Fratelli’s arms spread out even more in exasperation.
‘Here we go again. With one breath you tell me I’m gone from the Carabinieri for good. With the next you try to pull rank. How is an invalid like me supposed to follow…?’
‘It’s a question of respect. Even civilians call me capitano.’
‘Respect, respect.’ Fratelli toyed with his heavy winter coat. ‘How long have we known one another? No. Let me tell you. Since we were raw cadets, shivering in our uniforms at the age of seventeen. If I had no respect for you, would I be here now? After all this time? In these circumstances?’
Marrone leaned across the desk and growled, ‘I know that look. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, and you’re not letting on what it is. The days when you could pull those tricks are over.’
‘All I want is to help! To track down the deeply disturbed human being who attacked those paintings in the Brancacci yesterday. Before he does something worse.’ Fratelli paused to let that sink in. ‘Which he will, I think. As night follows day. We may be too late to stop him already.’
The captain slumped forward on to the desk, head briefly in his hands. Fratelli had spoken the truth. These two had known each other for thirty years. One soaring through the ranks, a good, obedient servant of the state. The second clawing his way upwards until he reached the middling position of maresciallo ordinario. Only to find himself trapped there, mostly by his own penchant for free speech and thought, accompanied by the occasional act of blatant insubordination.
‘I’m telling you, Walter,’ Fratelli persisted. ‘Remember that monstrous old butcher from Scandicci who was none too picky about what went into his finocchiona? Without me—’
‘Without you we would have sent the wrong man to jail and left that bloodthirsty bastard out there to kill yet more of his neighbours. Yes, Pino. I know. How often have you reminded me of this?’
‘Let’s not forget the charming widow Bartolini from Bel Riposo either.’
Marrone refused to look up, staring at the desk with a stony resolution.
‘Did anyone else think to check on the chihuahuas? Well? Did they?’
‘No,’ the captain said grumpily.
‘Quite,’ Fratelli replied and folded his arms.
Marrone glared at him.
‘Pino! I meant no! To you! To whatever hare-brained idea you’ve come up with. Listen to me.’
‘I always listen to you,’ Fratelli objected. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’
‘Listen to me! You’re on permanent sick leave for a reason. We both know that. Ambra Neri and I have discussed this at great length. If either of us thought it would be for the best—’
‘Best for you,’ Fratelli broke in. ‘Not me. I’m the one who’s doing the favours here. I could sit at home, listen to Beethoven and read books if I wanted.’
‘You’re sick!’ Marrone cried.
The captain’s long, sallow face fell. He looked, Fratelli thought, deeply miserable. This was a shame. They were close when they were cadets. Friends; warriors in a constant and difficult struggle for some kind of justice. Along the way came girls and drinking and the odd bout of fisticuffs with a few nocturnal rogues. He admired and liked this man.
‘You’re sick and you won’t be coming back,’ the captain added quickly. ‘No one’s more sorry about that than I am. Pino…’
‘Ten minutes,’ he pleaded. ‘Listen to what I have to say. After that, if you want to kick me out of the door…’
‘I don’t want to. I have to—’
‘Twenty years. An anniversary. Do you remember?’ Fratelli demanded.
Marrone didn’t answer for a while. Then he said, ‘Of course I remember. How could I forget?’
‘Twenty years,’ Fratelli repeated. ‘Please listen to me, Walter. Ten minutes. It’s not much to ask now. Is it?’
A severe middle-aged woman in a dark blue uniform bearing the scarlet lily of Florence took over when Julia Wellbeloved left Soderini’s office. More by grunts than spoken instructions, she guided Julia to the second floor through a succession of halls and chambers devoted to the elements, brushing past groups of tourists as if they didn’t exist. They passed quickly through a room with a bust of Machiavelli, a place Julia felt sure, from her reading, must have been the man’s private office itself when he worked here as an important servant of the state. There were paintings and globes and maps and… so much that she could only watch it whisk by in a bright, gilded haze. The woman in the blue uniform was in a hurry; not best pleased, it seemed, by this sudden mission.
They turned one more sharp corner. Then she found the key she wanted and set about opening the plain door that led, by various secrets turns, all the way from the seat of power of the Florentine republic, through the Uffizi, across the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, all the way to the Pitti Palace, once home to the House of Medici, rulers of this small and rancorous state off and on from the middle of the fifteenth century until its collapse in bankruptcy, despair and bitter internal division three hundred years later.
As the two of them crossed the bridge over the narrow street beneath and entered the Uffizi, unseen to the milling visitors in its overfull galleries, Julia felt assaulted by the past. The famous gallery she’d seen already several times, amazed by the richness of its collections, the way some of the greatest canvases in the world seemed to be fighting for space to breathe on its miles of walls. In the confined space of the Vasari Corridor, the weight of the centuries seemed even heavier. A kilometre long, it was a practical construction, a way for the Medici to stroll from their palace home to the offices of state without having to meet the grubby and occasionally violent proletariat along the way. Even so, there was scarcely a stretch of bare plaster anywhere along the way. Self-portraits covered the walls mostly — some recent, some five hundred years old. A sea of dead faces with glittering eyes following the lucky few allowed to cross by the corridor.
Halfway across the river, they stopped by two sets of large windows on each side of the corridor.
‘Mussolini,’ the woman in the blue uniform said. ‘And Hitler. You know the story?’
Julia remembered what Pino had told her.
She walked to the window facing away from the city and admired the low, elegant shape of the next bridge along, the Ponte Santa Trinita, not far from Fratelli’s home. Hers too, for a little while.
The views from the other side, out towards the viewpoint of the Piazzale Michelangelo, above Fratelli’s Negroni bar, were equally exquisite in the pale winter sun. The river, the lines of tall houses, church spires and, in the distance, verdant hills.
‘Hitler liked to sit here and take tea,’ the woman said. ‘That saved the Ponte Vecchio.’
No it didn’t, Julia thought. She was with Pino Fratelli there. That morning, on her way to see Soderini, she’d crossed the old bridge and watched the jewellers starting to open shops full of garish baubles, well beyond the reach of an impoverished postgraduate student. She’d stopped by the grand statue of Benvenuto Cellini, directly below these windows on the western side, midway along the span. Already tourists were taking photos. Cellini was a consummate artist, sculptor, writer, painter and musician. His terrifying image of Perseus with the Head of Medusa stole the breath from all who saw it standing in the Loggia dei Lanzi in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. And he was as vile a murderer and villain as the city had seen, one who confessed his crimes — boasted of them — in the memoirs Fratelli had given her the night before.
Evil was evil, she thought. It saved nothing. Simply existed alongside beauty, sucking the life from it.