‘What’s there to say?’
‘He frightened you.’
‘Anyone would. Coming out of the dark like that.’
What are you looking at?
A figure in a cape and hood, with an aggressive, terrifying manner. Perhaps a murderer who’d decapitated a city councillor of Florence, a man of some wealth and position, not long before, and come to the heart of the city, carrying his severed head in a bag.
‘I didn’t see him,’ she complained. ‘Just a glimpse of a pale face. And a black hood.’
‘He was carrying something. A pole. A bag. See? There are always other details a witness forgets. Perhaps important ones.’
Fratelli thought for a moment and said, ‘You felt you recognized him. Didn’t you say that?’
‘Yes, but it’s ridiculous. It was dark. I don’t know what I saw really. I thought… I recognized something…’
But what it was she didn’t know.
A tall, heavy young man was walking down the corridor towards them. It took a second or two for her to realize it was Luca Cassini, the station junior from the day before. That awkward, revelatory conversation by the lampredotto stall in Sant’Ambrogio market seemed very distant somehow.
Fratelli leaned over and whispered in her ear.
‘I believe our time has come. Tell Walter everything, please. Except…’ He winked at her and tapped his nose. ‘Not the Brigata Spendereccia. That will only complicate matters.’
‘But…’
She didn’t have time to finish. Cassini was there, ushering them into Marrone’s office.
‘I don’t think a few damaged paintings are on the captain’s mind right now,’ the young man said cheerily.
‘We’ll see about that, Luca,’ Fratelli told him with a smile. ‘I hope you’re ready for a busy day.’
Walter Marrone was pale and drawn, staring at his unwelcome visitors with sad brown eyes. Papers lined his desk by the window overlooking Borgo Ognissanti. Two younger officers, Albani and Nucci, dressed in smart suits, sat next to him making notes. The phone cut into their conversation constantly. Fratelli fought to make his ideas heard against the constant flow of interruptions. It wasn’t going to be easy. The captain was one of Fratelli’s oldest friends, but at that moment Marrone clearly wished them elsewhere, even when he was offered something Julia thought he would welcome: a witness.
‘You saw what?’ Marrone demanded gruffly.
‘A man,’ Julia said hesitantly. ‘At the back of the loggia. He had a bag and what I thought was a boathook. He was tall. Bald, with a very striking pale face and a cloak, a robe. Almost like a monk’s.’
‘When?’ asked one of the younger officers.
‘Just after six, I think.’
The other man sighed and looked at his watch. ‘You think?’
‘Six fifteen or so. I took a taxi and met Pino for a drink at six thirty. So that’s an accurate estimate.’
The officer glanced at his colleague, eyebrows raised.
‘Tornabuoni’s head didn’t go up there until after nine o’clock,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been him.’
‘Your reasoning?’ Fratelli wanted to know.
‘Someone would stay there for three hours? In the loggia? With a head in a bag?’
Pino Fratelli shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Marrone. ‘Why not? Who’d search him? November. A cold night. He had all the time in the world.’ He glanced at the captain. ‘It’s a mistake to ascribe the motives and actions of a normal human being to a psychotic criminal. A man who inhabits a world that looks like ours but isn’t. Walter? You know this as well as I do. They may not teach these things in detective school any more—’
‘Don’t start,’ Marrone broke in with a scowl.
‘Walter. You know—’
‘A man with a severed head?’ the captain interrupted. ‘Hiding at the back of a public square? For three hours? For what possible reason?’
‘Because he doesn’t want to be seen. So he waits until there are no people. Or he has some magical connection with the number nine and wishes to hear it from the church bells. You’re creating doubts out of thin air, with nothing to support them.’
‘He was asleep,’ Julia said suddenly. This conversation had made her think about the incident again. Fratelli was correct: there was more to be recalled, and perhaps there always was. One needed the prompt, the perspective that brought it into view. ‘That’s why he reacted so oddly. I thought he was a tramp, asleep there. Something I did woke him.’
Fratelli opened his arms as if to say… There.
‘So a murderer with a head in a bag goes to sleep?’ Albani or Nucci, one or the other, asked with a sarcastic side to his thin and weedy voice. ‘Not once, but twice; more than that maybe.’
‘Perhaps he was exhausted,’ Fratelli said. ‘Physically and mentally. I doubt he’d decapitated a man before.’
He glared at Marrone then waved a hand at the two young officers.
‘Am I wasting my breath? Have these two not heard a word I’ve said? We’re dealing with a psychotic individual here. One who feels he’s outside our world. Any idea of logic, of rationality… some idea that we can comprehend his actions, predict them even… This is nonsense. The man can’t manage that for himself. Why should others expect they can do it for him?’
‘This is about the Brancacci, isn’t it?’ the captain asked wearily.
Fratelli folded his arms and took a deep breath. Then he said in a low voice that was close to breaking, ‘No. It’s not.’ His right hand went to his forehead for a moment. ‘Well, not entirely. It’s about…’ His head was shaking, a little too rapidly. ‘Something I should have told you long ago.’
He stared at the younger officers.
‘Something personal,’ he added.
Marrone’s face became a turn more miserable. He ordered Albani and Nucci out of the room. They left with a mutinous ill grace.
‘Then tell me now,’ the captain said patiently when they were gone. ‘But I warn you, Pino. You’re treading in unfamiliar territory. We already know a lot more about Vanni Tornabuoni than we did yesterday. His… friends and associates have been very forthcoming now he’s dead. This has nothing to do with your frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel. Nothing at all. There’s no need to hunt for complicated explanations; Hebrew myths and tales about serpents that are half snake, half woman. It’s a mundane matter. A bloody and squalid affair, but murder often is. I’m sorry. Still, if you wish to speak…’
Fratelli seemed lost for words.
‘The cockerel’s part of the crest of the Tornabuoni family,’ Julia said. ‘I read that in one of Pino’s history books.’
Fratelli and Marrone stared at her.
‘So perhaps it was a message. Saying that somehow Tornabuoni was connected with the Brancacci. With—’
‘It was no message,’ Fratelli interrupted. ‘Nothing as simple as that, anyway…’
It was his story to tell, she thought. No one else’s.
‘Then tell the captain,’ Julia urged, jogging his elbow. ‘Tell him what you told me.’
‘What’s going on?’ Fratelli demanded of Marrone, scarcely seeming to hear her. ‘I know you, Walter. I can read you like a book. There’s some secret here. Something you don’t wish to share.’
‘Dammit, man!’ the captain snapped. ‘Don’t try my patience.’
‘Why not? You’re trying mine.’
Walter Marrone took a deep breath and played with some of the papers on his desk. Then he stared gloomily at Fratelli and Julia Wellbeloved and said, ‘If either of you breathes a word of this outside the station I will know and I will not be happy.’ He folded his bulky arms. ‘We have a man in custody for Tornabuoni’s murder. A lover of his.’ The captain scowled. ‘One of many. Vanni Tornabuoni led a colourful life.’