Some Bitter Taste Page 5

  ‘Let’s hope, at least, that what happened to the pregnant girl will be the saving of her friend.’

  “You’re very sanguine,’ the captain said. ‘I’ll be content if she turns up to testify.’

  ‘She’s in a safe place?’

  ‘Oh, yes. In a convent.’

  They were in Via Maggio and the marshal remembered. ‘Drop me here, would you? I want to cut through Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti. I’ve a call to make there.’

  There are some things we can’t explain to ourselves, though if we knew how to read the signs they are surely there. Standing in the exhaust laden heat with the evening traffic of Via Maggio roaring at his back, the marshal looked up the ginnel to a sliver of the Pitti Palace, its pale stones rosy in the sunset. His stomach tightened and a thought flashed through his mind. ‘I’ll need to call the fire brigade.’ The thought vanished. He didn’t react to it, much less act on it. He had to force himself to start walking up there. Torn between the urge to hurry and his reluctance to move at all, he walked at a perfecdy steady pace, his face expressionless behind dark glasses. He felt as though he were walking in a cloud of cotton wool which prevented him from registering noise or movement. Yet there was noise and movement, he knew that. A child directing a tricycle towards him on the slope, mouth agape with excitement, a mother, hand held high, behind. A boy poised on a moped that wouldn’t start, a blue cloud almost hiding him. Another thought flash: ‘There’s no use blaming myself.’ He didn’t know the numbering but the group that had collected outside an antique shop on the left drew him toward it. Only when one of the women there looked round and then touched the man next to her and pointed at him did the cotton-wool cloud dissolve. The moped roared away, the mother cried out, and the marshal stopped the tricycle as it came straight at him.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Marshal! Thank you so—you little monkey! Just wait till I get you home!’

  When he reached number 4, the woman who had pointed said, ‘We called 112. We were expecting a car.’

  ‘You did right. They’ll be here.’

  ‘Marshal Guarnaccia, don’t you remember me? Linda Rossi.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I remember.’ He didn’t remember her but he understood. ‘So, you live above Signora Hirsch, is that right?’

  ‘On the top floor. I hope I did right but I was worried. You see, she—’

  ‘Come in with me.’

  It was a small but well-kept staircase. Dark. The marshal removed his sunglasses so that at least he could make out the yellow glow of a lightbulb in a small lantern if nothing much else. The second-floor door was fluted and had shiny brass fittings. The stink of decomposition was overpowering and the woman beside the marshal retched.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’

  ‘Go up to your flat.’

  She scurried upstairs, heaving.

  The marshal peered at the door. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on it, as far as he could see; entry would have to be made through a window so as to open up from inside, they would need a ladder crew. The rest was for Forensics to check. A snake of foul-smelling liquid was oozing from beneath it. He called the fire brigade.

  Four

  She lay on her back, head near the door, one foot pointing down the short tiled corridor, the other twisted beneath her torso. Her left arm was stretched outwards, her right hand clutched to her breast. Her chin was tipped up as though she were trying to see who was coming in the door behind her but the face wore a dark and iridescent mask that flickered in quiet concentration. There were tinier movements in the stickiness under the eyelids where already new life fed on her spent one. The flies rose from her, buzzing angrily as the marshal pushed the door with a gloved hand as far as it would go and stepped inside. Before they settled again he saw the bluish mouth twisted in a grimace and the throat wound alive with maggots.

  The marshal stepped over her extended arm, avoiding the coagulated blood that had flowed as far as the skirting board and collected there and the thin stream of viscous liquid oozing towards the landing. The patch of blood was very large. A carving knife lay on the floor near the open kitchen door.

  In the few moments of peace given him between the fireman’s opening of the door and the arrival of squad cars, the prosecutor, photographer, forensics, the marshal superimposed other images on the one before him: Signora Hirsch coming in as he had done, looking down. 'A knife. Not a bread knife but it was a kitchen knife.’ Signora Hirsch sitting opposite him in his office, the fear that flooded through her body when he’d asked about a smell. Had she smelled it again as she opened her door for the last time? The only smell now was coming from her dead body.

  He held a clean folded handkerchief over his mouth, remembering her pleading look as she told him she had been depressed but that she wasn’t mad. He had known mad people in his time. The year when the asylums were officially closed down, people institutionalised for decades were thrown on the mercy of their families or of the world at large. He knew well enough that there were people capable of slitting their own throats, setting up a scenario like this to prove their own stories. They needed help and pity wouldn’t help them. The marshal was under no illusions. He did wish he had visited her earlier in the week but only because it might have offered her a few moments of human comfort, not because it would have made any impression on whatever process was working towards its conclusion in her life.

  ‘Evening, Marshal. Could you … ?’ He stepped out of view as the photographer started taking his long shots from the doorway. The kitchen wasn’t very big. A bit old-fashioned, very clean. The knives, excepting one, stood in a wooden block near the draining board. The sitting room had an old-fashioned air, too. Of course, she wasn’t young, but still … The reason became clear soon enough. There were two bedrooms and she slept in the smaller one, book and tissues on the bedside table. The master bedroom was unused. A gold satin bedspread covering an otherwise unmade-up bed. Her parents’ house, then. She’d mentioned her mother, her mother’s death. Depression. 'I’m not paranoid.’ Might be worth finding out the circumstances of the mother’s death.

  ‘You finished? Turn her over then, will you?’ A lot of clattering. ‘Bag the knife.’ ‘No journalists yet! I said no …’

  The precious moments of peace were over. The echoes of Signora Hirsch’s voice faded. The atmosphere, suspended since the moment when the murderer shut the door behind him, evaporated. The house became a crime scene and the woman a corpse. Flash—a corpse showing position relative to door. Flash—close-up, corpse only. Flash—throat wound and surrounding bloodstain. Flash—close-up, wound only. Flash—decomposition signs—body orifices, mucous membranes. ‘Rectal temperature …’ The doctor’s voice. ‘Got to be at least forty-eight hours, probably more, but in this heat…’

  The prosecutor appeared on the landing. He looked about fifty. He wasn’t tall but there was something stylish about him. The marshal, running an eye over the striped short-sleeved shirt, pale linen trousers, and glossy shoes, put it down to money and to the jacket swinging on his shoulders, the fine leather briefcase, much battered, and the tiny unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth. He had never seen this man before, which made him apprehensive. He watched him as he spoke to the doctor. Then their eyes met.

  ‘Ah, Marshal—Guarnaccia, isn’t it? How did you happen to be here?’ Oddly enough, the one reassuring thing about him was the little cigar. Reminded him of Prosecutor Fusarri, a strange and anarchic character but a familiar one.

  The marshal, with his tendency to think he could only be in the way during any important investigation, gave a brief explanation and made to retreat back to his little office, stolen mopeds, and missing cats.

  ‘Excellent. No reason why you shouldn’t handle this—and, of course, it’s your patch so no doubt you know her neighbours, valuable witnesses, and so on. Carry on, Marshal.’

  The marshal sighed as he started up the stairs to the top-floor flat. He had no objection to carrying on but he had a feeling that there was more to this
faith in his competence than a three-second encounter could warrant. The emergency call had gone to Borgo Ognissanti and he saw Captain Maestrangelo’s hand in this somewhere. That remark about knowing the neighbours gave him away. He wasn’t wrong. Neighbours it was, then …

  ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You deal with so many people. We’ll never forget your help, though.’

  ‘How long have you been living here?’

  ‘Just over two years. My husband’s doing very well. You remember, he’s an architect—no, of course, why should you—’

  ‘I do remember now. He was a still a student back then.’ He remembered the tiny flat where most of the space was taken up by the husband’s drawing table. ‘Do you own this flat?’

  ‘Yes—or at least we will when we finish paying for it.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He remembered now that there had been some trouble about an eviction, which in turn reminded him of Signora Hirsch’s anonymous postcard. ‘Do you happen to know if Signora Hirsch owned her flat?’

  ‘I don’t, I’m afraid. She was very pleasant and kind but a bit…’

  ‘Reserved?’

  ‘That’s it, yes. Reserved. Not the sort to stop and gossip on the stairs. Lisa—my little girl—said she talked a lot to her, but perhaps she was more at ease with a child.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I remember Signora Hirsch mentioning that you work, and that your little girl sometimes spent a bit of time with her.’

  ‘Lisa’s twelve but we don’t like her to be alone in the house. Signora Hirsch always treated it as a social visit. She didn’t want to be paid. She said once that since losing her mother she missed having someone to look after. Marshal, tell me the truth. She is dead, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she’s dead.’

  ‘I knew it. I told Signor Rinaldi but he wouldn’t listen to me—typical of that kind of man if a woman tries to tell them anything—said I was exaggerating, though the smell was strong enough on his landing—he has the shop on the ground floor and lives on the first. As if a respectable, refined person like Signora Hirsch would go away leaving her rubbish bag behind the door—that was his story—but he had a snooty attitude towards her. I think they had a bit of a row. Rubbish bag, indeed! Oh, I know people do but never in this world would she—in any case, she wasn’t going away. She would have told me. I count on her for Friday afternoons, you see, for Lisa. I do freelance editorial work for a publisher so I work at home but I do occasionally have to go in, like this afternoon, so I went and rang her bell and saw—oh …’ She covered her mouth and nose with her hand as though the smell still clung there. ‘She was in some sort of trouble, you know. I told her to go and see you but I don’t know whether she did.’

  ‘Yes, she did, but I can’t say I understood what was going on. When did you last see her?’

  ‘Last Sunday.’

  ‘You’re quite sure about that?’

  ‘Positive. We’d driven out to the country for lunch at the house of some friends of ours. They’re doing a cottage up. It’s nowhere near ready but they work on it on Sundays. My husband’s helping them a bit so we sometimes join them for Sunday picnic lunch. We didn’t come home until going on for seven and we overtook Signora Hirsch on the stairs.’

  ‘Did she mention where she’d been?’

  ‘Yes, to her brother’s. She sometimes visited him for an hour or so in the afternoon, more often lately, I think.’

  ‘Did she ever mention his name?’

  ‘Not that I recall, no.’

  ‘Did he ever come here?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. I never saw him. But what I wanted to tell you was that we’d no sooner got in and shut our door than the phone rang. It was Signora Hirsch in an absolute panic, saying there’d been somebody in her flat. It wasn’t the first time. My husband went down and when he didn’t come back right away I followed him. She was in a terrible state. I asked her if there was something she could take to calm her down. I’ve always noticed that she takes the stairs very slowly and wondered if there wasn’t something … Anyway she took some medicine but she wouldn’t go to bed, saying she preferred to be on the living room sofa with the television for company. I advised her to go and see you as soon as possible and she promised she would. I never saw her again.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen anyone, any stranger, on the staircase recendy?’

  ‘No, never. The flat just below us is empty at the moment and there’s very little movement in this building other than Signor Rinaldi’s furniture being shifted between the shop and his first-floor flat, where he sometimes stores things because he’s so short of space. I’ve certainly never noticed any strangers on the stairs or hanging about on the second-floor landing.’

  The marshal looked at his watch. ‘I suppose I’ll find this Rinaldi in his shop at this hour.’

  ‘No, not today. When I saw him and we were talking about calling the carabinieri, he was on his way out. He works alone, you see, so when he goes out buying or visiting the antique fairs he has to close the shop except very occasionally when he finds someone to look after the place for him. There’s no one there today.’

  ‘I’ll have to come back, then. Now, what about when Signora Hirsch’s mother was alive? Did they have visitors then?”

  ‘Oh, that was well before we moved in. We’ve only been here a couple of years and I gather that this flat, like the one below, was on short lets before, usually to foreigners, people here for the academic year, that sort of thing. I know that because it was Signora Hirsch herself who said she was glad we’d taken the flat and that now she’d have permanent neighbours, a bit of company. What—I suppose I shouldn’t ask you but—I mean was I right about something being wrong with her? Was it her heart?’

  ‘I can’t tell you much. There’ll be an autopsy, but it will be in the papers so you’d better know now: It looks as though she was attacked.’

  ‘Attacked? You mean somebody really did get in? Was she murdered?’

  ‘We don’t know yet exactly what happened.’

  ‘But is it safe? I mean for Lisa? I’m sorry … it’s the shock, it’s only just sinking in.’ Her hands were shaking and she tried to cover her nervousness by affecting to tidy the sitting room, which was already tidy. ‘Perhaps you want to sit down … I have to sit down. Feel a bit odd. Sorry.’

  She sank into an armchair and the marshal stood beside her, holding her shoulder steady with a large warm hand. ‘Will your husband be home soon?’

  ‘He never gets back before nine.’

  ‘Call him and tell him to come home. The little girl is in?’

  ‘She’s in her bedroom doing her homework.’

  ‘Well, you get on with whatever you would normally be doing.’

  ‘I should be getting supper on.’

  ‘Then do that. You have nothing to fear. The second-floor flat is full of people and I shall certainly be there until your husband gets home and will come up later to see that you’re all right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As she let him out, a voice on the stairs below was calling, ‘Marshal? Is that you, Marshal? There’s something you’d better have a look at!’

  He hurried down, hat in hand. The men in Hirsch’s flat were grouped round an open cupboard set in the left wall of the entrance. There was a coat rail in there but most of the outdoor coats which had hung there had fallen from their hangers. Whatever had taken up most of the space behind had been torn from the wall and the resulting mess of dust and plaster swept onto the piles of coats. A red-handled sweeping brush had been thrown in and had fallen out when the cupboard was opened.

  ‘Makes the scenario pretty clear,’ remarked the prosecutor, pointing at the gaping hole with his little cigar ‘By the look of it I’d say there was a safe there. They no doubt threatened her in the hope of learning the combination but she didn’t give it up.’ He glanced around him. ‘Wouldn’t have thought she possessed anything worth her life. Of course, you know more about the victim, Marshal.’


  ‘Not a lot…’

  ‘They’re still fingerprinting. Come out on the stairs. They’ve finished out there.’ When they were out he lowered his voice. T wish I could light up. Would be an improvement on the smell at least. Right, tell me all.’

  The marshal told all, including the kitchen knife story, the postcard, and the smell of cigars. The prosecutor removed his, looked at it with a brief smile, and popped it back in his mouth. ‘Never mentioned a safe?’

  ‘No, but the top-floor neighbours might be able to help there. It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘I’ll accompany you.’

  ‘I don’t think … it’s a child, you see—might be a bit overawed by someone of your importance.’ If the prosecutor had doubts about what he really meant, the marshal felt sure that he would choose to think himself important rather than imagine he might not be too good with children. The prosecutor let him climb the stairs alone. Signora Rossi must have recovered her equilibrium because there was a good smell coming from the kitchen.

  Lisa Rossi, looking up from her exercise books, looked and acted nearer fifteen than twelve but the marshal assumed that meant he was getting old. Her figure was light and pretty and only a thickly concealed rash of teenage spots indicated her immaturity. Pop stars stared sullenly from posters all over the walls of the tiny room. Soft toys sat in line on the single bed.