‘And the next morning — Saturday morning — I thought I heard the phone ring; he must have answered it, if it did. I was busy with the children. It seemed odd to me — well, when he didn’t come back. The phone call, then the supermarket.’
‘Odd?’ Pietro leaned forward, alert. Even from where he stood, peering, his face close up to the glass, Sandro could see the wounded, bewildered look in the woman’s eyes.
‘I did ask him. We never use that supermarket. He was distracted. He mentioned money again. He said we had to be careful with money in the — in the current climate, that was what he said.’ A trace of painful indignation in her brimming eyes. ‘I’m not one of those women — who doesn’t think about the expense. I’m careful. Claudio gives me housekeeping-’
And her eyes widened. Sandro could see her thinking, what next? Where will the money come from now?
Claudio Brunello was trying to economize?
‘Do you think perhaps he might not have been telling the truth?’ Pietro’s voice was low. ‘Would you have been angry, for example, if he said he had to go back into work? Something like that?’
Irene Brunello stared into his eyes, pale. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. It was a — a thing of ours. Once on holiday, then no calls from work, nothing.’ Sandro could see her absorb it, take the burden of guilt on herself. ‘I never meant — he never-’
Don’t, thought Sandro, enough.
‘All right,’ said Pietro, soothing, and Sandro felt a small yet strong pulse of grateful affection, that their minds still seemed to run along the same track. Would they ever work together again, properly? Best not to think about it.
‘So,’ Pietro continued, doggedly patient. ‘On Saturday morning he said he would go to the supermarket.’
She nodded, confusion in her eyes. ‘I made him coffee, I went out for pastries from the good baker’s. He likes something sweet in the morning.’
Liked.
‘And then I took Laila to the beach, leaving him there with our son to have breakfast, that’s when I thought I heard the telephone, at about ten. I was putting the beach things in a basket. And after about fifteen minutes he brought Gianni, our son, down, and said he was going to the supermarket.’
‘And that was the last time you saw him?’
Sitting on the warm stones of the beach at Monterosso, the turquoise sea behind her, the bright little condomini along the front, shading her eyes as she waved him off.
‘You didn’t report him missing?’
She stared at Pietro with wonder, and Sandro already knew the answer before she gave it. Because once you went to the police, once they started checking the hospitals and the RTAs, you were halfway to widowhood. You were admitting the possibility. She just barely shook her head, clinging to that picture of her husband as she had last seen him, standing in the sun.
‘What will we do?’ she said, her face turned to Pietro, blank with the immensity of it.
Sandro looked at her, at the mute appeal in her eyes; then at his old friend. You will ask, won’t you? he wanted to say, through the glass. Check out her story, talk to the mother, talk to the maid, where’s she been all weekend? Because it was at moments like this, when all your sympathy was engaged, when everything leaned one way, towards the grieving widow, that mistakes were made. So many murders were committed by someone close. Even if this was not a murder, but a suicide.
He believed her, even through the one-way glass, he believed her, because he wanted to believe her. Was Pietro being sceptical enough?
She said it again, ‘What will we do without him?’
And nobody had any reply.
*
On the porch, listening to the cicadas in the trees and the vague, distracted sounds of her mother in the kitchen, Roxana stared into the warm, scented darkness of the garden and tried to make sense of it.
It wasn’t easy. Today at the office had made home — the side of her life usually most resembling a madhouse — look like a haven of order and peace.
‘Darling,’ Violetta had said as she pushed her way wearily through the door, and had held her arms out. Full of affection, the bringer of comfort — was this new Ma just a new phase? Worn out, Roxana had decided to take it at face value. What the hell.
‘Ma,’ she said, letting her mother put her arms around her. ‘How was your day?’
And Ma, perhaps still buoyed by her newly rediscovered powers of recall, had launched into a story about the Sicilian with his vegetable truck who had been selling watermelons at the end of the road. Where the melons had come from, how she’d known the man since he was a small boy selling with his dad, from the same truck. Roxana had sat down and let her mother talk. She had poured herself a small glass of white wine from the refrigerator, and when the story showed signs of drawing to a close, said, ‘I’ll be out at the back.’
Sipping the wine — slightly sharp, she couldn’t remember how long that bottle had been there — Roxana thought about Marisa Goldman. She’d never seen her like that, Marisa whom nothing could touch, always perfectly composed, every little pretty detail of her life under control. Perhaps there were some things that money and good taste could not solve, after all. Roxana, however, for whom Marisa was a daily itch beneath the skin, found that she could not summon up even the most meagre satisfaction from the image of Marisa’s sallow, drawn features.
‘What did she say?’ In Marisa’s immaculate office Roxana had poured her superior a glass of cold water and looked intently into her pale face. ‘What exactly did Irene Brunello say?’
And as Marisa had stared back at her dully, it had occurred to Roxana that perhaps she’d taken something too, a tranquillizer. Marisa was always popping pills: vitamins, sleeping pills, homeopathic and not so homeopathic. Perhaps life with the playboy billionaire wasn’t that much fun, after all. But eventually she had spilled it all out, except that, it turned out, all hadn’t really been that much.
The police had got hold of Irene Brunello at Monterosso. They had found a body with Claudio’s ID on it — and Claudio had been gone since Saturday. She was frantic with worry — they all were, said Marisa, almost accusingly.
‘But she hasn’t identified him yet.’ Someone, Roxana had thought, had to be blunt; someone had to resist being frantic.
A tight little shake of the head, no. Marisa’s face had been anguished. ‘But it doesn’t look good.’ She’d bitten her lip. ‘I offered to go with her, but she said no. I’m going over later, to their apartment.’
Kneeling at Marisa’s side, Roxana had sat back on her haunches. ‘There’s something funny about all this,’ she had said, almost to herself.
‘All what?’ Marisa had spoken sharply and Roxana had hesitated.
‘A private detective came looking for him yesterday.’
‘What?’ Marisa’s voice had been a whisper. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Roxana hadn’t dignified that with a response; she had just continued, ‘He’s been gone since Saturday? So that’s why she was phoning. Why she phoned my home, looking for Claudio.’
‘Why would she phone you?’ A trace of the old haughtiness in Marisa’s voice.
Roxana had merely looked at her. ‘I don’t know, Marisa,’ she had said patiently. ‘Maybe your phone was off, maybe there was no signal out there on the boat. I mean, clearly I would have been a last resort.’ She’d frowned. ‘It must have been she who phoned here, at the bank, yesterday. God, Val’s a moron.’
And right on cue, the clump of biker boots in the foyer had announced Valentino’s arrival. Stiffly, Roxana had got to her feet. ‘I’ll tell him, shall I?’ she’d said.
Marisa had rubbed her face with both hands, shivered even though the air-conditioning was barely making a dent in the temperatures. ‘No,’ she had said. ‘It’s all right.’ And she had moved to her position of authority behind the desk, the bright turquoise of her shirt incongruous against the steel and leather. ‘Send him in.’