Soderini took a deep breath and waited for more.
‘But then,’ she said brightly, ‘I visited the Carabinieri station and it was clear I was mistaken. The timing was wrong. They have their culprit.’
She walked forward and touched his arm, quite deliberately.
‘Why am I telling you this, Sandro? You know it already.’
‘I knew they had a suspect. I’d no idea you were involved. You should have told me straight out.’
‘I’ve told you now,’ Julia pointed out.
Soderini picked up her coat and held it. ‘In future you’ll come to me when you have doubts. Or problems. I need make one phone call only. This investigation of yours will succeed, I’m sure of it. You know what they say about Rome? Non basta una vita. One lifetime isn’t enough. Florence is smaller than our southern cousin. But Rome is one world. We are many. Give us time.’
She followed him, the same route to the start of the Vasari Corridor she’d taken before.
‘Where are we going exactly?’ she asked as they began to walk past the long lines of self-portraits.
‘I told you. To meet the Brigata Spendereccia.’
‘Which is…?’
‘An evening of food, wine. Pleasurable entertainment. Or so I recall. This job…’ He looked round the palazzo. ‘So many of your questions seem to have little to do with your apparent reason for being here, Julia. Why is that?’
‘Because I can’t think straight walking down a freezing cold corridor, dressed to the nines, with a man I don’t know, going God knows where.’
He looked at her and laughed. So freely she couldn’t help but do the same.
‘The guidebooks will tell you there are four grottoes in the Boboli Gardens. Secret places of delight for the idle Medici bored by the splendour of the Pitti Palace and the public empire beyond its walls.’
‘Grottoes,’ she said softly.
‘Grottoes! Like the Roman emperors used to have. Splendid, private places, built into the hillside of that sprawling garden behind the Pitti. Reminders of another time. Before the Pope’s pronouncements. Before confession and guilt. Windows into a world of the old gods, Pan and his satyrs. Bacchus and his maenads.’
Gardens had never interested her much, nor mythology.
‘Four of them?’
‘So the guidebooks say.’
Sandro Soderini tapped the side of his nose and winked. Coarse gestures. Ones that made him look like a cheap, jumped-up politician for a moment. A nightclub performer or a charlatan selling tricks.
He wound his arm tightly through hers. ‘But guidebooks are for the rabble. You have me now. And I know places the riffraff have never seen. Be grateful. Be attentive. Be…’
She waited, and when he didn’t go on asked, ‘What?’
‘Be good.’
The two men wandered back to the café near Fratelli’s home, to sip coffee, check their watches, talk carefully under the watchful eye of the Grassi dragon. When she ordered her husband to lug some beer crates outside, then slipped into the kitchen herself, Cassini leaned over and whispered, ‘Who’s the battle-axe?’
‘A very good woman,’ Fratelli told him. ‘An angel, of sorts.’
‘Never seen an angel with a mush on it like that. She’d scare the life out of me on a dark night.’
Fratelli scowled. ‘I need to work on your education, Luca. Angels are supposed to scare you sometimes. That’s their job. How else are you to do as you’re told? Speaking of which…’ He looked at Cassini, a big, shambling figure inside his winter coat. ‘What’s your job tonight?’
‘Eyes and ears,’ Cassini repeated from their earlier conversation. ‘We’ve discussed this already, thank you. I’m not stupid.’
‘I know that,’ Fratelli lied, trying to recall if they really had talked it through. ‘And legs, if needed. I can’t run any more.’
‘And this too,’ Cassini said, balling a fist.
Fratelli groaned.
‘If the occasion calls for it,’ the young man added quickly.
‘If the occasion calls for it you’ll get the hell out of there. I’m not having you put your career or your wellbeing on the line. I’ll call the stazione and let them deal with it.’
‘You don’t need to look after me, thank you. Besides, the stazione have been ordered to steer clear.’
‘When Fratelli calls, they come! I’m not looking after you. This is for my sake alone. I don’t want to be saddled with the destruction of what few prospects you possess. I do have a conscience, you know.’
Fratelli glowered at the young carabiniere and muttered something low and vile.
‘No one gives a damn about your conscience,’ the Grassi dragon declared, marching into the café, dishcloth in hand, polishing an old-fashioned glass cappuccino cup. ‘What about your medication?’
‘What about my medication?’ he grumbled.
‘Have you taken it? The right number? At the right time? The way that charming lady doctor of yours—’
‘I’ve taken my pills! I’ve visited the lavatory and washed my hands afterwards. My ears are clean, my hair is combed, my underwear spotless and so neatly ironed the damned undertaker will cut his bill should I fall down dead on the spot and leave you all to clear up the bloody mess! For God’s sake, woman, will people simply listen to me for once? And, after that, kindly bless what little time I’ve left on this earth with some quiet!’
He got what he asked for then. The silence. A shocked one. Fratelli was only aware afterwards, from the ringing of his voice around the walls of the little café, how loud and intemperate he had, in an instant, become.
Signora Grassi’s face was a mask of grief and guilt. Her eyes glassy with tears.
‘Never mind, eh,’ Cassini said gently. ‘I’m sure it’ll all work out fine.’
Fratelli fought to think straight. Did his head hurt? Was he really angry or just… lost?
These moments came from time to time. Not so regularly. Or were they now more common?
Signora Grassi was dabbing at her face with a handkerchief. He found himself racked by a sore sense of guilt.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said, reaching across the counter to take her old and wrinkled hands. ‘I’m the most worthless man in the world and do not for one moment deserve your constant, selfless kindness. I reward it with anger and ingratitude and don’t even realize it until after this cruelty of mine is over. But why…’
His hand flew to his mouth. His eyes pricked. His head whirled and for a moment he felt so unsteady his hands gripped the old wooden counter, fighting to keep himself upright. He couldn’t see properly. His head was filled with a sea of hissing tinnitus.
Cassini was there in an instant, saving him with his strong arms, feeding a chair beneath Fratelli’s backside, lowering him down into the seat and safety.
A long moment punctuated by nothing but the ticking of the grandfather clock at the end of the bar, beneath the purple football scarves and photos of old Fiorentina football squads.
Then the metallic rhythm of the clock stopped completely and Pino Fratelli felt his heart freeze with a sharp and unexpected fear.
Was this the instant? No. That would be too cruel. He had work to do. Broken circles to close. A few final deeds, some ghosts to be laid, vile spirits exorcized.
Not now.
He’d pray to a god he didn’t recognize to escape that. Just for a while. Long enough to know some final peace.
He was sweating; breathing in short, pained gasps.
The beast inside was blind and dead. It would wake at a time of its own choosing, regardless of any exterior consequences.
Then the clock ticked again. Fratelli opened his aching eyes and realized they were all there — Grassi and her henpecked husband, Cassini too — holding a glass of water in front of him.