The Villa Triste (46 page)
‘You find her, you tell her the mail’s her job,’ she said over her shoulder.
She gripped the banister, looked up, sighed, and started to climb.
Pallioti waited until the small shape had disappeared, plodding its way towards the heights of Olympus. Then he crossed the room quietly, lifted the waste-paper basket parked under the lamp, and upended it onto the mail table.
Eleanor Sachs had every intention of breaking the promise she had made to Pallioti. And doing so sooner rather than later. In fact, she had considered turning around and driving straight back down to Siena on Saturday evening. Then she had thought better of it. Not because she was afraid of him, but because she was afraid of Piero Balestro. Everything about him, to put it bluntly, gave her the creeps.
The fact didn’t lessen her determination to talk to him, to find out who his children were, and whether their stepfather’s name had been Faber. But it did persuade her that forewarned might include being forearmed. Or something like that. The long and the short was, if she was going to venture back to cross-question the Minotaur – and that was exactly what he’d reminded her of, a cold-eyed randy old bull – then she ought to be prepared. Finding out something – anything – she could about him, might come in handy. Even Theseus had taken a ball of string.
So she’d given up the idea of making the excursion on Sunday, and instead spent the day online. There, she had found information on four Bales Clinics, all in what appeared to be poor, remote townships in South Africa. Doctor Peter Bales had also had a private practice, considerably more stylish, if the website was anything to go by, in Johannesburg. The accompanying picture showed a much younger Piero Balestro. The biography agreed that he’d graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1950. There was no mention of his wife, or of any children. No mention of a family at all, or even of the fact that he was Italian. From his photograph and biographical notes, Peter Bales looked to be an all-American boy.
It was the hope that she might find some record of his marriage to the American nurse he claimed to have married in Florence, and with any luck his wife’s name – or even better, an address – that had driven her to the city archives early on Monday morning.
By eleven, Eleanor had trawled through marriage records, and Red Cross records, and records concerning hospitals and come up with nothing. She was about to quit, had about decided that it didn’t matter, that she’d just get in the car and drive down to Siena and confront the old creep, when she thought about the Pergola Theatre, and Radio Juliet – and what Pallioti had told her. And Piero Balestro’s reaction when he had brought it up. It was the only time Balestro had faltered, the only time anything Pallioti had said had seemed to have any impact on him. Admittedly, it hadn’t been much. A prick in his bull’s hide. But it had been something. And if she was going to break one promise to Pallioti, the least she could do was keep another.
Eleanor filled out a search slip and put in two more requests, for material covering the dates a week on either side of the Pergola shooting in February and the Radio Juliet arrests in June of 1944. The library was not terribly busy. She got up, stretched her legs, went outside and checked her mobile phone. There were no messages. Her husband had stopped calling since the disaster of a weekend they had spent in Positano. She came back twenty minutes later to find two document boxes deposited at her work station.
The material was almost all copies, the original documents either being elsewhere, or deemed too fragile to be handled by researchers. Some of it – the copies of news sheets and testimonials, reports of GAP actions – she’d seen before. She glanced at her watch. It would take her an hour and a half, at least, to reach Balestro’s estate, and she wanted to eat something before she left. She was hungry and pretty much losing interest when she came across the papers at the bottom of the second box.
Eleanor recognized them at once. She’d seen some of them before. They were records from the Villa Triste. She lifted them out and set them on the desk. They always made her feel slightly queasy, these meticulous records of death, so neatly kept. So carefully noted. They were only photocopied sheets, but she ran her fingers along the lined entries anyway. It was an exercise she made herself carry out – to remember that these neat letters represented, not just names, but lives, hopes, dreams, and ambitions that had been beaten, broken, and snuffed out.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to think of the small, insignificant pieces of lives that had been lost. The memory of a birthday party. The joy of sunlight, or rain. The sound of a voice. The taste of a favourite food. A glass of wine. Of bread and salt. Nothing to anyone, except those who had lost them. Then she looked down at the page, and blinked.
Eleanor Sachs felt her pulse quicken. She looked, and looked again. What she saw was wrong. It had to be. But it was there, under her fingers. She moved them slowly along the words, along the neat copperplate writing, like a child learning to read, just to be sure she wasn’t making a mistake. But she wasn’t. She checked the date at the top of the page.
15 June 1944
. She looked again. But the words still said what they said.
Eleanor glanced around the room. There hadn’t been many other readers to start with, and most of those had left, either for lunch, or for the day. The girl at the front desk was reading something. Occasionally licking her finger, flipping through pages. Without taking her eyes off her, Eleanor reached down into her shoulder bag.
The thing was too big, cavernous. She should get a neat little purse so she would have no trouble finding things. Like her mobile phone. She was lifting it out, when she realized it was stupid. The phone would make a chirping sound when she turned it on and another when she took a picture. There was no way, in the silent room, that she wouldn’t be noticed – and promptly thrown out. And even if she managed to get a picture of the page, the screen was so tiny it would hardly do any good. Something told her she didn’t have time to mess around linking the phone up to a computer. Pallioti needed to see what was in front of her and he needed to see it now.
Eleanor looked around again. Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips. Then in one swift motion she reached out, slid the page onto her lap, and into the open mouth of her bag.
Pallioti had finished his sandwich and was on his way back to the office when his phone rang. Without breaking his stride, he pulled it out of his pocket. When he saw that the caller was Eleanor Sachs and not the Mayor calling to shout at him again, he stopped and flipped it open.
‘Good morning, Dottoressa,’ he said. ‘Or should I say afternoon?’
The results of his hunt through the waste bin had been most satisfactory. The sun was still out. His sandwich had been better than usual. All in all he was feeling remarkably chipper.
‘Where are you?’ Eleanor Sachs sounded strained. Worse than strained. She sounded frantic.
‘Where am I? I’m in the piazza—’ Pallioti looked at the phone and frowned. He could hear traffic, the honking of a horn. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter? Are you driving?’
‘Yes. No,’ she said. ‘I’m on the Lungarno. I’m pulled over. Near the Excelsior. Can you come?’
‘Eleanor?’ Had she been arrested? Pulled over and wanted him to bail her out? ‘What’s—’
‘I’ve found something,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘You have to see. It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s important. It’s from the Villa Triste.’
Five minutes later, Eleanor Sachs looked up and saw Pallioti coming towards her down the pavement. He wove past a couple of window-gazers, held up his hand and stepped into the traffic to avoid a woman with a baby buggy. When he opened the passenger door, she felt a pang of relief. She had been sitting with the bag on her lap, her hand inside it, holding the paper as if it might vaporize before she could show it to him.
‘Here.’ Without saying anything else, she handed him the flimsy photocopy, glad to be rid of it, as if it were explosive, or somehow incriminating.
She watched as his face creased with concern.
‘What—’
‘It’s from the Villa Triste,’ she said. ‘Thursday, 15 June 1944.’
He looked up.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘I stole it, about an hour ago, from the archives.’
Pallioti frowned.
‘It’s just a copy!’ she said. ‘For God’s sake, it’s not the end of the earth. Halfway down – just read it!’
Pallioti pulled out his glasses. He lifted the sheet up so he could see it better. Under the date, there was a list of names.
Aurelio Enrico Cammaccio, B. Florence, 1885, 59 yrs, Professor. 11 a.m. Removed – Executed.
Enrico Bernardo Cammaccio, B. Florence, 1921, 23 yrs, Deserter.11 a.m. Removed – Executed.
Carlo Francesco Peralta, B.Venice, 1921, 23 yrs, Deserter. 11 a.m. Removed – Executed.
The next three names on the list he did not recognize.
Mario Tommaso Benelli, 19. Porfirio Rodrigo Andarri, 18. Romolo Teodoro DellaChiesa, 19.
All listed as deserters, they too had all been ‘removed’ at 11 a.m. on 15 June, and executed.
Strong arms, lopsided smiles. No more than boys, they had dug a trench and knelt down. Pallioti felt his chest tighten. He looked at the last three names on the list.
Piero Balestro, B. Siena, 1921, 23 yrs.
Giancarlo Menucci, B. Siena, 1924, 20 yrs.
Giovanni Rossi, B. Pisa, 1921, 23 yrs.
After each were written the words, 11 a.m.
Removed
. And then the final word.
Executed
.
He had not bothered to call Enzo Saenz, or even Guillermo. Instead, he had stared at the paper in his hand, then opened the door and ordered Eleanor Sachs out of the driver’s seat. When she had insisted on sliding over to the passenger side instead of getting out of the car, he hadn’t even bothered to argue, just barked at her to fasten her seat belt.
They were past San Casciano before she said anything.
‘They did it, didn’t they? They betrayed that Radio group, Juliet? That’s what this is about?’
Without taking his eyes off the road, Pallioti nodded. He came shockingly close to the car in front, flashed his lights and leaned on the horn until the driver swung over, gesturing obscenely.
‘What happened?’ Her voice was tight.
‘They were arrested. In February. After the shooting at the theatre. The three men, Massimo, Il Corvo, Beppe.’ Pallioti had a straight empty stretch of road ahead, but still didn’t look at her.
‘But not Lilia?’
‘No. She got away.’
‘And they were taken to the Villa Triste, and kept for three days, and then they escaped. Except’ – Eleanor glanced at him – ‘They didn’t. Not really.’
‘No.’
Pallioti heard Signora Grandolo’s voice in his head.
No one ever walked out of the Villa Triste
. They didn’t escape from there, either. Isabella had told Caterina as much. One guard in the front of the truck. One in the back. For three men. Both too injured to prevent all three escaping. It was nonsense, and Giovanni Trantemento had all but laid it out. Antenor. He must have half hoped, consciously or not, that someone would figure it out. That someone would take the burden away. Absolve him before it was too late.
You deserve this medal more than I do
. He had all but underlined it in red. No wonder Massimo had cause for concern, had decided to close Trantemento’s mouth before he could finally spit out the sin.
‘So, it was a set-up,’ Eleanor said. ‘They were allowed to escape, get away, and the price was Radio Juliet.’
Pallioti nodded. And what else, he wondered? The safe house used after the weapons drop, almost certainly. In which case, they must have been Mario Carita’s golden boys. A cache of weapons, ammunition, explosives – and how many arrests? How many lives smashed? Then Juliet.
No wonder they had been able to ask for anything – new identities. Sets of papers to get a Jewish family to Switzerland. Safe passage into Spain. Money for doctors and drugs.
All that mattered
, Piero Balestro had said,
was to take care of your own
. But Issa had thought GAP was her own.
GAP will take of me
, she had told Caterina.
We have a sacred bond of trust
. It was that belief, not her sister’s carelessness, that had cost them their lives. One of them must have contacted Carita that morning, as soon as they were told the address of the meeting place, the house off the Via dei Renai.
Pallioti tried to tamp down the rage he could feel growing inside.
‘But how did he do it?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How did Balestro come back and fight at the liberation, how was he there in August? Wouldn’t people have guessed, known he was arrested with the rest of Juliet?’
‘Maybe not.’ Pallioti glanced at her. ‘That was in June. He got his cousin out of Fiesole, got him to a doctor somewhere. They must have lain low for at least a month or a few weeks for Achilleo to recover.’
‘And by August, in Florence, things were chaotic.’ She nodded. ‘If they just showed up at the end, in time for the glory, spun some story or other—’
‘Il Corvo and Beppe were long gone.’ Pallioti finished the thought for her. ‘There was no one from Juliet left alive to contradict anything Massimo said.’
‘And his cousin would have lied for him. Corroborated anything he said.’
Pallioti nodded. He suspected that Achilleo Venta was luckier than he knew to be alive – lucky he’d been useful to his beloved Massimo.
‘And those two women.’ Eleanor glanced at him. ‘The sisters?’
Pallioti nodded.
‘They were arrested, and transported. But they escaped. They ended up in Milan. And, well, you know.’
‘What was her name? Lilia? You said she was pregnant?’
‘Yes,’ Pallioti said. ‘She was pregnant.’ He pushed another car out of the fast lane. ‘The father was executed. He was part of Radio Juliet. She never really recovered. It broke her heart.’
‘And the baby?’
Pallioti shrugged.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He was born in Milan. He probably died.’
Eleanor lapsed into silence. She stared out of the window. Pallioti concentrated on the road. It should have been a relief, or at least some kind of vindication, to know that he was right, that his much-vaunted sixth sense, his ‘hearing’ as Signora Grandolo called it, had not deserted him. But it wasn’t. The moment he had seen those names on the Villa Triste ledger, understood that they had been made officially dead, and why, he’d felt like a fool. The worst kind of amateur.
He’d been played, and what was worse, played by the dead – just as Isabella had been, all those years ago.
He had wondered, briefly, about the escape, then put it down to luck, which he didn’t believe in. But the second part of the trick he had missed completely. It had been right in front of his face, but he hadn’t seen it. The fact that Issa had been chosen, taken to the clearing in the woods – not by chance, or because she had made a lot of noise in the cells, but because of who she was. A hero. Someone people owed their lives to. Someone whose word amongst her comrades was unimpeachable.
Whoever arranged for her to be taken to that clearing knew that. And knew that if she survived and reported that all the members of her GAP unit had been executed – as she had, at the very first opportunity in Verona – she would be believed without question. Because she had seen the bodies with her own eyes.
Except she hadn’t.
Instead, what she had seen was exactly what she had been shown. Her father, her brother, her lover. And below them a tangle of arms and legs. Arms and legs that she expected to belong to Il Corvo and Beppe and Massimo. But that in fact had belonged to three boys. Three strangers who, for all Pallioti knew, had been arrested and shot for just that purpose.
There was an efficiency to it – a wit, even – that made Pallioti wonder if it had been thought of by Carita himself. Or had Massimo come up with the idea – that she should look down on Carlo’s dead face, and provide the men who had betrayed him with an alibi? If she died in the camps, there would be no witnesses. If she lived to tell the story, her word would set him free forever. Guarantee that Massimo and Beppe and Il Corvo were dead. Because Issa said so. And no one comes looking for dead men.
Pallioti blinked. The road was unwinding ahead of him, spooling out fast in a thin grey ribbon.
But someone had. That was exactly what had happened.
His foot hit the accelerator.
Everyone’s luck runs out, Dottore.
The sky was a sharp noontime blue. Once again, Piero Balestro’s electric gates stood open, their railings glinting silver against the packed white earth of the drive. There could be a thousand reasons for that, all of them innocent. Or not. Pallioti glanced at the security camera. Its tiny red eye blinked in a steady rhythm.
They turned in and started down the drive. It had not been forty-eight hours since their first visit, and already the place felt strange. The dun mounds of the hills, their crowns of cypress, and the soft sage scrub that grew in the drainage ditches, were absolutely still. There was not a breath of wind. Earlier, mist would have pooled in the valleys. Pallioti could see the glisten of a small pond in a hollow. Dots of white spattered across the hillside beyond. Sheep. If he rolled his window down he was sure he would be able to hear the faint, monotonous tinkle of bells.
He glanced at Eleanor. She was staring through the windscreen as if hypnotized.
‘When we get there,’ Pallioti said, ‘I want you to stay in the car. Lock the door. Don’t get out unless I tell you. If anything happens, leave. Drive out of the gates, and call the police.’
She nodded.
‘What do you think we’re going to find?’ she asked a moment later.
He shook his head.
‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I have no idea.’
The first sign that anything was wrong was the jeep. It wasn’t there. The silver Alfa sat exactly where it had before, its nose facing the line of cypresses. Pallioti could see a sharp mark in the gravel, a skid where the jeep had reversed, quickly. There was no sign of life around the house. Through the trees they could see the horses still grazing in front of the stables.
He got out of the car and stood for a moment. Something about the stillness made him inclined to be quiet. The leaves of the bay trees were almost black against the soft stone of the house. The brass latches of the shutters sparkled in the sun. The lions, their paws crossed, looked implacably out over the steps. There was a faint hum in the camellias, possibly the buzz of an out-of-season bumblebee, still hunting for pollen, unaware that come nightfall it would not survive the frost.
Pallioti was not aware that Eleanor had opened her door until she spoke.
‘What’s that?’
She was half in, half out of the passenger seat, her head cocked like a dog’s. Before Pallioti could admonish her, tell her to do as she was told and not be so stupid, he heard it too.
At first it was nothing but a distant echo of sound. Then it rose, hit a high note, and died. If the wind had been blowing it would not have been possible to hear it at all.
Pallioti had turned towards it, was about to step around the front of the car, when the front door of the house burst open.
‘Oh! Papa, I—’ At the last moment, just as she put her foot on the top step, the maid looked up. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re – I thought you were—’
She tried to stop on the second step, but lost her balance. Her arms flailed, the small doll-like hands reaching towards Pallioti, who managed to grab her and steady her down onto the gravel, stop her from falling flat on her face.
‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry.’ Embarrassed, the maid tried to step away, but Pallioti hung onto her.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Yes.’ She nodded, a blush rising from under the collar of her uniform and creeping upwards, deepening the coffee-coloured skin of her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again. ‘I thought you were—’
Her accent became thicker as she became more agitated, making her Italian almost incomprehensible.
‘You thought I was who?’
The tiny woman’s eyes pooled with tears.
‘Thought I was who, Signorina?’ He asked more gently this time, and the maid began to cry. Her face crumpled. She shook her head.
‘Papa Balestro,’ she said. ‘I thought when I heard the car – Papa Balestro.’
‘Papa?’
Pallioti could hear Eleanor behind him
The maid’s hair had come loose, escaping from the plastic clip that held it. Dark silky strands swung across her face, catching on her damp cheeks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve been so worried. I didn’t know what to do. I thought, when I heard the car—’
Pallioti was looking towards the house. Through the open door he could see the hallway. The brass chandelier of countrified design shone on the too-new terracotta tiles. Letting go of the woman’s arm, he mounted the steps and pushed the door open wider. A single pair of hunting boots rested upside down on the rack. Above them, the rifles hung where he had seen them the day before. The shotgun was missing.
He turned around.
‘Where is Doctor Balestro?’
The maid wiped her eyes. Tears stained the cuff of her pale-blue uniform.
‘I don’t know, Dottore. I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head, looking at Pallioti as if he might somehow have the answer.
‘When did you last see him?’ The question came out as a bark, making her jump.
‘Last night,’ she said. ‘Late. I always check on him, to see if he needs anything.’
‘And did he?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He was on the telephone. He waved at me – to go away. So I went. Then, this morning, I heard the car.’
‘When?’
‘Early.’ She began to cry in earnest. ‘Very early. He goes hunting, at this time of year. He takes Pepe, the dog. But—’
‘But?’
‘He’s always back. For breakfast. By nine, before he goes down to the stables. I cook him—’
Pallioti did not care what she cooked him.
‘Where’s the dog?’ Eleanor asked. ‘The dog.’ She glanced at Pallioti.
Before anyone could say anything, they heard it again. Echoing in the still November air was the faint wail of an animal in pain.
‘Stay here.’ Pallioti waved towards the house. ‘Go inside and lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me.’
The maid nodded, scuttling up the steps like a small animal seeking sanctuary. The door swung closed. There was a clicking as the battery of locks began to turn. Pallioti ducked through the line of trees and stepped out onto the lawn. Below, in the paddock, the horses raised their heads.