The Innocent Page 3

  Apart from market day, very much a shopping basket and purse outing, his mother never went anywhere. It must have been a funeral because the memory included the smell of beeswax candles. Probably his grandfather’s death. There was no body in the image, but the absence of one was palpable.

  —Bring me my handbag from the wardrobe.

  There was no need to specify which wardrobe. There was only one. Standing in his parents’ bedroom, he could hear his own heart thumping. The small low window was open but the outer shutters were closed and the air in the room was musty. A smell of mothballs mingled with the beeswax. The high bed with its crocheted counterpane and the dark wardrobe seemed to him immense and the small lightbulb with its frill of glass illuminated little beyond itself. He could remember nothing except that moment but he assumed now that if the handbag was wanted, then it was to pay something to the priest who was sitting downstairs with the women, drinking a glass of zibibbo. The men were all standing outside. He could just hear their low voices and smell a faint whiff of fresh cigarette smoke drifting up. The money in the handbag was only for church expenses. Coins were given to him and his sister, Nunziata, for the collection at Mass. They had a particular smell, those coins, a mixture of mothballs from the wardrobe, the dab of lavender scent on their mother’s handkerchief and sugared almonds, one of which they were given after Mass. They were always in the bag. They were favours saved from weddings and stayed in their little net bundles tied with a scrap of coloured ribbon. They in turn tasted of the mothballs, the coins and the dab of scent. Still, they were a treat and he was moved now by his mother’s thoughtfulness in making something special out of so little. Had there been anything else in the bag? Apart from her big black rosary and small black missal … there was something that made him shudder … a bottle … not the scent, surely—smelling salts! In a frightening green bottle, a sharp burning stink that could choke you. It had once been used when his sister fainted in church. Afterwards, she had been put to bed, writhing in pain, and from then on he remembered that smell with fear. Nobody would tell him what was happening so he listened in on the whispering women in the kitchen as they prepared camomile tea with a teaspoon of honey in it.

  —She’s come on, bless her …

  But what did it mean? Something from which he and his father were excluded, it seemed.

  He removed the handbag from its sack. It was very different from the one his memory had conjured up, very soft leather, brown with the designer’s initials printed all over it in gold, like printed cloth. Equally unlike his mother’s, with its brief, unchanging inventory, this one was chock-a-block. Listing this lot was going to take some time. He tipped it all out and fished for a document in the pile of stuff. He found an identity card. Annamaria Gori, born in 1969 and resident in via Romana, not far, in fact, to judge by the number, from the Annalena entrance to the Boboli, about halfway between the Pitti Palace and the Porta Romana. Married name Bellini. He didn’t recognise the face but these little photos they did for documents …

  ‘So, what were you doing in that secret garden?’ he murmured to the unsmiling face.

  Mid-thirties … time enough to have tired of Mr Bellini. Not very attractive. Perhaps the rest of the bag’s contents would tell him something. What a pile! The combined address book and diary, much scribbled on in pencil and various colours, contained nothing of interest. There was a dental appointment this morning which she certainly hadn’t kept. Dead three to four days, the doctor had said. He went back a page or two but found nothing that looked like a meeting with someone in the Boboli. He put the diary to one side and pulled his old typewriter towards him to start the report with its long list.

  Another address book, older and smaller, bank receipts, a fat wallet and purse with banknotes, change, a driver’s licence and credit cards. Supermarket checkout slips, long ones, lots of them, dry-cleaner’s receipt, a few visiting cards, a letter in a pink envelope, a leaflet from a candidate in the municipal elections, more receipts, restaurant, hairdresser, a very expensive fashion shop, two combs, one broken, three lipsticks, one of them used up, a large bunch of keys, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, an unopened bar of the same chocolate …

  On and on went the list, telling of a life in which there was plenty of money, little sense and no order.

  Four packets of paper handkerchiefs, two of them opened, five used and crumpled paper handkerchiefs, three plastic ballpoint pens, none working, one gold fountain pen with empty cartridge, two brightly coloured felt tips, the pink one dried out and without its cap … When the list was typed, the marshal pulled it off the typewriter and stretched, yawning. He was hungry. Lorenzini opened the door. ‘Have you a minute?’

  ‘Mm … come in.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s a document in this bag with an address—just down the road—have you seen her about?’

  Lorenzini looked at the identity card and shook his head. ‘Mind you, these photos …’

  ‘I know. I’ll go round there now—you couldn’t do the duty sheet for tomorrow, could you?’

  ‘I already have. I didn’t think you’d have time.’

  Thank heaven for Lorenzini. He accepted the sheet and signed it. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Well, I wanted a word about Nardi.’

  ‘Oh, no …’

  ‘It’s not that I’m not happy to deal with it but they’re used to you.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just about had enough of them. What’s happened now?’

  Nardi was a constant problem in his Quarter. What any woman saw in him was a mystery, but two of them, his wife and his lover, had been fighting over him for years without any business resulting. Now, all of a sudden, the thing seemed to have flared up.

  ‘You remember Monica came round to report the wife, saying she was threatening her?’

  ‘Yes … ?’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘She was right, that’s what. Nardi’s wife—what’s her name—’

  ‘Costanza.’

  ‘Costanza, right. She marched up to Monica as she was coming out of the butcher’s this morning and pasted her.’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘She’s got a black eye and a cut lip and some scratches. She went to the hospital. It’s official, and since she’d already reported the threat here, we’ll have to take action.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I know. Unless we can calm them both down.’

  ‘But didn’t Monica defend herself? She’s a bigger woman. They say that’s why Nardi … I mean …’

  ‘Yes, well, she got in a few good scratches. Long nails.’

  ‘Long red nails, yes. Oh dear … If you do think you can cope, I really ought to deal with this Boboli case. The thing would be to try and find out why this dust-up happened. They’ve been going along comfortably for years.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. It beats me, though. I mean, it doesn’t happen these days, does it?’

  ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t happen? It is happening.’

  ‘Yes but …’

  But Nardi, a retired railway employee who still performed Sinatra numbers at the railway workers’ social club, was over seventy. His thin, cross wife, Costanza, and his big-breasted ‘bit of fluff ’, Monica, were both in their late sixties. Passions ran higher in their generation, apparently.

  ‘Do your best to stop her going through with it. You know it’ll be a waste of time. She’ll change her mind long before it comes to court.’

  ‘I suppose so …’

  ‘You don’t seem convinced. It’s not the first time, though it has been a few years.’

  ‘Yes. It’s just that she says she’s trying to get on that TV programme—you know—the one where they have a judge and they settle family quarrels and condominium disputes and stuff like that.’

  ‘Good. Let them sort it out and give us a rest.’ The marshal was feeling around in one of his desk drawers where he kept a
lighter, a stick of wax and his seal. ‘I’d better get this stuff ready to go first thing in the morning. How’s Esposito?’

  ‘Just the same. The men say he barely speaks and that he spends all his spare time shut up in his room.’

  ‘Does he? Well, he soon won’t be able to do that. With any luck the builders will be starting work on the new bathrooms any day now. He’ll be battling with dust and mess, shut in his room or not.’

  ‘So will we because the builders are going to be trailing through the waiting room with their wheelbarrows. It’ll be a nightmare. Anyway, the lads don’t think he’s homesick. They say he’s been like this since he worked on that suicide case with you. The trouble is, being an NCO, he can’t confide in any of them. Oh, and Di Nuccio—who’s Neapolitan too, after all—says he’s probably in love.’

  ‘Oh, no. What is the matter with everybody, all of a sudden?’ Even the captain and that Frenchwoman …

  ‘It’s spring. Let me pack that for you if you’re going round to this woman’s house. It’s supper time.’

  The marshal made some telephone calls, the last one to his wife.

  ‘I don’t know … not long, I hope. Start without me … You have? No … no. Lorenzini did say it was late but I didn’t realise …’

  He closed up his office.

  It was a little girl who came to the door of the first-floor flat in via Romana. She was perhaps six or seven, very slight, with long brown silky hair.

  ‘Come back here!’ shouted a woman’s voice from somewhere down a long corridor. ‘Nicoletta! Let your dad go to the door.’

  The child flashed a knowing smile at the marshal and shot off along the red-tiled corridor on a plastic scooter. The marshal waited. He had announced his visit but not explained it. He had no idea whether he was here to comfort or to investigate. A man appeared from a room on the left carrying a forkful of spaghetti.

  ‘Come in. What’s it about? I’m sorry but we’re having supper. Nicoletta!’ He caught the scooting child on her return journey and ran along beside her, trying to insert the fork in her mouth. ‘Just one. Come on, just one.’ The child turned her face away from the fork and scooted off. Returning, she stopped dead and, with her triumphant gaze fixed on the marshal, allowed the fork to pass her lips before scooting off again.

  ‘Roberto! Who is it?’

  ‘Somebody from the carabinieri! I told you they rang! Come this way.’

  A pleasant and surprisingly large room with french windows on to a terrace behind and a lot of green beyond. Turning to look at him from the dining table were a stolid, big-eyed boy and the woman of the identity card. She was very heavily, if lopsidedly, made up and very much alive.

  ‘Do sit down … Marshal,’ the husband said. He didn’t say where and left the marshal to decide for himself while he wound more spaghetti on to a fork from the bowl in front of an empty chair.

  ‘You’re going to have to stop giving her chocolate.’

  ‘It’s the only thing she’ll eat. What do you want me to do? Let her starve?’ The woman poured herself half a glass of red and looked at the marshal. ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’

  ‘Nicoletta! Come back here!’

  ‘I’m not hungry!’

  The marshal glanced over his shoulder and saw the scooter flash past the doorway pursued by the forkful of food. At the table, the boy shovelled and sucked at his spaghetti, oblivious.

  Perplexed though he was, the marshal was grateful for the distraction of all this rushing about since it gave him time to rearrange his ideas. The woman had asked him for an explanation of his presence but seemed no more interested in whether he answered than in whether her little girl ate anything. He decided to say, ‘I think you lost your handbag today.’

  ‘Oh, thank goodness, I knew I must have left it at the supermarket—that’s the second time I’ve done that—you can’t imagine what a day I’ve had without it. I had to pick the keys up from the daily woman—my mother has keys but she’d already gone to pick Nicoletta up from school and take her to dancing class …’

  The little girl shot in through the door, scooted round the table and out again, always with that little triumphant smile on her face which, though she never looked at him, was directed at the marshal.

  The father was winding another forkful from her bowl.

  ‘Have you made that appointment with the pediatrician?’

  ‘I think my mother might have, I’ll ask her tomorrow afternoon. We’re going shopping.’

  The little boy spoke up: ‘She’s supposed to be taking me to football practice tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Roberto! Can you take Marco to football practice tomorrow?’

  Whether he answered yes or no, the marshal didn’t notice. The woman’s hair was much crimped and brightly coloured though very untidy, but what amazed him was her make-up. It was orangey brown and thickly plastered on, and each eyelid had a bright-green slash which might as well have been aimed at her by the child dashing past on the scooter. It gave her a wild look, though she was clearly unruffled by life and her smug, smiling expresson was a practised version of her daughter’s.

  ‘Marco, go and bring a glass for the marshal.’ The boy slid down from his chair obediently.

  ‘No, no, Signora …’

  ‘Shh!’ When the boy had left the room, she leaned forward and whispered, ‘Don’t say anything to Roberto about the handbag. He’s already annoyed about the pediatrician and I’m not telling him that my mother’s already taken her. He said she could be running a very slight temperature all the time and that’s why she has no appetite. He said he wants to do blood tests, can you imagine? I’ve no intention of letting him. I can’t bear the thought of them sticking a needle in her, wouldn’t you feel the same?’

  ‘I—’

  The little boy returned with a glass and sat down. He took a piece of bread and mopped up every last bit of sauce from his pasta dish, then handed over the clean plate underneath for some of the big frittata that was in the centre of the table next to the salad bowl. The marshal, watching him, thought that at least this fluffy-headed woman cooked. It was late. The frittata looked good and he was hungry.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have a drop … ?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Mum! It’s onions again. I don’t like the onion one.’ He didn’t stop eating, though.

  ‘Well, I can’t help that.’

  ‘Why can’t you tell Miranda I don’t like onions?’

  ‘I have told her.’

  ‘Well, tell her again.’

  ‘Do you want some more?’

  While she was serving him another large slice, the little girl came skipping in and started dancing round the table with a bar of chocolate in her hand, followed by her worn-out father who sat down in front of a bowl of pasta which must, by now, have been quite cold. The marshal, knowing he was going to have to get this woman into his office, away from the husband, if he wanted to get any sense out of her, stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry to have had to disturb you.’ The husband was getting to his feet.

  ‘No, no … I’m sure the signora will show me out as she’s finished her meal …’

  He looked grateful. Through a mouthful of cold spaghetti he said to his wife, ‘What was it about, then, did you witness a road accident or something?’

  ‘Your wife could be a witness to an accident, yes … nothing to worry about. Excuse me.’

  At the door, he turned his gaze on the woman in what he hoped was a threatening manner. ‘Signora, you didn’t leave your handbag at the supermarket. It was found by the pool in the upper botanical garden in Boboli.’

  Until then, he hadn’t suspected her of anything more than woolly-headed selfishness and chronic laziness, but now her eyes were suddenly glittering and her face under the plastered make up flushed dark red. ‘If I didn’t leave it at the supermarket, somebody stole it. At the checkout when I was packing my stuff. They must have done. I saw a bunch of people the
re who looked like Albanians to me.

  If you found the bag in the Boboli they’ll have dumped it there when they’d taken what they wanted. That’s what they do, isn’t it? Were my keys still in it? Because if they’re not I’ll have to be in when Miranda comes every morning until my mother gets some new ones made for me—she’ll have to do it because I’m not telling Roberto. Did you notice if they were there?’

  ‘Yes, Signora, they are.’

  ‘Well, you could have brought the bag with you, couldn’t you? Saved me all this trouble.’ It was fortunate that she was saying all this in an aggressive undertone so the husband wouldn’t hear, otherwise she would have raised her voice to him. How did her husband stand her? The marshal considered himself a patient man but Roberto was a saint.

  ‘Signora, I’d like you to come to my office in the carabinieri station at Palazzo Pitti to sign for and collect your handbag. Not tomorrow because I shall have to get the magistrate’s permission to release it.’ He said this slowly and quietly, more calm and expressionless even than usual. Anyone who knew him would have been alarmed by this.

  ‘What a pain! And, in any case, it won’t be before eleven because I’m going to the hairdresser’s the day after tomorrow and she’s redoing my streaks, I want them blonder. It costs a fortune to have them done and it takes so long it’s exhausting, so at least they should show up—’

  ‘And when we’re in my office, Signora, you will tell me the exact circumstances in which you discovered what you thought to be a drowned person and why you left after mentioning the fact to a gardener.’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t a drowned person? Was it a dog or something? It was something disgusting, anyway—oh, well, never mind.’ Had he been of a more manageable size he had no doubt she would have pushed him bodily out of the door, which she slammed behind him. What an awful woman!

  ‘So what does she do all day, then?’ The light was on in the warm kitchen. Teresa cut him another slice of bread and sat down to keep him company. She was fascinated.