Vita Nuova

T
he marshal stood near the edge of the swimming pool, his eyes sheltered behind dark glasses from the glare of the low sun. A big yellow leaf lay still on the blue water. There was a scattering of wet leaves on the grass under his black shoes. The damp warmth made it seem like September, but the date on the notes in his top pocket was August 19. He turned his back on the pool and the stone tower standing on the other side of it. He looked down. No sound reached him up here, though the red roofs and marble towers of Florence lay below him. Normally you’d hear the muted drone of traffic. Of course, the city was pretty empty except for tourists. The pool had been built right on the brow of the hill, and no doubt you’d be able to raise your head from the water and see the dome and bell tower below an endless blue sky. Very nice. He didn’t care for being in cold water himself, no matter how hot it got. He didn’t care for this place at all, if he had to be honest, but there was no denying it was pretty fancy. He just didn’t like it . . . this silence, the unshaded glare. He turned back and stared across the water at the tower. At the foot of it, two cream-coloured deck chairs faced the pool and a cream-coloured umbrella shaded a table and canvas chairs.

Shouldn’t there be a nice orchard there, or maybe a vineyard, instead of the open blue glitter of a pool? The climbing sun burned his shoulder through his blue shirt. He stepped back, seeking shade.

Of the two women, it had been the young, pretty one who cried louder, roaring, hysterical, tears pouring down her cheeks, soaked tissues clutched in her hand. The mother was silent. Too stunned, perhaps. Sitting there on an upright chair in the kitchen, her face flushed and her eyes looking glazed rather than tearful, beads of sweat breaking at her temples. She made no move to comfort her daughter. She made no move at all. The kitchen was very big and full of fancy new equipment, but it was in a basement with windows set high and the marshal had found it oppressive. With the excuse of needing to meet the prosecutor on his arrival, he had been relieved to come back outside. The garden was as still and quiet as the water of the pool. One of the big yellow leaves floated down and stuck to the epaulette of his shirt. He brushed it off. He already felt too hot. If only it were really September. For a second his stomach tightened at the thought that the pleasant smell of fallen leaves would, from now on, call up the thick, sour smell of fresh entrails. That was ridiculous. For one thing, the chlorinated pool lay between him and the open doors at the base of the tower, and the dead woman was up on the second floor. The smell couldn’t possibly be reaching him. Even so, he kept his breathing shallow. It was still in his nostrils. He could go back to the kitchen, but that feeling of oppression, or perhaps some undefined smell in there, too, made him reluctant. Nothing you could put your finger on. These people had money, a lot of money. The father was in a private clinic, his elder daughter dead, presumed murdered, a grandson, orphaned now, the other daughter weeping louder and louder, and no sign of the prosecutor’s car—what was taking him so long? No matter how far away he lived, there was no traffic in August. The marshal walked around the pool and turned the corner of the rough stone tower to return to the studded main doors of the villa, one of those fortified country houses from centuries ago, severe stone buildings with bars at the windows and military crenellations. His big shaded eyes took in everything along the way. The two family cars, a Mercedes convertible and a black Mini, were parked on the gravel in the shade of a big tree. The main gates were big and the perimeter wall high, but it would be easy enough to get in. He’d already taken a look behind the house and the gardens beyond that, and seen a bulldozer moving earth, digging out another swimming pool by the look of it. It was silent now. The carabinieri the captain had sent up had stopped the work. He had spotted the corner of a broken roof, low down on the hillside within the wall. A peasant’s cottage. There was sure to be a door in the wall there and a cart track where, in the past, farm produce would have been taken down to Florence in trouble-free times—which didn’t seem to have been frequent, from what he’d heard over his years here. The main doors had a sculpted stone coat of arms above them. It wasn’t one he recognized and, anyway, it was almost worn away. He went inside and removed his hat and sunglasses. Still that crying, a bit quieter now, interspersed with low murmurs. A smooth, new grey stone floor, a modern wrought-iron railing, smooth, grey stairs leading down to the kitchen. Rich people always mean trouble. Everything depended on which prosecutor took the case. At the sound of his heavy tread descending the staircase, the crying grew louder.

As it turned out, it was another hour before the prosecutor turned up. When he did, deeply tanned, white-linen-suited, paunch under a fine striped shirt, the marshal’s heart sank. Fulvio De Vita. No doubt, the prosecutor was equally dismayed at the sight of the marshal’s dark bulk standing in his path. They shook hands. He was a little breathless. You’d think he’d come here at breakneck speed!

‘Guarnaccia, yes. I remember. . . .’

And so do I, the marshal thought. Particularly the first time he had had to work with him. That case had been in August, too. A clear case of suicide, the prosecutor had decided, anxious to leave for his holidays. Of course, that murder victim had been poor and unimportant. All the stops would be pulled out for this one.

‘Excuse me. . . .’

They were on the second-floor landing of the tower and stood back now to let a young carabiniere with a video camera start work. The marshal’s big eyes followed him. The cameraman closed in on the shell cases encircled in white chalk on the worn red tiles, then stepped inside, filming everything, detail by detail. So much more efficient than the human eye. The marshal himself had picked his way through the living room to where, beyond an open door, the body lay prone beside the bed. He had gone to check for signs of life, although, given the sloppy trail she had left as she dragged herself away from the door all the way through towards the bedside telephone, there was little chance of finding any. She hadn’t made it to the phone. Her arm was stretched out in front of her, her hand touching the sculpted leg of the bedside table, but a bullet in the back of the head had stopped her. Perhaps she had grabbed at the leg. A photograph in a silver frame lay smashed on the shiny rug.

‘Can we roll her?’

The cameraman stood back, and two technicians in hooded white overalls rolled the body over.

The cameraman called back to the prosecutor, ‘Must be at least four or five bullets to the abdomen.’

‘How much did the sister mess up the scene, Marshal?’

‘She didn’t. She said she ran away as soon as she saw the body from the doorway.’

‘Without even checking if her sister was dead?’

‘So she said.’

‘You think she’s telling the truth?’

‘Yes. She didn’t tread any blood outside. That would have been difficult.’

‘Hmm. We don’t know if anything was stolen, then.’

‘No . . . though there’s no sign of the place being ransacked.’

‘No need for professionals to ransack a place. Robberies in villas like this one are well planned and often commissioned. They can be after one piece.’

‘Yes. . . .’

‘But?’ The prosecutor shot an aggressive look at him.

‘But,’ a long time had passed since the suicide that wasn’t—and, besides, the marshal had been right, hadn’t he? ‘They don’t usually leave this sort of thing behind them. . . .’

‘This sort of thing’ was the body now being lifted into a metal coffin. A soft white robe hanging open, fat, bare legs. Blond hair swinging loose.

The prosecutor nodded his permission and they stood back again as the coffin was carried out.

‘Professor Forli’s assistant . . .’ he felt for the notebook in the breast pocket of his blue shirt, ‘gave me a time of death, judging from body temperature . . . around nine A.M. No rigor, no permanent lividity. He waited as long as—’

‘Yes, yes. Thank you. Once I have his full report— what are the family members saying?’

The marshal turned back a page.

‘The sister, Silvana Paoletti, lives in the main part of the villa with her parents. She came to collect her nephew, Piero, aged three, to take him to summer school at 8:15 because his mother, the victim, had to work. She drove him there, did a few errands in town, drove back and came up here to her sister’s rooms in the tower, saw the body and ran away.’

‘What made her call you, rather than calling an emergency number?’

‘She didn’t. She ran out into the road screaming and was seen from the house opposite. The woman who saw her was watering the garden, and she took her inside and called me because she knows me. That was at ten thirty-seven. Then she came back with the sister and waited with her until I arrived because she was in such a state. She didn’t come up here.’

‘And who is this woman who knows you?’ He summed up the marshal’s probable acquaintance with a swift head-to-toe glance. ‘Does she work at the house across the road?’

The house across the road was smaller than this place and probably built little more than a century ago, but it was a pretty grand house even so.

‘No, she doesn’t work there. . . .’ The marshal tucked his notebook back in his pocket and buttoned it. ‘She’s the owner.’ He didn’t explain that they knew each other because he’d helped out when her son wanted to do his national service in the carabinieri. He was a bit ashamed of himself. He didn’t dine out with the people who lived on this most expensive of roads overlooking Florence. He didn’t dine out with anybody. His heart sank at the thought of the evening ahead of him.

‘And the mother?’

‘She seems to be in a state of shock. Her husband’s in hospital after a little stroke, so this coming on top . . . in any case, she was sound asleep when her daughter came back with the neighbour and went to tell her what had happened. She was still very dazed when I arrived. I could try to talk to her again tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps . . . or it might be better if I spoke to her— I imagine that, in any case, you have your station to run—Palazzo Pitti, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll see her tomorrow morning, then. No point in your wasting your time running around unnecessarily. You say there’s no husband, but I want the man in the victim’s life found—father of the child, boyfriend, whoever she was seeing. Can’t keep that sort of thing a secret. Somebody will know. Concentrate on that.’

‘Of course—and, in any case, Lorenzini, my second-in-command, will be back from holiday shortly, so there should be no problem with—’

‘Right. . . .’ The prosecutor was staring into the room where two technicians were still working, one picking through the stuff on the floor with tweezers of some sort, the other examining the sill of an open window. He didn’t seem to be following their work, just staring, thoughtful. A frown creased his forehead. The tops of two cypress trees were still as sentries against the sky beyond the window. No breath of air entered the big bedroom. Only that one window was open. The morning sun, very hot now, lit the tumbled white bed, sprayed with a fine mist of red down one side. Doors to the bathroom and the child’s bedroom stood open. The prosecutor’s gaze remained fixed, absent. The marshal could well imagine that he might be deciding to get somebody else on the case. He had no illusions about this man’s opinion of him. He knew it only too well after hearing the prosecutor’s raised voice that time after leaving his office, all those years ago.

‘The blank incomprehension of the man!’

Well, he was no great hand at talking and this prosecutor wasn’t the first to get exasperated with him. Wouldn’t be the last, either. And if he did get somebody else to take over, that was all to the good. The marshal was in a morose vein, as it was, and in no mood for treading around rich people who could cause him trouble.

‘Good.’ The prosecutor seemed to have come to some sort of decision. He picked up the briefcase at his feet and clapped his other hand on the marshal’s shoulder. ‘Right! So find the boyfriend—and bring the sister up here, once these people have finished, to check whether anything’s been stolen. Come and see me tomorrow and bring me your report.’ He shook hands and, all of a sudden, a dazzling white smile flashed across the suntan, which alarmed the marshal more than his anger had once done. What did it mean?

You shouldn’t judge people hastily, of course. Maybe he’d mellowed over the years. Fellow seemed to have too many teeth, though. And his hair was dyed.

‘And besides, I can’t do with men who smell like a perfume shop—I know you’re going to say I’m old-fashioned. Well, I
am
old-fashioned! Where the devil. . . .’ He was opening cupboard doors and slamming them shut without looking inside them properly, so he didn’t find what he was looking for. ‘Oh, Teresa!’

He stood still in the middle of the kitchen, having run out of cupboard doors to bang.

‘And don’t start on about men not being able to find things! If things were put in their proper place, they wouldn’t have to be found, they’d be there!’

The phone rang. Now where . . . damn. He’d left the portable phone on the bed when he went to shower, in case she. . . .

He went in the bedroom and picked the phone up but didn’t sit down on the bed. Bad temper kept him standing rigid.

‘Hello!’

‘Salva? Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not all right. I thought you said you’d done the shopping before you left. The salt jar’s empty.’

‘Well, fill it.’

‘How can I fill it if there’s no salt?’

‘In the cupboard to the left of the hood of the cooker, bottom shelf. Listen, Salva—I forgot to ask you last night—did you follow up on that flat Captain Maestrangelo told you about?’

‘I haven’t had time to be bothering with flats!’

‘Oh, Salva, you said yourself things are quiet in August, that it’s the best time to get things done. And don’t shout.’

‘I’m not shouting!’ But he lowered his voice a bit.’

We’ll talk about it when you get home.’

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