Death of an Englishman (10 page)

Carabiniere Bacci put this to the Captain but he only shook his head without answering. 'Why,' he murmured to himself, 'should they quarrel? And why should they leave all this stuff here when they had a truck outside ready to take it away?'

'Well, if a quarrel broke out suddenly and ended in the shooting,' pointed out the Chief, 'and I'd say it must have done because you don't set out to kill with an amateur weapon or aim at the heart, as you've said yourself, then they'd hardly hang about long enough to deal with all this stuff after the shooting.'

'But this—' the Captain laid a hand gently on the angel's head—'this is something else. They must have had a customer waiting for it or it would never have been stolen, a customer who had already paid a large deposit for the risk they were taking. There's no question of this getting any export licence, it's another class of operation altogether and it had to be done quickly, it's finished now. So why did they leave it, why … ?'

He got to his feet and paced about, coming to rest in front of the french windows. Staring before him, he saw the dark wall on the opposite side of the courtyard and, in the middle of it, a rectangle of yellow light at the level of the second floor. The shadow of a small figure was bouncing up and down in the patch of light, throwing something up and catching it. The Captain turned suddenly and snatched up the telephone receiver from the Englishman's desk. His free hand flicked in Carabiniere Bacci's direction. 'Go upstairs to the Cipriani on the second floor and find out if that child switched a light on when the noise woke her. You'll probably find that the answer is yes, since she was able to tell us what time it was—but check that her clock isn't luminous … Hello? Get me the radio room, will you? … Hello … yes, it is … well, we may be getting somewhere—take this message, I want it sent immediately to the men who are questioning antique-dealers in
Quartiere
3—and give it exactly as I say it: Cancel previous order. Langley-Smythe case closed, repeat, closed, for lack of evidence. Inform all dealers, including those already visited, and return to base. Repeat it to me. Good. Send it out exactly so. When the men get back get their Chief to call me here, 284393, for further orders. I shall need them all night … I know and I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do. I need them. Thank you.'

All over
Quartiere
3, radios crackled into life, interrupting strained conversations in the quiet, elegant antique shops with polished marble floors and great copper bowls of red and white poinsettia in the Via Maggio, among the stacked-up furniture and bric-à-brac of tiny shops in Via de' Serragli and Via Santo Spirito, in the varnish-smelling restoration workshops with Christmas greetings written in glitter on their dark windows in tiny alleyways off Via delle Caldaie and Via Maffia. Officers closed up the dealers' ledgers, passed on the unexpected message, went out to their motor-bikes and switched on their headlights while the evening shoppers turned to gaze at them curiously. Dispersing among the long, narrow streets, they retraced their paths and revisited the dealers they had seen. 'You can forget it; nothing to worry about, the case is closed.' Within the hour they had reconvened and were roaring across the bridge towards Borgo Ognissanti. The fog had vanished and the rows of iron lamps shattered the black surface of the river with brittle light.

'Cesarini, eh?' said the Chief thoughtfully. 'And you really think he'd be fool enough to come down here?'

'I think he might be greedy enough and he must be tempted, if only to see what we've been doing, how much we've found out. If I told him myself that the case was closed he'd be suspicious, he's not a complete fool. But these dealers are like ants. Cesarini wasn't on the list of dealers to visit because I've already been there myself. The story will get back to him by hearsay within minutes, I should say, and he
must
be tempted when he gets back and sees the place deserted—that's if I'm right, of course. I haven't one scrap of real evidence against him—ah, Carabiniere …'

Carabiniere Bacci was in the doorway, his face flushed from running up and down the stairs and from excitement.

'Yes, sir. She switched on her lamp; the clock isn't luminous.'

'Right. Then it's more than possible that the light was what caused them to panic.' The Captain sat down in the leather chair in front of the desk and began beating the arm of it softly with his fist, sending up little clouds of dust as the Marshal had once done. 'And still, and still … I cannot believe that nobody ever saw them together … four years … it isn't possible, you can't get away with a thing like that, not in Florence; people here know what you're up to before you know yourself … Even in a house like this one, they may never speak to each other but they would still
know,
just as the English lady knew …'

The telephone rang.

'Speaking. Yes … good … exactly, I'm hoping that the dealer we're looking for might turn up here during the night. We'll go and get a bite to eat and then lock ourselves in here and send the guard away—yes, he is fortunate, you don't need to say it, I am sorry but I'm going to need your men all night because I've no hope of getting any others …'

Usually it didn't matter; with half the population on the move towards home,
la mamma
and Christmas dinner, criminal activity was as scarce as the policemen left to deal with it; only the traffic police expected extra work. 'When it comes down to it,' the Marshal had often said to a sceptical Carabiniere Bacci, 'we're all Italians.'

'Keep them out of sight down a side street near the piazza, a squad car and two motor-bikes should be enough—and a plain clothes man in the piazza itself to keep watch for them and be in touch with the others—no, that's not necessary; if anyone comes in we'll hear them. The man we really want is probably in the building or will be, and there are four of us here, but two others may turn up and that's where you come in—if you see them come out in a rush, block them. It's possible they may be armed so your men should be protected … yes … right, that's all.' The Captain put the receiver down and looked at his watch, 'Well, gentlemen, I think we should get something to eat and be back here before the shops close at eight. And I hope I'm not wasting everyone's time.'

'I don't think so,' said the Chief, getting up stiffly from his chair. 'And I think I'd better telephone the vicar, if you don't mind, as we won't be going there to eat.'

He rang the vicarage.

'Felicity
will
be disappointed not to see you, and we're having shepherd's pie, too. Ah well, I expect it can't be helped, this sort of thing, in your job—now you've got a key with you, in case you're late back? Only, we're usually in bed by elevenish —and do help yourselves to a cup of tea when you come in …'

When he put the phone down the Chief blinked to find himself still in Italy. He hadn't much hope of getting that cup of tea.

The nearest place to get a quick dinner was the
Casalinga
which the Englishman had patronized, just round the corner, for the Neapolitan in the Piazza already had a crowd of young people waiting for the pizza which he made in the evenings.

There were few people dining so early in the
Casalinga
and the proprietor's wife laid a clean white cloth for them at a table near the window in the back room. There was no view, just the stone wall opposite, beyond the thick lace curtain and a red 'Greetings' sticker on the glass.

Paolo the proprietor's fat son appeared, bulging under an immense white apron. He had brown curly hair and a stubby pencil stuck behind his ear.

'Stracciatella,'
he announced, bearing down upon them, producing a notebook from under the great apron and sliding out the pencil in a business-like fashion.

'What about a menu,' muttered the Chief apprehensively in Jeffreys's ear. 'We want a menu; I don't like—'

'Tut, tut!' Paolo wagged an admonishing finger at him, for he was a thoroughbred Florentine,
'Stracciatella
! Good fresh broth, eggs laid ten minutes ago, whole thing prepared by
la mamma.
Four. Four
stracciatelle
!' He bellowed the order without so much as turning his head.

'And what else has your mother made for us?' asked the Captain respectfully.

'Cotechino
and lentils,' announced Paolo promptly. 'Specially for Christmas. But will they like it? No. English, aren't they? I'll bring them calf's liver in butter and sage and some roast potatoes. All English people like potatoes. Green salad? Green salad. A litre of red. Water? Litre should do you. Fizzy or flat? Flat, the other's bad for you. I'll bring your bread.' The pencil disappeared behind the brown curls and he was gone from them, bellowing their order as he rolled along the aisle between the unlaid tables with their checked oilcloth undercovers.

When he returned with a basket of rough country bread and a jug of wine, he slapped both on to the table and bent to look in the Chief Inspector's face. 'Don't worry so much!' he admonished the Chief severely. 'You'll eat well here!' He dropped into his bit of restaurant English: 'Many English customers! All eat well! Potatoes! Good red wine for the cold weather! All right?' He patted the astonished Chief's shoulder and poured him out a tumbler of wine and pushed the bread towards him. 'Eat!' was his final command before he rolled cheerily away again to the kitchen.

'Well,' said the red-faced Chief, 'he seems to know his job. I wasn't sure about having any more wine but I'd better do as ordered.' He broke off a piece of bread and the two Florentines watched him. For the first time, Jeffreys noticed, they were smiling.

'We'll take these with us,' said the Captain a short time later. Fat Paolo tipped the basket of tangerines, walnuts and dried figs into a brown paper bag.

The trattoria was filling up with students, all of them loaded with large bags or folders, bringing in the cold air with them. In the front room they were noisily re-arranging tables and calling out to the groups milling in the doorway, 'Over here! Gianni! There's a place!' All of them ordered
pasta
and most of them
cotechino
and lentils. It was their last meal together of the term. 'Paolo! Three
spaghetti al sugo!
Paolo! There
must
be
tortellini,
it's Thursday! And
pasta corta
for Silvia! Paolo! Come back, it's four
spaghetti!
Four!'

And the fat boy bumbled good-naturedly from table to table, tossing them bread and scribbling in his book, allowing a little grin to escape him when the girls pulled at his apron or jumped up to rumple his curls and change their orders as fast as he could write them.

One or two solitary old people sat at small tables in corners, old men of the Quarter wearing black berets and munching slowly at their
spaghetti
with toothless gums. A leathery old tramp with a long grey beard was dipping hunks of bread into his big bowl of minestrone at a table behind the door.

There was an empty place for one at the back of the room beneath a watercolour of Piazza Santo Spirito. None of the students thought of taking it, but eventually fat Paolo stuck the little table on to the end of a bigger one because the crowd of hungry students was swelling every minute. He turned the solitary chair round with an apologetic shrug at the Captain as the four policemen passed through the front room on their way out.

There were more young people outside, gossiping and riding up and down the street on their noisy mopeds to keep warm.

'It really has turned cold now,' said the Chief, turning up his collar and seeking a pair of gloves in his pocket. The slit of sky visible between the high buildings was black and speckled thickly with winking stars. An icy wind took their breath away as they came to the corner of Via Maggio.

'The
tramontana,'
said Carabiniere Bacci, walking beside Jeffreys. 'Tomorrow will be beautiful.'

They could see the lights still on in both of Cesarini's shops, but others were already closing, their metal shutters already half down and the last customers stooping to get out. The two
vigili
were starting their last round of the evening, supervising the closing of the shops, stopping for a chat at some of them, rapping on the shutters of those who were pretending to be closed. A man was struggling to tie a huge Christmas tree on to the roof of his car. The familiar noise of the rolling metal shutters caused people to quicken their pace. It was the sound of the end of the day and of supper. For the first time, the two Englishmen felt homesick. They finished the short walk in silence, and in silence turned into the dimly lit entrance of number fifty-eight. The guard was dismissed and the four of them went through to the bedroom so as not to show a light. They closed the outer and inner shutters in the hope of keeping out some of the cold but they could see their breath, and the chairs which they had brought in from the living-room were colder than their hands.

As they sat down to wait, the Captain's hand went to his Beretta.

The Marshal was asleep in his darkened bedroom. The relief Brigadier had left, but before going he had driven the station Land-Rover down to the Piazza and brought back a crate of mineral water, a loaf and some black olives. The Marshal had been unable to swallow any food but, in his feverish condition, he was grateful for the supply of water. The crate standing by his bed gave him a feeling of security. The Brigadier, a Sicilian himself, had not had to be asked. The Marshal's office telephone had been connected to an answering service, transferring his calls to Borgo Ognissanti so as not to disturb his sleep. Nevertheless, his sleep was uneasy, his fever high. The same dream of trying to get home recurred, a dream of struggling across a burning sandy plain which swayed and rolled beneath his feet sickeningly. He knew he was trying to get home for Christmas. Sometimes trains passed by in the distance, going his way, sometimes they passed quite close by, but never close enough for him to get on them. They were all full, piled to the ceiling with luggage, overflowing with families. People were hanging out of all the windows waving empty bottles, as they do on all southbound trains, calling for someone to fill them with water. Sometimes the Marshal sensed Cipolla, the little cleaner, struggling along beside him in his black cotton overall that was too short for him in the sleeves. Why should he be with me? wondered the Marshal. Where is he going? But the effort of asking seemed so great it hurt his burning head. I'll have to ask him, even so, he thought, I can't just ignore him. But when he finally managed to open his mouth that was so hot and dry, the wrong question came out. 'Where's your sweeping brush?' he heard himself ask stupidly. 'And your bucket?' But it didn't seem to matter to the little man; he answered, as if it had been the right question: 'To the funeral.' He didn't hear me, then, thought the Marshal. He's guessing. But whose funeral? His wife's, or the Englishman's? 'I can't come with you,' he said, 'I have to get home, it's Christmas.' They were both panting, stumbling on the hot, swaying sand. Why should it be hot like this at Christmas … ? A fever, it was a fever …