Christobel Kent - A fine and private place

Then he turned to her as though he’d only just heard what she said. ‘So who?’ he asked. ‘Who does he think did it?’

‘He thinks it was Michelle,’ Cate said, and there was a long silence. She had thought he would defend her, but he did not.

‘Because of her husband,’ he said, and she wondered how he knew. ‘Meadows vetoed him, did you know that? Said she wasn’t having married couples here. And he topped himself. No wonder she was angry.’

‘You’d never do that,’ she said, without being able to stop herself. ‘Would you?’ He took her hands and clasped them in his.

‘ Never say never,’ said Tiziano, as though he was murmuring an endearment. Mai dire mai .

‘No.’ Feeling the dark creep closer to them, feeling the cold rise up through the stone floor, the walls, Cate whispered, ‘Don’t say that.’

‘You don’t know, sweetheart,’ Tiziano said softly. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. There are things that regenerate, you see, and there are things that don’t. Spinal cord, that’s one of the things that doesn’t.’

There were words that Cate wanted to say at that moment, about how little it mattered to her that his legs didn’t work, only she didn’t know how you could say that. It mattered to him, that was the thing.

Besides, he was still talking. ‘Look at Alec Fairhead, he’s regenerated all right,’ he said, with bitterness.

‘What d’you mean?’ she said, unsettled.

‘After, what is it, more than twenty years of mourning, no relationships, no decent work to speak of, now Loni’s dead and he’s trying it on with everyone in sight.’

‘Did you know about that? About Alec and Loni?’ She stared at him.

‘He told me. The morning after she died, he told me. She aborted his child, did you know that?’ Cate shook her head slowly. ‘A new man now,’ said Tiziano. ‘Asking you to run away with him last night, haring off after little Tina. He’s down there now, getting her to comfort him.’

‘What?’ she said. She hadn’t known Tiziano had heard that last night. ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea, though, with Tina,’ she said, feeling alarm rise in her. ‘She’s — she’s vulnerable.’

‘Or d’you want him for yourself?’ She stared at Tiziano in the flickering half-light, startled by the anger in his voice.

He looked away, but not before she saw something burn in his eyes. ‘Did you see that coming, then? Michelle?’ And his voice now contained only casual curiosity, as if he simply didn’t care any more.

Had she? And then Cate thought of Michelle standing by that burning oil drum, saw again the expression in Mauro’s face as he ran up to stop them. He’d thought they were up to no good, hadn’t he? Why had she swallowed Michelle’s story whole?

She should have emptied that stuff all over the grass and picked through it until she knew what was in there. But she’d been afraid.

She should have told Sandro Cellini about it, but she’d wanted to protect them.

And Cate felt abruptly and completely alone, the burden of her failure falling squarely on her own shoulders, and no one else’s. Her mother’s voice rang again in her ears: When are you going to take responsibility, Caterina?

‘I’m going down there,’ Cate said, hearing her own voice as though from far away. ‘I’m going down to the villino .’

‘As you wish,’ said Tiziano stiffly.

And it was only when she was out of the door in the cold andrunning in the snow, down into the trees, that she realized he thought that Alec Fairhead was the reason for her going.

Luca Gallo’s face collapsed as they stared at him, and he sat, suddenly limp, in the chair behind his desk. He stared around at his surroundings as though he barely recognized them, and had no idea what was going on.

Sandro stood and watched, and waited; at his side Michelle Connor seemed entirely relaxed, and curious.

Gallo had pushed his chair back and was staring at the drawers. His desk was a total mess, an overflowing inbox, a small photo of a man’s face fallen under the computer screen, loose papers slipping to the floor. Was this the sign of a man who was losing his mind?

‘Is this true?’ Sandro said quietly.

Luca Gallo was shaking his head slowly, from side to side, then eventually he looked up. ‘Sorry?’ he said.

‘Did she give you the phone last Wednesday, the day before Loni Meadows died?’

‘The day before?’ said Luca slowly. ‘I couldn’t be sure of the day.’

‘But before she died?’ Sandro was patient. Luca nodded. ‘Before,’ he said, ‘yes.’

It was like getting blood out of a stone: the man looked traumatized. ‘I’m trying to think,’ he said. ‘Where I put it.’

‘Are you playing for time?’ asked Sandro as gently as he could. ‘Because all you are doing is allowing me the time to realize that if anyone here could have set up Loni Meadows’s car accident, you could have.’ As they returned his gaze, Gallo’s eyes came into focus, slowly: he seemed hypnotized into silence. Sandro went on. ‘You could have sent Mauro down there, couldn’t you? To do the dirty work, to work on the road surface. He’d be good at that; and now rather conveniently he seems to be unavailable for comment. You weren’t at dinner: you could have waited until they’d left the dining room, and sent that message. Only you, in fact, could have sent that message, isn’t that right?’

‘How do you know?’ Luca seemed to be grappling for a rationale. ‘How can you be so sure that the message was from his phone?’

Sandro shrugged. ‘Of course, I can’t.’ He pulled the little silver pebble of a phone that had belonged to Loni Meadows from his pocket and looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Of course, even if Orfeo’s mobile never turns up, this will tell me, in the end.’ He flicked it open, passed a thoughtful thumb across its small, dead screen.

‘It could tell you now,’ interjected Michelle, and Sandro turned to look at her. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, and she gestured to him impatiently. He handed the phone to her and watched, frowning, as she fished her own mobile out of her pocket, flicked off its back with a blunt nail.

Gallo was pulling open drawers now, in a panic. ‘Hold on,’ said Sandro, ‘calm down.’

‘It’s here somewhere,’ said Gallo. The drawers spilled out of the desk; he looked up, wild-eyed.

‘It must have been tough,’ said Sandro, arms folded across his chest. ‘Working for a woman like that. And when she bawled you out in front of everyone — ’ Sandro saw something fierce come into Gallo’s eyes.

‘So,’ said Sandro. ‘Per Hansen said he saw a light, from around the side of the castle, heading cross-country at about midnight.’ He leaned on the desktop with the tips of his fingers, eyeball to eyeball with Gallo. ‘The police will know, you know. They’ll find the shoes, or the trousers, they’ll find her traces on you.’ He paused. ‘What did you do with the phone? Did you destroy it? Hope no one bothered to ask after it? Or were you just going to give it back and rely on Orfeo being too stupid and arrogant to ask any questions?’

Gallo stared down, pale-faced, into the chaos of paper, old telephone directories and files. Then he focused, and pounced. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here, here it is.’ And he brandished an envelope marked ‘Count Orfeo’ in a neat script totally at odds with the disarray in the room.

Sandro stopped.

‘Right,’ he said, and slowly he held out his hand. Gallo hesitated, then dropped the envelope into his palm, and at that moment Michellelooked up from whatever she was doing, held up her scratched and ancient telefonino , its screen illuminated.