The Killing Room (4 page)

Only her uncle was in the hospital: a heart attack a week ago. He’s doing well, they said, cautiously. But he was still in intensive care at Santa Maria Nuova. Three days with tubes in
him and at last he was sitting up, talking, even if he did look like a ghost. They said the first week was crucial.

Elena looked down from the bedroom window at the building opposite and something horrible rose inside her. He used to stand right here, having climbed naked out of her bed, and look down. She felt a tightening, like fear, in her chest, and she didn’t know why.

Standing still a moment as her heart raced, Elena told herself she might as well take advantage of having been woken at six. She dropped John’s CDs into the waste bin on her way out of the door to the hospital. It was a start.

Chapter Four

S
ANDRO WAS AT THE
Palazzo San Giorgio at a quarter to ten. He was wearing his suit, and he hadn’t had any breakfast. A mistake – two mistakes, connected by a tight waistband – because it was never a good idea to attend an interview with discomfort and hungry bad temper seething just under the skin.

The beautiful doorway beneath which they’d lined up for the party, with its high wide arch through which carriages would once have rolled, was open – but blocked. A truck bearing a huge padded packing case (Sandro found himself thinking, the Trojan Horse?) had somehow got wedged while attempting to reverse through the gates. It seemed to have been there some time. As Sandro skirted it there was an alarming hiss and bounce as it tried to move, then stopped again. There was no room to fit past it. A man in a hard hat leaning on the bumper talked lazily into a walkie-talkie; Sandro tried to catch his eye but he turned his back. He looked around, trying to work out which was the Palazzo’s official entry point, and eventually the man in the hat directed him further up the hill.

Waiting to be admitted, Sandro watched as a girl walked doggedly up towards him, her small strong body leaning in to the angle of the hill. A tangled knot of black hair was twisted up on her head. She turned and let herself in to a workshop opposite the truck. He just caught her look of weary exasperation directed at the truck as she pushed through the door.

The Palazzo’s regular entrance was a smaller arched doorway. A doorman of late middle age wearing a striped waistcoat and tails stood guard over its plate-glass inner doors and hushed foyer. He led Sandro down a softly lit, pale corridor in ostentatious silence. Observing the man from behind, Sandro saw that he had a bald patch and his uniform was too big for him on the shoulders.

The carpeted corridor was very quiet, as if soundproofed, and they saw no one until they walked past the open door of a vast room with book-filled alcoves, round tables and a bar at one end. The waistcoated barman – small, dark, alert – raised his head as they passed the doorway. Sandro glimpsed a couple drinking coffee from a silver pot at one table. Therese – no Alzheimer’s yet, he thought, as the name jumped into his head – Therese with the dog, and her sandy-haired husband.

A figure was coming towards them down the corridor now, moving slowly. Sandro had plenty of time to observe her. The white-haired woman with that high forehead and warrior’s nose, statuesque even in motion, leaning heavily on a cane, her very pale, very intelligent blue eyes raised to his. She paused, and out of deference Sandro couldn’t help doing the same.

‘Who’s this, Lino?’ she said, in ringing, English-accented Italian, with the fearlessness of the very old.

The doorman gaped. ‘I . . . this is—’

‘Sandro Cellini,’ Sandro said, holding out his hand.

‘I saw you at the launch,’ she said, letting her own largeboned hand rest in his. Her hair was so fine and so white it was almost transparent, but the effect was oddly beautiful. ‘With a handsome woman. Was that your wife? You talked to the Camerons.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you looked like an off-duty policeman.’

Startled, Sandro let out a laugh. ‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘you would have been right, Signora . . . ah . . .’

The doorman Lino shifted on his feet, but Sandro could not have got past the old woman without pressing himself against the wall, and he wasn’t prepared to do that.

‘Athene Morris,’ she said, and let his hand drop at last. ‘You’ve come to see our Mr Bottai? She tilted her head. ‘No. You’ve come to see Alessandra. Would you like me to tell you why?’

‘Signora Morris,’ said Sandro, ‘I don’t know myself yet. You have a gift, clearly.’ He saw pleasure light her pale eyes.

‘I’m just nosy,’ she said, leaning on her stick. ‘Not many vices left, at my age.’ And she smiled conspiratorially. ‘I happen to know there’s a vacancy.’

Lino cleared his throat, and with a tiny creak of discomfort Athene Morris stepped back, just enough to allow them past. ‘I expect I will see you later, Mr Cellini,’ she said.

As she answered the door, at first sight Alessandra Cornell looked as impeccable as she had on the evening of the palace’s launch; pale, blonde, flawless. Stepping inside, Sandro reminded himself that he was not the petitioner here: she had come to him.

The attaché’s office was on what was nominally the palace’s ground floor, although with the steep slope of the gardens falling away it felt as grand and light as a
piano nobile
. After the dim padded corridors Sandro was momentarily dazzled. There was a big rosewood desk, a bookshelf, low modern white armchairs; the vaulted ceiling was decorated with a very freshly – and pinkly – restored fresco of garlands and babies. Clearly a very great deal of money had been spent here.

Sandro felt Cornell watching for his reaction, and he was careful not to show it. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, trying for humility and awe. He wondered if she might have to surrender it to one of the fractional owners, for the right price.

She inclined her head, and indicated that he should sit down. He lowered himself gingerly into an armchair.

There was a silver-framed photograph on the desk, of a man’s face, and Sandro only had time to register the corporate dullness of the smile, the bland neatness of the shirt and tie that made it hardly worth putting in a frame, before Cornell turned it away.

It was safe to say they hadn’t hit it off at the launch. In the candlelight, with Sandro irritable from the champagne, she’d quizzed him sharply about his work, his clients, the reasons for his departure from the police, and, resentful at being subjected, without warning or explanation, to what seemed to be an interview, he’d answered her curtly. Rudely, Luisa had said. If there’d been a job going, it had gone to some one else.

‘Thank you for coming.’ She sounded weary, suddenly. The pallor lost its lustre. She leaned back against her desk.

‘Of course, it is a pleasure,’ said Sandro, with stiff pity. ‘I had the impression I had failed the first interview. If it was an interview.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well. Perhaps the conditions weren’t ideal.’ Sandro waited, and Alessandra Cornell sighed. ‘It’s a delicate matter,’ she continued, slowly. ‘At least, now it is.’

The door opened abruptly and a voice said, ‘I understand you’ve spoken to the lawyers? Was that strictly necessary? There are ways of getting rid—’ Gastone Bottai had not bothered to look into the room he was entering until it was too late. Seeing Sandro, he stopped, put out.

‘Gastone!’ There was panic, thought Sandro, as well as exasperation in Alessandra Cornell’s voice. ‘Do you never listen to anything I say?’

Bottai looked at her, something childishly discontented in his expression, and Sandro pondered the hierarchy. He’s her boss, but she’s smarter than him. He liked her fractionally better.

‘This is Sandro Cellini,’ she went on, her voice levelling as she held Bottai’s gaze. ‘We were to talk, do you remember?’

‘I know who he is,’ said Bottai, huffily, put out at having to make the acknowledgement. ‘As long as it is merely preliminary. Clearly I am also involved in any recruitment decisions.’

She inclined her head, effectively dismissing him.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Alessandra Cornell, her unease still apparent even after Bottai had closed the door behind him.

The words preliminary and recruitment were not cheering Sandro; the only thing keeping him in his seat, little did Cornell know it, was his curiosity about Bottai’s indiscretion. Lawyers?

She put her hands on the table. ‘At the launch I wasn’t sure
we even needed a full-time security consultant here,’ she said. ‘It was still at the early stages.’ Was she pleading?

‘That’s the thing,’ Sandro said, sitting back in his chair. ‘I mean, what is that – in a place like this? Security consultant. Did you want him to talk closed-circuit monitoring, set up proximity technology?’ He was aware of being bullish, but what did he have to lose? ‘Or is it more like nursemaiding? Keeping the guests happy? My guess is, a bit of both.’

She looked startled. ‘We got input from clients, from management,’ she said, faltering. ‘And we found a man we thought was suitable for the position.’

Smoke-filled rooms then: the usual bartering. Sandro could imagine his CV being pushed to one side. Too old, too bad-tempered. But it was back on the table now. He leaned forward.

‘Because I have to say, Miss Cornell.’ He was in earnest now. ‘I can keep an eye on a security camera with the best of them, but I’m not an expert on technology, nor am I much of a nursemaid.’ He held her gaze. ‘Too rough round the edges. So if that’s the brief—’

‘It didn’t work out,’ said Cornell, blunt at last, looking down. ‘Two days ago I had to let him go. I’m eager to replace him straight away, so as to reassure the clients.’

He looked at her, taking his time, making sure he remembered the name right. ‘It was Giancarlo Vito, wasn’t it,’ he said, and her eyes widened. ‘I expect he looked like just the man for the job. But you fired him. What did he do, exactly, that was so . . . indelicate?’

Two spots of colour appeared on Alessandra Cornell’s cheeks, and she compressed her lips.

‘He wasn’t up to it,’ she said, and at last he heard frankness, saw the poise broken down. ‘He allowed things to happen. It got beyond his control.’

He looked into her eyes and he saw something else. Alessandra Cornell was frightened.

‘I need someone I can trust.’

Chapter Five

‘J
UST SAY YES.’

Giulietta Sarto sighed into her mobile. She was supposed to be at work in half an hour. Say yes? There was something about Luisa Cellini that made it hard to say anything else.

‘It’s not forever,’ Luisa said. ‘Just to tide him over. So he feels he’s not abandoning the business.’

Eyes closed, Giulietta shook her head, just slightly.

‘It’s just absolutely not the right time,’ she said, steeling herself. ‘Things are shaky enough at the Women’s Centre. They only took me on as a paid employee last year, and now they’re laying people off. If I ask to cut back the hours – or take a leave of absence – I mean, it’s probably just the excuse they need.’ She inhaled. ‘And it’s not like the private detective business is booming.’

There was a silence, that lengthened.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right, when he asks me, I’ll say yes.’

She heard Luisa breathe out: it sounded like genuine relief. A pause. ‘Did you say you had news?’

Giuli had forgotten her news. Was that a bad sign? ‘Oh, yes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Enzo and I have set a date.’

‘A date?’

‘To get married.’

They’d been engaged close to two years, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. Daft though it might seem, Giuli had barely given a thought to it. She hadn’t had the kind of history that ended in marriage, as a rule. Her mother had worked as a prostitute in the southern suburbs of Florence before overdosing; abused, anorexic and drug-addicted Giuli had ended up in prison for killing her abuser, and until Luisa and Sandro had come into her life, she’d assumed she was several times more likely to be dead by the age of fifty than married.

She was forty-four this year. What should a forty-four-year-old woman be? She had no clue.

‘Oh, Giuli,’ said Luisa.

Hearing the catch in her throat, and knowing Luisa was as a rule not one to give in to emotion, Giuli said gruffly, ‘Don’t. And don’t start on the wedding dress.’ Little did Luisa know.

‘All right,’ said Luisa, recovering herself. ‘All right. I just wanted . . . well, anyway. I’ve just come off the phone with him. With Sandro. I wanted to get to you first.’

Hanging up, Giuli stared at the row of chiffon and lace in front of her, and broke out into a sweat. Mistake. Huge mistake. She backed towards the door; the saleswoman, who’d been standing looking at her with undisguised impatience even before she answered her mobile, didn’t move to detain her.

On the street, Giuli looked back at the shop window. A dummy gazed out at some point above her head, an expression
of idiot bridal rapture on its face, not at all what Giuli would have considered appropriate for a woman who’d been trussed up in twenty metres of pearl-studded satin – namely something closer to outrage.

Mistake. And if she were to let Luisa loose on it – those high standards, after thirty years in the business of dressing women, that infallible taste, the pursed lip, not to mention the unmanageable emotion this particular wedding was going to dredge up – the mistake would turn tsunami.

Giuli stared down at the phone in her hand. She thought maybe she should call Sandro. Luisa had forgotten to ask her the actual date, after all that, which was just as well as it was only two weeks away. Cue all-out wedding-dress campaign, no thank you.

And on top of all that, Sandro was going to ask her to go full-time manning the office for him. Because something had come up.

‘It’s such an opportunity for him,’ said Luisa. ‘They’ve already had a bad experience, I gather. The first guy didn’t work out. But the money’s good, and it’s regular. It’ll start on a trial basis, I imagine, but . . . it’s a real job.’

Giuli tapped her teeth with the phone. What if Sandro didn’t work out either? And what if she burned her boats with the Women’s Centre? She’d come to love the place. It might be contraception advice and battered wives and grubby feral kids, it might harbour one too many reminders of her old life, but it was home.