The Faces of Angels (49 page)

She could be the gardener. But even as I think it, I dismiss the idea. The drive is thinly gravelled and weedy. A tiny Fiat is the only car parked on the other side of the gates, and the bench set underneath a chestnut tree has a broken leg propped up by bricks. This house can't afford staff. She puts the wheelbarrow down and pulls her gardening gloves off, then she senses me and turns. As our eyes meet, I think that, although I've only seen pictures of her when she was dead, Benedetta Lucchese must have looked a lot like her sister.

I know this is the moment when I can walk away, when I can be just one more passing tourist trying to glimpse beyond villa walls. But instead I stand there with my hand resting on the sign, the rusted wire poking into my thumb. A real German shepherd, much prettier than the one on the picture, rustles out of the undergrowth, and the woman speaks to it, rubs the top of its head, which comes almost to her hip. Then she walks up the drive, the dog padding beside her.

Her fine features and wide-set eyes are creepily familiar. But where Benedetta was dark, this woman is fair. She has long caramel-coloured hair tied back in a braid.

‘
Buongiorno
. Can I help?' Her voice is soft, the words rounded and smooth, cool as stones dropping through water.

‘Signora Isabella Lucchese?'

‘
Si
.' She cocks her head, her blue eyes watching mine. ‘Do I know you?' she asks.

‘My name is Mary Warren.'

She stares for a second, then her eyes widen. She won't recognize the newspaper pictures from two years ago, not now that I've changed my hair, but she'll remember my name. How could she forget? The man who murdered my husband killed her sister.

‘The Honeymoon Killing?' She summons up the tabloid name, and I nod.

‘Karel Indrizzio.'

‘
Si
.' Her voice falls to not much more than a whisper. ‘Karel Indrizzio.'

The air around us feels as if it has gone still, as if time has stopped. The dog senses it and whines. His golden eyes flicker to her face. Without looking at him Isabella drops her hand to his head.

‘If you don't believe me,' I say, ‘I have…I have some ID.' I'm scrabbling in my bag now, suddenly terrified that she'll tell me to go away. I fish out the old press card that I still keep in my wallet and my driver's licence, and proffer them through the rails of the gate. Isabella takes the cards, still watching me, glances at the pictures and names and passes them back.

‘I need to talk to you,' I say. ‘I'd like to talk to you, please.'

I can feel her wavering, wondering if perhaps she wouldn't be wiser to send me on my way, not make the mistake of opening the gates and letting me and whatever I might bring with me into her life. All at once, I feel as if I smell, as if there's a rotten sick-sweet odour rising off me that will never be disguised by fancy clothes or new haircuts or any amount of acacia oil. This was a terrible mistake. There is nothing this woman can do to help me, or Billy, and I have no right to intrude on her life. I'm not even sure what I want to say. Pierangelo was right. I should let Pallioti do his job.

‘I'm sorry,' I say quickly. ‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come, I—' I start to back away, to turn and walk as fast as I can, maybe even run down towards Viale Galileo, but Isabella Lucchese stops me.

‘Why?' she asks. I hesitate and look at her. ‘Why do you want to talk to me?'

The sun is warming the cobbles and the flowers that tip over the walls, scented hydrangea, a scraggle of red roses.

‘I have a friend. I had a friend,' I correct myself. ‘She was murdered. Last week. A week ago today. And before he killed her—whoever he is—he took her somewhere and tortured her.'

‘
Santo Dio
.' Isabella crosses herself quickly.

‘He burnt her.' By now tears are streaming down my cheeks, as if saying it out loud finally makes it real. ‘All over her body, he burnt her. And then he killed her, and dressed her up. This time he put her on a fire. There was another girl he drowned.' Isabella is staring at me. ‘It's happening again,' I say. ‘It's happening all over again, just like it did before.'

I am only half aware of her opening the gate. She steps out into the road and takes me by the arm, the dog watching, bemused, as she leads me inside.

‘Come on,' she says. ‘Come out of the road. You can't stand here like this.' She even digs in her pocket and hands me a handkerchief.

Behind us the gate clanks shut and our feet crunch on the gravel. The smell of lavender rises up as we skirt the wheelbarrow, and Isabella guides me around a hedge at the side of the house.

‘Come on,' she says as though she's talking to a reluctant animal or a child. ‘Sit down. I was going to have a cup of coffee.'

She parks me on a bench at the back of the villa beside a low wall that gives onto a wild tangle of garden below. Behind us, grape and honeysuckle climb the columns of a pergola. The pale stucco of the villa glows faintly in the sun. The upstairs windows are shuttered, their eyes closed, but the lower ones are open, and vines wind themselves through broken slats and cling to rusted latches.

Isabella drops her gloves and vanishes into the house. The dog regards me solemnly for a moment, listening as I hiccup and sniff, wiping my eyes with his mistress's handkerchief, then he follows her halfway and plants himself outside the door, making sure I won't get in. Through the kitchen window, I hear a tap go on and off, a coffee grinder; and as I stop crying, and sit still, I can hear the sound of bees.

‘I keep them,' Isabella says from behind me. She is holding a tray with a coffee pot and two cups on it. She puts it down on the seat. ‘Do you know anything about bees?' she asks. We are speaking Italian, and at first I think I haven't understood her. She sees the look on my face, smiles, hands me a cup, and switches to English. ‘I started keeping bees as therapy,' she says. ‘After Benedetta was killed. Bees are very soothing.'

She sits on the low wall opposite me, stirring her coffee. ‘Once,' she says, ‘they swarmed. They do that sometimes, if they get scared. Run away from their hive. They went inside and I found them on the curtains. When that happens, you have to capture the queen. You just hold her in your hands and the rest of them will follow you anywhere.'

Behind her, beyond the tangle of the garden, the olive groves roll away. Below us, I pick out the roofs of the little bumblebee houses nestled by the walls of the Boboli.

The coffee is bitter and very strong. ‘Thank you.' I finish it and put the cup down, not sure whether I'm talking about the coffee or the handkerchief or her kindness. It doesn't seem to matter. ‘This is a very beautiful place.'

‘Yes.' Isabella glances up at the house and smiles. ‘They say Byron stayed here,' she says. ‘But they say that about most of the villas in these hills. My mother's family built it in 1630. We've been here ever since. Almost all of us were born here, upstairs in the centre room. It's considered auspicious.' She waves towards the shuttered windows. ‘But now there's just me. Well, just me and Fonzi.'

At the mention of his name the big dog gets up and comes and stands beside her. He nudges her arm with his nose and she rubs his ears. ‘It's too big for us, isn't it?' she asks him. ‘Just for us and the bees? But we can't bear to leave it. Sometimes,' Isabella says, ‘in the evening, you hear a nightingale.'

She puts her cup down. ‘Now,' she says. ‘Why don't you tell me about what happened to your friend?'

I put my own cup back on the tray, consider the faded gilt rim and the tiny spoon. ‘Her name was Billy Kalczeska. She was my room-mate. Well, I shared an apartment with her. I came back here to do a course, on art history.'

It feels important that I don't get this wrong, as if a lot is riding on it, and at first the words come slowly. Then they start to gather speed and flow of their own accord, and I tell her about Billy, and about Ginevra Montelleone, and what I discovered about Caterina Fusarno. When I finish, her face is pale. She gets up and stands looking out across the view, her back to me.

When she turns round, she says, ‘But Karel Indrizzio is dead. He died in that accident when they were taking him to Milan. You know that?'

I nod. Isabella stares at me, her face disbelieving. I think if I hadn't told her Pallioti was handling this, she might be deciding by now that I'm making it all up and throw me out.

‘So, what you're telling me,' she says slowly, ‘is that there's someone else. Someone who's copying him. Or?' She sits down hard on the wall. ‘Or that Indrizzio didn't do it. That's what you're really suggesting, isn't it?'

‘I don't know,' I reply. ‘Honestly. I really don't. I don't understand either. But I thought if I could find out why these women, of all the women in Florence, why these? Or if I could find out where he takes them, then maybe—' My voice just stops.

‘I'm afraid,' I say. Isabella looks at me. ‘I'm afraid of his four red bags.'

‘Because he's used only two?' I nod. She picks at a piece of moss. ‘Or because you think one of them is for you?' she asks.

‘Both. I don't know. But I do know he's going to use them,' I add. ‘For somebody.'

We sit there with nothing but the hum of the bees and the rustling of birds, an occasional twitter, around us. When Fonzi gets up, sniffs the air and lopes off down the steps into the tangled undergrowth, both of us watch him. Then Isabella throws the moss she's been picking over the wall. She takes a deep breath and runs her hands across the long, lean features of her face, and for half a second I expect her to do a clown trick, take her hands away and look like someone else. Now you see me. Now you don't. When she does finally look at me, I imagine that she has been here, with her dog and her bees, in this crumbling garden, for ever.

‘It's not that I don't believe you,' she says. ‘I never liked the case against Indrizzio. I mean, I wanted to believe it. I was even looking forward to the trial, because I wanted to be convinced, you know?' She shakes her head at this idea. ‘But then he died. And there were no more killings. So I thought, oh well, that was it. I didn't know about the prostitute.'

‘Caterina. No one did, really. And Ginevra Montelleone was reported as a suicide. They can't do that with Billy's murder, obviously, but I think they don't want to have a panic. Terrify people. It's the beginning of the tourist season.'

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘Or to have to admit they were wrong all along. What about you?' she asks suddenly. ‘Why don't you just get on a plane and leave?'

‘I can't. I'm going to live here. I'm getting married. There's nothing in America I want to go back to.' It sounds facile, but it's true, and the realization comes as something of a shock, as if I've been on a boat, and so busy sailing out to sea that I've only just noticed I can't see land any more.

‘Besides,' I add, taking a breath, ‘I don't think it would do any good. For me maybe, but for no one else. I don't think it would stop him. He could have killed me if he'd wanted to, in the Bargello. Look.' I lean forward, as if I can will her to come with me, convince her that this time there's something, anything, that can be done about this. ‘I believe Indrizzio is dead, and if he did kill your sister and Eleanora Darnelli, whoever this is knows a lot about him. What he did, how he killed. They must have known each other. And if Indrizzio didn't do it, if he didn't kill them, then—well I just keep thinking, if I can find out why he chooses the women he chooses, what the connection is—' I look at her. ‘I know he chose my friend, Billy, because of me. So I need to figure out about the others. There has to be a link.'

‘And you think it's you?'

‘I can't think of anything else. If it's random, if he just kills, there's no way to find him, except luck.'

Isabella stands up and pushes back the rolled cuffs of her faded yellow shirt exposing strong arms, sinewy and tanned from wrestling with the wilderness of her garden. ‘I don't know what to tell you,' she says. ‘You can ask me anything you want about Bene, but the police have it all, pretty much. I'll give them that, they were thorough.'

‘Was she fit? Could he have forced her into a car that night?'

Isabella shrugs. ‘She was as fit as anyone. She rode a bike to work. But yes, I guess someone could have grabbed her. I've thought about it, of course. That's what they thought Indrizzio did. They found out that he actually belonged to one of those car clubs.' She laughs at the look on my face. ‘I know,' she says, ‘he was homeless. But this is Italy. Not having a place to sleep doesn't stop you from having a driver's licence. Apparently, he even worked sometimes. On construction, that sort of stuff. At least that's what the police told me.'

I think about this for a second. With the black economy, people do all sorts of things, live whole lives below the radar of the state.

‘Whoever did this, or is doing it,' I say, ‘I think they might be Catholic. Because of the stuff left on the bodies, the “presents.” It's all vaguely liturgical. Eleanora's white ribbon: purity. The candle: transubstantiation. Caterina Fusarno was left with a goldfinch. They stand for Christ's passion, at least in painting, and the red bags belong to Hate in the garden of Eden. Do you think she could have known him from church somewhere?'

‘Sure,' Isabella says. ‘She could have known him from anywhere. He could be a parent of one of the kids she took care of at the hospital. Who knows?'

Kids. I see Rosa Fusarno's face. Sunflowers. Giraffes. ‘She didn't work in a day-care centre did she? Out by the airport? Maybe a charity place?'

Isabella shakes her head. ‘She was full-time at the hospital. She barely had time for a life.' So much for that idea.