The Villa Triste (48 page)

‘Salt,’ he said, when he had finished. ‘Where do you keep the salt?’

The maid looked at him.

‘No,’ she shook her head.

‘No?’

‘No. No salt. Only a little.’

She got to her feet, opened a cabinet, and handed him a small cardboard shaker that looked as if it might have been stolen from a fast food restaurant. Full, it could only have held a few tablespoons.

‘There isn’t any more in the house?’ Pallioti asked.

‘No.’

She took the shaker out of his hand and replaced in it the cabinet.

‘Papa had blood pressure,’ she said. ‘Salt not good for you.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘
Bravissimo! Bravissimo
, my friend!’

All rancour forgotten, the Mayor was apparently Pallioti’s best friend again. In fact, Pallioti had not heard him sound so ebullient in years. If he was not careful, he might rise straight out of his chair and begin to bounce around the ceiling. Or at least drop the phone.

They had just received news from the Finanza that the haul of papers taken a week ago from Piero Balestro’s desk and safe had indeed led back to a major drug company which had been a focus of attention for some time concerning the illegal sale of tainted drugs for the treatment of HIV in several African countries.

The safe had also coughed up quite a lot that was of significant interest to Immigration. Piero Balestro’s clinics apparently ran a lucrative sideline in the sale of babies for adoption. The maid, who, it turned out, at a best guess was only seventeen, had probably been one of them. Immigration and the social services were still trying to sort that out. In the meantime, Interpol, Europol, the FDA and FBI in the United States, and several other Pols, Feds and tax agencies were all equally delighted.

In addition, if all that were not enough, Cesare D’Aletto was riding high in the mezzogiorno. The journalist who had first come up with the neo-Nazi angle and whom Enzo had talked to early in the investigation had turned out not to be blowing hot air after all. Closer examination of Bruno Torricci’s girlfriend had revealed that she had once worked for the IT company supposedly implicated in messing up ageing partisans’ benefits. Having come to an agreement with them to leave quietly in return for a hefty cheque, she had moved on to her present job freelancing as a ‘software specialist’ for the company that had installed systems not only for Brindisi, but also several other southern policing divisions. There, she had used her not-inconsiderable skills again, most notably to install several ‘back doors’ through which various operators, including herself, had been able to access the systems and information databases concerning pending and ongoing operations and investigations.

That was how Bruno Torricci had known about Cesare D’Aletto’s suspicions concerning the gun that had killed Roberto Roblino. He’d merely used the information to taunt D’Aletto and Enzo Saenz and waste their time and patience. And as far as anyone could tell, that was about all that had happened so far. The police in the south had been embarrassed, sent on wild goose chases and plagued by leaks to the media. But the scope for more dangerous mischief was obvious.

Having put a stop to it had made Cesare D’Aletto a hero. Rumour said he’d been offered a significant promotion and agreed to accept it only on the grounds that he could stay in the south and ‘finish the job he’d started’, which only made him more of a poster boy. In his most recent press conference, he’d made a point of publicly thanking Enzo Saenz and Pallioti, both for their help and for ‘providing an extraordinary example of exemplary policing’.

The upshot of all this, according to the Mayor, was that Florence had banked enough favours to last for several decades, Pallioti’s new division was being spoken of as ‘an Inspirational Model of Cooperative Law Enforcement for the Twenty-First Century’, and his own critics had been kicked so far into the long grass that they would have to mount a safari to find their way out.

‘
Bravissimo!
’

He dropped the phone. There was a shuffling of papers, then another, ‘
Bravissimo!
’

‘Anything you want, my friend,’ the mayor said, finally taking time to draw breath. ‘Now is the time to ask!’

Pallioti looked out of his window. From where he was sitting behind his desk he could see a bright early December sky and the grey top of the palazzo on the opposite side of the piazza. What could he say? That he would like Enzo and the magistrate to revise their opinions concerning the death of Piero Balestro, which had now been definitively listed as a suicide?

Without a shred of evidence to the contrary, that was hardly likely to happen. And even if it did, the Mayor would doubtless argue that it was deeply undesirable. Two homicides had been solved, wrapped up and tied with a bow. And if what had finally been given to the media was a little vague – well, that was deemed to be, if not preferable, at least more palatable, than the unpleasant truth – that three ageing and decorated heroes were in fact brutal traitors who had caused countless deaths and unknown suffering and then lived long, and by most measures fruitful, lives before they finally fell out and killed each other. For a start, the families, and not just Maria Valacci and Roberto Roblino’s housekeeper, would go demented.

Since receiving the news of his cousin’s death, Little Lamb had suddenly become Massimo’s greatest defender. Pallioti had broken the news himself to the old man, driving straight there after leaving the Balestro house. Agata, who had been tending the pigs at the time, had seemed slightly stunned. Her thoughts had rather obviously flown straight to the bank account and the property. Achilleo Venta, on the other hand, had burst into tears, his fragile shoulders shaking as his gnarled hands had gripped Pallioti’s.

An hour later, as he drove down the rutted drive and turned towards Florence, Pallioti had thought that it was not the first time his job had given him cause to reflect on the very strange nature of love. He doubted it would be the last.

‘It is sad, my friend, this squabble between our Holy Children. I know you are not happy.’

The Mayor knew him too well. They had been friends for a long time.

‘Sometimes,’ the Mayor went on, ‘sometimes we compromise for the greater good.’

‘Yes,’ Pallioti said. ‘Sometimes we do.’

After agreeing to have lunch, at the Mayor’s expense, and saying goodbye, Pallioti picked up his pen and began to drum it against the edge of his blotter. His mind ran over the conversation he had had with Saffy the night before. So far, she was the only person who seemed as troubled as he did by the idea that Piero Balestro had suddenly, after all these years, been so unhinged by Pallioti’s visit that he had waited twenty-four hours before having a violent, and apparently unique, attack of conscience that left him moved to fill his pockets with salt and drive out and shoot himself at dawn with a gun no one could remember him owning.

Of course, she had agreed, it was possible. Anything under the sun was possible. Massimo might also be revealed as a private but dedicated family man, and a model altruistic doctor committed to healing the poor.

Except he hadn’t been.

His will left nothing to charity. The young woman who kept his house had been little better than a slave. He had left a wife and two children in the States without speaking to them for years, and spent his time – first in Zimbabwe and then in South Africa – not selflessly healing the sick, but instead selling them black-market drugs at ridiculous rates and possibly in exchange for babies. She had no problem, Saffy had said, in believing that he might have killed the other two, especially if they were going to ruin his little book debut. But it would be a cold day in hell before she would believe that a man like that performed a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in the space of two days and took a gun to himself. For a start, she insisted, his ego was too big.

Pallioti, of course, agreed. But they had also agreed that there was no evidence that pointed to much of anything else. A track through the woods and a few broken twigs that led, metaphorically and otherwise, only to an empty road – where someone might have parked, and someone might not have. The fact that a pair of gloves had been found in the driver’s side pocket of the jeep and that the ones he had been wearing – which did indeed have a powder burn – did not match the brand he usually bought. No trace of salt in the fabric of the seats or the carpet, or anywhere else in the jeep. Even Pallioti had to admit it didn’t add up to the proverbial smoking gun.

Still, the conversation had left him feeling better. They had poured the last of the wine and changed the subject. To the sales from this show and the subject matter of Saffy’s next one. To the apparently fabulous hotel Maria Grandolo’s family had co-opted for their autumn break. To whether or not Saffy and Leo would finally rent a villa by the sea for next August, and if so, whether they should opt for Agrigento, which was closer and would allow Pallioti to come for weekends, or Sardinia which was reliable, or somewhere in Apulia, which, since her holiday, Maria was now championing vigorously. Secretly, Pallioti hoped they would nix the last option. The idea of having Maria Grandolo stalking him down the beach and turning up half naked in the swimming pool was enough to make him volunteer for August overtime.

He considered the papers on his desk. There were the final details of the fraud case that needed to be cleared up, and the pile of information Guillermo had amassed on Roberto Roblino, Giovanni Trantemento, and Piero Balestro. It included copies of property deeds and tax forms and, in the case of Roblino, even import and export licences. There was also a copy of the original Red Cross report Eleanor Sachs had dug up. She’d faxed it, with a note promising that it had been legitimately copied and not stolen. Pallioti slid it out and stared at it. Eleanor had been right the first time, it was hardly worth it, just a few sentences.

Cammaccio, Caterina. Presumed dead. Personal effects registered Allied Military Field Station #44871, Bologna, 21 April 1945. Forwarded – Red Cross Personal Property Reclamation Office, Florence, June 1945.

Pallioti took off his glasses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He picked up his pen and sat for a moment, tapping it again on the edge of the blotter. Then he put it down and turned on his computer. He was never going to be a whizz, but he had mastered Google.

Fifteen minutes told him what he wanted to know. The Allied offensive had begun on schedule on 9 April. The first wave was eight hundred and twenty-five Liberators and Flying Fortresses. By late afternoon they had dropped 175,000 bombs. And that was just the beginning. The fighting was particularly intense just south of Bologna as the American Fifth Army fought its way down to the Po. Almost a week later, on 15 April, Allied bombers dropped 1,500 tons of explosives – three times more than the Luftwaffe had dropped on the British city of Coventry – on the Monte Sole massif. And still the Germans held out. It was another six days before Bologna was liberated by Polish troops on 21 April.

Pallioti took his glasses off. He stared, unseeing, out of his window, across the tops of the palazzos and the beautiful red roofs. He could not imagine what it would have been like, in that particular cauldron of hell where Isabella and Caterina had finally died. What truly amazed him was that there was any Italy, any Europe, left to liberate at all.

Pallioti had finally shut the computer down. He had put the papers into his drawer, when Guillermo buzzed him.

‘
Pronto
.’ He hit the button on his intercom without even looking up.

‘I have someone here to see you. A Professor Sachs,’ Guillermo said, as if he didn’t know exactly who she was.

‘Eleanor Sachs,’ Pallioti heard Eleanor say.

He smiled.

‘Send her in.’

Pallioti had not seen her since the day they had found Piero Balestro. She was wearing jeans and her denim jacket. She looked at her watch.

‘Sun’s over the yardarm,’ she said. ‘Or something like that. I was thinking maybe I could take you to lunch?’

They decided to walk, and had crossed the Ponte alla Carraia and turned towards the Carmine, looking in windows and enjoying the brightness of the afternoon without the burden of conversation, before Eleanor finally spoke.

‘I’m going home.’

Pallioti looked down at her.

‘No, I mean really home,’ she said. ‘To the States. I’m not going back to England. Don’t say anything,’ she added. Her small shoulders gave a jump under her jacket. Her hands were dug into her pockets. ‘My marriage is over and I hate Exeter anyway. It’s best.’

When they arrived a few minutes later, he held the door of the restaurant for her. It was a small and pleasantly noisy trattoria where anonymity was more than possible because no one cared about anything other than the food. They wound their way through a crowded babble, successfully avoided a hurtling waiter, and claimed a small table against the wall in a back room which was thick with The fug of conversation and steam rising from plates of the daily special.