The Innocent (12 page)

—What more do you expect from me? Have I said a word? We all protect our own, Marshal. We both know that. Accuse Peruzzi? No, no, no, no. I wouldn’t have thought it of you. Not that I don’t appreciate your position but I wouldn’t have thought it of you. You’ll have to excuse me now. I’ve got work to do.

He shouldn’t have spoken to Lapo. It couldn’t have done any good and had probably done some harm.

The marshal leaned his forehead against the glass to look down at two people who had stopped to talk in the wet street directly below. A large woman with two plastic bags of shopping and a boy on a moped. The boy kept revving up, trying to get away from her, but each time she would call out and stop him. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t wearing his helmet. The narrow street was filling with blue smoke. The marshal continued to watch the scene playing out below what he still thought of as Clementina’s flat, grateful for any distraction from his discomfort.

He had lost Lapo but, what was worse, he had lost the whole square. Again, the thing would have been to separate his witnesses, not let the story get around the square faster than he could get round it himself. But by the time everybody in that tiny space had finished listening in to their altercation from over the hedge—he’d kept his voice down almost to a whisper but Lapo, a real Florentine, could have been heard in Pisa—Peruzzi had come out on his doorstep and so had everybody else.

After that, he had been wasting his time. After that, it had been hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. After that, shrugged shoulders, outspread arms, opened palms, silence. He might have been back home in Sicily except that their eyes met his, defiant not shifty, and the few remarks that had been made were worthy of Peruzzi himself.

He was an outcast. And the worst of it was that he felt the same way they did. He couldn’t, even now, though he had to be lying about the girl buying those clothes herself, suspect Peruzzi of anything more than a foolish passion.

Separate your witnesses. He didn’t want to separate them, dammit! It was their solidarity with each other—and his with them, after all these years—that he counted on. He knew no other way of doing things and it had never failed him before …

Pippo’s wife, Maria Pia, opened the widow opposite and leaned out to feel at the socks on a washing line stretched below it. She unpegged them, disappeared for a minute, then leaned out to hang a dripping blouse. After a glance at the neighbours’ washing and another at the sky, she covered the blouse with a sheet of polythene.

The marshal opened up the window to the damp, soapy air. ‘Good-morning.’

A few minutes later she was in the flat with him, talking over Clementina’s story, Franco’s long illness and the shocking rent that ‘our little Akiko’ had to pay for this tiny place. Akiko would never have harmed a fly so why would anyone want to harm her? Maybe this flat brought bad luck, though she didn’t believe in that sort of thing herself. She’d had many a conversation with her in the butcher’s. All the women were curious to know how she cooked the meat she bought, she was so very particular about how it was cut or minced. Once, Akiko had invited her up here to try something. There had to have been a dozen little bowls of different things—very tasty, she had to say—but no, she’d never tried it herself. Pippo never fancied foreign food and, besides, so much preparation, chopping all those things. Of course, Akiko was so fast, never walked if she could run.

A man in her life? Oh, yes, there was a man, though she’d only seen him from above, one night when they’d come home together and she’d just been closing the shutters as they unlocked the street door below. Of course, the street lighting around here—they always say they’re going to see to it but—anyway, the only thing she could say for sure was that he was very tall. It was true, yes, that Akiko was tiny, but—no, she was sure she remembered him being tall. Oh, she wouldn’t like to guess his age. From above and behind, in the dark? No. Just that he was a tall man. Somebody else might have seen him, got a better look. She could ask around when she went down to the shops tomorrow. Akiko was always cheerful and chatty but she was very discreet about her private life. They used to tease her in the butcher’s about it because she often bought enough for two people but she never said anything much apart from what she cooked for him. Did the marshal think she’d got involved with somebody who was a bad lot? Well, she must have, mustn’t she?

Before she had to get back to put the water on for the pasta, she pointed out a photograph in a silver frame on the white shelves. ‘That’s her with her sister, alike as two peas with their little tartan kilts and white blouses. That’s how they were dressed for school, she told me that. You’d have expected something a bit more Japanese, really, wouldn’t you? I remember saying to her, “You can see right away, even at that age, which one’s the tomboy.”’

She whispered to him, as he opened the door for her, ‘I hope you won’t mind me asking but I saw a man with a bag leave in a police car before … ?’

And, though he didn’t give her much of an answer, he didn’t mind her asking at all. Life felt back to normal again.

After she’d gone, the marshal added the photograph in its frame to the things he had already collected: a diary, the address book by the phone, a folder with letters and packets of photographs. He took a quick look through one of the packets, sure he’d find the man he was looking for, but it was all shoes, or details of shoes with notes in Japanese on the back. A second seemed to be nothing but views of Florence so he’d have to go through it all later. Out on the landing, as he was locking up, his phone rang.

‘Guarnaccia.’

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. I don’t know if it’s important or not but you did say to call if I found anything …’

The woman from the dress shop.

‘It’s not that I’ve remembered anything particular … or even found anything, really, but it crossed my mind that—since that sweater was last year’s—you ought to check the stock house down via Romana. They buy up what’s left at the end of the season from shops like ours and sell it off cheaply. If she went there, they might well know her. It’s the sort of place where people rummage and chat. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not much, I’m afraid … I’m probably disturbing you for nothing.’

‘No, no. You did right to call me and I’m very grateful. Have you finished with your workmen?’

‘Oh, don’t! They’ve all gone but it’s only luck that you haven’t been called in to a murder here—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t joke when that poor young woman … I hope you find out what happened.’

‘I’ll find out.’

He went downstairs to the wet street and set out with a determined step for nearby via Romana.

A nice woman who was concerned and wanted to help.

A place where people rummage and chat. Life was definitely back to normal. He’d find out.

‘I’ll be right with you! I will—no! Don’t put those there! I’ve told you a dozen times to pack them in boxes! Nobody wants to look at sweaters in June! I’ll be right there!’

But she wasn’t. She was everywhere but. Every now and then her tousled grey-blonde curls and rattling earrings appeared above a rack of clothes, only to disappear behind teetering piles of folded jeans to protest at an invisible assistant.

‘I’ve told you! There’s no point in hanging things together because they’re the same colour! Divide them by size, for heaven’s sake! This rack’s supposed to be forty-two, forty-four and look at this! Look at it! Fifty-two! Is that woman still in that cubicle? Well, stay with her! What have I told you about—?’

Suddenly the curls and earrings bounced up by the marshal’s shoulder, and the voice cut to a stage whisper as audible as her yells. ‘You can see how I’m fixed—you can’t imagine how much stuff gets stolen from me in all this chaos but I can’t find a decent girl to help me—this one’s willing enough but she hasn’t the sense she was born with. She’s Romanian and, if you ask me, she doesn’t understand a word—’ She broke off and turned up the volume:

‘Put those bikinis back in that box! If you leave them scattered all over the counter like that there won’t be one left by the time we shut—not that box! Can’t you see I’ve written ‘scarves’ on the side with a black marker—on the other side, the other side—I know there are belts in it, I know that. That’s not your problem. Just put the bikinis in the box they came out of ! I think it says bras. Either that or accessories …’

Red nails clutched at the marshal’s black sleeve and the whisper this time was almost a growl. ‘You can see how I’m fixed. I can’t leave people trying stuff on and if I stay down near the cubicle, people come in and take things. I’m always saying you’ve got to have order, it’s the only way. You’ll have to give me some advice. D’you think I should install those whatsit cameras or will I not be able to afford it? She’s left that woman on her own again and she’s got at least four linen jackets in there. You’ve got to have order—I’ll be right with you. Stay there.’

The marshal stayed, obedient as a well-trained bulldog, the sole solid, stationary element in a boiling sea of rummaging customers, shifting clothes racks and sliding piles. The only time he moved at all was when a toughlooking young woman rammed him with a rack of glittery frocks.

He glanced at his watch. A quarter to one. With any luck things would quieten down soon and she would surely close, anyway, at one.

Things didn’t quieten down. There was more of a crescendo of noise and muddle culminating in the protesting customers being physically evicted and the door locked.

‘I’ve got to talk to the marshal … For goodness sake!’

When they’d all gone, she wiped her brow on a loose, flowery sleeve and said, ‘You can see how I’m fixed. You’ll have to give me some advice—I mean, just look at that damp patch, up there to the left of the door. I’ve already had it fixed twice and it’s back again. You could probably recommend a reliable builder, somebody in your position, you’d know the right sort … I’m exhausted with it all, I can tell you. Let’s sit down. This is supposed to be my desk and just look at it … Put that stuff anywhere—oh! Give me that silk frock. I’ve been looking for that for two days. It’s to go to the tailor to be shortened … have I lost the measurements? I have. There was a little yellow stick-on thing …’

‘Is this it?’ It was stuck to his sleeve.

‘Well, thank goodness for that. I could do with somebody like you working for me. I don’t think that girl speaks a word of Italian … not that she’s said anything but …’ She wound down after a while, like clockwork. The marshal, watching as the curls and earrings settled, wondered how old she might be. As old as, or older than, himself, probably, but the disorderly mop of curls, her plumpness and the room full of tumbled dresses in which frills and glitter were a dominant theme made her seem like an overtired child who would never get round to putting away her toys and dressing-up clothes.

He gave her some advice in the gravest of tones and she drank it in with equal solemnity. He could just see her telling her favourite customers about it:

—The marshal from the Pitti came here and he said to me …

And life would tumble along as before.

It turned out that the Japanese girl was a favourite customer. Not that she had a lot to spend but she was so pretty and trim and, of course, size forty—well, there’s always plenty of choice in a size that small, including model samples. She remembered that linen sweater, a lovely piece but it didn’t sell. Akiko had fished it out from under a pile of dark stuff—Most people like something more cheerful, you know, in the summer, especially for the seaside, but you could never get her to buy anything sexy or glamorous even though she’d have looked lovely …

—Being that size, she could buy a lot of the big designer stuff, Valentino, Ferré and so on, from the market in Piazza Santo Spirito on Wednesdays. They cut the labels and you get it for practically nothing …

This was all music to the marshal’s ears since it exonerated Peruzzi from having lied and, perhaps, from everything …

—I was sure she was in love. A baby would have made a difference, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps not from everything. He’d better ask.

‘Oh, yes, there was a man in her life all right, because she brought him to Domani, next door, and that was how she noticed this shop and started coming here.’

‘Domani?’

‘Domani. The Japanese restaurant next door. You wouldn’t have noticed it with the shutter down. It’s his closing day. Come back tomorrow. They’ll know all about her man. And then, when you’ve time, you’ll come back and see me again, right? Give me some more good advice. Wait a minute while I unlock the door for you … It’s right, what you said about lining up the racks so I can see to the other end of the room when I’m down here. It’s like you say, you’ve got to have order.’

‘That’s right. Thank you for your help.’

So … Home to a good meal and, this afternoon, a thorough look through the stuff he’d taken from the flat, secure in the knowledge that the Japanese restaurant would provide what he might not find. The shops all had their shutters down and from above his head came the sound of the news and wafts of good dinners. Steam was rising from the road. He kept close to the wall away from the hot sun. In Piazza San Felice the nuns were ushering small children out of the infant school to their waiting parents. Droves of older children were coming towards him from the middle school in Piazza Pitti, so his own two were probably home by now.

But if Giovanni was at home, Totò certainly wasn’t. As he reached the big piazza, the marshal saw his son, not crossing over to the Pitti and home but bouncing towards him, his face alight, and he was calling out, ‘Where were you?’

The marshal stopped in his tracks, astonished. Totò had been so difficult for so long … but the sight of him bounding forward, like when he was a little boy and wanted to be caught and swung round by his dad … Smiling, he almost held out his arms in response. His son bounded straight past without seeing him. The marshal turned with a puzzled frown and saw Totò with his hands on the shoulders of a slim, fair girl. He was talking earnestly. She was listening with her head down, a head of long, loose curls that reached to her waist, like a Botticelli painting. Her arms were held stiffly by her sides, her fingers gripping the overlong sleeves of a dark T-shirt. The marshal turned away and walked home alone.