The Questore was dead.
(“Piero, Piero—I honestly think I’ve never met a man like you to take offence. And bear grudges.”)
Trotti took the turning right and heard the voice of a woman. “Commissario!”
He stopped and turned.
She came towards him, small in her overcoat, the sound of her heels dulled by the wet cobblestones. “You didn’t get my message?”
“What message?”
“I was hoping to see you at the service, Piero.”
“Other things to do.”
Bianca Poveri, the youngest female prison director in Italy, slipped her arm through his and fell into step beside him. “You never could stand the man.”
“I’m not a politician. They didn’t need me at the service.”
The fog dulled every sound, dulled Trotti’s voice, dulled the fall of their shoes as they walked, almost in step.
“Your cousin eventually arrived at Linate?”
“Anna Maria took a different plane. She came via Zurich.”
“And your cousin Sandro?”
“Anna Maria came for the funeral.”
“Another funeral?”
“Sandro’s dead,” Trotti said flatly. He could feel the damp fog working into his trousers and he longed for the dry cold of the hills. Perhaps there could be no dry cold of the hills for Trotti, after all. “Dead? You told me Sandro was your age.”
“Sandro died,” Trotti said, not wishing to elaborate.
“I’m so sorry.”
They turned into Piazza Vittoria and along the empty, echoing porticoes.
Bianca asked, “What about your place in Santa Maria? Weren’t you going to retire in the hills with Sandro?”
“Gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“Sandro incurred a lot of debts,” Trotti replied. “More of a gambler than I ever realized.”
The door of the Bar Duomo was misted and twinkled with the light beyond. Trotti pushed the brass handle and opened the door for Bianca Poveri to step past him. He noted her musky perfume but it was immediately lost to the other, familiar smells of the bar.
“Accompanied tonight, commissario?” the barman asked cheerfully, catching sight of Trotti through the crowd. “A beautiful lady, I see.”
The mirror behind the bar threw back Trotti’s smiling image.
A couple of heads nodded an evening salutation as Trotti and Bianca Poveri went to the far table where nobody was sitting.
On the pink cloth of the table lay a discarded copy of the morning’s local paper, stiffened by a wooden rod. SUICIDE IN THE QUESTURA. Even without his glasses Trotti could recognize the nowfamous photograph of the Questore shaking Bettino Craxi’s hand, at the time of the prime minister’s visit to the small, hardworking provincial town.
“A drink, Signora Direttrice?”
“Don’t you dare call me that.” She was wearing pearl earrings and beneath the coat, a black woolen dress that accentuated the youth of her face.
Trotti offered to help her remove the coat but Bianca Poveri shook her head.
Trotti lifted two fingers and mouthed the word two for the waiter.
“I can’t stay. Got to get back to Anna Giulia.”
“And Alcibiade,” Trotti added as he unzipped his jacket. He rubbed his hands, the warmth quickly returning.
“What are you going to do, Piero? About your retirement.”
He shrugged. “It’s not important.”
“And your chickens and your goats?”
“My cousin’s staying with me. Last time Anna Maria and I lived together was over fifty years ago when she was a young fiancée, waiting for her man to come back from the wars.”
“What are you going to do about your place in Santa Maria? The animals? The rustic life you keep talking about?”
“Don’t worry about me. Anyway, September’s still a long way off.”
“You’ll live here in the city?”
“I won’t be lonely, that’s sure. Anna Maria says she might stay on in Italy after all. She’s a widow now. In Holland she rarely sees her grandchildren. I’ve got my daughter I can see in Bologna. And, as long as I remain married, there’s always Agnese’s villa on Lake Garda.”
“That’s what I wanted to see you about.”
“About Lake Garda?”
Silent and discreet, the barman had moved from behind the bar and was now transferring a saucer of cashew nuts and two glasses of steaming Elisir di China from a steel tray on to the table. A slice of lemon had been clipped to the rim of each glass.
Bianca Poveri looked at the glass of china and smiled gratefully at Trotti. “Better than a funeral.”
The waiter turned on the wall light. “Anything else you need, commissario?”
Trotti shook his head.
“And the lovely lady?”
“I need to get home to my family.”
The waiter smiled philosophically, shrugged and picked up an overflowing ashtray. He went away with the crumpled Provincia Padana beneath his arm.
“I’ve been getting a lot of faxes from Trieste, Piero.”
“Why?”
“Your Uruguayan friend thinks you can help her.”
“I don’t think I can help anybody at the moment.”
“She’s sent a couple more letters.”
“I tried to help Eva once. In the end, I had to change all the locks in via Milano.”
“They’re going to send her back to Uruguay. I gather she was counting on you. She seems to think you can get her a residency permit.”
“You were right, Bianca. Like snails and they carry their shells on their backs for the rest of their lives. There’s not much that you or I can do about that.” He sipped the hot china. “Not much I can do for Eva. Anyway, there’s another woman in my life now.”
Bianca could not hide her surprise. “A woman? After all these years.”
He said nothing.
“A woman, Piero?”
“The longer Anna Maria stays the better. She’s a battle axe but she’s kind. Proud and stubborn, like all mountain people.”
Bianca laughed. “Can I presume to think, Piero Trotti, now you no longer have a place in the hills, now the Questore’s left for that other Questura in the sky, and now that your cousin’s helping you rediscover all the charms of family life—can I hope you’re going to stay on in the Questura?”
“Presume whatever you want.”
Bianca Poveri seemed to catch her breath. “They need you, Piero.”
“Nobody needs me. Nobody’s indispensable.”
“Before it’s too late. Before the shell grows on their backs and there’s nothing you or I or anybody else can do to help them.”
Trotti was about to speak.
Bianca was leaning forward. Her face was gentle and attentive, despite the hard lines of her perm. “Stay on, Piero.”
Trotti glanced up.
“Mind if I sit down?”
She was standing beside him, her hand placed possessively on his shoulder. Simona Scola smiled as she bent over and lightly kissed Trotti on the cheek. “I do hope you’re not flirting with another woman, Piero,” she said laughingly. There was no amusement in the glance that she gave the other woman.
Trotti could not contain his smile. His hand stroked her fingers.
OTHER TITLES IN THE SOHO CRIME SERIES
Stephanie Barron
(Jane Austen’s England)
Jane and the Twelve Days
of Christmas
Quentin Bates
(Iceland)
Frozen Assets
Cold Comfort
Chilled to the Bone
James R. Benn
(World War II Europe)
Billy Boyle
The First Wave
Blood Alone
Evil for Evil
Rag & Bone
A Mortal Terror
Death’s Door
A Blind Goddess
The Rest Is Silence
Cara Black
(Paris, France)
Murder in the Marais
Murder in Belleville
Murder in the Sentier
Murder in the Bastille
Murder in Clichy
Murder in Montmartre
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis
Murder in the Rue de Paradis
Murder in the Latin Quarter
Murder in the Palais Royal
Murder in Passy
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
Murder Below Montparnasse
Murder in Pigalle
Murder on the Champ de Mars
Grace Brophy
(Italy)
The Last Enemy
A Deadly Paradise
Henry Chang
(Chinatown)
Chinatown Beat
Year of the Dog
Red Jade
Death Money
Barbara Cleverly
(England)
The Last Kashmiri Rose
Strange Images of Death
The Blood Royal
Not My Blood
A Spider in the Cup
Enter Pale Death
Gary Corby
(Ancient Greece)
The Pericles Commission
The Ionia Sanction
Sacred Games
The Marathon Conspiracy
Death Ex Machina
Colin Cotterill
(Laos)
The Coroner’s Lunch
Thirty-Three Teeth
Disco for the Departed
Anarchy and Old Dogs
Curse of the Pogo Stick
The Merry Misogynist
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave
Slash and Burn
The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die
The Six and a Half Deadly Sins
Garry Disher
(Australia)
The Dragon Man
Kittyhawk Down
Snapshot
Chain of Evidence
Blood Moon
Wyatt
Whispering Death
Port Vila Blues
Fallout
Hell to Pay
David Downing
(World War II Germany)
Zoo Station
Silesian Station
Stettin Station
Potsdam Station
Lehrter Station
Masaryk Station
(World War I)
Jack of Spies
Leighton Gage
(Brazil)
Blood of the Wicked
Buried Strangers
Dying Gasp
Every Bitter Thing
A Vine in the Blood
Perfect Hatred
The Ways of Evil Men
Michael Genelin
(Slovakia)
Siren of the Waters
Dark Dreams
The Magician’s Accomplice
Requiem for a Gypsy
Timothy Hallinan
(Thailand)
The Fear Artist
For the Dead
(Los Angeles)
Crashed
Little Elvises
The Fame Thief
Herbie’s Game
Mette Ivie Harrison
(Mormon Utah)
The Bishop’s Wife
Mick Herron
(England)
Down Cemetery Road
The Last Voice You Hear
Reconstruction
Smoke and Whispers
Why We Die
Slow Horses
Dead Lions
Nobody Walks
Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis
(Denmark)
The Boy in the Suitcase
Invisible Murder
Death of a Nightingale
Graeme Kent
(Solomon Islands)
Devil-Devil
One Blood
Heda Margolius Kovály
(1950s Prague)
Innocence
James Lilliefors
(Global Thrillers)
Viral
The Leviathan Effect
Martin Limón
(South Korea)
Jade Lady Burning
Slicky Boys
Buddha’s Money
The Door to Bitterness
The Wandering Ghost
G.I. Bones
Mr. Kill
The Joy Brigade
Nightmare Range
The Iron Sickle
Ed Lin
(Taiwan)
Ghost Month
Peter Lovesey
(England)
The Circle
The Headhunters
False Inspector Dew
Rough Cider
On the Edge
The Reaper
(Bath, England)
The Last Detective
Diamond Solitaire
The Summons
Bloodhounds
Upon a Dark Night
The Vault
Diamond Dust
The House Sitter
The Secret Hangman
Skeleton Hill
Stagestruck
Cop to Corpse
The Tooth Tattoo
The Stone Wife
Jassy Mackenzie
(South Africa)
Random Violence
Stolen Lives
The Fallen
Pale Horses
SeichÅ Matsumoto
(Japan)
Inspector Imanishi Investigates
James McClure
(South Africa)
The Steam Pig
The Caterpillar Cop
The Gooseberry Fool
Snake
The Sunday Hangman
The Blood of an Englishman
The Artful Egg
The Song Dog
Magdalen Nabb
(Italy)
Death of an Englishman
Death of a Dutchman
Death in Springtime
Death in Autumn
The Marshal and the Madwoman
The Marshal and the Murderer
The Marshal’s Own Case
The Marshal Makes His Report
The Marshal at the Villa Torrini
Property of Blood
Some Bitter Taste
The Innocent
Vita Nuova
The Monster of Florence
Fuminori Nakamura
(Japan)
The Thief
Evil and the Mask
Last Winter, We Parted
Stuart Neville
(Northern Ireland)
The Ghosts of Belfast
Collusion
Stolen Souls
The Final Silence
Ratlines
Eliot Pattison
(Tibet)
Prayer of the Dragon
The Lord of Death
Rebecca Pawel
(1930s Spain)
Death of a Nationalist
Law of Return
The Watcher in the Pine
The Summer Snow
Kwei Quartey
(Ghana)
Murder at Cape Three Points
Qiu Xiaolong
(China)
Death of a Red Heroine
A Loyal Character Dancer
When Red Is Black
John Straley
(Alaska)
The Woman Who Married a Bear
The Curious Eat Themselves
The Big Both Ways
Cold Storage, Alaska
Akimitsu Takagi
(Japan)
The Tattoo Murder Case
Honeymoon to Nowhere
The Informer
Helene Tursten
(Sweden)
Detective Inspector Huss
The Torso
The Glass Devil
Night Rounds
The Golden Calf
The Fire Dance
The Beige Man
Jan Merete
Weiss
(Italy)
These Dark Things
A Few Drops of Blood
Janwillem van de Wetering
(Holland)
Outsider in Amsterdam
Tumbleweed
The Corpse on the Dike
Death of a Hawker
The Japanese Corpse
The Blond Baboon
The Maine Massacre
The Mind-Murders
The Streetbird
The Rattle-Rat
Hard Rain
Just a Corpse at Twilight
Hollow-Eyed Angel
The Perfidious Parrot
Amsterdam Cops: Collected Stories
Timothy Williams
(Guadeloupe)
Another Sun
The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe
(Italy)
Converging Parallels
The Puppeteer
Persona Non Grata
Black August
Big Italy
Jacqueline Winspear
(1920s England)
Maisie Dobbs
Birds of a Feather