The Drowning River (22 page)

Sandro stood outside the bank’s dark windows and peered inside. There were close to a million euros of Claudio’s money in there, in this dingy little back-street branch. He pressed his back against the facade in a fruitless attempt to stay out of the wet; this was the place, though. These humble San Frediano streets were Claudio’s secret life. This was his bank, the Cestello was his local; his other place must be somewhere around here.

His
telefonino
rang again; he thought he should go to his office and dry out, but he found he couldn’t move. With fumbling fingers he retrieved the phone and found himself talking again to the pasty-faced carabiniere he’d spoken to on the way out of the station that afternoon.

‘The old guy?’ said the carabiniere without preamble. Giacomini was the desk-officer’s name, thought Sandro blearily, how come he
could remember that when everything else was fuzzy? ‘The one you asked me to look for on the CCTV?’

‘Yes?’ said Sandro, his heart sinking; it was like opening an envelope you knew contained bad news.

He was right. ‘Yup,’ said Giacomini, ‘found him all right, that was some hunch.’

‘And?’

‘In, at the Annalena gate, 11.20.’

‘Out again?’

‘Nope,’ said Giacomini. ‘Not so far. But he could’ve –’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Sandro with a heavy heart. ‘He must have come out of the Porta Romana gate.’ Because he did come out, that much they knew. What he’d wanted was proof Claudio had left the Boboli alone.

‘Looking like, sort of blank, he was, on his way in,’ said Giacomini, musing. ‘On another planet.’

‘Yeah,’ said Sandro. ‘He had Alzheimer’s.’ He felt a surge of empathy for poor Claudio, like some big wounded bull elephant blundering through a habitat turned hostile, his world growing unrecognizable around him. Would that face tell him anything? That he’d had some kind of brainstorm, and had abducted or hurt or killed a young woman, then concealed her body? He thought of the gardens, all those woodstores and toolsheds. Or taken her off with him, to his other place? Taken her back to the bolthole his wife had known nothing about, until now.

‘Can I come in and get a look?’

Giacomini sighed. ‘Not tonight,’ he said, ‘no way, I’m off in twenty minutes. Monday morning?’

Monday morning? Monday morning will be too late, thought Sandro, because he was in full possession of the knowledge, dull and sinister, that every hour that passed, every minute, made it less likely Veronica Hutton would be found alive. It was how it was, with abductions; it was how it had been when Lucas Marsh’s daughter went missing from that swimming pool nearly twenty years ago. And just as he had on that occasion, he had to fight the despair that rose in him, the nagging voice that said, It’s too late already. You’re wasting your time.

As if he heard something in the silence, Giacomini sighed. ‘How about I email you the stills?’ he said. ‘You’ll have given us your email address? Can do that, wouldn’t take a minute.’

Not about to admit that computer technology was too much for him at the best of times, Sandro gave in. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Sure.’ He needed help, and he appreciated the hand the man was holding out to him. ‘Thanks.’

As he hung up, Sandro caught the cab driver’s curious gaze at him up through the window, open for the cigarette he’d lit. He felt the shivering rise up again, and struggled to control it in front of the man. He looked away, trying to will a miracle. An answer.

Across the way, the scrubby grass of the Piazza Tasso contained another children’s playground; though this one was newer, it looked just as dismal under the shroud of rain. On one of the swings the hooded figure of some large child swung back and forth monotonously in the pouring rain, while his frail-looking mother bent over him, trying to persuade him home.

He needed help. As he stared blindly at the scene, suddenly Sandro felt entirely overwhelmed. Lucia’s silent grief; the nagging terror for a missing child; the brute intractability of the facts, of hidden money and secret apartments and lost handbags; he was drowning under it. And the biggest, blackest wave, rising far out to sea and rushing towards him, was Monday morning, and a tiny lump in Luisa’s breast: his breast, his pillow, his beloved.

I am afraid, he thought. I am afraid of death.

For a moment it seemed to Sandro that it was simply too much for him: he would send the cab away, stand in the rain like a vagrant until he dropped and someone else could take over.

As he stared, the woman at the swing straightened and came away from the intractable child and through the rain Sandro saw that it wasn’t a child, but a young man, holding a comic book up to his face. And as the woman hurrying towards him raised her hand, trying to get his cab, that she wasn’t anyone’s mother. It was Giulietta Sarto.

‘Sandro?’ she said, dashing across the road.

‘Do you know him?’ said Sandro, staring at the young man on the swing, wondering if he was delirious.

‘It’s the funny kid,’ she said, impatiently. ‘Comic-book Boy, everyone knows him, Jesus Christ, Sandro, look at you!’ She took both his shoulders in her hands.

‘What was he talking to you about?’ he said, wondering if he was making sense.

‘Oh, dogs, asking me about a guy I know – well, I guess we both know him – keeps asking if he’s got a dog. The kid’s obsessed, but he’s harmless. He’s worried about the goddamn dog, I tell you, there is no dog, I don’t know what he’s talking about. What I’m worried about is you, Sandro. What the hell are you up to? You’re soaked to the bone.’ She leaned in closer, staring into his face as she used to when she was in rehab, and they’d told him it was because she had to relearn the idea of personal space. ‘You’re not well.’

Sandro found he didn’t have it in him to agree or not. He did feel very odd.

‘This your cab?’ she asked, and the driver answered for him, ‘Get on with it, I can’t hang about all day,’ flicking his cigarette away into the gutter.

‘I’m taking you home to Luisa,’ she said, and before he could argue she opened the car door and shoved him inside.

In the warm dark of the cab, the radio burbled, about the rain, and an anniversary. In the Casentino a mudslide had buried a small hamlet, and above Lucca a weir had collapsed under the weight of water; the president of the republic would be visiting the stricken village.

Sandro heard the driver snort. ‘Lot of good he’ll be,’ he said. The voices continued, an old
contadino
talking about 1966; a government spokesman brushed him aside, talking over him. Flood defences were holding, he said with weighty assurance, the rain should ease overnight, although more was forecast in the morning. Tomorrow there would be no repeat of November, 1966.

Flood defences holding for the time being; no, repeat, the rain should ease – the words went round and round in Sandro’s head, absolving him. The defences were holding.

‘Tell me about Comic-book Boy,’ he mumbled to Giulietta Sarto. ‘I think I’d like a proper introduction.’ From the expression on her face he could tell he’d stopped making sense.

At three in the morning by the small, leather-bound clock on her bedside table – the clock that Ma had given her when she’d gone away to school at thirteen – Iris raised herself on her elbow, leaned across Jackson’s humped shoulder beside her in the narrow bed, and whispered.

‘Jackson?’ Then, louder, ‘Jackson?’ He made a noise, still asleep.

‘I want you to go,’ she said, in her normal voice, and waited, her back against the wall. After a minute Jackson sat up beside her, alert in the moonlight but not all there, still actually asleep even as he answered her.

‘OK,’ he said, unquestioning, fumbling for his trainers. ‘’Sssa time?’

‘Late,’ she said, and he just nodded.

‘OK.’ Now he was awake.

He swayed as he stood over her, shoes on, belt buckle undone. He felt in his pocket for his keys; she heard them jingle. ‘You all right?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ said Iris, meaning to say, of course I am, but not able to find the right words, the right tone. He leaned down towards her but she turned her face away so he got her cheek. She felt his dry lips brush it.

The door closed behind him but she could hear him on the stairs, then the street gate rattled and clanged, a deep silence settling like fog in his wake, filling the flat’s dark corners.

Even though the whole point of telling him to go had been that Iris would get some sleep, at last, with the clang of the gate her thoughts set off again. She wondered where he was going back to, at three in the morning. She didn’t know where he lived, or who he lived with; she knew he could get angry and he had a police record in the States, and she knew he had an iPhone, and that was about it. She knew what his skin smelled like, now. What have I done? she wondered.

The detective guy had called as they were getting into the cab on
the way home. Sandro Cellini. She had felt Jackson next to her as she spoke into the phone, listening intently as she tried to remember to say everything that was important. She’d felt breathless as if she was being interviewed, more nervous than when she’d been speaking to the carabiniere earlier; it all seemed so absolutely hopeless. Searching for needles in haystacks, old painters called Claudio in a city full of painters, looking for Ronnie’s mystery man when he could have been any one of dozens of playboy Italians in blazers, American college boys in Bermudas or even a sculptor with his own studio.

When Jackson could have made the whole thing up, because she only had his word for it. And Jackson had been the last person to see Ronnie.

She told herself the detective was taking it seriously, though there had been long silences on the phone; maybe he was writing it all down. She had to believe in him because he was their last chance, Ronnie was slipping through their fingers and only Sandro Cellini could catch her. She hoped he had been writing it all down. She had felt Jackson’s long, cool fingers slip between her own as she spoke.

When he had spoken the detective had sounded tired; he really should talk to her, face to face, he’d said. They had agreed on tomorrow, both of them reluctant but they didn’t really have any choice, did they? What could they have done in the dark, worn out? A whole, long night, wherever Ronnie was, whether she was inside or out in the rain – and Iris had to stop that train of thought. It wasn’t cold, Iris told herself, it was wet but not yet cold. Not winter yet.

Although if she was dead, she wouldn’t feel the cold. Iris saw the rain falling on a cold cheek, streaking the brown and gold hair across Ronnie’s dead skin, in undergrowth. Perhaps it was too late; she had said goodnight and maybe the detective, Sandro Cellini, had heard the despair in her voice because he had said, ‘Don’t worry.’ Then he’d added, ‘We’ll find her.’

She had held Jackson’s hand the rest of the way back in the taxi but it had been Sandro Cellini’s words that had stopped her feeling alone. Until they had arrived in the Piazza d’Azeglio, that was, and Jackson
had paid the cab, and they were inside the deep dark of the apartment, alone together and both holding their breath for what would happen next. And then she had stopped thinking about Sandro Cellini, or Ronnie, or anything at all.

Afterwards, of course, it had all come rushing back at her, in the darkness, and she began talking, quickly, out of guilt.

They had been crushed against each other on the narrow bed as she talked into the darkness, Jackson silent beside her.

‘You wouldn’t have fixed up for Ronnie to meet this Claudio if you’d – well, if you thought there was anything funny about him. Would you?’ Her voice was small, pleading.

There was a silence. ‘Look, Iris,’ he said, with resignation, ‘I don’t know, that’s the truth. I mean, sure, I wouldn’t have knowingly put her on to some old creep – I didn’t think he was a creep. I liked him a lot; I thought Ronnie’d be blown away by him.’ His voice was hollow.

‘But?’

‘But you never know about people, do you? Not really.’ He sounded low and tired and desperate.

Iris took his hand, under the thin cover; she knew she should just leave it, they both needed the rest, but she couldn’t. ‘And what about the boyfriend?’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why we didn’t know anything about this boyfriend? Why didn’t she tell anyone about him?’

There had been a silence; beside her Iris felt Jackson fighting sleep.

‘Maybe it’s just none of us would have known him,’ he had said eventually, ‘so no point bragging.’

‘And why didn’t he come to the party, then? She could have showed him off.’

‘Busy guy, maybe.’ His voice had been drifting by this point. ‘Some place else to be.’

And he had rolled away a little, and was gone, holding her hand tucked under the dead weight of his arm. And Iris had stayed awake staring into the dark, while things made less and less sense. Until at three she had given in.

And now she was alone, and there was something else to think about, she realized. How much time had it taken? Iris had no idea.
Not long at all, then a long time lying awake. She couldn’t imagine ever doing it again.

He’s gone, now stop thinking, Iris instructed herself. And fell instantly asleep.

In the pre-dawn sky beyond the tall, shuttered windows, the cloud rolled down again, and softly the rain began to fall.

‘You Sat Bolt Upright,’ said Luisa, setting the water glass down carefully on the bedside table, ‘and you said, that’s it. I’ve got it, you said.’

Sandro groaned, and raised himself on an elbow to drink the water. He found he was very thirsty. ‘I don’t suppose I said what it was I’d got, did I?’

It had seemed like a very long night; under the influence of the fever Sandro felt as though he’d travelled enormous distances in his sleep. He felt completely drained of energy, but the fever was gone.

They’d got back to an empty apartment. Giulietta Sarto had done everything, paid the cab, fished in Sandro’s pocket for his key, got him upstairs and shoved him into the bathroom while she brewed some potion up for him of sticks and leaves and ginger. He had heard her rooting through the cupboards as he stood under the shower, trying to get warm. She told him Luisa had given her the recipe for it, good for fevers. Giulietta had had a lot of fevers after rehab and the halfway house, during the six months she practically lived with him and Luisa. Listening to the hiss of gas under the pan and the clatter of cups, Sandro had twice opened his mouth to tell her that Luisa had a hospital appointment on Monday, but the words would not come out.