White Death by Tobias Jones Page A

threatening phone calls.’
    ‘So I heard,’ she said curtly.
    ‘Did Luciano ever talk about that?’
    She shook her head. ‘That’s not possible.’
    ‘What’s not possible?’
    ‘That Luciano would ever threaten anyone. If anything it was the opposite.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Luciano was getting some heat himself.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘When he sold the place on, a man came round here,shouting at him, threatening him, calling late at night. That sort of thing.’
    ‘Who was it?’
    She shrugged.
    ‘Did you ever see him?’
    She nodded.
    ‘And you would recognise him again?’
    ‘Of course,’ she said quickly as if the question were stupid.
    ‘What did he look like?’
    ‘An accountant. He didn’t look like the normal kind of thug.’
    ‘And what did Luciano do?’
    ‘He laughed it off. Said it was nothing, just some sfigato who was jealous of our success.’ So far she had confirmed what I already suspected. Masi was being tipped off about lucrative land deals. But he couldn’t make the purchase himself. His name was too well known. If he had stepped forward to make a deal, everyone would have known land was about to be redesignated and he would have had to pay through the teeth. So he was using frontmen. They bought the land and then sold it on to him. Masi had to trust those frontmen to sell at the price he wanted. But when Tosti found himself the proud owner of valuable land, he had started to think he had finally made it. He was dreaming of zeros in his bank account and had tried, like many before him, to take them to some sandy beach abroad. That’s why, presumably, he had taken a hit.
    ‘How much money did your husband make on the deal?’
    She looked up at me as if she didn’t understand.
    ‘It must have come to you when he died.’
    She shrugged.
    ‘So?’
    ‘He left me almost a hundred thousand.’
    ‘You’re a lucky woman,’ I said with more sarcasm than I intended. It was the wrong thing to say and she stared at me with scorn.
    ‘I’m a widow. I have no home and my son has no father. I don’t want that money. I don’t know where it comes from or where it belongs.’
    ‘So why not give it back?’
    ‘To who? To the first person who threatens my family? To someone who might be responsible for my husband’s death? Who should I give it to?’
    I didn’t say anything. She stared at me with her large black eyes as if it were my fault. I couldn’t give her a reply. She pushed back her thick hair and growled a sigh.
    ‘What do you think I would rather have? My husband or the filthy money that cost him his life?’
    I nodded, not needing to reply to the rhetorical question. ‘Before all this happened,’ I said slowly, ‘had you ever heard of Amedeo Masi? Did Luciano ever talk about him?’
    She shook her head brusquely like it was all useless. She was looking at the floor and I took the chance to study her face again. It seemed on the cusp between beauty and sadness. Her large, dark eyes were framed by a permanent, almost imperceptible, frown.
    ‘Where did you meet him?’ I asked quietly.
    She didn’t move, but started smiling slightly. ‘Monteleccio.’
    ‘Where’s that?’
    ‘Somewhere in the Apennines. A tiny town way up in themountains.’ She looked at me and then stared at her hands. ‘We had gone there for some sagra. I can’t remember what it was. Some cheap wine and food festival, and a couple of friends and I had nothing better to do. He was in the queue behind us with a few of his friends. You know what it’s like. They were talking and joking, we were pretending to ignore them. In the end we sat at the same table and things just went from there.’ She closed her eyes, like she was trying to see the whole scene again. ‘I should get back,’ she said abruptly, as if she were embarrassed at having wasted time in useless reminiscing.
    I walked her back to the shop and told her I would do what I could. She shrugged like she expected nothing but