Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,91

Earlier that same night, though I had not known it then, the girl had died – or been murdered – and had ended up on a piece of waste ground near the river. Had I inadvertently done away with the only witness to the crime? And had I then, equally inadvertently, come to the aid of the murderer by disposing of the body? I flashed forwards to Stufa staring at the jar just before he hit Fiore. I played all these moments off against his nickname, Flesh.

‘What if Stufa killed the girl?’ I said.

Deep lines appeared on Earhole’s forehead, and I had a glimpse of how he might look when he was in his thirties or forties. ‘We don’t know she was murdered,’ he said. ‘And even if she was, we wouldn’t be able to prove it.’

‘Maybe not. But it’s grounds for suspicion, isn’t it?’ I gave him a couple of scudi. ‘You’ve done well, Earhole. Really well.’

He thanked me and pocketed the money as carefully as usual. Almost immediately, though, the corrugations on his forehead were back again. ‘I can’t work for you any more.’

‘Is it your leg?’

There was an aspect of the afternoon, he said, which he had so far failed to mention. Eager to submit his report to me, he had rushed away, leaving his guide dumbfounded. As he rounded a corner near the library, though, he ran straight into Stufa. In the collision, Stufa dropped the books he was carrying, and Earhole was knocked clean off his feet. The monk who was with Stufa – a smaller, fatter man – seized Earhole by the collar and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Before he could answer, Stufa, bending to pick up the books, looked into his face.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, straightening. ‘I know this boy. I’ve seen him before.’

‘I work at the hospital,’ Earhole said. ‘Just over there.’ He pointed in the rough direction of Santa Maria Nuova.

‘Just over there.’ Stufa imitated Earhole’s fearful voice, then laughed unpleasantly. ‘In fact, I’ve seen him more than once.’ He took hold of Earhole’s chin and tilted his face towards the light. ‘Do you know something? I think he’s been following me.’

‘Why would he do that?’ the small monk asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Stufa said. ‘Maybe he’s taken with me. Maybe he likes my looks.’

The small monk grinned.

In that moment, Earhole felt the grip on his collar slacken, and he was able to jerk free. Luckily, he remembered where the gatehouse was. He was out of the monastery in seconds. Thinking the monks were after him, he did what any criminal would do: he made for the ghetto. Down Via de’ Banchi, on into Cerretani, a right turn, a left turn, and he was there. Once inside that warren of passages, staircases and walkways, he found a burnt-out building and hid among the blackened beams until his heart slowed down. Later, as he re-emerged, a rotten floorboard gave beneath him, and he twisted his ankle. It had taken him an hour to reach the palace.

‘I wasn’t expecting Stufa to be there, you see?’ he said. ‘Recently, he’s been spending his afternoons with the Grand Duchess, up at Poggio Imperiale.’ He shook his head. ‘All the same, if I hadn’t been running, it would have been all right.’

‘You got away,’ I said. ‘That’s the main thing.’

But Earhole was standing in front of me, his hands quite still. His lips had turned blue. ‘He knows me now. He knows who I am.’

I asked if he wanted to spend the night in my house. He said no. If he didn’t go home, his mother would fall asleep at the table – or, worse still, on the floor – and his niece would go hungry.

‘At least let me look at that leg,’ I said.

His right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I dressed it in a poultice of arnica and ice, and bound it tightly.

‘Can you walk?’

He put his weight on the injured foot and winced. ‘I’ll manage.’

I went out to the street with him. Toldo had been replaced by a soldier I didn’t know. A brooding feeling to the evening: a sky of soot, a red vent near the horizon. I watched Earhole hobble off up Via Romana, then I closed the gate and returned to my workshop.

Towards the end of February, I went to visit Cuif. It was a long time since I had seen the Frenchman, and I had missed his jaundiced opinions and