Vita Nuova Read Free Page B

daughter, for instance. The daughter was what? He looked at the date of birth on his notes . . . twenty-five. Pretty, you could tell, despite the blotched face and the tears. Slim, with dark hair in a long plait behind. No makeup, though he’d noticed tiny traces of eye makeup on the wet tissues that were all over the enormous glass table, so she must use it sometimes. Been out the night before, perhaps. She wore a simple flowery summer frock that, together with the plait, made her look like a little girl. The crying, too, of course. There were so many ways of crying and, in his job, the marshal had heard a lot of them. Most adults smothered their crying, tried to force it back, but this young woman was roaring, loud and unashamed, for help and comfort. The marshal’s instinct had been to place a big soothing hand on her head, as he did with his own children, but these days you had to be careful, so he’d looked at the mother. No response at all. Poor woman. Hardly any wonder she was shocked into silence. She was a blonde, like her dead daughter, bleached now, mixed with the grey, but you could tell by her pale blue eyes. Fifty-one . . . looked older but, then, she was overweight. Born in the Alto Adige and given that her name was German—Anna Wertmuller— she would be German-speaking. Funny, that . . . there was little love lost between Italian and German speakers up there, and you wouldn’t expect her to have moved down here. Well, he didn’t know a lot about it and today had certainly not been the time to ask. When he’d tried to talk to her, she had only stared up at him like a frightened child might, as though she were waiting for him to tell her what to do. What could he tell her? The only thing he could think of was to try to interrupt the daughter’s crying and suggest she give her mother a drop of something.
    ‘She doesn’t drink!’ The phrase had somehow been howled without interrupting the crying at all.
    He ought to try to talk to them both tomorrow, whatever the prosecutor said. For a long time, he pictured the two of them in that huge kitchen he so disliked. Those high, barred windows, a closed door that presumably led to servants’ quarters. A place that size would be a lot of work—but what sort of newfangled idea was it to make a kitchen in the cellar? It was really a wine cellar, with a vaulted ceiling. The faintest trace of a smell that came and went . . . what was it? Each time he’d tried to identify it, it escaped him. Something innocuous, maybe, but connected with an unpleasant memory? The wet tissues she kept squeezing had a light perfume, but it surely couldn’t be that. Short, unvarnished nails. . . .
    The dead woman . . . he looked at his notes again. Daniela. Older than her sister . . . twenty-seven. Single mother . . . well, the prosecutor was right about that, anyway, the man in her life being the prime suspect, as always. He’d need the men the captain had sent him again tomorrow. They had searched the tower, and the grounds immediately below it, all day and found no weapon. That whole area where there was building going on remained to be searched. It had to be done, though the marshal was pretty sure they wouldn’t find anything. Why would he leave it behind? Somebody cool enough to put that bullet in the back of his victim’s head . . . anyone in a panic would have fled as soon as she hit the floor. Captain Maestrangelo had agreed with him about that when they’d talked on the phone that evening.
    ‘A very cool customer. Especially when you think how long she must have taken to drag herself through the living room and into the bedroom in that condition. And he stood there at the door, watching—there were no shell cases inside the flat?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Very sure of himself. Sure of his aim, too. And no trace of him in the room, I imagine.’
    ‘It doesn’t look like it.’
    ‘Sounds professional. What do you think?’
    ‘Well. . . .’
    ‘You don’t think