Fratelli found himself praying for a weapon, anything to smash a way through this screaming mob. Finally Luca Cassini drove past, bellowing, using his fists and elbows, his massive strength and size to get through.
The mechanical chatter of gunfire — a quick, heartless burst — broke the din again, but Cassini was beneath the entry arch by that time, dragging Fratelli behind him as they squeezed their way through the narrow gap in the wall.
More light, the smell of food and drink, the sharp and brittle tang of fear. Fratelli felt his foot catch on something — a rock, a fleeing reveller from the disastrous Brigata, he never knew. Cassini’s hand left him and all he saw was a forest of limbs, trampling, stumbling. Head down, white hair flying around him, he wondered if this was where the long and fruitless journey ended, in a smashed skull on the rock floor, his life, his ambitions eking out as nothing but the dreams of an impotent old fool.
Then another hand came out and took hold of his jacket, jerked him into the corner, the shadows, a place of momentary safety.
Pino Fratelli found himself looking into the face of Sandro Soderini. The mayor had his back to the wall, a small handgun in his right hand, his hawkish eyes flashing between the man before him and the room. Fratelli followed the line of his gaze. The banqueting tables were thrown to the floor, dishes and drink and food scattered across the stones. At the centre, scattered like a cast-off toy, a body, bloodied face upright. The museum official, Mariani.
Luca Cassini was fighting to reach the two figures with the weapons, Marrone and Ludovico Ducca behind, trying to drag him back, speaking words of warning, of sense. Fratelli felt his skin grow cold as he recalled the way Luca had smirked when they’d first met and showed him that massive balled fist.
Bit of a fight? I’m your man.
Not now, Fratelli said to himself.
Not with Savonarola’s double marching through the tables, staring at Cassini as if he were a lunatic, barking, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’
‘Get back, Luca,’ Fratelli shouted at Cassini, who took not a moment’s notice.
Instead the young officer waved his arm ahead and yelled, ‘Put that weapon down, will you?’ As plainly as if he were dealing with a drunk in the street. Then, at the woman, Cassini bawled, ‘And you. I’ve got your dog, you know. There’s going to be more carabinieri in here in a moment than you two have seen in a lifetime. Put those bloody guns down, I say…’
Crazed, fixated, Pontecorvo hunted for a single victim among the mob.
Soderini stayed in the shadows, didn’t protest when Fratelli reached out and demanded the gun. Holding it down by his side, out of sight, he then stepped out into the waxy yellow candlelight.
I’m a dead man, he thought. What does it matter where and when?
‘Where is he?’ Pontecorvo yelled.
‘In custody,’ Fratelli declared as he strode boldly into the room to confront them. ‘This nonsense is at an end, Aldo. And so, please, is your anger. Righteous or not.’
The museum man was gone, no doubt about it. It was a miracle he was alone. This wasn’t slaughter for slaughter’s sake. Not yet.
‘He’s in our custody.’ Fratelli smiled and held out his free hand, keeping the gun hidden by his side in his left. ‘As you must be now. You…’ He nodded at the lean, pale figure behind her. ‘And your friend. Put down the weapons. Come with us. Tell us what you know. We have as many questions for these people as you. Help us and we will find you justice…’
‘Find what?’
It was the woman, and her voice possessed a cold and stony vehemence. She raised the ugly black weapon in his direction.
‘Find justice,’ Fratelli said more loudly. ‘For you. For all of us.’ He kept his eyes on the man and it occurred to him that the handgun in those long, powerful arms looked utterly out of place, as if he had no idea how best to use it.
A cook. Someone familiar with knives and the butchery of meat. Vanni Tornabuoni’s severed head was his. The bloody corpse of Mariani hers.
Pino Fratelli watched him carefully as he said, ‘Twenty years ago my wife died on the steps of our house in Oltrarno, not far from here. Raped and murdered.’ His eyes never left those pale, grim features. ‘Left with a scarlet frown of lipstick.’
The pale and featureless face broke in a howl of wordless grief and terror.
‘Talk to me,’ Fratelli demanded, keeping the weapon down in his left hand, walking forward, furious, his head full of heat and pressure and so many urgent questions. ‘Tell me why.’
The woman was the crazier. No grief, no agony on her face. Only anger and insanity, and a growing sense of puzzlement. She was turning towards the man behind her.
‘What did you do?’ Pino Fratelli asked as his head began to swim.
Twenty years before and the memory of that night was still turning, screaming in his head.
In the darkness of the cave where it began came a picture: their make-up on his face, lipstick too, the same as he had in his pocket. Drugs and drink. And something else. A virus that lived inside his blood, a wriggling, screaming memory.
‘Filth!’ his mother said when he ran shrieking to her, slamming the door in his face, leaving him alone. A bastard child, stranded by the grim cruel thing called fate.
Lost, unable to think, he’d staggered down the road, following the pair of men ahead. In a narrow street near Carmine, an open door. A woman beckoning them in. The rising tide of mud and filth around them. He watched, he followed, hid in the downstairs room amidst the washing and the junk.
Listened to the sounds from above and felt the hellish grotto had followed him all the way across Oltrarno into this modest little house.
Two decades on, and Aldo Pontecorvo thought of the church of Carmine, the place his mother dragged him every Sunday, to confess his sins, never hers. To pinch him when he stared at the naked women on the columns.
Which were you?
That was one question. Another…
The creature behind the tree. The beautiful, blonde head atop the curving body of a serpent, as sinuous and deadly as the long, wide wave he’d seen rising out of the muddy waters of the Arno.
Who, in truth, was she?
The answers had been there all along. He had simply wished to avoid them. And had done so, since when the lights had failed and the waters receded a little, he’d stumbled out of that dread house, gone home, let his mother beat him, knowing all the time he was changed forever just as surely as the angel’s bitter, violent fury had transformed the fleeing couple as they were driven from the Gates of Paradise.
Two decades to see a chance of salvation. It was with him now in the sweaty, confused interior of the cavern, leering satyrs watching from the crumbling walls.
The woman who’d seduced him. The white-haired man he’d followed from afar for years. A serious, talented detective. Though not wise enough to save his wife.
He watched as the woman turned towards Fratelli, weapon rising in her hand. She’d killed the first man she’d seen, a drone who always left the Brigata early. Would murder them all. That was her intent all along. The hunger was in her blood, unstoppable, and always had been.
‘What…?’ Fratelli began.
Now the detective stood in front of him, oblivious to the woman with her weapon and her rage.
The carabiniere had a gun. That was to be expected, though he didn’t seem ready to use it. Not yet.
‘I will show you…’ Pontecorvo began.
But saying it brought back the dread pictures, robbed his throat of the words.