A Murder in Tuscany by Christobel Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

Sandro, stuffing the phone in his pocket.
    The three overgrown boys clustered around the parked motorini , jostling each other, pulling on helmets. Without a moped of his own Alberto ousted one of his pals, taking control and forcing the kid to ride pillion.
    Fortunately for Sandro the street was one-way, because it would have been impossible to manage a U-turn in the confined space; certainly not without drawing attention to himself. His tailing skills needed a little attention, that was for sure; a battered, nondescript motorino such as Giuli’s mightn’t be a bad idea, either. He sat with
the engine running until they went past, a cigarette clamped between Alberto’s lips as he talked around it, helmetless and entertaining his entourage, taking a hand off the handlebars to gesture in the air, the motorino swerving as he did so.
    Not for the first time, Sandro felt a spasm of pity for little Carlotta Bellagamba.
    At the bottom of the hill they swung through the Porta San Miniato, left past the little bar where Sandro had lost the plot, down the high-sided canyon of the Via San Niccolò, then a sharp right around the great bulk of the Palazzo dei Mozzi with its huge, studded door. They were on the Piazza Demidoff, overlooking the river, where the rich kids hang out.
    The gang pulled up in front of what looked like a closed-up restaurant or club with shuttered windows, on the corner of the street; they seemed to be fishing through their pockets, looking for something. Sandro double-parked outside a bar thronging with outdoor smokers, and watched. The shuttered windows weren’t completely dead; a string of red fairylights twinkled along the top of the shutters, and there was a dim light visible through a glazed section at the top of the door.
    Whatever it was the boys had been looking for – and Sandro guessed it was money – they found it. They were lined up at the door now, Alberto, the tallest by a head, in the lead, pressing a bell and talking into an intercom, and then they were inside, the boy at the back shoving a little to hurry them in.
    Right, thought Sandro, with gloomy satisfaction. He knew what kind of place it was; he knew they weren’t in there spending their parents’ money on dried-up sandwiches. He knew, too, that if he went in after them, a man in late middle age on his own, he might as well attach a flashing beacon to his head and imitate a police siren.
    He got himself a slice of pizza, returned to the car, and watched.
    The afternoon faded. Half a dozen times Sandro stuck the key in the ignition, ready to jack it in. He was being paid to watch Carlotta Bellagamba, not her boyfriend, and he was being alternately chilled to the bone or suffocated by the car’s faulty, fume-laden heater. He thought of Giuli, wondered idly what Gallo wanted. It had been money for old
rope, that job; he supposed he wouldn’t mind another like it, running a few things through the system, checking credit and criminal records, following up references. He hadn’t even needed to leave his office.
    Sandro knew he should call the man, and should call Giuli back too for that matter, but that would require him to climb out of the car and walk to the riverbank fifty metres away where there was a mobile signal, out of the lee of the hills and the stone mass of the Palazzo Mozzi. So he sat and chewed his nails, and wished he was a policeman again and his partner Pietro was sitting next to him, talking about food. And tried not to think about what it would be like returning to a flat empty of Luisa, for three whole nights.
    At close to four o’clock she appeared. Not Giuli, not Luisa, but little Carlotta Bellagamba. The pink Vespa tilted around the corner, dangerously laden, Carlotta’s curls springing out from under her helmet. Two big carrier bags from a flashy chain store dangling from either handlebar, and another between her knees. She’d been shopping. Jesus wept.
    Sandro killed the engine, which he’d had on to run the