The Faces of Angels (42 page)

‘Listen.' I lean forward, looking into the hard bright light in Francesca Giusti's eyes. ‘There's something you need to understand. I would never have done anything, anything at all, intentionally, to hurt Billy. You may not believe that, but it's true.'

What's unintentional, though—who I am and what happened to me and what it means; who might come looking for me and find Billy instead—all that hangs in the air between us. Francesca Giusti leans back in her chair, watching me.

‘You know,' she says finally, ‘we have found no record of a text message on your phone.'

I look straight back at her. ‘I'm not surprised. I told the
ispettore
, I erased it.'

She doesn't answer. Instead, she smiles.

‘Tell me, Signora Thorcroft, is there anything else you think we should know? Anything strange or out of place that you can remember? It doesn't matter how trivial it seemed at the time. It might help us now.'

‘A priest.' Francesca Giusti blinks and Pallioti glances up. ‘Billy said a priest came to the apartment. About—I don't know, maybe two or three weeks ago. Looking for me. She said he asked for a Mary Warren. At the time, I thought it might have been a mistake. The old lady downstairs is an invalid, and her priest comes to her. I thought—' I shake my head, trying to remember exactly what Billy said.

‘You thought what?'

‘I thought she might have been mixed up. That it might have been a coincidence. But I don't now. She didn't know my married name at the time. This was before I told her anything.' Pallioti is watching me, the pen still in his fingers. ‘After I was attacked, you talked to a Father Rinaldo who'd been with us that day.' Pallioti nods. The motion of his head so tiny it's almost imperceptible. ‘I think it was him.' I say. ‘I think he came looking for me, and met Billy. He was at the vigil for Ginevra Montelleone,' I add. ‘I saw him. Her family, or at least her mother, used to worship at San Miniato. And I've seen him near our apartment. On the street.'

Francesca Giusti has been making notes in her leather notebook and now she glances up. ‘Is there anything else, signora?'

The white man. The El Greco saint with the pirate dog. I open my mouth and close it again. What can I tell them? That I keep seeing a mute homeless man who has my husband's eyes? That I gave him a bunch of tulips? I shake my head. ‘No. Nothing.'

Dottoressa Giusti stands up, extending her hand to me as though we've just met at a cocktail party. Her grip is firm and cool. Obviously this interview, at least as far as she's concerned, is over.

‘Thank you for coming in this afternoon, signora,' she says. ‘We appreciate your cooperation. I understand that this must be a very difficult time for you. All the same, please accept our congratulations on your upcoming marriage.' She lets go of my hand. ‘We've finished with your apartment,' she adds, as if it's an afterthought. ‘You're free to move back there any time you choose. And,' she says, smiling again, ‘I'm sure I don't need to remind you that anything said in this room is entirely confidential? It's very important, given the nature of our investigation. We'd appreciate it, if you don't leave the city, for now.'

Francesca Giusti gathers up her leather pad and her fancy gold pen. As she reaches the door, she turns and looks back at me.

‘Obviously you know quite a bit about all this, signora.' She nods at the manila envelope still lying in the centre of the table. ‘Not least, I'm sure, that Karel Indrizzio indulged in the rather common practice of keeping souvenirs. Signorina Darnelli's shoe, the Lucchese girl's watch. Caterina Fusarno's handbag was missing, and Ginevra Montelleone's clothes.'

She looks at me for a second, as if appraising what she's going to say next, and whether or not I can be trusted.

‘We think that whoever is copying him,' she says finally, ‘may be doing the same thing. I'm sorry that you saw Signora Kalczeska's body. But given that you did, and that you knew her well, may I ask you, do you have any idea? Any thoughts at all, about what he might have taken from her? A piece of jewellery, perhaps? Something you noticed? A necklace? A watch?'

‘She didn't wear a watch.' I shake my head. ‘That's not what he took.'

Now they are both looking at me, Pallioti holding another unlit cigarette, Francesca Giusti with her hand on the door knob.

‘What he took,' I say, ‘was her hair. He took her fucking hair!'

By the time I get down to the lobby a few minutes later, my hands are shaking and I have to stop and lean against the cold marble wall. I wonder if I should put my head between my knees, if maybe that would miraculously stop all this from happening.

Today's a holiday, but at the Questura people are coming and going. Nutcakes and psychopaths probably don't take a day off for Easter. In fact, they probably consider it prime time. Young men, obviously cops, race by in pairs, which seems to be how they travel. Maybe, I think, they're like geese, and mate for life. Then I see Pallioti. He's coming down the wide steps of the main staircase, slowly, his face sheepish. Or possibly I'm imagining that.

‘Shall I call a car for you, Signora Thorcroft?' He looks around the lobby of the Questura, vaguely, as though his mind is really somewhere else, and for the first time it occurs to me that he's probably tired. That this case, and maybe his whole job—dealing with the kind of people who cut women up with knives and leave them ‘little presents'—is hell. ‘The driver was supposed to wait,' he says, ‘but these guys—'

Pallioti shrugs, and pulls the cigarette package out of his pocket. I can see now that they're Nazionale, the same brand that Billy smoked. This time when he offers me one, I take it.

The silver lighter flicks, and the smoke is warm and familiar. For a second, the act of standing here smoking together almost makes us friends, and I wonder what he's giving up to be here this Easter Monday. A special lunch? Time with his children? His wife? Or does he live in a solitary apartment somewhere?

‘Can I ask you something?'

He raises his eyebrows, presumably in acquiescence.

‘The case against Indrizzio,' I say, ‘not for me, but for Eleanora Darnelli and Benedetta Lucchese, how strong was it?'

Pallioti considers the end of his cigarette for a moment, then he shrugs, as if telling me cannot possibly do any more harm than has already been done.

‘He was charged with your husband's murder and with attacking you, as you know. The similarities with the other two were strong,' he glances at me, ‘as I presume you also know. Circumstantially, both were possible. He had no alibi, and was seen in the area the night Benedetta Lucchese was killed. We were still working on a connection to Eleanora Darnelli when he died. And then the killings stopped.'

‘Until this January.'

Pallioti inclines his head in a little bow. We smoke for a while in silence.

Then I say suddenly, ‘I should have asked you about Karel Indrizzio. I'm sorry. I know that now. I should have come to you.' The words are coming out faster than I intend them to. ‘But you understand, don't you?' I ask. ‘You understand at least why I wanted to know?'

It's suddenly important to me that he say yes, that this man who sat in the hospital, who travelled with me through the days when I veered close enough to the dead women to touch them, should understand. I look into his face and the grey eyes look back at me. This time, though, something moves deep inside them, like a fish stirring under a frozen river.

I'm sure he's going to say something. I can feel the words forming in the air between us. Then he changes his mind.

‘You could have asked me, signora, of course. But I'm not sure what I could have told you.' He shrugs, and adds, ‘The past and the future, it's all around us, but so difficult to know. We live in the picture,' Pallioti says, ‘but we rarely see it.'

He takes a long pull on his cigarette and stubs it out into the sand ashtray beside us. ‘Now,' he smiles. ‘Shall I find you a car?'

I stare at him. Then I drop my own cigarette into the sand. ‘No, thanks,' I say. ‘I think I'll walk.'

By now, it's late afternoon, and I begin, automatically, to walk towards Pierangelo's, then I turn away. I'm not ready for company yet. I took one of the pink tranquillizers before I left the apartment, but it must be wearing off because I feel anything but calm. I don't think I could sit still if I tried. It's a relief, of sorts, not to be numb, to escape the dulled haze I've been more existing than living in for the last day and a half. But now, instead, my insides are simmering and popping. What I feel, I realize as I turn into the narrow warren of streets behind Piazza della Signoria, is angry.

Oddly enough I'm not mad at Francesca Giusti, who was just doing her job—and well, I'll admit, I wouldn't want to face her in court—but at Pallioti. I'm angry with him for not trusting me with whatever it was he had been about to say just now, for darting back under the ice and fobbing me off with some clichéd sidewalk profundity. I thought better of him. I thought, I realize with something of a shock, that he was my friend.

‘They think I did it.'

‘What?' Pierangelo is chopping, the knife coming down in sharp rhythmic smacks on the cutting board.

‘They think I did it. Or at least that woman does, Francesca Giusti.'

‘That's ridiculous.'

‘Not from where they're sitting.' I pour myself a glass of wine and look at him. ‘Think about it. I know everything, every single little detail. I was hiding gory pictures in my bedroom. I commune with dead women, and, according to them, Billy and I were lovers. She took me where I didn't want to go, so I killed her, and made it look like this creep did it. Makes perfect sense to me.'

‘
Cara.
' Piero abandons the vegetables he's been mutilating and puts his arms around me, rests his cheek on the top of my head. ‘I have some leave coming up,' he says. ‘I'll take it. We'll go to Monte Lupo, as soon as this is over.'

‘What makes you think it's going to be “over”?'

‘Of course it will be.' He runs his fingers down my face. ‘They'll find who did this. Pallioti isn't a fool.'

‘What if it wasn't Indrizzio?' Piero frowns. ‘I'm not kidding,' I say. ‘What if it wasn't? I asked Pallioti today, and he said the cases against him for both Benedetta and Eleanora Darnelli were totally circumstantial. They never even charged him for them. He was in the area when Benedetta was killed, but so what? I mean, he lived there. In the gardens, or wherever. They never even put him in the vicinity when Eleanora Darnelli was killed, or at least they hadn't when he died.'

Piero has picked up his knife again and I can't see his face.

‘The killings stopped,' I say. ‘So they just dropped it. But what if whoever really did it was out there the whole time? And now he's back.'

‘The case against Indrizzio for you and Ty was strong. DNA, and blood typing,' Pierangelo points out. ‘He had Ty's wallet and your wallet.
Cara
, he described you.'