A Dead Man in Trieste (2 page)

Koskash had suggested several places where Seymour might go for lunch.

‘A sandwich and a drink is all I need,’ said Seymour.

‘Then why not go down to the piazza? It is nice there. You can see the sea and there is always a little breeze.’

And it would give him a chance, thought Seymour, to meet some of Lomax’s friends: those friends whom Kornbluth had thought so unsuitable and whom he had thought it important to let Seymour know about.

And so he had gone down to the Piazza Grande, and found the Caffé degli Specchi, the Café of Mirrors, and now he was sitting at the table at which, Koskash had told him, Lomax used to sit: the table he had sat at and left on the evening that he had disappeared.

A man came up, saw him at the table, hesitated and then sat down at the next table. After a while he caught Seymour’s eye and raised his glass.

‘You are English?’

‘That’s right.’

‘This is your first visit to Trieste?’

‘Yes.’

‘There is much here to see.’

‘Yes. Although actually you could say that I am here on business. There is someone whom I was hoping to meet.’

‘Ah!’ The man sipped from his glass. ‘You are waiting, perhaps, for Lomax?’

‘Perhaps.’

He took another sip and then put the glass down.

‘Lomax won’t be coming,’ he said.

‘So I gather.’

‘You know?’

‘Only a little. Really, only that he has disappeared.’

‘It was last Tuesday. He had been here. Here, at this very table! Earlier in the evening. We only found out the next day. When he didn’t come, we wondered. You know, he was so regular. He always used to be here. It was his place. The best place on earth, he said. He said that at last he had found his niche. So when he didn’t come we thought that perhaps he was ill. A touch of malaria or something. So Lorenzo called in at the Consulate on his way home. And then he found . . .’

‘He found?’

‘Well, that Signor Lomax had disappeared.’

‘But surely –’

‘I know, I know. But he was always so regular. Say what you will, he never missed an appointment. So when he did, Koskash was worried. He went to his apartment. Lomax hadn’t been there at all that night, he hadn’t come home. Well, Koskash was surprised. And not just surprised, concerned. It might be nothing, but . . . So he dropped in at the police station and had a word with Kornbluth.’

‘Kornbluth?’

‘The Inspector. Everyone knows Kornbluth. He’s a pain in the ass but he’s all right, really. He said not to bother. Lomax was probably just having a lie-in with some woman. Come back if he didn’t show up. Well, he didn’t show up and Koskash did go back. And then . . .’

‘Then?’

‘You know Trieste? No? Well, in Trieste, my friend, there are two sorts of police. There are the
lamparetti
, Korn-bluth’s sort, the municipal guard I suppose you would call them. And then there’s another sort. You understand? Well, you will if you stay in Trieste any length of time. They are everywhere. Anyway, somehow they got to hear about it, and then – Jesus!

‘The next moment they’re all over the place. An official! An official has disappeared! Not only that, a foreign official! This is serious. If you or I disappear, my friend, that is nothing. But an official! Officials are important in Trieste. Where will it end if officials start disappearing? What will become of the Empire? And so the next moment the secret police are all over the place.’

He looked at his watch.

‘And so this lunchtime everyone is late. They are probably all at the police station.’

A man came hurrying up, coat tails flying, shirt collar undone.

‘Alfredo, Alfredo!’

‘Lorenzo!’

They embraced warmly.

‘Alfredo, I have been in prison!’

‘You have been there before, Lorenzo.’

‘But this time they shouted at me, Alfredo!’

‘You need a drink.’

The waiter put a bottle on the table and then, without asking, half a dozen glasses.

‘Where are the rest of you?’

‘They are in prison, Giuseppi.’

‘There must be something right that they have done, then,’ said the waiter.

He poured out some wine for Alfredo and Lorenzo and was about to pour some for Seymour but then hesitated. ‘Yes, yes!’ cried Alfredo. ‘Some for my friend!’

‘Your pardon!’ cried Lorenzo, noticing Seymour for the first time. He jumped up and threw his arms around him.

‘A friend of Lomax’s,’ Alfredo explained.

‘Any friend of Lomax is a friend of mine!’ declared Lorenzo dramatically.

They drank each other’s health.

Lorenzo sobered as quickly as he had fired up.

‘Poor Lomax!’ he said.

‘Is it poor Lomax?’ asked Seymour. ‘Surely, it is only that he has disappeared? Might there not be some happy explanation? Couldn’t he have just . . . well, gone away for a day or two?’

‘Lomax never goes away.’

‘But, perhaps, a sudden call of business?’

‘Lomax has no sudden calls of business,’ said Alfredo.

‘Anyway,’ said Lorenzo, ‘this is where he does his business. Here!’

Two people came towards them through the tables.

‘Ah! Here is Luigi! And Marinetti.’

‘The bastards! They made me take my trousers down!’

‘Are you sure it was the police station you went to, Luigi? There is a place down by the docks . . .’

‘There is nothing to choose between the two,’ said Marinetti. ‘The police are all whores.’

‘Yes, but they shouldn’t have treated me like that. Who do they think they are? Who do they think
we
are?’

‘They think we’re just a bunch of Italian layabouts,’ said Alfredo.

‘Well, we
are
just a bunch of Italian layabouts,’ said Lorenzo.

‘I am not a layabout,’ said Marinetti, taking umbrage.

‘No?’

‘No! I am an artist. And that is important. Artists are the voice of the future. But that’s just the trouble. Those bastards are the voice of the past.’

‘That must be why they’ve got it in for me,’ said Luigi, sighing.

‘Are you all artists?’ asked Seymour. The paintings in Lomax’s room were beginning to make some sense now.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Alfredo.

‘No,’ said Lorenzo.

‘Sometimes,’ said Luigi.

‘Every man is an artist,’ said Marinetti. ‘Every man has the capacity to create. Except for the members of the Hapsburg police.’

Alfredo looked at his watch.

‘Where is Maddalena?’ he fretted. ‘And James?’

‘Still at the police station, I expect,’ said Lorenzo.

‘I do not like that,’ said Luigi. ‘I worry when they have got her on her own.’

‘If Lomax had been here, we could have asked him to see what was happening.’

There was a little silence.

‘This is a friend of Lomax,’ said Alfredo, remembering suddenly that he had not introduced him.

‘Ah, a friend?’ They shook hands. ‘You have come to collect his belongings?’

‘No, no,’ said Seymour hurriedly. ‘I didn’t know until I had got here. It was a great shock.’

Lorenzo touched him sympathetically on the shoulder. ‘I am here on business,’ said Seymour. ‘I was going to deliver something to him.’

‘There is a clerk. Koskash.’

‘Yes, I’ve met him. Most helpful. However, I think I’d better wait until I get instructions from London.’

‘While you are here,’ said Alfredo, ‘make this your home.’

Seymour was drawn to them. He couldn’t help wondering, however, if these were the kind of friends a British Consul usually had.

An hour or so later he got up, shook hands all round, and left. The artists showed every sign of staying where they were.

Seymour went back to the Consulate.

The worried-looking clerk, Koskash, was still there, bent over his desk. Evidently, siestas were not for him. Seymour wondered how far he could take him into his confidence. So far he had not told him he was a policeman, merely said that he was here to enquire into the circumstances in which Lomax had gone missing. Koskash had, of course, guessed. But perhaps they ought to agree on the question of Seymour’s formal status here. That seemed a suitable Foreign Office thing to do.

When he had discussed this at the Foreign Office he had found that there was considerable reluctance about him going out openly as a police officer. Might it not send the wrong signals? Imply scepticism about the ability of the local authorities to carry out a proper investigation? Suggest, too, to Vienna that London attached the wrong level of significance to the affair, more importance than Lomax, dead or living, merited? From Seymour’s point of view, too, they suggested, there could be advantages in going incognito.

But then what was he to go as? There was a long discussion about this, longer, in fact, than there had been about Lomax himself and his disappearance. The older man ruled out Seymour’s trying to pass as a diplomat, however junior. It was quite unthinkable. A manservant, perhaps? The younger man doubted whether Lomax had gone in for menservants. He was, after all, only a consul. A Consulate guard, then? Wasn’t it a little late for that, asked the younger man. And mightn’t that be to attach too little significance to the role? How would it look to the Minister?

In the end it was agreed that Seymour should go out to Trieste as a King’s Messenger, which sounded appropriately superior but was appropriately inferior.

Koskash listened carefully but looked doubtful.

‘We haven’t had a King’s Messenger here before,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Usually they just go to the embassies.’

‘Perhaps, then, no one here will know quite what to expect,’ said Seymour, ‘and that might be all to the good.’

Koskash continued to look doubtful but since it had already been determined, he had no alternative but to acquiesce.

‘What did you tell Kornbluth?’

‘Merely that I was from the Foreign Office and that London wanted to know about the circumstances surrounding Lomax’s disappearance.’

Koskash nodded.

‘All right so far,’ he said; but there was still a note of doubt in his voice.

Seymour went on through into Lomax’s room. Apart from the pictures it was sparsely furnished. There was just a desk and a few chairs. Files, presumably, were kept outside in Koskash’s room.

Seymour sat down at the desk and went through the drawers. They were practically empty. In one of them, stuffed away without interest, was a list of diplomatic representatives in the area, but that was all. On top of the desk were an in-tray and an out-tray, both empty. There was also an appointments book. That was empty, too.

The room felt as if it hadn’t been inhabited for a long time. Perhaps it hadn’t been, if Koskash hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said that Lomax spent all his time down in the piazza. But if that was the case, then where had he done his work? If, that was, he had done any.

Later in the afternoon Seymour got a key from Koskash and went to Lomax’s apartment. It was in a large, crumbling house. The rooms were high and dark, but that made them cool, a thing to be sought after in Trieste in the summer. For the same reason, perhaps, the furniture was mostly wickerwork. Again there wasn’t much of it: one or two chairs, a small table and a dressing-table. It looked as if Lomax hadn’t spent much time here, either.

In the bedroom there was a wardrobe with a few suits. Seymour went through the pockets and found only a letter from an Auntie Vi who lived in Warrington and a surprising number of ticket stubs. The bed was a large wooden one with a single sheet and a Continental bolster-like pillow. When Seymour bent over it he caught a faint whiff of a woman’s perfume.

Afterwards Seymour went back to the Consulate. Koskash had gone now and Seymour sat at his desk, in the darkening room, thinking.

He didn’t know what he had expected to find but this wasn’t it. He had been sent out to Trieste to find a man or at least to find out what had happened to him. But he hadn’t found a man, either here or in the apartment. Where was Lomax’s life?

In the piazza, apparently. That was what Koskash had said, what Kornbluth had said, and what the artists had said and Seymour seemed to have no choice now other than to accept it.

But . . .

This was a consul, after all. Was that how consuls usually spent their time? One part of Seymour would have liked to think it; but the other part, the strict, conventional part which came originally from his family’s strongly Puritanical background on the Continent and then from two generations of life as a new immigrant, with all its pressures to keep your head down and not stand out, to make yourself invisible by observing the norms of your adopted society and becoming more English than the English, was faintly shocked.

Seymour was at heart a bit of a conformist; and Lomax didn’t seem to conform at all! How did that play in London, Seymour wondered? Not very well, if his own experience at the Foreign Office was anything to go by. And not very well with officialdom in Trieste, either, judging by what Kornbluth had said.

But Kornbluth had said something else, too, or, at least, had hinted at it. He had gone out of his way to link Lomax with that strange group of artists and the artists with . . . what? Nationalistic activity of some sort? Political trouble-making? Had Lomax allowed his sympathies to run away with him and identified himself too closely with their preoccupations? And had that had something to do with his disappearance? Or death? Was that what Kornbluth had been hinting?

And was that, too, what those men at the Foreign Office, in their obscure, supercilious way, had been suggesting? Were those the currents that they feared Lomax had allowed himself to be drawn into?

Later, Seymour walked down to the piazza. The lamps in the cafés were coming on. The tables were filling up. The space in the middle of the piazza, which had been empty when Seymour had been there earlier in the day, was now crowded with people. There were whole families, grandparents, parents and children, the children running on ahead or pushing themselves after on wheeled wooden horses, all out together; there were young girls arm in arm, young men, always apart from the girls, usually in groups, older couples turning aside from time to time to chat to people they recognized at the tables. There were uniforms everywhere. Was this a garrison town? But they didn’t look like soldiers. And then he suddenly realized what they were. Officials. Alfredo had said that there were a lot of officials in Trieste, and hadn’t Seymour read somewhere that in the Empire all officials, from the topmost civil servant to the bottom-most postman or clerk, wore uniforms?