‘I’d better check first. That Calzaghe’s not back, I mean. He won’t allow it, you see.’ Although Sandro thought she seemed as much afraid of Niccolò as she was of her boss. They’d waited fifteen minutes, he and Niccolò Rosselli, inside the rusted gates to the silent hotel, time to reflect that it wouldn’t take long for nature to reclaim the Stella Maris, its flaking shutters and unkempt laurels and weed-clogged gravel. There was something about Rosselli’s dark, relentless misery that muddied Sandro’s own thoughts; his head was already back in Florence, pondering the significance of a police raid in the dark alleys of the Oltrarno. He had completely forgotten the errand Vesna had offered to run for him until he’d seen her hurrying along the wide sunny street towards them. ‘OK,’ she said now, coming back out of the hotel’s dark lobby. ‘He’s not here.’ Her eyes darted again from Rosselli to Sandro. There was something she wasn’t sure she should say, in front of the husband.
