The Rainaldi Quartet Read online

  The piazza is now surrounded by unprepossessing office buildings, many occupied by banks which can be guaranteed to suck the soul out of any area they inhabit. At one corner there is even a branch of McDonald’s, for the infamous golden arches have colonised our humble community too, though I notice – in an irony suitable for our times – that a McDonald’s paper cup is now the vessel of choice for every beggar on the street to hold forth for alms.

  There is an air of neglect about the place. The bandstand, which these days is more often used to shelter from the rain than for musical performances, is looking distinctly rundown. The statue of Ponchielli, a son of Cremona who wrote some ten operas but is now known only for the Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, is in need of a clean, and the grass in the middle of the piazza could do with a cut.

  I had the area virtually to myself. I remembered a time when the square would have been crowded with mothers and their young children. When our offspring were babies I would regularly take time off from my work in the afternoons and bring them here with Caterina. We’d sit on a bench while they slept in their prams, or play with them on the lawns. You don’t see many mothers and children now. The mothers are all out working to help pay the rent and their babies are being looked after by someone else. We’d been lucky, Caterina and I. We’d had time for our children, we’d been there for them. I can think of few better epitaphs for a parent.

  Guastafeste came up from behind and slid on to the seat next to me. He was carrying a black fibreglass violin case.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’m not in any hurry.’

  He glanced around, his policeman’s eye alighting on a lone man making his way towards the secluded, wooded area at the far end of the square which was notorious as a rendezvous for local drug dealers and their customers. Then he handed me the violin case.

  ‘I think that’s the one,’ he said. ‘It has Sofia’s name on it.’

  I opened the case on my knees and removed the violin inside. I recognised the maker’s style, but checked the label all the same: Antoniazzi Romeo Cremonese, fece a Cremona l’anno 1920.

  ‘This is it,’ I said. I held the instrument up. ‘The bridge looks a little worn. The E string’s been cutting into it, and the feet aren’t a perfect fit. Did you have any difficulty getting it out?’

  ‘It’s not relevant to the inquiry. The investigating magistrate will never realise it’s gone.’

  I put the violin back into its case and refastened the catches.

  ‘I rang Vincenzo Serafin,’ Guastafeste said. ‘He denied he’d ever spoken to Tomaso.’

  ‘And Tomaso’s phone call?’

  ‘Serafin said he knew nothing about it. He checked his diary. The morning of the call he was out of the office – apparently. His secretary didn’t remember it either.’

  ‘You believe him?’

  ‘I might have done – if you hadn’t told me about him selling fakes. And if Tomaso’s phone call – according to the phone company records – hadn’t lasted six minutes. Who was he talking to all that time, if not Serafin? I think Serafin knows more than he’s letting on. Problem is, I can’t prove it.’

  ‘And England?’

  ‘I’ve talked to my superiors. They took some persuading, but they’ve agreed to let me go. They wanted to let the British police handle it for us – all for budgetary reasons, of course. Everything comes down to the bottom line. But I managed to convince them that it would take too long – putting in a formal request through the Ministry of Justice, all the bureaucracy. It would be months before anything happened. They can’t pay for you though.’

  ‘I didn’t expect them to,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay my own way.’

  ‘You don’t need to come, you know.’

  ‘Is there a problem? Your superiors object?’

  ‘I haven’t told them about you coming. They don’t need to know.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like you there. You’re part of the team as far as I’m concerned. Besides, you speak English. I’m going to need you to interpret.’ He paused, watching a second lone man heading for the trees across the piazza. ‘But are you sure you want to do it? It won’t be cheap.’

  ‘The money’s not an issue,’ I said. ‘I can afford it.’ I looked at him. ‘It’s not the money you’re worried about though, is it?’

  Guastafeste smiled ruefully. I knew him so well I could guess his thoughts. He’d grown up in an apartment only a few doors away from ours. I’d met him first when he was only a couple of days old, seen him regularly throughout his childhood. His parents – his father was a salesman who was perpetually away from home, his mother a hairdresser who worked long hours – neglected him. Not wilfully, just carelessly. Their sins were ones of omission rather than commission. Wrapped up in their own lives, they simply seemed to forget about their son who, from an early age, began to gravitate towards me and my family, coming to my workshop after school with my son, Domenico, frequently coming home with us for meals that his own parents were unavailable to provide. I became a sort of surrogate father to him. I gave him his first cello – a shabby half-sized instrument I picked up cheaply at a local auction – and later made him the full-sized cello he still plays. He was a bright lad. He could have chosen any number of careers, but I think it was the chaotic, unsettled nature of his upbringing that made him opt for the police force – the most ordered, secure occupation he could find.

  ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘Trouble?’ I replied. ‘Don’t be silly. How can it be trouble, helping you track down Tomaso’s killer? I want to be involved.’

  ‘I’m taking you away from your work.’

  ‘Hang my work. What does my work matter?’

  ‘And there may be risks. Possible dangers.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Tomaso was murdered. So, I’m sure, was Enrico Forlani. Both were involved in the search for this violin, this Messiah’s Sister. Somewhere out there is the killer: a desperate, very dangerous individual. If we get in his way…’

  ‘You think I haven’t thought about that?’ I said. ‘I know there are risks.’

  ‘You know I’ll protect you, Gianni. I just want you to be aware of all this before you get in any deeper.’

  ‘I’m aware,’ I said. ‘And I want to help. For Tomaso. Not just to find his killer, that’s your job. But to find the violin. I want to find the violin for him.’

  ‘You think it really exists?’

  ‘Let’s see what we find when we get to England.’

  * * *

  My route back to my car took me past the building that had once belonged to my apprentice master, Bartolomeo Ruffino. It’s a clothes shop now, a boutique full of chic blouses and expensive dresses, a far cry from the dilapidated workshop I remembered. I stood on the pavement on the opposite side of the street and gazed at the shop for a while. I’d spent nine years of my life in that building, from the age of fifteen to twenty-four when I broke away from Ruffino and set up on my own. I was married by then with a wife and young baby to support, but I’d seen my fair share of girls in the dark, secluded alley that ran down the side of the building. I could picture some of them now, recall the clumsy fumblings, the nervous giggles of adolescent courtship. I’d had my first sexual experience in that dingy alley; a hurried, awkward coupling up against the brick wall that had left me – and my partner, no doubt – wondering what all the fuss was about. Claudia Simeone, that had been her name. My first real love. We’d lasted less than six months, but I could still remember thinking at the time that I was going to marry her. I still saw her around occasionally. She’d filled out in her thirties; the breasts and thighs that I had so lusted after had taken on battleship proportions and she’d sprouted a moustache as black and downy as the one I’d attempted to grow during our juvenile affair. I’d had a lucky escape.

  I thought about Ruffino. He’d been a cunning old rogue who’d always appreciated that the k
ey to being a successful forger – apart from not getting caught, of course – was respectability. No one must suspect for even one second that you were not what you seemed. There had been nothing in either Ruffino’s appearance or demeanour to indicate the true nature of his activities. He would come to his workshop five days a week and make violins, have an occasional glass of wine in a nearby bar at lunchtime and then go home to his wife and children in the evening. He was a leading member, and one-time president, of our local trade association; he exhibited at trade fairs, won medals at international violin-making competitions and even wrote a couple of well-received papers on the history of the violin trade in Cremona. As far as outward appearances were concerned, he was the model of a dedicated craftsman and family man.

  The truth, however, was rather different. Yes, he made violins which bore his own label – and very fine violins they were too – but a good quarter of his time was devoted to crafting new instruments, or doctoring old ones, to pass them off as the work of greater, more sought-after luthiers. Yes, he was a loving husband and father who took his family out to a trattoria on a Saturday night, who played football with his sons in the park and never forgot his wedding anniversary. But on Sunday mornings, returning home from Mass in his best suit and tie, he would stop off at his workshop and have sex with his mistress on the workbench. I know, because I caught them at it one day.

  I had keys to the workshop – one of my duties was to open up every morning and have Ruffino’s coffee ready for when he arrived – and on this particular Sunday I’d decided to go in and do some work on one of my own violins. I was in the storeroom when I heard them come in. By the time I peeked out they were already at it so it didn’t seem wise to make my presence known. Ruffino’s mistress, a voluptuous creature named Tiziana, was up on the bench, her blouse undone, her skirts spread to reveal her fleshy thighs. What did I do? I watched them, of course. Who wouldn’t have? I was fifteen or sixteen years old. I couldn’t take my eyes off them, Ruffino in his Sunday finery, Tiziana moaning softly as his fingers explored her.

  It was pure accident that I happened to be there that Sunday. It was also an accident on the subsequent eight Sundays – or maybe it was nine – until, disgusted by my voyeurism, and terrified of being discovered, I kept away from the workshop on the Sabbath. But it taught me that a good forger, whatever he does in private, must always maintain the appearance of great respectability. The illusion of honesty must be created and carefully nurtured.

  Ruffino would have appreciated the change of use to his old premises. Outside the workshop he had always dressed smartly and he had been something of a connoisseur of women’s couture, spending wads of his spare cash on clothes for his mistress which he had taken as much pleasure in buying as he had later in removing. It was twenty-four years since he’d died but I still missed him – his cursing, his booming voice and theatrical gestures, his incomparable passion for violins. Somewhere in all the clutter of junk I keep at home I have a cutting of the local newspaper report of his death. I can remember most of it word for word. He’d died in his workshop one Sunday morning after he’d been to Mass, the article said. His body had been found by a friend, Miss Tiziana Ricci, who fortuitously happened to be passing and heard him cry out. He’d apparently overexerted himself and had a heart attack while sawing some new planks of maple. There are worse ways to go.

  * * *

  I heard the violin as I walked across the courtyard and stopped for a moment, entranced by the sound. It was some way off, muted by the barrier of the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi’s thick walls, but it had a clarity, a purity that was arresting. I listened for a time before continuing on my way, the sound growing ever louder, ever more striking. There was something very special about it. It had a warmth to it, a depth that very few violinists manage to draw from their strings. The violin, to me, is the most profound of instruments. It is the only one – the viola excepted, but I’m a violinist so we don’t count that – where your body, your skin is in direct contact with the instrument, where you can feel the vibrations in your head as you play. You are not detached from your instrument like a pianist, you are one with it.

  Scientists will tell you that all materials, animal, vegetable or mineral, have a natural frequency – a point at which the atoms of which they are composed start to vibrate uncontrollably. So soldiers, when crossing bridges, are told to break step in case the rhythm of their marching feet sets the atoms of the bridge in motion, tearing the structure apart. The human body also has a natural frequency. That’s why harmonic music pleases and discordant noise jars. We like sounds that vibrate at a frequency sympathetic to our internal structure – hence Mozart will always be more popular than Schoenberg – and the violin, of all instruments, produces that sound most effectively. It is perfectly in tune with the human soul.

  That was how I felt as I listened to the music emanating from the recital hall. It was more than just music for my ears, it was music for my whole being.

  I slipped inside the hall and waited silently at the back. Sofia was on the platform, clad in jeans and a tight T-shirt that exposed her midriff. As she played, her body swayed like a sapling and her long dark hair swung around her face, brushing the edges of her violin. She was playing the Bach D Minor unaccompanied partita with the poise and maturity of someone much older. I watched her, enraptured.

  ‘No, no, what are you doing?’

  A figure came forward from the side of the stage and the spell was broken. I recognised the distinctive aquiline profile of Sofia’s teacher, Ludovico Scamozzi.

  ‘The sound, no, it’s all wrong,’ he said sharply. ‘This is Bach. You’re making him sound ugly.’

  Sofia lowered her violin and bow and stared at Scamozzi in bewilderment.

  ‘Ugly?’

  ‘Your tone, it has no beauty. You’re digging in too much, your bowing is harsh. Here.’

  Scamozzi stepped up to Sofia and stood behind her.

  ‘Lift your arms.’

  He reached over and took hold of her bow arm with his right hand while his left arm snaked around her waist. Sofia gave a shudder that was visible even from the back of the hall. I saw her stiffen and try to pull away. But Scamozzi was pressing in close behind her, holding on tight.

  ‘Relax, Sofia, relax. You cannot play with so much tension in your body,’ he chided her.

  His face was in her hair, he was almost nuzzling the side of her neck. It seemed a very good moment to make my presence known.

  I cleared my throat loudly. Scamozzi let go of Sofia abruptly and looked up.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he barked, peering out into the hall.

  I walked down to the front where he could see me.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Castiglione.’ We knew each other professionally. I’d done work for him on his violin. ‘What do you want?’

  I looked up at him, then at Sofia. She gave me a glance of relief and edged warily away from Scamozzi.

  ‘I was admiring your playing,’ I said to her. ‘Most impressive. A beautiful tone,’ I added in a deliberate contradiction of Scamozzi.

  She smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We are having a lesson here,’ Scamozzi said irritably.

  ‘Ah, is that what it is, Signor Scamozzi?’

  Any other teacher at the Conservatorio I would have graced with the title ‘Maestro’, but not Scamozzi. Respect you have to earn.

  ‘You are interrupting us,’ Scamozzi snapped.

  ‘I have a violin here for Sofia,’ I said. I held up the case. She reached down and took it from me. ‘Try it out. I’ll stay around for a bit in case it needs some adjustment.’

  I sat down at the front of the hall and watched while Sofia changed violins and resumed her lesson. Scamozzi didn’t touch her again, but he fussed around on the edges of the stage, interrupting her constantly, fiddling with his long hair – sweeping it back behind his ears, running his fingers through it, occasionally tossing his head back like a petulant pony and clutching clumps of it in his fi
sts. He seemed unable to keep still and was clearly lacking in the primary quality a good teacher requires – the ability to listen.

  But then he wasn’t a teacher by choice or temperament. Once he’d been a celebrated prodigy who’d been hailed as the successor to Salvatore Accardo as Italy’s leading virtuoso. He’d begun a career as a concert soloist that showed every prospect of being a glittering success. But in his late twenties it had all gone wrong. He’d always been a flashy player, with more technique than true musicality, in my opinion. Then his technique deserted him and there was nothing left. He could have recovered it with a bit of hard work, but he was lazy and arrogant. He reneged on a few bookings, let people down at the last minute and acquired a reputation for unreliability. Promoters stopped engaging him and he took to the bottle which only accelerated his decline. He still made infrequent appearances in the concert hall, but to all intents and purposes his career was over. He was pushing forty now, raddled with bitterness and resentment.

  He’d hung on to his teaching post at the Conservatorio, though goodness knows how, for he was singularly unsuited to the job. All the great teachers I have encountered have believed in inspiring and encouraging their pupils. Scamozzi’s philosophy – from what I was witnessing now – seemed to be the opposite: that only by terrorising his charges, by undermining their confidence and self-esteem, could he drive them to excellence. He was merciless in his relentless criticism. Perhaps with a mediocre violinist he might have had good cause for censure – though not in such an unnecessarily brutal fashion – but Sofia was gifted. She could really play.