‘I didn’t know you two were even — close,’ she said cautiously.
‘No,’ said Marisa, looking at a point somewhere over Roxana’s shoulder. ‘She — I don’t know. I have the feeling she — she wants something from me.’ She shifted her gaze reluctantly to look directly at Roxana.
‘Wants something?’
‘I think the grief is making her imagine things. I think she thinks I know something. Some explanation of — what has happened.’
‘They still think he killed himself? Why would you know anything about that?’
The struggle for patrician reserve on Marisa Goldman’s fine-featured face was visible. Why, she was asking herself, why must I talk about this? The police had made her talk about it, hadn’t they, aristocrat or not? It seemed to Roxana that Irene Brunello wanted to stay with Marisa because she’d been her husband’s other woman, either professionally, or something else — who knows how grief can hit; you might even find yourself reaching out to Marisa Goldman. ‘Do you know anything?’ Roxana asked, cautiously. ‘Were you and he — was there anything between you?’ It would explain the extremity of Marisa’s reaction.
‘What?’ Marisa looked horrified. ‘Do you think that’s what she thinks?’
‘Well,’ Roxana spread her hands, trying not to shrug. ‘What else?’
Marisa passed a hand over her forehead, and her hair — expensive, tawny, usually not a strand out of place — was ruffled by the unguarded movement, briefly giving her the appearance of a disturbed person. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘What if Paolo hears about this?’
‘So you were? Having an affair?’
Would her billionaire kick her out? Marisa, homeless: she could always go back to her mother in Turin. Roxana couldn’t be even a tiny bit gleeful. It was all too grim.
‘I was not,’ said Marisa, turning on her. ‘No, no, no. That is not what I meant. He and I never, ever — there was nothing.’
So all she was worried about was that there should even be such a rumour, was it? Roxana didn’t know what to think. If something had ever happened — well. He was too much of a family man not to have regretted it pretty quickly. Expressionless, Roxana stared at her boss, feeling that things had shifted, somehow. That if she were a different person, this might be her chance, to seize power, or at least to take a step towards it.
Behind them in Claudio’s office there was a scraping, the sound of chairs pushed back. The clock said eight: they should have opened ten minutes ago. Everything was going to pot.
‘We should open up,’ Roxana said.
Marisa stared at her uncomprehending, then her expression cleared. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well, I can do that.’
‘There’s the cash delivery to receive,’ Roxana said. ‘It should come in fifteen minutes or so, and the ATM’s been playing up.’
Marisa’s expression hardened, as if she suspected Roxana of twisting the knife. Had she ever had to do anything so menial as signing off a cash delivery?
Beside them, the door opened to Claudio’s office and out came Valentino, looking subdued. Nothing like an interview with police officers to help you grow up, Roxana supposed. She smiled tentatively and, clearly anxious, he stared back at her for a long moment. Claudio was dead: it still hadn’t sunk in, not for any of them.
‘Miss Delfino?’
Roxana straightened, held out a hand.
The older policeman regarded her levelly, unsmiling. ‘Might we have a few moments?’
She sat where Valentino had sat, the seat still warm. The crew-cut younger man was on her left, watching her intently, the baggy-eyed policeman across the desk. He appeared to be exhausted. Roxana remembered that she’d wanted to be a police officer once, when she was still a child, as a result of some TV show with female detectives. She hadn’t imagined it would be about telling people someone they loved was dead, and not being able to sleep for what you’d seen. But she didn’t know whether she felt relieved she’d gone into banking instead.
The older policeman explained in a soft monotone why they were there, as if she didn’t know. She gazed at him earnestly, wanting to be helpful.
‘There’d been nothing unusual,’ she said. ‘There was the talk of being bought by the Banca d’Italia a couple of months ago, six months, that made him anxious, made us all anxious but then it blew over. He loved this place.’ She realized it was true only as she spoke, and she felt her eyes burn. ‘We stayed independent. It’s not the — the highest-flying bank in the world. But he knew his customers, and his staff. He looked after us all.’
Her eyes dropped to her lap. He was the reason she was still there, she wanted to say, even when she shouldn’t be: that, too, came to Roxana for the first time. Loyalty, just like her and Ma, a double-edged sword. And now? She could leave.
‘Right.’
She thought something softened behind the old policeman’s eyes. Beside her the younger man was checking his watch, trying to catch his superior’s eye. The older man didn’t seem to see.
‘Saturday,’ he said, thoughtfully.
‘Saturday?’
‘It seems that on Saturday morning someone telephoned Claudio Brunello at the seaside. And shortly afterwards he came back into the city.’
‘Right.’
The day after leaving for his holiday, he had come back. Roxana frowned.
‘That surprises you?’
‘His holidays were sacrosanct. We weren’t even allowed to call him.’
‘So the telephone call didn’t come from here?’ The policeman raised his head, just a fraction, to look beyond her, through the glass and into the bank. ‘No one phoned him, on Saturday morning?’
Roxana shook her head, uncertain. ‘I didn’t. And I’m pretty sure Valentino didn’t. Saturday’s a short working day and it was busy. A lot of small traders cashing up before the holiday, I suppose. We didn’t take a break, not even for a coffee. Valentino sits a metre away from me. There’s no signal on the mobile in here, which the bank’s fairly pleased about. No time-wasting.’ She frowned, trying to think. Something — had there been something? A call? No, she was mixing the days up. That was Tuesday, when a woman phoned for Claudio. ‘And there was nothing to call him about, anyway. Nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘And Miss Goldman?’
‘Marisa?’ Roxana didn’t understand. ‘Marisa wasn’t here. She was on some boat somewhere, with her boyfriend.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the policeman. But there was something about the way he said it.
‘She went off Thursday night.’ Roxana spoke earnestly, as if trying to convince him. ‘She was meeting her boyfriend — Paolo he’s called — at Piombino or somewhere.’
‘Yes. That’s what she told us.’
Roxana sat back in her chair, trying to work him out. Marisa must have really rubbed him up the wrong way.
‘So.’ The weary-looking policeman steepled his fingers again. ‘Saturday. You closed up at one.’ The younger man shifted in his chair again. ‘And afterwards?’
He spoke almost as if he were making conversation. And how did you spend your holidays? Even as she told him — she’d done ten quick lengths at the public pool surrounded by screaming kids, if he must know, before she went home. Then she’d gone to the supermarket, vacuumed the house — all she could think was, why do they want to know? Did they ask Val, did they ask Marisa, how they spent their Saturday afternoons? Schmoozing at the rowing club, drinking cocktails, choosing from a selection of bikinis? No supermarket shopping and housework for them.
‘Your colleague — Valentino.’ So they had asked him. ‘He says you left together, at lunchtime on Saturday?’
‘He went to the rowing club. He was wearing his kit.’ There was no need for Val to put on that singlet, the one that showed off his biceps, but he had.
‘Yes,’ said the policeman with the ghost of a smile. ‘Well, I’m sure the club will confirm that.’
It wasn’t an accident. They thought he’d committed suicide. Was that a crime? Did it require proof, and witnesses? Roxana supposed it did.