The Italian Wife (32 page)

From him. From Roberto himself. A gift that he had given her. A deep sigh of happiness escaped her. It was beyond her comprehension.

His hands caressed her throat, her breast, sending heat spiralling through her veins and a pulse kicked into life in her groin that she had thought was dead and buried. She rubbed her smooth sleepy cheek against the bristle on his jaw and heard his breath rumble deep in his throat when her hand slid inside his shirt and found the hard lean muscles of his chest.

Her hair fell thick and wild over him and he swept it up in his hand, a tangled hank of it, and tipped her head back, so that his lips could claim her long throat.

‘Isabella,’ Roberto murmured, exhaling the words in soft puffs of warm air over her pale skin. ‘I want us to remove Rosa from the convent tomorrow. You can keep her here with you, so that when her father comes for her, he will be forced to speak with you.’

Her hand tightened on his chest like the bite of a horse. ‘Roberto —’

‘And I will go to Rome to question the man who was Luigi’s commander.’

There it was. His decision. The heavy furniture seemed to press closer, waiting for a response. Isabella opened her mouth to say she could not risk him again, he was too much a part of her now, woven into the heart of her.

The crash on the front door ricocheted through the apartment. No knock. No ringing of the bell. Just the splintering crash resonating in the silent room and then boots in the hall. Roberto leapt to his feet as five men in carabinieri uniform burst through the door into Dr Cantini’s living room. The air seemed to vibrate around them. Fear burrowed into Isabella’s chest, driving the breath from her lungs.

‘Signora Berotti,’ declared the leading police officer, the one with his heavy chin thrown forward and the bicorn hat worn like a weapon on his head, ‘you are under arrest.’

‘No,’ Roberto said firmly. ‘There is some mistake, officer. Signora Berotti is not —’

‘Shut your mouth before I shut it for you. Who are you?’

‘I am Roberto Falco, photographer for the town of Bellina. I work for Chairman Grassi and I shall be reporting you to him for incompetence and wilful misconduct if you do not leave this house at once.’

The aggression in the officer’s eyes faltered. Isabella could see him calculating inwardly, but only until his sharp gaze fixed once more on her and then he marched forward. She had staggered to her feet. Struck dumb. But she stood straight and made no sound when he seized her wrist with a grip that nearly wrenched her arm from its socket.

Instantly Roberto smashed his fist into the man’s face with the full weight of his body behind it.

‘No!’ she screamed, as a barrage of blows fell on him, driving him to the floor.

‘Come, bitch,’ the officer snarled through a bloodied lip.

She was handcuffed and dragged to the door.

‘On what charge?’ Roberto bellowed. A gun was pointed at his head.

‘Treachery.’

‘Roberto,’ Isabella cried out.

‘Isabella, it’s a mistake. Don’t worry. I’ll go to Grassi.’

She nodded stiffly.

‘Don’t be afraid.’

But when she was shut alone in total darkness in the back of the police van outside, silent terror descended on her mind.

27

The cell was clean. It was new. It was cold.

Isabella sat for three hours on the edge of the hard bed without moving. Eyes straight ahead. Spine rigid. If she moved, she feared she would fall off a cliff into a chasm. Her thoughts were spiky. Jagged. She kept remembering the colleague of her father, Dr Pavese, the one who vanished one day and was replaced without a word. She pictured a new architect walking up to her drawing board, using her drawing pens, sharpening her pencils. The others in the office would notice. They’d look. But would they ask, ‘Where’s Isabella?’ Would they demand an answer from Dottore Martino?

Of course not.

No questions. Not if you didn’t want Blackshirts’ boots in your bedroom at two o’clock in the morning.

Treachery
.

The word burned, each letter branded into her brain. Treachery got you shot in front of a firing squad. Or hanged. Or beaten to death in your cell. Her eyes, the only part of her that still moved, scoured the cold tiles on the floor for bloodstains but found none. She breathed, but only just.

Treachery
.

What had she done to deserve that word?

Did rejecting Il Duce’
s
greedy lips count as treachery? Or speaking to a rebel’s child? Or pointing out a crack in a house? Or binding up the wound of a farmer who wasn’t a farmer?

Dear God, where was the line between treachery and reality?

Roberto had once warned her that she must guard not only her words but also her thoughts from scrutiny.

Who had listened to her thoughts?

Anger came. It drove the chills from her veins and forced her to stride back and forth across the small space, her heart hammering to break loose. She wanted them to come for her, to start the questions. She wanted to see their faces and look directly into their lying eyes. These people. They had wrenched control of her life from her hands and she had to take it back.

Hours ticked past. The cell grew smaller and the air became too thick to breathe. The silence hurt her ears and loneliness twisted itself into a tight knot in her stomach. There was nothing here except a narrow bed and a galvanised bucket and the stink of her own fear on her skin. Life stripped of its outer layers, the way she’d seen a rabbit carcass flayed of its skin, hanging red and raw from a hook.

But Roberto was here. With her. She invited him in and he came willingly. The sublime sound of his laughter demolished the fear inside her head and she heard again the promise in his voice when he said,
It’s a mistake. Don’t worry
.

She stared at the blank wall and refused to blink.

‘I want a lawyer.’

‘All in good time, Signora Berotti.’

‘Colonnello Sepe, I want a lawyer now.’

The policeman’s thin lips pulled into a sour line of displeasure. ‘We are not here to deal with what
you
want, signora.’

‘Then why am I here?’

‘To answer the charge of treachery to the State of Italy and to Il Duce as the representative of this country.’

Isabella’s heart lurched and she kept her hands linked together in the handcuffs on her lap, so that they would not shake.

‘I am baffled, Colonnello. I have never done anything against my country. On the contrary, I —’

‘Do not lie!’ His hand slammed down on the desk, but his voice grew as soft as oil. ‘It will get you nowhere.’

Isabella wanted to run. To batter the door down. To leave this room. She could see in his dead eyes that she had already been tried and condemned in his mind. This was a formality, that was all. He was seated behind a metal desk in a chilly room, a poster on the wall of Il Duce on the famous balcony of the Venezia Palace as he addressed the crowds of Rome. It was the kind of grey-painted room where a person could lose their soul. Another officer sat silent in the corner, and the manilla file in front of Colonnello Sepe looked alarmingly thick.

She sat upright on the hard chair and refused to drop her gaze. ‘What proof do you have, Colonnello, that I ever —’

‘You are not here to ask questions,’ he snapped. ‘You are here to answer them.’

Isabella said nothing. She waited in silence for more from the hawkish face before her, and saw a faint flash of pleasure flare the nostrils of his long pointed nose.

‘You are charged,’ he said, ‘with treason. You were running from the rally field long before anyone knew the aeroplane’s intention was to attack.’ He placed one hand on top of the other on his desk, a small bony tower. ‘Why was that, Signora Berotti?’

Isabella’s mouth was dry as dust. No words emerged. If she told the truth, she would be placing Roberto on this chair with these handcuffs biting into the strong bones of his wrists.

‘It is clear,’ the carabiniere continued, ‘that you knew what was about to happen and yet you warned no one. You were willing for Mussolini to die and that is treason.’

‘No.’

‘You have shown undue attention and care to the daughter of a known traitor.’

‘That was because her mother —’

‘You were present on a farm when the tenant was revealed to be an instrument of deception.’

‘Instrument of deception?’

‘Yes.’

Isabella’s mind was spinning. Something was clawing up her throat, trying to get out.

‘And,’ Sepe said, releasing his hands, palms up like a conjuror, ‘cracks have been appearing in a building in your charge. You are sabotaging the very construction of our town.’

He sat back in his chair, the skin on his forehead so tight it looked as though it might split. His eyes narrowed, observing her, and there was a gleam of satisfaction in them. Was this revenge for last time, when she had stood in the way of his questioning of Rosa?

‘So, signora. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘I am innocent.’

He snorted his disgust. ‘The cracks?’

Only one person could have told him about the cracks. ‘They are the result of cost-cutting during the construction process,’ she said. ‘Either the cement contains too much sand or the foundations were not dug deep enough. Neither of those is my responsibility.’

He jotted something down on a lined pad in front of him. ‘The farmer?’

‘I was visiting him for the first time. I knew nothing about his farming skills.’

‘So why were you there?’

She hesitated. A fatal error, she was aware. ‘To look at one of the homesteads from an architectural standpoint, now that they are occupied.’

Were her words too thin? Too weightless? Was her breathing too fast?

‘And the girl called Rosa? I have seen for myself your attachment to that traitor’s child, so don’t deny it.’

‘Her mother gave her to me to look after.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

I don
’
t know. I don
’
t know
.

This time the fleshless man in the dark uniform let a silence grow in the room, a silence that was as heavy and viscous as the mud in which her feet were trapped. They both knew what was coming next.

‘Why did you run from the rally?’

This time she was ready for him.

‘I was feeling ill. I wanted to get away before I was sick.’

‘Liar!’

‘No, it’s true. I was —’

‘Liar!’

She shook her head.

‘Signora, you left Il Duce and his loyal supporters to die on that field while you fled like the treacherous coward you are.’ Scorn and disgust rippled through his words. ‘Who told you about the plane?’

‘No one.’

Colonnello Sepe stood up abruptly, knocking back his chair.

‘Who are you working with against Il Duce?’

‘No one. I am not —’

‘The truth, signora. I
will
have the truth.’

‘I am telling the truth.’

Why did he not mention Roberto? Or Davide Francolini? If he knew so much about her, he must know she was with them on the rally field. She was breathing too fast, but she was aware of Sepe’s every tiny expression, each flick of an eyelid, each tightening of a muscle, the way his pitch-black pupils contracted and expanded as he breathed. She saw it coming, his need to strip away another layer of her defences, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.

He walked forward until he was standing right next to her in her chair at the front of the desk. She could smell his aftershave, something spicy and sharp, and the cloying scent of his hair oil. It took all her willpower not to flinch away from him. Without comment he seized her right wrist and laid it flat on the desk, dragging the other hand with it in the handcuffs. His grip was like steel.

‘Now, signora, let us have the truth from you.’

From his holster he withdrew his gun but held it by its muzzle, raising it in the air above her fingers like a hammer.

‘I imagine you need your hands to be very precise in your line of work, don’t you, signora?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you need full use of your fingers?’

‘Yes.’

Her fingers spasmed on the desk.

‘Who told you that the aeroplane was coming to crash into the platform?’

‘No one.’

A sigh spilled out of him. A pretence. As if he didn’t enjoy his work.

‘One last time. Who told you?’

‘No one.’

The gun came down.

28

‘Get out of my car.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Falco, damn you, get out of my car right now or I’ll have you thrown out.’ Two spots of livid colour appeared high on Chairman Grassi’s cheeks.

They were seated in the rear of the chairman’s sleek black motor car, a long unmistakable Lancia Dilambda that cruised the streets of Bellina every Sunday morning to inspect progress in the town and assess the behaviour of the inhabitants, like a shark patrolling its waters. A muscular uniformed chauffeur sat up front in the driving seat, suitably separated from his passengers in the elegant limousine by a glass partition. Nonetheless, Roberto kept his voice low. He had waited on the street corner in the chill wind that whistled up Via San Michele and as soon as the chairman’s car slowed at the crossroads on its usual route, he had stepped into the road, pulled open the rear door and swung himself onto the seat before Grassi could voice his objection. They faced each other from opposite ends of the long leather seat, hackles raised.

Roberto placed a photograph face down on the patch of cream leather between them.

‘What the hell is this? Grassi demanded. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘It’s not a game, chairman.’

Grassi snatched up the photograph. He was a man used to dealing with surprises. Each day he handled unpleasantness and he was skilled at maintaining his composure, his slate-grey eyes revealing nothing. But his jaw dropped open. He scowled at the picture.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘I took it myself. That’s what you pay me for.’