Vita Nuova Read online

  He interrupted himself to look in at the duty room.

  ‘Don’t put any calls through until I tell you otherwise.’

  ‘Not even your wife?’

  ‘Nobody.’ She would notice something was wrong, and what would he tell her?

  ‘Marshal? Your paper.’ The carabiniere was back.

  ‘You’re sure it’s the second edition?’

  ‘Yes. I asked. Is there anything else, or can I go for the post?’

  ‘You can go.’

  He shut himself in his office and sat down with the paper.

  There was a brief introductory piece on the front page with a photograph of The Emperor. When had Nesti got hold of that? Of course, he’d have taken a photographer when he went there before ‘to take the waters’—when? The day they’d eaten at Paszkowski’s, but what day was that? He was losing track of time. Without his usual routine, the rhythm of his daily life with Teresa and the boys, one day merged into another, a formless muddle. . . .

  Continued on page 5.

  An enlargement of that same photograph at the top and, in a box, one of the articles about Paoletti’s arrest all those years ago, with a mug shot. All that mattered was the list, and Cristina surely wouldn’t have known about that. She’d warned them about photographs, though. . . .

  He must keep calm, concentrate, read the page carefully and see how much Nesti knew—or at least guessed. But the print shifted under his gaze, and he found himself reading the same paragraph time and time again without taking in a word.

  Blackmail . . . that word leapt from the page. It was only supposition. It couldn’t be more than that, but supposed blackmail meant a supposed list of client/victims. What he must find was any mention of himself that would alert the prosecutor and Paoletti. He must read the blackmail part first, and he still wasn’t concentrating. Suddenly, he pushed the paper aside and reached for the phone. To call Nesti and just ask . . . ? To call the prosecutor and find out where things stood, get it over with? Whatever he had in mind, the number he was dialling was his sister’s. He had to hear Teresa’s voice, no matter what. It was the only thing that would calm him. He couldn’t tell her. She would hear that something was wrong, but he’d say he was overtired, that he didn’t sleep well without her. He just needed her to talk to him so he wouldn’t hear his heart beating all the time. It rang and rang. He’d apologise for not going to see the flat, promise to go, and he would go, too, and pretend to himself that things might turn out all right. But could he really cope with that? It meant ringing the bank, making an appointment with the manager, talking to the captain, fixing with the estate agent, being taken round. He couldn’t make even the first move. It rang and rang. It was easy enough to deal with the people in his waiting room as though everything were normal. They presented themselves, told him what they wanted. Mostly, they just wanted him to listen. And besides, he had Lorenzini and his carabinieri to keep everything running, and he only had to be there some of the time. The station didn’t stop running if he wasn’t. The world didn’t stop turning, but at home. . . .

  She wasn’t there. She must have taken the boys to the beach. He let it ring until it stopped of itself, and then hung up.

  Again he took up the newspaper, again tried to scan the page for his name, pushing his shoulders back to ease a painful tightness in his chest. He looked at his watch. Surely, if he’d seen the paper, the prosecutor would have called by now? No. The early editions of all the papers would have been put on his desk in the morning. He probably hadn’t seen this one yet. That gave him some time. He picked up the phone again and called the paper. Nesti wasn’t there, of course.

  ‘You should try this afternoon, after three, three-thirty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  And silence.

  Then he heard a voice he recognized out in the waiting room and opened the door to save a young and inx-perienced carabiniere from the clutching hand of Signor Palestri.

  ‘I want to talk to the marshal!’

  ‘Can’t you talk to me? The marshal’s very busy.’

  ‘No! I want the marshal! Somebody has to do something, they have to come!’

  ‘It’s all right, son, I’ll deal with it.’ Guarnaccia put an arm round the tiny old man and led him to one of the waiting-room armchairs.

  ‘Sit down a minute. Our stairs are steep and you’re all out of breath.’

  ‘Well, I am ninety-three, you know, so what can you expect?’

  ‘You do well for your age. You always manage to come and see us.’

  ‘To see you. I come to see you, and it’s not a social visit, you know. Something’s got to be done. You’ve got to send somebody. I’m frightened, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I understand. It’s a frightening world.’

  ‘It didn’t used to be like this—and if they get in, I can’t defend myself. That’s the point. I can’t defend myself, not at my age.’

  ‘No, of course you can’t. That’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘I’m ninety-three, you know.’

  He lived alone, very near by. He was fearful of a world he no longer understood or had any contact with and, though he had almost no memory at all, he never forgot the marshal. They came to their usual arrangement. The marshal promised to send a squad car immediately.

  ‘They’ll be there in minutes, so you’d better get home. If they find you in, they can check inside the flat as well as the main entrance and the street.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best but I can’t run, you know. I’m ninety-three!’

  ‘You just walk at your usual pace. If they don’t find you in, they’ll take a look outside and try you again next time round. You remember it worked out all right last time when you were worried?’

  Since he lived so near the Pitti station, the marshal’s men passed under his window in their cars frequently and this fiction of the squad car made him feel protected. Now and again he would forget and come back for the reassurance of the marshal’s voice. Where else was he supposed to go?

  The morning passed, a queue in the waiting room formed and dispersed, some dull paperwork imposed a sense of normality which was intermittently overwhelmed by a wave of fear flooding through him, almost stopping his breathing. He opened a file on the computer to write a report on the whole business. And just who was he going to give it to? In theory, where there was a conflict of interest concerning the Procura of Florence, the report should go to the Procura of Genoa, which had jurisdiction over Florence in such cases. The marshal knew this, but his faith in the whole system was severely shaken and no amount of theoretical knowledge could help him. They were all magistrates and he was just an unimportant NCO about to be pushed out like others had been before him. He would disappear from the scene. And if this report got into the wrong hands, so would those children.

  ‘Follow your instinct,’ was what the captain always said. ‘You don’t need me.’ And where had following his instinct got him?

  The thought of his commander, Captain Maestr-angelo, intelligent, calm, capable . . . maybe. . . .

  The thought was dismissed in seconds. The crux of the matter was the question of the children, and if he told the captain about that, then they would both be in the same boat, obliged to proceed and sure to be ruined as a consequence. How would that help?

  No. He wasn’t going to wreck the captain’s career. There were those, the marshal knew well enough, who’d care more for appeasing the people on that list than for any number of abused children, but Maestrangelo was a good man, an honest man such as you didn’t often find—and besides, if the army were to lose men like him because of the sort of people on that list, where would it end? His own career was probably finished, but how important was that in the grand scheme of things? It was only important to the marshal himself because of his wife and children. He didn’t have to sit in this stupid little office seven days a week. What sort of a life was it, anyway? He could find something better to do. Years ago, hadn’t Totò protested in a
fury?

  ‘Why can’t you get a proper job like other people’s dads!’

  Well, it’s an ill wind. Perhaps it was for the best that this had happened. People always said he was asleep on his feet—well, this business had woken him up, all right. Woken him up to his powerlessness, his lack of importance. He could be got out of the way the minute somebody important snapped their fingers. He’d always known it, of course, but knowing it and having it happen are two different things. A real job. . . .

  Anybody retiring from the carabinieri was welcome in certain types of job. Perhaps he could even earn more . . . perhaps not—and they’d have to move out, of course, right away. How much was there in the bank exactly? Teresa would know . . . and she’d said they wouldn’t need that big a mortgage. But how did she know if they hadn’t seen the flat and didn’t know the price—or did she? In any case, if he didn’t get another job immediately, there’d be no question of buying; they’d have to rent. He should go to the bank, but he was in no state to be talking to a bank manager. He was so tired, apart from the anxiety that was holding him paralyzed as he waited for the storm to break. Read the article properly, carefully, make sure his name wasn’t mentioned . . . Nesti wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t. That was why they’d used his credit card last night. But that first article, the one about Paoletti’s past, they’d agreed on that one, hadn’t they? What happened to that? They hadn’t run it the next day because of the gypsy business . . . two more children . . . there. At the bottom of the page . . . Paoletti’s career, his daughter’s murder and possible connections to. . . .

  ‘I give you the goods on Paoletti, you give it back to me and I write it up.’

  His name wasn’t there. He was just a carabiniere source. Thank God.

  The prosecutor knew he was involved, though, because he’d been the one to have the old articles sent over to the Procura. . . .

  Too tense to sit still, he got up and told the lads in the duty room he had to go out for a bit.

  ‘Where’s Lorenzini?’

  ‘Over at Borgo Ognissanti, don’t you remember? He—’

  ‘All right. I’ll not be more than half an hour.’

  Once outside, on the sweltering slope of the forecourt, he put his sunglasses on. There was hardly any need to worry about his allergy to sunlight today. There was some glare but the sky was heavy and it must have started raining in some parts of the city already because you could smell it. There were storms forecast, somebody had said . . . Signora Nuti, maybe . . . poor thing, dreading every shower, dragging buckets of water up her steep cellar steps with her arthritic hands. Why was life so sad and difficult? And so frightening . . . poor old Palestri. The marshal could hardly see about him in his self-imposed gloom, but he stayed behind his dark glasses for the familiar, protective feel of them.

  Some of the tourists, coming out of the Pitti palace, were struggling into flimsy transparent raincoats, the sort you buy in the street. A spasmodic warm wind whipped at their city maps so that they could neither read them nor fold them. They should hurry up and get back to their hotels—and why were they here, anyway? They’d be better off at home, safe and comfortable, instead of trailing round the world, tiring themselves out, struggling with a place, a language, a people they couldn’t understand and getting wet through.

  At the bottom of the sloping forecourt, he stopped at the newsagent’s kiosk and bought some more newspapers and a copy of La Pulce, the magazine everybody bought when they were looking to buy or sell a house, a car, or second-hand funiture. He could look at the prices of flats. There was a jobs section too. And all the daily papers had one as well. He looked over at the bank, knowing he couldn’t go in there. A retired carabiniere was standing outside on guard, shifting his weight wearily from one foot to the other, his face glazed over with boredom. The marshal’s chest tightened at the sight. He crossed over further along and got a coffee and a sandwich in the bar. He wasn’t sure whether this was elevenses or lunch because he’d lost track of time. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t even sure if the gnawing pain in his stomach was hunger or anxiety. The bar was crowded with people, mostly foreign, chattering loudly, as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Despite their noise, he could still hear his heart pounding. It was too hot in there with so many people and the espresso machine going. Wanting to leave, his sandwich half finished, he pulled out his wallet, only to find there was no money left in it. Nesti and Lorenzini between them had cleaned him out. He stood there, perplexed. The barman caught his eye and waved at him with a hand that signalled ‘another time.’ He wasn’t going into the bank, even so. He took a card from his wallet and walked along to the cash machine, remembering as he put his number in that Nesti had said he owed him some ridiculous sum of money. Well, it would have to be a cheque. He couldn’t go into the bank.

  ‘Storm’s about to hit us,’ remarked the guard, who had already retreated into the doorway. He would have liked to have a chat, that was obvious, and though the marshal didn’t know him except to nod to, he felt bad about pushing the card and money into his wallet and turning away with hardly more than a grunt. The guard probably believed it was because of the nearing storm cloud. Big drops spattered his sunglasses and the newspapers as he climbed back up the slope.

  The thunder began just as he started up the stairs. His head was aching fit to burst. The lights were on.

  Once shut in his office, he hung up his hat, removed his sunglasses and dried them with a big white handkerchief before putting them back in his shirt pocket. He sat down with the newspapers and opened La Pulce first. Shop assistants, cleaners, extra lessons, someone to look after the children, someone to look after the old, independent salespeople, must be personable.

  The phone rang. Could it be Teresa? Let it be Teresa.

  It was the prosecutor.

  There were no polite preliminaries. The mask was off. This was the man he knew.

  ‘This is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘This story is by the journalist whose articles you had sent over to me. You’re the source!’

  ‘Only—’

  ‘I understood I was running this case. You take a little too much upon yourself, Guarnaccia, and you always did. I remember you and your independent little ways. We’re investigating a murder here, not helping some squalid journalist with his career!’

  And how could he answer that? Hadn’t he said the same himself?

  It went on for a long time. It was fortunate that the marshal was given no chance to defend himself, firstly because he had no defence, secondly because it gave him time to listen to the prosecutor rather than to his words. Inevitably, though, without any feeble offerings on his part to feed the fire, the prosecutor began to repeat himself and, after that, to wind down and look for an exit line. He found one. It was breathtaking.

  ‘I’ve had this sort of trouble with you before, I seem to think. I remember you, years ago, hoping to save yourself a lot of work and get away to your holiday by trying to convince me that a murder was a suicide. But I was right that time and you were wrong. Just bear that in mind!’

  A deafening clap of thunder right overhead accompanied the slamming down of the receiver, and a torrent of water slashed against the office window. The marshal breathed out slowly. His ear hurt, his head rang, and, even so, he felt a bit better. He hadn’t heard most of the prosecutor’s words, but he had heard that his anger was fuelled by fear. Not as great as his own, of course. Perhaps alarm, apprehension was more like it. Unless he was already one of those being blackmailed, he couldn’t know the extent of the danger he was in. He could certainly have no idea of that yellow envelope in Piazza’s filing cabinet. It was true that he, like many others on that list, could get the marshal and his colleague Piazza removed easily enough, but that didn’t alter the fact that if Nesti pursued the story and the prosecutor’s name came out—with or without proof—his life would fall apart. And, knowing Nesti, he would get his hands on that list sooner or later. Year
s ago, he’d got his hands on the P2 list and was hawking it paper to paper for ages, unable find anybody with the guts to take it on. But in the end, though Licio Gelli had gone on slipping through everybody’s fingers to the last, his reign was over. This Paoletti was a similar sort of character. What made it easy for them was not just the help that money bought at a lower level and accomplices at a higher but, more importantly, the fact that nobody, nobody wanted them in the dock and talking. Of course, Paoletti was a much lesser version. You needed a war to launch a career on the scale of Gelli’s.

  Alarm, then. And he couldn’t say too much for fear of revealing things the marshal might not know. The people on that list were powerful and they had everything to lose, jobs, reputations, families, their whole lives. That made them very dangerous people indeed. What the marshal had also been listening for was how much the prosecutor thought he and Nesti already knew. So he needed to read page five properly.

  Before starting to read, he tried his sister’s number again, but there was still nobody there. He looked at his watch. Perhaps they’d taken sandwiches to the beach instead of going home to lunch. He’d try tonight at supper time. He was bound to find her then.

  He settled down and started reading. Paoletti’s past, he’d checked that already . . . the club that with such prices couldn’t make a profit, the system with the phone numbers at the cash desk. That brought it as far as pimping. With Paoletti’s history and Nesti and Piazza’s widower as witnesses, the charge would probably stick. But that other girl had disappeared. What about Cristina?

  He interrupted his reading to call Don Antonino at the safe house and explain something of how things stood. Don Antonino was a sensible man and experienced. He might be able to help. And it was good to talk to somebody.