Fratelli smiled at her. Kept looking round the yard.
‘There’s a nasty rumour abroad that your husband was involved in drugs, Signora. It would be very useful if we could take a look around. Disprove such a thing…’
‘Did this Tornabuoni deal in drugs?’
‘Maybe bought them,’ Cassini grumbled.
She didn’t move. ‘Why are you here? Where are your papers? I see only one ID and that’s for a junior officer.’
‘We’re trying to work out who killed him!’ Cassini snapped.
‘Here? I’m struggling to eke a living out of this place. On my own. I don’t need this shit.’
Pino Fratelli took out a large, clean handkerchief and blew his nose, once again looked round the little farm with its crippled olive trees, its silent, watchful dog, the dilapidated cottage.
‘Will you stay?’ he asked. ‘It’s a lot of work for two people to run a farm. Even a little place. Just one of you…’
‘What I do is my business. Not yours.’
The shotgun waved at him, then the car.
‘If you’ve nothing to tell me,’ she said, ‘you’d best go.’
‘Of course,’ Fratelli agreed. He gestured to Julia and Luca Cassini, who seemed surprised that he deferred so easily. ‘I’m sorry if we disturbed you. It’s an unfortunate habit of ours, I’m afraid.’
He smiled, took Cassini’s notes, looked at them. She seemed puzzled.
‘Signora Efron. An unusual name. Is there anything you wish to ask us?’
A moment of uncertainty between them. No words.
‘Get out of here,’ she said.
Fratelli packed the notebook into his jacket. ‘I apologize again. Good afternoon.’
Then he walked back to the car and waited for Cassini to get behind the wheel, Julia to climb into the back. They set off down the stony track, towards Fiesole.
‘Your radio, Luca,’ Fratelli said, holding out his hand.
Cassini passed it over. ‘Useless round here. Won’t get a signal until we’re nearer home.’
‘Stop at the first phone box we find, then.’
‘Won’t be till Fiesole. Is that a good idea? Should we hang around?’
Fratelli stared at him as the car bounced down the rough lane, then emerged on to the narrow single-track asphalt road towards the town.
‘What makes you ask that?’ he wanted to know.
‘You spooked that woman, Pino. Julia?’
‘You spooked him,’ she agreed from the back.
‘I reckon she’s probably planning to scarper right now,’ Cassini added.
‘Possibly. Find me that phone box.’
‘That woman’s going to hop it!’ Cassini cried.
‘She didn’t kill her husband, Luca. Or break into the Brancacci and deface those paintings. We seek a man for those things.’
‘All the same…’ Julia chipped in.
‘She’s a foreigner. No money. Only a beat-up van that doesn’t look as if it would make it much beyond the autostrada. If she flees, even Walter’s idiot detectives from this morning could find her. Chavah Efron in herself is of little importance…’
The two of them grumbled at that.
‘Oh!’ Fratelli cried. ‘So now I must provide proof. No. You shall do it. I wish each of you to tell me one thing you learned during that exchange, please.’
‘Are we on a bloody training course then?’ Luca Cassini demanded.
‘Yes. You first.’
‘She’d no intention of letting us set foot in that house. I know that.’
Fratelli grunted, ‘Pah!’
‘What do you mean, “Pah”?’
‘We could have got into the house if I’d pushed it. She just didn’t want us there. Anywhere on the farm. Good place to hide things, by the way. Perfect, if you ask me. Julia!’
‘That woman was lying through her teeth. It was quite obvious.’
Fratelli rubbed his eyes and sighed.
‘Don’t you dare say “pah” to me,’ she added.
‘I’ll do my best but really… of course she lied to us. She’s a criminal of some kind. We’re the people who are supposed to apprehend her. What do you expect? An instant confession? Even the average innocent citizen lies to us as a matter of course. The fact someone is less than honest tells us absolutely nothing—’
‘We should have insisted,’ Cassini broke in.
‘We couldn’t!’ Fratelli barked. ‘You’re a junior officer attached to a vandalism case. One that, for Walter Marrone, has nothing to do with a two-week-old murder. Indeed, so convinced is he of that fact, he expressly forbade me to go near anything remotely connected to it.’
‘Oh, thanks for telling me that now!’
‘As if you hadn’t guessed. Don’t play the fool with me, boy. I know that’s nonsense. Had we barged in there and found nothing, Walter Marrone would have had your badge. And probably thrown Julia and me in jail for a day or two to boot. We’d no warrant, no accreditation, no legal right to question that woman at all. I think she knew.’
He patted Cassini’s shoulder, then turned to look at Julia in the back seat. ‘I don’t intend to allow my personal obsessions to affect your lives or careers.’
‘They have done already, thank you,’ she observed.
He didn’t respond to that. The car was winding down a steep hill back to the little town of Fiesole. There would surely be a phone box soon.
‘So what should we have noticed?’ Cassini wondered.
‘Her husband was murdered two weeks ago,’ Fratelli repeated. ‘She’s aware we’ve made no progress, have no clue as to who the perpetrator might be. Which is, one might add, very much the case.’
He glanced at both of them then asked, ‘Well?’
‘Why wouldn’t she ask something?’ Cassini said with a big, wide grin. ‘I mean… his wife… why wouldn’t she say… how are you doing? Why the bloody hell don’t you have the bastard in a cell right now?’
‘Because she knows who killed him,’ Julia Wellbeloved said in a quiet, firm voice.
‘The culprit being Tornabuoni,’ Fratelli added, beaming at both of them. ‘Very good. One other thing there was worthy of note too. Anyone?’
They were silent.
‘Mud,’ Fratelli declared, checking his watch. ‘Words are all well and good, but you must learn to use your eyes too. Look at things. Consider the mud. Chavah Efron is a sturdy, active woman but small in stature. Even her boots were quite small. Say a size thirty-eight.’
He glanced at Julia, then at Cassini behind the wheel. ‘She didn’t object when I said she was on her own. Yet most of the recent footprints in that yard, including those that went to the dog, were much larger. A man’s. Probably about a forty-seven, I’d guess.’
‘Mud,’ Cassini said and shook his head, laughing.
‘Find me a telephone, Luca. I want to talk to your captain.’
The young officer looked worried suddenly.
‘Don’t fret,’ Fratelli reassured him. ‘All I have to offer is a small morsel of peripheral information picked up on our travels. I won’t involve you. I promise.’
She walked back into the house, went upstairs, watched from the window. The lane to the farm was visible to the single-track road at the bottom. The white Fiat went all the way, then turned left towards Fiesole, disappearing out of sight.
They would need to call in help. She had some time — half an hour. More, perhaps. No room for hesitation.
The shotgun was still in her arms. There was no sound from the roof space. She wondered what to do.
Couldn’t leave him. If they found him he’d talk. Couldn’t take him far, either. He was slow, strange, unpredictable. A liability.
‘Aldo!’ she cried, then banged on the attic flap with the barrel of the gun.
She heard him scrabble across the timbers, then watched as he drew back the wooden covering. A querulous face. Not scared. Not anything, really. He needed to be told.