use the same one, Luba. But I couldn’t ask Costanza. Because she was such a private person. But they’d be there, and I’d see the same ones a few times. In the beginning, as I said, I really didn’t notice them. And then I did, but they never caused any trouble, were always very polite, so I just sort of got used to them.’
‘Until?’ Brunetti asked, sensing that he was meant to ask and that she needed help to tell this story.
‘Until I found one of them on the steps, well, on the landing in front of Costanza’s door: I was coming up the steps, and there she was. Costanza wasn’t home – I rang her bell – and this girl was lying there. At first I thought she might be drunk or something. I don’t know why I thought that; they’d always been very quiet.’ She looked away, and Brunetti could see her thinking about what she had just said. ‘Maybe it’s because they’d all looked poor, and it was my bourgeois prejudice coming out.’ They watched her shoulders rise in an unconscious shrug. ‘I don’t know.
‘I couldn’t just leave her there, so I tried to help her get up. She was moaning, so I knew she wasn’t unconscious. That’s when I saw her face. Her nose was pushed to one side, and there was a lot of blood down the front of her coat. At first I didn’t notice it because the coat was black and I hadn’t really seen her face until I got her to sit up.’
Signora Giusti turned around and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I asked her what had happened, and she said she had fallen on the street. So I said I was going to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital.’
‘Was she Italian?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, I don’t know where she was from. The East somewhere, I’d say, but I’m not sure.’
‘Did she speak Italian?’
‘Enough to understand what I said and to tell me about falling. “
‘What did she do?’
‘When she heard me say that, she panicked. She grabbed my hand and said “
‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I heard – we both heard – the door open. The front door downstairs.’ She closed her eyes, remembering the scene. ‘The woman – she was really still a girl. Couldn’t have been much more than a teenager, really – she panicked. I’ve never seen anyone do this, just read about it. She crawled over to the corner and pushed herself into it. She pulled her coat up over her head as if she thought that would hide her or make her invisible. But she kept moaning, so anyone would know she was there.’
‘And then?’
‘And then Costanza came up. She didn’t say anything, just stopped at the top of the steps. The girl was moaning again by then, like an animal. I started to say something, but she held up a hand and said the girl’s name, Alessandra or Alexandra, I don’t remember which, and then she said that everything was all right and there was nothing to be afraid of, the same sort of thing you’d say to children when they wake up in the night.’
‘And the girl?’ Vianello asked.
‘She stopped moaning, and Costanza went over and knelt down beside her.’ She looked at them, surprised to be remembering something now. ‘But she didn’t touch her. She just said her name a few more times and told her everything was fine and not to worry.’
‘Then what?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I stood up and Costanza said, “Thank you,” as though I’d just given her a cup of tea or something. But it was clear that she was telling me to leave, so I did. I went back up to my apartment.’
‘Did you ever see the girl again?’
‘No. Never. Then, after a few months, there was another one, but I never spoke to any of them again – there might have been two or three more that I knew about.’
‘Did Signora Altavilla ever refer to it or say anything to you about it?’
‘No. Nothing. It was as though it had never happened, and after a time it felt that way, too. I’d say hello to her – Costanza – on the steps, or she’d ask me in for a cup of tea, or she’d come up here if I suggested it. But neither of us ever said anything about it.’ She looked back and forth between them, as if asking them to understand. ‘You know how it is. After a time, something that’s happened, even if it isn’t very nice, if you just don’t talk about it, it sort of goes away. Not that you forget about it, not really, but it isn’t there any more.’
Brunetti recognized the familiarity of this, and Vianello said, ‘It’s the only way life can go on, really, if you think about it.’
At this, Brunetti glanced at Signora Giusti and their eyes met. She nodded, and Brunetti found himself nodding in return. Yes, it was the only way life could go on.
12
‘Did you ever find out what she was doing?’ Brunetti finally asked.
‘It doesn’t take much to understand, does it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think she was using her apartment as some sort of safe house for… well, for women at risk.’ Then, before he could ask, she explained, ‘From their boyfriends or their husbands, or in the case of these women from the East, for all I know, from the men who own them.’
‘Own?’ Vianello asked.
‘You’re a policeman. You should be able to figure it out,’ she said, surprising them both with the blunt challenge. Then she went on in a calmer voice, ‘What else could they be, if not prostitutes? That woman, Alessandra or Alexandra, she wasn’t Italian, she barely spoke the language. I doubt she was anyone’s wife. But I know she was frightened, terrified that whoever broke her nose would come back and finish the job. That’s probably why she disappeared.’
‘Can you remember,’ Brunetti began, ‘anything that your neighbour said in all this time – since you noticed the women coming into the house – that would suggest she felt in danger?’
In a voice that strove for patience, she said, ‘I told you, Commissario, Costanza was a very private person. She wouldn’t say anything like that. It wasn’t her way, her style.’
‘Even as a joke?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.
‘People don’t joke about things like this,’ she said sharply.
Brunetti was of a different mind entirely, having had plenty of evidence of the human capacity to joke at anything, no matter how terrible. It seemed to him an entirely legitimate defence against the looming horror that could afflict us. In this, he was a great admirer of the British; well, of the British who were, with their wry humour in the face of death, their gallows humour – they even had a word for it – defiant to the point of madness.
‘Signora,’ Brunetti said in a voice meant to restore tranquillity, ‘did you draw conclusions on your own?’ Before she could ask, he said, ‘Here I’m asking for your general feeling or impression of what might have been going on.’
For some reason, his question calmed her visibly. Her shoulders grew less stiff. ‘She was doing what she thought was right and trying to help these poor women.’ She raised a hand, then turned and left the room and was quickly back, carrying a small piece of paper, the familiar receipt for a bill paid in the post office. She handed it to Brunetti and sat again in her place on the sofa.
‘Alba Libera,’ he read, wondering what Free Dawn she was involved with.
‘Yes,’ she said, raising a hand as if to wave away the banality of the title. ‘They probably wanted to have a title that would not call attention to itself.’
‘And who are they?’ Brunetti enquired: it was not the organization Signorina Elettra had found.
‘It’s a society for women. You can see it’s a non-profit,’ she said, pointing to the letters that followed its name.
Brunetti restrained his impulse to say that those letters were no guarantee of fiscal probity and, instead, asked, ‘What do they do?’
‘What Costanza did. Help women who run away, or who try to run away. They have a helpline, and they take it in turn to answer. And if they think there’s real danger, then they find a place for them to stay.’
