Property of Blood Page 10

  You won’t forget, will you, Salva? You know what you are … you’ll have a talk with him tomorrow?’

  Yes … yes. I’ll have a word tomorrow.’ Include him, tell him details about the car, the hideout, Salis, and the old Sardinian band—of course, that was something that might well be considered as a separate issue from what Fusarri had called babysitting. Out of his province.

  Salva, are you listening to me?’

  Yes, I’m listening.’

  What was I talking about?’

  Toto.’

  Oh…’

  All his teachers used to say when he was a schoolboy, ‘What was the last thing I said?’ Absentminded though he was, he became an expert at dredging up the key word of the last sentence still hanging in the air when his ear was pounced on.

  Ashamed of himself, he turned and pulled her close to him. ‘I’m sorry. Tell me again.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Salva? You only get like this when something’s really disturbing you. What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘Kidnapping’s a terrible crime. The thought of that poor woman…’ She shivered. ‘Who knows what conditions they’re keeping her in, and in this freezing weather. There’s such a wind.’ They were silent a moment, listening to the moaning of the mountain wind, the soughing of the cypress trees in the Boboli Gardens, and the occasional bang of someone’s unfastened shutter. ‘It makes you realize just how lucky we are, safe and warm in our beds. Of course it’s worse if it’s a child—well, I think so anyway, and I’m sure any woman would rather be taken herself than have her child taken.’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. Tell me again about Toto.’

  They talked until late and he felt much better as he settled to sleep. It didn’t last. At three in the morning he was tossing about, muttering, half asleep and dreaming. He was getting near to pinning the problem down. It was the missing dog, that was it! And the photographer … the photographer came into it somewhere. It was too late now. Nesti and his photographer had gone home long ago. He tossed and worried for a long time until he came to a solution so obvious it was absurd. They had their own photographer at Borgo Ognissanti, for goodness’ sake. He did the mug shots in his tiny studio, went out on scene-of-the-crime shoots. If anyone should have known that mug shot of Salis was out of date, he should. At this point, the best thing was to take the dog there. The photo, when it was developed, was odd, not what you would have expected. The dog’s head hung down instead of resting back against the support that keeps heads straight for mug shots. Of course, it was badly injured and couldn’t help it. There was a lot of blood round the mouth. Still, the shot was done, that was the main thing. The Marshal strained his eyes trying to read the name and number propped in front of it. He couldn’t see so well because he was tired—no wonder, since it was the middle of the night and the wind still howling…

  ‘Write it down.’ That would be best, if he could find the light switch, get his notebook …

  ‘Salva!’

  ‘What?’

  “You’re hitting me in the face! What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing …just had to write …’

  He was asleep.

  Six

  ‘I’ve given up my course at university. I went to see the assistant professor this morning and told him. He was very nice about it but upset, too, because I’m one of his best students, probably the best he’s ever had, but he understood when I told him we were going through such a difficult time.’

  ‘But surely you’ll go back after …’ It was difficult for the Marshal to find a suitable ending to that sentence.

  ‘How can I think of that? We don’t know what’s going to happen! If Olivia’s dead, if she doesn’t come back, I’ll have to take over everything. I won’t be able to think of my own studies.’

  ‘But your brother …’

  ‘Leo won’t do it. I’m talking about the administration of this house and of the rest of the Brunamonti property. Leo’s very artistic but he thinks of nothing else, sitting over his computer drawings until all hours. He’s always asleep during the hours when business has to be done. It will all fall to me.’

  ‘Well…’ The Marshal’s eyes strayed to the large black-and-white photograph of her in her ballet dress over the desk. ‘It’s a very great pity, a very great pity indeed since you gave up your dancing to study. Could you take that up again? Even now… some exercise, some distraction, it would do you good. It doesn’t help and it’s bad for you to be shut in here the whole time.’

  She turned her head away and observed him with that sideways glance, her erect body perfectly still as she spoke.

  ‘Classical dancing isn’t about exercise and distraction. The best pupils are skimmed off and put into the professional course, which means lessons five days a week plus rehearsals when there’s a public performance in preparation. I had to give up, as many others did, because of the demands of university. The ballet mistress, who was once a prima ballerina herself, was furious about it. It’s understandable, of course. She’s trying to set up a company, and when she’s trained someone for years and they leave … She barely speaks to me if I see her in the street now. But I couldn’t have made a career of it. It would hardly have been suitable for me. And now, because of this, I won’t be able to study either.’

  You mustn’t be too pessimistic. It may take time but I’m sure you’ll have your mother home again. How did you get on with your visit to the Prosecutor’s office this morning?’

  ‘He hardly spoke a word to me. He was only interested in Patrick and that detective he insisted on bringing from London. They’re staying in the same hotel. Personally, I see no need for it. Patrick normally stays here.’

  The Marshal, remembering the frothy, transparent white garment and weeping Silvia’s remark, had assumed that was so but made no comment.

  ‘But the Prosecutor did explain that he’s set up a television spot on the news for you both?’

  Yes, he did. Patrick’s going to be with us but the Prosecutor said Leo and I should do the talking. I thought a plea for my mother’s safety would be better coming from me. I don’t know what I should wear. I want to get it right and Leo’s no help at all.’

  The Marshal was no help, either.

  ‘Oh well, I’ll ask Patrick.’

  She wore black. A very simple black suit. No jewelry except the usual ring, which she twisted incessantly as Leonardo Brunamonti spoke. Then the camera focused entirely on her. She turned her head sideways with a little jerk and eyed the camera with that alarmed, sideways look, as though it might attack her.

  ‘Poor young thing. She’s too upset to speak,’ Teresa commented, joining her husband on the sofa for the late news and handing him a cup of camomile tea.

  Patrick Hines’s shoulder was just visible in the frame as he must have tried to rouse her to speech. The interviewer was thrown but tried to recoup the situation.

  “Your brother, Leonardo, has given his message to your mother’s kidnappers, begging them to get in touch with you and let you know if your mother is alive and well, which we all sincerely hope she is. But I think you had your own personal message, Signorina … ah … Signorina Brunamonti?’

  The rigid torso, the sideways stare. Silence.

  ‘She’s terrified,’ the Marshal said. ‘I’d be the same in front of telecameras, but she managed so well with the press photographers that I thought she’d be all right.’

  ‘You don’t have to speak, though, do you?’ Teresa pointed out. ‘Not for a photograph … Look, they’re going back to the brother.’

  Leonardo begged whoever was holding his mother to treat her well and respect her as they would their own mothers. Patrick Hines was shown briefly as a friend of the family’s there to help, which effectively eliminated him as the recipient of the ransom note. No carabinieri appeared in the piece but the kidnappers would know enough to assume this could have been
set up by the Prosecutor. In fact, eliminating him was what the Prosecutor had in mind. He didn’t care for this private detective idea, though the detective himself he rather liked.

  ‘I assure you I intend to operate within the law,’ the detective said, ‘and that my presence will in no way affect your investigation. I should merely be regarded as a friend of the family—or, I should say, a more than usually well-informed friend of the family.’

  ‘Delighted to,’ returned Fusarri, ‘but in so regarding you I feel obliged to point out that friends of the family, unlike the family, do not enjoy the exemption from prosecution under Law Eighty-Two, which freezes the Brunamonti assets and forbids any unsupervised payment of a ransom.’

  ‘A well-informed friend of the family,’ the detective repeated without emphasis. He was a big man, muscular, with short hair, neady combed. He wore a thick dark blue overcoat, a regimental tie. He worked for a London agency but Fusarri saw at a glance that he had spent years with the Secret Service and said so.

  ‘MI6, yes.’ Though peaceable at the moment, there was an edge to his voice that said he would become dangerous if annoyed. Fusarri did not annoy him. He offered him a cigar and made the Marshal step forward and be introduced, happy in his conviction that no amount of years in the Service would prepare anyone to cope with Guarnaccia’s bulging-eyed silences.

  The newspapers that day ran two full pages on the Brunamonti kidnapping with a picture of Olivia Birkett in her heyday as a model. An article recounted her arrival in Italy for an Italian course at one of the many American schools in Florence and her being approached by a fashion house to model for them. She had never returned to America and, after a few successful years as a model, had married Conte Ugo Brunamonti. The photographs of the daughter, though taken in the white drawing room and the courtyard of the palazzo, were suitably trimmed and focused so as to avoid giving information about the property and general wealth of the family. She was quoted as saying that their circumstances were limited and that she hoped unreasonable demands would not be made which they had no hope of meeting. Asked for a message to her mother she said they were doing everything, everything, that it was possible to do.

  ‘That’s a lovely photo of her,’ Teresa remarked, folding the page to look more closely. ‘Is it a good likeness? She looked different just now on the news.’

  ‘Good enough. She’d have done better not to wear that fancy fur coat while saying their circumstances were limited.’

  ‘Mm … It’s not suited to a young girl, anyway. Her mother’s perhaps.’

  ‘Probably my fault. It was a cold day and I told her to put on something warm. Still, even a fur a bit less glamorous would have done—or a loden, even better. Limited circumstances …’

  ‘Is she not very intelligent?’

  ‘Oh no. Apparently one of the best students her professor’s ever had, though she’s decided she has to abandon her studies because of what’s happened.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Still, she can always take them up again when this is over. Let’s hope it ends well. What do you think, Salva?’

  ‘There’s no saying. No contact. It’s bothering the Captain because he says it’s a power game, making the family wait so long to prove they’re not in a hurry, have no worries.’

  ‘And is that what’s been bothering you, too, for days? Give me your cup … I think we should have an early night…’

  The early night helped. Though he slept undisturbed and remembered no dreams, he had a sense of having been sorting things out during the night. It often happened that he knew he was staring something in the face and not seeing it and this always had the effect of making him grumpy and introverted, at least so he was told. The best cure was a quiet, rather dull day in his own little office, away from officers, prosecutors, and the Brunamonti family, and that was what was on his timetable, for the morning.

  At eight o’clock he was behind his desk and by twelve he had received a woman who said she had been threatened by two electricians who had done a bad job rewiring her house and still wanted payment, an elderly man who wanted a reference for a gun permit as he intended to shoot to kill next time some lout attacked and robbed him outside his own door, and a boy whose moped had been stolen. When they had all gone away feeling better, he felt better himself.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed quietly, as one source of anxiety extricated itself from the general unease. An empty dog kennel, ‘you’d have done better not to mention the dog…,’ ‘with the trouble he’s already in …,’ ‘no shepherd boy will work for them, not now.’

  The Marshal sat for a while, mulling this over.

  A man like Salis, even when he wasn’t a wanted man and in hiding, spent half his time on the road, shifting stolen sheep up and down the Apennine trail, trafficking in stolen weapons and vehicles. He kept a shepherd boy, they all did. His wife made the cheese, life went on, and his cover was secure. If he was inside, the same. When he was on the run, the same.

  ‘Not now.’

  The Marshal tried to reach Captain Maestrangelo and was dismayed to hear that he had gone out to the country to start a house-to-house search and that Criminalpol had been brought in. The Marshal all but hung up before the end of this bad news. It was inevitable, he knew that. All suspect households would be checked for missing members. Somebody was taking food up to the hills and somebody besides Salis was up there guarding the victim. As Bini said, there were ways and ways of doing this checking, and police ways were not carabinieri ways, especially as the carabinieri had to go on living with the country people when the police had gone back to the city.

  ‘And, besides, it’s not them,’ muttered the Marshal to himself. ‘It’s not them because it’s not Salis. The dog…’ He’d known the dog was what was wrong but before he’d been able to ask Bini about it that woman had flagged them down and started on about the other dog. And now, where to start? The facts. Get the facts.

  Francesco Salis was wanted, as his criminal record stated, but not because, like Puddu, he’d escaped when on parole. He had served his last sentence, going grey in prison, and as Bini had said, he hadn’t sat for another mug shot because they’d never caught him for his latest job. Salis was wanted for the murder of a shepherd boy.

  When he got out to the country, the Marshal found Maestrangelo already fraught with repressed anger. It was hopeless. Upset one family and a whole clan turned against you. More than one family had been upset. The Captain felt responsible for what he couldn’t control. It wasn’t his style of doing things. It also didn’t work.

  ‘If I had the men I need …’

  The Marshal’s news was both bad and good. Bad because these householders had been wrongfully disturbed. Good because, far from damaging the investigation, it was exactly the right course—and one it would have been difficult to justify the expense of, had they wanted to do it deliberately. The Salis trail was false, as the Marshal now understood, but this search, carried out in good faith, would serve to satisfy the real culprits and annoy Salis, who might, if they could make contact, be angry enough to help them catch the enemy who had set him up.

  They drove back to the village and visited Bini. He didn’t tell the Captain any jokes but he did make his complaint about having to live with the people round those parts after this was over. The Captain pointed out, reasonably enough, that the sooner it was over the better for everyone concerned and got him sufficiently focused to give an account of the shepherd boy’s murder. Bini could tell them what no official documentation could tell them: who they were dealing with and what their motivation might be.

  During the time Francesco Salis was in prison, his flock had first been tended by a cousin of his who had later returned to Sardinia, where he had inherited a bit of land on the death of his mother. His place had been taken by Antonio Vargiu, a nephew of Francesco’s, a teenager, newly arrived, as the saying goes, ‘on the continent’. This nephew hadn’t been on the scene for long before there was trouble. Francesco’s wife soon noticed that the boy
was neglecting his work and had been seen in the village bar consorting with members of a rival clan. The boy had a heroin habit which he was trying to hide from his own family. He was being supplied by the rival clan and paying with sheep abstracted from Francesco’s flock. Stolen sheep, though earmarked, are never recovered, unless incidentally. They do sometimes turn up during the search for a kidnap victim but have been transported so far from home on the trail between Bologna and Rome that their owners are unlikely to be identified.

  The Salis clan moved in to punish the boy and his suppliers but all that resulted was a knifing incident in the village bar which failed to put a stop to the trafficking. Salis was released from prison, fully informed. He supped and slept and rose in the misty dawn to take down his rifle from behind the door and aim it at the traitorous boy’s heart as he slept in the fold. But the boy was young and agile and fear had kept him alert as he slept. The first shot hit his shoulder as he rolled away and leapt to his feet. He ran out to the farmyard, hoping to escape on his moped. The next shot ricocheted off the moped and Salis had all the time he needed, as the boy tried to kick the damp motor into life, to reload and shoot the boy twice between the shoulder blades.

  Before it was fully light he had transported the boy’s body over the hills in the back of his old cut-off car and dumped it on the rival clan’s land. Given the earlier knifing incident, Bini knew all about the matter and had no hesitation in setting out to arrest Salis. He found a great deal of blood in the yard, a moped, and a tight-lipped wife. Salis was gone and had never been seen since. Francesco’s wife didn’t hold with kidnapping but she clearly had no serious worries about this one. What she had been afraid of when Bini and the Marshal turned up was that her husband, if found during the resulting searches, would be charged with the boy’s murder. So she clammed up when the Marshal mentioned the dog.