Home Before Dark (36 page)

'It reminds me of a sculpture.’
'A bust of one of your ancestors, perhaps.’ Morelli said
mockingly, as he pinned the drawing he’d found in Sam
Metcalf’s apartment on the wall of his office. 'Anything else?
You notice what he’s wearing?’
'Looks like a polo shirt.’
'Ralph Lauren. What does that say to you, Luca?’
The younger detective’s gaze stayed fixed on the drawing.
'American?’
'It’s a global brand, copied everywhere.’
'He has an American look, though. Something about the
eyes. Like a cowboy staring into the distance.’
'You know how bent that sounds? There aren’t any eyes,
Luca. That’s why it reminds you of a statue. She didn’t draw
the eyes. Why do you think that is?’
Luca shrugged. 'Maybe she didn’t get a good enough look
at him.’
'If this is the man who murdered Sophie Lister, then she
must have met him more than once. She saw him again,
Luca.’ He came back to his desk and sat down with a heavy
sigh. 'Despite the fact. . . she was afraid.’
'It could be anybody.’
'I think that’s exactly what the artist was trying to tell us.
Her murderer looks like everyman. He becomes invisible in

a crowd.’
'Well, you have to start somewhere.’
'Are you trying to be funny?’ Morelli gestured towards the
pile of paper in front of him. 'Look at the response we’re
getting.’
After his discovery of the drawing yesterday afternoon, he
had gone straight back to the office. No time for lunch he’d
grabbed a sandwich from a paninoteca on the corner of
Sam’s street. By three o’clock the head and shoulders sketch
of a male Caucasian, aged twenty-five to thirty-five, had been
copied, scanned and circulated by e-mail and fax to the relevant
police departments in Italy, Austria and further afield;
and then to every hotel, restaurant, pension, youth hostel and
internet cafe in Florence.
In twenty-four hours, besides the usual crank calls, they’d
received nineteen replies to their appeal for information. The
most significant came from an old waiter at Garga, a trattoria
in the centre, not far from the Piazza Antinori where Jimmy
Macchado had been murdered. He’d served an American
tourist two weeks ago who looked like the man in the drawing.
Paid in cash, left a good tip, no reservation. He couldn’t
remember much else about him. Of the other respondents
being followed up, Morelli had to admit, none of them so
far sounded all that promising.
Luca said, 'If the girl was afraid, why didn’t she just give
the drawing to someone or post it home or leave it at the
atelier?’
'She may not have had time.’
'You think the killer was aware that she’d sketched him?
Maybe that’s what was on Sam Metcalf’s computer.’
'Unlikely since Sam was in Boston. She took her laptop
with her.’ Morelli tipped his chair back. He steepled his fingers
under his chin. 'What else have we got?’
'A phone-in this morning from a woman who wouldn’t
say why she was calling. The moment I started asking
questions she made some excuse and hung up.’
'You traced the call?’
'Jennifer Ursino. Lives at number fifty-nine Via dell’Erta
Canina.You know that little street off the Viale Galileo, below
San Miniato? I called her back and she finally admitted it
was about the drawing.’
'She’s English?’
'Yes. Speaks Italian with an atrocious accent. She’s a
widow, lives alone. Her husband died two years ago of a
heart attack. He was a Fiorentino, in the leather business,
had his own company. I was thinking I might look in on
her tomorrow.’
Morelli asked, 'How did she come to see the drawing?’
'She takes in lodgers, but she said something about noticing
our flyer at the bar of the Hotel Dante. She thinks the subject may have stayed with her . . . and, this is the interesting part,
in the spring of last year.’
'Do we know if she was interviewed then?’
Luca shook his head. 'She’s not a registered landlady. I
would imagine that’s why she was reluctant to contact the Questura’
'What’s the name of the pension?’
'Doesn’t have a name. She just rents out a small flat and
the occasional room when she feels like it. She said he was
very quiet, she hardly ever saw him.’
'Well, what the Christ are we waiting for then?’
Morelli swung himself out of his chair and stood.
'You have a meeting with Commissario Pisani in fifteen
minutes.’
'Get a dick, Luca.’

On the Westside Highway, speeding north towards Gilmans
Landing, I sat back in the glare-free, air-conditioned limousine
and closed my eyes, letting the waves of Beethoven’s Ninth
crash over what Dr Calloway would have called my bruised
psyche. I still had a thumping headache and was hardly in
the mood for small talk with an eighty-five-year-old being gently wooed by Alzheimer’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of Alice Fielding. She once
played a central part in our lives and her place on the Hudson,
La Rochelle, is full of memories of Sophie and George when
they were young. We used to go out there in summer as a
family to escape the heat of the city and swim in the pool,
or Alice’s husband would take us sailing on the river. They
were golden days.
Looking out at the Hudson, I tried not to think about the
girl, the nonexistent girl, I’d made such a fool of myself
over. If I’d more or less come to terms with being taken for
a ride – the bottom line is that Will did warn me about Jelly,
and I’d refused to listen – I still had feelings for her. It
doesn’t make sense, I know, but I hadn’t stopped being in
love with her – or, as she put it, with my idea of her. I was
beginning to see that 'Jelly’ and I had both had a lucky
escape.
There was no question of my going on trying to find her.
You can’t protect someone who doesn’t exist and, whether
or not Ward knew that Jelly was just a made-up person, I
didn’t feel her inventive friend was at any risk. I had to wonder
now if it really had been him impersonating her online. But it
was time to let go, get over my mid-life hallucination and
move on.
I still hadn’t replied to Campbell Armour’s e-mail. I’d put
off doing so partly because I didn’t appreciate the way he
seemed to be insinuating that I knew more about what
happened at Skylands than I was telling him. I’d never heard
of the place, or the name Seaton, until he went and dug them
up in Norfolk.
He was coming to the Carlyle at six. Before we got
together, I thought it best to clear up any misunderstanding
by sending him an account of that chance meeting I’d had

years ago with a woman I now realised must have been
June Seaton.
I had nothing to hide. I felt it unlikely that our casual and
fleeting liaison could explain anyone holding a long-standing
grudge or wanting to hurt me or my family. But I knew there
had to be some connection.

We met at a party, a society gathering I’d been swept along
to by friends of friends, in a grand penthouse apartment on
Fifth Avenue. I was twenty at the time, flat broke, an ambitious
young Englishman on my maiden visit to New York.
Suitably enthralled, I remember going out onto a roof
garden with my hostess, who had one of those letter-names
like KK or CC, and being shown Central Park, a dark
mysterious gulch below the diamond-studded skyline – and
then suddenly, right next to us, there was this girl leaning
daringly against the parapet with her back to the magical
view, looking at me.
She was wearing a black cocktail dress with a string of
pearls, flute of champagne in one hand, cigarette in the
other – I can’t trust my memory, the description would
have fitted quite a few women there. But she was bewitching
and, I thought, the last word in sophistication. She must
have been at least seven or eight years older than I was.
We got talking and ended up spending the rest of the
evening together. We hit all the spots – Xenon, Studio 54,
the Mudd Club . . . she paid – then wandered around
Lower Manhattan, looking for after-hours joints. Just before
dawn, on one of the West Side piers, we got caught in a
violent rainstorm.
Forced to run for it, we found shelter in an empty cargo
container that had an open hatch in its side. We were soaked
to the skin, breathless and laughing. After doing a line or two
of cocaine, we made love standing up in the hatchway because
the floor was filthy. It was exciting. The rain hammered on
the roof, and didn’t stop.
She told me her name – I’m quite sure it wasn’t June
Seaton. She was all for meeting up again the next night, and
the night after; but I held back in a cautious, typically British
fashion. I was flying home to London in a few days and I
wasn’t so green or so smitten that I couldn’t sense she was
trouble, possibly a little unstable. It was the decade of the
crazy chick.
I suggested getting a cab and taking her home, at which
point she became clinging and slightly hysterical. Then
suddenly she announced she was going to leave the person
she was with so that we could be together. I had no idea that
she was married with a nine-year-old son and lived in rural
Connecticut. She threw her arms around my neck, mapping
out our future between desperate kisses. I tried to disentangle
myself, gently at first and then firmly – in the end, I had to
push her away. I shoved her harder than intended. She slipped
and fell and, as she went down, struck her head on a steel
bench.
I still feel ashamed of what I did next. I checked her pulse,
and was relieved that she didn’t seem that badly hurt, but I
realised I had no desire to be there when she came around.
She was crazy enough to charge me with assault and all I
could think about was being put in jail or, worse, deported.
I left her lying unconscious and walked away. I called an
ambulance from a nearby payphone, told the dispatcher how
to find her – and that was that.
I didn’t hear from her, or of her, again. I fled back to
London the following day. News never reached me of the
ghastly tragedy which overtook the Seatons very soon afterwards.
When I returned to New York to live a couple of years
later, she was not on my list of people to look up. I never
told anyone about what happened.
My memory of the encounter, like one or two others from
that wilder period of my life, gradually faded, but I have no
doubt the woman was June Seaton.

I started to e-mail Campbell, sharing my recollections of June
for the first time with another person; then realised it was
too much information and shortened the message to:
'Husband, definitely not. . . but the wife looks like someone
whom I met briefly in New York, summer of ’79. Can’t
imagine how Ernest could have known I once spent an evening
with his mother, but it’s a possible connection.’
I looked up and saw the towers of the George Washington
Bridge looming above the highway. Just then my cell began
bleeping.
'You don’t know me.’ It was a young voice, soft, hesitant,
'I’m Jelena’s friend.’
I didn’t answer for a moment. 'How did you get my
number?’

'She gave it me. This was her idea to call, you know.’
'What’s your name?’ I was Instantly suspicious.
'Tachel . . .’
'I’m sorry, what is it you want to speak to me about?’
'Look, mister, we don’t have to do this.’
'Do what exactly?’
'Do shit.’
I thought she was going to hang up then. But the conversation
went on in this punchy, semi-hostile vein until Tachel
said that if I wanted to talk, if I had any questions I’d like to
ask, she was willing to get together and try to explain things
from her girlfriend’s point of view.
The little speech sounded rehearsed and I thought about
telling them both to go to hell. I’d accepted that I was never
going to meet 'Jelly’ and, frankly, I had no particular wish to
now. But I was curious and, however contradictory this may
seem, I couldn’t resist the chance to talk about her with someone
who knew her. I still felt I was owed an explanation.
It would mean putting off seeing Alice Fielding till later
that afternoon, but she wasn’t going to notice if I was a couple
of hours or, for that matter, a couple of days behind schedule.
'All right. When are you free?’ I asked, signalling the driver
to pull over. She said give me fifteen minutes.

58

Luca Francobaldi pressed the bell in the peeling stucco wall
of 59 Via dell’Erta Canina for the second time, then took a
step back into the narrow street and looked up at the villa’s
shuttered windows. The sky over Fiesole was black.
'You sure she’s expecting us?’ Morelli said wearily, turning
up his collar. It was starting to rain. 'Ah!’ He could hear footsteps
approaching.
'I really have to go now.’ Jennifer Ursino was talking into
her mobile as she opened the front door. She snapped the
lid of her phone and apologised to the detectives for making
them wait. 'Fa molto afoso,’ she murmured.
A pretty silver-haired woman in her early forties, baggy Tshirt,
drainpipe black jeans, Prada loafers, she led her visitors
through a dark hall into the lounge, where she’d been watching a game show on a huge plasma TV. She picked up the remote and switched it off. 'Drink anyone?’
Both men politely declined. She poured herself a gin and tonic, carried it over to the sofa and curled up among the
cushions, tucking her long legs underneath her.
'So, how can I help you gentliemen?’
They sat opposite her on straight chairs. Morelli took a
copy of Sophie’s drawing from his pocket and spread it on
the coffee table.
'I believe you can identify this face, signora.’
Jennifer nodded. 'It reminds me of someone – I wouldn’t
put it more strongly than that. David. He might have stayed
here last April.’
'Is that why you hung up the phone earlier . . . because
you weren’t sure?
She shrugged. 'Something like that.’
'David? What was his other name?’
'I don’t remember. He was an American, living in
Paris … I think he said he was doing academic research.’
'Don’t you usually ask your guests for some kind of identification, signora’ Morelli frowned. 'Passport, permesso, driving
licence?’
She gave a little laugh. 'I really should, I know. But I like
to treat my guests as friends. I try to avoid bombarding them
with questions.’
'Did David mention where he was from in the States?
Where he called home?’
'I don’t remember. Do you mind telling me what this is about?’
'We’re trying to trace the subject of the sketch as part of
a criminal investigation.’ Morelli cleared his throat. 'Do you
have any record of his stay?’
She shook her head. 'I leave a guest book in the flat, but
not everyone bothers to sign it. He didn’t. He paid in cash,
gave me the whole amount up-front.’
Luca asked, 'Signora, do you happen to remember his
movements on the night of the twenty-seventh of April?’
'I’ve really no idea.'Jennifer stiffened. 'The flat has its own
entrance on the back. He came and went. I hardly ever saw
him. I sleep . . . very soundly.’
Morelli shot Luca an I’ll-do-the-talking glance and went
on. 'How do you find your guests, signora?’
'Word of mouth mostly. I get a lot of artistic types, fashion
people and so on.’
'And this . . . David?’
'He just rang up out of the blue.’
'Did you know Sophie Lister, by any chance?’
'The girl who was murdered? No.’
'Ever think about him in connection with her murder?’
'No . . . Christ no, never. He seemed rather a shy, gentle
person.’
'How else would you describe him? Did he smoke, drink?
Any unusual habits? Did he have visitors?’
'I just said, he was very quiet, very neat and tidy. I never
saw him with another person. In fact, I hardly heard a peep out of him. The ideal lodger.’ She laughed.
'You say you like to treat your guests as friends, signora, yet you seem to have had very little contact with this man.’
'David was different. He made it clear that he wanted to be left alone and I went along with his wishes.’
'You never heard from him again?’
Jennifer shook her head, no. Morelli could tell she was lying. He went over to the window and stood looking out at the rain.
'We know that he was in Florence recently. You’re quite sure he didn’t come back here? You didn’t speak to him?’
“I’m quite sure.’
'Signora,’ he said gravely, turning to face her, 'I must warn you that if David is who we think he is then we are dealing with an exceptionally dangerous individual. You really need to tell us everything you know.’
Jennifer blinked as she reached for her glass. Her hand trembled and Morelli wondered if she had a drink problem, or was just frightened.
'Did he use a computer when he was here?’ Luca
asked.
'All right, all right!’ she blurted. 'I didn’t speak to him but
he did get in touch. A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail
from him asking if his old room was available. I replied that
it was already rented.’
'Was it?’
She looked at Morelli. 'I didn’t want him back.’
'Why not? I thought you said he was the ideal lodger.’
She hesitated. 'He made me uncomfortable.’
'Why are you afraid now?’
'I didn’t say I was afraid.’
'Signora, tell me what happened.’ Morelli’s tone was gentle,
more concerned than probing. 'Did he try to contact you
when he was here?’
Jennifer looked down at her glass. 'I thought I saw him,
that’s all. I was out walking the dog on the viale one evening,
and as I passed the old iron gates to the Villa Arrighetti’ Morelli
glanced at his subordinate, but Luca was busy
taking notes – 'I saw a man standing there among the trees,
who looked like David. I felt sure he’d been watching me.
By the time I could cross the road he’d vanished.’
'He might have been staying at the villa, or somewhere
nearby.’
'Yes, I thought of that. I was worried in case he’d found
out the flat was unoccupied and knew that I lied to him.’
Morelli didn’t want to alarm her more, but he felt she probably
had a narrow escape. 'Was that the only time?’
'I never saw him again.’
'I’m still not clear what made you change your opinion
about him.’
'I don’t know. It was just a feeling.’
'Did you happen to save the e-mail, Signora?’
'Think she slept with him?’ Luca said as he accelerated into
a hairpin curve on the Viale Galileo. 'She’s a good-looking
babe.’
'Babe? I know you’ve got a thing about older women. But
that’s because basically, deep down, Luca, you’re a mama’s
boy.’
'She’s young to be a widow’
'So what does that mean? She has to be dying for it? She
screws her lodgers instead of charging rent? I know how your
mind works. No, she’s covering up, but it’s nothing like that.
How long will they need to trace the
URL
and get an address
from the e-mail header?’
'I don’t know. I told Milan it was urgent.’
'You realise the Villa Arighetti was where the Listers were
staying when they were here? Slow down or we’re going to
get stopped by some Carabinieri arsehole.’
Luca spun the wheel of the Fiat and shrugged. 'Coincidence.’
'You may be right. Florence is a small place.’
An hour after they got back to the office on Via Zara,
the information Morelli had requested was on his desk.
The Computer Crime Squad had traced the Internet Service
Provider and obtained the telephone number 'David’
used to make a connection when he e-mailed Jennifer
Ursino.
The number had been decoded to a name and address in
Paris – David Mallet, 20 rue Mabillon, Place Saint-Sulpice.
Something about the address looked familiar. Morelli
picked up the phone, punched two numbers and asked for
the file on the Villa Nardini murder. He opened the folder
the girl brought him.