Some Bitter Taste (13 page)

‘
We know where you live…’

It
still
spoke of an unscrupulous landlord. Whatever must be added to the equation had to be added on her side. She had to be the threat. Somebody had been defending themselves from her in the end. If only the Land Registry were up to date. The whole of the building where the victim had her flat was registered as the property of Jacob Roth. An unhelpful and defensive clerk had insisted that the records were never more than two years out of date, which the marshal knew was nonsense. The Rossi couple had deposited their contract of purchase two years before, and Rinaldi supposedly owned both his shop and the first-floor apartment. There was still hope since changes of ownership were deposited in the first instance at the Real Estate Registry in Via Laura by the purchaser and the delay was caused by the bureaucratic backlog between there and the Land Registry map update. There were, of course, people who failed to register and so avoided taxes for years. At first, the name Jacob Roth had given him hope. The name was surely Jewish and could mean a personal connection, perhaps a friendly arrangement without a rent contract. That happened, and there could also be a low rent or rent-free arrangement where the tenant paid, instead, restoration and maintenance; hence Sara’s facade and roof repairs problem.

The marshal interrupted his speculations to have lunch. He then visited the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in the Palazzo Vecchio. He found no Jacob Roth living. Hardly surprising, since the Land Registry printout had given Roth’s date of birth as 13.6.1913 in London, G.B. He found no Jacob Roth dead.

‘He doesn’t have to be living here,’ pointed out the prosecutor, when the marshal arrived at his office with this news, ‘to own a building here. If he was born in London, perhaps he returned there.’

‘Yes … it’s just…’

The prosecutor remained silent and the marshal, to his own surprise, said quite firmly, ‘It’s just a feeling I have that whatever’s going on is going on in this city. Sara Hirsch only gave me bits of a jigsaw puzzle but the other pieces are here in Florence. Maybe it’s what she said or maybe it’s how she said it. I wish I could remember her exact words but—don’t you think if the problem had its roots somewhere else she’d have gone there? She wasn’t one of the ones left stateless after the war. She had a passport. And … she was nervous, she was tearful, but she was very sure of her ground. Really convinced.’

The prosecutor continued silent, examining a cigar, waiting.

‘And then there’s the war … She was Jewish but they baptised her …’ The marshal frowned, unable to connect the facts in a logical way.

The prosecutor, very quiedy, offered, ‘“If things were as they should be …” It was in the psychiatric report. Marshal, we must find out who her father was. I don’t think we should give up looking for this Jacob Roth who owns or owned the building. And what if he’s her father? Mind you, if he was, I can’t imagine Sister John Dolores’s being concerned to hide the fact.’

‘The money. We don’t know how much it was. Perhaps it was a lot and she doesn’t like the convent’s having large deposits of Jewish money in its bank account.’

‘If that’s the case,’ said the prosecutor, ‘we’ve more chance of getting it out of her. If it’s false pride we’re dealing with rather than a secrets-of-the-confessional type scenario, then another little visit to the good sisters might be indicated. I’ll deal with that. What’s your next move?’

The marshal failed to notice this extraordinary question. The usual way of things was that he regarded the prosecutor’s running a case with respect and wariness up to the point where he became as absorbed as a bulldog locked on to a bone and forgot about him. He was entering into this phase now. So he hardly noticed either that he was doing something he had never done in his life before—explaining quite easily what he wanted to do. He wanted to spend some time alone in Sara Hirsch’s flat now that evidence of the crime had been cleared away and he was free to wander at will through her rooms, sit on her sofa, look at her bookshelves, interrogate those things that bore witness to her daily life. He avoided admitting as much, even to himself, but he was about to pay Sara Hirsch the visit he’d promised to make before her death. Armed with a written permit and a bunch of keys he returned to 4, Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti.

‘Now then …,’he said to the silent drawing room. Now then, what? Nothing except for that feeling a child gets when left alone in the house. It is a bit frightening but mosdy exciting. There is no one to say ‘Don’t touch’, no one to dissipate the terror of the shadowy places. The atmosphere tingles with possibilities, with adult secrets to be discovered, locked drawers to be opened, letters to be peeped at. No foreign land, no faraway planet, has so many secrets as a house left unattended, let alone a house where a violent death has occurred. But a crime scene full of investigators and technicians holds none of that magic. You have to be alone and quiet to hear a house speak.

The shutters in the drawing room were closed. The marshal switched on the light, looked carefully at a leather sofa, identified Sara Hirsch’s habitual position, and sat down in it to look about him. It was true, as Rinaldi had said, that there was nothing here up to his standard. It was all good-quality stuff, even so. There was no reproduction furniture but no remarkably fine craftsmanship either. None of those pieces that stand alone against a background of rich brocades in the Via Maggio antique shops. There was nothing that the marshal could imagine had been chosen by Sara rather than her mother. There was something not right about the way the furniture was arranged, too. He was certainly sitting in Sara’s place. There was a table to his right with a little silver tray on it where he could place his glass or coffee cup while … while what? While he read? The overhead light, a chandelier affair with glass drops and half a dozen candle-shaped lamps, didn’t give light you could read by and there was no other. So … while what? While he stared straight ahead at the doors of a tall oak cupboard? Furniture used to be arranged around the fire. These days it was more often arranged around the TV. He got up and opened the cupboard doors. The television was a large one and there was a videocassette player, too. On a lower shelf he found a bottle of cognac and a balloon glass. He was more interested in what he didn’t find on the empty shelf direcdy above the television. He closed the cupboard and decided on another chat with Lisa Rossi, the little girl upstairs.

‘A whole shelf full—well, nearly a whole shelf. Sometimes we used to watch one if I finished my homework before my mum got back. I didn’t like them so much, though. A lot of them were black and white and they always look sad, don’t they? Because they’re about people in the old days. Are they to do with the secret?’

‘I don’t really know. Perhaps.’

‘Is it important, my secret? I haven’t told anybody.’

‘It’s very important. Can you draw?’

‘Draw? Not really. I’m never any good at it at school.’

‘But could you draw the things in Signora Hirsch’s safe—the candlesticks, for instance? Just try … here, in my notebook.’

‘They were like this … kind of flat with a lot of candles but I can’t remember how many. It’s come out all crooked; I told you I couldn’t draw.’

‘It doesn’t matter. And the other things?’

‘I can’t draw those. There was a cloth thing with a fringe—I thought it was a long skirt but she never unfolded it—and a little hat. The rest was just books, I think. It was only the photographs she used to show me. She never said anything about those other things but I saw them.’

The marshal hesitated. It was essential not to suggest the answer to a question with any witness but he had to insist. If all the videos had gone, there had to be a reason. They must have known there was one that mattered, one that was something other than a favourite film classic. With an unexpected dead body on their hands they wouldn’t have hung around searching but would have taken the lot, just in case the one they wanted wasn’t in the safe. He mustn’t suggest … Lisa gazed at him with calm grey eyes, waiting.

‘And she kept all the films in that cupboard, on the shelf above the TV? You never saw a video anywhere else?’ Don’t suggest, mention any place but the safe. ‘What about the drawers, Lisa? People sometimes keep things tucked away in drawers if they’re important. Did you ever—’

‘No! I never, I never meant … I want my mum!’

Tears spilled from her eyes and her pale face was suddenly red. What had he done? The door at his back was open and he called out, ‘Signora!’

‘What’s happened? Whatever have you said to her?’ The child flung herself forward and hid her face against her mother’s breast, sobbing loudly.

‘You shouldn’t have done it, you know that?’ The prosecutor, surprised, with his little cigar lit, went on smoking and regarded the marshal without a trace of annoyance. ‘Always with a parent, or at least a witness, in the room. We live in difficult times, Marshal, times when it’s no longer possible to give a child a kindly stroke on the head. This girl, now, could invent anything. She couldn’t prove anything but she wouldn’t need to.’

‘But why on earth …’

‘She obviously has something to hide, something ridiculously trivial that you’ve accidentally put your finger on. And you’ve put yourself in a position that could suggest to her that she could blame you for her tears instead of confessing the truth. It remains to be seen whether she does that. She didn’t say anything specific while you were there?’

‘Not a word. She just cried and cried. She was pretty well hysterical. I should never have gone up there. Whatever was I thinking of? You were the person … when I spotted that the tapes were missing I should have called you right away. I’d no business … I’m no investigator—’

‘You are the investigator on this case, Marshal, and it’s perfectly natural that you should have gone up there. The only thing you did wrong was to speak to the child alone.’

‘Yes. What she was telling me, though … this secret of Sara Hirsch’s … it was something she hadn’t told her mother about so she wouldn’t have talked to me about it.’

‘A carabiniere, then, one of the men from your station—too late now. If two of you show up now, the poor little thing will think she’s about to be arrested for whatever crime she thinks she’s committed. After all, we’re dealing with a homicide here and, however unconnected the child’s little bit of naughtiness might be, her nervousness must be exaggerated by that. Now go on with your investigation. I’ll talk to Signora Rossi and defuse the situation. Trust me.’

The marshal went back to his station. He trusted the prosecutor but he was very distressed. The prosecutor was a good man, a man with years of experience as a children’s judge. If anyone could undo the damage, he could. What the marshal was distressed about was that he could no longer trust himself. He, too, after all, had his years of experience, years of caring for the people of his Quarter, of building up a relationship with them, of being someone they could turn to with their biggest and their smallest problems. He’d never stopped to think about it before. If it crossed his mind at all it was only to start him grumbling about the number of people in the waiting room who would talk to nobody but him. The only man they trusted. And was he now to be accused of molesting a child? If that could happen then these really were dangerous times and he had been oblivious, had patted little boys’ heads and comforted lost little girls. With horror he remembered, as he walked through his waiting room, that once a tiny lost and hysterical girl had stripped off every stitch of her clothing in that very room and he had quieted her and dressed her as best he could, no witness in sight. This thought made him break out into a sweat. He shut himself in his office without his habitual glance into the duty room. There he sat and contemplated his situation. Lisa had still been sobbing loudly when he left. If he hadn’t touched her, had called for her mother without so much as stroking her fair hair, it was only because her outburst had been so surprising, so utterly unexpected that he had failed to react. Well, thank God for that.

But the truth was that he didn’t really thank God for it at all. It was all wrong. This business might all come to nothing but things would never be the same again. If that’s the way the world was now then there was no place in it for him. If he couldn’t do things his way—and what was his way? Forgetting his promise to Sara Hirsch until it was too late? Was that how he cared for the people of his Quarter? If he was now to be accused of something he hadn’t done, didn’t it serve him right since no one had accused him of what he had done? Of doubly failing Sara Hirsch, failing to save her life and failing to find her killers.

He sat for a while, shifting files from one side of his desk to another, opening and shutting them, pretending to read them. He wasn’t breathing properly. He was too hot … he’d forgotten to take his jacket off. He got up to do it and stood there forgetting what he’d got up to do. Hot though he was, there was a heavy, cold weight in his stomach. He felt like he’d swallowed a toad. Failure after failure came flooding back. What about that Albanian girl in the hospital? The decision not to go into the flat had been his and only his. And Sir Christopher Wrothesly?
'I’m under your care, too. I’m pleased to hear it.’
He had little reason. Too much trouble to pay a sick man a visit; the great investigator was busy solving the Hirsch case. And then it was too late. The man had become too ill to receive him.

‘No, no, no …’ The world had little use for him and no wonder.

Lorenzini opened the door. ‘Is there somebody with you?’

‘No.’

‘I thought I heard you—’

‘No.’

‘Are you going out?’

‘No.’

‘Oh … there’s a couple of things here need your signature.’

‘Leave them on the desk.’

Lorenzini put the stuff down and withdrew.

The toad squatting in the marshal’s stomach swelled, colder and larger. He had to move, do something. He opened the door and called a carabiniere from the duty room. He had decided to visit the hospital, check on the girl, give them her name, something useful…