Play the Roman Fool and Die

Book 436: Murder Room

by Richard Grindal

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Arriving home one night, Ronnie Bart, an English journalist, finds a woman in his apartment. She is wearing only his dressing gown and eating the remains of his breakfast. Her stay is brief, for she is soon arrested by the police, accused of murdering a young man. Trying to prove her innocence, Bart is drawn into a complex and dangerous affair.

Release date: January 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 166

Sample

There were three reasons for my bad temper as I climbed the four flights of stairs to my apartment in Via Baccina. Mentally I listed them. On nothing more than an alcoholic
whim my boss had made me withdraw at the very last minute from a B.E.A. press trip to London. For the second night in succession I had been unable to find a place to park my car within a mile of
the apartment. And Marucci, the film director, had deliberately ignored me in the street in spite of the fact that I had been stupid enough to lend him 20,000 lire only a day or two previously.

Although the Paese Sera said it was the warmest August night for half a century, the red stone walls of the old building exuded damp. The poodle of the Yugoslav actress had fouled the
second floor landing yet again. There was no point in complaining to the portiere as he was in league with the actress, running a call-girl racket together in all probability. I told myself that I
must find an apartment in a more civilised area and shut my mind for the moment to the knowledge that I could not afford one.

As soon as I opened the door, I saw the girl in the living room. She was wearing my dressing-gown and as far as I could tell very little else. From a plate balanced on her knees she was eating
ham with her fingers. I recognised it as the ham I had been unable to stomach at breakfast that morning.

For one electrifying instant I thought she was waiting for me, sent there for my pleasure by some generous friend. Could it be Marucci, repaying his debt? Then realism reasserted itself. Things
like that might happen to the Nigerian Foreign Minister or to the Managing Director of Johnnie Walker, but they did not happen to Ronnie Bart.

If I had harboured even a lingering wisp of hope, the girl’s reaction would have torn it aside. She jumped up from the sofa, still holding the plate.

‘Get out of here!’ she shouted.

‘Now wait a minute, Signorina,’ I began in my most courteous Italian.

‘Get out!’

‘Who are you and what is all this?’

She threw the plate at me. I ducked and it flew through the open doorway to splinter on the stone floor outside.

‘Stronzo! Va a Fangoo!’ She tossed out four or five more epithets, each more obscene than the last and looked around her for another missile.

‘This is my apartment, you know.’ I raised my voice and it went up in pitch by half an octave as to my mortification it occasionally does.

A little of her violence ebbed away, leaving behind a watermark of sullen anger and suspicion. The dressing-gown had fallen partly open at the front. She did not bother about it. I sensed that
this was not so much exhibitionism as contemptuous indifference to me.

‘Rubbish! It isn’t yours.’

‘But honestly!’

‘Don’t try those old tricks on me!’

‘But I do live here. Go and ask the portiere.’

She shook her head in resignation. ‘I should have known I was letting myself in for this, allowing myself to be brought here. It was too good to be true. Him and his noble generosity! Does
he always pimp for you?’

Her mention of nobility gave me the first clue to the answer. Mario! Only Mario had a key to my apartment and of all my friends only he struck grandiose poses. I remembered too that he would
believe I had left Rome on the B.E.A. press trip.

‘Let me make a ’phone call,’ I said sternly, ‘and we’ll soon get this straightened out.’

‘Keep away from me, you bastard!’ she said sharply, reaching for the table lamp as I moved in her direction, heading for the telephone.

I began to grow annoyed. The girl was not even particularly attractive. Her features were coarse, her hair inexpertly bleached, her voice strident. Admittedly, the knowledge that she had been
brought there for someone else’s recreation and not mine may have disposed me to be more critical than usual, but for her to believe that I had carnal designs on her was a piece of conceit. I
restrained myself from saying so and when I dialled Mario’s number he answered.

‘Mario? What in God’s name are you up to?’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘How did you find out about it?’

‘Find out? I’m in the apartment now.’

‘That’s impossible! You’re in London.’

‘You really must try to ease your mind out of its inflexibility. Sollazzo made me chuck the trip at the last moment.’

‘Well, how could I be expected to know that?’

‘I see! As soon as I go away you think you can use my flat as a brothel.’ I used the English word so that the girl would not understand. At the same time I wondered why I
was worrying about her sensibilities. She had been listening to my conversation with surly displeasure.

‘It isn’t like that at all!’ Mario protested. ‘This was an act of charity.’

‘At my expense? That sounds like your style. Do tell me about it!’

Mario ignored my sarcasm and told me. He had been driving back to Rome from Milan that day. When he had stopped for petrol at the beginning of the autostrada, two officials of the Red Cross had
approached him. With them they had a fourteen-year-old girl whom the police had picked up in Milan. She had nowhere to live and as a juvenile in need of protection they wanted her to be sent home.
The Red Cross had asked Mario to give her a lift to Rome.

‘But why did they pick on you?’ If I sounded incredulous it was because Mario was the last person to whom I would entrust a girl, however juvenile.

‘They saw my press badge on the windscreen.’

‘Then why didn’t you take her to her home?’

‘She lied to the police. She comes from Naples. I tried to persuade her to go on there, but she refused.’

‘So you picked on my flat!’

‘Where else could I put the poor girl? As you know I am not fortunate enough to have an apartment of my own.’

Mario’s voice turned sour, as it always did when he spoke of my apartment. Like all Italian men he was obsessed, not so much with sex, as with somehow arranging for himself the freedom to
enjoy it. This meant, for a married man, having a place to shack up with girl friends and he was not rich enough to afford one. So humble as it was, he envied me my apartment.

‘I think you’ve got a hell of a nerve,’ I commented.

‘Carlotta will have to stay at your place, at least for the night. Tomorrow we can make other arrangements.’

‘And what am I supposed to do?’

‘Go to a hotel, of course. You can’t stay there with her. It would be immoral.’ He must have been unable to sense my stunned silence because he added coolly: ‘In fact I
think it’s most inconsiderate of you to come back without warning like this.’

It would have been futile to protest, to unleash my indignation. I had no weapon that would pierce the defence he had arrogantly improvised.

‘Have you finished arguing over me?’ the girl Carlotta asked when I put down the telephone. ‘It might be easier just to draw lots.’

‘Please try to get it into your head,’ I replied patiently, ‘that I have no designs on your virtue.’

‘You’d be five years too late for that, my friend.’

‘What!’ Although I knew the score about juvenile delinquency in Italy, I was almost shocked. ‘But you’re only fourteen!’

‘Fourteen! Don’t be soft!’

‘Then you lied to the police about that as well?’

‘Of course. If they had known I’m eighteen they would have had me in court.’

The discovery of her real age both disturbed and reassured me. Physical development like hers would have been abnormal in a girl of fourteen and it was good to know that I was not harbouring a
freak. On the other hand ideas which one could thrust aside when faced with a juvenile, became temptations with a girl past the age of consent.

‘Well, I’m sorry, Carlotta, but you can’t stay here.’

‘I must. At least for tonight.’

‘Why?’

‘Take a look in the bathroom and you’ll understand.’

In the bathroom, on an improvised clothes line slung between the shower attachment and the medicine cupboard, hung a black and white striped mini-skirt, a white cotton jumper, bra and pants.
They dripped with melancholy rhythm, partly into the bath and the washbasin but mostly on to the floor.

When I rejoined Carlotta in the living room I remarked: ‘So, you’ve washed some clothes. You can return tomorrow and fetch them.’

‘What are the police going to say when I go naked into the streets? It will look bad for you.’

‘You must have something else you can wear.’

‘You don’t know much about girls like me, do you, Englishman? We don’t have wardrobes. The clothes in your bathroom are all I possess for the present.’

For a moment I was tempted to call her bluff. Then it struck me that she was a girl quite capable of going out naked into the streets and the last thing I wanted was trouble with the police.
Although foreigners are always supposed to be given a fair amount of latitude in Italy where the vice laws are concerned, experience had taught me that Italian police did not always play the game
by the unwritten rules.

‘In that case you’ll have to stay, I suppose. You can have the bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa.’ Because she was clearly about to make some acid comment I continued
quickly: ‘Don’t worry, there’s a key in the bedroom door. You can lock it if you wish.’

‘You bet I will.’

After picking up the fragments of the plate from the landing, I took them into the kitchen. There was no food in the refrigerator except a carton of milk, two shrivelled tomatoes and an egg.
Having missed dinner somewhere along the line, I had been looking forward to that ham.

‘You’ve had dinner I suppose?’ I called out to Carlotta.

‘No.’

‘Didn’t Mario buy you a meal on the way back from Milan? The mean swine!’

‘He had dinner and asked me to eat with him, but I refused.’

‘Why on earth?’

‘Because I knew what he’d want in return.’

Cynicism in young girls has always seemed to me most unattractive, but for some indefinable reason I was prepared to make allowances in Carlotta’s case. ‘There’s a cafe not far
away that’s open till one. I’m going to have a toast. Would you like me to bring you one?’

‘Why not?’ For the first time that evening she smiled and it improved her looks enormously. ‘Not even an Englishman would expect to have a girl for the price of a
sandwich.’

The next afternoon a press conference was held at the Ministry of Finance to announce an important Government decision. The boys who claimed to have a private line to the
Minister said it was not going to be devaluation, in spite of the economic troubles that had been plaguing the country for almost a year. Whatever the announcement, it would not be worth even a
paragraph in Mediterranean Round-up, but I went along partly for the Scotch and because I liked to remind other journalists of my existence.

While I sat waiting among the assorted reporters, the arrogant and the asinine, the anti-social and the alcoholic, I wondered about Carlotta. She had still been in the bedroom, presumably
asleep, when I had left the apartment that morning. I had decided not to wake her, deliberately, because I had wanted to avoid restarting the discussion about her plans for the immediate
future.

My motives for this piece of evasion were not clear even to me. I may have been hoping, ostrich like, that if I turned away the problem would disappear of its own accord. On the other hand there
was an almost imperceptible feeling, not strong enough to be called hope, that if I did not force the issue, she might still be in the apartment when I returned that evening.

I examined this idea, turning it over in the analytical fingers of my mind dispassionately. The girl meant nothing to me. There was no attraction nor even sentiment. It must be the writer in me,
insatiably curious about humanity, always looking for human material. Her appearance in my apartment the evening before, her violent tongue and primitive emotions would all be good copy for the day
when I finished my play and started the first of my novels. The experience would be well worth a night or two of cramped sleep on my imitation stile impero sofa.

Introspection was interrupted at this point by the arrival of those who were to be the principal performers at the press conference. The press officer at the Ministry led the way, followed by
the Minister’s chief assistant, the Minister himself and another man whom I did not immediately recognise.

After the press officer had given a short introduction, the Minister made his announcement. He prefaced this with a speech reminding us of the severe economic difficulties that faced Italy, of
the wave of strikes taking place up and down the country, of soaring prices and unemployment, of the open talk that summer would be followed by an autumn of bloodshed. The speech was typically
Italian; literary, elaborately contrived and long-winded as well as emotional. It was depressing to think how many hours I must have spent listening to similar speeches during the four years I had
been in Rome. Contrary to what the world believes, it is not love-making, but talking that is the Italian’s greatest talent.

Finally we reached the point. The Minister said: ‘The Italian Government is happy to announce that Dr. Otto Reinartz has agreed to advise us on the preparations of a plan to combat the
country’s present economic difficulties.’

I looked at the man who sat beside the Minister and to whom he was pointing. So this was Reinartz. A Swiss, reputed to be the greatest economist in the world, he had carved out a brilliant
career culminating in his recent appointment as head of the International Finance and Monetary Commission. In appearance he was disappointingly commonplace; short, inclined to stoutness, with a
large serious face like the dial of a functional but unattractive clock. He was perspiring too freely for a healthy man and kept dabbing at his hair line with a handkerchief folded in a
triangle.

The journalists began to ask questions. Would Dr. Reinartz be resigning his appointment with the International Finance and Monetary Commission? The Minister said no, because the doctor was
confident that he would be able to give enough time to this new assignment. In fact he felt that it was part of his duties as Director of the Commission to go to the aid of any country that needed
help.

The correspondent of Il Messaggero asked: ‘Can Dr. Reinartz give us any indication of the guide lines he would suggest for a policy to bring back economic stability to
Italy?’

Reinartz answered this one himself: ‘We must understand at the outset that no one individual could devise, even in outline, the kind of policy that might be needed. The rehabilitation of
your country’s economy will depend on the wisdom of many people working as a team. It requires. . .