Sandro pursed his lips and said nothing: he knew what Pietro meant. There’d been a case only a month or so back, a bank employee and his wife abducted and tortured by an Eastern European gang for security details, a whole wall of safety deposit boxes plundered before the bodies were found the next morning. He peered inside: no sign of panic in there. No sign of violence, or ransacking, and however sleepy the security guard looked, surely he’d have noticed?
He could say to Pietro, I’m right here, I’m on the spot. Want me to ask a few questions? But he didn’t, because he didn’t want to hear that tone in Pietro’s voice again. And what could he do, anyway? Without the technical support to make sense of what would be encoded and computerized and secured beyond the reach of intruders, legitimate or otherwise.
In the background Sandro heard the bleep and crackle of Pietro’s police radio, and wiped his forehead. ‘You need to go?’ he said softly, but Pietro was already on it, talking in that familiar urgent and muffled tone into the radio. Then he was back.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and Sandro could tell his mind was already elsewhere. He wished he could ask what had come through on that radio message but he kept silent.
‘Something’s come up,’ and from his guarded tone Sandro realized Pietro knew what thoughts had gone through his old partner’s head.
‘I understand,’ said Sandro. ‘You go.’
‘There was something else,’ said Pietro, hurriedly. ‘The forensic examination. The post-mortem injuries — there were some marks — small abrasions — on his wrists, something like a friction burn across his back. And there was a lesion on his leg. Long, oval-shaped mark, on the inside of his leg.’
‘A lesion?’
‘Like a deep graze, or a burn.’
‘And that stuff on his shoe, that was ash, right?’ Sandro ran his tongue over his teeth, thinking. His mouth was sour. That was the heat too, and last night’s wine. ‘A fire?’ He puzzled over it, thinking aloud. ‘But he wasn’t seriously burned.’
‘No, no,’ said Pietro, distant, not quite answering. ‘They’re analysing the ash. It’s something unusual. Cellulose, celluloid, something like that.’
‘Pietro,’ said Sandro, losing his cool just a bit. ‘Look. Is this a problem? I know he’s not my guy. I know it’s not my case. I know all that. I’m just trying to be thorough.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish we could — I don’t know. Sit down and chew this over. Face to face.’
There was a long silence, and Sandro resigned himself to failure. He had no leverage: he couldn’t ask, he could only wait, and patience wasn’t his strong point.
Then Pietro breathed out explosively. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I know. It’s just delicate, you know? With the Guardia and all. All right. There was some — DNA evidence.’ Again Sandro waited. ‘That blood — it wasn’t all his. We’re checking it against what we’ve got registered. You never know.’
All right. Sandro was keenly aware that Pietro hadn’t told him not to worry, this was fine. But still.
You never knew. There was no national DNA database yet; the legislation was still being wrangled over. So presenting it as evidence was far from being a guarantee of results, unless things were absolutely cut and dried. But there was an embryonic resource, and some regional forces and some individuals were becoming enthusiastic about collecting samples. They could get lucky.
‘I’ll let you know.’ And again that resignation.
‘Thanks,’ said Sandro humbly, staring down at the pavement.
‘Chiara loved the present,’ said Pietro, out of the blue, then hurriedly, ‘I trust you. You won’t let me down on this.’ And he hung up.
It was a warning.
Sandro turned and once again he looked inside the bank. Time to grow some balls, he thought, and rapped on the window; when those inside turned towards him, he took out his badge and held it up against the glass.
*
Why didn’t anyone tell me? This was the thought that ran stupidly through Roxana’s head as she stared at what was left of the Carnevale.
Stupid, because why would anyone? Oh, by the way, Roxi, she could just hear Maria Grazia say, the old porn cinema’s closed down, thought you’d be interested. Not.
It was hardly dramatic, either. They’d only got around to mounting the board halfway round the frontage. The signage — a vertical strip of coloured neon letters spelling out the name, 1950s vintage — was intact. Gaudy once, never tasteful, maybe they’d even be re-used now that kitsch was in again. When the building became whatever it was going to become, people would walk past, they’d shop there, maybe they’d even live there, and they’d be oblivious to the fact it had once been a porn cinema.
Roxana had never seen a porn movie in her life, nor had she the intention of ever doing so. She came closer to the boarded-up facade, unaccountably depressed. Why? It was a horrible little place. The dark glass, the mealy-mouthed notices forbidding minors entry and, inside, the dirty, dog-eared posters of thonged backsides and plastic breasts — dearly visible to those minors, undiscouraged, who would have had their noses pressed against the glass.
All on computers now. It had to be worse. Millions of images, each one a hundred, a thousand times worse than anything they ever showed in here, and no one to police who saw what. At least with the old cinema in the backstreet there’d always be some old dear leaning out of her window to see whose husband might have been paying a sneaky visit.
There was a door fitted in the hoarding. Roxana stepped closer and out of the shade, feeling a wave of heat rise from the stone.
So this was why the dark-eyed man with his cashbag hadn’t been in: his job was gone. Had whoever owned the cinema found a place for him somewhere else? For some reason, that mattered to Roxana. What would he do? He’d always been so polite. Waited obediently, let old ladies go ahead of him, never grumbled if there was a queue.
You didn’t think customers made any impression, not really, just the same old thing day in, day out, but there they were, the details, they stacked up over the years. Maybe it was the same for someone working in a porn cinema. The shade of lipstick, the dog always tied up outside, the car parked illegally, the particular brand of aftershave. Ma would say it was the OCD. ‘You shouldn’t fill your head with all that stuff,’ she’d say. ‘All those little tiny bits and pieces, a waste of space. Only so much room in your brain.’
And then, ‘You’re just like your father.’ With his labelled jars and drawers in the shed, his tools laid a certain way in the box, his folding and refolding of shirts.
She should have gone and got that toolbox and fixed the gate herself, shouldn’t she? Roxana realized she was dreading going home, talking to the handyman about the gate. What if he wasn’t trustworthy? What if he preyed on vulnerable women?
Stop it.
Roxana looked up at the building: like the signage, it dated from the 1950s, and it was drab and filthy. It would have sprung up after the war; this close to the Ponte Vecchio, a lot of buildings were just as ugly, the originals having been blown up by the retreating Germans. The plaster was black with decades of grime and exhaust fumes. The windows were thick with dust, inside and out. There was a sign up, too high for her to read: an artist’s impression of balconied apartments and people — those blissfully ignorant people — walking by. Redevelopment: of course. The only mystery was that it had taken until now.
How long since she last walked down here? How long had it been boarded up like this? The man had brought in takings only ten days ago. She moved closer to look at the pine boarding: it was still tacky with resin and smelled of the forest. Then she put her hand against the door that had been cut into the tongue and groove, and it swung open under her hand. Without thinking, she stepped through, and the door banged shut behind her.
She stood on the pavement, hidden by the boarding from the street. The steel fishnet security shutters were still intact. Stepping up, she peered through. Between the shutters and the smoked-glass doors, the floor was ankle-deep in a slurry of junk mail and other flotsam: Roxana could see the polystyrene of a fast-food container, with the shrivelled remains of its contents. A number of envelopes she recognized, the little paned ones with the mark of the bank’s franking machine, then she turned her head sideways to see better. MM Holdings: that was the name of the addressee. No surprise there: the company was a customer of the bank.