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‘I can’t. You know that. You’re not a serving officer. You never will be.’

‘And when the next call comes?’ Fratelli roared.

His voice was so loud it bounced off the white walls of Marrone’s room and carried through to the adjoining office where the plainclothes officers worked, ten or more crammed tightly together on desks that hadn’t changed in four decades.

‘I’m sorry, Pino,’ Marrone said, eyes on his pens and notepad again. ‘Find your own way out, please. I’ve got a lot to do.’

‘Give me a boy, Walter. The stupidest, most useless cadet you have. The one no one wants to work with. The idiot you want out of your hair even more than you wish it of me.’

‘You are out of my hair,’ Marrone retorted.

Fratelli sat there, arms folded, waiting. There was always a failure in the stazione. A mistake who’d slipped through personnel for some reason. The runt of the litter. The accident in waiting.

‘I’ll be gentle, Walter, I promise. He can look at the records, wave his card at people. I’ll merely pull the strings.’

‘What did I do to deserve you as a friend?’ the captain asked with a mournful sigh.

‘You gave me rope to hang myself. And profited rather well from that, I think. Remember the finocchiona in Scandicci. And the widow Bartolini’s chihuahuas. Come on. One useless cadet is all I ask. You won’t miss him. Not for a minute.’

Marrone’s lined and dignified face darkened.

‘You always know my weak spot,’ the captain grumbled.

‘An occasional capacity for original thought is actually one of your many strengths,’ Fratelli said, and crossed his fingers beneath his heavy coat.

‘If I were to agree to this,’ Marrone muttered in a low, cold tone. ‘Do you promise you won’t break any rules? Or get the infant into so much trouble I have to fire him? And if you find out anything — anything — I want to know first and decide what to do with it.’

This small victory brought a smile to Fratelli’s face. He shook back his head of white hair and beamed, then untwined his fingers and held out his hand across the desk.

‘Agreed!’ he declared, and pumped Marrone’s fingers before the man had the chance to change his mind.

‘And don’t look so damned pleased with yourself,’ the captain added. ‘You haven’t met him yet.’

* * *

The corridor twisted and angled through buildings, across streets, finally, to a set of steps that led out into a chilly bright day. She’d been here before, on an earlier visit as a student. The vast behemoth of the Pitti Palace lay ahead.

Her guide seemed anxious to pass her charge on to the next link in the chain. She ushered Julia into the back of the Pitti and found an office with a sign bearing the name ‘Giovanni Tornabuoni’.

There was a secretary inside wearing an identical blue suit. She was filing her nails and reading a glossy magazine.

‘Tornabuoni isn’t here,’ this new woman said.

The attendant from the Palazzo Vecchio shrugged and walked out without a word.

‘I do have an appointment,’ Julia said.

‘I am aware of this,’ the secretary replied, as if the statement was idiotic.

‘Will Signor Tornabuoni be back soon?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Shall I wait?’

She frowned and said nothing.

‘Did he leave a message?’

‘No.’

Then a thought. ‘But someone did. Soderini’s office passed it on.’ The note was sitting on the desk in front of her. ‘Here.’

It was from Pino Fratelli and read, ‘I have uncovered matters which may interest you. Please meet me at the market in the Sant’Ambrogio at twelve thirty. We will eat lampredotto. Pino.’

‘Dammit, Fratelli,’ she swore. ‘I am not yours to summon.’

Except she was. Men who missed appointments never deserved a second chance. Not after she’d married one. Vanni Tornabuoni could live with Sandro Soderini’s displeasure over this particular missed date. She felt it might be considerable.

Besides, Julia had come to feel that Fratelli was the most interesting person she’d met in Florence. Spot on about the mayor with the wandering eyes, and probably a few other things, too.

That left her at a loose end. There was no one to interview and time to kill.

‘Can I look round the paintings?’ she asked.

‘The ticket office,’ the woman said, scraping her nails once more, ‘is round the corner.’

* * *

Fratelli stood at the counter of I’Trippaio, his favourite lampredotto stall in the Sant’Ambrogio market hall, watching Luca Cassini, Walter Marrone’s boy, feed. There was no other word for it. Cassini was twenty-two, a good head taller than Fratelli, broad-shouldered and huge, with a blank, childish face that looked forever lost. He played for the Florence rugby team in his spare time. Seemed more interested in that than Carabinieri work, as far as Fratelli could work out. In the space of fifteen minutes he’d downed two panini from the stall, one stuffed with lampredotto and broth, the other oozing tripe.

In spite of his true lineage, Fratelli thought himself a Florentine mostly. This meant that, especially in winter, he found it difficult to get through the day without stopping at one of the lampredotto stalls in the city for a snack. He’d grown up with the stuff. He didn’t mind that it was the fourth stomach of a cow, stewed until it resembled a dirty dishcloth, then sliced, drenched in cooking juice and handed over steaming in bread for a pittance. Tripe he could take or leave, but lampredotto… They were eating it here when Brunelleschi was bossing around his builders. It was as much a part of the city as the Duomo itself.

But one was all he could take. Not so the giant, blank-faced Luca Cassini. The young man was now on to dessert with a large, cheap chocolate bar. Fratelli felt his own appetite would remain absent at least until the evening snacks that came with a Negroni. He was glad they’d arrived early and that Julia Wellbeloved, if she were to answer his call, had not witnessed this pasty-faced giant in a cheap grey suit chomping on guts, patiently pulling out bits of fat and gristle and dumping them on the cement market floor without a second thought. Foreigners could be funny about lampredotto.

‘Are you full?’ he asked when Cassini finished the chocolate bar and whisked the wrapper over his shoulder.

The young man thought about this for a moment, glanced at the steaming tubs of offal in front of him and, to Fratelli’s relief, said, ‘For now.’

‘Didn’t I know your father? Used to be a carabiniere too?’ Fratelli thought for a moment and added, ‘He was big as well.’

‘You mean granddad?’

‘Right,’ Fratelli said, nodding. Sometimes he lost track of time.

Cassini seemed a willing enough kid. Perhaps the low brow and slightly piggy eyes were deceptive. It was possible his manner, so slow and ponderous, represented nothing more than a personal trait, not the sign of dim-wittedness it appeared. Luca’s father was a Florence councillor, a trader with a shop selling expensive tourist tat, ceramics and leather, near Santa Croce. The kind of man who could exert a modicum of influence, pull a public job for a son who had no obvious qualifications for anything else. The family connections with the Carabinieri one generation back helped too.

Fratelli always made an effort to try to like the people he worked with, hard as that was on occasion. Not now. Cassini possessed none of the sarcastic surliness that marred some other young officers. Besides, he could recall his own too-smart self at that age in their caustic comments and sly glances. If this kid could do the job…