They watched as, alert, Anna walked around the space. ‘Bigger,’ she said. ‘This room is bigger. Than downstairs.’
‘Some have them divided off, they make another room,’ said Giovanna. ‘I didn’t need to do that. It’s just me here.’
Anna looked at her, unseeing. ‘That was going to be the nursery,’ she said in a stifled voice, and held out both arms as if taking the room’s measurements. ‘Can I go out?’ she asked abruptly. ‘On to the balcony?’
Giovanna crossed to the glazed doors and pushed them open; the light that fell inside was soft and yellow. It must be getting late. ‘Let me get you a glass of water,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Luisa.
Anna smiled faintly. As if water will solve my problems, she seemed to be saying. But ‘Thank you’ was all she said. She stepped through the doors, and for a second as she disappeared Luisa felt a great surge of panic. What if-what if she-?
But hurrying out on to the balcony all she saw was Anna standing there, solid in the evening sun, her feet set wide apart to give her balance and both hands on the concrete parapet. Giovanna appeared beside them with the glass of water.
‘Have you remembered,’ said Luisa, ‘what it was? What was wrong, when you came here with him?’
Anna was looking at the view: a slice of view at any rate, between another apartment block and some abandoned farm buildings that no doubt would soon become more apartments. A view, not perfect, but good enough, of hills to the south-west, darkening as the sun set behind them, the motorway just audible and intermittently visible. She wondered whether Anna had even heard what she said but then the girl turned her head.
‘I think so,’ she said, the sun glowing apricot on her face. She took the glass of water that Giovanna held out and sipped.
‘Something was wrong?’ said Giovanna. She looked at Luisa questioningly.
‘When her … fiance brought Anna here to see their apartment,’ she replied.
‘It might be nothing,’ said Anna.
‘What?’ said Luisa.
Anna drained the glass and handed it back. ‘The keys,’ she said. ‘The keys to the apartment.’ She frowned. ‘They weren’t right. He said they were his keys, but-’
‘The keys?’ Luisa tried to remember what Anna had told her about the keys. There’d been something. ‘The — the Ferrari keyfob? Was it that?’
‘That,’ said Anna, nodding. ‘That — he would never have had such a keyring, he wasn’t interested in cars, not at all. He didn’t even have a car, said he didn’t see why you would need one in a city.’
‘Right,’ said Luisa, waiting.
‘There was a label on the keys,’ said Anna carefully.
‘A label? What kind of label?’
‘A little card, tied with cotton, like you might have in a shop, you know, a little price tag.’
Luisa frowned, head on one side, trying to picture it, knowing there was something about this picture she would recognize, eventually — only Giovanna got there first.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that would be the agent, wouldn’t it? The estate agent’s tag, they put a tag on the key when they’re selling a property, telling you who it belongs to? What property it belongs to. So they don’t get them mixed up.’
‘But it was his place,’ said Anna, and her lower lip stuck out, like a stubborn child’s. ‘He said it was his.’
The older women looked at her.
‘He didn’t know where anything was,’ said Luisa softly.
‘They’ve been trying to sell it for years,’ Giovanna added, her head on one side as she watched Anna. ‘It’s on the market.’
‘Maybe he bought it,’ said Anna defiantly. ‘Maybe he was renting it.’ There was a silence, in which Luisa tried to think how to soften this.
‘He … it’s possible he just … he was just … borrowing it,’ she said at last.
Just as he borrowed Claudio Brunello’s identity. Buying time.
From below them there was a dull thud and an explosion of fine debris blew out through a window, dusting the trees. All three women leaned down to look, and the powder-white face of a man in overalls looked back up at them.
‘Hi,’ said Giovanna breezily.
He raised a hand tentatively and said something guttural in a language none of them understood.
‘Got the builders in,’ said Giovanna. ‘Maybe they’ve sold the place at last.’ She looked from Luisa to Anna, then back. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You want to know what’s going on down there? Come on, then.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
By the time Luisa walked back through her door on the Via dei Macci, it was dark outside.
Giuli had been making excuses for Luisa while they waited. ‘You know there’s hardly any phone coverage,’ she’d said. ‘Inside an apartment building, for example, or in a particular street. The Via dei Bardi, for example, that’s a killer. San Niccolo in general, tucked in under the hillside there …’
Sandro had let her talk, fretting silently, barely even picking up on her mention of San Niccolo and what an undesirable place it could be to live.
‘They’ll be fine,’ she had finished up, uncertainly.
‘So why didn’t she leave a note?’
‘You know Luisa,’ Giuli had said, and that was the end of that conversation.
And all Luisa had said when she did return was, ‘Don’t be daft. It’s a Thursday in August, there aren’t even any cars, what were you worried about? That I’d be run over by a watermelon seller?’
Giuli had stood there in that stance again, arms tightly folded against her body, and a frown etched on her face.
‘Not you too?’ said Luisa. ‘Come on.’
It was bravado, though. Sandro knew her too well.
‘It might be August,’ he said, ‘but people seem to still be getting murdered. For nothing, some of them.’
‘People?’ Luisa pulled out a chair and sat with weary resignation. Reluctantly, Giuli let her arms drop and sat down next to her. They looked at him warily.
Sandro wished he could take it back now. ‘Oh, nothing. A mugging, carjacking or something on the south side, Pietro mentioned it.’ Luisa nodded, her face betraying nothing.
‘Where’s Anna?’ asked Giuli.
‘She wanted to go home,’ said Luisa, then let out a dry, small laugh. ‘Home.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor kid. That dismal old place.’
‘It took three hours?’ said Sandro. ‘Just taking her over to Santo Spirito?’
‘Can you get me a glass of water?’ said Luisa mildly. ‘I’m parched.’
And she waited for him to turn his back, he knew, before she said, ‘We went over to the apartment in Firenze Sud. His apartment, supposedly, the one they were going to move into.’
‘All that way on the bus?’ Sandro set down the water and the glass. Sighed and poured.
Luisa’s mouth turned down, just a little. ‘I know,’ she said eventually. ‘Yes, I know. She wanted to go. She wanted to show it to me.’
‘Oh, I tried the estate agent,’ said Sandro, absently. Luisa looked at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t back from lunch, they said. Running late, they said he’d call me back. Galeotti. Go on.’
He visualized the man, his flash car. And clients like Marisa Goldman on his books, the agency’s letterhead on her desk at the bank. No wonder he didn’t have time for Sandro. Was Marisa Goldman moving house?
‘He never called, though.’
Luisa sighed.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Giovanna Baldini — I told you about her, right? She was at school with me.’ Sandro nodded, waiting. ‘She lives in the flat above. We went in. We talked to her.’ Luisa took a sip of the water and mopped at her forehead, pale and damp with sweat. ‘She knew a bit about the flat — and — and in the end she got the concierge to talk to us.’
‘The drunk you talked about?’ said Sandro. ‘And?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘So it turns out, the flat wasn’t his at all.’
Sandro looked at her and realized he had never really believed in Anna’s apartment with its nursery in the first place. What had he thought? That she’d imagined it? Or that her fiance had? But it did exist.