White Death by Tobias Jones

the time. She gave us a room above the shop. Shewas widowed too about a year ago, more or less the same time that Luciano was killed. We sort of found each other. I had gone there before a few times, so we knew each other vaguely, but one day, soon after it happened, I went in to buy something and I stayed there all day, just talking things through with her. By the end of the day, she had invited us to stay in her spare room and had offered me a part-time job.’
    ‘Kind woman.’
    She nodded slowly, staring beyond me to the outside world.
    I moved the tazzina round in its saucer, waiting for the right time to ask her about her husband.
    ‘You know,’ she started without prompting, ‘for a while they thought I had done it.’ She put her head sideways.
    ‘That’s always their first thought. Bound to be the spouse.’
    ‘Built up quite a case against me.’ She exhaled in derision, her smile turning into a bitter grimace. ‘Luciano had come into some money. The first time in his life. He was flush. They thought,’ her voice wobbled for an instant, ‘they thought I had killed him, or had him killed, for the money.’ Her lower lip was quivering now.
    ‘What money?’ I asked quietly.
    Her sigh sounded more like a growl. She pulled her hands apart, then put them back together. She shrugged, then looked at me shaking her head. ‘It was some stupid investment scam. The only investment in his life that ever went well. Trouble was, it wasn’t his money and it wasn’t his scam. He was just the frontman.’
    ‘I don’t follow.’
    ‘He was lent money to buy a business.’
    ‘A prosciuttificio?’
    ‘How did you know?’ She looked at me suddenly, surprised and scared.
    ‘That’s how I got his name. From the Ufficio del Catasto.’
    ‘So you know all about it?’
    ‘Hardly anything. I know he bought the joint and sold it to Masi Costruzioni.’
    ‘That’s just about all I know,’ she said with regret. ‘That and the fact that he bought the place with someone else’s money.’
    ‘How did you find that out?’
    She laughed bitterly. ‘Wasn’t hard. Luciano never had money of his own to speak of. I knew he couldn’t afford to buy a beer, let alone a whole business. Someone put him up to it.’
    ‘He was someone’s stooge?’
    She nodded. ‘Only,’ she hesitated, ‘he started getting ideas that he wasn’t. The place he bought was placed inside the residential land belt a few months later, and he realised he was the legal owner of a goldmine. He thought he could make a lot of money and he did. He sold it to Masi Costruzioni for a huge profit.’
    ‘Only it wasn’t his money in the first place?’
    She shook her head, closing her eyes as if to try and blank out the memory. ‘Luciano thought he had hit the big-time. He said it was time to pack our bags. Said we had enough money to live on for a few years. He wanted to go to Spain.’ She put her forehead into the palm of her hand and stayed in that position for a few seconds, her shoulders bouncing like she was coughing silently.
    It sounded like her man had tried to trouser money that belonged to someone else and had paid the ultimate price. I asked her who had lent him the money and she rolled her eyes.
    ‘That’s what the authorities wanted to know. After his death, that’s what they asked me. I told them I had no idea, but they found out.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘It was some bank. You should ask the Carabinieri.’
    ‘I will. Who was in charge of the case?’
    ‘Speranza. Never seemed very in charge to me,’ she said with bitterness.
    It sounded like a good lead. I looked at her and wondered if she was strong or honest enough to talk about her husband as something other than just a victim. I assumed that if he had bought the place he had had some hand in lighting the fires and making the threatening calls. I tried to ask the question as tactfully as possible.
    ‘The man who sold his prosciuttificio to your husband was subjected to arson attacks and