Free The Innocent by Magdalen Nabb

closed to traffic,’ the driver reminded him. ‘Shall I go through anyway?’
    ‘Yes.’ He was trying to remember any occasion on which the shoemaker had been calm and cheerful. All he did remember was the time a pyromaniac had set fire to his car. Still, he needn’t have worried. The apprentice was alone in the workshop, standing at a workbench, his back to the door.
    ‘Good-morning.’
    The young man was cutting out a piece of leather on a slab of marble, using a sort of scalpel, freehand. He finished his stroke and put the knife down carefully before turning with a smile.
    ‘Go to shop, please.’ He pointed. ‘Borgo San Jacopo.’ He wasn’t Peruzzi. What’s more, he was obviously Japanese and there was going to be a communication problem. On the other hand, he was certainly calm and cheerful.
    ‘Is Peruzzi in the shop?’
    ‘No Peruzzi. Today hospital.’
    ‘I see. I need to talk to him. Will he be here tomorrow?’
    ‘Yes. Today hospital.’
    ‘And you’re his apprentice? How long have you worked here? A year? A month? How long?’
    ‘Yes. Ten months.’
    Was that long enough to make it worth asking him anything about the shoe? He’d know more about it than the marshal did, at the very least. He opened the bag and held the shoe out. ‘Can you tell me anything about this shoe? Anything at all?’
    The smile vanished.
    ‘You recognise it? Was it made here? Is it Peruzzi’s? A copy?’ He was breaking every rule. Suggesting, talking instead of listening and watching. It was because of the language problem. But words are not everything. The young man was worried. He took a step backwards away from the proffered shoe, glanced behind him and then stood still. The marshal sat down on a polished wooden bench and remained silent. If you leave enough silent space, people rush to fill it out of fear or embarrassment. He placed his hat and sunglasses squarely on his knees and waited. He didn’t stare at the apprentice but let his eyes rove around the workshop. There was a show window, mostly hidden from view by a linen curtain on a brass rail. He could see into one corner of it and out at the little square. Some people, particularly regular customers for whom Peruzzi had made shoes for years, came here rather than go to the smart shop on Borgo San Jacopo. There, casual customers and tourists were dealt with by a patient woman, well away from any danger of encountering Peruzzi whose gimlet eye and raucous Florentine voice would have scattered the customers like a fox scattering chickens. The young man still didn’t utter a word. And yet there was no real tension in the air, just silence. Like the silence of an empty church. Why should that be? The strong smell was of new leather so it wasn’t that. The light perhaps … a narrow beam of sunlight beside the linen curtain and, elsewhere, the gloom pierced only by a lamp on the workbench. The one over the last was switched off. Not the light, then … this bench. The long, broad bench he was sitting on might well have come from a church. Its smoothness owed as much to hundreds of years of use as to polish. The armrests were carved.
    Not a word from the apprentice. It had never happened before and the marshal didn’t know what to do. Should he repeat himself to fill the space? Can you tell me anything about this shoe? Wouldn’t that be ridiculous? He decided to look at the young man, try to judge his attitude.
    His attitude was one of polite submission. He stood quite still, his thinness accentuated by a long canvas apron that reached his ankles, his hands folded in front of him, his head very slightly bowed and his gaze lowered. Baffled, the marshal looked away and saw, through the window, Lapo passing by behind his bit of hedge with two plates held high.
    He stood up. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and talk to Peruzzi about this.’ He slid the shoe back into the evidence bag.
    The young man smiled and bowed his head just a little more. ‘Thank you very much.