The Villa Triste (22 page)

Pallioti looked around. There were no members of the forensic crew, but plenty of evidence that they’d been there. Probably half through the night.

‘Did they get much?’ It was Enzo who asked the question, but even as he did, Pallioti had a feeling he knew what the answer would be.

‘It’s a little early to say definitely,’ Cesare D’Aletto replied. ‘But on first glance, no. Almost nothing at all.’

The inside of the
castello
was better than the outside. The walls were white-plastered stone. A tiled hallway bisected what was basically a large two-storeyed square. At the front, sitting rooms opened off either side of it, their grilled windows looking down on the bend of the drive and beyond to the town. A staircase ran up the wall of one sitting room, leading to a gallery that obviously gave on to bedrooms. Beyond the sitting rooms, a dining room opened off to the left and a large kitchen to the right. Pallioti stopped in the archway that led to the dining room. At least half of the table was covered in papers, books, and files.

‘The housekeeper says he was collecting “his archive”,’ D’Aletto said, coming up behind him. ‘Apparently, he’d been obsessed with it for the last year or so. Since he was decorated in Rome. He’s already loaned the medal to a local museum. He became something of a local hero, after the sixtieth. Talked to school groups, that kind of thing. I’ve had a look at it,’ D’Aletto added. ‘But not in detail, yet. Most of it seems pretty general. You know, newspaper clippings. Excerpts from books. A teaching package he put together for schoolkids, about what life was like in the partisans. It was a nice hobby for him. She says kids liked him. I guess he told good stories.’

Cesare D’Aletto turned away. He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket.

‘The back garden’s out here,’ he said, ‘where she found him. We got it covered last night. But it’s not pristine.’

Through the pebbled-glass panels of the door, Pallioti could see the top of the tent that had been erected over the old man’s body and what looked to be a surrounding piece of lawn. Enzo was in the kitchen, standing at the sink.

‘That’s where she was when she saw him,’ D’Aletto said, looking over his shoulder as he fitted the key into the lock. ‘The housekeeper. Yesterday afternoon, looking out of the kitchen window. She rang on Saturday – I guess she does that regularly – to see what he wants to eat during the week. Didn’t think too much of it when he didn’t answer. By Sunday when she tried again after church and the same thing happened, she was a little worried. Finally, after lunch, around two o’clock, she came down here.’

‘So he lived here alone?’

‘Not at first. Apparently, years ago, she and her husband lived with him. There’s a cottage out behind the house. They stayed there. But when they started having kids, she said he thought they were too noisy, so he bought them a house in the village. Turned the cottage into his office.’

‘So why is his stuff in the dining room?’

Cesare D’Aletto, who had managed to get the door open, looked at Enzo and smiled.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it looks to me like part of the cottage roof fell in about twenty years ago and no one ever bothered to get it repaired. I’d say it’s inhabited now mainly by pigeons and old lawn mowers. By all accounts,’ he added, ‘Roblino liked living alone. He was apparently healthy as a horse. And vigorous. Still rode his bicycle. Walked. Used the town swimming pool in the summer.’

‘So he would have been able to put up a fight?’

‘One assumes so. If he’d wanted to.’

‘Were there any defensive wounds, at all?’

Cesare D’Aletto sighed. For the first time, tiredness showed on his face. In the watery light of the hallway Pallioti noticed the fine wrinkles around his eyes, the smudge on his collar. He had probably been up all night.

‘On first look,’ he said, ‘the ME says no. Obviously, the autopsy may turn something up.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s scheduled about now,’ he added. ‘So perhaps they’ll be able to tell us something when we get back to town. But nothing obvious, no.’

‘Was anything stolen?’ Pallioti asked, suddenly. ‘Anything at all?’

‘Not that we’ve been able to find. At least so far.’

Pallioti looked at him sharply.

‘Nothing?’ he asked. ‘Not, for instance, his wallet?’

Cesare D’Aletto shook his head. ‘His wallet was in his pocket, with seventy euros in it. There was no sign of forced entry, and the housekeeper’s weekly money, which he apparently always got ready on the Saturday, for some reason, was on the kitchen table under the salt cellar.’

‘And what about that, the salt?’

‘I wondered, too – if it had been taken from the kitchen. But according to the housekeeper, nothing appeared to be disturbed. And she did most of the cooking at home and brought dishes in for him, so the only salt kept here was that right there, on the table. No more than a couple of spoonfuls. There’s no indication that Roblino ever owned a gun, either,’ he added.

‘So—’ The rain was patting the kitchen window, overflowing from the gutter and falling in a curtain of grey beads. ‘What do you think happened here?’ Enzo asked.

Cesare D’Aletto took a deep breath. ‘I think someone walked in on Saturday afternoon and shot him.’ He ran a hand over his eyes and shook his head. ‘And I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘it was our fault.’

‘Your fault?’

D’Aletto nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. You see, last night, early this morning, whenever it was, I pulled up everything we had, have, on Roberto Roblino. Over a year ago, he received a threat.’

Enzo frowned.

‘A letter,’ D’Aletto said. ‘He turned it over to the police. Made a complaint. As far as I can tell, they never did anything. I’ve had a copy made for you,’ he added. ‘Along with the rest of the file, what there is of it. It’s back in my office.’

Cesare D’Aletto looked at the scrubbed kitchen table. At the four chairs pulled up around it. The blue bowl of pomegranates sitting on the counter. ‘No one thought it was important,’ he said softly. ‘Now two old men are dead.’

The garden was walled. A rectangle of immaculately clipped grass was dotted with fruit trees. Espaliered apricots spread their arms along the red wall, meeting the broad leaves of vines. Lemons and oranges lined up in pots. A small fountain, tiled deep blue, sat in the centre of the lawn. Pallioti had never been to Granada or to the Alhambra, but he had seen pictures of it. Suddenly he understood why Roberto Roblino had come here, to the south. The relentless sun, the baked earth, even the white blocks of the villages. All of it was as much Spanish as Italian. Beside the tent was a pomegranate tree.

Cesare D’Aletto went down the steps. ‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘They’re slippery.’ He stepped across the sodden and muddied grass and held back the flap of the tent. ‘This is where they found him.’

In the queasy grey light, the taped outline of the body looked strangely solid. It was stretched away from them, one arm flung out towards the metal chairs that were grouped around a small table. The table’s top was inlaid with red tiles that made an interlinking pattern of stars. White cushions, still sodden, were tied onto two of the chair seats. The third chair had several books piled on it. A rather rumpled panama hat lay on the grass beside it, not far from the outline of the old man’s hand, as if he had been reaching for it. Pallioti bent down. The books were all to do with the war. Their pages were buckled and wet. The glassine covers suggested that they might have come from library sales, or simply been borrowed and never returned.

Pallioti stood up and turned around. A cool feeling spread through his body that had nothing to do with the rain. He looked back at the house. He could see the hall through the still-open garden doors, look straight down it to the front door. Given that someone was careful, or disciplined enough – someone who had been let in, who had been welcomed as a guest, invited, perhaps, to share the last whisper of summer under a pomegranate tree – if the door had been opened for them by their host, they could have come into the house and walked down the hall without touching a thing. They could have followed Roberto Roblino through the already-open back doors and straight out into the garden. Where they had put a gun to his head and ordered him to kneel. Invited him to eat salt. Then fired a single bullet, before turning and retracing their steps, letting themselves out of the front door with a gloved hand, leaving no trace at all. Arriving, killing, and departing as if they’d never been.

On this anniversary of Italy’s Sorrow let it be known to All.

The flame of Truth and Justice is still alive.

It shines in all dark Corners.

All true Italians will know its Light.

Traiters may think they can hide, but they will not be protected from Justice by the false protecshon of their lies.

The cleansing light of purity and truth will seek them out.

The shadows will be vanqished. As long as there are brave men and warriers the Halls of Valhalla will never be empty.

Traiters will be clensed by the Sword of Purity and the True Glory of Italy will live Again.

You have been warned!

The original had been handwritten in red ballpoint pen. Even through the plastic shell of an evidence bag it had been obvious that the paper was cheap, a dirty pale blue of the sort sold by the pad in newsagents. It appeared to have been faintly lined, as if the writer would otherwise have trouble keeping the sentences straight on the page.

The plane was far short of a plush corporate jet, but it did have a reasonably sized foldout table. With the tips of his fingers Pallioti held down the copy of the letter that Cesare D’Aletto had provided for them and read the text again. Then he lowered his glasses and looked out of the window. At this height, the rain had vanished. The clouds they flew over were tinged with late-afternoon sun. Across from him, Enzo was leafing through the file D’Aletto had given them. It was disturbingly thin. Apart from the usual tax, business incorporation, and car registration material, there was very little on record concerning Roberto Roblino. In fact, if they hadn’t known better, it might have been possible to believe that he had dropped into Italy in 1957, fully formed at age 35. Not that it mattered much; if Cesare D’Aletto was right, the reason he had been killed had nothing to do with anything as rational as a thwarted lover or past business deal gone sour. Pallioti looked again at the threat the old man had received over a year ago.

The date,
28 April
, and a series of Roman numerals,
LXXXIII
, were printed in the top right-hand corner. There was no return address. At the bottom of the page, instead of a signature, there was some kind of stamp. It was dark and smudgy, and looked like something Tommaso might have made for one of his playschool craft projects. Pallioti guessed that it had been carved out of a pencil rubber. He had several such masterpieces carefully stuck to his refrigerator. He examined it more closely and saw that it was a thick cross with upturned edges enclosed in a circle.

‘The Celtic cross,’ Enzo said without looking up. ‘It’s used by Italian and Spanish neo-Nazi groups.’

Pallioti raised his eyebrows.

‘In an effort to prove their, quote, unquote, purity.’ Enzo put the tax papers he had been reading down on the table. ‘It’s their answer to their Austrian and German counterparts, who accuse them of having “tainted” Latino blood. They claim they’re actually Celts.’

Pallioti nodded, pretending he knew what Enzo was talking about while marvelling, yet again, at what a bizarre storehouse of information he was. But, he thought, undercover policemen were like that. They hoarded facts to trade among themselves, like kids with marbles.

‘And the date?’ he asked. ‘Italy’s sorrow?’

‘28 April – the anniversary of Mussolini’s death; 2005,’ Enzo added, ‘is 83 in Fascist. The purists date from 1922, the glorious dawn when Il Duce took power.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes.’ Enzo looked at the letter for a moment then made a face.

‘I was wrong,’ he said. ‘It appears it wasn’t just smoke.’

‘No.’

‘I’ve already called ahead. We’re starting with known right-wing extremist groups and working outwards. And we’ve got the reporter coming in again. And anyone else we can dig up who knows anything about this kind of stuff. We’ll shake the tree and see what falls out.’

‘Good.’

Pallioti put the letter down and cleared his throat. The plane might have a table, but it did not stretch to mini bottles of vodka, which at the moment was rather too bad. The fact that they might finally have a real lead was nothing but good news. But he had something else on his mind. Ever since this morning when he had seen Roberto Roblino’s collection of partisan souvenirs carefully laid out on his dining-room table, he had been feeling particularly guilty.

‘I have something to confess,’ he said. He reached into his inner pocket, where he had taken to carrying Caterina’s little red book, and placed it next to Enzo’s file. ‘I borrowed it,’ Pallioti muttered. ‘From Giovanni Trantemento’s belongings. From the safe.’