The Villa Triste (32 page)
Digging his hands in his pockets, Pallioti thought he had walked down this street a hundred times. Perhaps two hundred. Three. There was a restaurant here where he sometimes ate. A bar where he had been known to have a grappa.
The lower half of Via dei Renai faced the Piazza Demidoff, a small rectangle of greenery where sad-faced old men sat on benches and talked to their dogs. A row of stone palazzos looked out through the winter trees onto the river. Four centuries ago, they had been built by the great and the good. Sixty years ago, they had been lived in by families. Now their lower floors were almost entirely taken up by discreetly fashionable restaurants and trendy cocktail bars. One, facing the park, was a hotel.
It was barely 9 a.m. The morning, which had not been warm to start with, seemed colder. The top of the street closed in on itself, narrowed until the buildings faced each other like dancers in some renaissance ritual, identical and po-faced. There had been a frost overnight. Thin patches rimed the paving stones, turning the shadows white. Pallioti walked slowly. He was nearly at the end of the pavement when he turned abruptly, and found what he was looking for.
Set into the wall, the plaque was not large. He must have walked past it countless times without noticing. There were plaques on walls all over the city. Everyone knew they were there, but no one ever actually stopped to read them. He thought of the machine-gun nests Caterina had counted so carefully, the metallic snouts she had seen everywhere, once she knew how to look. In the towers. In the thickets of the Boboli Gardens. She had learned to see death wound round with vines and flowers. As he would learn to see plaques set into walls.
Reaching up, he ran his gloved fingers over the engraving.
12
June
1944
In Memory of the Members of Radio JULIET Who From This Place Carried on the Brave Fight for Freedom and Justice In the Face of Nazi-Fascist Oppression Their Memory and Courage Shall Live Forever
A small iron bracket, similar to the ones often found in graveyards, was mounted next to the stone tablet. It was newly painted, a discreet grey. The glass tube that rested in it held five white roses. A condolence card hung from their raffia cord. Pallioti turned it over and saw the words, Remember The Fallen.
‘Yes. Yes, Ispettore. You are correct, of course. We are guilty as charged.’
A ripple of laughter came down the phone.
‘It’s one of the little chores we take upon ourselves – to keep the flowers fresh. On the memorials. It’s an irrelevance, I suppose. But then again, one finds that most of the important things in life are, don’t you think? And of course it’s nicer, for the city. There’s nothing worse than dead things, all dried up. Or, God forbid, plastic.’
‘
Certo
,’ Pallioti murmured.
He held Signora Grandolo’s card in his hand, turning it over and over. She was as polite as ever, but was probably wondering why the city paid his salary. He looked out of the window. He had taken her at her word, called on a whim. Perhaps, he thought, simply to hear the sound of her voice – the sound of a voice of someone who cared. Or simply knew what had happened.
The bright weather of the day before had held, although it was distinctly colder. Sun lit the piazza below. Pallioti blinked.
‘Of course,’ Signora Grandolo added, ‘it’s a particularly horrible story. Radio Juliet. Then again, I suppose the stories behind all of the plaques are horrible. Or else they wouldn’t be there.’
‘No,’ Pallioti murmured.
He was watching the fountain. The arch of water sparkled and glistened. Beyond it, outside the restaurant, a few people sat determinedly huddled in overcoats at the outside tables, sipping coffee and trying to read the newspaper in gloves.
‘I don’t suppose you know—’ he heard himself asking, ‘or rather, if you have any information on any of them? Or their families—’
‘From Radio Juliet?’
Pallioti sensed as much as heard the shift of tone in her voice. The laughter was gone now, replaced by a sober quietness.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Signora Grandolo said. ‘None of them survived. That was one of the things about it that made it so awful. Of course,’ she added, ‘it was a hazard with the radios. That the signals would be traced.’
‘Yes,’ Pallioti said. ‘Yes, of course.’
He realized that he could have blurted out that this was not, in fact, what had happened. That the transmission had not even begun, that they had only just gone up into the attic – Enrico and his father and Carlo – that they probably did not even have the set turned on before there was the screech of brakes in the street, running footsteps on the stairs.
‘I understand,’ he added, ‘that there is another monument?’
He did not bother to explain that it had taken him the better part of a frustrating half-hour online to find the very obscure municipal website that mapped Florence’s monuments and plaques to its dead.
‘That’s right,’ Signora Grandolo said after a moment. ‘There is. Another monument to Radio Juliet. Up in the hills.’ She paused. ‘You see,’ she added, ‘after they were taken to the Villa Triste, they were shot. Executed.’
In the piazza, the three flags snapped and danced. The tablecloths at the restaurant fluttered and jumped, trying to escape the clips that held them down. As Pallioti watched, a waiter came out. One of the people lowered a newspaper and spoke to him. It was a woman. Her short dark hair ruffled in the wind.
‘Ispettore?’ Signora Grandolo said. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry—’
With a start, Pallioti realized that she had asked him something, and he had no idea what.
‘No, no,’ he murmured. ‘Not at all.’
Holding her paper down with one hand as she spoke to the waiter, the woman sitting outside the restaurant turned up the collar of her coat. Pallioti squinted. He was sure it was Dr Eleanor Sachs.
‘You hadn’t mentioned it,’ Signora Grandolo said. ‘When we met before. So, I didn’t realize you were interested in Radio Juliet?’
‘Some research.’ Pallioti turned away from the window. ‘Just something I came across. The story is, so, well—’
Signora Grandolo sighed, rescuing him.
‘Horrible,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is horrible. I suppose that’s why the flowers matter – at least to me.’
‘This other monument—’ Pallioti was looking at his desk, but instead he saw Issa and Caterina’s father – a university professor, a man of dignity – his face naked without his glasses, his son beside him. Below them, a tangle of arms and legs. Beside them, Carlo, Issa’s archangel, the father of her unborn child with a bullet hole in his forehead because he would not turn around. ‘I don’t suppose you could tell me where it is, exactly?’
‘
Certo
,’ Signora Grandolo said. ‘Of course. It’s—’ she paused, then she said, ‘Well, since you’re interested – I do go up there, to change the flowers. I could— But, well. You would probably rather go alone. Enthusiasts are a bore, I know. And—’
‘No,’ Pallioti replied quickly. ‘No, not at all. I’d be very interested. To come with you. If that’s what you were suggesting, if you would show me.’
‘Oh.’ Signora Grandolo sounded genuinely surprised. So much so, that it occurred to Pallioti that she had not meant to invite him at all.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t mean—’
‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course I did. I’d be delighted. To have the company.’
‘When,’ he asked, ‘were you thinking of going?’
He heard her flip a page, of a diary or a calendar.
‘I’m free,’ she said, ‘this afternoon. Or, if that—’
‘That would be fine.’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Shall we say one o’clock? I find,’ she added, ‘that it’s sometimes easier to get away when everyone is at lunch.’
Signora Grandolo’s car, a large black Mercedes, was significantly more impressive than the police pool vehicles assigned to Pallioti. It was more impressive than anything that transported the Mayor. If Enzo Saenz ever got behind the wheel he’d probably have to be prised out with a lever.
‘I used to have an Alfa.’ She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘But the truth is,’ Signora Grandolo said, ‘it was uncomfortable. Old bones,’ she added. ‘The Germans make very comfortable seats.’
Looking at her, it occurred to Pallioti that he had no idea how old she was. He had heard that you could tell a woman’s age by the backs of her hands, but he had no idea what that meant, and Signora Grandolo was wearing gloves. In dark woollen trousers, a matching roll-neck sweater, and what he thought Saffy might call a ‘car coat’, she looked even more elegant than she had before. There was no doubt about it. Maria was not a fluke. The Grandolos were beautiful women.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. Two long white boxes rested on the back seat of the car.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, as they slid out into the traffic. ‘But I have one other stop to make, on the way. We go right past a school that was used as a collection point, before loading people on to the trains. It will only take me a minute.’
Pallioti shook his head. ‘Not at all.’
Leaning back in the seat, which was indeed very comfortable, he experienced the unfamiliar, and in no way unpleasant, sensation of letting someone else make the decisions. He realized that he had no real idea where they were going – ‘up into the hills’ could cover a multitude of sins – or how long they would be gone. Nor did he care. He had slid out of his office past Guillermo’s empty desk – Signora Grandolo had been right about lunch – taken the side elevator and escaped again through the service door. Then he’d backtracked into the piazza and caught a cab at the rank, amusing himself, childishly, with the idea that if the loitering reporters had just looked the right way they would have seen him.
But of course they hadn’t. Because people only looked where they expected to see something. The juvenile glee at ‘pulling a fast one’ had lingered as the taxi pulled away. He’d even considered turning off his mobile. He’d settled for vibrate. If Enzo called, it would jump in his pocket like a bed bug.
The school was an ugly brick building ringed by a wrought-iron fence. It was not more than a couple of blocks from the station. As they parked, Signora Grandolo followed his gaze and nodded.
‘They were efficient,’ she said. ‘You have to hand them that. Just a few minutes’ walk. Not much chance to get away between here and the trains.’
She killed the ignition and looked towards the school building.
‘This was bombed, actually,’ she added. ‘Most of this area was. It wasn’t completely full at the time. But over a hundred people were killed.’
She opened her door. Pallioti got out as well. He took the box she indicated from the back seat and followed her as she passed through the iron gate and into the paved school yard. The ugly metal-framed windows were bolted closed against the cold. Even so, they could hear children inside, the rustling and twittering of voices.
A simple marble column no more than a few feet high, the monument was set on a grey stone plinth a few feet from the front door. As they got closer, Pallioti saw that it was engraved.
In Memory of Those Who Were Taken From This Place Never to Return
Martyrs in the Struggle for Freedom Against Nazi-Fascist Tyranny They Will Not Be Forgotten
The old arrangement of lilies was wilted and dead.
Pallioti bent and picked up the faded bouquet. Bright-yellow pollen dusted the grey marble and speckled the sleeve of his coat. He watched as Signora Grandolo opened the white box and lifted out a new arrangement of pale-pink lilies. She brushed away a dead leaf and placed the flowers carefully at the foot of the monument. Then she stepped back.
‘Half the blooms will probably be gone by tomorrow.’
She took the old arrangement out of Pallioti’s hands, placed it in the box and put the cover back on.
‘But,’ she added, ‘at least they don’t graffiti it. Or they haven’t. Yet. I’ve always thought,’ she added, ‘that really, they should have carved every name of the people who passed through here, on the column. I thought it would be good for the children to see that – names just like theirs, even if they only walked past them twice a day. But, of course, we couldn’t. There were too many.’ She looked at Pallioti. ‘It’s one of the more perverse things,’ she said. ‘At least I think so – that they kept such complete records. Listed every single person who walked in or out of the prisons, or the Villa Triste. That was the SS headquarters. Of course,’ she added, ‘no one ever walked out of the Villa Triste. They were marched or carried.’
Behind them, a harassed-looking man angled a bicycle through the gate. He nodded to them as he manacled it to the rack beside the wide glass doors, carefully removing the front wheel and so many other pieces that by the time he was finished it looked like a skeleton.
‘Really, I suppose I should thank them,’ Signora Grandolo went on. She pressed the top down on the box and shrugged. ‘The Nazis. For keeping such excellent records of who they killed. Without them we would have been quite lost.’ She turned back towards the car. Pallioti held the gate for her.
‘Did they lose many?’ he asked. Then he realized it was a stupid question. How would you know who was lost? Roberto Roblino, for instance.
She glanced at him, opening the Mercedes’ boot and placing the box inside.
‘Surprisingly few,’ she said. ‘They didn’t really make mistakes. The SS. Or the Fascists, for that matter. They didn’t misplace people.’ Then she smiled and added, ‘At least that we know of. Of course if they did—’
‘And if you knew about it, they wouldn’t be lost.’
‘Ah,’ Signora Grandolo smiled across the roof of the car as she opened the driver’s door. ‘The Mayor warned me, Dottore,’ she said. ‘You really are more than just a pretty face.’
The small road they took out of the city wound rapidly uphill. Apartment blocks gave way to modest villas, and then to straggling woods. Unlike the hills that led to Fiesole or Settignano or Arcetri, where Saffy lived, this area was not fashionable. It had frequently been used in the past as a graveyard for the stripped carcasses of stolen cars, and worse. If he looked back Pallioti knew he would see, not a panorama of dreaming spires, but the squat boxes of factory warehouses and the columns of apartment buildings. The big car purred. A truck hurtled down past them. Pallioti glanced over his shoulder as its horn squawked and saw it narrowly miss a taxi climbing behind them.
Unfazed by the increasing steepness, the curves, or the occasional hurtling truck, Signora Grandolo drove steadily, with both hands on the wheel. Through the passenger window, Pallioti watched the hill fall away, taking the shoulder of the road with it. Trash, plastic bags and bottles, scattered among skinny trees. Through their bare winter limbs, he saw a glint of metal, an upside-down shopping trolley half submerged in the dark water of a stream. When Isabella was brought up this road, there was almost certainly no rubbish – no plastic or valuable shreds of scrap metal. The trees would have been in leaf and the water would have been nothing but a bright thread, a flash of silver playing hide-and-seek in the sunlight. She had thought she was going to die, be told to get out and run. She’d told Caterina she had been ready. He wondered if she had decided to go down, towards the water, or up, to her mountains?