Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

"I don't know. It was dark, I didn't even see his face."

Maurizio's eyes narrowed, studying him closely. "I believe you." He wandered to the fireplace and flicked some ash into the grate. "I don't know what you think you know, but let me tell you how it is. I know Gaetano, of course I do. We all do. When he left last year, he asked me to help him in his business." He gave a wry smile. "No, he asked to borrow some money. I said no, and then I saw La Capannina and I said yes. I thought it was a good investment. And it is. The arrangement between us is very complicated. I'll be honest, it is not exactly legal. This makes him very sensitive. It makes us both very sensitive. I'm sorry you suffered because of it. But that's all it is—a business arrangement."

He had to hand it to Maurizio, it was a nice try, offering up an explanation that would allow Adam to walk away from the affair with a clean conscience.

But he was beyond that now. He had changed. They had hurt him. They had scared him. No, they had made him piss himself with fear, thinking he was about to die.

"You're lying," he said. "I know you're lying, you know you're lying. You killed Emilio, and when Gaetano saw what you'd done you had to buy his silence. Maybe you're still buying it. Did Gaetano tell you about his plans? He has big plans—money no object— your money, I imagine."

He was surprised it hadn't occurred to him before that the relationship was one of ongoing blackmail, that Gaetano had raised the price on Maurizio with La Capannina. It was a gratifying thought that Maurizio really had been paying for his crime for the past fourteen years.

Maurizio's expression hovered somewhere between pity and amusement. "Is that what you think? That I killed my own brother? Are you mad?"

He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and approached the desk. He was no longer amused.

"You come here and you tell me this? You dare to tell me this? I was there." He stabbed his finger against his chest. "I was there. I saw that German shoot Emilio. I saw him walk up to him and shoot him again in the head." He made a pistol of his fingers and "fired" at the ground. "And I did nothing. Nothing. I watched. If doing nothing means I killed him, then yes—I killed him."

It wasn't the tears welling in Maurizio's eyes that unsettled Adam, it was the pistol-fingers he had pointed at the ground. That explained the bullet hole in the floor upstairs—a detail of the shooting Chiara had failed to mention to him, and which Adam had blithely taken as proof of Maurizio's hand in his brother's death.

It was the cornerstone of his case—his only piece of hard, physical evidence—and Maurizio had whipped it away with one simple gesture. The whole ramshackle structure of the conspiracy he had built now came crashing down around his ears.

"Well . . . ?"

"I'm sorry," Adam replied quietly.

"You're sorry!?"

"Yes."

Maurizio spun away from the desk, exasperated. "Is that all you can say?"

"I'll leave."

"Yes, you will."

"Now?"

"Tomorrow morning, as you planned. I don't want to make a scene for my mother."

Adam nodded. Maurizio shot him a contemptuous look and stalked out of the room.

He made his way upstairs in a daze, shaky and light-headed. He tried to marshal his thoughts but they scattered off in all directions like a rioting mob, leaving him to poke around in the ruins of his argument.

He found himself in his room, unpacking then repacking the suitcases he'd prepared before leaving for the coast.

Why couldn't he think straight? The close chain of his reasoning was usually the one thing he could rely on. Maybe he was in shock. Yes, that was it. Or concussed. The doctor in Viareggio had warned him he might be.

He was right about one thing: Viareggio had indeed brought matters to a head, forcing a confrontation with Maurizio. He gave a quick and manic laugh. It was about the only thing he had been right about.

At least it was over now, done with. He was in no condition to take the thing any further, even if he had wanted to. Which he didn't. He wanted to leave. He would have phoned for a taxi there and then, but even that seemed like a task too far.

He lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair near the fireplace, wincing as he did so. They had really worked him over beneath the pines in Viareggio. Something was badly wrong with his ribs. There was a sharp and unfamiliar edge to the pain, worrying. And as for the throbbing in his skull, the aspirins barely brushed the surface of it.

He was a wreck, inside and out. He had never been brought this low in all his life. Like Dante, he had finally reached the ninth circle of Hell.

No. It was a false comparison to draw. Because Dante's journey had not ended there, deep in the abyss. He had risen up through Purgatory and on into Paradise, guided by the ghost of his dead love, Beatrice.

He dwelt on this thought for a while, then heaved himself up out of the armchair and made for the door, every step a discomfort.

Something told him to turn back before he got there. It was exactly this—his cockeyed belief in his own spectral guide—that had brought him to his current predicament. Strangely, though, it no longer mattered to him if he was the dupe of his own diseased fancy. He was too far gone to care.

He felt oddly calm as he edged his way through the gap in the high yew hedge. In fact, it was the first time he had ever entered the memorial garden free of any apprehension or disquiet, he realized. Maybe it was the pain racking his body. It was certainly the closest thing he had ever experienced to what she must have felt at the end.

Whatever curious affinity he had cooked up for himself and Flora, she was having none of it.

She offered no solace, just a blank and stony stare.

He told himself not to lose heart. She had done this to him before, rebuffing his advances, then allowing him close. Antonella and Harry had both sensed it in her—she liked to tease. She was exactly as Federico had cast her in stone all those centuries ago.

He walked the circuit slowly, aware that it was the last time he would ever do so. He waited and hoped. In vain. Half an hour later he found himself back at the amphitheater, dejected, rejected, his final tour complete.

He ran his fingers over the inscription on the stone bench: anima fit sedendo et quiescendo prudentior. The Soul in Repose Grows Wiser. Yet another clue left by Federico Docci. How many had he left in all? Just the right amount for his crime to go undetected for almost four hundred years. It was an impressive piece of judgment on Federico's part—worthy of admiration, even—and it was easy to picture Federico applying the same rigorous subtlety to the murders themselves. Why else had he not been brought to account? He saw Federico nursing his ailing wife till the bitter end, the distraught husband, perfectly in character. And he saw Maurizio, the distraught brother, squeezing out a tear to deflect the suspicions of a stranger.

That's how good you had to be to get away with it.

He was alert now, in the grip of a new clarity, the implacable logic tightening around him.

Maurizio knew for a fact that Adam had visited the top floor, because Maria had told him so. He might well have assumed, therefore, that Adam had discovered the bullet hole in the wooden boards and that he'd recognized it for what it was—the linchpin of a case against Maurizio. All Maurizio had to do was remove the pin and the wheel would fall off.

Maurizio was still in character, playing a role. Short of killing Adam, what else could he do other than talk his way out of suspicion? There was to be no confession, not even the slightest admission of guilt.