The Villa Triste (30 page)

‘What about you?’ she asked.

I looked down at my own hand. Despite everything, I have continued to wear the engagement ring Lodo gave me.

‘It will be safer here,’ Mama said.

I nodded. Standing there in the warm honey light, I slipped it off and handed it to her. She wrapped it in an oilskin envelope, stuck her trowel into the dark earth and began to dig.

Chapter Eighteen

Two days of meetings in Genoa caused the week to slip by almost before Pallioti noticed. Sunday dawned hard and bright. The rain that had dogged the early days of the month had retreated, leaving the air crystalline and cold. Deciding to book a table instead of cooking herself, Saffy had chosen a restaurant on the hill above the Boboli Gardens for lunch. Tucked behind one of the old villas, it looked out over the olive groves towards the
fortezza
and the pale sugar cube of the Medici villa. By 1 p.m. it was crowded; their group alone was made up of more than a dozen people.

Pallioti looked around him. There were several couples with children. A university professor, and a curator from a museum out of town. His sister sat across from him, Tommaso beside her in a high chair. Several other children, buoyed by cushions and phone books, peered across the table making faces and trading secrets. His brother-in-law was deep in conversation with a business partner, his greying curly hair bobbing as he nodded at whatever the other man was saying. Pallioti did not know any of these people well, and some of them not at all, but on Sunday, for a few hours, they were his family. Out of his suit and his habitual dark overcoat, he slipped in among whatever group Saffy had convened all but unnoticed, no one but her brother.

The antipasto had been devoured. In the lull between courses the conversation had shifted from the funding crisis in the arts to a general discussion on the merits of Sardinia as a vacation spot. Pallioti accepted another glass of wine and drifted, bobbing along on the waves of voices and laughter. He was half listening to a comment concerning something to do with a block of new flats when he looked up and saw Eleanor Sachs.

She was alone at a table in the far corner of the big room, her head bowed intently over a menu. The lack of a bottle on the table and the way the waiter was hovering suggested she had only just arrived. Today, she had forsaken her black polo neck for one of a russet colour. Her trench coat was hung on a coat hook at her shoulder. Her short dark hair had been ruffled by the wind.

As Eleanor Sachs put the menu down and spoke to the waiter, Pallioti felt a pang of guilt. In the big busy room filled with conversation and families, she looked very small and very alone. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured to the woman beside him, and got to his feet. He could feel Saffy’s eyes following him as he wound his way through the tables and crossed the room.

‘Signora?’

She looked up, so startled that Pallioti almost felt the need to apologize as he extended his hand. Eleanor Sachs shook it gingerly, then smiled.

‘
Posso?
May I?’ he asked, indicating the chair across the table from her. ‘Just for a moment?’

‘
Certo
. Of course. I’d be delighted.’

She glanced across the room, her eyes darting to the big table by the window.

‘Is that your family?’

He nodded. ‘More or less.’

‘How lucky.’ She looked back at him. ‘I mean, it must be nice. All of you being here together.’

Pallioti looked at the table, and saw for himself what it must look like. A large, affluent, happy group of people, talking and eating together on a Sunday afternoon in early winter. He’d never really thought of it that way before, but she was right. He was lucky.

Before he could think of how to phrase that, or whether he ought to at all, the waiter appeared with a bottle. He looked in confusion at the table. He had already removed the second place setting.

‘I’m visiting. Just for a moment.’

‘But you’ll have a glass?’ Eleanor Sachs smiled. ‘I think you’ll like this rather better than the grape cordial the other night.’

The waiter brought a second glass and pulled the cork. She was right about that, too. Pallioti put his glass down.

‘Dottoressa Sachs,’ he said. ‘I owe you an apology.’

Eleanor Sachs had the good grace to appear surprised.

‘You were right,’ Pallioti said. ‘About the salt—’

She smiled. ‘So you didn’t believe that?’

‘And about Roberto Roblino and Giovanni Trantemento.’

The smile vanished.

‘They did know each other,’ Pallioti said. ‘In fact, Giovanni Tran-temento wrote the nominating letter for the awarding of Roberto Roblino’s medal.’

‘What?’

Pallioti nodded.

‘They were in the same GAP unit. They worked together here, in Florence, in 1944.’

She shook her head, as if it was she who now didn’t believe him.

‘It’s so strange,’ she said.

Eleanor Sachs picked up her glass. Pallioti had not been sure, in the cafe the other night, what colour her eyes were. He had only noticed their shape. Now, in the daylight, they almost glittered, bright and vivid, caught between lashes as dark as her hair.

‘It’s just that – well, I told you.’ She took a sip of the wine. ‘He was kind of a windbag, poor old guy. You know, a boaster. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have just told me.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘Nope.’ She shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. He talked about all sorts of other stuff. You know, general derring-do, killing Nazis. But not that. Nothing specific about GAP. He certainly didn’t tell me that’s how he knew Trantemento.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, I sort of suspected. But, go figure.’

‘Well, his code name, for what it’s worth, was Beppe. Giovanni Trantemento was known as Il Corvo. I don’t know if that helps you at all.’

Eleanor Sachs put her glass down.

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ she asked. ‘Not that I’m not grateful.’

Pallioti, who had begun to get up, sat down again.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d like to know that you were right.’ He smiled and began to get to his feet again. ‘Perhaps,’ he added, ‘it will help you in your hunt for Il Spettro.’

‘So, you still don’t believe me about that?’ A smile played across her face. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘No one else does, either. Much less thinks he’s alive and kicking and going around knocking off old men. I guess that would be too easy a solution? Death by ghost?’

Pallioti thought of the smudged crosses and the inky red lettering. The misspelt messages of hate.

‘Perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘Now,’ he said, glancing towards the front of the room where the children were being summoned back to their chairs for the next course, ‘I really must return to my table.’

Eleanor Sachs held out her hand as he stood up.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to do this. I appreciate it.’

When she smiled, she looked like a different person. The waif vanished, replaced by a pretty woman. He took her hand. The bones felt as fragile as a bird’s.

‘I hope it helps,’ he said. ‘And you’ll let me know? If you prove me wrong and find Il Spettro?’ Pallioti’s smile transformed his face almost as much as Eleanor Sachs’s transformed hers.

‘Oh,’ she laughed. ‘You bet. You’ll be the first to know. It’s a deal.’

Pallioti had got halfway across the room, in sight of the plate of osso bucco that had been delivered to his empty place, when he turned back. Eleanor Sachs looked up. She didn’t seem particularly surprised to find him standing beside her again.

‘There is one thing.’ He hesitated, feeling slightly foolish. She waited. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he asked finally, ‘in the research you’ve done on the partisans, that you’ve ever come across two sisters?’

‘Two sisters?’

‘Their name was Cammaccio. Caterina and Isabella. I think Isabella’s code name was Lilia. They were here, in Florence.’

‘Cammaccio?’

Eleanor Sachs thought for a moment, then shook her head.

‘It doesn’t ring a bell,’ she said. ‘No. Sorry. But I can check it out, I’m in the archives all the time. If you want?’

Pallioti gave a wave of his hand.

‘Don’t bother,’ he said and smiled again. ‘Really, it’s not important.’

‘Who was she?’ Saffy leaned across the table and dropped her voice, the words coming out as a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Who was who?’ Pallioti smiled.

His sister grinned, plucked a breadstick off the table and broke it in two.

‘No one,’ he said. ‘An American.’

‘A very pretty American.’ She handed the breadstick to Tommaso. ‘Very gamine. Very Audrey Hepburn.’

‘Very married,’ Pallioti replied, and wondered why he’d bothered. Laughter erupted from Leo’s end of the table and rippled towards them. Pallioti smiled at his sister and shook his head. ‘She contacted me,’ he said, ‘because she thought she knew something about Giovanni Trantemento. It was purely business.’

‘Ah.’ Saffy smoothed Tommaso’s hair. ‘And did she? Know anything ?’

Pallioti shook his head. Women, even his sister, were as tenacious as pit bulls once they got an idea in their head. Still smiling, he reached for his glass. ‘No,’ he said. Then he added, ‘Well, that’s not quite true. No and yes. I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t very pleasant. In fact, rather unpleasant. So I went to apologize. You see,’ he shrugged. ‘I told you. Nothing important.’

Saffy nodded. She was making an effort not to laugh at him. ‘Then,’ she asked, ‘why did she leave after you spoke to her?’

‘Did she?’

Pallioti looked up. A family was rising from their chairs. Several waiters flew by. Conversation and laughter reached a crescendo and fell again as the departing couple and their children moved towards the coat rack. Across the litter of plates and discarded napkins, he saw the little table in the corner. It was empty. The half-full bottle of wine and two glasses stood abandoned beside an untouched plate.

The crime scene tape that had festooned the landing outside Giovanni Trantemento’s apartment had been taken down. The blood that had seeped under the door, meandering like a lost little river bearing the old man’s life along with it, was gone. Scrubbed away. Lozenges of pale afternoon sun fell from the high windows and danced on the wide polished boards. Standing on the top step of the stairs, Pallioti could smell lemon oil and beeswax hanging in the still, chilly air.

Marta Buonifaccio stood outside her apartment door. She’d heard him come in – in fact, had buzzed open the door when he rang her bell – and had sensed as much as seen him climb the stairs. She’d opened the door a crack, but hadn’t come out until he was well out of sight, on the second or even third landing. She hadn’t needed to check on him. She knew where he was going, and why. He’d come on a pilgrimage, like an explorer on a solitary voyage of discovery. And he’d come on Sunday, in the late afternoon, when the other occupants of the building were likely to be lingering over family lunches, or watching television, or asleep, because he wanted to be alone. Because he wanted to stand outside Giovanni Trante-mento’s door. To whisper the old man’s name. Because he wanted to stretch his hand into the still, cold air, and try to feel what had happened.

‘Dottore.’

He was wearing a suede jacket over a sweater and corduroy trousers. No tie with marzoccos. No gold cufflinks. Not that it mattered. Leopards didn’t change their spots.

‘
Buona sera
, Signora Buonifaccio.’

She had spoken as his foot hit the last step of the stairs. Now he gave a little bow. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you.’

That was another thing about men like this. They were unfailingly polite.

Pallioti stopped in the middle of the cavernous hallway. If it hadn’t been for the lamp on the table below the mailboxes, and the fact that she had coughed, he doubted he would have seen her.

Marta Buonifaccio stood exactly where she had stood before, on the far side of the empty hearth. For a moment Pallioti felt as if he were playing the childhood game of statues. As if she might not have moved since the day Giovanni Trantemento died. She still reminded him of a Russian doll, so solid and compact that several people might be squeezed into her body. She had dispensed with the headscarf. Wiry strands of grey hair framed her round face.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you on a Sunday evening,’ Pallioti said again as he stepped closer. ‘But since you are here, might I take just a moment of your time? There was something I wanted to ask you.’

Marta’s shoulders dipped and rose, a gesture that was almost half a curtsey. It reminded him of the maid in his parents’ house when he had been a child. She had been a silent, almost ghostly girl. Someone, to his shame now, that he had barely even been aware of. She had polished silver and made beds and swept the stairs and always been there, until she had left. Her name might have been Anna or Angela, or – the truth was, he had no idea. Marta gestured towards the door of her apartment.

‘Tea?’ she asked.

Marta reached for the teapot. Like the cups and saucers, it was covered in a pattern of pink rosebuds. Pallioti wondered when they had last been used. He reached for his cup and tipped a dead bug out of it. He had come more or less on a whim, feeling the need for a walk after lunch, and had planned to stop for a grappa at his favourite bar on his way home. The truth was, he wasn’t very keen on tea.

Marta’s small round eyes glittered.

‘Shouldn’t throw away protein, Dottore,’ she said, glancing at the bug. ‘You look like you could use it.’

She cackled at her own little joke. If she had ever been shocked by Giovanni Trantemento’s death, she’d obviously got over it. This evening, she seemed determinedly cheerful, as if she was trying very hard.