Two Women in Rome Page 19

Turning off the main road into Genzano, a car shot across their bow. ‘The man has the face of a crocodile,’ hissed Concetta, ‘and the manners of a pig.’ A woman in tight capris on an electric bicycle dipped and swayed beside the car, seemingly at ease with the risks she was taking. Not a stray lock fell from her dark ponytail.

  Lottie felt weak.

  Once parked, Concetta hurried off, leaving Lottie to enjoy the spectacle of flowers unrolling down the main street.

  A full, floral palette, from the palest to the darkest of greens, to reds and purples, pinks and blues, had been sculptured into every form of dragonage. Horses bore armoured knights on their backs and fought scaly ones. A medieval queen had one coiled at her feet. Dragons sat at the mouths of rocky caves. They spat fire, were impaled on lances and clashed with fellow dragons in symphonies of ochres, olive greens and browns.

  Lottie wandered happily.

  Yellow was a dominant colour. There were fiery suns and, scattered throughout, representations of sunflowers picked out in golds, Chinese yellow, russet-yellow and canary, growing in the backgrounds alongside rocky caves and mountains.

  Nina wrote about the sunflower. Native to Central America, they were held in high esteem because they were believed to have been the emblem of the Sun God. Pioneer folklore had it that, when the Mormons left Missouri to look for a land where they could be free to worship, sunflower seeds were scattered over the Utah plains by the vanguard wagons so that the women and children following on the next summer would know where to go.

  Picture the Mormon women. Frazzled from travel and the not-knowing, almost certainly hungry, scanning the stony prospects, and nerving themselves to push onwards, their gaze ever searching out the splash of yellow to tell them that their menfolk had gone that way.

  Lottie halted beside a fine example, where a bright yellow sunflower bloomed behind a prancing horse.

  Was it a coincidence that Nina wrote about the sunflower in the notebook?

  In the café behind, a woman was shouting across the road to a friend and sweeping the pavement. Lottie waited until she had finished and took a photo of it.

  Two doors down from the café, a boutique sold lingerie in oyster satins and black lace. Beautiful, luxurious things. Lottie admired a nightdress hemmed with satin. Moving on, she noticed a man on the opposite side of the road who had stopped to fiddle with his phone. He was middle-aged and, except for his shaven head, unremarkable.

  Further on, the delicatessen offered up a spectacle: jars of goats’ cheeses in oil, black olives in cream earthenware bowls and salamis hanging from ceiling hooks like stalactites acted like magnets. In she went and, pot of the olives in hand, emerged ten minutes or so later to find the man was still there talking into his phone.

  Stopping to photograph here and there, she found her way to Orietta’s house, which was set two streets back from the main street. Semi-detached and modern, with big picture windows, it had a wire fence running around the garden.

  Concetta sat in the garden under a vine-smothered pergola absorbed by her two-year-old granddaughter. Lottie was struck by the image she presented – the soft smile and protective pose was a side of Concetta with which she was unfamiliar.

  A dark beauty, which suggested the family originated from the south of Italy, Orietta was six months’ or so pregnant and looked like her mother.

  ‘Does she bully you?’ Orietta wished to know, her smile revealing beautiful teeth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lottie. She glanced at Concetta, who was whispering to the toddler. ‘But I could not manage without her.’

  Orietta was no fool. ‘She’s choosy, my mother. But she has a heart, and, if it’s given, there’s nothing she wouldn’t do.’

  ‘My husband has benefited. Very greatly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tea was served under the pergola from a tray patterned with ripe cherries. There was no milk, only slivers of lemon and almond pastries. The toddler played at their feet. The three women gossiped. A scooter roared up the street followed by a car driving too fast, releasing a stink of fuel. Concetta clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘Barbarian.’

  Since coming to Italy, Lottie had acquired phrases and idioms and they slid off her tongue with pleasing alacrity and ease. A modest achievement, perhaps, but one that suggested that she was beginning to blend in to Italian life.

  Released from the chores and the kitchen – or, perhaps, it was the stimulus of being with her daughter – Concetta turned talkative. ‘The signora,’ she turned to Orietta, ‘works with the dead. That’s her business.’

  ‘You could put it like that,’ Lottie defended her work, ‘but in some ways, I keep them alive.’

  They ate the pastries, and Orietta told them about the participating schools and the designs. ‘The children have to learn what the messages of the flowers are. They all have meanings.’

  Lottie accepted a third cup of tea. ‘The sunflowers are great.’ She showed them her photograph of the impressive sunflower in the final section, standing tall behind a dragon. Its colours were of the darkest ochre, dipping into rust.

  Orietta consulted the leaflet that Lottie had brought with her. ‘That’s the school run by my cousin,’ she said. ‘They have a good art teacher.’

  But Lottie was not listening. She was staring at the photograph. In the background, in the right-hand corner, lurked the man with the shaven head.

  She recognised him now as the man she had seen in the Protestant Cemetery.

  It was late when Lottie backed the car into its parking place, a tricky manoeuvre that left her covered in a faint sweat.

  The apartment was silent. Tom had left a note on the table to say he had gone to bed. Lottie poured herself a glass of wine and let herself out on to the balcony. Cradling the glass, she stood there for some time. There was a whiff of lavender, the sound of a door slamming and darkness punctured here and there by lights in windows and doorways.

  Later, she lay beside Tom shrouded in his sleep and his secrets. However long she lived with him, however close they grew, she would, of course, know only a percentage of what he thought.

  Ill at ease, she sighed. Shifted. The old serpents, the wily doubting ones, slithered into her thoughts.

  Who was the man with the shaven head?

  Always at such moments, she was thrown back on the memory of being abandoned, cold and hungry. ‘Think of it as the sea wall that you have built against them,’ advised a therapist that Lottie had once consulted when she was struggling to forget them. ‘From time to time, those defences grow fragile, any defences grow fragile, and they will need rebuilding. Just rebuild them.’

  She grasped at her wrist – the habit learned from the times when she felt she belonged to no one and nowhere. Laying a finger over her pulse, she counted its beats. ‘That’s me,’ she said to herself, followed by the mantra that had seen her through. ‘No one can take that away.’

  Once – a couple of glasses of wine in – she had confessed to Helena that she almost wished she had been mistreated by the foster parents who plucked her out of the children’s home. Then her anger would have had a legitimate and concrete target.

  Helena’s frown had reproved Lottie. ‘You’re crazy. You wanted to be beaten up? Or abused? Or any of those appalling things that happen?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I know what you’re trying to say. Mike and Rachel didn’t love you. And that’s not enough for a child. But …’ She had laid a red-nailed hand on Lottie’s arm. ‘Sweet pea, get over it.’

  ‘I’m trying to say that just being tolerated leaves a … hunger.’

  Helena’s frown had lifted. ‘You do know you’re a fool and I love you.’

  Did it matter? There were worse things than a lack of unconditional love. Yet, she knew, her experience during that time had laid a cold finger on her spirit and blighted her capacity for joy.

  Tom’s breathing deepened. He was very warm, and she shifted further away.

  A light outside projected a pale cir
cle on to the wall.

  Sleepless.

  A man with a shaven head had been following her. The rational calculus in her mind clicked through possibilities and decided that it was coincidence.

  She decided to stick with that, slid out of bed and crept into the sitting room.

  The darkness was softening at its edges and there was the peaceful hush before the dawn.

  Seated at the table, she began to construct a timeline of Nina’s movements around Rome, Lazio and Tuscany, using the journal and consulting the files in her laptop.

  Nina’s handwriting was tricky to decipher, particularly as a few of the journal entries were in French and Italian, but her habit of dating her writing was helpful. Certainly, the dossier of her garden commissions was impressive, as was the roster of clients. Palacrinos, Tavianis, Gellis …

  At the window, pink now stained the sky.

  Lottie worked through the material: letters, bills from professional colleagues, ideas for a garden design and several formal commissions – a garden near the estate of La Foce in Tuscany and an estate south of Rome.

  Nina also had the slightly curious habit of annotating receipts from her clients. On the bill from the Tavianis, she had written:

  In the evening, the sun positions itself precisely above the mountain peak, poses so all can admire and then slips down like Thetis into the water …

  On another she had written:

  They talk nonsense … Spoilt, demanding but disadvantageous to cross. They inherited money or made it by means that’s best not to ask about and they believe that their ill-gotten money entitles them to be superior.

  The final papers from box number two had not yet been scanned in and she spread them over the table.

  A carbon copy of a letter to a Celestine Grazia in May 1978 read:

  I promise to visit every month, more often if I can.

  Lottie’s expanding log recorded that Nina returned to the Palacrinos’ garden at least three times in 1978 to check up on the planting.

  The lead urns must be planted up with nepeta and set against the olive trees. The orange trees should be on the sunken terrace in front of the house and their pots should be painted light green …

  This was a copy of another letter to Paola Palacrino:

  It is important they are sited in exactly the right position and I suggest I come up and stay for a couple of nights to make sure.

  The reply was also there:

  Come immediately, Nina. Stay with us and we can talk about everything. Bring a nice dress. The general was asking after you.

  Landscape gardener. Living in Rome. Travelling in Lazio and Tuscany. Having an affair with a man with whom she should not have been (almost certainly a priest). Working undercover. Botanical artist.

  Who was the man with the shaven head?

  The unanswered questions washed to and fro. Lottie dropped her head into her hands and peered through latticed fingers. It was a struggle to find Nina but there was also the struggle with her own psyche – and, she guessed the two connected to each other.

  When she looked up Tom was standing in front of her, having padded in from the bedroom in bare feet.

  ‘Lottie, what are you doing?’

  ‘Trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle.’

  He placed both hands on the table and leaned over towards her. ‘I won’t ask again why you are so obsessed. I just have to accept you’re mad.’

  Their eyes met. His were alive with irony and his customary humour – and she felt relief so great she was almost dizzy. She dismissed her irritation and went to fetch a glass of water.

  On her return, she found Tom bent over the papers. He looked up at her entrance and the mood had snapped into something else. ‘These shouldn’t be here.’

  Tom disliked mess which Lottie understood. ‘I’ll clear up later, don’t worry.’

  He tapped the letter. ‘This shouldn’t be lying around.’

  She skim read. ‘“The garden faces south …” What’s odd about that?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Underneath Paola Palacrino’s signature could just be made out in pencil in Nina’s handwriting: ‘Rough Notes.’

  Lottie read out aloud: ‘“Rex and I discuss the Roman Sword. Running a secret army and funding an unaccountable intelligence service is a risk to democracy. Creating hidden forces that can be called into play against the Soviets has turned out to be a Pandora’s Box. In almost every country, these cells are being activated for peacetime political activity and are protected by the very highest.”’ She tapped the paper. ‘So … Nina was politically aware. She had to be.’ She glanced up at Tom and was taken aback by his expression.

  Fury. Astonishment. Fear? ‘What the fuck was this woman doing?’ he muttered.

  ‘Tom, explain.’

  There was a second of silence.

  ‘You must stop this.’ Every iota of humour had been stripped away. ‘Leave this stuff alone. Get it into the archive. She’s dead and gone.’

  ‘Not gone,’ said Lottie stubbornly. ‘Not gone.’ Ironically, she agreed with Tom. It would be better if the papers were stowed in the archive as soon as possible, but she was angry. ‘What are you doing talking to me like that? What’s got into you?’

  At odds and deeply awry, they stared at each other. It was Tom who blinked first.

  ‘I’ll get us a drink …’ he said. ‘Wait there.’

  Lottie heard him moving around in the kitchen. He reappeared carrying a loaded tray, put it down and passed over a mug of tea. ‘It’s got a dash of brandy in it.’

  Rattled by their misunderstanding, she looked down at the mug and debated whether to shove it back at him. Then she saw that, having calmed down, he was back to the old Tom.

  ‘Why only a dash?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘Did you know I was an expert on jigsaws?’

  ‘I suspect that’s a brazen lie.’

  ‘Maybe. Here’s the thing. Choose the right space in which to solve your puzzle. Turn the pieces over. Sort the edge pieces. Sort by colour. Work on small sections. And …’ He tapped the lid of her laptop. ‘Top tip: never give up.’

  She leaned against the chair back. ‘I thought you’d just told me to do the opposite.’

  ‘I can help, Lottie, and it would be nice to do something with you.’

  ‘Why so? You don’t approve of what I’m doing.’

  He picked up a couple of the police papers. ‘It was a tricky, complicated time when she was murdered.’

  She smiled wryly. ‘And I don’t understand? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you that we’re a partnership and partners look out for each other.’

  There was the faint taste of brandy on her tongue. ‘OK.’

  ‘Let’s go over what you do know.’

  Lottie gave the details and Tom listened.

  ‘The painting was found in her papers. Gabriele Ricci and the experts all agree it’s fake but painted on original parchment obtained on the black market.’

  ‘The artist had underworld contacts,’ said Tom.

  She spread her fingers over the surface of the table. ‘The question is why would Nina Lawrence have the painting?’

  ‘Payment. Think of all those duchi and principesse for whom she worked. There’s a fair bet they had one thing in common: lack of cash.’

  ‘Then both parties would have known it was fake.’ Lottie was enjoying this. ‘A duca or whoever would never have handed over a genuine one knowingly. It would have been worth thousands and thousands.’

  ‘Maybe they needed to get rid of it.’

  She ticked off additional possibilities. ‘Was she acting as a fence …? I don’t think she would have stolen it, but maybe she was helping someone out. And, perhaps, she knew it wasn’t genuine.’ She clicked on to the file on her laptop that contained the article for The Determined Traveller and its illustrations and pushed it over to Tom. ‘Or was it Nina who
made the copy? She could draw and she knew about paint. She had seen an original in Palacrino.’

  Tom peered at the illustration. ‘Why the initials “EK”?’

  ‘If you’re forging something you don’t use your real name.’

  ‘In my experience, if you use something as a decoy, it generally contains a clue.’

  She was intrigued. ‘You know, do you?’

  ‘Observation is good.’ He gathered up the mugs. ‘First piece. Were there any bank statements?’

  Lottie checked over the documents on her laptop and pushed it over to Tom.

  He ran an eye down the screen. ‘She was in credit at the time of her death. A couple of payments were made immediately before.’

  Lottie stood behind his chair. ‘Clients,’ she said. ‘I recognise the names.’

  ‘She had also arranged to pay someone on a regular basis.’ He pointed to the entries. ‘The equivalent of two hundred pounds every month to a Celestine Grazia.’ He twisted around and looked up at Lottie. ‘A fair old sum at the time. Maybe she was the forger? Or knew something and had to be kept quiet?’

  She peered over Tom’s shoulder. The payments to Celestine Grazia began in January 1978 and continued up to October 1978, the month of her death.

  ‘If you give me a printout of this,’ said Tom, ‘I’ll do a bit of ferreting.’

  Lottie put her hands on his warm, solid shoulders. ‘That’s nice of you.’

  ‘I am nice,’ he said. ‘Very.’

  They returned to bed. Tom wrapped his arms around Lottie and cradled her to him. They were, Lottie thought, so close, so full of emotion, so delighted to be with each other.

  ‘Forgive me?’ he said. ‘More than anything, I want you to settle and to be happy.’

  Deeply touched, she swallowed the lump that rose into her throat.

  He whispered to her, ‘Lottie, when I met you my life knitted together. I hope very much you feel the same and that you don’t feel you have to spend your time with the dead.’

  She touched his cheek and thought for a moment. ‘I love what I do. You have to trust me, Tom. As I trust you.’