‘Good question,’ he noted. Something bothered him.
‘Pino? You’re thinking.’
‘Soderini,’ he said. ‘The mayor of Florence. Why did he walk up a muddy hillside out in the sticks like this? Any ideas?’
‘None.’
‘Any observations?’
‘Don’t be so cryptic, please.’
‘I’m not being cryptic. You’ve met him before. He’s fond of you, I’d say, judging from the rather genial and familiar way he greets—’
‘Stop it!’
‘Didn’t you notice anything? Something that perhaps connects him to Tornabuoni?’
Luca Cassini was coming back. He had the black mongrel on a chain and was chatting happily to it.
‘You’ve lost me,’ she said.
‘Think a couple of steps ahead. Vanni Tornabuoni killed Aristide Greco because Greco attempted to murder him. We must assume Greco was a trained terrorist. These people regarded themselves as soldiers. They weren’t amateurs with a gun. Well then…?’
‘Tornabuoni had a weapon too. He knew he was in trouble. That was why you were asking if Soderini had been warned.’
‘Not just that,’ he said, opening the doors of the little Fiat.
‘Then what?’
‘Tell her, Luca,’ Fratelli ordered.
‘He had a gun on him,’ Cassini said, sounding shocked. ‘The mayor. Dead obvious. Shoulder holster. Over the right-hand side. Could see it bulging under that fancy raincoat of his.’
‘A man like that isn’t easily scared,’ Fratelli continued. ‘Which means, I suspect, he’s no idea who or what he’s supposed to be frightened of. Only that it’s out there.’ He glared at the dog. ‘What do you intend to do with this animal?’
‘Take it to my uncle’s. After I drop you two off.’ Cassini scratched his head and looked at the tiny car. ‘Someone’s going to have to sit in the back with him,’ Cassini added. ‘He’s a bit pongy…’
‘I’ll do it,’ Fratelli said, and climbed through the tiny door on to the rear seat, watching as the young man persuaded the mongrel to join him.
‘Put an arm round him,’ Cassini advised. ‘He might not like it when we start moving. I had a dog who threw up every time he got in a car…’
Then they set off on the slow, winding road back towards the city.
When he got back she’d lit the fire. Slow flames licked over the old logs in the grate. Smoke rose to the chimney sending a damp, dark aroma through the room.
Something on the table. He looked.
Apples and pears, gathered from the trees outside, which were now shedding their leaves for winter. Two plates, two sets of cutlery. All washed.
There were more candles than he ever remembered. His mother never used them without a need. They had no money. She worked in the gardens, sweeping leaves, planting vegetables, digging, fetching, cleaning. The tiny, dank cottage was the reward. A place where an unmarried mother might live, survive, beyond the judgemental stare of the city outside the walls of the Pitti Palace.
‘How long do we have?’ she asked, taking the bag from his arms, putting it on the table, sifting through the contents.
‘Before what?’
‘Before they know someone’s here?’
They worked the gardens all year round. It was a sprawling estate, now in the hands of the city. Soderini, Tornabuoni when he lived. The Medici’s heirs. They coveted it, enjoyed it. Got others to do the work.
‘Long enough,’ he said.
Two pizzas, plain food. Some ham and salumi. Water and a bottle of Chianti already opened, the cork stuffed back into the neck.
Chavah Efron poured two mugs, left his on the table, swigged at hers, tore off a strip of pizza, stuffed it into her mouth with some meat.
He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten in days. They pounced on the food, finished every last morsel, so quickly he offered to go back down the hill and find some more.
‘Visibility increases risk,’ she said, without looking at him. It sounded as if she were reciting from a manual of some kind.
The fire crackled. The windows began to steam up. Down the hill, through the trees, lights were just visible in the palace.
He got up, drew the tattered curtains, wondered if they’d be thick enough to block out their presence. But he didn’t worry too much. His mother had been here for more than four decades; a hermit, a recluse, tolerated for the work she did. The men in the palace scarcely noticed her.
She filled up their mugs again, raised hers, smiled, toasted him.
Cheap Chianti. Harsh, crude. The kind the poor drank, not knowing any better.
Still…
He liked the way it blurred the feelings in his head.
Then she pounced on the fruit she’d picked, the last of the apples and pears from the summer.
Picked up the biggest of the apples, green with a rosy tint to the skin. Carved it in two with her knife. Held half up to him, grinning.
‘Are you afraid of me?’ she asked in her gruff, accented voice.
Her eyes glittered in the candlelight. The wine had done something. That and the memories. Illicit moments here as a child, wondering what it would be like to be a man. Before the Brigata took his innocence from him. Before the Fall…
‘No,’ he said, and took the fruit from her, bit into the soft white flesh.
She finished hers quickly. Then looked at the low bed in the corner, his mattress next to it. Too small for him. Had been for years. Trying to squeeze his long frame on to it had been awkward and uncomfortable. Not that his mother left him any choice.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Chavah Efron whispered, her sparkling eyes on him every moment.
‘I can’t help that. Tomorrow I can go and steal something. Find some money. Get a car. We can—’
‘Tomorrow we’ve got an appointment. You and me.’
He’d told her where he worked before the Brigata. He was still worried about the way she took that information, seemed to dwell on it.
‘We can get out of here. Go south, maybe. Where Ari came from… In Calabria no one’s ever going to know.’
‘First,’ she said, ‘you’ll do as you’re told.’
He didn’t answer, just poured some more wine. Found his fingers trembling.
‘Tonight too,’ she added.
A pause.
‘Get on the bed, Aldo.’
‘I don’t…’
But she was on him then, her warm damp mouth against his skin.
And he was lost.
After the argument at the farm he wouldn’t go straight home. So the three of them sat with him in the bar in San Niccolò, Fratelli with a Negroni, Julia with a glass of white wine, Cassini sipping at a Coke and grabbing fists of meat and cheese from the plates that came out of the kitchen.
The dog stayed in the little Fiat but its smell came with them.
Fratelli’s mood was black, however much the other two tried to cheer him.
‘Well,’ Cassini declared after a while. ‘I suppose I’d best be going really. Take that mutt up the hill…’
‘Why do you bother, Luca?’ Fratelli snapped. ‘What’s the animal to you?’
‘I bother because if I didn’t, no one else would.’ Cassini sounded cross. ‘You can’t just walk away from things. Not in this job. My grandpa never did when he was in the stazione. He always said you didn’t, Pino. In fact, you were a pain in the arse…’
‘Yes, yes. So you said!’
‘Let’s go,’ Julia broke in. ‘It’s been a long day. I’m tired and grubby. And—’
‘This is all wrong!’
Fratelli’s tumbler of gin and vermouth slammed on the table, spilling drink and peanuts and pinzimonio everywhere.
Luca Cassini scratched his short black hair. ‘I don’t get what you’re so bothered about. I mean, I know it’s not nice of someone to mess around with those old paintings in the Brancacci. But it’s not like killing someone. Or those weapons we found. You can see why Marrone’s more interested in—’