The Drowning River (35 page)

There was at least incontrovertible proof of that, not merely the word of an alcoholic barman, on the camera suspended above the Annalena gate.

Sandro leaned back, hands still on the steering-wheel, and gazed sideways out of the car window. Had it been a thrill for Veronica Hutton, to pass so close to where her lover was working? Was she thinking only about the time they would be alone together? Or was she planning how to charm the old painter into giving up his secrets, his gossip, his history, so she could just casually impress Massi with her insider’s knowledge?

Another fire engine drew alongside, slowed to get past, sped on. Sandro fretted; where was Massi? He decided to tell Luisa what was going on, while he waited.

The line crackled as it rang, and not for the first time since the rains began and he started investigating Claudio Gentileschi’s last hours on earth, Sandro had the overwhelming feeling that something catastrophic was in the air, literally. Flooding; chaos; everything coming apart at the seams. Claudio Gentileschi a fraudster, a faker, a molester of young women, a killer. But Luisa sounded cheerful.

‘It won’t kill us,’ she said simply. ‘We can sleep on Giuli’s floor, we can stay with my aunt Alice in Galluzzo, we can book into a hotel, for heaven’s sake. It’s hardly high season. And, anyway, you know what they’re like, it’s probably all just an exaggeration.’ She tutted. ‘I mean, whoever heard of them closing all the bridges?’

Was she enjoying this? He didn’t mind if she was. ‘Massi hasn’t turned up yet,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s stuck on the other side. I’ll be here.’

‘OK,’ said Luisa. ‘We’re nearly at the Cat Lady’s place.’ She took a breath. ‘Hope she’s at home.’

‘You’re not tired, are you?’ said Sandro, anxiously. ‘You’re feeling all right? You’re dry?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Luisa. ‘I’ve got my boots, my raincoat – I’m looking forward to pinning this Fiamma DiTommaso down, if you must know. I told you she did a runner when I tried to talk to her in the garden?’ There was a pause, and Sandro grunted. Luisa did sound OK; she probably needed to take her mind off – things. ‘Giuli’s looking after me, anyway,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you.’

‘Should I pick you up?’ said Sandro, helplessly. Luisa laughed. ‘How you going to do that?’ she said. ‘If they’re closing the bridges, the only way to get anywhere’s going to be on foot. We’ll come and find you.’

As he hung up, out of the corner of his eye he saw a whole golden window of light extinguished, and he turned his head to look. Opposite the Galleria Massi was a shop that sold carved and gilded light fittings, a window display with a scarlet silk-spread bed and boudoir lighting, now dark; as he watched a stocky woman came out and reached up for the iron shutter to the window to close up. She had a defeated look about her; she must be struggling, thought Sandro, if she’s got to come in and open the shop on a November Sunday. Hold on, he thought, didn’t Luisa say something about the shop opposite? Hold on. He climbed out of the car.

‘Evening,’ he said, and she looked at him, keys in hand and the shutter half-down.

‘Yes,’ she said suspiciously. Sandro briefly considered a story about needing a wall sconce before dismissing it. He merely nodded across the street at the gallery. In his pocket the damned phone pipped at him, again; he ignored it. How could a man think straight with these bloody things firing off messages every five minutes?

‘The Galleria Massi,’ he said, gesturing across the road. ‘D’you know him? Paolo Massi?’

She snorted. She was strongly built, a small workhorse of a person, with thick dyed blonde hair and a watchful air that Sandro liked. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘Or at least, I watch him mess about with that place, if that counts. You can get to know someone that way, I suppose.’

‘Don’t like him much?’ said Sandro, and she inspected him more closely.

‘Not much,’ she said. ‘What business is it of yours?’

He gave her the swift outline of an answer, a private investigation, involving a student of Massi’s. She nodded. Gabriella, but he could call her Gabi, she said. With a sigh she removed her key from the shutter, leaving it up, pushed the door to the shop open again, flicked the light switch. ‘Not as if I’ve got anything else to do,’ she said. ‘After you.’

From here you could see more of the dim interior over the road,
he noticed; far down at the back of a shop some kind of security light was on.

‘I only asked him to put some flyers in the gallery,’ Gabi said indignantly, ‘and said I’d reciprocate, and he acted like I was some kind of street trash with my hand out.’

‘Is he there every day?’ She tossed her head. ‘When it suits him. He runs a school too, doesn’t he? He comes down here to play at being a bigshot, or when he has some student show to put up, like last week.’ She peered through the glass. ‘At least, I think that’s what it was; this one must be pretty special. A lot of to-ing and fro-ing all week.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘God knows where he stores all that crap, when it doesn’t sell. Probably takes it to the dump.’

As she spoke they were standing at her desk – like Massi’s, it was stationed at the front of the shop, just inside the door.

‘You like to get a good view of the street?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Who wants to hide away at the back? And it deters shoplifters. Even he likes to look into the street.’ She nodded over the road.

‘Ever been inside his shop?’ Sandro asked.

‘You mean gallery,’ she corrected him, curling her lip. ‘I’m a shopkeeper, he’s a – a patron of the arts.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Just the once, asking that favour; he made it clear he wouldn’t welcome another visit. I thought it was full of rubbish, modern stuff, student exhibitions, hardly worth the storage space. I’d like to know how he makes a living.’ She tapped the side of her nose.

‘Got any ideas?’ It occurred to him that Gabi might be the woman who sold him out to the Guardia; never mind discarded lover, more like retail envy. In this day and age, it was money over sex, every time.

She was talking angrily, staring across the road. ‘Well, the nice shiny SUVs with German plates don’t go away with pigs’ heads in formaldehyde and student artwork, do they? They get their stuff out of the back room in beautiful hand-made portfolios.’

Sandro took a step nearer to the window, the germ of something taking shape in his mind. What had Antonella Scarpa said they sold? Renaissance drawings, that kind of thing?

‘Tuesday,’ he said with an effort, trying to tie this thing together, to get back to facts. ‘Massi says his wife came down, to have lunch with him. Could that be right?’

‘Wife?’ Gabi snorted again. ‘Which one?’ Sandro started back at that, and saw her sourly mischievous expression.

‘Only joking,’ said Gabi. ‘She’s not his wife, is she? The bossy little Sardinian woman, the
Sarda
with the short black hair. Not his wife, even if she acts like it.’ Antonella Scarpa, thought Sandro. Gabi went on. ‘She’s down here often enough, that one. If I was his wife I’d – well, I wouldn’t like to be his wife, put it that way.’

‘So she – the real wife, I mean – you’re saying she wasn’t here on Tuesday?’

‘Actually,’ said Gabi, wrinkling her brow, ‘Tuesday? I’m not open Mondays so, yes, I came in Tuesday, All Saints or not. Funny thing is, I think you could be right, she was here Tuesday, old number one wife.’ She unfolded her arms, her face relaxed as she pondered. She laughed. ‘I remember now, because it looked like she’d come down to take over from number two wife.’

Antonella Scarpa had been here for a couple of hours in the morning, Sandro remembered him saying that. Massi. Hiding behind his women.

Gabi seated herself at the small desk, as though re-enacting her working day; set her chin in both hands and stared through her rain-spattered window across the grey street.

Sandro found himself holding his breath, although he wasn’t quite sure why; the stocky little woman was so intent, suddenly.

‘He arrived first,’ she began, slowly. ‘Bright and early, for him, I remember wondering if today was the day, only the student show’s always on a Saturday. He had a coffee in a take-away cup, let himself in. He was. . .’ she frowned. ‘Let me think, he had something with him, more than the usual – he often has a document case or such like. Tuesday he had – what was it? He was having difficulty with the door, what with the takeaway cup, carrying it all. More like a weekend bag type of thing, fancy designer one. He went straight in the back, and left it there.’

Sandro followed her gaze, fixing on the glow of the security light visible at the back of the gallery. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see that it illuminated a wall of storage, and a door out to the back.

‘Then he came back to his desk, sat right down, didn’t really move.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Sometimes I just stare at him, waiting for him to give in and meet my eye, but it’s like I don’t exist, you know? He was on the phone a bit, then did some paperwork.’

‘And Antonella Scarpa? His assistant? When did she arrive on the scene?’

There had been something about Antonella, thought Sandro, hadn’t there? Tougher than him, by a long way. A worker, tenacious, prickly. How did she feel about being number two wife? Number three, maybe, after Veronica Hutton.

Pursing her lips, Gabi pronounced, ‘She turned up, oh, must have been ten? I’d nipped down the road for a coffee myself around then, and she was arriving just as I was letting myself back in.’

‘Was that the only time you left the shop?’ he asked.

Gabi looked at him, affronted. ‘It was,’ she said with dignity. ‘I bring myself a sandwich, generally. No such thing as a lunch break, these days.’

‘And when the wife arrived?’

She frowned again, concentrating hard. ‘An hour or so later? Eleven, eleven-thirty sort of time?’

‘A bit early for lunch,’ mused Sandro, half to himself. And a bit of a coincidence, anyway, if the wife hardly ever went down there, for her to turn up just out of the blue.

‘Lunch? I didn’t see much sign of lunch,’ said Gabi, chin still in her hands. ‘Not then, anyway, too early for lunch.’ She frowned. ‘I think she went out a bit later, when I was eating my own lunch, half one or so. First off, though, she saw number two wife off the premises pretty quick, literally took her place, rolled up her sleeves and got down to messing about with the pictures, like she was his assistant now. Fireworks, I’d say. Surprised to see her wasn’t in it.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Sandro, carefully.

Gabi laughed to herself meanly. ‘Whatever they were saying to each
other, between the three of them, they scared off the only customer I’ve seen put a head around that door in months, poor thing ran off like a scalded cat.’

‘And Scarpa left then? The Sardinian woman? At around –’ he tried to sound casual – ‘eleven-thirty?’

‘She did. Around then, yes. Although I had a customer myself at that point. It was a good day, Tuesday, the sun brings ’em out, you know.’ At which they both gazed into the street, the sun a distant memory. A car drew up slowly on to the kerb opposite, two figures seated in the front.

‘So you weren’t looking over the road?’

‘Oh, yes, I kept an eye,’ said Gabi. ‘I was interested, by then, you know? There’s days and days go by, sitting here, and they don’t often put on that kind of a show. Half the time the place is closed.’

‘Thing is,’ said Sandro, aware that this was the six-million-dollar question, ‘Massi says he was there all day. Says his wife can vouch for that, she was there all day with him.’

Gabi grimaced. ‘Well,’ she said reluctantly, ‘I got to say, he really was there the whole day, I can see him, you see, at that desk. Though they left a bit early, around four. I saw them locking up, the full works, shutters down. You’d think they had a couple of Leonardos in there instead of some student sketches.’

‘And he couldn’t have, say, slipped out for half an hour, while you were serving?’

This was getting too far-fetched, wasn’t it? So it was no surprise when Gabi shook her head. ‘Well, no,’ she said with regret. ‘Sorry,
caro.
He was sitting at that desk like she’d glued him down; she was out the back somewhere, she didn’t reappear for a while, then when she did she went off in the car and came back with a sandwich bag, and he was there the whole time. He didn’t even go out into the yard for a smoke; I’ve seen him do that, when he’s under pressure. A couple of minutes? Well, possibly. But not half an hour, not even ten minutes. Nope.’

Across the road the couple climbed out of the car; they’d been sitting there like they were having a lover’s tiff, but then Sandro saw that they weren’t a couple but Paolo Massi and Antonella Scarpa.

Gabi stood up, and folded her arms back across her chest.

‘Looks like number two wife’s back in charge, hey,’ she said.

The Via dei Bardi, where Fiamma DiTommaso supposedly lived at number twelve and which was usually the most tomblike of streets with its high stone walls and deep gloom, found itself in noisy chaos. Cars were backed up in the rain and people smoking angrily on the pavements.

The two women edged along the narrow thoroughfare under the gardens of the Costa Scarpuccia, which were banked up and held in place by an ancient and bulging wall.

‘They’re closing the bridges,’ said Giulietta, helpfully, to a man standing under the dripping foliage, as they skirted him. He scowled, more at the world, thought Luisa, than at Giuli. The world’s not so bad, she wanted to say, even the rain on her face seemed a kind of blessing, even the chaos and the flooding were better than nothing.

They trudged on towards their goal. Most people who lived on this street were very wealthy indeed and the facades were well maintained, but there were pockets of poverty and dereliction. Lead-blackened plaster, cheap and shabby windows, disintegrating stonework. They were everywhere in the city, rent-controlled buildings where the landlords were trying to starve their stubborn, ancient tenants out by refusing to carry out repairs or modernize the properties. Sometimes they held whole families of immigrant workers, revealed only in summer when their ground-floor shutters would be thrown open in the gasping heat to expose a wall full of bunk beds, like a termite mound exposed.