The Viper Read online

  Panayotis sighed. ‘Anyway, they came up with nothing, is the upshot. Rain is a bastard.’

  Then it was Parini’s turn, the cheery ginger kid. ‘We did the house-to-house –’ There was a collective sigh, and he grimaced. ‘But no one says anything. Not seen anything, not done anything, didn’t know anything. Don’t remember anything, not in the bar, not in the market square. The barman expressed sympathy for the dog and said Lotti liked it more than any human being but that wasn’t saying much – and then he shut up. Some of them just look at you through the window and shrug.’

  Ceri had been in charge of compiling the list of those who’d lived at La Vipera. ‘So far I have one dead,’ he said, frowning, ‘Chantal Buisson. She died of breast cancer ten years ago in France. One living in a religious community in Canada – Helen Mason? The phone just rings and rings and there’s no email address, but I’ll keep trying.’ Bouncing on the balls of his feet. ‘I may have a lead on Gorgone.’ And abruptly he’d sat down again, and after that they’d dispersed for lunch.

  ‘They don’t eat in the canteen,’ Pietro had said as they followed the younger men down the corridor. ‘It’s all energy drinks and gym sessions for their generation. So we can relax.’

  Now they paused before the drinks cabinet: no more wine, though, it seemed, not even the quarter bottles that used to be de rigueur. There was a row of low-alcohol beers and soft drinks in cans. Sandro poured each of them a glass of tap water from a jug and pushed the trays onwards.

  ‘You went on the house-to-house too,’ he said. ‘Who did you talk to?’

  ‘I went up to the Salieri place on the hill,’ said Pietro. ‘The old lady was there but she’s not dealing from a full deck these days. I gathered from the housekeeper she spends most of her time in bed.’

  He hesitated and Sandro jumped in, remembering something dimly involving Luisa, a wedding. ‘Any kids? The old lady – didn’t she have a daughter?’

  Pietro took a forkful of pasta, nodding. ‘The old lady’s son lives at home but had been away with his sister at some spa or something. Sister lives in town. He turned up as I was leaving, Luca Bartolini. Very civil, very forthcoming. Was in Greece in the early part of August, then at this spa at the time we assume Lotti to have been killed. Gave me the hotel names, the dates, all that.’

  They looked down at their food.

  ‘What do you think about the murder–suicide idea?’ said Sandro, reaching for the bottle of oil. ‘It would make life a lot easier, wouldn’t it? Although we’d need to know why he killed her in the first place.’

  Pietro gave him a quick look. ‘I think you’re right: he might have killed her but I don’t think he killed himself. I don’t get the sense that he was a man given to introspection or remorse – he was a butcher. But if he was going to commit a murder and then find himself overcome by his finer feelings, I don’t believe it would be weeks later. Also, in addition to the knife wounds, he had a contusion to one temple and nothing on the floor of the hut to indicate that he struck his head when he fell. And he was fond of the dog.’

  ‘So,’ said Sandro, ‘just coincidence?’ Chewing the leaves without enthusiasm. ‘I don’t remember a butcher’s in the village back then,’ he said. ‘I only remember the bar.’ He hadn’t remembered even that until that very moment. A little place on a square. A lean blue-jawed barman, a stocky barmaid. He realised that could have been Martinelli, the woman who found the bodies, an old woman now.

  ‘No reason why you should,’ said Pietro equably, forking pasta into his mouth. ‘It probably didn’t even have a sign back then.’ He sighed. ‘Lotti was retired and a widower. No children. No connection with Johanna Nielsson that anyone will admit to, although he did live in the village when she and her entourage were at La Vipera. He was twenty-five or twenty-six and still living at home at that time. He married in his mid-thirties, after the death of his parents. Wife died of cancer after fifteen years.’

  ‘And these days?’

  ‘He lived alone with his dog,’ said Pietro. ‘No history of – trouble of any sort on file. Along with a lot of other men all over Tuscany, he was interviewed over the Monster killings because he was in the right place at the right time for one of them, not the others. Although Martinelli recognised him, we did also track down a cousin for the formal identification. Quite easily, as a matter of fact, she lives in San Frediano.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sandro, chewing, already thinking ahead. ‘So first off, we go to Sant’Anna and talk to a few people, right?’ The village bar: he bet those young agents had gone about it all wrong. Maybe the barman would still be there.

  ‘Well, not quite,’ said Pietro carefully. Sandro waited and his partner went on. ‘We’ve done the preliminaries there, haven’t we? You don’t want to give the lads the impression you don’t trust them to do a thorough job. And the residents of Sant’Anna aren’t going anywhere – they can wait a day.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘You heard Manzoni,’ he said, sighing. ‘She wants you to focus on La Vipera. Those guys. And you know what Ceri said about a lead on Gorgone? Well, it turns out he lives in Modena, of all places.’

  ‘Modena?’ He couldn’t imagine it. Modena was a place of sober business and good food and sensible behaviour. Wasn’t it? More Ferraris than hippies. The last time Sandro had seen Gorgone, his hair had hung to his nipples – which had been visible because his shirt had been unbuttoned to the waist – and he had played with the ends of it as he talked to Sandro, like a child, his eyes unfocused.

  Pietro smiled wanly, putting down his fork. ‘And he runs a chain of gyms, if you can believe that. Wellness centres, all that business. Rather top-end.’

  Sandro stared. ‘You’re sure it’s the same guy?’

  Pietro held up his phone with a picture on it from a professional social media site and Sandro took it, peering.

  The hair was short and grey, the eyes behind heavy-rimmed expensive glasses. In the photograph, at least, which looked like it had been taken professionally, he looked in unfairly good nick for a man two years older than Sandro. Three years younger than Johanna Nielsson.

  ‘He’s roughly the right age, I suppose,’ said Sandro grudgingly. ‘Is he a suspect?’ Nielsson and a butcher called Lotti, lying on a dirt floor in that filthy embrace, and for a second all he could perceive as a motive was jealousy and Gorgone still her lover.

  Pietro shrugged, just barely. ‘You tell me,’ he said.

  ‘So we’ll –’ Sandro paused, hearing the lift in his voice, raising his head to look at his old partner with an unexpected bubble of exhilaration rising somewhere inside him. He checked himself, looking back down at the page open on Pietro’s phone again, the smooth-skinned silver-haired businessman, the cold eyes behind the glasses. The man’s company had an address in the Piazza Duomo, the historic centre of the city.

  ‘So we’ll go up there and interview him,’ he said, handing the phone back.

  Pietro smiled. ‘You will,’ he said, fork in his hand.

  *

  Giuli tried Sandro first but the call went straight to answerphone. She hesitated – but what message could she leave that wouldn’t make her sound hysterical or a fool – and hung up. A little girl phoned to ask for help. For a mad moment Giuli wondered if she had even imagined it. It was irrational: she’d retrieved the number and called it back and it had rung and rung. But the small frightened voice was so like the voice she had heard inside her own head for so many years. Please help me. The little girl had called Sandro: how had she got his number? She’d probably found it in the Pagine Gialle, the yellow pages, under private detectives: it was even online, these days, and so were five-year-olds. Acting out some story?

  But there was no need to leave a message. Sandro’s phone would tell him the office had called. Was it worth getting Sandro to trace the number, get an address?

  Luisa had been oddly cagey about why he was going back into the police station after all this time. Giuli had never really though
t what he did to get himself kicked off the force – giving information to a bereaved father about the man they suspected of his daughter’s murder – had been wrong in the first place, but then she had been in a position to know for sure the suspect was guilty.

  Sandro’s pride and his scruples in the years since, his pain at being excluded from a club he despised, she had sort of understood – but Giuli was a pragmatist. If you had spent time on the streets as a junkie, if you had done terrible things, only some of which you were ashamed of, you had to be very careful around guilt and responsibility. You could die of guilt quite easily, and Giuli didn’t want to die. Not any more.

  Sitting back at the desk in the warm September light, Giuli let it bathe her. Closed her eyes, feeling the fatigue like a weight. She’d try calling the number again first. Give it an hour. The girl’s voice was in her head, a bat squeak from far off, floating as though in space, a tiny astronaut untethered. Giuli’s eyes sprang open.

  She picked up the phone again but on the table beside her the mobile rang. Enzo, bang on cue. She hesitated – this was work time – and then picked up anyway.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she said.

  ‘Just checking on you,’ said Enzo, her husband of thirteen months.

  Giuli sighed. ‘I’m fine. Just a bit tired.’

  A silence. ‘Maybe you’re not sleeping, maybe it’s the mattress. Maybe it’s the job – Giuli, couldn’t you take a break from it?’

  She thought again of the tiny voice: there was no denying, it would keep her awake tonight unless she solved the mystery.

  Children called the police, didn’t they, all the time, to tell them their brother had stolen their sweets or whatever? She relaxed fractionally.

  ‘There’s work in the shop, behind the counter, you know that.’

  ‘Darling, I –’ She couldn’t tell him. She loved him to pieces, her daft, shy, fond husband, but there was no way, no bloody way, their marriage would survive working side by side, day in, day out, in his father’s hardware store on the edge of town, where the day’s excitement would peak with a pensioner’s purchase of some duck tape and a Stanley knife.

  ‘I love my job,’ she finished lamely. ‘I probably need supplements or something.’

  Enzo leapt in. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘I’ve booked you in for blood tests. Tomorrow evening.’

  Terrific. ‘You’re so – that’s so – thoughtful,’ she said, trying to sound bright. ‘Um – where?’

  ‘The big lab on the Via Verdi,’ said Enzo promptly, and she could tell he was relieved she hadn’t gone off on one. ‘Six tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ she said, dutiful. ‘Home at seven, okay?’

  ‘I’ll do dinner,’ he said and rang off, cheerful.

  Giuli sighed and immediately googled the number of the lab on the Via Verdi. He’d never know she hadn’t gone; she could tell him everything was fine. It wasn’t that she was scared – she’d reschedule, of course she would – just now wasn’t the right time.

  She’d know if she was ill. She didn’t need doctors, tests, all that.

  Her hand hovered over the phone, but the tiny voice intruded. Help me.

  Of course, Sandro would be at the police station – he could be in a meeting with some bigwig, and there she was, butting in. She felt a sweat come over her, engulfing her, and with it the desire to burst into tears. Her, Giuli, crying. Giuli who never cried, not ever, except she had, hadn’t she? On her wedding day. It was all a huge mistake. Marriage was for kids, for the young, it wasn’t for her, marriage and hot sweats, all in the space of a year. What a fool. What a fool you’ve been, Giulietta Sarto.

  When you don’t know, ask. When you need help, ask. How many times had Sandro said that to her? But Sandro was in an office with hot sweats of his own to deal with, and this wasn’t his sort of problem: this was one involving women and emotion and children and blood tests and feeling completely and utterly out of control. Help me.

  She dialled.

  Chapter Five

  IN LUISA’S HANDBAG HER PHONE, on cue, began to buzz angrily, and the sound of the motorino was louder – it was just around the bend below them. It appeared just as Maria Clara Martinelli, breathing heavily, arrived in front of Luisa on the verge, so close that she could smell sour breath. Luisa looked from her to the rider. It was the man she’d seen with Martinelli in the bar, ridiculously lanky on the tiny machine, and he brought it to a halt behind her, trapping her.

  Luisa, her heart beating so fast it hurt, scrabbled for her phone in an attempt to pretend all of this was normal, they were ordinary folk, this was a chance encounter on a country road. She tried to force an apologetic smile as she retrieved the phone, but her face was stiff. Martinelli glared back at her, mulish, the shadow of a moustache on her upper lip making her look like a tough. The man pulled off his motorcycle helmet with an easy motion and stood there watching.

  ‘Giuli,’ said Luisa into the phone, but Giuli was already off and talking in a rush, which wasn’t like her. Something about a child calling the office, something about being tired, not sleeping. ‘Giuli? Slow down.’ The man rubbed a hand through grey hair flattened by the helmet and began to walk over, slowly. They were an odd pair. He looked almost aristocratic, with his long fingers and deep-set eyes. Martinelli glared: she must have seen Luisa, must have called him. ‘Look, is it – can it wait, Giuli? It’s just that I’m in the middle of something.’ A silence on the line. Giuli in a huff – the last thing she needed. ‘Giuli.’

  ‘It can wait.’ The line was dead. Slowly Luisa put the phone away, wishing there’d been a way of letting Giuli know where she was without provoking a torrent of questions. The tall man came to a halt in front of them, the helmet under his arm, and the country road suddenly seemed very empty, very remote. It was cold in the shadow of the forest.

  ‘What do you think you’re up to, following me?’ burst out Martinelli. The man set a long-fingered hand on her arm, and in that second Luisa detected something between them, a small spark of connection, and she subsided. A couple? Not these two, surely? But something.

  The man frowned at Luisa. ‘Excuse us,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit jumpy at the moment. Not used to – tourists, you see.’

  He didn’t mean holidaymakers: there wasn’t anywhere in Tuscany unused to tourists, not even a corner as unprepossessing as this one. He was talking about murder tourism. They must, Luisa reflected, have had plenty of that back in the day, when the Monster patrolled these hills.

  ‘I’m –’ sorry was what Luisa wanted to say, but that would have been an admission of guilt ‘– out for a walk,’ she finished lamely. She’d come thinking she’d be invisible: so much for that theory. Under other circumstances she might have found it a cheering thought, that sixty years of good grooming and care over her appearance made a difference, but it was only inconvenient.

  Martinelli scoffed. ‘In those shoes?’ They all looked at Luisa’s feet. She had chosen her oldest, lowest pumps, but Martinelli had a point. They were calfskin, the heel was two inches and they were cut low over the instep.

  ‘She doesn’t look like a journalist, either,’ said the man, sounding almost amused, as if Luisa wasn’t there.

  ‘I’m Luisa Cellini,’ said Luisa, drawing herself up a little. They turned to look at her and she had to decide. She’d never been any good at lying. Sandro always said she shouldn’t take up a life of crime. ‘I used to – know the woman who died.’

  Martinelli’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Luisa went on bravely. ‘You’re Maria Clara Martinelli? You found her.’

  ‘I don’t know how you’d know that,’ said Martinelli, but before Luisa had to answer the man spoke.

  ‘Maria Clara,’ he said gently, ‘I should think most of Florence knows.’ He turned to Luisa. ‘I’m Luca Bartolini,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I’m a neighbour of Signora Martinelli.’ A smile. ‘We country people have to stick together.’

  As if. If Luisa was identifi
able by her shoes, Bartolini’s elegant manicured nails gave the lie to any pretence that he was a man of the soil. She shook his hand briefly, registering that he would be about her own age. ‘You were a friend of Johanna Nielsson’s?’ he said, watching her. His eyes were deep-set, hooded.

  ‘I met her,’ said Luisa warily. He’d said he was a neighbour of Martinelli’s: she must in that case have walked past his house on the way up. The stone archway.

  The Salieri house.

  She went on. ‘We had a – connection, forty years ago.’ The woman’s dead, she told herself. Be civil. ‘You only had to meet her once and you couldn’t forget her, I think,’ she said. Which was true.

  There was a grunt from Maria Clara Martinelli, staring down at her feet.

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’ Luisa said quickly.

  Martinelli lifted her head, slowly, and looked at her. ‘I’m sure,’ she said, brusque but not hostile now, and sighed. ‘At first, well, I had no idea what I was looking at.’ She put her hand up to her neck in a vulnerable, anxious gesture. ‘Just a bundle of clothes and him on the ground. I knew the dog straight away. And it was her property – they were on her property, you see.’ And for a second the square weathered face, the blunt fringe, had a childlike quality, and Luisa felt a pang of pity – and guilt.

  Luisa suddenly shivered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she felt it. ‘I can see how it looked. I’m not a gawker, I’m not a journalist, I just needed to – I remember those days. How it was. The Monster, all that.’ And then the words escaped her. ‘My husband doesn’t know I’m here.’ Damn, she thought, damn, damn. They didn’t need to know, for heaven’s sake. The shadow of something passed over Martinelli’s face, of understanding, then curiosity. Wondering, thought Luisa, if Nielsson stole my man back then. Not wondering if her husband was Sandro Cellini, investigating officer – so let them think that, a useful smokescreen. Not wondering if both, in fact, might be true.

  ‘I mean,’ said Luisa quickly, ‘he’d think what you think, that it’s ghoulish.’