The Villa Triste (47 page)

‘There,’ Eleanor said.

The sound came again. From where they stood, it seemed a little louder.

He glared at her.

‘You should stay here.’

Ignoring him, Eleanor started down the steps that led to the stables. As he followed, Pallioti glanced back. Under the noon sun, the house was a pale block of stone. Between the deep-red shutters of the sitting-room window, he saw a small face. As he watched, the maid raised a hand and pressed it to the glass.

The track that skirted behind the stable led past several paddocks, all of them empty. After the last one, the gravel gave way to compacted chalky earth. Pallioti took it at a trot, Eleanor fell in behind him. The wailing had become regular now, rising and falling like a siren. The track wound around the small lump of a hill. Ahead, Pallioti saw a pond and a strip of wood. Naked branches of chestnut and beech filled a small valley, winding through it like a river. They had almost reached the treeline when he saw the flash of red. Pallioti raised a hand. Eleanor stopped. The dog’s cries had lessened, wound down into whimpering, as if it sensed them coming. Slowly, they walked forward together.

The jeep had been parked in a stand of trees, nose in. Pallioti had not looked, but he realized when he thought about it that, of course, there would be a service drive for the stables opening off the road – an access for feed deliveries and horse vans. Piero Balestro would have taken it this morning, as he probably took it every morning during the hunting season. He would drive this far, then park and unload the guns and the dog. The wood would provide attractive cover. The pond was probably a winter home for ducks. Looking to the far side of it, Pallioti spotted what looked like a hide, several segments of wattle behind a stand of bulrushes.

The old spaniel had fallen silent. Its leash was tied around a sapling some twenty feet away, in a stand of thin, newly planted alder. Seeing them, it sat, and started to whine.

Wary of the jeep, Pallioti circled away from it, meaning to approach the dog from the side. Then he saw Piero Balestro.

The old man was lying some two or three yards from the passenger door, which was open. He was wearing the same tweed jacket, this time with a green down vest of the kind hunters favoured over it. His brown boots were still shiny. No dust had settled on them. The soles were clean. It looked as if he had got out of the car, crossed to the passenger side, opened the door, then turned and walked no more than ten or a dozen steps.

One arm was pinned underneath him, the other flung out, gloved hand palm up.

‘Alessandro?’

Eleanor pointed at the ground. Just beyond Piero Balestro’s outstretched hand, lying in the short dead grass, was a small gun.

Pallioti nodded. He squatted down on his haunches. Piero Balestro’s head was twisted, his eyes open. They stared, colourless, almost white, against his livid cheeks. Some people believed that the last thing you saw was imprinted on your eye, locked into your soul. Looking into Massimo’s soul, Pallioti saw nothing.

He had been shot, once, in the forehead. The hole was not big. Surprisingly little blood dribbled out of it. His mouth was open, as if in protest, or surprise. There were white crystals on his lips. Beside his chin was a pile of salt.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tape was strung through the trees like garlands. It looped round trunks and hung from bare branches. The entire distance of the track, from the stables to the scene, had been closed off. The medical examiner and scene of crime officers had walked like strange white-suited aliens over the yellowing brow of the hill.

Now Carla Nanno, the same ME who had handled Giovanni Trantemento, knelt over Piero Balestro. Her gloved fingers poked and probed. She glanced up.

‘Approximately eight hours,’ she said. ‘As a best guess. Right after sunrise. It’s not an uncommon time for people to kill themselves.’

‘You think that’s what this is?’

She shrugged, looked from Piero Balestro’s hand to the gun that had already been photographed and measured ad nauseam.

‘Well, it certainly could be self-inflicted,’ she said. ‘No question. Maybe I’ll find something that says different, when I get him on the table. But I doubt it. Of course,’ she added, ‘that doesn’t mean it was. Self-inflicted. I’m just telling you that, as of now, it could have been. That’s my best guess.’ She nodded towards his outstretched hand. ‘I’ll test, obviously. But it looks like there’s a powder burn on the glove.’

Pallioti nodded.

‘What about the salt?’

She looked down. Took a finger and ran it under the old man’s lip. There was something obscene about it. Pallioti tried not to flinch. Carla Nanno frowned.

‘Well, it’s in his mouth. But not nearly as much as the other one. That would make sense. I mean, you wouldn’t eat it if someone didn’t make you. Like I said, we’ll have to see when we open him up.’ She looked up at Pallioti. ‘It’s in his pockets, too,’ she said. ‘Did you know?’

He didn’t. Having found that he could not get a signal, and having given Eleanor his phone, and instructions to go back to the car and drive as far as she had to to call Enzo Saenz, Pallioti had not touched Piero Balestro’s body. He had not even touched the dog. He wanted the leash photographed and checked for prints. He had explained this, speaking in a low murmuring tone to the spaniel, who had eventually stopped whining and lay down, its head resting on its paws as it regarded him solemnly. After that, he had walked carefully in widening circles until he had found what he was looking for. It was nothing, really. A couple of broken twigs. Ten more minutes’ walking, winding through the trees in the strip of wood, had brought him to a small paved road. He had stood in the middle of it, then walked fifty yards up and down either side. Where, exactly as he’d expected, he’d found nothing.

Now he watched as Carla Nanno bent over the prone figure, pro-prietorial and protective as a nurse with a critical patient. She lifted the slit of one of Piero Balestro’s vest pockets. Sure enough, a thin white dribble escaped.

‘Where is the bag?’ Pallioti asked.

She looked up at him.

‘What?’

‘The bag. For the salt. How did the salt get here?’

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Is it in the car?’

Pallioti glanced towards the jeep. The forensics team had finished with the outside. Now two officers were crawling around inside it, Photographing and swabbing and measuring. When they had finished that, it would be towed away to be analysed for fibres and hairs and bits of skin and anything else that might have come from whoever it was who had met Piero Balestro here just after dawn this morning and shot him in the head.

The forensics labs could strip and eat it, if they wanted, Pallioti thought. It was a pointless exercise. This killer didn’t leave prints, and wouldn’t leave tracks. He just came and went, like Eleanor’s Ghost, sowing his bodies with salt.

Eleanor herself had been put in a police car and driven back to Florence. Pallioti had asked if he could borrow her car for the rest of the day, and for once she hadn’t argued. Had just reached out and squeezed his hand.

‘What about his wallet?’

Carla Nanno looked up. ‘Inner left jacket pocket,’ she said. ‘Over two hundred euros in notes. And four credit cards. All present and accounted for.’

Pallioti nodded.

The medical examiner was saying something.

‘His jacket pockets. Maybe he just filled them, up at the house.’ She shrugged. ‘You know, why bother with anything else? Bringing a bag or anything. If all he was going to do was put a handful in his mouth and put the gun to his head. Like I said,’ she added, standing up, ‘I’m not saying that’s it, for definite. It just looks like it probably was. I mean, it would be my bet. If that is a powder burn on the glove, I don’t know how else to explain it.’ She shrugged. ‘We’ll see how much he swallowed. Maybe you’ll pull prints off the gun.’

Pallioti glanced at it and nodded. He didn’t tell her that he also thought pigs might fly. And possibly sooner. From where he was standing, he could see the Bakelite handle. The bottom of the grip was crumbling. It had been left for them, like a gift, precisely because it would tell them nothing.

One of the crime team was backing out of the jeep. She put a foot down, her white bootee testing for the ground, then stood up, clutching a handful of plastic evidence bags. As Pallioti approached, she looked up and smiled nervously. The girl looked barely old enough to be out of school. He’d noticed that was happening more and more often these days. Peering through the door she had just emerged from, he saw a shotgun case resting across the back seat. It appeared to be still zipped up.

He nodded towards it.

‘Is the gun inside?’

‘Yes,’ the girl nodded. ‘It was zipped when we found it.’

‘Ammunition?’

‘A box of cartridges. In the glove compartment.’

Pallioti nodded. He didn’t bother to ask what kind they were. At least one of Balestro’s rifles, he was sure, would take .22s, the most common ammunition in the world. The same that would be found in the gun beside his outstretched hand, and in his head. They would discover that he bought them all the time. There would be at least one box, probably more, somewhere in the house. His gloves would probably come from the same place, if it was a decent hunting shop.

‘Salt,’ he said, looking back at the girl.

‘Dottore?’

‘I’d like you to look for salt.’ He nodded at the jeep. ‘Any traces at all you might find. In the mats, the seats. Anywhere in the car. It’s especially important.’

She nodded, trying not to appear confused. ‘Salt?’

‘That’s right,’ Pallioti said. ‘Salt.’ Then he walked away.

In the house, Enzo Saenz was going through Piero Balestro’s desk. He was back in jeans, the suit he had taken to wearing apparently a thing of the past. At least for today. Frowning, head bowed, his ponytail tucked into the collar of a leather jacket under which a shoulder holster was plainly visible, he looked less like a police inspector than a thoughtful and rather meticulous criminal. Only his hands, encased in the standard white latex gloves, gave him away.

Pallioti stepped into the room. Again, he had the same sensation he had had upon entering the driveway this afternoon. The place looked exactly the same, but was different. He had noticed this before in the homes of the recently dead. A sudden change in the air. A shifting of molecules. Demoted from the status of possession to mere object, things became denser, duller, colder.

‘Have you found anything?’

Enzo shrugged.

‘Hard to tell. About this? I would say, no. About some strange transfers of significant sums from Cape Town to a bank in the Cayman Islands, probably.’

Pallioti thought of the winking eye of the security camera, the shine of the electric gates and the battery of locks on the front door.

‘He was afraid of something. Or someone.’

Enzo glanced up.

‘Well, my gut instinct, looking at this lot, is that he might have had reason to be.’

‘He said something about “clinics” in South Africa. He worked for a drug company there. At least initially.’

Enzo picked up another sheaf of papers from the rolltop desk and flicked through them.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘couple that with the fact that when I asked the maid why, if she was so worried, she didn’t go looking for “Papa Balestro” or call the police, she told me that she’s not allowed to go out of the house or use the telephone, and’ – he shrugged – ‘we’ll see. I’ll want the Finanza to take a look at all this. It may not do us much good. But at least they’ll owe us a favour.’

‘Ammunition?’

Enzo nodded. He put the papers down.

‘Four boxes upstairs in a locked drawer. There’s also a safe. Set into the floor under a wardrobe. Very professional. I’ll have it open by evening. But frankly, I doubt there’s going to be anything in it for us. I found the gun licences, too,’ he added. He turned to face Pallioti. ‘They’re all in order,’ he said. ‘For the shotgun and the rifles. No small arms. On the other hand, if it was a souvenir, he probably wouldn’t have registered it. Would have just kept it in a box somewhere, to remind him of his glory days. Which might be why he used it this morning.’

‘So you think that’s what happened?’

Enzo waited for a moment. He looked down at his white-gloved hands, then at Pallioti. In the late sun that streamed through the big windows his eyes were not brown, but tawny, almost golden, like a bird of prey’s or a cat’s.

‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘After what you told me the other night, and what Guillermo told me before I came down here, yes I do. I owe you an apology, Maestro. I think you were right all along. When the theatre thing went wrong, the three of them were arrested and someone, probably Massimo, saw a way out. He seems to have been the ringleader. They did a deal and were allowed to escape. The price was the radio network. I think they thought they’d got away with it, and to be fair’ – Enzo shrugged and looked around the room – ‘it looks like, for a long time, they did. But things catch up with people. I don’t know if it was the medals, or before – but they fell out. Maybe someone wanted to come clean, developed a conscience, even if it was late in the day. More likely, I think it was the medals. We know Trantemento didn’t want anything to do with them, but I’ll bet the other two did. Maybe that explains the money in the safe, at least some of it. We know Trantemento wrote Roblino’s letter. I’ll bet he wrote Balestro’s, too. For a price. Maybe someone was blackmailing somebody. Or maybe they were all black-lucretia Mailing each other. Or there was something in this book Massimo was talking about that caused a stink. Getting the medal certainly would have helped publicize that, by the way.’

‘Any sign of it? A book manuscript?’

‘None,’ Enzo said. ‘It might turn up, or, like most books, it might have got no farther than his head. The truth is,’ he added, ‘we’ll probably never know what happened between these three. But yes. Yes. I think you had the bones of it right. Massimo killed the other two. It explains why they didn’t fight. Why they let him in. Then on Saturday when you came calling, he knew it was over. From everything you’ve told me, he doesn’t sound like the type to let anyone else take control. So he decided to do the honourable thing. Or the easy thing. Or whatever you want to call it. I’m open to suggestion,’ Enzo said. He looked at Pallioti. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I’ll wait until after the medical examiner is done. But if you’re asking me what I think—’ He nodded. ‘That’s what I think.’

‘And Bruno Torricci?’

‘A bigoted scumbag who can’t spell and probably makes his living pouring cement for the Camorra, but for once, about this, he was telling the truth. He didn’t kill anyone.’

Pallioti nodded.

‘And the salt?’

Enzo shrugged.

‘The ME thinks he just put it in his pocket. She’s probably right. The others? Making them eat it?’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows? He was a savage bastard? Something they did sixty years ago, some supposed “betrayal” that’s been bugging him? They were probably up a mountain somewhere and the others wouldn’t let him salt his sausage and he’s never forgotten it. That’s what these guys are like,’ he added. ‘If they were you and me,’ Enzo said, ‘if their minds worked the same way ours do, they wouldn’t go around shooting people.’ He shook his head. ‘But honestly?’ he added. ‘Why the salt? The chances are, we’ll never know.’ He smiled. ‘One of the first things you taught me, Lorenzo. We can’t know everything.’

Pallioti nodded. His undercover officers had taken to calling him Lorenzo at about the same time he’d started calling them the Angels.

Someone shouted from upstairs. Enzo shouted back, then excused himself.

From the sitting-room doorway Pallioti watched Enzo Saenz take the stairs two at a time. Then he walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

The maid was sitting at the table. A uniformed policewoman was making tea, using the same pot and cups that had been on the tray on Saturday. She was murmuring into a radio clipped to her shoulder as she reached for a sugar pot, opened a drawer and found teaspoons – something about a social worker and immigration. The dog, who had been untied some time ago and returned to the house, slumped in front of the huge stove. All of them looked up as Pallioti came into the room.

The maid’s face was tear streaked. Looking at her, Pallioti could not decide if she was fifteen or thirty-five. The policewoman offered him tea, but he shook his head. A row of canisters stood beside the stove. Methodically, he opened each one.