The View From the Tower (25 page)

“You know the Prime Minister depends absolutely on your agreement,” he says, without preamble, in an accent that takes her back to Turin, in a tone that takes everything for granted, her obedience above all. She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t answer. Let them sweat, she thinks. He begins to describe the work Federico has done, his contribution to the state, his dedication, none of it false and yet all of it unreal to her, as it would have been to him, she is sure of that. And it strikes her that what the man is doing is not describing Federico at all, but the dead man in the ardent room, in a suit he’d never worn, the man with make-up on his face, who isn’t Federico either. I might as well let them do what they want, she thinks, with relief, as though she has been holding her breath without realising it, and has now let it go. They can have their hero and I can have my husband.

And now he plays what Helen recognises immediately as his trump card, when he says the President of the United States has intimated he would be prepared to postpone his flight to France to take part in the funeral. She should be honoured by such a presence, he says, his tone increasingly unctuous. The fight against international terrorism. The Axis of Evil. It’s vital that everyone play their part. How stupid you are, she thinks. You almost had me. If you hadn’t brought up Bush.

She is about to ask to be taken back to the car when Giulia and Fausto appear at the door, Giulia holding her handbag, Fausto a handkerchief, both looking oddly lost, like supplicants from the provinces and not, as they are and know they are, cogs in the governing wheel. The young man waves them in, welcoming them as moral back-up, although Helen wonders if that’s true. Giulia, yes. But Fausto? He was so against the idea of a state funeral. Now, though, she isn’t sure. Normally, he’ll stand up to Giulia, in the end. That’s why they are still together, Federico used to say. Because he answers back when he has no other choice. He’s the grist to her mill. Am I the grist to yours? she’d thought.

The man is turned away from her but she can see his face through a mirror in this palace of mirrors, just as she saw the bald patch of the other man in the lift and wanted to smile. She can see his look of irritation and pleading, addressed to Giulia, the way a teacher looks at the mother of an intractable child. Can’t you do anything with her? his face is saying. She’s being naughty. She won’t play along.

Giulia stalks across to her.

“Well?” she says.

“Well, what?” says Helen.

 

 

 

4

 

Giacomo can’t wait any longer and tries to call Helen, but his mobile is dead. Everyone’s mobile is dead. He stops at the side of the road, the Quirinale a hundred yards away, and wonders where she is. The body of Federico is no more than five minutes’ walk from where he’s standing, and it occurs to him to go and see what the mood is there. Perhaps someone will know where Helen has gone; she can’t be that far away. He feels trapped beneath some kind of bell jar, a sensation exacerbated by the cowl of heat on the city. He hesitates outside an empty bar for a moment, then turns up the hill towards the ministry.

He’s expected a line of people, but the room is almost empty by the time he arrives and no more than a minute or two passes before he is standing beside the coffin. It has always struck him as barbaric, this practice of displaying the dead, but now, with Federico in front of him, he is struck by the blandness of it, as though death weren’t involved. Removed from the antiseptic surroundings of the morgue, Federico looks the way he’s looked so often, distant, slightly aloof, his mind on other things. He was shot in the stomach and the heart, of course, which helps. He won’t tell Helen he’s been, he decides, because nothing he is likely to say – if he is honest – will comfort her. A woman behind him coughs and Giacomo steps aside to watch her bob at the knee and cross herself and touch the wood and kiss her fingers. It’s the rituals that invest the business with sense, he supposes, and wishes he’d been trained in them, or believed in what they stood for. Still standing by the coffin, he observes the woman, middle-aged, grey trousers and a blouse, walk off towards the door, alone, her duty done. Is she a friend of Federico’s, he wonders, or a colleague or simply a citizen paying her respects to a servant of the state? Whatever, she has at least as much right to be here as he does. He might have stood here longer if a man hadn’t crossed the room and asked him if he felt all right. I’m fine, he says, but the man stays beside him until he walks away and leaves the room, feeling like someone who’s behaved suspiciously in a jeweller’s. For a moment he experiences a trace of guilt. Not because of Helen; that’s also Helen’s choice. Because there have been times he’s wished Federico dead, and now he is. He has had his wish. Is that why I’m here? he wonders. To gloat? Is that why I slept with Helen last night and the night before last, not to comfort her at all, but to take possession, as though I were exercising my
droit de seigneur
? The middle-aged woman is standing outside the
camera ardente
. She turns to look at him as he leaves. It’s terrible, she says flatly. He was a good man. Giacomo nods. They walk together towards the street, without speaking.

Giacomo is deciding what to do next when a black car pulls up. The door nearest to him, the back door on the right, is flung open. What appears to be a scuffle takes place inside the car, raised voices, the sound of something like a slap. He starts to move away, unnerved, when Helen stumbles from the car, tripping against the kerb. Giacomo is close enough to catch her, almost before he has seen who it is, a woman falling from a car into his arms. Helen pulls herself onto her feet and hugs him, gasping
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it’s you
, as another woman – Giacomo recognises Giulia – wriggles across the back seat of the car towards the open door. Giacomo sees a man’s hand reach round from between the two front seats to restrain the older woman, whose head emerges from the darkness of the car like a caricature of rage and begins to keen, a dreadful noise. Giacomo breaks free from Helen and slams the door on Giulia, not caring if the woman is hurt, not caring if her black-gloved hand is trapped by the frame of the door, hoping deep down that it is. He slaps his own hand against the body of the car, as one slaps a horse to make it move and, after a moment, it pulls away and is gone. Behind him, Helen begins to laugh and cry at the same time, gasping for breath.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says.

And then, as the car drives off and Giacomo turns to face her, she says, her face excited, her voice hoarse: “Fuck them, Giacomo, fuck the lot of them. I need your help. Can you get hold of a car at the hotel? Mine’s back at the flat. For God’s sake, Giacomo, come on!”

5

 

Martin swings his panama between his knees. He’s finished his second coffee and is thinking of ordering another one, or maybe a draught beer, a small one, if the waiter comes across, but so far he’s been left on his own, with his thoughts. He had a call from Alina this morning; she said she wanted to see him. Of course, he said. This afternoon.

He is sitting in the second row of tables, protected by the awning. The first row, the farthest from the bar, is dedicated to tourists who need to tan, the third to knots of older men who might, or might not, have ordered something in the last hour. He’s where he likes to be, neither here nor there. His first wife called him ambiguous, but didn’t explain what she meant, and he hadn’t insisted. He hadn’t wanted to clarify his ambiguity. What was it Socrates said? That the unexamined life is not worth living? He’s always preferred George Eliot’s line about a window providing more enlightenment than a mirror. He is alone in his row, which is a source of satisfaction to him. He wonders what Alina wants from him, and what he wants from her.

There is something missing, he knows that, something essential, something the size of St Peter’s. But he can’t put his finger on what it is. He’d ask Picotti if Picotti, he’s started to sense, weren’t somehow part of the problem. He’s spent some time this morning reading up on Don Giusini and the man seems genuine, decent, slightly off the wall as these anti-global Franciscan types tends to be, a pain in the arse to the church but allowed to do pretty much as he wants, for now at least. There is nothing that doesn’t ring true. Part of the problem? Part of the solution? Martin is waiting for Corti, his cell phone contact, who might have been able to lay his hands on some of the transcripts of conversations the priest has had with Federico, but he doesn’t hold out much hope. Corti sounded unforthcoming, even furtive, on the phone this morning. “I’ll see what I can do. A coffee later, maybe? After lunch?”

Martin said, “Yes, why not? The usual place.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Corti said again. Like most attempts at reassurance, this failed to reassure.

Martin is about to leave when Corti waves from the other side of the square.

“Sorry, Frame. Held up by all this security,” he calls out, twenty feet from the table, as though he and Martin were alone in the square. “They wouldn’t let me through,” he says, stressing
me
in an affronted way. He isn’t used to having his movements impeded. He sits down moving the ashtray in a finicky way, then uses a paper napkin to wipe the sweat from the sides of his nose, the corners of his mouth, dropping it on the floor after a rapid offended glance at the smear of grease he’s gathered.

“Don’t worry,” says Martin. “Drink?”

“I’d rather not,” Corti says. “Stomach.” He glances across to the door of the bar. “A glass of water if he comes.”

After they have both been silent for some minutes, not looking at each other, as though gathering their thoughts, Corti turns towards Martin and spreads his hands in a gesture of surrender. “No luck, I’m afraid. I did my best.”

“You mean the conversations weren’t recorded?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But there aren’t any transcripts?”

Corti purses his lips. He has some kind of gel on his skin, Martin notices. Either that or he’s been waxed. He’s certainly been promoted, he has a slick of power about him that wasn’t there in the past, when Martin helped him salvage his career.

“Not now. There were. That is, there might have been.”

“They’ve been removed?”

Corti pushes his thick grey hair from his face with both tanned hands, momentarily reminding Martin of Sandra Dee. Martin knows that he is lying.

“Can’t say.” Teasing.

“Won’t say?” Teasing back. Martin hates this.

“What’s the difference?” He pauses. “There is something else that’s rather odd.” Corti’s tone is confidential. “I thought I’d have a look at one or two other mobiles, to see what they’ve been up to.”

“Which other mobiles?”

“Well, his wife’s to start off with. You never know. The bosom that harbours the asp and so on. But no surprises there. Then I had a quick look at his father’s. Nothing of any consequence. Calling his son, constantly, which is rather sad as things have turned out. You wonder what he’ll do with himself.” He glances at the empty tables around them, lowers his voice.

“His mother’s, though, that’s another business entirely. She has two numbers, did you know that? Well, why should you? You know who she is, of course. Giulia Paternò? Battleaxe of the Republic? She must be in her eighties by now, ninety maybe. Not the kind of woman you’d expect to be so wired up. One of them is used for family and friends, but the other one isn’t. Not by a long chalk. She’s got two or three interesting friends for an octogenarian, even if she is a senator.”

“One of them called Picotti by any chance?” Martin says, on a hunch.

Corti sucks in his breath. “I didn’t say that.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“If you already know…” Corti sounds annoyed.

“I hadn’t realised I did,” says Martin.

“If you take my advice,” says Corti, in a tone that recognises the unlikelihood of this, “you’ll drop the whole thing right now.”

“Drop what?”

“The whole thing. Di Stasi.” Corti leans back in his chair. “Look at it this way, Frame. He’s dead. He’d have been dead in any case. Maybe not today. Next week. Next month. You knew that, surely?” His voice is cold. “Drop it.”

“I’m sorry?” says Martin. “Dead in any case?” What the hell does he mean? So he has read the transcripts after all.

“Ask his confessor.”

Corti stands up, smoothing the wrinkles from his trousers, tugging discreetly at his crotch.

“Look after yourself, Frame.”

“You too, Corti.”

 

Martin goes into the bar to settle the bill. He is about to leave when his attention is caught by a small television in the corner. It is the midday news. Martin watches as Helen walks away from the cameras, having refused to speak to the waiting journalists, surrounded by dark-suited people he doesn’t know, wearing a black dress that doesn’t suit her. He sees Giulia hop beside her like a rickety diminutive crow, her hair bound tightly into a dancer’s poll, black mourning gloves in one hand, the other constantly touching the shoulders, the back, the arm of her widowed daughter-in-law as she follows her towards the official car. He notices Helen glance out of the car towards the cameras with an odd look of interest, as though she has only just seen them and is wondering what they want. He sees the black car pull away towards the Quirinale and disappear, replaced by a panning shot of the crowd outside the ministry, a ragged line of mourners, and the voice of a journalist talking about the people these people represent, the loss to the nation, the mooted arrival of Bush, as yet unconfirmed, committed to the war on terrorism in all its forms, on all its fronts.

He looks at the clock on the wall. He needs to get home. He wants to shower and change before Alina turns up.

 

 

 

 

6