‘What about the comb, Pino?’
He stroked his white hair and said immediately, ‘Nowhere to be seen. Removed completely. Sharp knife. Scalpel even. Why?’
‘He wanted the blood?’ she suggested. ‘To smear it on the walls.’
A long, lugubrious stare. ‘He removed the head for that. Used the neck as if it was a paintbrush. He’d no need to remove the comb or to gut the bird. Why? And why was it a cockerel? An old one you wouldn’t normally eat?’
Julia pushed away the salami and bread Fratelli had ordered. She wasn’t feeling hungry.
‘Where would you get something like that?’ she asked.
‘In the countryside,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Where else? A farmer. Or a worker there. I’ll tell Walter. In the morning. When his mood has recovered. A decent man but he has a terrible temper.’ He smiled for a moment, looking a little guilty. ‘At least, he has with me.’
‘What will he do?’
‘Same as always,’ Fratelli grumbled. ‘Mutter grazie then go his own sweet way. A farm. He should crosscheck with known offenders. Do the kind of thing he’s good at. Menial work. Walter’s a clerk at heart. Not an artist.’
She had to laugh.
‘And you are?’
‘Of course! Why do you think they never promoted me beyond maresciallo ordinario? I have a creative temperament which offends them. I am Brunelleschi, dreaming of new ways to build my dome. They are the mealy-mouthed, penny-pinching paper-pushers of the Signoria, bidding me to dream up a miracle before ungraciously shoving a few lire across the table and saying, “Make it happen with that.”’
The straw made one more round of the glass, then Fratelli took a sip of the strong cocktail and briefly closed his eyes, delighted.
‘Credit where credit’s due. Genius requires patronage, since it’s rarely possessed of a pecuniary mind. I need them as much as they need me.’
His keen eyes fixed on her then, Fratelli leaned forward, lightly punched her knuckles with his and said, ‘I was joking. I’m an idiot. A holy idiot sometimes, but that still leaves me an idiot. Walter’s damned good at minutiae. Better than I could ever be. If only the man would do as I say!’
It seemed futile to point out that Walter Marrone appeared to be Fratelli’s boss.
‘Perhaps our vandal was simply deranged.’
Fratelli stared at her and said nothing.
‘Crazy. Unbalanced,’ she added.
‘Is that the intended conclusion of your report? Why do people attack works of art? Because they’re lunatics. If so, it will surely be the shortest academic paper in history.’
‘Of course I want to find reasons…’
‘Reasons are all we have. Without them everything is reduced to chaos. To folly and irrationality. You know the kind of people who commit crimes like that? Crimes that make no sense, have no source, no connection with any prudent purpose?’
‘Lunatics,’ she said firmly.
‘No. Ordinary, boring, middle-class men and women. The people you see on the bus and the train. Who think themselves the most normal and law-abiding citizens of all. Then go out one day, get drunk, get mad, get furious with the world around them, or simply see an opportunity for mischief when no one else is looking.’
He stared at the cocktail, swilled it once round the glass and ordered another.
‘Then commit a feat of idiocy — an act of violence, of murder, of gross cruelty; some cowardly, disgraceful sin of omission — simply because they can. Once it’s done they’re horrified by it, by themselves, and shrink back into their little shells, hoping no one will notice their brief lapse into wickedness. While secretly praying for it to happen again because in that moment…’ The straw came out of the glass and described a 360-degree circle over the Negroni. ‘In that very moment, they feel more alive than they’ve ever known before.’
He shook his head and she realized she was becoming mesmerized by this man. By his strange, bohemian appearance: the clothes; the wild, white hair. And the languid yet unremitting energy inside him, as furious and relentless as the churning waters of the Arno.
‘We should be grateful for that sense of guilt. It makes the job of the Carabinieri so much simpler.’ He scowled at the gleaming counter. ‘But a man who smears a priceless painting with the bloody neck of a cockerel…’
Fratelli’s sad eyes roamed around the bar. There were just five or six other people: a woman staring at a glass that appeared to have a carrot and a stick of celery in it, and a few men, all like Fratelli, looking a little lonely.
‘He has a reason. There’s a line from an occurrence, a thought, perhaps an offence against him in the past. That line runs directly to the present. Without guilt, without that averted look in the face of a man one suspects, the discovery of that line becomes the principal challenge any investigator must face. The one you must deal with in your paper. A criminal who possesses a sense of guilt is a case half solved. It’s the ones who burn with self-righteousness, who know that what they do is both justified and logical… they’re the challenge. Hitler, listening to that pusillanimous dwarf Mussolini in those garish windows of the Ponte Vecchio, never thought himself a criminal for one moment. He was a liberator, a hero to his people, a man of the most refined and sensitive morals. Morals that allowed him to murder mankind by the million.’
The glass of Negroni rose in a toast.
‘It’s bastards like that we’ve got to worry about.’
‘Because?’ she asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious? Had you sat and listened to Hitler and Mussolini at their little tête-à-tête forty-odd years ago, you would have heard the most genteel of conversations, by two men who saw themselves as dignified masters of their respective worlds. Monsters, and they didn’t even know it.’
He glanced at his watch. She caught the clock on the wall. It was eight.
‘I’m sorry, Pino. I need to eat.’
‘You can eat here! They’ll make anything you want. A panino? Some pasta?’
She didn’t rise to the offer.
‘Be my guest,’ he pleaded. ‘I won’t pester you after this, Julia Wellbeloved. You’ll go back to your studies tomorrow. I’ll nag Walter for as long as his patience lasts. With luck our culprit shall be found. And after that we’ll meet on the stairs and nod politely at one another. Not a word of what I say will be of the slightest practical use to you in your work.’ He grinned. ‘See? An artist. I told you. For amusement only.’
‘A sandwich,’ she agreed. ‘Cheese. No more meat.’
‘You don’t like finocchiona?’ he asked. ‘I’m shocked. This is a Florentine speciality. Meat from the Cinta Senese pig with fennel seeds. Beautiful. This’ — he picked up a slice of the pink and fatty sausage, dangled it in front of her — ‘is the best. From Greve. We call it sbriciolona. Crumbly. See?’
‘Too strong for me.’
He called out to the woman behind the bar for more plates.
‘In Florence we like exaggeration. Everything bigger, tastier, more powerful, more… gross. You must tell us when we overstep your mark. This’ — he tore off more of the raw sbriciolona — ‘I buy down the Sant’Ambrogio market for a pittance an etto and—’
His eyes closed, as if he felt a sharp pain. Fratelli rocked on his bar stool, looking for a moment as if he might tumble to the floor. Her hand shot out to steady him.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What? What?’
‘You nearly fell.’
‘Ridiculous! I was thinking. That’s all.’ He beamed at her. ‘I told you I was an idiot. And you…!’
He reached over quickly, took her hands and kissed her briefly on each cheek.