‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Giuli slowly. Slowly, her eyes on Luisa.
‘I’ve got the day off,’ said Luisa impatiently. ‘I’m not going home to twiddle my thumbs.’
‘Us, then,’ said Giuli, and her eyes were almost bright now. ‘What shall we do?’
The door opened in the corner of the room, and turning his head Sandro saw Anna edging through it, encumbered by a small holdall. He got to his feet.
‘Well,’ he said quickly, ‘just go to the apartment, ask a few questions, neighbours, porter if there is one. Look around, see whether anyone knows anything about the man there. Why he might have — done what he did?’ He frowned. ‘If maybe he was in any trouble. You might even get inside the place.’
Sandro’s suggestion had been just to keep them busy, stop them worrying. But then, as he turned to help Anna with her bag, Sandro found his own curiosity stir as he thought about what they might find. And as they stood on the doorstep, Luisa grumbling that he should have brought the car, Sandro responding automatically that there wouldn’t be any parking over there and what was wrong with taxis, Anna standing small and quiet between them and thinking God knew what, his curiosity hardened into something else.
Because the family home — the big comfortable apartment that he imagined Claudio Brunello inhabited with his handsome, sensible wife and two children — Sandro knew now that it would hold no secrets, even supposing he had the brass neck and cold ambition to barge in on Irene Brunello in her grief and ask to look around. It was the wife’s territory: she went into its corners with her brushes and dusters, she emptied its drawers and its pockets. But the place that Claudio Brunello had bought, or rented, or borrowed, furnished or otherwise, with its nursery being worked on, its neighbours, its views: it seemed to Sandro that that might be the place, the place where you’d find answers.
The taxi appeared, edging around the double-parked corner with difficulty, and Sandro had to raise an arm to advertise their presence.
Answers? To what? And quite suddenly it came to Sandro that he didn’t believe that Claudio Brunello had committed suicide. Not for a moment.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Roxana was early, but Marisa Goldman was earlier.
More surprisingly, so was Val. He was in Claudio’s office, and two policemen were talking to him.
Marisa came out of her office when she heard Roxana pass through the security doors, and standing in the doorway, she seemed frightened. Pale under the tan, and there were details — tiny things, a crease in the silk shirt, no earrings, a ragged nail on one hand — that if you knew Marisa, gave her away. Because Marisa was always perfect. She’d broken her arm in three places a year ago, riding pillion on her boyfriend’s motorbike, and Roxana had heard that when she’d come round from the operation the first thing she’d done was to ask for her make-up bag and her earrings.
‘You’re next,’ she said, turning her head to follow Roxana’s gaze with her eyes. ‘They’ve talked to me already.’
Roxana set down her bag: she could see one police officer, leaning forward, hands steepled on the desk, sitting where Claudio would have sat. Late fifties, bags under his eyes. The other she could only see in profile, a younger man with a crew cut, staring from one face to another with dogged intensity. Val had his back to them: he looked like a small boy, sitting very still. As she watched, he nodded, and she could see the tanned back of his neck above the crisp shirt.
Roxana turned back to Marisa, and was shocked all over again.
‘Have you been here all night?’ she said, aghast. ‘You look — um-’ She stopped. You look terrible. ‘What did they ask you?’
Marisa was staring, distant. ‘They asked how he had been, that sort of thing. Had there been any unusual stress, had he any reason to — to-’ She faltered, ashen. ‘I don’t suppose they want us to — to confer,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’ll ask you what they asked me, and then you’ll know.’
‘Right.’
‘And that’s just the beginning,’ said Marisa, with what might almost have been grim satisfaction. ‘The Guardia di Finanza’s called.’ The force that policed financial crime. Roxana swallowed: Marisa continued. ‘They’ll be in when this lot are gone.’ She looked at her watch. ‘And the manager of another branch to — to liaise with them.’
‘What branch?’ asked Roxana, curiosity getting the better of her.
‘Giorgio Viola, from Sant’Angelo,’ said Marisa shortly.
Sant’Angelo: Roxana had been seconded to that branch briefly, just after she started with the bank. Viola: vaguely she recalled a sad, fat man. That’s probably him, judging from Marisa’s pursed lips and expression of distaste.
‘They’re closing him down, aren’t they?’ said Roxana.
‘Yes,’ said Marisa, rubbing her eyes with a slim hand. ‘I believe so.’
‘Right,’ said Roxana, ‘I’ll look forward to that, then.’
Looking down her long nose, Marisa seemed at last to focus on Roxana, and her expression. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Roxana,’ she said flatly, ‘I mean, they’re hardly going to take you for anyone significant, are they? It’s not that, anyway, they were perfectly — perfectly civilized.’ Her dismissive tone wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘I’m — well. It’s all been rather stressful.’
‘Yes,’ said Roxana, startled by any admission of weakness at all, conciliatory. ‘Yes, of course, you were — he was — I mean, you knew him very well. Of course.’ She could hear herself, sounding like her mother, once upon a time. There, there.
The tone was not lost on Marisa: she drew herself up. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘She’s staying with me.’ And Roxana got a glimpse of how she’d look when she was old. Grim-faced and gaunt. ‘Irene Brunello’s at my place. I — we didn’t get much sleep.’
Roxana stared. ‘Maybe you should take the day off,’ she said slowly. ‘I mean — you were on holiday anyway, weren’t you? We can manage.’
‘No,’ said Marisa quickly. ‘No.’
Maybe Marisa had been having an affair with him; had she and his widow sat up all night, thrashing it out? Maybe she was the woman — but no. The woman who’d phoned was Irene Brunello. Was there another woman, who had hired the private detective? Roxana’s head ached with trying to make sense of it, and with the undertow of panic that had woken her at four. Ma, and intruders, and whether anything was safe any more.
‘How is she?’ Roxana ventured. Then thought about it, the little family smiling in the photograph on Brunello’s shelf: stupid question. ‘She must be in a terrible state. What about the children?’
Marisa let out a shaky exhalation. ‘She didn’t stop crying all night. I could hear her. She didn’t want to go back to them, she said, back to the children, till she’d got it out of her system. They’re with her mother.’
There was a pause, during which Roxana thought about the children, in their happy ignorance, playing on the beach. She could not have guessed what Marisa was thinking.
‘She asked if she could stay with me.’ Roxana stared — she couldn’t imagine Marisa providing comfort. It might be because after his wife, Marisa had known him best — God knows. The idea that Claudio and Marisa might have had an affair grew. Marisa went on. ‘What could I do? I couldn’t say no.’ She moved her head to and fro as if in pain. ‘Paolo’s stayed on the yacht. I mean, if he was here, it would be different — but I couldn’t say no, could I?’ Pleading, her eyes met Roxana’s. Was she expected to answer?
Irene Brunello would have been better off in Galluzzo, squeezed between Ma and her at the table, prowlers or no prowlers, was all Roxana could think. She’d seen photos — on the iPhone, Marisa showing off their new interior decorator — of her superior’s big, cool marble-lined apartment overlooking the city, with gardeners, maids, not a stick of furniture that cost under a thousand euros and none of it comfortable.