The Immaculate Deception

13

The drive to Siena was uneventful, even pleasant. It is very hard to be preoccupied and worried when you have the distractions of Italian traffic constantly threatening to force you off the road if your attention wanders too much. The address she had was for a small village about twenty kilometres to the north-east, but she stopped in the town anyway to have some lunch and also to look at the language school where Elena Fortini now worked. Her file said she was half American and half Italian and spoke English fluently. This skill now gained her a living, and a very quiet living it must be, Flavia thought to herself. Anybody who buried themselves here must be looking for a quiet life.

This woman had been an artist of a sort back then as well, although she had produced the sort of art which rarely engaged Flavia’s official attention.

She had been a sort of ideological soul-mate for Sabbatini and, reading between the lines of the file Corrado had found for her, Flavia guessed that she had been the brains behind his politics. While she sensed that Sabbatini had been a radical because it was fashionable, this woman had been more serious, her opinions and actions more carefully thought through, even reasonable. Sabbatini had followed her lead and acted as he did to draw attention to himself.

As with many of the people who had been in revolutionary movements in the 1970s, she had realized, perhaps earlier than most, that the battle would never be won. Consequently, she had taken up an offer of a pardon in return for a brief prison sentence, a full confession, and information about her erstwhile colleagues. A notice attached to the file expressed irritation that the amount of information she gave was minimal, and completely unhelpful. Even when saving her own skin, she was unprepared to give up her friends.

Finding her had been remarkably easy; once a political criminal, always a political criminal, and Fortini was required to register her address every six months even though it hadn’t changed for years. The latest address was attached to the file Flavia had extracted from colleagues in anti-terrorism.

Once she had eaten, rested, and prepared herself she drove the rest of the trip to where the woman lived. It was a small and run-down pile, one of those difficult houses that is clearly old but could have been built anywhere between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Not big, but with bits added on here and there, so that the roofscape of terracotta tiles headed up and down in all directions and at all angles. Valuable now that so many English and Germans and Dutch wanted summer houses; bought for a song ten or twenty years ago and now worth a fortune.

All the stereotypes that built up in her mind so easily began to break down as she walked to the door and saw the piles of chicken feed stacked neatly on the little terrace, the washing line covered in children’s clothes, and took in the general air of impoverishment – a tile missing here, a large crack in the thick stone wall there – that hung about the place. Not neglect, though; everything had a well-loved air to it.

The signs of activity were all around; from the other side of the house came the unmistakable sounds of children playing, screaming with laughter amid the splashing of water; two hens strutted neurotically around, their beady eyes fixed on the ground intent on spotting every last fleck of food; a cat slept peacefully nearby, ignoring everything. From inside came the sound of a woman singing to herself – obviously to herself, as no one would ever dare sing that badly in anybody else’s hearing. The house had all the signs of poor owners, of making do, of there being little luxury. Flavia felt an enormous and uncontrollable surge of longing. Some people make comfort and contentment wherever they are, whatever their circumstances. This house was created by one of those people. Her surprise was as great as her envy.

The singing stopped abruptly when she knocked; there was a long pause, then a woman in her late forties came to the open door, drying her hands as she walked.

She even had a pleasant face, this terrorist ideologue, and had once been striking. Now it was getting old, careworn with tiredness and with no longer bothering about what she looked like. But again, there was an ease and a contentment there that came from a deeper place.

‘Elena Fortini?’ Flavia asked. ‘Can I have a word with you, please?’

There was instant suspicion, but no fear or uncertainty in the response. ‘Secret police come to check on my bomb-making factory, are you? Come in, then.’

Flavia stepped over the threshold, into the warm hospitality and the domesticity of others. ‘Police, but not very secret,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see the bomb-making factory, though. I love these country pursuits.’

Elena eyed her carefully, paused a second, then let out a laugh. ‘Later, if you want.’

She led the way to the huge, stone-floored room that served as kitchen, work room, laundry room, dining room and sitting room. In one corner a television, in another a piano jammed up against a washing machine so old it should have been in a museum. Surrounding it was so much washing that Flavia felt a pang of sympathy.

‘Dirty things, children,’ Elena said. ‘I live my life cocooned in washing.’

‘How many do you have?’

‘Two. I know; you thought there must be at least eight to produce this mess. But two is quite enough to reduce anything to rubble. I have a vague image of tidiness I keep in my mind, rather like some people have a notion of eternity in paradise. You never approach it, but it’s good to believe that you might get there one day.’

She gestured for Flavia to sit down at the table while she poured some coffee. ‘The English maintain that old age begins when the police start looking young,’ she commented.

‘Sounds like a compliment to me,’ Flavia said. ‘I feel anything but young at the moment.’

Elena peered at her carefully, then nodded. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said elliptically. ‘I suppose if I told you to go away, it wouldn’t do any good.’

‘Sorry, no. But I don’t think I’ll take up much time. We don’t bother you much, do we?’

‘More than you should. It’s not as if I ever have anything new to say to you, after all.’

‘Maybe this time you will. I’m here to ask you about more recent events. In the last month.’

‘I’ve scarcely been out of the house in the last month.’

‘Visitors?’

‘I don’t encourage them.’

‘Phone calls?’

‘No phone.’

‘Letters?’

‘Only bills. Listen, why don’t you ask proper questions? Then I might be able to answer more usefully.’

‘Very well. Maurizio Sabbatini.’

Elena rolled her eyes. ‘I might have known. What’s the old faker been up to now?’

‘He’s dead, for one thing.’

She grimaced. ‘So I heard.’ She rubbed her nose for a few seconds and concentrated hard, so it seemed, to keep the tears out of her eyes. ‘He was a complete fraud, you know. A faker in everything he thought and said and did. He had the sincerity of a beetle, and the constancy of an earthworm. I hadn’t seen him for ten years, never wanted to see him again, and I’m very upset he’s dead. Can you explain that?’

‘Part of your past goes with him?’

‘Glib and facile.’

‘Yes, but I don’t know anything about either of you. Glib and facile is all I can manage.’

‘He was fun. Always laughing. Even when he robbed a bank, he thought it an absolute hoot. And made everyone else laugh as well. He even had the bank manager in stitches before he left. He used to come to collective meetings, when everyone was earnestly discussing the dictatorship of the proletariat, and within half an hour had everybody giggling hysterically. He could never take anything seriously.’

‘So why didn’t you want to see him again?’

‘Life is not a laugh. Some things are too serious.’

There was a lot, a whole world, unsaid here. Flavia waited, hoping she would volunteer the information, but instead she just looked up at her. ‘And he’s dead, and you’re here. Perhaps you’d better tell me why?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me.’

‘Maybe I can. Maybe I will. But you can hardly expect me to pour out my soul to some policewoman who just walks in my door one day. I don’t know who you are or what you want. Anything I say you’ll have to earn. Don’t you think that’s fair?’

It wasn’t. She was a convicted criminal, Flavia was police. She should answer all questions put to her. In theory. Flavia realized quite well that this was not the right approach. Elena Fortini, she knew, had withstood more seasoned, more brutal interrogators than she would ever be. Anything she wanted that this woman knew would have to be given up freely or not at all.

‘Earn how?’

‘By telling me why you’re interested in such a wastrel. Tell me about my poor old clown. Then maybe I will tell you about him myself. It’s not as if you can do him any harm, and not as if I’d care much even if you could.’

So Flavia told her a little: about the theft of the painting, how someone else had swapped the picture for the ransom, how Sabbatini was already dead by then. No details, just an outline.

‘Was there an autopsy? Was he drunk?’

‘Fairly drunk. Not gigantically so, though. Not to induce a stupor, I wouldn’t have thought. But enough to make him fall asleep and stay asleep as he drowned.’

‘You’ve considered the possibility that he was held under until he drowned?’

Flavia hadn’t. Indeed, the idea had never crossed her mind, so easy had it been to summon up an image of a dissipated, irresponsible fake artist incapable even of staying awake in a bath. So she reconsidered quickly.

‘If it was the case then it is likely to go down as the perfect murder. No one saw, heard or suspected anything. There is not the slightest shred of evidence.’

She nodded. ‘Just like last time, then.’

Flavia raised an eyebrow.

‘His sister,’ she explained.

‘Ah. That I know about.’

Elena looked closely at her. ‘I wonder why,’ she said.

‘Tell me about it, though. I don’t know many of the details,’ Flavia prompted.

‘Find them yourself. It’s all in the file, isn’t it? Young innocent murdered by ruthless terrorists?’

‘Is that why you stopped? If I remember, she was killed in 1981, you gave yourself up soon afterwards.’

She shrugged. ‘My womanly instincts revolted, is that what you think? No; I gave up because I hate lost causes. No other reason. Besides, I thought you were here to discuss the present, not the past.’

‘I’m here to discuss Sabbatini.’

‘Maurizio was a joker, unreliable, untrustworthy. He doted on his sister, and when he was picked up by the police, she was kidnapped to warn him to keep his mouth closed. Then she was killed. He never quite recovered from it; he felt responsible, which he was. He stopped laughing. Is that good enough for you?’

Flavia got up and poured herself another coffee without asking. It was very strange how she felt at home here, companionable with this incomprehensible woman, so sweet and gentle, and with such a past. Flavia over the years had come to trust her feelings for people; if she felt comfortable with them, it usually meant they were trustworthy, even pleasant. This time her feelings and what she had just heard were so mismatched that nothing was making sense.

‘So how did you get here?’

‘I retired,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I couldn’t take it any more. There were only two ways to go: ever more violence in a cause that was becoming hopeless, or getting out. I got out; others chose a different course.’

‘And Maurizio?’

‘You know as much as I do. It has struck you, I suppose, that the theft of this painting mirrors his past antics? That he advertised himself so that it must have been clear – to some people if not to you – who was responsible?’

Flavia nodded. ‘And the money?’

‘Maurizio was never interested in money.’

Flavia shook her head. ‘I’m out of my depth here. I can’t even begin to see the logic of this. I’m used to people doing things for simple reasons, even good reasons. Wanting more money is the main one.’

Elena shrugged. She got up, peered through the window into the sunlight where the children were playing, and began to tidy the kitchen. She had said her piece.

Elena shrugged again. ‘You asked, I answered. Nothing more I can say. But the idea that Maurizio was after money doesn’t work. Nor does the idea that he was working with someone. He never did in the past, not even with me. He trusted absolutely no one. No friends, no colleagues. And you are telling me that he suddenly got himself an accomplice and suddenly became interested in money. Very unlikely. But,’ she said as she walked Flavia back to the car, ‘you must make up your own mind. Tell me one thing, though,’ she said as she watched Flavia open the door and prepare to leave.

‘Yes?’

‘Boy or girl?’

Flavia frowned in puzzlement. ‘What?’

‘The baby. Is it a boy or a girl?’