A Murder in Tuscany Read online

  And so when, a good ten minutes later, Luisa’s key turned in the lock he was still standing there in the hall in his coat, bag in hand, drained of any kind of volition. Was it just tiredness? He’d been up very early. That, anyway, was the face he presented to Luisa.

  She was alone; there was that, at least. What had he expected? Of course she was alone.

  ‘What are you standing there like that for?’ Luisa said, frowning, hanging up her coat. She had make-up on; it looked better on her than it had on Giuli. Dark eyes, strong mouth; she’d always had good skin.

  ‘Sorry, cara,’ he said, fumbling with his own coat. ‘Worn out; maybe I’m coming down with something. Just got back.’ Luisa eyed him narrowly, and he regretted the suggestion he might be under the weather. She’d think it was a bid to keep her at home. ‘I was going to put on some pasta,’ he said.

  With a tut Luisa bustled past him, and he smelled a gust of her scent. Like a Pavlov’s dog, he felt himself submit to her presence.

  ‘I’ve already eaten,’ she said in exasperation, turning the tap to fill a saucepan, her gloves still on. ‘I thought you were coming later?’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘Giuli – well, I got Giuli to take over.’ He wasn’t going to say it had been Giuli’s idea; he wished it hadn’t been, now. ‘I’ll do that, you sit down.’ Gently he edged her away from the sink, set the pan on the stove. He wasn’t hungry at all; he could see that this new situation required a new approach from him, and this was all he could think of.

  ‘I wanted to see you.’ He hesitated, thinking of what he really wanted to say, and not saying it. ‘You’re going away. It’s so – so sudden.’

  Luisa subsided into her chair, pulling off her gloves. ‘And I’m at work all tomorrow,’ she said warily. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sandro, keeping his voice even. ‘If you don’t think it’ll wear you out.’ In frustration he turned away from her and took a garlic clove from a small terracotta dish, peeled it, chopped it, crushed it. Set the frying pan on with oil, pressed a fistful of spaghetti down in the boiling water. Even Sandro knew how to make spaghetti all’olio aglio e peperoncino; even the most old-fashioned of men had that in their repertoire along with pasta pomodoro.

  ‘There’s always Sunday,’ she said vaguely, sounding distracted. Turning to observe her, he saw she was looking for something in her handbag, a half-smile on her face.

  And before he could stop himself, Sandro found himself saying, ‘Giuli saw you having lunch with Frollini.’ And heard the accusation in his voice. Luisa looked up at him, startled.

  ‘She saw me?’ she said. If she hadn’t been his wife he might have had a better idea of whether the confused expression she offered to him held a trace of guilt, but as it was, he had no idea.

  ‘In Rivoire,’ he said shortly, turning back to tip some chilli into the frying garlic. The room filled with the sweet, spicy scent. He turned the gas off carefully, not wanting to burn it. ‘Any parsley?’ he said. Luisa reached into the fridge and gave him a handful of sprigs.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, her face hidden again, back down into the depths of her handbag. ‘It was quiet,’ she said, ‘and we had the trip to discuss.’ She looked up at him. ‘He’s a busy man; we had to make time.’

  Sandro didn’t believe in coincidence. ‘Looking for something in there?’ he asked. He wanted his voice to be easy and kind, but all he could hear was petulance. He turned to the stove, took the pan, drained the pasta, tossed it sizzling into the oil and garlic and chilli, set it on the table, took out a bowl and a fork and a napkin, poured himself a glass of last night’s Morellino. Touched none of the food, but drank the wine.

  ‘Just my mobile,’ said Luisa. ‘I must have left it in the shop.’ She settled the bag in her lap, both hands on top of it and either accidentally or deliberately shielding its contents from him, and finally she met Sandro’s gaze.

  ‘What’s going on, Sandro?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is something the matter?’

  And now his opportunity presented itself so baldly, Sandro wasn’t ready.

  His mobile rang in the hiatus, and he took it out, stared at the screen; Luca Gallo, it said. Damn the man; he let it ring a few times, then pressed reject.

  ‘The Bellagamba case,’ he blurted, not having the faintest idea what he was going to say next. ‘It’s a worry. The girl’s in bad company.’

  Luisa stared him down, not buying it. ‘And you’re the man to sort her out?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ said Sandro. On an empty stomach, the wine was not helping matters one bit.

  ‘I mean,’ said Luisa, hands still resting on top of her bag, ‘that you’re behaving like an idiot. If there’s something the matter, then tell me, don’t just sit there getting drunk and making snide remarks.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sandro, setting the glass down harder than he’d intended to and slopping wine on the tablecloth. ‘Are you really going to New York with Frollini? Are you – ’ he hesitated, then took the plunge. Too late. ‘Is there something going on between you?’

  There was a long, cold silence.

  Slowly Luisa stood up, setting her bag on the table between them, brushing at her front for invisible crumbs. ‘Something going on?’ and the mocking note in her voice cooled his blood instantly.

  ‘I – I – ’ Sandro felt the wine fumble with his tongue. Felt his own stupidity like a fog in which he was blundering. Because he didn’t know, he didn’t even know what he was asking. He looked at her helplessly, but she didn’t take pity on him, not this time.

  ‘Do you think I am going to deny anything?’ Luisa said, holding herself quite still. ‘To provide you with witnesses or proof, to show you my appointment book in New York or bring Frollini in here to explain precisely the nature of our relationship?’ Pale and terrifying and handsome, she held his gaze, and the worst of it was, he was still thinking, she could be bluffing, this could be a cover.

  ‘That would be fun, wouldn’t it?’

  He said nothing; she didn’t want him to speak; he stared at the congealing pasta, the stained tablecloth. Her handbag sat there, inviting him to up-end it, searching for clues. He averted his eyes.

  Luisa leaned down to make him look at her, and when he raised his head she spoke. ‘Do you know what they say?’ she said. ‘That counselling they insisted I have? They said it can have unexpected side-effects, this kind of illness. The thought of your own – mortality, or something. Women up sticks and travel the world, some of them. Run off with younger men; take up painting or write novels. Of course, some of them just sit at home and wait to die. But I’m not going to die, Sandro.’

  ‘No,’ he said helplessly. ‘I know you’re not.’ But he didn’t know, not yet. Was he more afraid that she would leave him for Frollini, than that she would die?

  Luisa stared at him, then swept the bag off the table and into her arms. He wished she had not done that.

  ‘No, Sandro,’ she said. ‘Do you know what I think?’ He bowed his head. ‘I think a little time apart wouldn’t do us any harm.’ And she was gone, closing the bedroom door behind her.

  Within ten minutes of Sandro leaving, Giuli had managed to make herself less visible. Her first worry had been that if she stayed in the corner on her own the Indian doorman or one of the waiters would have her down as a hooker and have her out on her ear, but either they didn’t notice, or they didn’t care. She’d ordered a Coke from a waiter and he’d just taken her money and brought her the drink on his grubby tray. And in her jeans and biker boots, it could be that these days Giuli actually looked like a normal girl, in the right light.

  All the same, when a pair of English girls sat down at the other end of the banquette, giggling stupidly on hash, she edged into their orbit, for camouflage. One of them looked at her with fleeting distaste, as if she was trying to sell them something. Not me, baby, she thought, keeping her temper.

  Giuli concentrated on sipping her drink slowly, gazing into the
distance as though thinking deep and stoned thoughts. What she was really thinking about, as she kept Carlotta in her sights, was what she had seen as she zipped past Rivoire on the motorino, wobbling as she slowed, catching a glimpse of Luisa’s familiar profile.

  Next door to her place of work, sitting in the window having lunch with her boss. Of course she wasn’t having an affair, and Sandro would know that by now. He’ll have talked it over with her, she’ll have laughed him out of the kitchen. Giuli felt a kind of terror; was this what it was like, she wondered belatedly, for all those kids she’d used to envy, the kids with a house and two parents, when they hear them arguing and wonder if they’re going to get divorced?

  She and Frollini, they’d known each other thirty years or more, hadn’t they? It occurred to Giuli that Luisa had known her boss as long as she’d known Sandro; since she was not much more than a kid. And the illness had changed her; it had slimmed her, made her eyes bigger and darker, given her a kind of restlessness she’d never had before. Had her boss looked at her and seen her differently, all of a sudden? Had she looked at him? With his tan and his beautiful suits and the big gold ring on his little finger, so rich, so comfortable, so easy.

  This was crazy. Giuli squeezed her eyes shut to stop her train of thought and when she opened them Carlotta was on her feet. She wove her way downstairs alone, leaving her bags and coat on her seat, and Giuli, taking hers with her, followed the girl without attracting a single glance. Ladies’ room, she guessed; and not before time.

  Which had turned out to be behind the tiny leopard print-hung entrance and not so much a ladies’ room as a smoking room; a carpeted lobby with two gold-tiled washbasins and a lavatory cubicle off the far end, the whole set-up perfectly decent, and with Carlotta Bellagamba perched dreamily on the washbasins, and swinging her legs. Smoking a joint.

  Bingo.

  These kids. The thought of Luisa and Sandro nagged at Giuli, soured her stomach.

  The girl smiled sleepily at Giuli from under her curls, and Giuli smiled back. And when Carlotta held the joint up to her vertically, she knew she shouldn’t say anything, but she did.

  ‘No thanks,’ Giuli said, still smiling. ‘It’s not good for you, that stuff.’

  Carlotta shrugged, and slid off the washbasin. ‘Feels good, though,’ she said, taking a deep drag. The carelessly rolled paper glowed bright; the girl didn’t even know how to roll a joint properly. But Giuli wasn’t going to point that out to her.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Giuli, then shut up. Wondered what Sandro was going to say to the parents tomorrow; whether he was going to take the money and wash his hands of the girl.

  ‘That your boyfriend?’ she said eventually, nodding upstairs. Carlotta flushed. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Giuli shrugged.

  From behind the door came the cascade of a faulty flush, and one of the English girls emerged with a blush of scarlet on her cheeks, like a doll. She brushed past them without washing her hands.

  Giuli nodded towards the cubicle but Carlotta Bellagamba shook her head, holding up the joint. Giuli had no choice but to go in, locking the door behind her; after two, three giant Cokes, it was just as well. But when she came out, Carlotta wasn’t there any more.

  At the gold-tiled basin Giuli washed her hands with deliberate care, eyeing herself in the mirror. She didn’t want just to rush back out there and blow what cover she had.

  The lower room was empty when she emerged and in the entrance the Indian doorman was sitting absorbed in his cash box, counting notes into a cloth bag. It was nearly two; if Giuli went back up the spiral staircase and found Carlotta and the boys gone, she’d have wasted valuable time. She grabbed her jacket, her helmet, and slung her bag over her shoulder and edged outside.

  It was bitterly cold; the bare trees of the little piazza were silvery with frost. Where were they?

  ‘They haven’t come out,’ said the voice at her shoulder. It was Sandro, leaning against the wall.

  ‘You’re not warm enough,’ he added, holding out a hand for her helmet, so she could get her jacket on properly. She didn’t know whether to hug him for being there or give him grief for treating her like a kid.

  There was movement behind them, voices in the doorway, and Sandro took her by the elbow, moving them both aside.

  ‘Good move,’ he said in a low voice, ‘leaving before them. Clever girl.’

  Behind her Giuli heard the guttural accent of the man in the grey leather jacket. ‘Alla prossima,’ he was saying. ‘Any time, baby.’ Slurring, insistent.

  ‘How long have you been out here?’ hissed Giuli. ‘You did go home, didn’t you? You talked things over with Luisa?’

  ‘I did,’ said Sandro shortly. ‘Look, I just came back to make sure you were all right. And the girl, of course.’

  ‘I was going to follow her home,’ said Giuli, keeping her voice down. ‘On the motorino.’

  ‘You’d die of exposure,’ muttered Sandro. ‘And you’re worn out, look at you.’ Giuli grimaced, remembering the shadows under her eyes in the cloakroom mirror. ‘I’ll follow her back in the car. Only – ’ he stopped.

  ‘Only what?’ Giuli had her shoulders hunched against the cold and even in the lovely padded jacket Luisa had given her she couldn’t stop shivering.

  ‘Only I might want you to take this over a bit from tomorrow. I promised him – Bellagamba – promised him we’d come by and update him.’

  So he was going to stick with it – or she was. She said nothing; Sandro mistook her silence for reluctance. ‘I know tomorrow’s Saturday, ’ he said apologetically. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I just want Bellagamba to know you’re part of the deal.’

  Giuli felt her face break into a smile. She could do it, she wanted to say, she could. She restrained herself, as Sandro had taught her to do. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, for a start you’ve done most of the legwork,’ he said, hesitating. ‘And something’s come up. Another job. At least, I think it has.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Sandro. ‘I’ve got a garbled message from Luca Gallo on my mobile.’ He was looking over her shoulder, distant. ‘Says it’s urgent. Says he needs to see me tomorrow.’

  His gaze shifted over her shoulder, and turning her head a little Giuli saw the three boys and Carlotta on the street. From behind them came the sound of a bolt being shot across the door. ‘Chucking-out time,’ said Sandro. It was after two.

  ‘You get on your bike,’ Sandro said, ‘I’ll follow the girl home.’

  They walked together as far as Giuli’s motorino; he handed her the helmet. ‘Go home and get some sleep now.’ And before turning towards the little car he and Luisa had used to come and visit her in rehab together, he put a hand to her cheek. Then he hunched his shoulders and went.

  As she swung around the corner, heading for home, Giuli looked back and saw his silhouette as he sat solitary and motionless at the wheel, watching the kids on the pavement. You’ll be OK, she promised silently. Everything’s going to be OK.

  The frost that glittered on the city pavements also dusted the trees and gates and fences out through the suburbs and up into the dark hills. Down in the Maremma, the icy tributaries of the rivers that crisscrossed the land were beginning to freeze at the edges, and high up where Orfeo sat under a waxing moon the clear night sky had lowered the temperature to eight degrees below zero, and hardened the rutted fields to stone.

  Down in the steep-sided valley, on the sharp left-hand bend where Loni Meadows had come off the road, the deep ruts the heavy vehicle’s careering descent had carved in the earth had set like rock. It had gone almost all the way down, into the river; it had taken the crew of the tow-truck hours to haul it out of there and now the chaos of crushed vegetation and churned mud was the only obvious evidence of Loni Meadows’s headlong passage, in the dark, to her death.

  In Orfeo itself all illumination save the security lights that twinkled deceptively softly at even intervals around the cast
le’s massive fortified walls had been extinguished, but in her new bed, in her small, bare room, Cate could not sleep. As she half-dozed, snatches of the day’s events – faces, expressions, things said and left unsaid – replayed themselves in her head, in and out of order.

  At one point she started up, halfway through the fragment of a nightmare, and shouted ‘No!’ before lying back down. She drifted, half-awake, half-dreaming, in and out of time, seeing a rumpled bed, a green silk blouse, the big ugly car outside a hotel and finally only Dottoressa Meadows’s bright, wicked face, hearing her sharp, light, mocking voice before she fell, at last, into sleep.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘SO WHAT ABOUT the husband?’

  It occurred to Cate that Ginevra, speaking these words in a gruff undertone to Mauro, might have forgotten she was there. She was standing at the work surface in the little cold pantry off the kitchen, keeping her head down and following orders. Which in this case were to make the paste for the evening’s crostini toscani. She’d been doing it for forty minutes or so, since coming down not long after 7.30 and taking Ginevra by surprise. ‘Oh my God,’ the old cook had said, clasping a hand to her flushed chest at the sight of Cate in the doorway. ‘You gave me a start. What are you doing here so early?’

  Saturday evening was Ginevra’s evening off, and the dinner was a buffet prepared in advance: Cate had thought, more fool her, that what with all the goings on her offer to help would be welcome. Last night, sitting at the silent dinner table, hopping up and down clearing the table as well as trying to make some kind of conversation with the guests, Cate had felt sorry for Ginevra and Nicki, knowing how much extra work there would be behind the kitchen door. And to be frank, it had been torture trying to play the host, under the circumstances.