worse. Matteo was a frigid neurotic little bitch, not a saint, just as well people know that.’

‘No one’s a saint,’ Giuli had said, as mildly and gratefully as she could manage. But she’d been alerted now: either Farmiga had heard her conversation with Barbara, or word had already gone out. ‘But I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been given the benefit of the doubt.’

‘I don’t need reminding of that,’ Farmiga had said sourly, and stepping back inside the room from which she’d emerged, had pulled the door sharply shut behind her.

In the sunshine now, outside the great gates with the wooded parkland stretching up the hill behind her, Giuli felt a prickle at the back of her neck as she watched Wanda Terni on the other side of the Via Pisana, round-shouldered and blinking in the sun, waiting nervously for the traffic to stop.

‘There was something,’ she’d said on the phone, just as Giuli had emerged, irresolute, on to the Piazza Tasso. Giuli had heard the racket of children’s voices echoing in the corridors behind the teacher. ‘I can’t hear myself think here,’ Wanda had said then, distracted.

‘Where shall we meet?’ Giuli had said quickly, ‘Can you do lunch?’

There were people who really hadn’t liked Flavia Matteo, and Farmiga was one of them. Was that surprising? People who wanted to do good often had enemies, Flavia and Niccolò both. But no one was a saint: everyone had their flaw, their chink. And Giuli was pretty sure Flavia’s had been what killed her.

Wanda, halfway across the road, lifted a hand in a dismal sort of greeting.

Giuli waved back, and she thought about Sandro, at the seaside. What about Niccolò? Where was his flaw? She supposed that if he had one, Sandro, stuck with him in his little car or in a hotel room, would find it: at the thought, her spirits sank even further. The Frazione had to survive.

‘I’ve only got half an hour,’ said Wanda, out of breath as she reached Giuli. ‘That’ll have to be enough.’ They turned and entered the deep cool between the trees.

Chapter Eighteen

V
ESNA MADE HER WAY
slowly up the wide, cool boulevard that stretched from the sea front to the station, in the shade of the big-leaved mulberry trees. There was movement overhead through the green canopy, no more than the flick of a tablecloth, the flash of a well-upholstered pink housecoat, and a tiny shower of crumbs arriving on the pavement as Vesna passed. She heard a volley of bad-tempered domestic exchanges as she sidestepped the dusting of breadcrumbs, and was content, briefly.

Content to be single, to be independent: even the imminent possibility of unemployment meant freedom – from Calzaghe, from all the small indignities of life here as a woman, and a foreign woman at that. Vesna had a degree in biology from Sarajevo University, she had read Tolstoy, in Russian. Calzaghe had never read a book in his life as far as she knew, and his understanding of biology was strictly limited to his afternoon viewing, at his mother’s apartment.