The Viper Page 9

  ‘Yeah,’ said Giuli drily. ‘Funny. All my life I’ve wanted the opposite. I’ve wanted normal stuff, a boring life.’

  ‘Well, it was ugly,’ said Luisa. ‘It was derelict and ugly and … sinister. Give me a boring life any day.’

  Giuli felt Luisa’s eyes rest on her and suddenly she wanted to cry. Jesus Christ, what was the matter with her? Either she was stuffing her face or bursting into tears. She cleared her throat. ‘So, back then. You wrote to her, you asked to meet. And then – you warned her off?’ Luisa’s face was hard to read but she nodded. ‘Sandro never knew?’

  ‘He never knew. He thought,’ Luisa gave a faint smile, ‘he thought he’d done it all by himself. Walked away from temptation.’

  ‘He said you were at the homeless shelter today,’ said Giuli suddenly.

  Luisa’s mouth twisted, wry. ‘He’s going to see one of them,’ she said. ‘He thought I wasn’t listening, but I was. What if –?’

  ‘This Martine Kaufmann?’ said Giuli. ‘I was listening too. She’s in the Oltrarno, San Niccolo. You want me to check her out for you?’

  Luisa looked embarrassed. ‘I’ve already googled her.’

  ‘Look,’ said Giuli, sighing. ‘You’re going to have to tell him eventually. That you’ve been up there. Apart from anything else, you could help him, you know? With the investigation, I mean – you’ve got chummy with the neighbours already.’

  ‘Or it might mess things up for him,’ said Luisa quietly. ‘He’s got to do this. A chance to work with Pietro again? To be rehabilitated by the force? And –’ She hesitated.

  ‘And it might help him exorcise some old demons along the way?’ supplied Giuli. ‘And what about when he sees your leg?’ She stopped, seeing Luisa pale again, seeing she’d undone all the good the brandy and the ham sandwich had done.

  ‘If Pietro thinks I’m involved he’ll get worried it’s all too personal,’ she said. ‘He might kick Sandro off the case again and that would be a disaster. You know what Sandro’s like.’

  Giuli relented. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right, in your own time.’

  There was a silence. The bar had emptied out: the lunch hour was over.

  ‘What surprises me,’ said Giuli, leaning forward across the tiny table, an attempt maybe to lighten the atmosphere, to rouse Luisa again, to rile her even, ‘is that you managed it. That she did walk away from Sandro.’ Leaning down to smile into Luisa’s face. ‘I mean, little Luisa against the high priestess, right?’

  No spark, though, from Luisa, only something else, a stillness coming over her, but Giuli pushed on. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘what did you say to get her to leave him alone?’

  Luisa pulled her coat together, a hand at the neck.

  ‘I told her I’d kill her,’ she said.

  *

  Sandro walked along the cool dark length of the Via dei Bardi, away from the river. He liked this street, it was always silent.

  The female cadaver was that of Johanna Nielsson.

  Pietro had got a call as they walked away from the Via del Leone with confirmation that the chances – based on the DNA sample sent over from the Danish lab – that the body found in that hut in the woods was not Nielsson were infinitesimal.

  He thought of her in that chair, her arms pinioned, plastic embedded in what was left of her flesh, sitting there in a long print dress, her hair loose. Stabbed in the lower abdomen, multiple times. All of those details felt to him absolutely significant. The man, the butcher – Lotti – had been killed carelessly, heedlessly: either he was incidental, or an afterthought, or simply despised. The murderer had known Johanna Nielsson well, had known her a long, long time.

  Lotti killed with that single casual blow: the murderer could have waited behind the door but instead stood in front of him. Didn’t care about being recognised or actively wanted to be. Wanted to be the last thing Lotti saw. After his dead dog and Johanna Nielsson.

  As he walked, Sandro wondered a few things. Where the message was that had summoned Lotti up into those hills, because it had not been his usual route and Sandro did not believe it was coincidence that had led him there to be killed. Was it on a mobile? Apparently he had not had one.

  He had reached the halfway point on the Via dei Bardi, where the Costa Scarpuccia branched off and headed uphill, where a long wall barely contained the earth and foliage of an old overgrown garden, and stopped to think some more. Some late wild irises overhung the wall above his head and the entrance, unusually, to the tiny church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli opposite the turning was open. He stepped without thinking into the great doorway, standing diffidently to one side and looking into the lofty, serene space. Dimly, he could make out a bowed figure in the front pew.

  Sandro stood there, just a moment more; he waited, hoping for some kind of antidote to the images in his head of the ugly heap of death in that hut, hoping for the sense of a great good to set against the brutality. But the church was dark, and he must have made a sound because the kneeling figure stood up abruptly and, in a hurry, Sandro stepped back.

  He was late, he realised, or almost: Martine Kaufmann’s studio was a bare three minutes away, but he had only two. Feeling it would be undignified, not to mention uncomfortable, to run, he proceeded at a trot. Aware suddenly of being watched, he half-turned as he stumbled on to see the woman emerge from the great church doors. Not the black-clad humble sort of person he’d imagined at all but the figure of a woman, from this distance perhaps a little younger than himself, stout, pulling a helmet over short, light hair, climbing on to a motorino.

  Hurrying on, Sandro found himself at the studio, stacked canvases inside confirming it. He tried the door but it was locked. He pressed the buzzer.

  He was peering inside again, hand cupped round his eyes, when he felt a tap on the shoulder. Turning, he saw that it was the woman who’d been in the church, pulling off a scooter helmet, the hair springing up. She held out a hand. ‘Martine Kaufmann,’ she said.

  Short and stocky, with silvery pale spiky hair and lightcoloured eyes, a face softened by exposure to the elements, a small gold crucifix glinting at her neck. She pushed open the door and they went inside.

  Everything was very neat. Beside the door sat a couple of bulging plastic bags of the sort charities give out for old clothes, carefully labelled with their destination, a children’s charity of some sort. So her presence at Santa Lucia dei Magnoli was down to mundane good works. He gestured at the bags. ‘Having a clearout?’

  She smiled, her eyes crinkling. ‘My students donate – these foreign children, they buy so much stuff while they’re here and then they just leave it behind.’ True enough, thought Sandro. ‘Help yourself,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I think my denim-wearing days are over,’ said Sandro.

  Kaufmann barked a laugh. ‘This way,’ she said, gesturing towards the back of the space.

  The stacked canvases ranged against the walls were a combination of abstracts and garish nudes, a few shelves with some pottery with price tags. She saw him looking. ‘Student work,’ she said, smiling, as they reached a desk with a chair to either side of it. ‘We sell that too, for the charity, the pieces they don’t want to take with them. Please, sit.’

  She was organised all right, thought Sandro, looking round. He sat obediently. ‘How’s business?’ he said.

  Kaufmann pulled out a chair on the other side of the desk. ‘I make a reasonable living,’ she said with a frown, scrutinising him. He nodded. When people said that it always meant they were coining it.

  And then abruptly she sighed. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Is it her?’ Her gaze was direct and memory did stir, at last. Her blue-grey eyes. ‘Yes,’ Sandro said simply. He had no idea if condolences were appropriate.

  He was trying to work out what was familiar. She had been slender but she was well-built now, a little barrel of a body in a plain shift. Around her hung a scent at odds with her nunlike appearance, something floral, like jasmine. She rested her elbows on the table. �
��Have we met before?’ she said, mildly curious, her head tilted, and he caught a glimpse of that girl, years ago, watching him from a doorway.

  Baratti had taken them back for one last visit, pretending he suspected the inhabitants of growing opium poppies as an excuse to return to the house and try it on with one or other of the girls. Sandro had stayed outside that time.

  Now, he hesitated. ‘I was one of the attending officers at La Vipera,’ he said, ‘when someone made an anonymous call. All that time ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Martine Kaufmann, pushing herself back in her chair to look at him again, her eyes darkening to slate. ‘Oh, you. I remember. I remember you.’ Her gaze on him was steady. ‘Those visits you made to La Vipera didn’t reflect too well on the police force, in my opinion. The senior policeman –’ she was stiff with the memory of it ‘– he was not a pleasant man.’

  ‘Commissario Baratti,’ said Sandro, trying not to agree with her too openly. ‘Things have changed since those days. I’m sorry if we –’

  ‘You were very young,’ she said, with a diffident gesture. ‘It was a long time ago, as you say.’

  ‘Well, I was still in training, yes,’ said Sandro. ‘We were probably the same age, weren’t we? Aren’t we?’ She didn’t reply. ‘I’ve – I’ve come out of retirement to help with this case, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘This case,’ Martine Kaufmann said, passing a hand over her face. ‘I – I can’t believe it. Honestly, I can’t – I – I –’ He felt her struggle to regain her composure, and gave her time. ‘I was so – oh, never mind,’ she said with dignity, smoothing her shift, small square-nailed hands. ‘You want to know about when I saw her?’

  Sandro nodded. ‘Among other things,’ he said. The long room felt cold to him suddenly; you could smell the cold in these old fondi. They used to be the cellars, for wine.

  Kaufmann gave him a quick, sharp look. ‘Well, anyway, I was up in Liguria for a weekend back in April,’ she said. ‘Levanto, the other side of the Cinque Terre, the weekend after Easter, if you need to know. A painting trip, a visit to the churches.’ She looked at him with a trace of defiance, as if she needed to defend her faith. I’m not Baratti, he wanted to say.

  ‘Anyway.’ She tugged at her shift again, uncomfortable. ‘I booked myself into a campsite. I woke up the first morning, 29 April, and there was Johanna, climbing into her camper-van – she was just leaving. She laughed when I recognised her.’

  ‘A camper-van,’ said Sandro, his heart sinking. All that money and living like a hobo? ‘So she wasn’t living what you’d call a settled lifestyle? Had she fallen on hard times?’

  Kaufmann shrugged. ‘She didn’t say so.’ Her eyes were on him, mild but scrutinising. ‘Settling down would never have been Johanna’s thing, would it?’ She smiled sadly. ‘She was always a loner. We all are, really. It was one of the lessons that place taught us. Self-sufficiency.’

  ‘All of you that were at La Vipera? Mr Gorgone said you kept in touch a little.’

  She rolled her eyes good-humouredly. ‘Oh, Marcantonio … We’ve got very little in common these days. We run across each other – it’s inevitable. And of course when I saw Johanna I mentioned it to him. But as a rule – it’s like families, you know, they know each other too well. Outgrow each other.’

  Sandro nodded. ‘Mr Gorgone said something of the sort. Yes.’

  ‘That time at La Vipera –’ she was hesitant, apologetic ‘– it was formative. Living outside society, without comforts, no electricity, all that. I think it did set us apart, women working together, for each other. We had to do everything for ourselves.’

  ‘Five women and one man,’ said Sandro thoughtfully. ‘And it wasn’t like he was king of the hen-coop, either, was it?’ Kaufmann drew herself back a little, wincing at the vulgarity of it, but Sandro remembered Baratti jeering at Gorgone, a henpecked cockerel. Gorgone just sitting there picking his bare toes, staring like there was nothing behind his eyes, insolent and stupid.

  ‘Why did you have a man at all?’ he asked, curious.

  Kaufmann shrugged. ‘We did try to be just women, for a while, but then Marcantonio came along …’ She frowned. ‘Johanna liked him, was the truth of it. He had his uses.’ She looked away a little and sighed. ‘She liked to shock. She used to say, “They don’t like the thought of men being sex objects, do they?”’

  Sandro felt as though he was being tested. ‘I don’t like the idea of anyone being a sex object,’ he said, too weary suddenly to think of anything funny to say. It wasn’t funny. Two people were dead.

  ‘Have you been in Florence all summer?’ he asked, not quite casually, and she tilted her head to one side. Nodding.

  ‘Pretty much, yes,’ she said, ‘since that trip to Liguria. Oh – except for last week. I was teaching a course in Le Marche. Ascoli Piceno, do you know it? It’s very beautiful.’

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Two – no, three days ago.’

  Was this woman a suspect? If so, she was around when Nielsson was killed. Away when Lotti was killed. The thing went round in circles. If Martine Kaufmann had wanted to kill Nielsson she could have done it in Liguria. And why would she want to?

  She was looking at him with a faintly perplexed air. ‘I can give you the name and number of the course organiser if you like?’

  He inclined his head graciously, disguising his disappointment. ‘In due course, yes, please. You know there were two bodies?’

  ‘I did know,’ she said, head on one side, judicious. ‘A butcher?’

  So Gorgone had been in touch with her. ‘Called Lotti.’

  ‘I don’t remember the name,’ Martine Kaufmann said, apologetic.

  ‘When was the last time you did go up there?’ he asked lightly. ‘To Sant’Anna?’

  She shook her head. ‘Back to La Vipera?’ Her gaze was level. ‘I don’t know what I would go back for. I don’t – haven’t. I – what would I do there? Talk to the locals about their allotments? It’s the past.’ She shifted in her chair, uneasy. ‘I can’t believe Johanna did, either. She didn’t say anything about it to me. She said she was touring in the north. She said she might go over to Venice, to the mountains.’

  ‘And you believed her?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? Johanna wasn’t a liar.’

  Sandro found himself nodding. No. Not a liar.

  ‘You don’t think the man, Lotti, might have killed her?’ said Kaufmann, a hand to her crucifix, anxious. ‘I mean – a butcher.’ She shifted, uneasy.

  ‘Killed her, why?’ he said, softly, quickly, and she coloured.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, faltering for the first time. ‘They didn’t like us, those villagers. Some of them hated us, I think.’ Her pale eyes rose to his again, asking him for something. Asking him to understand. ‘Because we were different? Or because they wanted us, desired us, because we were in control and that made them feel powerless?’

  ‘Well –’ Sandro hesitated, aware that he shouldn’t be giving any more information than he had to ‘– Lotti as a suspect is one of the lines of inquiry we’ll be pursuing.’ It wasn’t quite a lie: he might have done it. Sandro just didn’t think he had.

  Kaufmann seemed more composed again. ‘She didn’t care about people liking her, you see. I expect he’s dead himself, now, but,’ she said, ‘she called the barman a eunuch. That was to his face. The barman at the café. When he’d kept her waiting.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Johanna said something about his wife being frustrated too, something like that, about him not being able to get it up.’

  ‘Did you know a girl who worked at the bar called Maria Clara Martinelli?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Oh – wasn’t she the one who found the bodies?’

  ‘She was. Well, never mind.’ He sighed. ‘Look, I can see you’ve worked hard to … move on from that time, anyway.’ He gestured at the bags of cast-offs. ‘Your relationship with the community seems to have improved.’

  Kauf
mann seemed to subside. ‘We were young. We were experimenting.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Italy wasn’t ready for us.’ The soft dark memory of Johanna Nielsson, of being alone with her, stood between them.

  ‘I understand,’ Sandro said gently. ‘But you do see that we can’t help but connect her death to those years at La Vipera. So if there’s anything you remember, anything that happened that might contain the seed, if you like, of these murders, that might point to a killer, will you let us know?’

  Opposite him, behind the desk, she nodded, pushed her fingers through her short hair, and the sleeves of her smock fell back. Sandro saw something on the inside of her wrist. A tattoo. She saw him looking and she held it out to him: a curled thing like a snail or a series of tiny concentric circles, the same tattoo as Johanna Nielsson had. ‘I got it done to be like her,’ she said, as he fumbled for his glasses for a better look, but she had pulled down the sleeves defensively and folded her arms on the desktop. ‘We all wanted to be like her. We’d have done anything she asked.’ Her voice rose a little, faltering. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead. I thought she’d live forever.’

  Which was what Marcantonio Gorgone had said. We thought we’d live forever.

  He stood, at last, and held out his hand. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Kaufmann,’ he said, although in fact all he’d learned was that she had an alibi for the time of Lotti’s death. At the door he hesitated: there was something, after all. One piece of concrete information he could extract from this exchange. He turned back and saw her still standing behind her desk, watching.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he hesitated, diffident, ‘perhaps you could you let me have the name of the campsite and your exact dates before I go? The campsite in Liguria.’

  He called the campsite as he stood on the pavement outside. A young lad answered, mercifully bright and keen, eager to help. So eager he wasn’t suspicious, didn’t ask for ID. Yes, a Miss Nielsson had been there in April, checked out on the twenty-ninth. He gave Sandro the licence plate.

  Before he forgot, Sandro typed it into a message and sent it over to Pietro. Nielsson had been living in a camper-van. Licence plate DY17306, get a trace?