Death in Springtime Page 5

  'How is it?'

  'They say it's deep and will leave quite a scar. Even so, it's only a flesh wound and will heal in ten days or so. I imagine it must have been a cypress tree since they prune the lower branches leaving a swordlike edge sticking up. As for her head injury, the immediate danger's past but her sight and balance have to be checked once she's able to get up, which will be today, I think.'

  'They'll bring her down to Florence in that case?'

  'Yes, later this morning. There's only the local GP here and twice a week a doctor from Poggibonsi does a round. Any seriously ill patients are usually sent to a state hospital.'

  'I'll see her later today then. It would help if they put her in San Giovanni.'

  The hospital of San Giovanni di Dio was practically next door to Headquarters, which was convenient in the case of patients who required a permanent guard or who had to be questioned at intervals.

  'I'll mention it. I suppose it depends where there's a bed. Do you think it was a mistake, sir? Their taking this girl as well?'

  'I don't know. But these people don't usually make mistakes.'

  'They're professionals, then?'

  The Substitute, too, had said, 'In that case we surely are talking about professionals . . .' And it was true that the Captain was proceeding as though they were. Even so, he only said again:

  'I don't know.' Then he added, 'You ought to get some sleep. I'll phone the Brigadier up there and tell him to send a man to relieve you.'

  'I think I should stay, sir, if you agree. I promised I would and she's still very nervous, I think. Perhaps I could at least stay until she wakes up and I can explain what's happening.'

  She was woken at seven by the night nurses who had to tidy her up before they went off duty. The officer waited out in the corridor and so it happened that, on leaving, one of the nurses in a hurry to get home said: 'You could take her flowers if you're going back in.'

  She was propped up now against a heap of pillows. Her loose yellow hair and the white hospital nightgown made her look like a sick child. The bandage round her head had been replaced by a small dressing above one eyebrow.

  'Bring them here.' She was staring at the flowers. 'Let me look at them . . .' She fingered the brightly coloured daisies as if testing whether they were real. Here and there the leaves, too, were streaked with turquoise and purple paint. 'He really was painting them.'

  'That's what upset you before?' The officer was bewildered.

  'Yesterday . . . Yes, I remember, I saw them when I woke up and I thought ... It seems stupid now but you can't imagine what it was like stumbling about in the dark and then seeing him daubing away . . . whoever heard of painted flowers . . .'

  'But otherwise they'd all be white,' explained the officer reasonably. 'There aren't many flowers about so early in the year. These daisies are quite plentiful.'

  'But all white.'

  'Yes.'

  'So they paint them.'

  'Yes. The florist brought them. He found you but I suppose you don't remember.'

  'That was nice of him, to bring the flowers. And I thought he was a nightmare or that I was going out of my mind. You'll have to move your hat.'

  He picked it up and set the flowers down on the locker.

  'Aren't you going to sit down?'

  'No, I have to leave now. They'll soon be taking you down to Florence.'

  'But won't you be coming with me . . .?' She stopped and blushed at the stupidity of the question, adding quickly, 'You work here in the village, of course.'

  'No.' It was he who blushed now at being taken for a country bumpkin. 'I work in Florence. There's a guard from the local station here outside your door. A car will follow you down in the ambulance and they'll send a guard from Headquarters to stay with you once you get there.'

  'Am I in danger?'

  'Probably not but we don't take any risks.'

  'But . . . If you work in Florence can't they send you?'

  'Send me?'

  'To the hospital where they take me—instead of people I don't know?'

  The young man's face darkened even more.

  'I don't do guard duty,' he said, 'I'm an officer. I was sent out here because we thought you probably spoke English. Your Italian . . .'

  'I know it's not very good . . . But you will come sometime ... I mean . . .'

  'I shall probably be there to translate when the Captain in charge of the case questions you.' To his distress he saw that she was trembling slightly. He saluted briefly and opened the door, afraid that she might be about to cry. He was somewhat mollified by the fact that the Brigadier's boy, Sartini, snapped to attention as he passed, well within her view.

  'What time did they find the car?'

  'First thing this morning, more or less.'

  The Brigadier was bouncing the jeep once again along the road out of Pontino, sending up sprays of wet grit and grumbling continually under his breath, this time because he had to keep switching the wipers on and off. A keen wind was puffing small clouds across the pale blue sky, blotting out the sun and sending miniature showers against his windscreen. A draught whistled through the jeep and all three men had the collars of their mackintoshes turned up. The Substitute also had a large English umbrella which lay in the back beside his briefcase and a brand new pair of green galoshes. By this time he and the Captain were accustomed to conversing against a background of the Brigadier's sotto uoce lamentations.

  'The lads searched that whole area yesterday—'the Captain indicated the vineyards and cornfields to their left—'And started on the other side this morning. They found the car almost immediately since it wasn't particularly well hidden.'

  'How much will it help?'

  'Probably not a great deal but it's a loose end tied up. It would help, of course, if someone had seen it being dumped, but I'm afraid that even if someone did—'

  'Here we are,' announced the Brigadier, emerging suddenly from his world of private woes and turning right on to a grassy track running between two olive groves. Where the trees finished the track dipped sharply down through neglected fields to a narrow valley watered by a stream.

  'Have to leave the jeep and walk from here on.'

  They had to wait while the Substitute put on his new galoshes, murmuring with a cigar between his teeth: apos;Don't want to miss anything this time . . .'

  The wooden bridge over the stream had to be crossed in single file. On the other side the ground began to slope up again.

  'And how did they get the car across here?' asked the Substitute, slowing to put a flame to a freshly filled pipe. The tobacco smelt sweet on the sharp air.

  'They'll have come by the villa,' said the Brigadier enigmatically.

  'Ah . . .'

  'We'll go back that way. I like to keep my eye on Pratesi at the sausage factory.'

  The villa came into view on the brow of the hill above them. A balustrade ran round its flat roof with terra cotta urns at each corner, outlined sharply against the blue sky.

  'Not that that's much of a road to speak of,' the Brigadier went on, 'But the family hasn't lived there since before the war—there were German and then English soldiers billeted here during the second war . . .'

  The Substitute would have been willing to bet every cigar he had on him that the Brigadier had been about to add 'before you were born'. He had been bemused at first by the scraps of peripheral information the Brigadier periodically tossed them with the air of someone indulging an already overfed dog, but now he was beginning to understand. Out of habit the Brigadier treated everybody as though they were local National Service boys who had grown up in the village and so knew every blade of grass as well as he did but who might be a bit hazy about certain family backgrounds and about things that had happened before their time. Once he had even got as far as adding 'before you . . .' and then tailed off into his private grumbles.

  'He lives in Torino,' the Brigadier offered them now.

  'Who does?'

  'The old Co
unt.' He nodded at the villa. 'There's talk of him coming back.'

  'And how does he get away with this?' The Captain looked about him with disgust. The vineyards on each side of their path were tangled and choked with weeds. The rioting, spent vines had grown black tentacles in all directions, sprouting now with fresh green shoots and hung with ghostly old man's beard. The undergrowth must have been a haven for vipers and the three men kept strictly to the path. According to the law, neglected land could be confiscated by the state.

  'That's how.' The Brigadier stabbed the air in front of him.

  At the top of the hill near the last curve of the weedy driveway that led round from the back of the villa a young man stood watching their approach.

  ''Morning, Rudolfo.' The Brigadier was panting a little as they reached the top of the slope.

  The young man had deep-set black eyes and very high cheekbones. He smiled uncertainly, showing white teeth.

  'You're down early,' remarked the Brigadier in a friendly tone.

  'I'm not down, I'm still grazing the mountain but I wanted to get some planting done.'

  'At this time?'

  'Potatoes.'

  'Good lad. Did they find the car on your patch?'

  'No, in the next field, or rather in the ditch between.'

  'The villa been searched?'

  'No.'

  'Well, it will be. Don't worry about it.'

  'The gamekeeper's got the keys.'

  'Is he in?'

  'He's gone to the market.'

  'Then he'll not be back until lunch-time. Don't worry about it,' the Brigadier repeated. 'You get on with your potatoes.'

  'Who is he?' asked the Captain as they followed the Brigadier across a wet field. Black figures could be seen milling round the ditch at the far end of it.

  'Giovanni Fara. He's a good lad.'

  'Didn't you call him Rudolfo?'

  'Seeing as everybody else does,' said the Brigadier, 'I do too.'

  The other two pondered over this morsel as they tramped along behind him. Half way across the field to the ditch where a jeep was now. straining at a rope attached to the emerging car, the Substitute lit on a possible solution.

  'Rudolph Valentino!' he exclaimed, drawing an odd look from the Captain. 'He looks just like him!'

  'And he's a good lad,' continued the Brigadier, taking this masterpiece of deduction in his stride. 'His mother's widowed back in Sardinia and there are two smaller children, a lad of fourteen who's here helping Rudolfo and a girl at home with her mother. He's struggling along at present with fifty or so sheep, growing a bit of food for himself along with his winter feed for the beasts. In a year or two he should have a decent sized flock—of course he's not normally down here this early, he only has a bit of a stable down here that he rents for the summer along with his few acres of grass and his bit of land for cultivation. His cottage is up on the mountain and he'll be grazing up there . . .'

  'Until Palm Sunday,' finished the Substitute automatically.

  'Anyway,' the Brigadier wound up as they stood peering into the ditch, 'that's how he gets away with it.'

  'What . . .?' The Captain had lost him.

  'The Count. Between Rudolfo and the gamekeeper there's just enough of the land being cultivated for it not to be confiscated. That's the only reason they're there.'

  The Captain took a look at the car's registration number as his men scraped the mud and twigs away. The fingerprint expert was unpacking his bag. A television cameraman was circling the car slowly with a hand-held camera.

  'What story are you giving them?' murmured the Substitute.

  A group of reporters stood gossiping and smoking nearby, their shoes sunk deep into the muddy field, their faces reddened by the wind.

  'There wasn't anything much I could tell them yesterday.'

  'Even so, it seems they went to the American Consulate.'

  'I suppose they would . . .' The Captain, having been at work since the call from the hospital at six, had not had time to read the morning paper. No doubt the Substitute read the newspapers at the same breakneck speed as he did everything else.

  'They're not giving you any trouble?'

  'The Consulate? No, no . . .'He didn't add that when he had first telephoned them they hadn't wanted to know. The official he had spoken to had only said:

  'There's no proof that this person is an American citizen?'

  'No proof, no. But as there was a telephone message to be—'

  'We haven't received any message.'

  'No, it was never sent.'

  'And no one's reported this girl missing?'

  'No. Nevertheless, perhaps you would inform the Consul General. If there are any developments that concern you I'll let you know.'

  The Captain hadn't insisted. It was natural enough not to want this sort of problem to deal with if it wasn't absolutely necessary. As long as they had been promptly informed he was covered for any eventuality. The fewer people he had to cope with, the better.

  'What I haven't told them,' he said, glancing again at the journalists, 'is that the released girl had a message to deliver and didn't deliver it. Before I tell them that I need to talk to the girl. Then it may be necessary to have them publish something that could help us.'

  'The contents of the message?'

  'Without knowing what it is I can't say—and it's not something I can rush because the girl won't talk if she's frightened, or she'll talk but not tell us the truth. It's more than likely that I'll ask them to publish that we know there's a message but that she hasn't delivered it and won't talk. The sooner we can get these people to make contact themselves, the better. Until they do I'm working completely in the dark.'

  A helicopter flew low over their heads and turned in a tight circle. One of the uniformed men on the ground spoke into his radio, looking up.

  'They'll go on patrolling?' asked the Substitute.

  'Certainly. They know what they're looking for if not who. Smoke coming from a normally disused building, a vehicle heading for a deserted spot. In an area like this all the vehicles and their normal movements are known.'

  'Of course.' The Substitute looked to where the Brigadier was deep in conversation with a group of men from the Captain's company. Two of the Brigadier's boys were working with them and one of them was giving a complicated description of some distant patch of ground with the aid of both arms. 'Every blade of grass . . .'

  The fingerprint man was packing up. Another technician poked his head out of the car to ask:

  'Is there anything you want to look at here?'

  The Captain glanced inside. A box of tissues, some of them crumpled, gloves, a torch, a map lying on the back seat. He took a look at the map in case anything was marked on it. There was nothing.

  'Take everything down to Florence with you. You can phone a preliminary report to my office tomorrow ...' Normally he would have said 'as soon as you can'. Perhaps it was only because of the Substitute's presence that he added, 'At eleven o'clock,' and then turned away quickly because the technician was about to protest. 'We have to talk to Piladu . . .'

  It meant going back to the village first and taking another road out. The market was in full swing as they made their way slowly round the piazza, the Brigadier leaning on the horn to make a path through the jumble of cars and people milling about in the bright but fitful sunshine. He looked for the gamekeeper from the villa among the group of men in dark suits and flat caps who stood talking between the plastic flower stall and the van selling salted fish, but he wasn't able to spot him. Once out of the village they picked up speed and took a road that would zigzag through five hamlets before bringing them to the only cart track that wound up the lower slopes of the mountain. The track, the Brigadier explained to them patiently, was all that was left from the days when the mountain villages were inhabited. There had been partisans hidden up there during the war, before you . . . but now only the shepherds used the long-abandoned houses and they went up on foot with their flocks.
By the time they were lurching slowly along the cart track the wind had dropped, letting the clouds gather. It began to rain steadily as they stopped the jeep where the track met two barely discernible footpaths.

  'Three Valleys Pass,' announced the Brigadier, switching off the engine. They could hear the rain pattering in the grass and bouncing off the roof of the jeep. There wasn't a soul in sight but the Brigadier got out and called up to his left:

  'Pil-a . . . du!'

  They waited a long time and nobody appeared but the Brigadier didn't call again. It was true that in such a solitary place anyone within a dozen miles must have heard him. He got back into the jeep for shelter. It was five or six minutes later that Piladu appeared on the mountain- side, stared at them for sometime and then tramped slowly towards them tightly wrapped in his hooded cloak. He stopped a few yards away and waited.

  'You can get in,' the Brigadier said, 'if you want to.' The rain was coming down harder in big drops. Piladu didn't move.

  'We want to know what your son had to say.'

  'He never came home.' There was no trace of his usual cheekiness, either because he was seriously worried about his son or simply because he had no need to defend himself up here where he was in his element and they were out of theirs. It was impossible to tell which from his expressionless gaze. He looked slightly past them as if they had already been and gone.

  'When was the last time he came home?' persisted the Brigadier.

  'Two nights ago.'

  'Was Scano's boy with him?'

  'I didn't see him.'

  The rain rolled off his thick greasy cloak that had strands of wool and stiff patches of dried blood down the front. The old dog ambled lamely towards them, shook his wet pelt and stood shivering beside his master. They could hear the younger dog in the distance, his bark muffled now by the rapidly descending cloud.

  'And you say he's not on drugs?'

  'I say he's no business hanging around Florence. His place is here with me.' It was plain enough now, from the glance he shot in the general direction of the three of them and the jeep, that so far as he was concerned they were just part and parcel of the trouble generated by the city, the days he had to spend queuing in the tax office, the months he had spent shut up in the squalid, overcrowded prison, the endless haggling with shopkeepers, the disappearance of his good-for-nothing son.