The Innocent Read online

  They had a little chat now, then Signora Verdi said, ‘I’m going because that man in the waiting room was here before me. There’s no banister on your stairs, though. Will that nice young carabiniere help me down?’

  ‘Of course he will. I’ll take you through. And whatever you say, you did a good job. I wish you worked for me.’

  Once on her feet, she lifted her arms and gave him a little hug and, when he left her with carabiniere Di Nuccio, she said, ‘My cooker’s electric.’

  The man with the insurance claim stood up.

  ‘Come in, Franco, come in …’

  Nobody else appeared after that, so the marshal found time for the paperwork he’d hoped to avoid and a quiet talk with a new man, not long out of NCO school, who wasn’t getting on at all well lately. Nothing had occurred yet to spoil his cheerful spring mood. When he stopped work and went back to his quarters, Teresa was in the kitchen, making spaghetti alla Norma, his favourite.

  ‘I know you shouldn’t have anything fried—but it was so lovely and sunny at the market this morning, I felt inspired—and you know the shepherd who comes on Wednesdays—well, it’s not often he brings salted ricotta, so … Anyway, as long as you don’t eat too much of it …’

  He ate too much of it. It was wonderful. Of course, it’s not the sort of thing you can digest without a glass of red.

  A little sigh of contentment escaped him. Even when Giovanni and Totò started one of their interminable quarrels, he maintained his silent, beatific calm and let Teresa deal with it.

  ‘Totò! That’s enough!’

  ‘Well, it’s true! He’s useless—and anyway, it’s only because I want to be a software engineer. He doesn’t even know what it means.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t. With a brain like yours you might as well be a carabiniere.’

  ‘Totò!’ Teresa shot her husband a quick glance and added under her breath, ‘I said that’s enough. Give me your plates.’

  Giovanni gave up his plate and passed on his dad’s. He looked crestfallen. The marshal, having only half followed the quarrel, wasn’t sure why. He placed a consoling hand on his son’s head but Giovanni cringed away from it.

  Totò said, ‘I don’t want any meat.’

  The marshal looked at his wife, who signed to him to ignore this.

  Totò ate zucchini and bread. Giovanni ate everything and had cheered up by the time he was peeling his apple.

  ‘I’ll make the coffee.’ The marshal exercised exclusive rights over the gleaming brass espresso machine. Teresa started the washing up and the boys went off to their room to start quarrelling over their computer games instead of doing their homework. ‘D’you want it here or shall I take it through?’

  ‘Take it through, I won’t be a minute … the paper’s out there. I haven’t looked at it …’

  He collected the newspaper that lay next to Teresa’s handbag and the bowl of keys on the chest near the entrance. He shuffled with tray and paper into the cool, quiet sitting room and settled in a big leather armchair to enjoy that most precious hour or so before getting back into uniform. Teresa let her coffee get cold but she did join him briefly and told him a number of things without sitting down.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘What? Oh … well, whatever you think best. If you want me to talk to the electrician—’

  ‘Not about the new lights, about Totò? Anyway, tell me tonight, I haven’t time to talk now.’

  He was fairly confident that, whatever it was, she would tell him again. He never stopped being amazed by her, amazed that she should be there, looking after everything, telling him things and then, somehow, knowing what should be done. How did she know things the way she did, when he was so often baffled and full of doubts about the future? Letting this insoluble mystery go, he finished the article he was reading and then dressed with care for a visit to Captain Maestrangelo, across the river at headquaters in via Borgognissanti.

  The captain was not smiling.

  ‘I must just finish this call—no, make yourself comfortable …’ He waved a hand at the black leather three piece suite and the marshal walked across and settled down, his hat squarely on one knee. A carabiniere came in and put a tray of coffee on the low table before him.

  ‘Do you want the ashtray?’

  ‘No, no …’

  It was removed. One of the tall windows was slightly open and a muslin curtain lifted on the faint afternoon breeze. The marshal waited, watching motes of dust revolve slowly in the shaft of sunlight that was warming the rug at his feet. After a while his gaze roved over the darkened oil paintings around the walls, overspill from a crowded museum. The captain was speaking into the receiver with such measured solemnity that anyone who didn’t know him would imagine he must be talking to the President of the Republic. The marshal, who did know him, knew that he spoke like that to the humblest of his carabinieri. He liked him for it. He liked him for his quiet intelligence, too, and for his honesty and his seriousness. The only thing about the captain that irritated him—though he couldn’t have said why—was when Teresa started going on about how good-looking he was.

  —No, no … I’m not having that. No. He’s a good man but … no.

  —So elegant in his uniform and such beautiful hands.

  —Hands?

  ‘Don’t get up.’ One of the so-called beautiful hands, long and brown, grasped the marshal’s own. The captain sat down and poured thick coffee into tiny gold-rimmed cups.

  ‘So, were you able to make any sense of that business?’

  ‘Oh, yes, no trouble. The signora was quite right. You don’t get an electricity bill like that if you’ve been in Provence and … where was it … Mexico … for the last seven months. No, no. I was pretty sure it was going to be the two young men on the opposite landing. I had to go round there twice because they must have spotted my uniform from their window that first time—I think I told you—so I got her to let me in herself at the street door this time and then she knocked at their flat and called to them. Once they’d opened up it was all over. I told her to switch the current off in her flat and they were plunged into darkness.’

  ‘I imagined as much. How did they do it?’

  ‘Nothing complicated. She’d had an air-conditioning unit put in and they got at that from their adjoining terrace and hooked up to it. She said she’s not there that often so I suppose they felt entitled—you know how it is—rich foreigners putting up house prices and so on. American, is she?’

  ‘French. She was Washington correspondent for a French newspaper for some years.’

  ‘I see. She told me she’s researching a book about the origins of opera now. That’s a beautiful flat she’s got and some very valuable antiques. I took the liberty of suggesting a more reliable burglar alarm.’

  ‘You did right.’

  ‘A charming woman.’ A fine and elegant woman, too. Well, no doubt Teresa was right but he couldn’t see it. There was no response to this comment so he went on, ‘I’m afraid she won’t press charges. I couldn’t convince her. Of course, they’ll still be living next door to her and she’s alone. You can understand it, really. I think they went to see her and talked her out of it, paid back some of the money. I can’t make her change her mind and maybe she’s right, after all.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve solved the problem. Thank you. Is everything all right with you?’

  ‘Never quieter.’

  ‘And the man you were worried about … Esposito, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Esposito, yes. I don’t know … I’ve had a talk with him but I’m just not sure. He’s very distressed, very. Maybe there’s something more than homesickness there—and besides, he seemed all right until just recently. I’ll have to keep an eye on him. He’s a good man, very serious. Very bright …’

  They talked briefly about some building work to be done in the dormitories, held up interminably for lack of funds. Then they were interrupted by the colonel.

&nb
sp; The marshal’s driver brought the car to the foot of the stone staircase and they drove out through the dim cloister into the sunshine and bustle of via Borgognissanti. The marshal was cheerful and relaxed, well satisfied with a pleasant day. Only when they were driving under the archway at the Pitti Palace did something seem not quite right. An announcement was coming over the address system in four languages, warning visitors to the Boboli Gardens behind the palace that they should make for the nearest exit since the gardens were closing. The normal announcement that went out every day towards sunset. But it was only half past five and the sun was still high and warm in the blue spring sky.

  Two

  ‘And where is this woman now?’

  ‘No idea.’ The gardener shrugged, on the defensive.

  ‘But you took her name?’

  ‘Took her name? As far as I knew, somebody was drowning. What would you have done? Started taking down her name and address and date of birth?’

  ‘All right, all right. I’m not criticising, just asking.’

  ‘And I’m telling you. I’m a gardener, not a policeman, for goodness’ sake. I ran up here as fast as I could, which is what any normal person would have done. Not fast enough, though, right?’ He cast a cold eye on the green remains of a face. ‘Must have been in there a while. The fish did all right out of it, anyway. It’s an ill wind …’

  The marshal took a deep breath and advised himself to be patient.

  ‘So that was all she said? That she thought somebody had fallen in the pool?’

  ‘That’s right—no, she did say which pool, for what it’s worth. She said the one with the water hyacinths—that’s this stuff and there’s far too much of it, spreads like a weed but we’ve too much to do, so … There are a few pools and I’d never have thought to look up here, I mean, hardly anybody comes up here, why would they?’

  ‘Two people did, apparently, if not three.’

  ‘Three … ?’

  That stopped him in his tracks. You had to bide your time with a Florentine who was acting cynical and aggressive to mask any emotional reaction. The marshal was something of an expert at biding his time.

  ‘How do you mean, three … ?’ His voice had become more subdued. ‘You think somebody—you don’t think she fell in …’

  ‘How deep is the water?’

  ‘About a metre, no more … maybe less.’ He started to sink down on to the stone ledge.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t sit down there. Stand away. Did you touch the body before I got here?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I just looked. It took me a while to make out the …’ He faltered at the word ‘face’, whch was hardly surprising. What there was, framed in a mass of bulbous green plants, was mostly bone with a few slimy shreds tangled up in pond weed and floating black hair.

  ‘You can hardly see it—and you can tell by the plants I haven’t moved it.’

  ‘But you said ‘she’. You said, ‘You don’t think she fell in.’ How do you know it’s a woman, or a girl?’

  ‘I don’t know … I suppose because of the handbag.’

  ‘What handbag?’

  ‘It was on the ledge.’

  ‘And where is it now?’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit—’

  ‘Not there! Sit on that stone bench.’

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. I’m just a bit out of breath, that’s all it is. What with running up and down this hill.’

  ‘Sit there a minute and take some deep breaths. That’s it. Now then, this handbag?’

  ‘I took it with me when I went back down to my office to telephone you. I’ll go and get it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute. I think I’d better—’

  ‘No. I don’t want you touching it again. We’ll collect it. And we’ll have to fingerprint you, do you understand?’

  But the man was clearly on the verge of being sick and the marshal took pity on him. ‘Go and get yourself a glass of water and stay down near the Annalena entrance to give directions to our people and the van from the Medico-legal Institute.’

  The gardener hurried off, his head down. Once his footsteps on the gravel had faded away there was no sound except for the chinking of blackbirds, hopping in and out of the low box hedging. It was true that nobody ever came up here. A stroll around Boboli was usually an extra, somewhere for tourists to relax after an exhausting visit to the big galleries in the Pitti Palace. Somewhere, too, for students from the language schools to eat a slice of pizza, toasting themselves on the broad ledges of the amphitheatre, watched by prowling cats. The mothers of Florence had their own well-worn routes. They pushed their prams idly back and forth as they chatted on stone benches under the plane trees of the long avenue or trundled their pushchairs on the gravel to the famous pools. They showed their children Poseidon stirring the waters, threatening the orderly lines of potted lemons with his trident, or the ferocious marble Oceano, ruling his island, and bright goldfish, bigger than the pointing toddlers, who appeared out of the green gloom, hoping for a crust of bread. Nobody climbed up here. A secret place for lovers to meet, maybe … sitting entwined on that smooth warm stone. A lovers’ meeting gone wrong … or a discovery—

  This thought was scattered as his memory, with a sudden jolt, threw up a sensation of panic and of his boots plunging into a raucous, flapping sea of hens and ducks …

  Oh dear … even now he felt a hot flush of embarrassment at what would have happened if he’d been caught. Would his career in the army have ended before it began? Now he thought not, but at the time … Damn that priest!

  It had been his first posting. Twenty-one years old, stuck in a village in the middle of nowhere. The woman was probably in her early thirties and he couldn’t for the life of him remember her name. Face like a madonna and a figure like Sophia Loren. She’d made no secret of the fact that her husband was shamefully neglectful of her needs and that he worked nights. And the church was right opposite. Of course, it was jealousy that made the priest call her husband like that and when she jumped up from the sofa at the sound of his motorbike there was no way out except by the kitchen window. He’d landed in the hen pen. Hens and ducks. Feathers everywhere and the row they kicked up … that was bad enough but at least he was dressed. If the husband had arrived ten minutes later … the risks we take when we’re young …

  ‘So,’ he murmured to the ravaged skull in its green bed, ‘what risk did you take?’ It could have been drugs, of course, but he didn’t think so. The gardens were closed at sunset, so this happened in daylight. An unlikely scenario. The marshal looked about him, wondering.

  Water hyacinths, the gardener had said. Almost the entire surface of the pool was a carpet of pale round leaves and fat bulbous lumps. There was a small patch of dark-green water visible at the far side where a couple of ducks were eating themselves some space—that’s what must have jolted his memory—but apart from that there wasn’t a gap except for this small one. Spreads like a weed …

  The marshal moved well away from the body—if there was a body—and got hold of a knot of the lumpy stuff. It bobbed on the water, attached to its neighbours but otherwise floating free on the surface.

  ‘Hmph.’ Well, that was all for the experts but as the marshal dried his hand on a white handkerchief, he couldn’t help wondering, not so much that this death had happened but that it should ever have been discovered, that a face should ever have appeared from that solid green mass. He sat down on the warm stone bench and looked around him.

  This sunken botanical garden was walled with a high screen of laurel hedge beyond the wall. The pool was surrounded by a circle of potted palms and outside that began the low geometrical hedging of a formal garden. Very nicely clipped and so on, but really all this garden offered was seclusion. Whatever way you looked at it, it was difficult to imagine any reason to come here other than in search of privacy.

  —Hardly anybody comes up here. Why would they? Well, plenty of people were coming now. The marshal
could hear the cars arriving. He stood up as the van came through the iron gates.

  Two men got out and started to slide the metal coffin out from the back. They were stopped and made to move the vehicle by the photo-technician who had to take his long shots before coming in closer and saying to the marshal, ‘Is it just a head or …’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Better shift some of this stuff once I’ve done some close-ups.’ But he was changing his lens. Shifting this stuff fell to two young carabinieri from Borgognissanti.

  ‘What if it won’t come up? We’ll need the proper tools. Isn’t there a gardener?’

  ‘No, no …’ the marshal said. ‘We don’t want to risk anybody else messing about near the body. Just pick it up, it floats … that’s it. Careful …’

  But it was easy enough and soon a body was completely visible. Only the exposed face, neck and hands seemed to have been damaged, the rest, though swollen, was protected by clothing. The photo-technician moved in and the marshal, standing back with the two uniformed men, asked, ‘Has the magistrate been informed?’

  ‘The captain’s seen to it. Should we go down and meet him at the entrance?’

  ‘Yes, do. And if you don’t see the gardener who sent you up here, knock on his door, the long low building on your left at the foot of the slope. Apparently he picked up a handbag …’

  What with waiting for the magistrate and then the doctor, the sun was going down by the time the body had been removed and the marshal could sit undisturbed in his office, examining the handbag and its contents. The photo-technician had given it back to him after fingerprinting. It was his job to write a report and then send the bag in a wax-sealed box to the prosecutor’s office. He intended to take his time. A woman’s handbag was a treasure trove of information. As he sat and stared at the one in front of him in its polythene evidence sack, he remembered the first such bag to have played a role in his life, his mother’s, a sacred object, never touched without express permission. He could remember one time when he’d been sent to fetch it, though he couldn’t remember the occasion. A funeral, perhaps. The handbag, large, plain and black, only appeared on Sunday for Holy Mass or for weddings, funerals and christenings.