‘Stay out of my hair from now on. That’s a warning. Every last favour I owed you has been spent. If I trip over you pretending to be an officer of the Carabinieri one more time, I will, I swear, lay charges. Against both of you, for interfering in our investigations, for…’
‘Do you honestly think you can bury two murders?’ Fratelli asked. ‘Tornabuoni’s of Aristide Greco? Then the man’s own death at the hands of God knows who… because it certainly isn’t the gardener. Who’s pulling your strings on this one? Need I really guess…?’
‘Enough!’ Marrone cried. ‘This conversation is at an end. As is whatever friendship we had. Goodbye.’
The phone went dead.
Pino Fratelli stared at it for a moment, shrugged, crossed the piazza and found them in the café.
‘That took a while,’ Cassini said.
‘Walter and I are old friends. We rarely have brief conversations.’
Julia seemed worried. ‘Is everything all right? You look pale.’
‘It’s a cold day. Winter on the way.’
The macchiato turned up. In three quick gulps it was gone.
‘Everything’s wonderful.’
‘Marrone…’ Cassini began.
‘The captain’s busy. He said we should go back and take a look at the farm for ourselves. He’ll join us there presently.’ He looked at Cassini. ‘Do they give you a weapon, Luca?’
Luca Cassini laughed. ‘If they won’t give me a car, I’m hardly likely to be allowed a gun, am I? I’m the office boy, remember. That’s why you’ve got me.’
‘No problem,’ Fratelli said. ‘Let’s go.’
Back on the outskirts of Florence, the old VW van belched diesel fumes into the dying afternoon.
‘We’ve got to dump this thing,’ she said. ‘Somewhere a long way from where we’re going. They’re not that stupid.’
They had clothes, some food, a few weapons and ammunition. He’d never left a place in a hurry like that. Never thought of himself as pursued. It felt… good, for some reason. Exciting. Like being in the presence of something bigger, more important. The woman had that effect too.
‘You do know where we’re going, don’t you?’
‘I’ll dump it. Don’t nag.’
He drove on into Santa Croce, through the warren of narrow streets. History was etched into them, in the stones, in their names. Dead warriors, old tribes. Past the basilica itself and the white statue of the stiff Dante, skirting the square with the tents for the olive oil fair she’d never attend again. Down to the bridge and across the Arno into San Niccolò.
There he pulled into the side of the road, not far from the bars in the Via de’ Renai, stopping the van next to a little patch of park between the low cobbled street and the busy riverside road.
‘They don’t have meters here. They won’t notice it for a while.’
Chavah Efron picked up the two bags she’d brought. Weapons mainly. ‘You’re good at this,’ she said.
‘No. I’m not. I’ve never done…’ He remembered Tornabuoni, the head beneath Cellini’s statue. ‘Never done anything before. Don’t know why I started.’
‘Because it was time,’ she said. ‘Because of me.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re a natural. Ari wasn’t. He was too… proud. He didn’t listen. Didn’t take orders. Didn’t get it.’
He waited, said nothing.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Somewhere safe.’
‘Nowhere’s safe. Not any more.’ She looked out of the window. The little bars were opening. Pleasant, comfy places for men and women of a certain age to drink themselves into a sleepy oblivion and forget what the world was like outside. ‘Where are we going?’
He picked up the workman’s canvas bag he’d brought from the farm, checked the crowbar there, prayed it would work.
‘Home,’ Aldo Pontecorvo said in a meek, low voice.
The rusty Cinquecento bounced its way up the narrow track to Chavah Efron’s farm once more. The place was, as Pino Fratelli expected, now empty. Front door ajar, back door unlocked. Dog still on the chain, whining, afraid. VW van gone. Two sets of footprints through the mud in the yard. One small, one large.
‘You were right there,’ Luca said, looking at them. ‘She hopped it swiftish, didn’t she? With some bloke.’
‘None of this should have happened,’ Fratelli muttered caustically.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘It’s not your fault, Luca. I wasn’t trying to say it was. It’s mine. It’s Walter’s. It’s…’ He wondered whether Cassini and Julia were ready to hear it. ‘It’s that damned city down there.’
Florence lay in the middle distance, Duomo and rusticated towers, campanili and basilicas, the grey form of the Arno worming through its centre.
‘Shall we take a look around?’ Julia asked quietly.
She was worried about something and he couldn’t quite work out what. His head wasn’t working right any more. It always focused ruthlessly on the task in hand. Now it lacked, on occasion, any peripheral vision whatsoever.
‘Check your radio again, Luca,’ Fratelli ordered. ‘We’re higher up here and… For the love of God, will you leave that dog alone?’
Cassini was with the black mongrel again, patting it on the head as the animal wagged its tail energetically.
‘They left the dog,’ the young officer said. ‘What kind of people would abandon a dog? I ask you—’
‘Your radio?’
Cassini looked at his handset. ‘Sorry…’
Fratelli led the way into the house. Walked round the plain, cold ground floor, looked at the dirty plates, poked at the discarded rock albums and the magazines — political, most of them. Left wing.
‘She was in a hurry,’ he murmured. ‘I should have done something…’
‘Let’s look upstairs, shall we?’ Cassini said.
The front bedroom had some of the floorboards up. In the room opposite, the old iron-framed double bed had been pushed to one side. The floor was up there too.
‘They’ve cleared something out,’ Cassini said.
‘I can see that.’ Fratelli tried to think straight and found it a struggle. ‘How long were we gone in Fiesole? Half an hour? Forty minutes?’
‘Something like that,’ Julia agreed.
‘She was expecting a visit. Before we ever came. They got the things out of here beforehand. Maybe to the van.’
He walked to the front window, looked at the tracks in the yard outside. The dog was still there, staring up at them.
Fratelli looked at the space beneath the floorboards there, then came back to the other room, thought about what might have been hidden beneath the bed.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘we’re going to get a bit muddy.’
Julia Wellbeloved had found something in the corner. Fratelli looked, felt his blood chill. A red flag and a star in a circle. The words ‘Brigate Rosse’.
Luca Cassini stared at it and said, ‘Oh, bugger.’
‘Do you read the orders every morning?’ Fratelli asked.
‘’Course I do.’
‘What’s the status on terrorism at the moment?’
Cassini laughed. ‘All that stuff’s over! We put them in jail. There are no bombs and guns and stuff any more.’
‘Just because something’s stopped, doesn’t mean it’s gone away,’ Fratelli said, his patience fraying. ‘I haven’t been allowed to see anything official in more than a year. What is the status today?’
Cassini frowned. ‘There hasn’t been any mention of it for months. Not since we got that woman of theirs and banged her up. They…’
He stopped. Went from one big foot to the other.
‘What?’ Julia asked.
‘I remember peeking at her papers when they came in. They said something about… maybe there was a couple of them left. Unimportant people.’