‘Quiet?’
‘I didn’t even think he knew enough Italian to understand, it was months ago. Galeotti and I discussing business after Tyrrhenian Properties’ first visit, the division of monies, if you see what I mean? A certain price offered, a certain compensation, you know? And old Auntie Margherita none the wiser.’
He thought Josef wasn’t even human, thought Roxana. You could say anything in front of him.
‘He heard us. And when she got pregnant he started dropping hints. All that stuff about needing an apartment. We strung him along.’ Turned his head towards her, but his face was dark. He was sweating, under the aftershave, the strong reek of him overcoming the sweet, expensive scent, an undertow of something else too. ‘So. You want to see?’
He put a hand to the wall and she heard the empty click of a light switch. Nothing happened.
He clicked his tongue. ‘Damn,’ he said carelessly. ‘Forgot about that, no lights. Still. This stuff we can manage in the dark.’
Roxana edged sideways, her hand moving out towards the door, feeling for the handle. ‘What stuff?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
And Val just tilted his head so she could see he was watching, in the almost dark, where her hand was going: he didn’t move, just watched.
‘You want to leave?’ he said softly. ‘Come on, Roxi. We’re waiting for someone — they’ll be here soon. Once I have his woman, he’ll come.’ He nodded, almost reasonable. ‘However long it takes.’
‘Once you have her? Have who? Who will come?’
Val’s eyes gleamed in the dark, and she knew that whatever plan he’d hatched, it was not a sane one.
‘I sent her the message, you see,’ he said. ‘From his phone, telling her to come here. Someone will tell him.’ He shifted in the dark, evasive. ‘He’s still here only because of her, and that child of his. He’ll find out she’s come here, someone will tell him, and sooner or later he’ll come to me.’ His voice was fervent with lunatic self-belief, or something stronger.
Sooner or later? Roxana knew in that moment that they would never leave, she and Val locked in the dark together forever. He was nuts enough to keep her here for as long as it took.
‘And while we wait — there are things we can do. Don’t you want to see? You do.’
‘See what?’ Roxana clutched the bag to her stomach.
He leaned down until his face was touching hers, as if he was about to kiss her. She didn’t flinch, though his breath was hot and sharp and chemical. Drugs.
‘I know you do. You want to see where it happened.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
For Christ’s sake .
Why all this walking? What had possessed him to set out on foot? Because when you really needed to be somewhere fast, you had to take a damned cab, and when you really needed the cab to arrive in the two minutes they promised, it was nowhere to be seen.
Sandro paced on the corner of the viale, staring this way and that for a white cab, call sign Roma 86. The row of huge umbrella pines was being tossed and flung by the wind overhead. And then the rain began. Huge fat drops to begin with, evaporating almost before they hit the hot tarmac, each one diminishing his chances of the cab arriving on time, or at all.
Sandro could have called Pietro to beg a lift, but Pietro was on his way out to check on Roxana Delfino and her mother. He’d even texted Sandro to say he was on his way over there now; a call had come in from out that way about an intruder, and Pietro wanted to be on the safe side, he was picking up Matteucci and they were off.
Was Gulli the one they should be after? At least he was a nasty piece of work, at least they had him for Galeotti’s murder.
But Sandro was after someone else.
‘He wasn’t there? He wasn’t at the bank after five that night?’ he’d repeated after Marisa Goldman had said it again, insisted. ‘You weren’t there, and Brunello wasn’t there?’ She’d shaken her head, almost smiling, avid.
‘So only Roxana Delfino was there,’ Sandro had said slowly, and in his head he scanned that gloomy bank of cashiers’ workstations, silent and virtually empty.
‘And Valentino, of course.’ And Marisa smiled, polite, bored.
Valentino. Valentino — and then Sandro grasped who she meant. That — that boy? The boy she’d sent looking for Roxana, and Sandro remembered only a whiff of aftershave, an expensive shirt. The photograph of a Triumph motorbike pinned over his workstation. A nervous, shifty expression on his face as he eagerly — too eagerly — left to find Roxana. Boy, how old would he be? Thirty?
He rode a Triumph. There was a lesion on Brunello’s leg. Surely not? A burn from a motorbike exhaust? Only a madman could have got the body of the bank manager on the back of a motorbike. He’d have to be — a madman. Or high on something? Hauled the body pillion as far as the African market, then given up?
And then Luisa had phoned. He’d seen Marisa Goldman watching him like a hawk now, alive again, as he had spoken. Had seen her not quite understand whom he could be talking to, the combination of impatience and fondness and longing in his voice clearly quite alien to her.
And then, Luisa had got the words out. ‘Serafina Capponi at the Loggiata,’ she said. ‘Came and told me, just to stir, perhaps, maybe because she’s really worried and doesn’t know what to do.’
‘Worried?’
‘About the girl.’
And he had heard the dead echo of worry in Luisa’s own voice, something chiming in his memory, something wrong. Concentrate.
‘The woman who owns the Carnevale, an old edicolaia called Margherita Martelli, the cinema’s been in the family for years, the building was theirs before it was a cinema. Anyway, she has a nephew or something, I don’t know. Nephew, grandkid, cousin. A boy working at the bank.’
And it had fallen into place. The boy, Valentino. And even as he had hung up, the phone had rung again, and this time it had been Giuli. She had sounded like she was in a wind machine, and looking out through Marisa’s big, double-glazed windows he had glimpsed the mature trees beyond her rose garden swaying violently.
His mind had been racing. How do we get hold of this kid? This Valentino. Find him. And what Giuli had been saying had taken a while to come through.
‘I’m here, I’m outside the Carnevale and she’s not here, but there’s something wrong. I know there is.’
‘Hold on,’ Sandro had said, ‘hold on.’ He had put a hand over the receiver, seeing Marisa Goldman looking at him resentfully. ‘Is it all right if I have a conversation?’ he had said, suddenly enraged by her. ‘I’ll be gone in just a minute, out of your hair. You have an address for your colleague Valentino, by any chance? A phone number?’
And her mouth set in a hard line, Marisa had turned and stalked away.
‘Giuli,’ Sandro had pleaded. ‘Again. Tell me again.’
‘Josef sent her a text message, finally. Sent Anna a message telling her to come and meet him at the cinema. Dasha saw the message. She told me.’
There had been a tremendous crash of thunder, then: Sandro hadn’t been able to tell whether he was hearing it over his own head, or down the line, or both. Both.
‘Jesus,’ Giuli had said, awed and frightened. ‘That was close.’
‘But he doesn’t have his phone,’ Sandro had said. ‘He asked Liliana — oh, never mind. He didn’t send that message.’
‘She’s not there, anyway,’ Giuli had said. ‘I banged and banged. No one’s there.’
The sky was black now. From up the hill Sandro could hear a rushing, a pattering. He could have asked Marisa Goldman for a lift. Damn, why hadn’t he? Because he couldn’t stand another minute of her, that’s why. He could see the rain coming, a sheet of it moving down the hillside. And then the taxi was there, creeping under the rain, and he put out his hand.
‘You know the old Carnevale?’ he said. ‘Take me there.’