LITMIR.BIZ

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of the shooting jackets on sale at the van that occupied the lay-by opposite the café on the main Colle Val d’Elsa road. The women had been laughing about it just the other day, wondering when exactly it had become fashionable for Italian men of all ages to look as if they’d just walked in from a tour of duty in the Balkans. Weird, she thought. Bel cautiously climbed the stairs to the loggia, expecting the same sense of long-abandoned habitation.

      But as soon as she emerged from the stairwell, she realized she’d stepped into something very different. When she turned to her left and glanced in the first door, she understood this house was not what it seemed. The rancid mustiness of the lower floor was only a faint note here, the air almost as fresh as it was outside. The room had obviously been a bedroom, and fairly recently at that. A mattress lay on the floor, a bedspread flung back casually across the bottom third. It was dusty, but had none of the ingrained grime the lower floor had led Bel to expect. Again, a cord was strung across the corner. There were a dozen empty hangers, but the final three held slightly crumpled shirts. Even from a distance, she could see they were past their best, fade lines across the sleeves and collars.

      A pair of tomato crates acted as bedside tables. One held a stump of candle in a saucer. A yellowed copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lay on the floor next to the bed. Bel picked it up, noting that the date was less than four months ago. So that gave her an idea of when this place had been last abandoned. She lifted one of the shirtsleeves and pressed it to her nose. Rosemary and marijuana. Faint but unmistakable.

      She went back to the loggia and checked out the other rooms. The pattern was similar. Three more bedrooms containing a handful of leftovers - a couple of T-shirts, paperbacks and magazines in English, Italian and German, half a bottle of wine, the stub of a lipstick, a leather sandal whose sole had parted company with its upper - the sort of things you would leave behind if you were moving out with no thought of who might come after. In one, a bunch of flowers stuck in an olive jar had dried to fragility.

      The final room on the west side was the biggest so far. Its windows had been cleaned more recently than any of the others, its shutters renovated and its walls whitewashed. Standing in the middle of the floor was a silk-screen printing frame. Trestle tables set against one wall contained plastic cups stained inside with dried pigments, and brushes stiff with neglect. A scatter of spots and blots marked the floor. Bel was intrigued, her curiosity overcoming any lingering nervousness at being alone in this peculiar place. Whoever had been here must have cleared out in a hurry. Leaving a substantial silk-screen frame behind wasn’t what you would do if your departure was planned.

      She backed out of the studio and made her way along the loggia to the wing opposite. She was careful to stay close to the wall, not trusting the undulating brick floor with her weight. She passed the bedroom doors, feeling like a trespasser on the Mary Celeste. A silence unbroken even by bird-song accentuated the impression. The last room before the corner was a bathroom whose nauseating mix of odours still hung in the air. A coil of hosepipe lay on the floor, its tail end disappearing through a hole in the masonry near the window. So they had improvised some sort of running water, though not enough to make the toilet anything less than disgusting. She wrinkled her nose and backed away.

      Bel rounded the corner just as the sun cleared the corner of the woods, flooding her in sudden warmth. It made her entry into the final room all the more chilling. Shivering at the dank air, she ventured inside. The shutters were pulled tight, making the interior almost too dim to discern anything. But as her eyes adjusted, she gained a sense of the room. It was the twin of the studio in scale, but its function was quite different. She crossed to the nearest window and struggled with the shutter, finally managing to haul it halfway open. It was enough to confirm her first impression. This had been the heart of the occupation of the casa rovina. A battered old cooking range connected to a gas cylinder stood by a stone sink. The dining table was scarred and stripped to the bare wood, but it was solid and had beautifully carved legs. Seven unmatched chairs sat around it, an eighth overturned a few feet away. A rocking chair and a couple of sofas lined the walls. Odd bits of crockery and cutlery lay scattered around, as if the inhabitants couldn’t be bothered collecting them when they’d left.

      As Bel walked back from the window, a rickety table caught her eye. Standing behind the door, it was easy to miss. An untidy scatter of what appeared to be posters lay across it. Fascinated, she moved towards it. Two strides and she stopped short, her sharp gasp echoing in the dusty air.

      Before her on the limestone flags was an irregular stain, perhaps three feet by eighteen inches. Rusty brown, its edges were rounded and smooth, as if it had flowed and pooled rather than spilled. It was thick enough to obscure the flags beneath. One section on the farthest edge looked smudged and thinned, as if someone had tried to scrub it clean and soon given up. Bel had covered enough stories of domestic violence and sexual homicide to recognize a serious bloodstain when she saw it.

      Startled, she stepped back, head swivelling from side to side, heart thudding so hard she thought it might choke her. What the hell had happened here? She looked around wildly, noticing other dark stains marking the floor beyond the table. Time to get out of here, the sensible part of her mind was screaming. But the devil of curiosity muttered in her ear. There’s been nobody here for months. Look at the dust. They’re long gone. They’re not going to be back any time soon. Whatever happened here was good reason for them to clear out. Check out the posters…

      Bel skirted the stain, giving it as wide a berth as she could without touching any of the furniture. All at once, she felt a taint in the air. Knew it was imagination, but still it seemed real. Back to the room, face to the door, she crab-walked to the table and looked down at the posters strewn across it.

      The second shock was almost more powerful than the first.

      Bel knew she was pushing too hard up the hill, but she couldn’t pace herself. She could feel the sweat from her hand coating the good quality paper of the rolled-up poster. At last the track emerged from the trees and became less treacherous as it approached their holiday villa. The road sloped down almost imperceptibly, but gravity was enough to give her tired legs an extra boost and she was still moving fast when she rounded the corner of the house to find Lisa Martyn stretched out on the shady terrace in a pool chair with Friday’s Guardian for company. Bel felt relief. She needed to talk to someone and, of all her companions, Lisa was least likely to turn her revelations into dinner party gossip. A human rights lawyer whose compassion and feminism seemed as ineluctable as every breath she took, Lisa would understand the potential of the discovery Bel thought she had made. And her right to handle it as she saw fit.

      Lisa dragged her eyes away from the newspaper, distracted by the unfamiliar heave of Bel’s breath. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re about to stroke out.’

      Bel put the poster down on a chair and leaned over, hands on knees, dragging breath into her lungs, regretting those secret, stolen cigarettes. ‘I’ll be - OK in - a minute.’

      Lisa struggled ungainly out of the chair and hurried into the kitchen, returning with a towel and bottle of water. Bel stood straight, took the water and poured half over her head, snorting as she breathed it in by accident. Then she rubbed her head with the towel and slumped into a chair. She swallowed a long draught of water while Lisa returned to her pool chair. ‘What was all that about?’ Lisa said. ‘You’re the most dignified jogger I know. Never seen an out-of-breath Bel before. What’s got you into such a state?’

      ‘I found something,’ Bel said. Her chest was still struggling but she could manage short bursts of speech. ‘At least, I think I found something. And if I’m right, it’s the story of my career.’ She reached for the poster. ‘I was kind of hoping you might be able to tell me whether I’ve completely lost the plot.’

      Intrigued, Lisa tossed the paper to the ground and sat up. ‘So, what is it, this thing that might be something?’

      Bel unrolled the heavy paper, weighing it down at the corners with a pepper grinder, a coffee mug and a couple of dirty ashtrays. The image on the A3 sheet was striking. It had been designed to look like a stark black-and-white woodcut in the German Expressionist style. At the top of the page, a bearded man with an angular shock of hair leaned

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