Some Bitter Taste (18 page)

He looked old
—
I mean grown-up. All the grown-ups look kind of old and sad in those brown pictures, and he had sad clothes on, a really gloomy suit and a hat. He was long and thin and dark but she was only a little girl. She was only up to his shoulder and she had plaits.’

A little girl. Sent alone with her past in a suitcase to the place that they thought was safe. Where the photograph was taken.

‘She told me. You could even see the stuff in the window behind them. It was right here in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti’.

Yes, of course. He had said it before and he was still convinced of it. Despite Prague, despite London, he knew that this was a Florentine story and the important elements were all right here.
'Right here in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti’…

Rinaldi, now, he was as guilty as hell, but guilty of what exactly? He said he’d paid the porters for nothing, that instead of what he wanted he got a dead body, a murder investigation on his doorstep.

The marshal scribbled a list on the left-hand side of a sheet of paper from his drawer.

Photo of mum and dad in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti.

Photo of flowers Video?

Little Lisa hadn’t seen a video in the safe but if all the videos were gone, then …

He hadn’t paid them for nothing. These things were gone.

‘No, no,’ said the marshal aloud. Sara Hirsch was frightened but she wasn’t stupid and whatever this business was about, it had occupied her whole life. They had already been in her house. She wouldn’t have taken risks after such a warning.

‘Talk with your lawyer and tell him what I’ve told you.’

‘I will … I intend to defend my rights.’

Her lawyer. He had to find her lawyer. Any trace of him was gone from the flat so Rinaldi had achieved that, at least If Jacob Roth was her father, then she would have gone to the same lawyer, this Umberto D’Ancona. If he was her father…

On the right-hand side of his sheet of paper he scribbled a few more things, copying them from the few documents in the Hirsch file. Jacob Roth’s date of birth taken from the Land Registry. Sara’s date of birth and her mother’s from their baptismal certificates. The purchase of the building in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti. These few facts, and they were very few, had to fit together. If they did, then they would show a gap. An empty space which, if he could define its edges, would tell him what he should be looking for.

Jacob Roth was born in 1913 in Great Britain.

Ruth Hirsch was born in 1926 in Czechoslovakia In the photograph Lisa had seen, Ruth was a child in plaits, Jacob, would have been thirteen years older, a man in suit and hat. But Ruth grew. Those apartments, he knew, had only two bedrooms. But there was a war on, people had to manage. In 1943 Ruth was pregnant. Was it love, proximity, marriage? Not marriage or why the convent? Jacob had a foreign passport and could have taken her away before the Occupation. Did he himself leave? Where was he that he survived the war when Ruth was hidden in a convent and his parents were deported and killed?

It always came back to the same question. Where was Jacob Roth? Where was he then, where did he die, where was he buried? Rinaldi hadn’t much liked telling them anything at all about the man and must have known a great deal more than he told. No knowing, of course, if what he did tell was true.

‘Just a minute! Rinaldi …’ He scribbled a note about Rinaldi’s taking over the business.

The door opened and Lorenzini looked in. ‘Did you call?’

‘No, no … I mean—nothing. I was just thinking aloud. Sorry.’

‘That’s okay. I was coming in anyway. Prosecutor sent this over. Further autopsy report on Sara Hirsch. And there was a phone call from the hospital about the Albanian girl. They said you’d asked to be kept informed.’

‘How is she?’

‘They’ve operated again. Condition’s stable. I suppose that’s not saying much in her case, is it?’

‘No. No, it’s not.’

‘You could almost wish … anyway, and there’s a young man waiting out here to see you.’

‘I suppose …?’

‘Has to be you.’ By this time, Lorenzini had accumulated quite a little ‘clientele’ for himself but people didn’t accept substitutes in every case. The marshal frowned and looked at the sheet of paper in front of him. Two or three scribbled lines, a few dates. The great investigator. He’d have been ashamed to let the prosecutor, or even Lorenzini, see them. Lorenzini was brighter, more on the ball, younger. Well … pride never solved a case.

‘All right, you can send him in—come here a minute first. Just be taking a look at these dates, will you? Those two men we arrested this morning …’

‘Falaschi and Giusti?’

‘Right. This antique dealer, Rinaldi, the man they work for, do you know much about him?’

‘I know him. See him occasionally about the monthly list of stolen goods.’

‘What do you think of him? Slippery?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, no. Not honest, either. The complete opposite of the chap on the corner of Piazza San Felice who does his own restoration work, has a passion for it. Rinaldi’s passion, I’d say, was for clever dealing. And I don’t think he needs to be slippery, as you put it. I’ve had my suspicions of him over the years but never been in a position to move against him and he knows it. He’d laugh in our faces.’

‘I’m sure he would. The point is…just look through these dates from the Hirsch case, will you? Rinaldi says he took over the shop after the war and I’m trying to make sense of it and I can’t. I don’t know what it is but … everybody’s Jewish in this story except for him, that’s one thing. Take the whole file and come back to me when I’ve seen this man.’

‘I’ll send him in.’

Proximity, love, marriage … whichever it was, the picture he’d never seen was the one most present in the marshal’s head. The girl with pigtails standing next to the young man in a suit. Proximity, love, marriage … pregnant at eighteen in a foreign country, running from a war, prejudice, and persecution.

‘Mama!’

That was Enkeleda’s voice. They had operated again. Another child …

A young man had come in quiedy and was standing in front of the desk. The face was familiar, blue eyes … the recollection pleasant, but he couldn’t quite place …

‘I don’t suppose you remember me. We met at L’Uliveto recently. I work in the garden there.’ He ran a hand through floppy blond hair, hesitating, a bit shy. He looked exceptionally tall in this small room. The marshal had seen him before but outdoors—

‘Of course. The poor relation—I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean—’

‘Oh, don’t worry. After all, I was the one to tell you that’s what I was. I’m the same myself. Never forget a face but then when I see somebody in a different setting I have trouble remembering who they are. Jim’s the name. And I suppose even now you know who I am you’re surprised to see me. Well, do you mind if I sit down? I think it’s time we had that little talk.’

Nine

O
h, Lord … he’d better straighten this out right away. With the best will in the world, he couldn’t afford to waste time today.

‘Look, it’s very kind of you to say that Sir Christopher thinks well of me—and I’m not disbelieving you either because it does seem that way. You’re not the first to say it, though I can’t imagine why it should be. He hardly knows me. And I understand that these are hard times for young people trying to get work. But I’m in no position to help you. I’m sorry …’

‘Help me? I think you must have misunderstood me. What I’m worried about is our little robbery. You see’—Jim leaned forward and looked earnestly at the marshal in a way that held him almost hypnotised—'/think, and the
head gardener
thinks, that it was faked. You know, an inside job, so when there’s a more serious robbery, it will point suspicion at somebody who could have let them in, like at the housekeeper.’

‘But I’ve already told you that no one ever suspected her.’

‘I passed that on to her but you know what happened last time: The current “Giorgio”
andthe
butler went, pushed out by the powers that be, even though you people didn’t suspect them either. Not a scrap of evidence. But the housekeeper says there’s more to it this time. She says that with the DNA testing they can do nowadays—’

‘She’s talking nonsense.’

‘Do you think so? I suppose she might be, but as I said the other day, she’ll leave for her holidays in August and she’s talking about moving in with her sister. We think Sir Christopher’s dying, and once he’s gone—well, you know what I mean, you’re dealing with the case, but that doesn’t alter the fact that if there is a big robbery there’s still Giorgio who can be blamed and at the same time protected, so he’ll keep quiet, or say what he’s told to say. You understand me?’

‘I … no. Giorgio’s the boy from Kosovo who’s cataloguing the library or something, is that right?’

‘The collection. Theoretically, but his lips will be sealed on that subject, too. Yes, the boy from Kosovo. The last in a long line of boys.’

‘I’d gathered that he was—though, surely, Sir Christopher, in his condition—’

‘Oh, no. He just likes to have them around. A lot of them were pretty much saved from the streets, illegal immigrants, Italian kids with a bit of a record, you know…Just a bit of self-indulgent kindness on his part, really, and in this case he’s on to a good thing. Giorgio speaks perfect Italian and good Russian and he’s brainy. A medical student. He’s willing to turn his hand to anything he’s asked to do as well as the cataloguing and they pay him a pittance.’

‘I follow you. He must be unhappy away from his home, though. He’s very young.’ Through the doorway, a weeping boy and Porteous’s hand massaging …

‘Unhappy? Away from Kosovo? An illegal immigrant rescued from the streets by a fancy lawyer? And now that he feels threatened because of the great hairbrush robbery, the same lawyer will be kindly offering to protect him.’

‘I see. But the last big robbery? You told me the butier went. Surely, Sir Christopher—’

‘Not Sir Christopher. Never Sir Christopher. It’s the others, led by Porteous. They poison his mind, accuse whomever they want to be rid of. People who’ve been there too long, know too much. They’ll be glad if the housekeeper goes now. She was born at the villa, you know. She and Sir Christopher are the same age exacdy. Her mother was housekeeper to Sir Christopher’s parents so she knows all about
that
story.’ The young man, still leaning forward in his chair, just as he had in the garden, lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘It seems James Wrothesly was a terror with the ladies and his
wife
caught him in flagrante in her garden when she came back a day early from a visit to England. She had this marble plaque put on the very spot and never went in there again. The staff all adored her, especially the gardeners. They still talk about her and keep her garden the way she liked it as though she were still alive.’

‘Sir Christopher himself told me that. I saw the plaque, too.’ The marshal glanced at his watch. He mustn’t be late again and he still wanted to talk to Lorenzini, but the low, confidential tone and the image of a garden and a sad, dying man—

‘That reminds me: The other day, when I wasn’t allowed to see Sir Christopher, I did hear his voice beyond a door and I must say it crossed my mind that he might have had a drop too much. A bit slurred. Does he drink?’

‘A glass of wine with his meals, delivered now by young Giorgio-whose-lips-are-sealed. Sir Christopher’s bed’s been moved to his mother’s old sitting room on the ground floor since he got weaker, with Giorgio in the room next door so he’s never alone. And he doesn’t have a chat with the gardeners anymore as he’s done every day of his adult life—even though he’s always parked out on the dining terrace overlooking his mother’s garden where we could easily go to him. We can see him from the kitchen garden in front of the lemon house. I’ve waved to him once or twice but he never waves back. It’s not like him. The garden was always his first thought in the mornings.’

What on earth was the point of all this? The marshal stared hard, his big, slighdy bulging eyes willing the young man to come to the point, if any. To no effect.

‘Anyway, in a day or two it’ll be August and we’ve been told to clean out the lemon house—of course, this is a dead period in the garden. The head gardener leaves for his holidays on the first … But you know about the big robbery so you can understand why I’m worried. Even the porter’s being allowed to go away and I’m to stay in the lodge.’

‘I see. Well, yes, it is a worry. Big houses are very much at risk in August but you can’t take responsibility for that great place. You’ve said yourself that Sir Christopher hardly knows you exist.’

‘I know. I just think he’s a good man—kind of innocent, childlike in a way—and it pisses me off—sorry—that he should be betrayed. He doesn’t deserve that.’

‘You think he’s being betrayed?’

‘We know he is, and after all he’s done for them. Porteous was a “Giorgio” too, you know, taken in off the streets, for all the airs he gives himself now.’

‘You said the other day that Sir Christopher wouldn’t recognise you if he saw you. So, your bothering to come here is …’ What was it? The marshal searched for words and found none.

‘Quixotic? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? When I think something’s not right I speak up. I’ve got nothing to lose. They won’t chuck me out as long as Sir Christopher’s alive and they’ll not have me back when he’s gone, so what the hell.’

‘You’re not—I appreciate you’ll be pretty much alone up there in the porter’s lodge at night—you’re not … afraid? I mean, afraid for your own safety?’ It had suddenly occurred to the marshal that he didn’t want a repeat performance of the Hirsch case, caused by his not paying enough attention. He was relieved when the young man laughed at the idea.

‘I don’t matter enough. I’m about as important as a slug in the garden—less important. Sir Christopher worries a lot about slugs. We’ve been known to have a half hour conference on the relative merits of pellets versus eggshells! You know … that day you came up, the day after he’d been taken ill? We’ve never seen him since. Giorgio says he can’t walk at all now.’