Page 19 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

‘Virginia Gallo, yes, I know her. She’s a good student, works hard and always hands in her work on time. As for her sister, Monica, I sometimes see them together and, as you can imagine, two identical, good-looking girls like that are never short of admiring – or predatory – males circling around them, but I’m not aware of anybody special for either of them. I’ll have a word with my colleagues. I know one of the drama teachers very well, and she might be able to tell me more about Monica. Watch this space.’

By the time I set off in the van for my meeting with the mysterious Zebra in the Bar Sport in Via del Fondo, I was none the wiser about Monica’s ‘unsuitable’ boyfriend, and I spent the short journey turning over in my head how I should proceed. In the end, I decided to wait until I’d heard back from Anna.

Via del Fondo looked as though it had seen better days. The café where I was meeting Zebra was on the corner, right at the beginning of the road, and it looked decidedly dodgy – the sort of place where you pay cash, keep your hands on your wallet, and find a seat with your back to the wall, not too far from the wayout. The road surface was pitted with potholes and there was a burnt-out car rusting at the side of the road. A row of decrepit terraced houses at the far end had been taped off, and there were notices everywhere warning people to stay away as the properties were earmarked for demolition. This was a far cry from the splendour of Piazza del Duomo and no doubt far, far off the tourist trail. As I was early for my appointment, I drove past the café and bumped slowly along the rough road until I reached the end and found the theatre. This looked little better than the surrounding houses although, in fairness, there was no demolition notice to be seen. The name of the theatre had been painted onto a long canvas banner, which hung rather pathetically over what had no doubt once been the entrance to an old factory. One thing was for sure – it certainly didn’t look like Broadway.

I turned back and parked outside the café, hoping that I would find the wheels still attached to the vehicle when I returned to it. It was that kind of place. The only people I saw as I climbed out of the van were a couple of what the Italians refer to asextracomunitari– literally from outside the European Union. Mind you, I reminded myself, since Brexit, I was also anextracomunitario, although probably not in such dire straits as these guys. The idea of having to leave their homes and families thousands of kilometres away and make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean in the hope of finding a better life was both daunting and potentially dangerous – as the two John Does murdered at the station proved only too graphically. For a moment, I wondered how I would have fared under such circumstances and, as always, I felt a pang of sympathy for them. Even so, I made sure I left nothing visible inside the van and locked it securely before heading for the door of the café.

The interior of the café lived up to my low expectations. In fairness, it looked clean, but there were three or four differenttypes of chairs to be seen at the equally mismatched tables, and the clientele was uninspiring – well, most of them. There were three old men sitting in there and a suspicious smell of tobacco in the air – even though smoking in bars and restaurants has been banned in Italy for quite a few years now. The barman was wearing a blotchy, grey T-shirt, which might have started life white and had probably fitted him twenty years earlier but now was fighting a losing battle against his expanding waistline. He had a shaved head and one of the bushiest moustaches I had ever seen. Fortunately, Oscar was more interested in sniffing whatever the floor smelled of and didn’t look up. If he’d seen the luxuriant moustache, he would probably have mistaken it for a squirrel.

However, in the midst of this somewhat depressing scene, there was one very bright exception. I don’t know what I’d been expecting from a person called Zebra – all right, not four legs and black and white stripes – but I was unprepared for the vision before me. Zebra was a woman, but I had no idea how old she was. She certainly wouldn’t see thirty again, and she might even have been as old as me. At a guess – and it was only a guess – I put her down as in her late forties. Her hair was amazingly long, hanging right down to her waist, and I counted at least ten different colours in the stripes that ran all the way up to her scalp. Her eyes were so heavily made up, she looked more like a panda than a zebra, but her face was friendly and her eyes sparkled mischievously.

Oscar’s reaction to Zebra was remarkable, even for him. The moment he clapped eyes on her, he positively bounded across the floor towards her and, without hesitating, jumped athletically onto her lap, where he proceeded to lick her face. I hurried over to haul him off her, but she held up a restraining hand.

‘Don’t worry, he’s fine. What a beautiful dog!’ She then returned her attention to my clearly smitten Labrador. ‘Who’s agood boy? You are, aren’t you? Yes, you are.’ She enveloped him in a hug that virtually hid him from sight. She wasn’t a small woman and she was wearing a voluminous, kaftan-like robe in a mixture of primary colours that effectively swallowed Oscar up. I had to wait a good half a minute before his head reappeared, tongue hanging out, grinning from ear to ear. Zebra cradled him in her arms as she looked across at me.

‘I presume you are Signor Armstrong.’ She was using the familiar form of the pronoun ‘you’.

‘I am indeed, and you must be Signora Zebra.’

‘Just Zebra. I’m the director of the Teatro dell’Arno.’ She disentangled her right arm from the happy dog and held out her hand towards me. There was at least one ring on every finger and there were so many bracelets on her wrist, I felt sure she needed strong arm muscles to lift them and probably jingled as she walked down the street. I shook her hand and got down to business.

‘How can I help?’

‘Stuff has started to go missing. I mean, it’s been stolen. Not very expensive stuff – we don’t really have anything like that there – but money from purses and wallets, a couple of silk scarves and my old iPad. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but none of us can afford to lose out like that. It’s so mean.’

‘Can I ask why you haven’t reported this to the police – or have you?’

She shook her head. ‘No. If I involve the police, I know what’ll happen. If they can be bothered to come out – and there’s no guarantee – they’ll say the stuff’s been stolen by one of the asylum seekers who live around here and they might even arrest all of them or move them on. I wouldn’t like that on my conscience.’

‘The asylum seekers are living in those houses that are going to be demolished?’

‘Yes, poor things. God only knows what they’ll do when that happens. They have nowhere to go.’

‘You don’t think the asylum seekers are responsible?’ Given their shortage of money, it seemed a realistic possibility.

Zebra shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t steal from us. I know it.’

She didn’t appear to have any doubts, but I wasn’t so sure. Still, setting aside my suspicions for now, I continued. ‘If it’s not one of the asylum seekers, who do you think it might be? I imagine quite a few people come in and out of the theatre every day. Could it be one of your actors, your other staff, cleaners or just somebody else who wanders in from the outside?’

She shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine for a moment that it could be one of our people but, you’re right, anybody can walk in if they like; security is very lax.’ She stopped and corrected herself. ‘Or rather, security is non-existent. We can’t afford any.’

I took a good look at her as she stroked Oscar, who had rolled over onto his back on her lap with all four paws in the air, tail wagging, a blissful expression on his face, and I made a decision. ‘I’m sure you’re aware that I normally charge for my time, but I’d like to help you. I did a bit of acting at school a long time ago and I feel sorry you’re having to go through this. The fact is that I don’t think there’s a lot I’m going to be able to do for you. I don’t have access to police files to check for any previous offenders and, besides, there’s no guarantee it’s the same person doing all the stealing. There could be different people wandering in and out and helping themselves. What I would suggest is that I come with you now to the theatre, take a look around, and see if I can think of anything that might help – prevention rather than cure. I won’t make any charge for that. I’d rather you saved your money for your shows.’

She reached across the table with her free hand and caughthold of one of mine. ‘You’re a good man, Signor Armstrong. Thank you most warmly. You’re right, we need every cent just to keep the lights on.’

She eased a reluctant Oscar off her lap and down onto the floor again. When she stood up, I saw that she was almost as tall as I was and quite a lot broader in the beam. Woe betide any sneak thief that she caught.

We emerged from the café into the relatively fresher air of the street. The theatre was only a couple of hundred metres away from here and normally, I would have just left the van where it was and walked, but, because of the kind of down-at-heel area this was, we climbed in and I drove along to the theatre, parking as close to the entrance as possible. I turned off the engine and glanced sideways at Zebra.

‘The fact that you chose to meet me in the café, was that because you do suspect it might be somebody on your staff or among the actors after all? Were you trying to keep my identity secret from them?’

She hesitated and then nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s what I was trying to do, although I still find it hard to believe that one of our people might be behind these thefts. But, of course, now they’re going to see you, and I’ll just have to tell them who you are.’

‘I know this will be a difficult question for you, but now that it appears that you might have your doubts about your actors or staff, is there anybody you consider to be suspicious? Is there anybody you’ve mentally earmarked as a possible thief?’

‘We don’t have many staff. We have a technician who does everything from lighting the performances to fixing the toilets when they overflow. There’s our PR manager, who also doubles as our accountant and ticket seller, and there are a couple of part-time cleaners. I suppose it’s just possible that one of the cleanersmight be the culprit, but it feels so awful even to be considering it.’

‘Are all four staff members here at the moment?’

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