The Villa Triste (25 page)

She smiled. Pallioti was glad to see that it looked more like a nervous twitch.

‘Well, you see, I’m writing a book.’

‘A book?’

‘Yes. As I said, I teach at Exeter University, in England, and I’m writing a book. I’ve written several others, but this is on the partisans.’ ‘On the partisans?’

‘That’s right,’ she nodded. ‘Social history.’ Sensing safe ground, her voice gathered confidence. ‘I collect oral histories, stories, really, that sort of thing. I have a PhD. About eighteen months ago, I interviewed Roberto Roblino.’

She was looking at him, he thought, as if she expected him to drop his jaw in amazement. Or leap out of his chair and applaud. Because she had a PhD. Because she had written books. Because she conducted interviews. It was all very familiar, and suddenly very irritating.

He nodded and gestured for her to continue, preferably rapidly.

She looked at him, a flash of irritation rippling across her features, took a sip of her wine and said, ‘I wanted to talk to him again. To Roberto Roblino. I’m taking this semester off,’ she added. ‘To work on this. Finish my research. I got here about a week ago. I’d been trying to call him. Then I found out he was dead.’

She looked at Pallioti as if this somehow explained what she wanted to tell him. He gestured again.

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I was planning, on this trip, to talk to Giovanni Trante-mento, too.’ Eleanor Sachs looked at him. When he said nothing she frowned, pinching her small heart-shaped face. ‘Actually, I’d been trying to talk to him for some time. But he said he didn’t give interviews. So I thought I’d just go see him, arrive in person. It’s harder for people to kick you off the doorstep. But when I got here, and went to his building, I found out he’d been killed. The concierge – the old lady who looks like a prison warden – she wouldn’t tell me a thing. So I called Roberto Roblino. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to—’

She shook her head as if the rest of what she had to say was self-evident. She picked up her wine glass, and took another sip.

‘Well, you can imagine,’ she said. ‘What I thought – when I found out he’d been shot, in his home. Just like Signor Trantemento. Then I saw your press conference and . . . To be honest’ – she had the good grace to sound slightly sheepish – ‘the salt was a guess. But at least it got your attention. Not about Roblino,’ Eleanor Sachs added quickly. ‘I know he had salt in his mouth. His housekeeper told me. She said she ran out and turned him over and – it must have been horrible. But Giovanni Trantemento did too, didn’t he?’

As she spoke, Pallioti felt a flood of relief and did not let it show. He was beginning to understand now. Not a member of Enzo’s or D’Aletto’s team after all. The housekeeper. Who Cesare D’Aletto had assured them wouldn’t utter a squeak, but never mind. He ignored Eleanor Sachs’s question about Trantemento, and asked his own.

‘His housekeeper? Roberto Roblino’s? She told you?’

Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘Maria Grazia,’ she said. ‘Signora Franca. She’s the one who told me. She takes care of him, she and her husband. She’s such an angel. And she was so upset, poor thing.’

‘And you spoke to her, when?’

Pallioti’s press conference had been on Saturday night. Roberto Roblino’s death had not been reported until Sunday afternoon, and he and Enzo had not heard about it for several hours after that. Yet Eleanor Sachs had called his office for the first time late Sunday afternoon. She appeared to be claiming that she had known about it before they did.

She nodded and put her glass down. ‘Sunday,’ she said. ‘Sunday afternoon. I called the house, Roblino’s house, and Maria Grazia answered. She’d just found him. She was all upset, waiting for the ambulance. When she picked up the phone, she thought I was the police, calling for directions or something. The poor thing,’ she said again. ‘It was awful. I stayed on the phone with her until they came. Then,’ Eleanor Sachs added, ‘well, right afterwards, I remembered I’d seen you on TV the night before, so I called.’

Pallioti looked at her for a moment. Despite his relief about his own people, he could swear she was lying. He wasn’t sure about what. The housekeeper story made sense, just. So, if it wasn’t that, what was it?

‘So,’ he said finally, ‘just to be certain that I have this straight. What you wanted to tell me was that, due to your work on a book about the partisans, you had interviewed Roberto Roblino. You had not, however, interviewed Giovanni Trantemento?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever meet him? Speak to him?’

‘No. He didn’t answer my letters and when I rang him, he hung up on me.’

Pallioti nodded.

‘So, you interviewed one old man, and never interviewed, met, or even spoke to the other, and now both of them are dead?’

Eleanot Sachs nodded, her eyes wide and eager.

Pallioti looked at her for a long moment, then he said, ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so, Dottoressa Sachs, it doesn’t seem very extraordinary.’

‘Well, not when you put it that way, I suppose, but—’

‘Hardly worth numerous phone calls and trailing me through the streets.’

‘Trailing you through the streets? I—’

‘And,’ Pallioti pressed, ‘I infer, although you have not actually said so, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you are suggesting that the same person killed them, these two old men – one of whom you interviewed and one of whom you didn’t – and that, inadvertently or otherwise, you know something about it?’

She nodded. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am. Yes.’

‘And do you have any evidence for this, or is it merely an idea because you happen to have met, or actually not met, them both?’

He knew he was being offensive now, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t say he’d warmed to Eleanor Sachs, but for a moment there he had thought he detected something, like a shadow moving underwater, or a faint scent on the wind. He had thought, just briefly, that perhaps she had something to say. But she was going to turn out to be just another enthusiast. A self-important, self-dramatizing foreigner. One more of the strange and dreary breed who for some reason believed that inserting themselves into police investigations was either their duty or a rather jolly pastime – culturally enlightening, and good fodder for dinner parties. There had been any number of such idiots during the Monster investigations. Several, if he remembered correctly, had ended up in jail. As far as he was concerned, if it wasn’t so expensive to keep them, they could have stayed there. Served life. For wasting police time.

‘Look,’ she was saying, ‘I know this sounds sort of crazy. But have you ever heard of
Il Spettro
?’

‘The Ghost?’ Pallioti glanced at his watch and shook his head. It was hot in the back of the cafe. Saffy’s flowers would be wilting. He needed to get to the gallery. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have never heard of the Ghost.’

‘Well, there are all sorts of stories about him. From during the war. And I—’

As she spoke, Eleanor Sachs’s face changed. A flush of pink crept into her cheeks. She ran a hand through her hair.

‘He ran an escape line,’ she was saying. ‘For Allied POWs and Jews, mostly. It drove the Germans crazy – well, all the partisans drove them crazy – but they could never catch him. Some people don’t even think he existed. They think the Nazis made this person up because they were so frustrated. And of course, the Italians loved it too. There are all sorts of stories. If you believed them you’d have to believe this guy was invisible and had wings. And as I said’ – she finally took a breath – ‘no one’s ever been able to prove he actually existed.’

Pallioti glanced up. ‘But you think he did?’

She nodded. ‘Roberto Roblino did too.’

‘Robert Roblino?’

Despite himself, Pallioti felt a twitch of interest.

Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘That’s why he sent me to speak to Giovanni Trantemento.’

Pallioti frowned. That was it. She had said something about calling Roblino to ‘say she was sorry’. He had heard ‘an apology’. She had meant ‘condolences’.

He picked up his glass. ‘Go on.’

‘There’s nowhere to go.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, Roberto Roblino wasn’t very helpful. I mean, in general. He wouldn’t even tell me what his name had been. You know, in GAP – sorry, the
Gruppi
—’

‘
Di Azione Patriottica
. Yes, I know.’

‘Oh.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, they all had names. The Wolf. The Lion. That kind of stuff. It was supposed to hide their real identities. I don’t know how much it did. Anyway, Roblino didn’t really have too much to say, nothing specific anyway that was very interesting about that. I almost would have doubted he’d ever done anything, except for the medal.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I finally asked him about Il Spettro. If he’d heard of him? If he thought he was real? And he told me to go talk to his old friend, Giovanni.’

‘His old friend, Giovanni?’

‘That’s right,’ Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘Roberto Roblino said, if I wanted to know about ghosts, I should ask Giovanni. Then he gave me Signor Trantemento’s name and address.’

She looked at Pallioti and shook her head.

‘But I never had the chance,’ she said. ‘I had to go back to England. I wrote, he didn’t reply. I telephoned, he hung up. When I got back here, he was dead. Then Roblino was dead. The same way.’

‘And on the telephone, he said what?’

‘Signor Trantemento? About Il Spettro?’ She shook her head. ‘Not much. Nothing. The first time I called, I managed to get it out – what I wanted to ask about, and that Signor Roblino had told me to call. I thought he’d, you know, talk to me, because they were friends.’

‘Are you sure they were friends?’

It wasn’t, Pallioti supposed, that unlikely. Old partisans staying in touch with one another. But it was the first he had heard of it. As far as he knew neither Cesare D’Aletto nor Enzo had found any suggestion in Giovanni Trantemento’s papers, or Roberto Roblino’s, that the two men knew each other.

Eleanor Sachs shrugged. ‘Well, acquaintances,’ she said. ‘Whatever. Like I said, Roblino gave me Giovanni Trantemento’s address.’

Pallioti thought about this for a moment. Then he asked, ‘But Giovanni Trantemento didn’t talk to you?’

‘No. I said my bit, and there was silence. Just a long silence. A minute maybe. Then he put the phone down. Quietly. As if he’d just pressed the button on the receiver. I called back, right away. Because I thought there had been, well, a fault on the line, or something.’

‘And what happened?’ Pallioti asked.

‘He told me to leave him alone. Then he hung up.’

Pallioti nodded. It was not that surprising. By all accounts Giovanni Trantemento was a very private man who didn’t like talking about the war. Between the letters and the phone calls, she’d probably been driving him crazy.

He drank the last of his wine. Over-oaked and faintly sweet-smelling, it left a furry feeling on the back of his tongue. Eleanor Sachs was watching him. He wondered how long it would take her to say whatever it was, to present the final trump card he could sense her holding back. He put the glass down.

‘There is something else,’ she said, finally. ‘But I don’t understand it. I mean, how it fits. What it means.’

Pallioti resisted the urge to smile. Policemen like being right just as much as anyone else.

‘And what might that be?’ he asked.

Eleanor Sachs regarded her hands for a moment. The blunt rounded nails were painted exactly the same colour as her lips, a paleish sort of pink. She folded and unfolded her fingers, flexing them as if they were stiff from cold.

‘The salt,’ she said finally. She looked up at him.

‘The salt?’

‘Yes.’ Eleanor Sachs nodded.

‘I thought you just told me the housekeeper told you, in Roblino’s case, and Trantemento was a guess.’

Was that what she had been lying about?

‘Yes,’ Eleanor Sachs said. ‘That’s right. But that’s not it.’

‘No?’ Pallioti wondered what on earth she was talking about now.

‘No,’ she said, sliding her glass aside and leaning forward. ‘Look,’ she went on, ‘I don’t know if this means anything, or if you already know. If you do, I’m sorry. But by the winter of ’43 to ’44, the Germans were getting really frustrated. It was the start of what some people call the Terror. The partisans were causing serious problems – and threats, civilian reprisals, none of it, was doing much to slow them down. So the Nazis did what they’d done with the Jews. They put a price on their heads.’

‘On the partisans’ heads?’ Pallioti felt his hand move towards his pocket, towards the soft shape of the little book he had taken to carrying there.

Eleanor Sachs nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Food was really scarce by then. Sugar and salt were almost impossible to get. So, that was it.’

‘What was what?’

‘The price.’ She picked up her glass and drained the rest of her wine. ‘That’s what you got,’ she said. ‘For betraying a partisan.’ She put the glass down and stared at him. ‘You ratted one out, and the Germans gave you five pounds of salt.’

Chapter Thirteen

30 January 1944

Donata Leone died. Three weeks ago. She went downhill quite suddenly. Sometimes it happens that way. I’ve seen it before. And yet, I admit, I had allowed myself to think that she was getting better, that somehow she would survive. She had become my friend, and I miss her.

On her last night, I sat with her, holding her hand for a very long time. I was looking out of the window, telling myself it was almost dawn and watching for the grey haze that seeps through the sky. The truth is, I wasn’t thinking about her at the time, even though her fingers were clasped in mine. I was thinking about last year, when we were still officially ‘in the war’ and everything was still halfway normal. And then I was thinking about our childhood, and the skiing holidays, and how I had never really enjoyed skiing itself, but how I did enjoy the chalets, and the hotel, and sitting in front of the fire all together at night with the snow falling outside. All the times when winter was something to look forward to. That’s what I was thinking of, when something made me look down, and I realized she was dead.

She looked so much like Issa – like a thinner, paler version of her – that for a moment I thought, ‘This is what it will be like when Issa dies, when they finally catch her and shoot her, or when she slips in the mountains and falls. She will look like this.’ I reached down and smoothed Donata’s hair off her forehead. Then I did something I have never done before. I opened her bedside locker, and took out her handbag, and found the little comb I’d seen her use, and combed her hair. She was proud of her hair. At the end of her life she had nothing left. I wanted, once more, for her to look beautiful.

After that, I stood up. The ward was quiet – sounds of breathing, sleeping, the occasional juddered moan of a dream, a footstep in the hall outside. No one was watching me. No one saw. I looked down at Donata, then I lifted the sheet gently over her face, and turned away, and walked through the doors and down the hall and into my cupboard, still carrying her handbag.

The honest truth is, I don’t know if I meant to steal it. I don’t know what I meant to do. Perhaps I was going to list her belongings in my ledger. But then it occurred to me that it was pointless, because she had no family. All of them had been killed in the bombings in Genoa. I knew their ages, their names, what they did. And I knew that all of them were dead. So I kept it. I told myself she would have given it to me, as a gift. I put her handbag under the pillow on my cot.

That night, when I went home, Issa was there. She and Papa were full of the news – eighteen of the nineteen members of the Great Council who voted last summer to get rid of Mussolini had been shot after some kind of so-called trial in Verona. More men hailed for their bravery, all now dead. Our new dawn did not last long.

Mama said nothing, and I did not want to talk about it, either, so it was not until after we had eaten that Issa pulled me aside and told me the radio had arrived. She took me up to her room and showed it to me.

Looking at it, I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I murmured, ‘I don’t know how you can sleep with that under your bed. It’s like sleeping on a bomb.’

And to my surprise, Issa nodded.

‘I don’t like having it here.’ She laughed, but I could see she didn’t think it was funny. Then she said, ‘You were right. I don’t care what they say about wanting to help, it’s too dangerous for Mama and Papa. But I don’t know where else to go.’ She sighed. ‘At least I know I can trust them.’

I looked at her closely. There were circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were hollower than they had been the last time I saw her. Perhaps it was because of Donata, but I felt a pang of fear. A white bright flash of it, like lightning. I didn’t realize until that moment how I have always depended on Issa to be stronger than me. Stronger than all of us.

‘You look tired.’ I sat down beside her.

‘There’s been arguing.’ She smiled, but again I could tell she didn’t think it was funny. ‘The men argue. They’re like rats, cooped up in the city. I want to go back to the mountains. But there’s no point until the snow clears, and this—’ She leaned down and patted the box. ‘This is more important. Something’s going to happen.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know what. But the Americans, they’ve made us understand. It’s coming soon.’

She was right. It was in the air. Everyone could sense it. The bombing had become more intense. Livorno had been all but destroyed, and train lines were being hit everywhere. This time the Allies seemed to be aiming a little better, because supply lines were seriously damaged. It was one of the reasons food was so expensive.

But I was not thinking about that. I was worried about what she had said, who it was she couldn’t trust. I wanted to ask her about the arguing, but before I had a chance she said, ‘You have to start remembering, Cati.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You have to start remembering everything you see. And counting. Count everything and remember it.’

Like the drops, I thought. The sticky drops of time I’d counted on that last day when I’d had my wedding dress fitted. Then I’d resisted, and failed, because at the hospital it was something the hysterics did – walked up and down and wrung their hands and counted – steps, nurses, beds, windows. That way madness lies. Now I was being ordered to make a wilful effort to be like them – to unhinge my mind for the sake of the Allies. Enrico, doubtless, would say it was my duty.

I almost laughed, and would have shared the joke with Issa, but she stood up, stretched, and ran her hands through her hair.

‘Papa’s going to help me,’ she said. ‘We’ll find somewhere to take JULIET. Somewhere—’ She smiled and shook her head. I knew she was going to say the word ‘safe’, and that the other joke was that there is nowhere safe. So instead she just said, ‘Somewhere away from here.’

And that was when I opened my mouth and the words came out.

‘I can help.’

Issa stopped and looked at me.

‘I can help,’ I said again.

And so it began.

For once, Issa did as I told her and came to the hospital the next afternoon. I found her sitting on my cot when I finished my rounds after teatime.

‘Budge up,’ I said quickly, and before I could think about what I was doing, I pushed her aside and reached under the pillow and pulled out Donata Leone’s handbag.

I knew Donata’s address, and that her apartment was in an attic, because while we had sat sewing, she had told me all about it. Told me about her room, and the books that were in it, and The few things she had been able to salvage from the ruins of the house in Genoa. She’d recreated it in words, I think, the sanctuary she had made for herself, because she was afraid she was never going to see it again.

Now I was giving it to Issa. I handed her the keys.

‘No one knows she’s dead,’ I said. ‘There’s no one to tell. I didn’t enter her in the ledger. She had no family. The room will be empty.’ Then, as an afterthought, I pulled out Donata’s papers and her ration card, too. I looked at her printed name. Donata Maria Leone. There was no one in this world who would miss her.

‘Here.’ I put them quickly into Issa’s outstretched hand. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you can find a use for these.’

That is how I became a thief.

Eight days ago, we found out what we had been waiting for. The Allies made a second landing some thirty miles south of Rome. The fighting is intense. German troops are moving south, and JULIET needs to know all about them. So we hoard scraps of information, anything we can find, so she can send them off to ROMEO in what I call her ‘love letters’.

Donata’s room was a great success. It worked just as I had hoped. Issa and Papa simply walked into the building, climbed the stairs and used the keys. JULIET was quite happy there – she needs to be somewhere high up in order for her antenna to work properly. But the problem is that it is too dangerous to transmit more than once or twice from the same place. GAP has kept its promise to ‘bring the war home’, never let the enemy sleep safely in his bed – in particular by throwing hand grenades at German officers in the station last week, and again a week ago, outside the Excelsior. As a result, Fascist patrols are greatly increased. Everyone is suspicious of everyone. And the Germans can trace radio signals. They are good at this.

So, if JULIET is to continue, she must move frequently.

Unfortunately, there are few buildings we can get to now where we won’t attract attention. Mama had the idea that she would prowl through the city herself, looking for places JULIET could transmit from – she says no one ever sees ladies ‘of a certain age’, especially if they carry a shopping bag. But I couldn’t let her do that. So I have sunk to the lowest of the low.

Quite a lot of people are dying just now, one way and another. And when they do, before I make the entries in my ledger, I rifle their belongings. I get their addresses from their papers or wheedle it out of them in conversation, and if they lived alone or I find that their family has fled or died, I steal their keys and give them to Issa. If I think they will be useful, I also steal their papers. And their clothes. Their worn boots. Their gloves and woollen socks and overcoats that smell of cigar smoke or perfume. I have not been caught out yet, but if I am, I will lie. I will say I have no idea where the papers or the keys went. I will say that things get lost in hospitals. I will say that it is sad, but in difficult times, people steal.

Issa hugs me and tells me that all of this has made me a heroine for Italy – a true partisan. But I don’t feel like that. I feel like a liar and a grave-robber. I feel like a crow, picking the bones of the dead.