The Flood

Tuesday, 4 November 1986

The following morning Julia Wellbeloved woke at seven, Cellini’s bloody life story still open on her sheets, still rolling around her imagination. The bells of Santa Maria del Carmine clattered in a sonorous tumult beyond the window. She got dressed and threw open the curtains.

The weather had changed completely. A bright winter sun cast the street outside in contrasting tones: one side deep black, the other a bright, chilly white. Men and women in heavy clothing shuffled up and down the pavement, many led by small dogs trudging along in front of them. There were lights in the tiny café a few doors away on the opposite side of the street, and wafts of either steam or cigarette smoke curled out of the half-open door. As she watched, a rusty Fiat estate car came to a halt outside the place, blocking the entire narrow street. A man got out and headed into the café, carrying several trays of pastries. Meanwhile a small, very old bus, lurching towards Carmine, dispatching a fog of diesel fumes in its wake, was forced to a halt behind the Fiat.

The delivery man emerged, and a brief argument of gestures and words that she could just about hear ensued. The language of Florence seemed to her very… florid. Full of words she could only guess at; terms that, judging by the vehement tone with which they were delivered, were unlikely to grace any A-level Italian examination back in England.

The appointment at the Palazzo Vecchio was for nine thirty. For some reason she wanted to get out of the house without seeing Pino Fratelli. So she tiptoed out on to the landing. His door was still open but there was no light and no music. Still sleeping, she thought. All the same, she went down the stone steps as lightly as a mouse and closed the door quietly as she let herself into the cobbled street.

A short dash through the crawl of morning traffic, once again blocked by a stationary car further along the street, took her to the tiny café. She breezed in and, in her best Italian, asked for a cappuccino and a cornetto alla crema.

Signora Grassi, who seemed rather larger and more formidable than she had the day before, glared back at her from the till, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, almost half of it ash.

‘Buongiorno,’ Julia added quickly.

‘Buongiorno,’ the woman grunted with a nod that sent the ash tumbling down on to the shiny red plastic counter top.

A middle-aged man, slight, with a brown toothbrush moustache, burst into action at her behest, handing her a pastry in a paper napkin, then setting to work on the shiny Gaggia machine.

There was no one else in the place. The attention of the woman at the counter, dressed in a garish pink nylon jacket embroidered with the name of a coffee company, was focused entirely on her single customer.

‘Inglese?’ Signora Grassi said.

‘Yes.’

The woman nodded across the road. ‘Fratelli’s… guest?’

The last word was spoken with such a suspicious intonation that Julia felt her temper start to rise.

‘I’m a postgraduate student here on assignment. The Uffizi arranged the accommodation.’

‘The Uffizi!’ said the man at the coffee machine brightly.

‘I’m researching an academic paper,’ Julia added. Then, out of nothing more than a sense of pure mischief, threw in, ‘I have an appointment with Signor Soderini, the mayor, in a little while to discuss my work.’

The barista’s eyebrows rose in admiration. Signora Grassi, who had to be his wife, puffed on her cigarette and squinted through hooded eyes. The coffee arrived, creamy and welcome. Julia tasted it, wiped the froth from her lip, and told him, truthfully, it was delicious.

She gazed around the little place, which was not unfriendly, merely suspicious of strangers. The walls seemed to be entirely devoted to Fiorentina, the local football team. There were violet banners, photographs of players and managers, some signed, going back decades, and several flags bearing the city’s coat of arms, the red giglio lily. The colours were so bright and vivid they reminded her of the figures in the other frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel, those dedicated to the story of Saint Peter. The scarlet spears of the ornamental lily were an emblem Machiavelli and Cellini would have recognized.

‘The mayor,’ the Grassi woman murmured. ‘And Fratelli comes with you?’

‘No. I think he has work of his own.’

‘What work? He’s supposed to rest.’

The ferocity of the woman’s reply shook her.

‘I don’t know,’ Julia said. ‘He’s my landlord. I barely met him until yesterday. He asked me to look at some vandalism in the chapel—’

‘The best detective Florence ever had,’ her husband chipped in, braving a caustic look from the woman at the till. ‘If anyone could get to the bottom of that outrage—’

‘Fratelli’s on sick leave,’ his wife broke in. ‘He’s not allowed to work and he knows it. If he—’

‘The best detective in Florence,’ the man added under his breath.

‘What’s wrong with Pino?’ Julia asked outright.

‘Ask him,’ Signora Grassi suggested.

‘I did. He said…’ She made the twirling finger at her ear, just as Fratelli had done. ‘He told me he was mad. As a mole.’

‘As a mole?’ the man demanded.

‘That’s what he said.’

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. A mole? What talk is this? Pino’s a decent man. A cheery man for the most part, especially given that life’s not been kind in many respects. His wife—’

‘Beppe!’ the Grassi woman roared. ‘There’s beer out back to be moved.’

‘I’d like another cappuccino, please,’ Julia interrupted, smiling at him.

Beppe took her empty cup, placed it in the sink and went back to the shiny Gaggia.

‘Fratelli is one of the sanest men I know,’ he said, fixing his wife with a rebellious stare. ‘Though what my wife tells you is the truth. You should ask him these questions yourself. This is Pino’s business, not ours. Not unless he asks it. In Florence we do not gossip.’

‘With strangers,’ the woman added.

‘And if he won’t tell me?’

The man frowned, puzzled. He handed over a fresh cappuccino, one she didn’t really want. ‘Then you won’t know, will you?’ he said.

Fratelli had a nine-thirty appointment with his consultant, not far from his old office in the street known as the Borgo Ognissanti. This was the other side of the river from Oltrarno, an area beyond the usual tourist crowds. So he loved the place, after a fashion.

In Ambra Neri’s consultation room, he was more than a little surprised to see Father Bruno Lazzaro, smug in his black priest’s robes, beaming beatifically like a saint in waiting.

Lazzaro was a fixture in Oltrarno. He’d joined Carmine from the neighbourhood seminary in the Piazza di Cestello around the time the adolescent Fratelli was rebelling against his Catholic upbringing. The arguments that minor fury prompted brought about the only serious disagreement Fratelli had ever had with his mother; one that was mended, with many tears, when she told him the truth about his birth and race.

The young Pino revealed none of this to the priest and simply argued his own case for atheism, doggedly, with great conviction. It was an infuriating exercise. Lazzaro was a priest of the old school, one who smiled constantly, listened with great care, nodding sagely at each point made. Then closed, as he always would, with the simple question: but if there’s no God, what can possibly explain Florence?

How could such geniuses as Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli and Brunelleschi be fooled into devoting their lives to works of art glorying a deity who did not exist? Was an Oltrarno teenager wiser than them?

After which he would smile more gracefully and await an answer. He was a very handsome man, with a clean-shaven face, perfect white teeth, peaceful blue eyes, a full head of light brown hair. There were those who said he administered to some of the women of the parish privately, in ways of which the Pope might not approve. Fratelli knew little of this and cared less, reminding himself that there were plenty in the Vatican for whom such behaviour appeared no sin at all.

But he had no good answer to Lazzaro’s perpetual question — if Michelangelo believed in the existence of an unseen deity, what did the scepticism of an ordinary mortal matter? Which was why the infuriating man found such pleasure in asking it.

And now, more than thirty years later, he sat in the office of Ambra Neri wearing that same, smug smile.

Fratelli found it impossible not to reward his charming consultant with a scowl for such treachery. He’d known this woman for a good decade, long before her interest in him became professional. She was beautiful, sympathetic, pragmatic and — to him — unimaginative in her outlook towards the mysterious and the unknown. He would, he knew from experience, be wasting his breath if he spoke of his ideas about the Brancacci incident, something she would regard as idle speculation, an extravagance deserving of condemnation. Though, given Lazzaro’s presence…

‘I thought this was a private consultation,’ Fratelli said, trying not to sound too surly.

‘It is. But we must take your behaviour into account, Pino. How do you feel?’

‘I feel fine!’ Fratelli protested. ‘How do I look?’

‘You look well. I’m pleased. You’re a very good patient.’

‘Oh for pity’s sake. How am I supposed to feel? I wake, I read, I talk to anyone who’ll talk to me. Then I sleep. What else is a man supposed to do?’

She smiled at him.

‘And, while I wish no disrespect, why is Father Lazzaro here?’

‘You’re one of my parishioners,’ the priest said with a generous wave of his hand. ‘Whether you like it or not. You were baptized in my church. You’re a part of us. We care for you. Given the spiritual trial ahead we want you to know we welcome you back, with open arms.’

‘What I want,’ Fratelli retorted, ‘is my job. Ambra. Fix it, please.’

‘You know I can’t do that. I’m a doctor, not an officer of the Carabinieri.’

‘The minor incident in the chapel yesterday,’ Lazzaro went on. ‘Your response was quite out of proportion. This is evidence of the stress you feel. Ambra here agrees with me. We need to bring you into our pastoral care and—’

‘The incident in the Brancacci’s just the kind of thing for my talents. Not too onerous. Not so taxing. Nor, in terms of the Carabinieri, too important, I imagine.’

A copy of the morning paper, La Nazione, lay on the desk in front of them. The attack on the frescoes headed the front page. Fratelli had read the story already, frustrated by the lacunae in the narrative, the lack of meaningful detail; even — and this seemed odd — any photos of the actual damage. The attack was being treated as if it were one more act of vandalism, akin to a hoodlum spraying graffiti on the walls of the Pitti Palace. There was no attempt to understand the context, and for him context was everything.

‘What an obscene act,’ Ambra Neri said, trying to cool things a little. ‘Why on earth would anyone break into a beautiful place like that and do such a thing?’

‘Give me the chance,’ Fratelli declared, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

‘It’s a matter for the officers next door,’ Lazzaro broke in, his voice no longer so warm and cheerful. ‘I would prefer you leave it that way. We’ve much work to do in the Brancacci. You had no right to be there yesterday.’

‘I thought I was a parishioner.’

‘The chapel is closed. Even the parishioners have no access. Not during restoration. And you bring along this foreign woman…’

‘An expert on vandalism, no less!’

‘I don’t care, Pino. What you did was wrong and must not be repeated. I’ve no desire to ban anyone from God’s house. But if you disobey the rules you shall leave me with no choice.’

‘I thought God only had ten rules, and for the life of me, Father, even as an atheist, I doubt I’ve broken one of them. Much, anyway.’

‘This is irrelevant…’ the man in black persisted.

‘May we speak alone?’ Fratelli asked, staring at the worried woman in front of him. ‘I came here for a medical appointment. Not a sermon.’

‘I’m supposed to help you,’ she said. ‘It’s not easy.’

He folded his arms and said nothing, merely gazed at the priest. Eventually Lazzaro grunted and got up. At the door he turned and said, ‘You know where I am if you need me. Any time. You only have to ask.’

When he was gone, Fratelli repeated his demand. ‘I want something to do. And by that I do not mean putting flowers on the altar.’

‘You can be very awkward at times.’ She looked at the papers on her desk. ‘If you want to go to Marrone again and ask for reinstatement, I won’t object.’

‘You could tell him it would be good for me. Help my fragile mental state.’

‘Fragile?’ she cried. ‘You’re the least fragile patient I have.’ She thought for a moment and added, ‘Because, I suspect, you don’t care much. For yourself, that is. You have friends, Pino. Many. Professionals like Father Lazzaro…’

‘A priest is a professional now?’

‘Don’t be so caustic. Think of others for once in your life.’

‘To hell with them. What about me? I feel fine. My mind is not so disordered mostly. I’m twice as bright and energetic as some of those fat slugs Marrone keeps around him…’

‘Now, now!’ She wagged a scolding finger at him. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’

‘What if I were to tell you I think this Brancacci Chapel matter is more serious than they appreciate. That I have good reason to believe it may well be the beginning of something far more threatening. Perhaps dangerous.’

‘Then I’d ask you why you thought that.’

‘Can’t say. Not yet. You think I’m crazy already. I’m not supplying more evidence to damn myself. Maybe if they let me into the case…’ He nodded at her desk and the pen and notebook there. ‘A simple, short letter. I’ll dictate. “It is my expert opinion that Maresciallo Ordinario Fratelli’s condition would be greatly ameliorated if he were given some small task to occupy his overactive mind. An insignificant case involving cerebral investigation, nothing more. No physical activity.”’ He kept his eyes on her. ‘“No call for access to firearms. A simple act of vandalism, say. Such as this incident in the Brancacci.”’

The doctor kept on smiling at him and said nothing.

‘Please,’ Fratelli added.

‘Marrone and I have discussed your condition. More than once. Lord knows you’ve begged me to talk to him often enough. The answer was always no.’

‘This,’ he pointed at the paper, ‘gives us a firm and good reason to ask again.’

‘They won’t have you back in the Carabinieri. Nothing I can do will change that, Pino.’ She looked through the window at the bright day. The Italian flag was fluttering in the breeze outside the Carabinieri station a few doors away; a red, white and green banner moving lazily with the wind. ‘Nothing out there will either. You have to learn to live with that. If you like…’

Ambra Neri reached over, picked up her pen and grabbed the prescription sheet he knew so well.

‘There are other medications we can try. Ones that may be more effective. Let’s see…’

‘No!’ Fratelli cried, and found his right fist slamming down on the desk. The gesture was too violent, his voice too loud. He was immediately ashamed of himself and apologized. She was a good, decent woman. Doing the best she could.

‘If you don’t wish… of course I respect that,’ Ambra Neri said with the matter-of-fact disdain of a consultant used to dealing with recalcitrant patients.

‘Help me get back to work. I want to think. To look beneath stones and see what lurks there. That’ — Fratelli’s mournful head rose and he gazed at the woman across the shiny, professional desk — ‘is what I do.’

‘Not any more,’ she answered. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t write to Marrone. I won’t speak to him again. What’s the point? You accept your condition so easily, so bravely. Why can you not accept the consequences?’

‘Because they’re far worse,’ Fratelli grumbled and gathered up his things. ‘Buongiorno, Ambra.’

‘Next week?’ she asked as he rose to leave. ‘We could go for a coffee. For lunch.’

‘I’m your patient now. We can’t…’ He turned and looked at her, sorry that he was the reason for the evident pain in her face. ‘Even if it was a good idea.’

‘Don’t spend too much time on your own,’ she told him. ‘Find a hobby. Volunteer for something. Be occupied. Go and talk to Lazzaro. He’s a good man. It doesn’t need to be about religion.’

‘Lazzaro believes in fairy stories.’

Her eyes were shiny — close to tears, he thought — and that only made him feel worse.

‘Lots of people do. If it helps…’

‘I’m not in the mood for a placebo, certainly not one offered by a priest.’ He blinked and stammered, ‘You make me sound like an invalid. Or a pensioner eking out his days.’

‘You’re not a well man,’ she said gently.

‘I know what I am. Thank you.’

That was a victory, he thought, watching the way she took those last few words. And now I might make a doctor cry.

Fratelli did his best to smile at her.

‘I meant that. Thank you. You’ve more important patients than this one. We should keep these meetings to a minimum. Unless there’s a point…’

He had no more words.

Outside, Fratelli wrapped himself in his coat and scarf, then walked round the corner for a coffee, choosing a bar where he knew it was unlikely he’d find anyone from the station. He didn’t want to experience their sympathy or see the way they struggled for something to say.

The same newspaper was on the bar there. He reread the story on the Brancacci Chapel again. The conviction — that this was not just wrong, but deeply wrong — had locked itself inside him now and would not leave.

‘Dammit, Walter,’ he said, as he threw back his macchiato. ‘You will see me.’

A few minutes earlier, Julia Wellbeloved had met Piero Soderini’s descendant, Sandro, an elegant and talkative man who looked in his early fifties, olive skinned with finely chiselled aristocratic features and dark hair, perhaps dyed.

The mayor of Florence sat at a desk in an elegant study on the first floor of the Palazzo Vecchio, an area cordoned off from tourists trekking towards the grand Salone dei Cinquecento. Half palace, half crenellated fortress, this curious building overlooking the Piazza della Signoria had been the town hall of Florence for more than six hundred years. Kings and princes had been welcomed here, politicians murdered, traitors defenestrated, suspects — Savonarola and the first Cosimo de’ Medici among them — held prisoner before being marched to the nearby Bargello to endure the strappado and the inquisition of the torturers. The harsh facade apart (Julia was beginning to appreciate Fratelli’s opinions on rustication), she found it difficult to associate such a vivid and violent history with the serenely beautiful interior of today.

The office Soderini occupied, behind a desk bearing a large sign that read ‘Sindaco di Firenze’, was part of the quarters once allotted to Pope Leo X, decorated for the Medici by the industrious Vasari, whose corridor she had mentioned at the outset of her conversation with Soderini, as Fratelli suggested. There were canvases on the walls and ceilings, so many she didn’t know where to look. He did, though. Straight at her, with a frankness and interest that was so open she found it hard not to laugh.

Soderini, a powerful, striking man who didn’t mind who knew it, clearly relished the sound of his own voice and his position at the historic heart of Florence. Fratelli had predicted Julia would get five minutes of his time. He was wrong. At ten o’clock, as the former detective was marching towards his old Carabinieri stazione, muttering darkly with each step, she was still sitting on an ornate gilt chair opposite Sandro Soderini, listening to him talk history — that of his own line, mainly — and complain heatedly about the lack of funding that made the protection of the art of Florence — ‘the most precious in the world’ — from vandals, the elements, and the constant ravages of time, so difficult.

‘Everyone wants beauty,’ Soderini said. ‘Few realize it comes with a price. Does that help?’

‘It’s the psychology that interests me. Why people would wish to damage something wonderful. The attack in the Brancacci Chapel—’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? Envy. Ugliness hates its opposite. Wishes to damage it, if it can. In a way…’ He stroked his chin and stared at her across his desk. ‘It’s perfectly understandable. As for the Brancacci…’ He waved away this subject with the back of his hand, as if it were beneath him. ‘From what I understand, the damage is slight and easily rectified. They will redouble the security on that place, trawl the bars of Oltrarno for misfits and drunks, and pick a likely suspect from the dross they recover there.’

‘There may be more to the case than simple vandalism.’

‘I doubt it. I’m aware of your paper. I was merely trying to give you a little perspective on its subject.’

Julia smiled and said nothing.

Soderini broke the brief moment of discomfort.

‘I’ve arranged for you to meet Vanni Tornabuoni. He’s my arts commissioner. Another old name, though’ — he grinned at her — ‘one that has not prospered quite so much over the centuries.’

He passed over a note with a time, an address and a name on it.

‘On Thursday you will talk to my people in the Convent of San Marco. Savonarola’s old home. They are reworking much of the place and security is, I imagine, much on their mind.’

A thought came to Sandro Soderini. ‘So you want to see the Vasari Corridor?’

‘A friend suggested… It was just an idea.’

‘An excellent one, in the circumstances. The corridor begins a little way beyond that door. It reaches the Uffizi by a small bridge, then continues all the way along the riverfront, across the Arno, across the top of the shops on the Ponte Vecchio to the Pitti Palace.’

The smile turned into a broad, flashing beam.

‘Most people don’t know it’s there. Even if they did, they’d have no way of getting in.’ His tanned face broke into a vulpine smile. ‘We don’t show all our jewels to everyone.’

He reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a heavy set of very ancient keys.

‘But to a visiting English academic… In return for your being my guest for dinner, I will grant you access. Tornabuoni’s office is at the far end. In the Pitti. Faster than ploughing through sweaty tourists on the Ponte Vecchio.’

She couldn’t stop herself laughing. ‘I’m sorry…’

‘Dinner,’ he repeated. ‘The English do eat, don’t they?’

‘I don’t…’

Nothing more.

‘Ah,’ Soderini sighed. ‘You mistake my purpose. Or at least my invitation. We have a small supper club in Florence. Men, mainly. The first Thursday of each month. We ask along a select number of guests. It seemed to me you might be interested. A little light entertainment after the sterile gloom of San Marco.’

Julia was blushing. ‘I thought…’

‘I know what you thought. Perhaps another night for that. This is a select gathering. Twelve men and a few lady guests. A very private occasion. An old tradition that dates back to the thirteenth century. You can find it mentioned in Dante, in Boccaccio and Cavalcanti too.’

‘A tradition…?’

‘La Brigata Spendereccia. The Spendthrift Brigade, as you’d say in English. We eat what Dante might have eaten. We drink the rarest of Tuscan wines. We sing songs. We behave as if we are the most irresponsible, the richest, the most privileged men on earth — for one evening, anyway. And the next morning we trudge back to the office with aching heads. Childish, but for a single night only, and in something of a special place.’

‘Where?’ she asked immediately.

He held up the set of keys and chose one. It was long and old fashioned, the kind a jailer might use.

‘Later. If you wish. To walk down the Vasari Corridor is a privilege shown usually to statesmen and the most senior figures in the world of art. And the odd Florentine civil servant in the know who wishes to avoid the crowds.’ Soderini’s twinkling eye caught hers. ‘To pass an evening with La Brigata Spendereccia… That is something quite different. It’s also a secret society of a kind, so you must mention it to no one. That is an absolute condition. Agreed?’

He stood up and held out his hand. She nodded and took it.

Julia said. ‘Are you coming with me, Mr Mayor?’

‘Sandro. Please. For the Brigata I will be your guide. Be here on Thursday night at seven o’clock, please. Now…’ He frowned. ‘I have more boring work to do.’

He picked up the slim modern phone.

‘Fiorella will take you. I trust you’ll find Tornabuoni entertaining.’

‘Ambra Neri is adamant it would be good for my condition if I were involved in some kind of intellectual activity,’ Fratelli insisted. ‘I’m not asking for much, Walter. A desk even. Just the chance to see some files, knock on a few doors, stick my nose in where it’s not wanted…’

‘I rather thought you were doing that already.’

Marrone had eyed him suspiciously from the moment Fratelli walked through the door. The captain had the best office in the Carabinieri headquarters on the narrow Borgo Ognissanti, one with long windows looking out towards the church. This two-storey ochre building had been the focus of Fratelli’s life for two and a half decades, until he was dispatched to the exile of sick leave. He felt he knew every brick, each corner, every last noise, from the howl of frustrated officers struggling with a case to the complaints of the iron pipework that made up the ancient central heating system now groaning against the winter cold.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Rushing round to the Brancacci like that. Upsetting that pompous priest. With your pretty English girlfriend in tow…’

Fratelli threw up his hands. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. She’s young enough to be my daughter. A lodger sent by the Uffizi.’ He leaned across the desk and pointed at the man in the blue serge suit. ‘A very intelligent and perceptive young woman. She used to be a lawyer.’

Marrone frowned and said, ‘Who in God’s name gives up the law to be a student? Where’s the money in that?’

‘Not everything’s about money. I don’t pretend to understand her reasons.’ It occurred to him he should have asked. ‘All the same, I feel we may come to be grateful for her presence.’

‘We?’ Marrone cried. ‘There isn’t a “we” any more. You’re off the force.’

‘Strictly speaking I’m on sick leave—’

‘You’re off the force! And kindly don’t call me by my first name.’

Fratelli’s arms spread out even more in exasperation.

‘Here we go again. With one breath you tell me I’m gone from the Carabinieri for good. With the next you try to pull rank. How is an invalid like me supposed to follow…?’

‘It’s a question of respect. Even civilians call me capitano.’

‘Respect, respect.’ Fratelli toyed with his heavy winter coat. ‘How long have we known one another? No. Let me tell you. Since we were raw cadets, shivering in our uniforms at the age of seventeen. If I had no respect for you, would I be here now? After all this time? In these circumstances?’

Marrone leaned across the desk and growled, ‘I know that look. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, and you’re not letting on what it is. The days when you could pull those tricks are over.’

‘All I want is to help! To track down the deeply disturbed human being who attacked those paintings in the Brancacci yesterday. Before he does something worse.’ Fratelli paused to let that sink in. ‘Which he will, I think. As night follows day. We may be too late to stop him already.’

The captain slumped forward on to the desk, head briefly in his hands. Fratelli had spoken the truth. These two had known each other for thirty years. One soaring through the ranks, a good, obedient servant of the state. The second clawing his way upwards until he reached the middling position of maresciallo ordinario. Only to find himself trapped there, mostly by his own penchant for free speech and thought, accompanied by the occasional act of blatant insubordination.

‘I’m telling you, Walter,’ Fratelli persisted. ‘Remember that monstrous old butcher from Scandicci who was none too picky about what went into his finocchiona? Without me—’

‘Without you we would have sent the wrong man to jail and left that bloodthirsty bastard out there to kill yet more of his neighbours. Yes, Pino. I know. How often have you reminded me of this?’

‘Let’s not forget the charming widow Bartolini from Bel Riposo either.’

Marrone refused to look up, staring at the desk with a stony resolution.

‘Did anyone else think to check on the chihuahuas? Well? Did they?’

‘No,’ the captain said grumpily.

‘Quite,’ Fratelli replied and folded his arms.

Marrone glared at him.

‘Pino! I meant no! To you! To whatever hare-brained idea you’ve come up with. Listen to me.’

‘I always listen to you,’ Fratelli objected. ‘There’s no need to take that tone.’

‘Listen to me! You’re on permanent sick leave for a reason. We both know that. Ambra Neri and I have discussed this at great length. If either of us thought it would be for the best—’

‘Best for you,’ Fratelli broke in. ‘Not me. I’m the one who’s doing the favours here. I could sit at home, listen to Beethoven and read books if I wanted.’

‘You’re sick!’ Marrone cried.

The captain’s long, sallow face fell. He looked, Fratelli thought, deeply miserable. This was a shame. They were close when they were cadets. Friends; warriors in a constant and difficult struggle for some kind of justice. Along the way came girls and drinking and the odd bout of fisticuffs with a few nocturnal rogues. He admired and liked this man.

‘You’re sick and you won’t be coming back,’ the captain added quickly. ‘No one’s more sorry about that than I am. Pino…’

‘Ten minutes,’ he pleaded. ‘Listen to what I have to say. After that, if you want to kick me out of the door…’

‘I don’t want to. I have to—’

‘Twenty years. An anniversary. Do you remember?’ Fratelli demanded.

Marrone didn’t answer for a while. Then he said, ‘Of course I remember. How could I forget?’

‘Twenty years,’ Fratelli repeated. ‘Please listen to me, Walter. Ten minutes. It’s not much to ask now. Is it?’

A severe middle-aged woman in a dark blue uniform bearing the scarlet lily of Florence took over when Julia Wellbeloved left Soderini’s office. More by grunts than spoken instructions, she guided Julia to the second floor through a succession of halls and chambers devoted to the elements, brushing past groups of tourists as if they didn’t exist. They passed quickly through a room with a bust of Machiavelli, a place Julia felt sure, from her reading, must have been the man’s private office itself when he worked here as an important servant of the state. There were paintings and globes and maps and… so much that she could only watch it whisk by in a bright, gilded haze. The woman in the blue uniform was in a hurry; not best pleased, it seemed, by this sudden mission.

They turned one more sharp corner. Then she found the key she wanted and set about opening the plain door that led, by various secrets turns, all the way from the seat of power of the Florentine republic, through the Uffizi, across the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, all the way to the Pitti Palace, once home to the House of Medici, rulers of this small and rancorous state off and on from the middle of the fifteenth century until its collapse in bankruptcy, despair and bitter internal division three hundred years later.

As the two of them crossed the bridge over the narrow street beneath and entered the Uffizi, unseen to the milling visitors in its overfull galleries, Julia felt assaulted by the past. The famous gallery she’d seen already several times, amazed by the richness of its collections, the way some of the greatest canvases in the world seemed to be fighting for space to breathe on its miles of walls. In the confined space of the Vasari Corridor, the weight of the centuries seemed even heavier. A kilometre long, it was a practical construction, a way for the Medici to stroll from their palace home to the offices of state without having to meet the grubby and occasionally violent proletariat along the way. Even so, there was scarcely a stretch of bare plaster anywhere along the way. Self-portraits covered the walls mostly — some recent, some five hundred years old. A sea of dead faces with glittering eyes following the lucky few allowed to cross by the corridor.

Halfway across the river, they stopped by two sets of large windows on each side of the corridor.

‘Mussolini,’ the woman in the blue uniform said. ‘And Hitler. You know the story?’

Julia remembered what Pino had told her.

She walked to the window facing away from the city and admired the low, elegant shape of the next bridge along, the Ponte Santa Trinita, not far from Fratelli’s home. Hers too, for a little while.

The views from the other side, out towards the viewpoint of the Piazzale Michelangelo, above Fratelli’s Negroni bar, were equally exquisite in the pale winter sun. The river, the lines of tall houses, church spires and, in the distance, verdant hills.

‘Hitler liked to sit here and take tea,’ the woman said. ‘That saved the Ponte Vecchio.’

No it didn’t, Julia thought. She was with Pino Fratelli there. That morning, on her way to see Soderini, she’d crossed the old bridge and watched the jewellers starting to open shops full of garish baubles, well beyond the reach of an impoverished postgraduate student. She’d stopped by the grand statue of Benvenuto Cellini, directly below these windows on the western side, midway along the span. Already tourists were taking photos. Cellini was a consummate artist, sculptor, writer, painter and musician. His terrifying image of Perseus with the Head of Medusa stole the breath from all who saw it standing in the Loggia dei Lanzi in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. And he was as vile a murderer and villain as the city had seen, one who confessed his crimes — boasted of them — in the memoirs Fratelli had given her the night before.

Evil was evil, she thought. It saved nothing. Simply existed alongside beauty, sucking the life from it.

‘First,’ Fratelli declared, ‘something our English friend spotted straight away. The fig leaves.’

‘Christmas decorations,’ Marrone interrupted.

‘Do you put up fig leaves for Christmas?’

‘Well, no. But…’

‘My intuition is they have something to do with catering.’

‘Fine, fine,’ the captain agreed.

‘More importantly, and again I’m grateful to Julia Wellbeloved for prompting this realization, there’s the question of why? What’s the point of covering up the supposed shame of some 500-year-old frescoes? Who could possibly object to their nakedness being revealed, and the removal of the prudish, ugly additions of whichever damned Medici put them there to begin with?’

Marrone’s head went from side to side, a sign of faint agreement.

‘I can see there’s something sexual here. I’m not as stupid as you think.’

‘I don’t think you’re stupid for one moment, Walter. You’re the most clinical and precise investigative officer it’s ever been my privilege to work with.’

The captain looked surprised and said, ‘You mean that?’

‘Of course I do! In ninety-nine per cent of cases you’re king, and my small and unpredictable talents are quite unnecessary.’ He hesitated then added, ‘But this is the one per cent. I’m sure of it. Of course we can assume that whoever daubed chicken blood on these frescoes was motivated by fury at what he perceived to be their obscenity. That’s obvious. But we’re missing a more important and informative question.’

Marrone blinked. ‘Which is?’

‘Who knew our beautiful couple would soon be revealed in all their naked glory? Not the general congregation of Carmine, that’s for sure. The chapel’s been sheeted off ever since restoration work began. There’s been no announcement in the papers. Nothing in the art magazines. I’ve looked.’

‘Interesting,’ Marrone observed.

‘Who knew?’ Fratelli repeated. ‘The restorers themselves. The officials of the Uffizi, the city art institutions, the writers and photographers preparing the tourist guides.’

‘Bleeding-heart atheist liberals, all of them,’ the captain noted. ‘They’d love the fact there was a bit of nudity on the walls. No point looking among that bunch…’

‘Very probably. So we must think about the small people, the invisible people. The ones they never notice. Builders and scaffolders. Suppliers of paint and materials, food and drink. Church wardens. That stolid proletarian stock from which this city was built. The Medici’s cannon fodder. The hoi polloi.’

‘You’re starting to sound like a bleeding-heart liberal yourself.’

‘Politics have nothing to do with it. That’s where we start looking. The little people.’

The captain sniffed. ‘I have a report on my desk saying the damage was insignificant. Chicken blood is easily washed off, apparently. It will be back the way it was by the end of the week. In any case, even supposing we could drag some lunatic vandal to court, he’d get a suspended sentence and an appointment with a psychiatrist. There are no obvious suspects. If we happen to bump into one—’

‘I haven’t finished!’

There it was again. The sudden anger. The flash of violence. Ambra Neri had seen this same strange and uncontrollable emotion earlier that morning. Where did it come from? This was all so foreign. Unlike the man he thought himself to be.

Marrone sat sullen and silent.

‘I apologize,’ Fratelli told him. ‘But you must hear me out. The daubs on Adam and Eve were what we all saw. They weren’t everything. Over the serpent. The beast with a woman’s head. There he painted something else. A bloody halo.’

The captain’s right eyebrow rose in disbelief.

‘Bear with me,’ Fratelli begged, and seized some books from his carrier-bag collection, turning the pages on two titles about Hebrew mythology and ancient biblical lore. ‘Who was the first woman, Walter? Do tell me.’

‘Eve, of course.’

‘You think?’

Marrone looked at his watch and scowled.

‘Jewish folklore,’ Fratelli said, bringing out a book. ‘The Alphabet of Ben Sira. Probably eighth century. According to this, the first woman was called Lilith. She wasn’t drawn from Adam’s rib. She was his equal. Made from dirt and dust like him. Like us.’

‘And?’

‘And she refused to mate with him the way he wanted. Lying down, him dominant, on top. Lilith believed herself as good as any man. If there was sex to be had, she wished to control it.’

‘Pino, Pino…’

‘Bear with me! Lilith abandoned him and went to live with the demons, bearing their children, dominating them, not him. It was then God made Eve. The second woman. The obedient, servile wife. That’s why Masolino’s serpent has a woman’s head. A beautiful one. She’s Lilith, come back to take her revenge on the man who failed her, and the woman who took her place in Paradise.’

Walter Marrone was a literal-minded man. Not slow, certainly not dense.

‘This is an interesting idea,’ he said. ‘You’re saying that, by painting a halo on the woman of the snake, this Lilith, our vandal is somehow worshipping an ancient Hebrew myth?’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying,’ Fratelli admitted.

‘That he’s Jewish? How many Jews are there in Florence?’

Fratelli shuffled on his chair. ‘Well, there’s one here, if you remember.’

‘Oh, come on. That was an accident of birth. You’re as Florentine as any man I know.’

‘It was not an accident! I was taken!’

Marrone looked a little shame-faced.

‘I’m sorry,’ Fratelli added, his voice losing some of its volume. ‘My antecedents are irrelevant. I wasn’t saying he was Jewish. Just that the inspiration came from there. We get ideas from everywhere. Painters, writers, dreamers, mystics, all kinds of people, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, atheists even… they all got obsessed with Lilith one way or another. You should look at some of the things the English were doing during the nineteenth century…’

‘The English now! You said we were looking for a builder. Or a caterer. One of the hoi polloi.’

‘An educated man too,’ Fratelli replied. ‘Self-educated, perhaps. Obsessive. There. See. We’re narrowing it down already.’

‘Pino…’

‘Think about this, Walter. Someone breaks into the Brancacci Chapel with a dead rooster. He smears blood on two sets of precious frescoes and covers up the nakedness of the figures with some cheap decorations from a restaurant. After that he paints… very carefully I think, look at the pictures you must have… he paints a halo over the beautiful head of the serpent, the female demon who tempted Eve and brought about our expulsion from Paradise.’

Marrone did think about it. Then he said one word. ‘And?’

‘Does that feel finished to you? Does any of this leave you thinking: we’re done now? He’s had his fun? He’ll return to putting plaster on walls rather than the blood of a slaughtered bird. Doling out lampredotto or selling pizza. Our man will go off the rails just this once, and never again feel the need to walk to that feverish, sexual place he visited in the Brancacci when he stood there, wiping the bare flesh of those beautiful creatures with the neck of a dead chicken?’

He tugged at his white hair and shook his head.

‘Though I still wish to God I knew why that rooster had no comb.’

‘Are you sure you’re telling me everything?’ Marrone asked. ‘You seem very confident of yourself, I must say.’

‘In this I’m confident,’ Fratelli replied, and didn’t look him in the eye. ‘Don’t ask for reasons. You wouldn’t understand them.’

‘I could try…’

‘No. They’re irrelevant and you don’t have the time. I want to see the files. The detailed reports. I want access to criminal records. I want to be able to ask questions of people who’ll come running to you to complain afterwards, and when they do I need you to tell them to go shove their heads up their arses.’

‘I can’t. You know that. You’re not a serving officer. You never will be.’

‘And when the next call comes?’ Fratelli roared.

His voice was so loud it bounced off the white walls of Marrone’s room and carried through to the adjoining office where the plainclothes officers worked, ten or more crammed tightly together on desks that hadn’t changed in four decades.

‘I’m sorry, Pino,’ Marrone said, eyes on his pens and notepad again. ‘Find your own way out, please. I’ve got a lot to do.’

‘Give me a boy, Walter. The stupidest, most useless cadet you have. The one no one wants to work with. The idiot you want out of your hair even more than you wish it of me.’

‘You are out of my hair,’ Marrone retorted.

Fratelli sat there, arms folded, waiting. There was always a failure in the stazione. A mistake who’d slipped through personnel for some reason. The runt of the litter. The accident in waiting.

‘I’ll be gentle, Walter, I promise. He can look at the records, wave his card at people. I’ll merely pull the strings.’

‘What did I do to deserve you as a friend?’ the captain asked with a mournful sigh.

‘You gave me rope to hang myself. And profited rather well from that, I think. Remember the finocchiona in Scandicci. And the widow Bartolini’s chihuahuas. Come on. One useless cadet is all I ask. You won’t miss him. Not for a minute.’

Marrone’s lined and dignified face darkened.

‘You always know my weak spot,’ the captain grumbled.

‘An occasional capacity for original thought is actually one of your many strengths,’ Fratelli said, and crossed his fingers beneath his heavy coat.

‘If I were to agree to this,’ Marrone muttered in a low, cold tone. ‘Do you promise you won’t break any rules? Or get the infant into so much trouble I have to fire him? And if you find out anything — anything — I want to know first and decide what to do with it.’

This small victory brought a smile to Fratelli’s face. He shook back his head of white hair and beamed, then untwined his fingers and held out his hand across the desk.

‘Agreed!’ he declared, and pumped Marrone’s fingers before the man had the chance to change his mind.

‘And don’t look so damned pleased with yourself,’ the captain added. ‘You haven’t met him yet.’

The corridor twisted and angled through buildings, across streets, finally, to a set of steps that led out into a chilly bright day. She’d been here before, on an earlier visit as a student. The vast behemoth of the Pitti Palace lay ahead.

Her guide seemed anxious to pass her charge on to the next link in the chain. She ushered Julia into the back of the Pitti and found an office with a sign bearing the name ‘Giovanni Tornabuoni’.

There was a secretary inside wearing an identical blue suit. She was filing her nails and reading a glossy magazine.

‘Tornabuoni isn’t here,’ this new woman said.

The attendant from the Palazzo Vecchio shrugged and walked out without a word.

‘I do have an appointment,’ Julia said.

‘I am aware of this,’ the secretary replied, as if the statement was idiotic.

‘Will Signor Tornabuoni be back soon?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Shall I wait?’

She frowned and said nothing.

‘Did he leave a message?’

‘No.’

Then a thought. ‘But someone did. Soderini’s office passed it on.’ The note was sitting on the desk in front of her. ‘Here.’

It was from Pino Fratelli and read, ‘I have uncovered matters which may interest you. Please meet me at the market in the Sant’Ambrogio at twelve thirty. We will eat lampredotto. Pino.’

‘Dammit, Fratelli,’ she swore. ‘I am not yours to summon.’

Except she was. Men who missed appointments never deserved a second chance. Not after she’d married one. Vanni Tornabuoni could live with Sandro Soderini’s displeasure over this particular missed date. She felt it might be considerable.

Besides, Julia had come to feel that Fratelli was the most interesting person she’d met in Florence. Spot on about the mayor with the wandering eyes, and probably a few other things, too.

That left her at a loose end. There was no one to interview and time to kill.

‘Can I look round the paintings?’ she asked.

‘The ticket office,’ the woman said, scraping her nails once more, ‘is round the corner.’

Fratelli stood at the counter of I’Trippaio, his favourite lampredotto stall in the Sant’Ambrogio market hall, watching Luca Cassini, Walter Marrone’s boy, feed. There was no other word for it. Cassini was twenty-two, a good head taller than Fratelli, broad-shouldered and huge, with a blank, childish face that looked forever lost. He played for the Florence rugby team in his spare time. Seemed more interested in that than Carabinieri work, as far as Fratelli could work out. In the space of fifteen minutes he’d downed two panini from the stall, one stuffed with lampredotto and broth, the other oozing tripe.

In spite of his true lineage, Fratelli thought himself a Florentine mostly. This meant that, especially in winter, he found it difficult to get through the day without stopping at one of the lampredotto stalls in the city for a snack. He’d grown up with the stuff. He didn’t mind that it was the fourth stomach of a cow, stewed until it resembled a dirty dishcloth, then sliced, drenched in cooking juice and handed over steaming in bread for a pittance. Tripe he could take or leave, but lampredotto… They were eating it here when Brunelleschi was bossing around his builders. It was as much a part of the city as the Duomo itself.

But one was all he could take. Not so the giant, blank-faced Luca Cassini. The young man was now on to dessert with a large, cheap chocolate bar. Fratelli felt his own appetite would remain absent at least until the evening snacks that came with a Negroni. He was glad they’d arrived early and that Julia Wellbeloved, if she were to answer his call, had not witnessed this pasty-faced giant in a cheap grey suit chomping on guts, patiently pulling out bits of fat and gristle and dumping them on the cement market floor without a second thought. Foreigners could be funny about lampredotto.

‘Are you full?’ he asked when Cassini finished the chocolate bar and whisked the wrapper over his shoulder.

The young man thought about this for a moment, glanced at the steaming tubs of offal in front of him and, to Fratelli’s relief, said, ‘For now.’

‘Didn’t I know your father? Used to be a carabiniere too?’ Fratelli thought for a moment and added, ‘He was big as well.’

‘You mean granddad?’

‘Right,’ Fratelli said, nodding. Sometimes he lost track of time.

Cassini seemed a willing enough kid. Perhaps the low brow and slightly piggy eyes were deceptive. It was possible his manner, so slow and ponderous, represented nothing more than a personal trait, not the sign of dim-wittedness it appeared. Luca’s father was a Florence councillor, a trader with a shop selling expensive tourist tat, ceramics and leather, near Santa Croce. The kind of man who could exert a modicum of influence, pull a public job for a son who had no obvious qualifications for anything else. The family connections with the Carabinieri one generation back helped too.

Fratelli always made an effort to try to like the people he worked with, hard as that was on occasion. Not now. Cassini possessed none of the sarcastic surliness that marred some other young officers. Besides, he could recall his own too-smart self at that age in their caustic comments and sly glances. If this kid could do the job…

‘Let’s go over those notes we made, Luca,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you’re going to do when I send you back to the station.’

‘Check criminal records to see if they know any of the workmen at the Brancacci Chapel,’ Cassini began, reading slowly from his notepad.

‘Good,’ Fratelli said.

‘Check with catering companies to see if they’ve any record of stolen decorations with…’ He leaned down and peered at his own handwriting, struggling with it. Fratelli’s heart began to sink. ‘Er…’

‘Fig leaves. Fig leaves. Write it down properly. Capital letters if you need to.’

‘I was never good at writing,’ Cassini admitted. ‘Not my field.’

‘What is?’

The big youngster grinned, balled a massive fist and said, ‘Trouble. Bit of a fight? I’m your man.’

Fratelli sighed. ‘Don’t let them do that to you.’

‘Do what?’

‘Use you as a punch bag.’

‘I can handle myself.’

‘And one of these days you’ll walk in with that big grin and that big fist and the man you’re looking at will be carrying a knife. Or a gun.’

‘Not happened yet.’

‘You only need it once. The records. The catering suppliers. Take a look at any sex crimes in Oltrarno too. See if there’s something recent.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know!’

And it’s probably not a sex crime either, Fratelli thought. That would be too obvious.

Having some kind of line into the station seemed a good idea when it occurred to him in Marrone’s office. Now he wasn’t so sure. The records department was a lair of filing cabinets and paper going back decades, the staff both inefficient and — on occasion — downright surly. They would devour this callow young man as easily as he’d swallowed down his lampredotto and tripe. There was supposed to be computerization coming along soon, and with it the ability to track down suspects in an instant and cross-reference known crimes with possibilities too. Sometime there would be radios that worked as well, not just when they felt like it, and a central control centre that could take and dispatch messages in seconds. Peace and happiness would break out all over the world, probably on the same day.

He was never going to see any of that, and he knew it.

‘Take a look at the sexual assault files outside the city. Go back a few years. Murder cases, even. Look to see if you’ve any record of women being found with…’

His blood chilled as he tried to say the words; his voice failed him.

‘Found with what?’ Luca Cassini asked.

‘Marks on their faces. On their mouths.’ Fratelli opened up his coat to get some air. It suddenly seemed hot in the market. ‘Lipstick or blood or something red. Daubed on them.’

The big young cop just stared at him. ‘How do I find that out?’ he asked.

‘You read the files.’

‘Which files?’

Fratelli took a deep breath. How did he explain this? Sometimes he’d spend days in records, going up and down the shelves, looking for links that eluded him. It was an obsessive, time-consuming task, one that frequently ended in disappointment. The Carabinieri didn’t work that way any more. They wanted quick results. Not people spending weeks poring over ancient scraps of paper.

‘Never mind. Just stick to the recent stuff. Ask whoever’s running records these days if something rings a bell.’

‘Why did we come here?’ Cassini asked.

Fratelli was watching the side entrance of the market. She’d turn up. He was sure of it.

‘Couple of reasons,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the door. ‘When did you join up?’

‘Been an officer eight months.’

‘You won’t understand then. Over there…’ He nodded towards the southern door. ‘Two streets away, no more, you’ll find a building site. Until a year or so ago that was the Murate prison. Not a nice place.’

‘Heard of that,’ Cassini said.

‘You should have done. For a couple of hundred years it was where we locked up anyone we didn’t like. So did the Germans during the war. If there’s such a thing as ghosts…’

Cassini was laughing. It sounded as if someone had told a bear a joke.

Fratelli glowered at him and the kid shut up.

‘If there were such a thing,’ the older man continued, ‘we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think for the sound of their screams. I used to deal with prisoners there sometimes. You know those paintings of the Virgin, the little shrines along the Via Ghibellina?’

Cassini was putting gum in his mouth. He hadn’t a clue.

‘They were there to give men a glimpse of the hereafter just before they went to meet it. On the scaffold.’

Not a flicker of emotion. The young, Fratelli thought. And then he saw her marching in through the open doors, looking furious, scanning the crowds hunting for fish and meat and vegetables. And lampredotto.

‘I still don’t know why we’re here,’ the young carabiniere repeated.

‘Because it reminds me of things. It helps me think.’

No one removed a rooster’s comb without a reason. Finding that was on his own to-do list, and he damned near forgot it too. His head wasn’t right sometimes…

‘Also,’ Fratelli added, ‘because this place serves the finest lampredotto in Florence. And I am a man of taste. I’ll catch a bus across town for the best, the most memorable of anything. A Negroni. A glass of good Chianti or Montepulciano. The right cheese. A piece of perfect stomach. An intriguing conversation. Such as this.’

‘You’ve got a lot of time on your hands.’ A pause. ‘From what I hear.’

‘What you… hear?’

But it was too late by then. Julia Wellbeloved was with them.

‘That bastard in the Pitti Palace stood me up,’ she cried. ‘I had an appointment…’

‘This is Italy,’ Fratelli pointed out. ‘Time tends to be more flexible than you’re used to.’

‘An appointment made by Sandro Soderini.’

The two men blinked and stared at her, then Fratelli asked, ‘What bastard?’

‘Some ass called Giovanni Tornabuoni.’

For a moment they were lost for words.

‘You move in such grand circles,’ Fratelli said finally.

‘Not when they don’t turn up I don’t. My work! How am I to do it if no one speaks to me?’

‘The mayor spoke to you, didn’t he?’

‘I know that look,’ she said darkly.

His eye caught hers, and he nodded slyly at the giant next to him.

‘A fine man,’ Fratelli declared. ‘A credit to the city. Your work will be done. And done brilliantly.’ He took the young carabiniere’s arm. ‘Julia Wellbeloved, meet my young colleague Luca Cassini. He’s here to help us.’

Cassini nodded and blushed and stuttered. Didn’t meet women much, Fratelli guessed.

‘Buy your new English friend something to eat, Luca,’ Fratelli ordered, handing over some money. ‘I must leave you for a moment. Julia…’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Nature calls,’ he lied.

She was leaning over the glass counter of I’Trippaio, sniffing the tubs of lampredotto and tripe.

‘You don’t have to eat that,’ Fratelli said quickly. ‘Really. It’s for us locals. Pretty disgusting…’

‘It’s the guts thing I’ve heard about?’ Julia’s lively, attractive face broke into a grin. ‘I’ll try some. Why not?’ She leaned and stared at the offal swilling around the silver pots. ‘Which bit is which?’

‘Best not ask,’ Fratelli said, then gave a little salute and pottered off down the aisles towards the butchers’ stalls.

Fratelli was gone for much longer than she expected. He’d lied about his purpose. She could see it so easily in his face. So Julia was forced to talk to the young carabiniere Luca Cassini, a task she didn’t find easy.

Eventually she decided it was time to deal with the question that had been nagging her since the previous day.

‘What’s wrong with Pino?’ she asked Cassini straight out.

He shuffled uncomfortably on his massive feet and stared around at the stalls, the people, the porters heaving crates around. Anywhere but in her direction. Cassini was chewing gum, a little too vigorously.

‘Luca?’

‘What do you mean, what’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s off sick,’ she went on. ‘I don’t know who he leaned on to get you. But it doesn’t change things. There’s something wrong…’

‘Have you asked him?’

‘Yes! He said he’s mad.’ A pause. It had to be said. ‘As a mole.’

His broad blank face wrinkled in bafflement.

‘A mole?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Doesn’t seem mad to me,’ Cassini said. ‘Bit forgetful. Bit out of it sometimes. Only to be expected in the circumstances…’

He knew he shouldn’t have said the words the moment they left his mouth.

‘What circumstances?’

‘Well… he’s…’

‘What?’

‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’ Cassini said, so loudly the man behind the counter stared at him in shock.

Julia put down the panino. It was disgusting anyway. Luca Cassini shuffled even more awkwardly on his big feet and gazed at the grey cement floor.

She felt cold and stupid and guilty for dragging this out of him. Aggrieved that she’d made him share such a confidence with a stranger. That pained him, obviously.

‘Dying?’ she repeated.

‘It’s not as if it’s a secret. I’m sorry. I thought you two were friends. You must have known.’

‘Then why would I have asked? Oh bugger…’

‘The captain told me to humour him. Everyone in the station knows. He’s been off duty for a year or more. Before I started work there. They reckon it’s a miracle he’s not in hospital by now.’

‘What is it?’ she asked, and wished she didn’t have to hear the answer.

‘Head,’ Cassini replied, and put a finger to his own pale temple as if to make this clear. ‘Got something wrong inside it. Tumour, they said. My gran had one. Lot older than him, though. Horrible thing. Makes them seem stupid, mad sometimes, and they don’t even know it. Don’t realize they’re acting oddly at all. We had to have her put away…’

‘He’s the smartest, nicest man I’ve met since I came to Florence! He doesn’t need putting away.’

Cassini looked hurt by the vehemence of her outburst.

‘No, he doesn’t. And I never said he did. Everybody likes Pino. Everybody feels sorry for him. I’ll do what I can to help. With whatever this obsession is.’

‘Obsession…?’

‘That’s what the captain said. His words, not mine.’

Walter Marrone was fond of Fratelli. She’d seen that for herself. Perhaps he was right. This strange attack on the Brancacci Chapel was a fixation. A mania related to his condition.

‘I’m sorry, Luca. I didn’t mean to force you to say something you didn’t want.’

‘Oh, didn’t you?’ Cassini retorted.

He nodded down the lines of stalls. She followed the line of his gaze. Fratelli was coming back towards them, tugging at his white hair, thinking. He looked absent-minded, a little lost. But he walked like a fit and active man.

‘Pino’s good at that trick too, apparently,’ Cassini said. ‘Getting stuff out of you when you’d rather keep it quiet. Known for it.’ He looked at her. ‘You two make a pair if you ask me.’

‘I said I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah well.’ He seemed downcast, a little upset. ‘Horrible thing to have. You think there’s nothing wrong with you. Then one day…’ He took out his gum and stuck it underneath the counter, as if that made it disappear. ‘My gran never knew when it was going to happen either. After a while she forgot it was on the way altogether. Next thing she’s gone in the head. Not long after that she’s gone altogether…’

Fratelli strode up to the pair of them, beaming. ‘Well,’ he said, rather dryly. ‘It looks as if you two are getting on.’

Julia felt she was rather too close to tears.

‘How was the lampredotto?’ Fratelli asked, trying to look into her face.

‘Vile,’ she muttered. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go. Another appointment…’

‘But I thought…’ She was leaving already, head down, eyes damp. ‘Julia?’

The briefest of glances back in his direction, but enough to give him pause for thought.

‘I have some… information.’

‘Not now…’

‘Negroni,’ he said. ‘The usual place? Six thirty?’

‘Possibly,’ she murmured, then turned on her heels and left.

Fratelli glared at the young carabiniere. ‘Luca…?’

‘Yes?’

‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything!’

Fratelli tapped his feet.

‘Women,’ the young man added. ‘You know what they’re like. Can I go back to the station now, boss? Look up those records? The ones you want.’

‘Very well,’ Fratelli said, with a nod to the door.

He watched Julia Wellbeloved march out of the market, head down, clearly upset about something.

‘When you meet my English friend again, Luca… go easy on her,’ he told the young carabiniere.

‘Tell her to go easy on me then,’ Cassini grumbled, and looked just like his grandfather then: mutinous and trouble.

It was cold on the ragged little farm outside Fiesole and there was something thrashing in the old VW van again.

In the kitchen he checked the fava beans he’d soaked the night before. At four in the morning, hearing the sounds from outside, he’d peeled a potato, skinned an onion, chopped them, heated some water in an ancient pot, mixed them with the soaked beans and some water. That was eight hours ago now, and still the dish sat in the alcove by the fire, its base just in the embers. This was the way the peasants cooked. Basic. Ancient. Beans and vegetables simmering all day while a man went about his work.

He tested the white bodies with a fork. Drained them, fed the dog from some tins in the refrigerator, coming to an accommodation with the animal. It no longer growled at him. That was all it required. Care.

Stupid.

His mother called him that from the start. It was, he thought, the first word he’d ever heard, uttered from her curled lips as she bent over him in the crib.

Stupid.

An idiot servant born to obey, to waste away his meagre life doing what others wanted. And, for all the secret reading, for the many furtive, wrestling thoughts inside his head, maybe they were right. When hard decisions came along, he avoided them. Sought other things on which to waste his time.

Like cooking, idly, easily, letting the knives do the talking for him.

The dried beans were soft now, ready. So he picked some wild chicory from outside — plenty there, not far from a small greenhouse with a few marijuana plants in it. After that he mashed the messy contents of the battered pan into a rough puree, chopped the chicory and mixed in some of their low-grade olive oil. With the half-stale bread from the kitchen, there was a meal.

Savonarola himself probably ate something similar, day in, day out, while the Medici and the lords of the Signoria feasted on peacock and wild boar. Food was about sustenance, nourishment. Not lavish displays of excess, ostentation and boasting. A careful, timid man could live on nothing if he so chose. Then dip into their world, take what he wanted, and retreat back into the shadows.

He gave the mashed beans a stir in the earthenware pot, piled some on a lump of bread. The beat-up van was moving again. A body trussed up in the back, struggling, terrified, expectant.

Why had he waited?

Because he was weak and frightened.

He gazed at the fire, listened to the muffled shouts from beyond the door, watched the VW lurching from side to side.

Twenty years before, down a dark, drenched Oltrarno street, he’d met the Devil. Seen him and his cronies at their work. Joined them, after a fashion.

That night he’d felt something planted in himself; a poisonous seed, a cancer that would grow steadily over the years, whispering in his head, demanding he find the courage one day to cut it out.

And when that day came…

He went over to the sink and picked up the two knives he’d taken with him the night before, trying to stifle the thought: this would have been so much easier if he’d got it over and done with then.

Outside.

The dog didn’t bark. The birds didn’t sing. No voice rose in objection. No fiery angels fell from heaven shrieking at him to stop.

The only witnesses were the spindly, wizened shapes of the olive trees clinging to the steep hillsides.

Something still didn’t feel right, though. The story the woman had told him the night before…

She was supposed to be weak, defenceless. It hadn’t felt that way.

He found himself wondering about her, questioning how truthful she was when she spoke about the olive oil that was supposed to save them. Biologico. A magic wand that might mean they could one day give up selling dope and coke and heroin. How much bright green oil would be needed to fill the gap that junk left?

An ocean. And, in the end, nothing changed. She was still lost but alone now. Stranded. Dancing for self-made princes, whoring herself to their whims.

Dead before long, like him. That was the way it always went.

He stuffed some bread and beans and wild chicory into his mouth, watched the van shake in front of him.

When he’d finished with the food he raised the largest, shiniest, sharpest knife to his mouth and licked the edge of the blade with his tongue. It cut into the soft flesh. He tasted the warm saltiness of his own blood, felt the welcome steely sting of pain.

This will do.

The dog sat quietly on the bare earth, watching him.

It knew what was coming.

Beneath the pale uncaring sun he walked towards the van, tramping through the thick brown mud, staring at his hands and the implements they carried, trying not to shake.

Julia spent the afternoon in the Bargello, trying not to wonder whereabouts in the sprawling, high-walled Florence fortress they’d tortured prisoners for century upon century. Now the place was one more gallery full of beautiful objects — statues mainly, with little sign of its grim past. Savonarola and his fellow friars were forced into confessions inside these walls with the liberal use of the strappado, presumably in one of the elegant rooms that now contained the beautiful works of Donatello, Michelangelo and the ubiquitous Benvenuto Cellini. Had time erased their screams and the brutality of their tormentors? Did the past still live behind a closed door or trapped inside a glass case, waiting on the amusement of passing visitors?

That depended on the individual imagination, or a willingness to render oneself blind to the deeds that haunted the stones she found herself walking every day. The night before, in one of Pino Fratelli’s books, she’d read about the controversial executions that preceded the fall of Savonarola, when five of Florence’s leading citizens were convicted of secret correspondence with the exiled Piero de’ Medici. These men were treated to the strappado inside the Bargello too, then hurriedly led into the cold, square courtyard and beheaded one by one. Ever practical, the civic leaders of the time had liberally scattered straw across the cobblestones to make it easier to remove the stains. Now she stood on the first floor of the museum, amidst the beautiful statues, looking down at the scene of their bloody end. Bored tourists meandered over the unmarked paving stones, unconscious of history, blind to the pain of those who went before. Yet, she noticed, she felt the faint and ancient patina of their agony. And so, she thought, would Fratelli in this place, for reasons she couldn’t yet understand.

Her motives for coming to Florence seemed to be growing more tentative — illusory, even. There was only one more research appointment in her diary for this week: two days hence, in the convent of San Marco, a little out of the centre, once the seat of Savonarola himself. She’d read copiously about that place and couldn’t wait to get inside, though the letter confirming the meeting warned that some parts of the building were closed ‘per lavori’. Works. What the Americans liked to call ‘refurbishment’. Florence seemed to be in a constant state of repair, much of it from the dreadful flood of twenty years before. Fratelli had referred to that event in passing, and when he did she’d noticed a brief creasing of his benign face, as if the memory caused him pain.

Or else it was the illness. Mad as a mole. Another game of his; a riddle, a trick. There was no such saying in Italian. It was part of the man’s disguise, an effort to hide his true malady, a terminal one, just as Florence concealed her own past with a show of bright magnificence and marvellous statues over the bloodstained cobblestones. What kind of illness might it be? Was it terminal because the Italian doctors didn’t know how to treat it? Would an English physician feel the same way?

She’d thought of medicine as a career before choosing the law, rejecting it only because her own father was a general practitioner in Berkhamsted, one with more wealthy and influential medical friends working in Harley Street and the great London hospitals. Julia wanted independence as much as she craved a profession. This, she knew full well, was why her marriage had failed so rapidly. She’d refused to become Mrs Benjamin Vine. There seemed no point. Not in the 1980s. The modern world. And besides, in Italy, and many other parts of Europe, married women held on to their maiden names after they took those wordy and rather meaningless vows. What difference did it make anyway? For Benjamin, a crucial one, or so it turned out. He felt she’d rejected him. Or rather failed to embrace him, to fall in with his ways, to love him as much as his self-esteem merited.

The whole business was doomed from the beginning and she remained baffled as to why she’d never noticed till the crockery was flying round their little flat in Islington, amidst the tears and shouts.

Wandering round the Bargello, watched by the serene statues, she thought of her ex-husband and her failed career as a lawyer; thought of Pino Fratelli, an intelligent, charming man, dying quietly, slowly, day by day, from an illness so subtle and insidious it was scarcely visible at all. It was entirely possible Florence was the wrong place for her to be at that moment. That her dreams of academic offers stemming from a brilliant dissertation were fantasies, never to be achieved. She’d split with Benjamin only six months before, left her job not long after. Everything had happened in a rush, against her naturally cautious English nature. If she wished, she could quickly return to Oltrarno, pack in a hurry — hopefully before Pino Fratelli got home from his investigative peregrinations around the city. Then walk to the station of Santa Maria Novella, catch a train north, be in Paris the following day. After that she would change lire to francs, meander slowly to the coast, eking out her dwindling money along the way, take a ferry across the Channel, and be home in chill, grey Hertfordshire, penniless, before the week was out.

Her loving father would always take her back, say a few kind and gentle words, offer support, moral and financial. Twenty-eight and as lost as a child. It seemed pathetic, selfish, and she wasn’t like that, not at all.

The close, high walls of the fortress museum began to oppress her. She walked out into the street, went into a nearby café for a macchiato, sat alone on a stool at the counter idly watching the TV. The core of her planned essay — to try to fathom the reason behind inexplicable, insane attacks against works of art — seemed to be growing more distant by the hour. Someone committed this very act almost in front of her yesterday in the Brancacci Chapel, and her immediate instinct had been to shrink from the deed. To seek an explanation for it from books or interviews with dry city officials, not the obvious sources: the police and the people they hunted. That was why she was still no closer to understanding the riddle she sought to solve. A lack of effort, of determination, of curiosity. Of courage. Though, if she were honest, even Fratelli — who possessed all those in spades — was wrestling with those strange bloody daubs on the Brancacci’s walls.

She remembered him wandering off in the Sant’Ambrogio market, leaving her with the nervous young carabiniere who’d blurted out the truth about his illness. He was looking for something there. From the expression on his face, she suspected he’d found it. Or a kind of answer anyway. And here she was, waiting on Sandro Soderini and the feckless Tornabuoni, begging for appointments that might never be kept, instead of attempting what the sick Fratelli did as second nature: hunting for direct answers; sifting for clues in the narrow, grubby streets of Florence, among the detritus of the centuries.

There was no excuse. No good reason to drift back to England, a failure twice over in less than a year. On Thursday, she thought. In San Marco. That’s where I begin. In the meantime…

Time to kill, and her head too full of paintings and statues. More than anything all those smug dead faces that lined the Vasari Corridor, staring mutely back at her as if accusing her of complicity in the unsolved crime of being alive for no good purpose.

She needed an escape. Julia walked back into the centre of the city, found a cinema and sat in an almost-empty theatre watching a harmless American comedy new to Italy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, laughing infrequently, mostly at the strange way the subtitles translated High School American English into Italian.

It was dark by the time she came out. She felt better. A Negroni with Fratelli, some news of what he’d found, would be welcome. Could she sit and listen to him, be charmed by him, without mentioning she now saw behind his mask? She’d no idea. But he was the only man in Florence she’d warmed to, and his presence and pyrotechnic conversation, forever leaping in unexpected directions, amused her. The man appreciated her company too, she thought. It was an agreeable bargain on both sides.

There were few tourists in the Piazza della Signora when she walked across the square towards the river. Lights still burned in the offices of the Palazzo Vecchio. She wondered what Sandro Soderini, the slyly lascivious mayor was up to. Working? Plotting? Bawling out Vanni Tornabuoni for missing an appointment with a woman Soderini wished to impress? Or fixing a date with a girlfriend? She doubted he had just the one.

She stopped and stared at the bronze circular plaque set in the cobblestones in front of Michelangelo’s David. The inscription said this was the exact spot where Savonarola and his two fellow priests were hanged and burned almost five centuries before. The place too, she realized, where the friar himself had organized the famous bonfire of the vanities in which paintings by Botticelli and perhaps Michelangelo had perished in the flames. A few yards away, in the shadows of the Loggia dei Lanzi, stood another reminder of the past’s ubiquitous presence around her. Benvenuto Cellini’s brutal bronze of Perseus, holding the head of the slaughtered Medusa.

Julia strolled over to look more closely at this fierce figure on its plinth at the edge of the loggia platform. Even under the weak lights, the intentional savagery was evident, in the muscular stance of the warrior, the severed head gripped in his fingers, its realistic tendons, sinews and cortex dangling beneath, seeming to drip real blood on to the stones of Florence. It wasn’t hard to see there was a shocking facility for violence in the artist who made this ferocious scene real. Not that this was obvious in his majestic bearded statue, which she’d seen midway on the Ponte Vecchio that morning, and from Hitler’s window in the Vasari Corridor. There was a hidden side to the Florentines, as there was to their city. Both concealed their interior nature with a fluent, casual ease.

The light from the street lamps was poor and forced her to get nearer. Close up the nature of the statue changed. Now she could see that Medusa was no monster at all. Her naked body, on which the victorious Perseus stepped in triumph, appeared voluptuous, a middle-aged sculptor’s sexual fantasy. Her dead face, frozen in the severed head held aloft in Perseus’ left hand, which gripped her snaking hair, was guileless and bewitching. Medusa’s features were not unlike those of Perseus himself: young and preternaturally sensual. Some struggle was going on here, between male and female, oppressor and oppressed, and it seemed to her that Cellini was hinting that there was precious little to divide victor and victim. Julia thought again of the couple on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel, naked and innocent on one pillar, shamed and made all-too-human on the other. Florence appreciated such a war of opposites, liked watching this struggle between dark and light, and with it the opportunity to dive into the swimming, grey ocean of moral and sexual uncertainty that lay between the two.

A memory from a guidebook. She stepped on to the loggia itself and walked to the rear of the statue. There, sculpted on the back of Perseus’s helmet, like a death mask reproduced in bronze, was Cellini’s own face, bearded and strangely contorted. She shivered and checked herself. So much art, so much of the past… so much blood.

A voice came out of the darkness at the back of the loggia. It was coarse and aggressive and a little unsound and it said, ‘What are you looking at?’

She staggered against the Medusa statue in shock, reeled round and saw — just — a shape in the shadows.

‘Nothing,’ she said loudly. Then in Italian, ‘Niente. Niente.’

A man came out of the gloom and for the first time since she’d arrived in Italy, Julia Wellbeloved felt afraid. He was tall and strong. Around his powerful shoulders was a full black cloak with a hood that rose to cover most of his features, giving him the appearance of a violent, fanatical monk. What she could see of his face was pale and hairless, with a prominent nose and sunken eyes that gleamed in the light of the loggia’s lamps. She felt she ought to know him for some reason, though the idea seemed ridiculous.

‘Nothing,’ she murmured in English again, retreating to the steps down to the square.

He had what looked like a boathook in his right hand and a huge canvas bag, weighed down by something heavy, in his left.

As she watched, a little more of the face came out from the hood and his large, canine mouth opened and shut, with a snapping noise.

She turned and strode quickly away, down towards the arches of the Uffizi and the river. It was dark and empty in the gap between the galleries on both sides and she wondered whether he would follow. At the end there were a few hawkers’ stalls on the raised pavement by the river, beneath the Vasari Corridor. Julia hurried over, stood in the lights of the nearest, and then, only then, turned to look behind her.

There was nothing. She was shaking like a leaf. The man with the stall, cheap jewellery and souvenirs, looked at her and asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she whispered without thinking, fighting for control of herself, perplexed by this extreme reaction to nothing more than an itinerant lunatic, the kind of down-and-out she met in London all the time.

Why did she run away like that? Why was she so hesitant, so weak sometimes? Pino Fratelli didn’t fear a thing and he was dying. Waiting for her in the little bar across the river now. It was six thirty already. She’d lost track of the time.

A taxi tottered across the hump of the Ponte Vecchio towards her. She waved it down and told him to take her to the bar in San Niccolò.

The man turned to her and looked impressed.

‘Negroni,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘They do the best in Florence, Signora,’ he said. ‘You should try one.’

Then they bumped along the Lungarno, past the arches of the Uffizi. She couldn’t help but look back towards the piazza, though there was nothing there to see.

‘The cock’s comb,’ Fratelli declared with obvious pride. ‘I should have guessed.’ He raised his tumbler of Negroni and toasted her. ‘I never would have spotted this without your prompting. Salute!’

The little bar was empty except for the two of them. Fratelli had bagged a table at the back. It was now laden with food; among the dishes a platter of vegetables with olive-oil dressing which he called ‘pinzimonio’ and said was especially for her. Raw fennel, carrot, celery, peppers… an odd thing to eat on a wet and chilly November night. But with some cheese and the strong cocktail, which she was starting to appreciate, she was beginning to feel happier after the odd encounter by Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa.

‘You seem shaken,’ Fratelli noted. ‘Are you OK?’

She wished he could be a little less observant at times.

‘I met a beggar. Outside the Palazzo Vecchio. He was hiding in the loggia. I think I disturbed him.’

‘We have too many barboni,’ he said. ‘Though honestly it’s not their fault. If you fall through the cracks in Italy there are few people to drag you back.’

‘Barboni?’

‘The ones with beards. It’s what we call tramps.’ He shrugged and picked at some finocchiona. ‘I always feel guilty when I see them, for some reason. Going home to a warm bed. Some food. A little peace and privacy. They mean no harm, usually, though the druggies in Santo Spirito are best avoided, as I warned you.’

‘I can deal with tramps,’ she told him. ‘What about your cock’s comb?’

He was quiet for a moment, gazing at her, then he picked up one more piece of the fatty pink sausage and held it for a moment.

‘Food,’ Fratelli said. ‘We’ve always been obsessed with our stomachs. There are things we eat today that the Medici would have regarded as commonplace. You might have seen them in Sant’Ambrogio. Stuffed chicken necks, the head still on. Tripe. Intestines. Lampredotto itself.’

She found herself laughing. ‘Who on earth would eat a cockerel’s crest?’

‘And his balls too,’ he added. ‘Don’t forget that. I told you there were some curious cuts on the poor bird’s body. He must have wanted them and couldn’t be bothered to split the thing open to take anything else. Or else the meat was too tough to be used. It was an old cockerel. I’m no cook. I don’t know. But he was.’

She folded her arms and stared at him.

‘It’s a very old recipe,’ Fratelli said. ‘One they used to serve at some of the dining clubs that the aristocratic… ahem, gentlemen… patronized in the old days.’

Julia immediately recalled Soderini’s invitation and felt a little cold.

‘Dining clubs?’ she whispered.

The man with the bright white hair opposite her waved his hand dismissively.

‘The rich aren’t like us. It was the same when Dante walked these streets. They would take themselves to private places, drink and gorge and whore themselves stupid. Then, when that venal side of their nature had been exercised, return to governing the gracious republic of Florence before popping into the Duomo to confess their sins to a priest who might have been at the very same table.’ He scratched his cheek. ‘At least we’ve come on a little since then…’

‘You think?’

‘I do,’ he said emphatically. ‘But that doesn’t stop a few aficionados trying to recreate the glory days of the past, does it? And here’s the dish, made a few days in advance usually.’

He retrieved his notebook. It still had the logo of the Carabinieri on it.

‘Cibreo,’ Fratelli announced. ‘My butcher friend from Sant’Ambrogio is an amateur cook of some skill. He has these ancient recipe books. He’s never tried it himself, principally because he’s never found anyone willing to share the dish with him. There are several versions. One demands…’ He scanned the page. ‘Chicken combs and testicles cooked in butter with sage, then mixed with broth from a calf’s head, some unborn eggs, candied fruits, chopped biscuits, celery, cabbage, saffron, cloves, all thickened with beaten egg and lemon juice…’

‘Stop! Stop!’ she cried, pushing the plate of vegetables away from her.

‘I said it wasn’t popular. I’ve never heard of anyone eating anything like that. Why would you? Most of Florence lives on pizza and pasta, finocchiona and lampredotto, which seems a well-balanced diet to me. Particularly…’ He pushed the food back towards her. ‘With some pinzimonio.’

She couldn’t get Soderini’s face out of her head. That sly grin when he invited her to dine with the Brigata Spendereccia, the Spendthrift Brigade. And his words… We behave as if we are the most irresponsible, the richest, the most privileged men on earth — for one evening, anyway. And the next morning we trudge back to the office with aching heads.

‘Even I wouldn’t eat that muck,’ Fratelli said, and shook his head.

To pass an evening with La Brigata Spendereccia… That is something quite different. It’s also a secret society of a kind, so you must mention it to no one. That is an absolute condition. Agreed?

‘Definitely,’ she murmured.

‘Pardon?’

‘What does this mean, Pino?’

He reached up and tugged at his long white hair. She so wanted to reach out and stop that particular habit.

‘It means we have one more way to narrow down the possible identity of our intruder in the Brancacci Chapel. We may surmise he has some connection with the Carmine. As a worker, perhaps; even a parishioner close enough to see behind those thick sheets that hide the chapel from the nave. Maybe a supplier of food or something. Those fig leaves he plastered on to Adam and Eve… they were from a restaurant or a catering company. I’m sure of it.’

‘And how many of those are there in Florence?’

‘Hundreds,’ he said with a frown. ‘Perhaps thousands. I don’t know. But one that makes cibreo…’ Fratelli shook his head. ‘That’s unusual. Unique, I’d guess. I’ve never heard of such an establishment. Everyone wants fancy food these days. We’re too rich for the old muck. We want steak and guinea fowl and lobster. Not five-hundred-year-old offal. Nor has my butcher friend a clue who might cook cibreo any more, though anyone can buy a cockerel, of course. Or pick up the rest very easily. I can’t see this going on a restaurant menu.’

‘I may be able to help there,’ Julia said quietly.

Fratelli smiled. Such a genial, pleasant man. ‘You can?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Well…’ He grinned at her and waited.

‘There’s a price.’

‘Name it.’

She didn’t take her eyes off him. ‘The price is the truth. About your illness. No nonsense about…’ Julia twiddled her finger at her ear. ‘Madness and moles.’

Fratelli’s face fell at that. He thought for a moment. ‘Ah. Luca Cassini. I wondered what was eating at that callow young man. He seemed intimidated by you. I should have guessed he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. Walter said he was giving me the office idiot, though to be frank I feel he was uncharacte‌ristically unjust there. Luca’s just young and a little frightened by the large and complex world in which he finds himself. As are we all, if we have any sense.’

She’d finished her Negroni before him. Fratelli turned and spoke to the woman behind the bar, who made two more.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you wish.’

‘I do.’

‘May I ask why? This curious matter of the Brancacci apart… we’re strangers. Foreigners. When you finish your dissertation and return to academic glory in Great Britain, we will write perhaps, from time to time. And then… nothing. Why?’

‘Because I can’t deal with lies. I can’t take that from someone. I…’

The woman was bringing over the drinks. Julia was surprised by how welcome this conversation felt.

‘There will be a reason,’ he said, ‘but I don’t need to hear it.’

‘My husband. Ex-husband. He’s gone. He lied to me and…’

Fratelli shuffled uncomfortably on the plush bar seating. ‘You don’t have to tell me, Julia,’ he said quietly. ‘Truly.’

She let him finish squirming. ‘What if I want to?’

‘Then…’

‘I never thought I’d get divorced. That kind of thing happens to other people.’

‘Bad things are supposed to be like that.’

‘But they don’t. They happen to you. To me. I never really talked about it. To Ben. To my father. To anyone.’

‘You don’t need—’

‘I do, Pino. Please listen. I thought things were just… wrong. A little cold and awkward. Then I found out there was someone else. His business meetings. His nights away from the office. It all started not long after we married. Perhaps before. I was never enough for him. I was wrong somehow.’

‘He must have been a very blind and stupid man,’ Fratelli said as he clutched his drink to his jacket.

‘No. He was a bastard. I’ve always had an eye for them somehow. I’ll never know why. The worse they treat you… The more you forgive them. I hated myself more than I hated him for that very reason.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ he said straight out. ‘He was the one who deceived you.’

‘You deceived me too. About…’ Another twirl of the finger at her ear. ‘Madness and moles.’

‘You were a stranger then. It was a white lie. I’m not a… a…’

‘A bastard,’ she said, and felt the uneasiness between them. ‘I realize that.’

He stared out of the long window at the front of the bar. It was raining again, steady drizzle that made the cobbles in the street outside shine like black mirrors.

‘I can’t stomach lies,’ she said. ‘I want the truth. Then I’ll tell you what I know. If it’s any use…’

He smiled. Such a calm man. Easy in himself. Resigned to whatever future lay ahead. She’d never met anyone quite like Pino Fratelli before.

‘But you don’t have to if you don’t want…’

‘There’s no need for a bargain, my dear. You asked, so I’ll answer.’

He spent hours hidden in the chilly shadows at the back of the Loggia dei Lanzi, waiting for the square to clear. It was stupid to have approached the woman earlier. She was English. A tourist, probably. With any luck she’d be gone in the morning, his one witness vanished to the next destination on the Grand Tour: Venice or Rome, Pompeii or Capri. They fluttered through the city like transient insects blown on the wind; temporary minor nuisances, nothing more.

But she spoke Italian, he thought. Easily, confidently. And the way she looked at him…

There was no point in wasting time or effort on what he could not change. To her he was a tramp in a hood, nothing more.

A set of nearby bells was striking the half-hour. Eight thirty. The steady rain had driven all but a few stragglers from the Piazza della Signoria. Those that did emerge from the darkness of the Uffizi or the adjoining streets scurried across the cobbles hoods up, heads down, or struggling beneath copious umbrellas billowing in the stiff breeze.

Wait for the moment. Do this well. Nothing would be the same hereafter. An endgame was in motion, one he could shape a little, direct to some extent, but never control. That was impossible, for anyone; even the great dignitaries whose lights no longer burned in the municipal offices of the Palazzo Vecchio to the right of this small and curious alcove on the square. His life was a series of distinct events, each magnificent in its horror, separated by long stretches of boredom and insignificance. Now the period between each occurrence was shortening. Or he was hastening the arrival of the next. He was unsure which. Something moved, an unseen impetus, shuffling him on, as the angel with the sword hastened the fallen couple from the garden in Masaccio’s fresco.

All that mattered was the immediate act ahead and he knew full well what that was.

When the square was as clear as it was likely to be at this time of night — scarcely a soul nearby, no one emerging any more from the Palazzo Vecchio; no cars, no bicycles — he strode out from the gloom at the back of the Loggia dei Lanzi. In his gloved right hand he held the boathook he’d stolen that evening from the rowing club on the city bank of the Arno. In his left was the object he’d kept in the bag. It proved heavier than he expected.

Walking towards Cellini’s Perseus, he attached the thing to the boathook. Then, very quickly and purposefully, he shone a torch on the bronze of the warrior, aiming it at the left hand that held the Gorgon’s severed head.

The face was beautiful and sensuous, her body naked and beguiling with its bronze gouts of blood and fleshy sinews. But this Medusa was an exaggerated, theatrical creature too, her severed head dripping with a snakelike cortex and a profusion of torn and dangling veins and muscles.

Artistic licence. Or a point about the woman. That serpents were a part of her, just as they were with Lilith in the Brancacci. Everyone knew that carnal trio on the Carmine walls.

The truth, as any butcher understood, was more mundane. A sharp knife did swift work, on beast or man. Reality was less dramatic. Both cleaner and more messy.

Still, this curious creative fancy helped his purpose. He secured his gift to the Piazza della Signoria more tightly on the boathook, then lifted it high until the hair met the shining head of Medusa glittering in the rain. There, in the prominent prow of snakes, above her closed and peaceful eyes, he moved it carefully to entangle new with old and keep the thing in place for all to see.

For one tense moment he stood back and surveyed his work.

A noise. A group of tourists cackling like teenagers on the far side of the piazza. Drunk, probably. Students from the language schools; young Americans discovering what it was like to enjoy cheap and plentiful alcohol in the place they called ‘Yurrup’.

He moved the hook, untangling it from the thing above him. Dampness was seeping through his gloves. Rain, or something else. He’d no idea. No witnesses, no fingerprints, no easy lines to join him to this deed.

A job well done, he thought, then lobbed the pole into the shadows and hurried off through the rain, back to the little van parked in a lane close to Santa Croce, and then the green silence outside Fiesole.

‘I told you no lies,’ Fratelli objected. He pointed at his head, his pale finger prodding the thick white hair there. ‘I’m mad.’

‘As a mole?’

‘That’s how I think of it. Something dark with sharp teeth. Beneath the surface. Moving. Growing. Something I can’t see or touch. Or feel much any more, thanks to the drugs the kind and careful doctor prescribes. But something which’ — that very Italian frown once more, brief — ‘will one day break surface, look around and wish for a life of its own. Which will be my death, of course. And its, too. Not that the mole is to know. It’s an innocent creature. Entirely blameless. Such things happen.’

She sipped at her drink and watched him recounting all this as if it were the most natural sequence of events in the world.

‘When?’ Julia asked.

That shrug again.

‘Tonight. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Next year. Probably not beyond that. Or so all the specialists say. In the meantime I must be patient. I can’t drive. I can’t work. I mustn’t indulge in anything which may be stressful — the drugs are supposed to help there. I must wait for death and twiddle my fingers in the meantime. The twiddling is the grimmest part. Far worse than the sickness or the prospect of my… disappearance.’

He leaned forward and touched the sleeve of her coat, gazing intently into her eyes.

‘I’m no different to anyone else really. Each life winds down a day at a time. Mine travels at the same speed as yours. All that’s different is the duration, not the pace. Which, since I’m almost twenty years older than you in the first place, is only natural. Don’t feel sorry for me. Pity is the most debilitating of sentiments. Spare me that.’

‘My father’s a doctor,’ she said briskly. ‘He knows specialists in London…’

‘I’ve seen specialists in Florence, Rome, Milan, Turin. You think they’re somehow inferior?’

‘Of course not! But medicine’s not… fixed.’

‘It’s science with a little art on the side,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I had a friend who was a doctor once. Briefly. The relationship that is.’

‘Pino…’

‘You asked. I answered. I’m one more human being afflicted with an incurable disease. A kindly ailment in some ways. Most people never know. I can walk…’ He raised his glass. ‘I can drink, in moderation, naturally. I can play with puzzles.’ A broad and genuine smile. ‘And discuss them with my charming English lodger. People say they’re frightened of death. But really… I think it’s life that scares them the most. Mine’s not so bad. I just wish…’ A flash of anger. ‘I wish Walter would let me back in the stazione one more time. That boy Cassini’s no substitute. I have a feel for cases. For index cards and ancient records. I like the smell of old paper; the way you can pick it up, read the words, store them, make some connection elsewhere…’

A quick sip of Negroni.

‘That art’s dying faster than I am. Youngsters like Luca Cassini think machines should do this for them. In twenty years’ time original thought will be deemed heresy within the Carabinieri, and every other law-enforcement system in the world. Instead detectives will wait for computers and scientists to give them answers, and shriek in agony when those simple solutions aren’t forthcoming. I was never made for such a world. I need to think. And when I think, I live.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

Fratelli blinked at her, puzzled. ‘Why what?’

‘Why did you get it? This illness? What happened, to give it to you and not someone else?’

It seemed to her a simple question. She expected an equally straightforward answer. Asbestos in the office. Some hereditary factor, though given Fratelli’s curious background it seemed unlikely he would know about that. Or an accident. A blow. An admission that it was nothing more than bad luck. A dreadful twist of fate.

Instead he looked a little uncomfortable, shuffling on his chair at the back of the bar, fiddling with his fingers.

‘No one knows the cause,’ Fratelli said eventually. ‘They happen. Like the weather.’

‘Pino…’

‘No…’ He waved his hand at her. ‘I have strange ideas. Strange theories sometimes. You must have noticed.’ He brightened instantly, the way he did. ‘And I have fulfilled my obligation to you, Miss Wellbeloved! A frank confession of my previous lack of candour. Which was not so much a lie as an obfuscation of the truth, as I hope you’ll accept.’

‘Up to a point,’ she muttered, still dissatisfied.

‘Now.’ He was all smiles again. ‘It’s your turn. The mystery of the cock’s comb and cibreo. You have news for me?’

Just before nine, two Japanese tourists — a woman of twenty-one and her boyfriend — tottered into the square after an extortionate meal in the Borgo dei Greci. The rain was coming down steadily, sloping thirty degrees to the black shiny cobbles on the icy northern wind. The woman clutched a copy of a tourist guide, trying to scan the pages. The Piazza della Signoria was deserted on this bleak wet November night. She didn’t have much idea of the way back to the hotel. There was no one to ask in her shaky English.

‘That way,’ the boyfriend cried, pointing at the Ponte Vecchio. ‘That way!’

She was getting sick of him. Every night it was the same. Food, then drink, then sex. They could have been back in Tokyo, hunting for a cheap hotel in Roppongi. Why come to Italy for this?

‘I want to see something,’ she said, and walked into the centre of the square, peering at the damp, flapping pages of the book.

Statues, she thought. Paintings. Beauty. That’s why they came here. It had taken all her persuasion to get him into the Uffizi, where she’d marvelled at Botticelli’s swan-necked Venus while he sighed and grumbled about not being able to use his shiny new Canon SLR. But it was night now, and everything that Florence had to see lived inside, behind those stern, dark exteriors. She’d expected beauty everywhere: flower-filled piazzas, men with guitars and accordions, warmth and colour and life. The city wasn’t like that. It was cold, dour and severe as a hated maiden aunt.

‘I want to see…’

There was David ahead of them, illuminated in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, shining in the steady drizzle. Michelangelo, she thought. That was a name on the list.

Still clutching the book to her, glancing at the page, she crossed the empty piazza and stood in front of the tower of the palace. It looked like something out of Disneyland, she thought. There should have been knights in armour. Elegant, pale, blonde-haired ladies in medieval dress. Perhaps they were there sometimes. Just not on a night like this.

‘Seen it,’ he grumbled behind her. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

‘Bed can wait. Let’s see it again,’ she said, and stood in front of the tall, handsome nude whose eyes were set towards the river, aimed south at Rome, the book said, a warning to the Pope to heed Florence’s independence.

He looked strong and beautiful. A nice young man, her mother would have said. The kind of foreigner every Tokyo girl wanted to meet. But there was a slingshot over his shoulder and something in his eyes that said: don’t mess with me. I’m not just pretty. I’m tough too.

She could hear her boyfriend coughing and choking on the cobbles. Maybe he’d throw up again. She didn’t get why he had to drink so much. Especially the grappa which she hated.

‘There are more statues,’ she said, and liked the way he reacted, shaking his head as if in disgust, too frightened to argue. ‘Over there the book says. You can get dry.’

And you’d better not puke, she thought. That would be the end.

She strode over to the odd alcove by the entrance to the Uffizi, still wondering at the way the reality of Florence so contrasted with the image she’d built of the place when she read the guidebooks and histories back home. There was supposed to be magnificence everywhere, a visible show of all Europe’s grandeur. Not lowering fortresses hiding their riches behind windows cloaked in iron bars. The loggia was, she realized as she walked towards it, one of the few free displays of art anywhere they’d seen. A collection of statues set in a small enclosed area, the front open to view so that you could walk round them, feel close to the past.

‘What the hell’s that?’ the boyfriend asked, coming close and staring at the flapping, damp pages. He looked interested finally.

‘Perseus,’ she said, ‘with the Head of Medusa.’

‘Who?’

Something from mythology, she thought. Quite what… It was late. She was tired and a little woozy from cheap red Chianti. Another day…

He walked to the front of the statue and stared up at the warrior with the sword and the strange severed head in his hand. Then, like an idiot, he put a foot on the bottom ledge of the plinth, reached up and slapped the figure hard on the leg, yelling some stupid cry, the kind he copied from all the dumb Samurai TV shows he loved.

‘That’s the way!’ the boyfriend barked at the still figure above him. As he spoke a bead of something thick and dark dropped from the dangling head, landed on his face, spattered his eyes and lips.

Rain, she thought. Except rain didn’t move like that, slowly, in big, gouty gobs that looked too physical, too real to come from the sky.

She watched him start screaming. Watched him begin to gag and then puke. Then she looked at the statue again and, as her eyes adjusted to the faint lights of the Loggia dei Lanzi, saw the thing there, the staring eyes, the matted hair, the mouth open in terror.

Real, she thought. It looks so real, and then her legs buckled, her breath came in short, agonizing gasps and she fell on to the stones in the Piazza della Signoria as a black fog of nothing came to swim around her.

‘The Brigata Spendereccia,’ Fratelli said. ‘Who would have thought…?’

‘You’ve heard of it?’

A tug at the hair. She was learning to ignore this.

‘Dimly. Florence is drowning in history, in case you hadn’t noticed. Even I can’t recall every single detail. Dante, Boccaccio, the Guelphs, the Ghibellines. Civil war. The Medici. Art and philosophy. Then that brief and strange interlude with Savonarola. Such busy times…’

She smiled and tapped his jacket. ‘Soderini’s made me an appointment at San Marco for Thursday,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m going to see the monk’s cell.’

‘Lucky thing. Our mayor does seem inclined to open every door he can find. I wonder why.’

‘No prizes for guessing that. We’ve got wandering eyes in England. Wandering hands too.’

‘Soderini’s a politician,’ he said with a shrug. ‘What do you expect? They have strange habits, and even stranger ideas about their own importance. But the Brigata Spendereccia…’

‘What is it?’

‘What was it?’ Fratelli replied.

He picked up some finocchiona and dangled it in front of her. Julia shook her head.

‘No, thank you.’

‘You’d best not be so picky when it comes to Thursday night. The Brigata is… was about excess. A group of twelve men, if I recall correctly. I think the idea was imported from Siena, which is odd given that the Sienese were our greatest enemies in those days. Anyway… imagine your prime minister and his fellow deputies—’

‘Cabinet ministers,’ she corrected him.

‘I stand corrected. Imagine that they feel they’re owed some favour in return for all the long hours they expend on behalf of the state. The collection of taxes, which they skim for themselves, naturally. The formation of foreign policy. Who to fight and who to back. In return for a consideration, of course.’

‘Cynicism does not become you,’ she scolded him.

‘I’m a practical man. Not a cynic. In Italy we accept these things for what they are, part of the natural order. In England you pretend such peccadilloes do not exist, or at least only in foreigners. You’re mistaken, and will one day realize it. But I digress…’

‘They want a party,’ Julia suggested. ‘A break from the tedium of governing.’

‘The party to end all parties. One in which they may lose themselves for a while. In the most exotic and luxurious of foods. The most expensive drink.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘In engaging and beautiful company.’

‘A Roman orgy.’

‘Certainly not! A Florentine one. Far more refined. And discreet too, I’ll bet. We love our secrets. You believe our friend Sandro has been organizing these things for a while?’

She thought back to the way Soderini spoke about his invitation.

‘I got the impression they’ve been going on forever.’

Fratelli sighed. ‘Well then. There’s something I never knew about the ruling classes. What a furtive little bunch they are.’

‘Cibreo,’ she said.

‘Sounds very much like the kind of thing they might eat.’

‘Pino. Are you sure they wouldn’t serve it in a restaurant? If you think your man’s in the catering business, surely that’s the place to look.’

He shook his head, adamant to the last. ‘No. My Sant’Ambrogio butcher supplies the finest and most expensive establishments in the city. If anyone knew, it would be him. No one eats that kind of thing these days. Imagine it on the menu!’

‘You eat lampredotto, which is the umpteenth stomach of a cow or something.’

‘Fourth,’ Fratelli corrected her. ‘And that’s tradition. Boiling cocks’ combs isn’t. Not since the fifteenth century or so. Detection depends greatly on the question of probabilities. Remember this, Julia. It may prove useful in your studies.’

‘Oh, them…’ she whispered.

‘Cibreo’s a dish for a feast, a banquet. Hardly a TV dinner for two. If it’s not on the menu of a restaurant, then a private occasion such as Soderini’s would seem the prime candidate here.’

Fratelli shook his head and frowned. ‘For the life of me I never knew that kind of thing still went on. You hear of squalid parties in the hills. In the villas of the rich. We occasionally had to deal discreetly with a drugs overdose. But the Brigata Spendereccia…’

There were people coming into the bar now. A couple had occupied a table within earshot.

‘There’s something old and aristocratic about the idea,’ Fratelli continued, sotto voce. ‘One can imagine it would appeal to those obsessed with their birth.’

‘Like a Soderini? Or a Tornabuoni?’

‘Plenty of others too,’ he said softly, casting an eye at the adjoining table. ‘And their cronies. So I doubt cibreo’s on many menus. Which, if we’re lucky, may mean our man works for whatever catering institution supplies our friend with his peculiar specialities. Do you know where it takes place?’

‘I meet Soderini at the Palazzo Vecchio at seven. That’s as much as he’s told me.’

He waited.

‘It could be anywhere, couldn’t it?’ she asked. ‘How many palaces do you have in Florence?’

‘This is a city of rusticated monstrosities. I believed I’d made that clear.’

‘Well then.’

‘Are you going to go?’ he asked gingerly.

‘To an orgy? No thanks. I’d rather sit here and talk to you.’

‘I’m flattered I suppose. But then what would we find out? Discovery comes from action, not idle discussion. We can exchange our theories endlessly, but where will that get us? Even if Walter listened to me, he wouldn’t approach Soderini and ask for the menu. Not if this is meant to be secret. If you have a location for these events then I can find out more. Who handles the catering. Luca can quietly check the files and see if there are any workers involved with a criminal record. We have an entrance point into proceedings. A way in. I…’

She was staring at him, outraged.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Fratelli asked.

‘You want me to go to an orgy just so you can find out what kind of lunatic swipes chicken blood on precious paintings? Commits so little damage that even your own Carabinieri colleagues don’t seem much interested?’

He seemed a touch put out by this remark.

‘You don’t need to participate, do you? Just watch, have a drink and a bite to eat. Then make an excuse and get out of there when the entertainment turns a little risqué.’

‘I noticed you said when, not if. All this for the sake of a chicken?’

His intelligent face turned stony and serious.

‘I thought you wanted to know why bad things happened. I was under the impression that was the purpose of your dissertation.’

‘It is… I suppose… Oh, dammit.’

Fratelli finished his Negroni, staring at the glass, then said perhaps it was time they caught the bus.

‘I don’t want to catch the bus yet,’ she complained.

‘You seem upset. And I’m just making it worse.’

No, you’re not, she thought to herself. You’re listening, patiently, carefully. No one else has done that for a long while.

‘I’m sorry, Pino. This degree idea seemed to make sense when I was in London, looking for something new to do. Now I’m here… I don’t know. I thought I had the right questions. I thought I’d understand what I’d hear in return.’

‘A good detective never anticipates the answers. He — or she — must focus on phrasing the correct inquiries. Nothing more. An open mind is essential. A closed one takes you nowhere.’

‘I’m not a detective.’

‘That’s not true. You’re a very astute and curious young woman. Perceptive and sharp at spotting the rhetorical flaws that provide an opportunity to uncover the truth. You should focus on that skill more than you do.’

‘By going to Sandro Soderini’s orgy?’

His eyes blazed for a moment as he shushed her across the table. ‘Please. You never know who’s listening in this city. Besides it’s not… what you claim. Not necessarily. Just a night out for him and his friends.’

‘Why is this so important?’ she demanded. ‘A bunch of playboys? A dead bird? A meaningless act of vandalism?’

He finished his drink, looked at his watch and stayed silent.

‘Why is it so important?’ she persisted.

That’s another story. I have strange ideas. Strange theories sometimes.

‘Tell me, Pino,’ Julia demanded. ‘I need to know.’

The Carabinieri were first on the scene, followed by a squad car from the state police. They looked at the mess in front of the Loggia dei Lanzi: a couple of Japanese tourists, the woman unconscious on the soaking cobbles, the man screaming and weeping hysterically.

‘Drunks,’ the senior carabiniere said to the first state cop to join him.

‘There’s a surprise,’ the cop agreed.

‘You can have them if you want. I mean…’

Sometimes these two forces were rivals. Mostly they tried to get along.

‘You mean it’s a small enough thing for us to handle?’ the cop replied.

‘Not exactly…’

‘Boss?’ said the young cadet who’d been behind the wheel of the Carabinieri car.

He was out in front of the loggia, taking a look beyond the couple on the cobblestones.

‘We could do it if you like,’ the carabiniere continued to the cop. ‘It’s just that we cleaned the car earlier. And yours…’ He cast a withering glance at the ancient pale blue Fiat the police came in. ‘Let’s face it…’

The crackle of a radio cut through the night. The young cadet was speaking into it, asking for assistance.

‘We don’t need help for foreign drunks,’ the older officer barked.

Something stopped him after that.

The young carabiniere was beneath the Cellini statue, looking up at the figure of Perseus. His voice kept getting louder. He sounded scared.

The cop was staring in the same direction too, so the older carabiniere, a man who thought he’d seen it all, followed suit.

Statues didn’t interest him much. Or paintings. He’d grown up in Florence, surrounded by this stuff. It was so familiar he never took any notice. Except when something was wrong.

The cops from the pale blue Fiat saloon were starting to look a little queasy themselves. One had his hand over his mouth. The other started mumbling something unintelligible that might have been a prayer.

‘Tell you what,’ the senior carabiniere said, going to stand closer to the Cellini bronze so that he could get a better view of what was suspended there in its raised bronze hand, pale and gory, dripping blood on to the steps of the loggia. ‘I think we’ll take this after all.’

The empty bus ran slowly along the Lungarno, dodging the pedestrians scurrying through swamped streets awash with water. As the vehicle drew level with the Uffizi across the river, she saw flashing blue lights at the head of the arches, close to the Palazzo Vecchio.

‘Something’s happening,’ Julia said.

Fratelli was hunched and miserable in his coat.

‘Something’s always happening. Nothing’s always happening,’ he mumbled, staring at the black flume beside them. ‘Life’s like the river. Always moving. Always in the same place.’

‘That’s a bit enigmatic,’ she said gently.

He seemed downcast, upset by something. The way she kept prodding him for more answers, she guessed. What else could it be? And why would he turn this way now? She’d already prised from him the perilous state of his health. That was a very private admission, particularly when it was offered to someone he barely knew. Not that she thought of him as a stranger any more. An odd intimacy had grown between the two of them. It was a surprise to both, yet she felt she understood why it had happened on her part. Pino Fratelli was such a gentle, easy, intelligent man. Full of interesting questions to which he had no answers, seeking them mostly from others. The fluent, call-and-response rhythm of their conversations happened so naturally, without any of the usual effort she found necessary with others. Yet there was still something unknown, a mystery yet to be revealed.

Fratelli pulled out of his hunch and squinted through the rain-soaked windows at the lights across the river. The Arno was lively and thrashing as it flowed swiftly towards the Ponte Vecchio. She recalled his brief mention of the terrible flood from twenty years before. Anyone who experienced that strange terror would surely look at a November night like this and find some unwanted memories returning.

‘A lot of lights,’ Fratelli said, a welcome note of professionalism in his voice. ‘I’m sorry. I get down sometimes. Not often, but you must yell when it happens.’

‘Act the policeman for me. I want to see what he looks like.’

‘Carabiniere, please.’

‘Be the carabiniere then. What might be going on over there?’

He frowned, thinking.

‘A mugging maybe. A fight.’ He stared at the lights. ‘I’d guess there are three or four cars. That’s a lot for a fight. Perhaps a dignitary is visiting the Uffizi in private. Wandering down your Vasari Corridor. The high and mighty always receive protection in Florence. They’re valued so highly. We’ll hear in the morning. On the radio. I listen first thing. Every day.’

He mumbled something that sounded like, ‘Just in case.’

‘Was there much for you to do here? When you were a carabiniere?’

‘What do you think?’

She thought about it and said, ‘Not a lot.’

‘Theft and drugs. Wife-beating and the occasional assault. Murder very rarely. Malice domestic, usually, as I think the English describe it. Man against wife. Once and once only wife against husband. Florence is not a normal city in many ways, but humanity possesses some universal qualities.’

Fratelli took one last glance at the river, the Uffizi, the flashing blue lights beyond the arches. Then the bus went behind the line of buildings leading to the Ponte Vecchio and the narrow streets that meandered towards Carmine and home. Whatever was happening in the Piazza della Signoria, they’d see no more of it.

‘You don’t have to go to Soderini’s squalid party,’ he said. ‘Not for my benefit. It was thoughtless of me to ask.’

‘It wouldn’t be for your benefit, would it? For ours. I want to write this study. I need to.’

A few hours earlier she’d considered going back to England, throwing herself on the mercy and bank account of her father. At the age of twenty-eight. The idea was unconscionable. Running away would be a cowardly, miserable act. And where would she find herself when she stopped? Alone again, in limbo.

‘If I help you find this man it will make my paper better,’ she said. ‘Academia likes the odd small thrill too, you know. A theory proved by practical action. A guaranteed success. There. Self-interest. Your conscience is salved.’

He winced and she thought for a moment he was in pain.

‘Are you all right?’ Julia asked.

‘Never better. And now? My last story?’

‘Not if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘And I do. The trouble is, I’ve never really told anyone before.’

She felt nervous at that. ‘Why?’

‘Because there was no one to listen. No one who’d believe me anyway. Or try to understand. I was mad for a while.’ His eyes were glassy and blank. ‘Truly. Before this present sickness. A long time ago. I didn’t know who I was. Or what. Walter Marrone could have fired me then if he’d wanted. Perhaps that would have been the right thing to do.’

‘Pino…’

‘No, please.’ He shook his head, then peered at her so directly, with such an earnest, pained honesty, she felt her breath catch. ‘You ask such pertinent questions. Why? How is this? In twenty years I’ve never known anyone…’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘In all that time.’

She took his gloved hand and looked him in the eye. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Julia told him. ‘Let’s forget all this. I’ll go back to my paper. On Thursday I’ll visit San Marco, then Soderini’s party. You can chase your chicken-murderer…’

‘I’m not chasing a murderer of chickens,’ he muttered with an uncharacteristic sourness. ‘I never have been…’

‘You’re starting to worry me.’

‘Only now?’ he asked, suddenly amused.

‘Yes. Only now.’

‘You asked what causes… this.’ Fratelli pointed at his white hair and then his temple. ‘Here is my theory. A lunatic’s explanation for his madness. Treat it as such.’

The bus lurched through Santo Spirito. She could see tramps sheltering in the doorways and arches of the closed shops.

‘On occasion a man or woman… a child… meets something dark and alien,’ Fratelli said as he stared outside the window. ‘A black, bad thing we label evil — for our own sake, mainly. Because we wish it to be separate from ourselves, not a wickedness that stems from the fragile creatures we are.’

She could see the piazza with the church of Carmine in the distance. So could he.

‘Those painters in the Brancacci understood all that,’ Fratelli went on. ‘Why else did the serpent have the head of a beautiful woman? My belief…’

He scrubbed the misty window with the arm of his sleeve, checking for the bus stop.

‘My feeling is that everyone meets the black thing some time. It’s how we grow. How we survive. And most sensible people…’ He turned and looked at her. ‘Like you. They will recognize it, be afraid of it, reject it, let it go. Spit out the monster the way a child coughs up something nasty. Vomit all that black bile out of their systems and carry on with their lives.’

He reached for the rope that rang the driver’s bell and got up. She followed him to the door. It was so stiff he had to force it open when the bus came to a halt.

The rain was falling steadily. He raised his umbrella briskly and held it over her as she joined him.

‘I think I first met it when I was four years old,’ Fratelli went on as they walked. ‘When the Nazis pushed me out of Rome, seizing my parents, my real mother and father, as I fled. I swallowed down that grief. I let it live inside me. Like a malevolent foul bundle of hate that I clutched to my heart. Not that I knew. I was a child. I thought it was part of my imagination. Something that would go away…’

She wound her arm inside his without thinking. This was Italy. Not England. Even men walked together like this. Closeness, a sense of shared humanity, was normal.

Fratelli pointed to the pizza restaurant on the corner and asked her if she needed something else to eat. No, she said, trying to smile.

‘Let’s talk again in the morning, shall we?’ Julia suggested as he opened the door to the little terraced house. ‘It’s been a long day for both of us.’

‘I haven’t finished,’ Fratelli said, then strode up the stone steps, opened his door and ushered her in. ‘I’ve barely started.’

The place was too warm. The lights were still burning. An LP sat on the hi-fi as if begging to be played.

He walked over to a plain white set of drawers and took out an old photo album, placed it on his untidy dining room table, next to the books and the record covers. Fratelli called her over and her heart sank as he flicked through the pages.

Julia recalled the odd conversation in the café that morning. The sympathy of the Grassi couple. The mention of a wife.

Here she was, in photos that looked as if they came from another era. Fading already. A lovely dark-haired woman, smiling, with bright, intelligent eyes. Beautiful in an elaborate white wedding gown next to a grinning, bashful Pino Fratelli, the two of them outside the church of Carmine along the road. Later, in the washed-out colours of a distant, lost summer; at the beach, in a rundown old car. Happy in a tiny, battered dinghy on a river, a fishing rod in Fratelli’s hands.

‘I didn’t cough up the black thing,’ he said, staring at the photos. He closed the album. ‘So a part of it never left. After a while the rest came back, out in the open, released by something from the place I kept it captive. I think…’

Pino Fratelli tapped his hair again; longer than it was twenty years before; white, not black.

‘If I’d spat it out of me the way I should, this never would have happened. And much else besides.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for things that—’

‘How do you know?’ he roared, eyes wild with fury, arms flailing. ‘What do you know? Of me? Of this city? Of anything?’

His voice was so loud she scarcely recognized it. Or his face, which was torn by grief and anger.

‘Oh, God…’ Fratelli cried, his hands clawing at his face. ‘Now I scream at the one person who listens to me. Jesus…’

There was a bottle of grappa on the shelf. He was going for it. She strode forward and stood in the way.

‘I’m allowed just a small one,’ he told her, calm again, his gentle face so full of grief and shame it tore at her heart. ‘My doctor says so.’

‘Is that a lie? I told you about those.’

‘It never left me, Julia,’ he murmured. ‘I invited it back. Do you understand what I’m saying? This thing inside’s been growing all these years. In a way I never understood, I’ve been nurturing it. Calling to it. Ever since Rome. Ever since the flood.’

‘The flood…’

‘And now I’ve introduced it to you.’

Fratelli reached round and grabbed the bottle anyway, then took down two small glasses off the shelf, filled them with the clear liquid. She could smell its strength even as he placed the drinks on the table.

‘Sit down and listen,’ he ordered. Then he nodded at the grappa. ‘You’ll need this. So will I.’