Risotto al Radicchio
A speciality of Verona. Risotto made with radicchio and red wine. The recipe is cooked in the same way as a classic risotto but with red wine instead of the customary white. The roughly torn leaves of a radicchio lettuce (Rosso di Verona) are added after the rice, then a glass of Valpolicella. The wine and radicchio give this risotto its distinctive reddish colour. Sounds unlikely but tastes perfectly good.
Stella Snelling’s Memorable
Mediterranean Meals
The von Stavenows would be heading south. Drummond had bought tickets for the last train to Verona. They would stay overnight there and go on to Genoa the next morning. Jack and Drummond had tucked into the corners of the carriage by the door. Kay was asleep, her head on Jack’s shoulder. Dori stared at the reflected scene, her thoughts too busy for sleep.
Adeline had gone with Edith’s body.
‘She’s not going on her own,’ she’d said. ‘I’m going with her. Someone has to see her safe home.’
The plain, pine coffin looked small inside the ancient, spindly, glass-sided hearse drawn by plumed black horses. It was odd, incongruous, to see it pulling up at the station but how else do you transport a coffin? Drummond’s men jumped down from where they had been riding with the driver and formed up with Jack and Drummond to become the bearers, arms linked to take the weight. They carried the coffin onto the northbound platform where the train waited in huffing clouds of steam. Passengers stood back, bare headed, as they passed, the women crossing themselves. It didn’t matter that this was a stranger’s coffin, after so much death, it was time to show respect again. The coffin was loaded into the goods van. Drummond’s men and Adeline climbed in after it. The sliding door slammed shut, a whistle blew, the impatient hissing turned to slow chuffing, the wheels began to turn and she was gone.
They found a small hotel near to the station and booked in for one night. Two rooms. They were travelling as couples. It seemed less complicated.
‘Mangiare?’ Drummond demanded.
The man behind the desk looked at his watch and shrugged, palms out.
‘È tardi.’ It’s late.
Drummond produced lire and began counting off notes.
‘Un momento, signore.’ It was late, he repeated, few places were open, but the lire did the trick. ‘Venire, venire.’ He ushered them out and down a side alley to a small restaurant. ‘Il mio fratello.’
His brother opened the place for them. They ate by candlelight surrounded by chairs stacked on tables. Clattering came from the kitchen as his wife went about preparing something. They didn’t know what and weren’t given any choice. The brother brought plates, a basket of bread in the crook of his arm, an earthenware jug of wine dangling from one hand and a fistful of glasses clutched in the other. He took spoons and forks from his top pocket and poured the wine. It was rough stuff, blackish red and harsh tasting, but it brought them back to some semblance of life.
‘What now?’ Jack took a piece of bread and tore it into pieces, dunking it in his wine. He’d hardly spoken.
‘You go to Rome. See if you can pick up any sign of them there. We’ll go to Genoa.’ Drummond took a hunk of bread. ‘I’ll get in touch with our chap in the Consulate. Get him to check sailings and passenger lists. See who’s been visiting the Argentinians, see if our friends at the Red Cross have been issuing any interesting passports to poor, benighted, stateless Germans. This bread’s as dry as a nun’s knickers.’ He threw down the piece he’d been chewing. ‘I hope the rest of the food’s better than this.’
The red risotto didn’t look too promising, but it tasted fine.
‘Come si chiama questo piatto?’ Dori asked.
‘Risotto al Radicchio,’ the patron said with some pride. ‘Specialità di Verona.’
‘Ricetta?’
He smiled, softening at her interest. ‘Sì, signora.’
‘Recipe?’ Drummond looked sceptical. ‘I didn’t even know you could cook.’
Dori took out a notebook. ‘Maybe I’ve changed. I’m thinking of starting a new career as a cookery writer.’
Drummond laughed. He clearly didn’t believe her but Dori was quite serious. The idea had just come to her and she suddenly knew that it was the right thing to do. She would even write under Edith’s nom de plume: Stella Snelling.
The patron brought more wine and his wife from the kitchen. She dictated the recipe in Italian. This much and that much, pinches and handfuls, mezzo litres and quartos. By the time Dori had written it down, the wine had been replaced by rounds of grappa. Drummond dished out a fan of notes and they went back to the hotel.
Drummond looked round their room.
‘I was going to sleep in the chair, but—’
‘There isn’t one.’ Dori felt a twitch of a smile, the first in a long time.
‘There’s always the bath.’
Dori kissed him hard. His hand gripped her through her slip, the other going to her breast. There was nothing subtle about his lovemaking. He was quick and brutal, but that’s what she wanted. To blot out the events of that day, to burn it all away, to make her feel alive again. They broke apart, sweating, both partly dressed.
‘Here.’ He retrieved his trousers from the floor and reached into the pocket. ‘I saved this for you. It’s yours, isn’t it?’
He held out the icon that Edith had been wearing.
‘She wanted to give it back.’ The icon swung between them, the silver chain stained, the face darkened still further. ‘I thought she might have need of it. In the church. I—’ her voice cracked, stopped by a surge of memory: the smell of incense and ancient stone, that light floral perfume that Edith wore, the warmth of her arm as they knelt together. And then, and then a scattering of scarlet across dark crimson, echoing cries of ‘Orrore! Orrore!’. In dreams, at random moments she would be taken back to that exact time, that precise place, she would see both scenes, over and over, added to all the others on the spooling film reel of her guilt. ‘I – I put her in harm’s way.’
‘We all did. She didn’t deserve what happened, that’s for sure.’ He brushed the heavy dark hair from her neck and fixed the chain with a surprisingly delicate touch. ‘I remember talking to her about it on the train. We all carry something. Stupid superstition, I suppose.’
‘What do you carry?’
He looked suddenly shy and Dori wondered if she’d overstepped some invisible line as if showing her might take away the power.
‘No harm you seeing.’ He picked up his shirt and took something from the pocket. ‘Found it in the desert.’ He dropped it into her palm. A small wheel, about the size of a shilling, made from tightly coiled gold wire and surprisingly heavy in her hand. ‘Roman, sacred to Mithras, soldiers’ god, or so some clever sod told me.’ He leaned back, his compact muscular torso braced against the headboard. ‘So, at who’s door? The Nazi bruderschaft?’
Dori lit two cigarettes, passed one to Drummond. ‘That’s what they’ll want us to think.’
‘Who then? Leo? McHale?’
Dori shrugged, ‘Could be either. Neither. Both. Waiting to pull the double-cross.’
‘Why Edith?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? Shooting her allows the von Stavenows to escape. He shot at me, too. Get rid of both of us, no one the wiser and on their merry way.’
‘We’ll get them,’ Drummond said, his grey-green eyes as hard as serpentine. ‘We owe it to Edith.’ He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Early start. Get some kip.’
‘Why are you sending Jack to Rome?’ Dori frowned, a new thought dawning. ‘Are you not sure about him?’
‘Can’t be certain of anybody in this business.’ He rubbed at his jaw. ‘He was Special Branch before the war, did jobs for Leo. Might be working both sides of the street. Better to be safe than sorry.’ He reached to turn off the light. ‘Anyway, the von Stavenows might still turn up and the poor sod deserves a bit of a honeymoon.’