Home Before Dark (5 page)

waiting for someone. But then he looked up and our eyes met.
Something about his expression made me step back.
'Don’t laugh, but I thought I had an admirer. It never
occurred to me that he might be waiting for Sophie. I didn’t
think anything more about it until I got back to FLorence and
heard what had happened.’
'Did you report this to the Questura’
She shook her head. 'I started to make the call, I felt guilty
enough, but then I figured if the man I saw was responsible
for Sophie’s death, he knew where I lived, what I looked like.
How could the cops stop him coming after me?’
'But he didn’t, did he?’ Jimmy said. 'You never saw or
heard from him again – until yesterday, right? So why does
he wait a year to threaten you? Why now?’
'How would I know? I should have got the hell out of
Florence then. If it hadn’t been for work, I would have done.’
'You stayed because of Federico, don’t kid yourself. Did
you tell him about the call? Did you tell anyone else?’
Tears filled her eyes. 'No, no I didn’t.’
Earlier, when she realised she needed help, he’d been the
first person she wanted to call. In a weak moment she’d even
started to dial his number. What stopped her was knowing
that she would go to pieces if Federico refused.
'Samantha, honey,’ Jimmy said softly. 'What’s going on?
Talk to me.’
She was wondering whether she should ask him to deliver
her laptop to Ed Lister’s hotel. The Toshiba didn’t have a
case and she’d wrapped it in clear bubble wrap and buried
it in her L.L. Bean book bag – it was out there in the hall
with her backpack and suitcase. Sam hesitated.
'I can’t… Jimmy, believe me, you don’t want to get mixed
up in this. It’s too dangerous. We have to go now or I’ll miss
my train.’
She could guess the reason Ward had come back. He

40

must’ve found out somehow about the files on her laptop – files Sophie had left behind that possibly could identify
him, and which he would do anything to recover.
aj: i got like 45 minutes to get to Penn station
td: what did you want to say?
aj: it’s not important… all right, last night, i dreamt you were in some kind of
trouble, something to do with Florence, with your daughter… is everything ok?

The white clapboard house vanished from the screen, leaving
behind the text of Sam Metcalf’s abrupt e-mail asking me
not to contact her again. I replied anyway, thanking her for
the information and enquiring about the username and password
to the homebeforedark website. No reference to her
change of heart, no pleas to reconsider her decision – I kept
it short and to the point. I thought that was my best chance
of preserving the fragile link between us.
The messenger light had stopped flashing. I’m not sure if
Laura had noticed my reluctance to respond, or even realised
that I hadn’t. She was basically allergic to computers. Smiling
at something Bailey was saying to her on the phone, she
seemed to have lost interest. I felt relieved when she turned
away, my mobile to her ear, and wandered back through the
French doors into the bedroom.
I pulled up my contact list and saw that 'adorablejoker’,
the girl from Brooklyn I knew only as Jelena (she saw no
need to tell me her full name) had left a brief message, but
was 'currently offline’ – or using the invisible mode. I thought
for a moment then started to type. She didn’t let me finish.

adorablejoker: can’t talk… running out the door. templedog: didn’t you just message me?
That gave me a jolt.
I hadn’t mentioned to Jelena that I was in Italy, or said
anything about following up leads on Sophie’s murder. Her
intuition at times registered borderline
ESP
. She claimed it
was her island blood; her maternal grandmother came from
Martinique.

td: everything’s fine
aj: you’re not at home are you?
td: in Florence… with my wife. We fly back tomorrow
aj: it’s true then

She knew about our loss. She rarely brought up the subject,
but whenever I did she’d listen quietly. Her sympathy came
across always as warm and genuine, not overdone. Ironically
it was because of Sophie that our paths had intersected in
cyberspace. After she was murdered, I’d wasted soul-destroying
hours wandering through chat rooms, hoping to pick up
a trail that would lead to her killer. In one of the rooms – I
don’t remember its name – I bumped into Jelena.
The very first online conversation we’d had, six months
ago, I warned her that I was grieving for a child who’d been
murdered; but I didn’t dwell on it and I avoided going into
too much detail. I’d said nothing to her, for instance, about
the possibility that Sophie met her killer on the internet.
I didn’t want to scare her away.

td: we’re over here collecting some of Sophie’s things. We had to come back
There’s a mass being said for her this evening.
aj: i understand, i wish i could say a prayer for her
td: you don’t need a dispensation
aj: but it’s inappropriate… Ed, something feels wrong… be careful
td: you worry too much. I’m not in any kind of trouble
aj: what’s your sign again?
td: very funny… don’t you have a train to catch?
aj: yeah and i’m desperate to get out of here, you keep talking to me
td: no, other way round
aj: stop fucking lying

After Jelena – or 'Jelly’ as she preferred – went offline, I sat
for a moment staring at the picture of her I’d pulled up onto
my screen. It was a head and shoulders shot – the only likeness
she’d sent me of herself— and showed a skinny, brown-skinned
mop-headed girl in an olive-drab T-shirt with a faded handprinted
logo of The Clash across the front. I hadn’t told her
that I’d worked with the band in the early 80s when I was
living in New York and involved in the music business. I
didn’t want to seem as if I was trying to impress her. Besides,
it dated me.
She looks absurdly young, absurdly pretty. Head to one
side, chin down, she’s gazing straight at camera with canted
almond eyes (she also claimed Indonesian and Dutch
ancestry) that sparkle with mischief and a 'show-me’ attitude;
she has a full curved red mouth you can see wouldn’t stay
still or suffer fools for long. From one low-resolution digital
image I couldn’t tell if she was strictly beautiful (she insisted
she had the features of an ant), but it was a face you had to
look at, and that I couldn’t look at without wanting to smile.
'Eddie!’ Laura was calling to me from the bedroom. 'We’re
going to be late.’
I closed the file, then shut down my laptop.
Sooner or later, a girl as bright and attractive as Jelena was
bound to meet somebody (I half-suspected she already had)
and that would be the end of our unorthodox but harmless
friendship. She was twenty-five years old, I was forty-six, a
family man – and the differences only began there.
There was nothing shady going on between us. In the real
world, I’d have put money on a middle-aged businessman
enjoying private conversations with a woman young enough
to be his daughter being up to no good. Maybe I had a blind
spot where Jelly was concerned. But, as far as I was concerned,
she was just a charming cipher, a ghost at the other end of
a computer terminal.
In her company I escaped reality for a while. It was that
simple.

Without Jimmy’s help, Sam would never have made it.
Arriving at the station just after five thirty, he carried her
bags for her as they fought their way across Santa Maria
Novella’s triumphal concourse – she hadn’t bargained on a
local soccer game swelling the rush-hour crowds with overexcited
fans – and out onto the track for the Venice Express.
Jimmy, pouring sweat, tickets between his teeth, helped her
board the train and find her reserved window-seat with only
minutes to spare.
'Trust you to pick the observation car,’ he gasped.
She looked out the small grimy windows and pulled a face.
An old woman in widow’s black nodded politely from the
seat opposite. Sam smiled at her and sank down onto the
banquette with a sigh.
She felt giddy with relief. She glanced up at Jimmy who
was trying to find room for her suitcase on the rack, when
the train suddenly jolted forward.
'Forget about that. Go, or we’ll both end up in Venice.’ It
had crossed her mind to ask him to keep her company. 'I’ll
come to the door. I got something for you . . .’ She shooed
him away.
The moment his back was turned Sam unzipped her
suitcase. The silk robe lay on the top. She’d bought it for
Federico – that didn’t matter now. She wanted Jimmy to have
the robe, but there was no way she could give it him wrapped
only in tissue paper. She’d thrown away the elegant box it
came in to make more room in her case.
Sam hesitated, then emptied the contents of her L.L. Bean
book bag onto the table. She transferred her laptop to the
suitcase, covered it with clothes and zipped the lid.
Asking the old lady to keep an eye on her stuff, she ran
down the aisle with the distinctive white and black book
bag.
'Oh my God,’ Jimmy went, as she handed it over, 'just
what I’ve always wanted . . . what is it?’
Sam laughed and leaned down from the carriage steps to
kiss him on the mouth. 'I owe you, you, big time.’
She could see the guard walking up the track slamming
doors. There was nobody else on the platform. Jimmy took
a peek inside the canvas bag and whistled. 'This must have
cost a small fortune . . .’
She heard the clatter of heels. A woman ran past.
'If it’s the wrong size, you don’t like the colour, whatever
. . . you can always change it. . . you know the store on Via
Tornabuoni.’
'What about this?’ He held up the bag. 'I’ll mail it to
you.’
The door slammed shut. As the train began to shunt
forward, Jimmy walked along beside her carriage. She
caught the chirruping first bars to 'O Sole Mio’ and smiled
as she saw him reach for his cell phone and consult the
display— Sam felt another twinge of guilt at the thought that she might have exposed her friend to danger, but as
far as she could tell they weren’t followed. She was going
to miss him.
She mouthed through the window, 'Look after yourself.’
Then Jimmy stepped back, gave a little wave and slid from view.

After dark the main gates of the Villa Nardini are closed and the family use a less conspicuous entrance in the ivy-covered
perimeter wall on Via Rucellai. I got there at seven. The
Nardinis were away, but I had their permission to go anywhere I liked in the house and grounds. Coming home from a party,
Sophie had let herself in this same door the night she was killed.
I’d run the sequence countless times in my head. Her murderer sees his chance and steps out swiftly from the shadows
I noticed a magnolia tree across the street that shaded the pavement. There were plenty of places he could have hidden.
But was that really how it happened? Wouldn’t she have
screamed, struggled, tried to run for it? Morelli believed she let the perpetrator’ into the grounds because she knew him. Via Rucellai is a quiet, well-lit residential street with a boutique
hotel on the corner and a retirement home for nuns overlooking
the villa’s garden.
No one saw or heard anything.
My hand had hardly touched the bell when the nail
studded oak door swung inwards. Rutillio, the old portiere, stood framed in the doorway; his long secretive face, caught
by the light in half profile, might have been a detail from
a Renaissance painting. A gentle soul, who’d been kind to
Sophie – I’d spotted him at the requiem mass earlier Rutillio
had broken down when giving evidence at the
inquest. He greeted me with a sombre, 'Buona sera, Signor
Lister
I was glad I didn’t have enough Italian to make conversation
as I followed him across a cobbled forecourt, lit by
a string of lanterns, and out onto the terrace. The formal
garden lay ahead, stretching away into a reservoir of private
darkness.
It was a warm, starless evening. Rutillio handed me a torch
and, thanking him, I took the way he indicated around a huge
chalice-shaped fountain and down some steps into the
parterre. I’d no interest in the house.
When we came before, I’d helped Laura pack up our
daughter’s room and I didn’t need to see it again. Sophie
was always telling us she would have preferred to live somewhere
less grand, so she could experience the 'real’ Florence.
Sometimes I wonder, if we’d let her find her own level, whether
she would still be alive today. We weren’t over-protective
parents, but her mother . . . no, we both felt that she’d be
safe here in this haven of privilege and tranquillity.
On that visit Laura told me about a dream she’d had of
wandering through the villa’s reception rooms (all herringbone
parquet floors and gilt chairs lined up along the walls) throwing
open one set of double doors after another, calling Sophie’s
name, searching for her. She insists now she had this dream
weeks before the murder. I’m not sure if her memory can be
relied on. She certainly never spoke to me about a premonition
. but then I didn’t always confide in her either.
She knew I was coming here tonight. I would have liked
Laura at my side, but wild horses couldn’t have dragged her
back to the place where our angel was taken from us. The
kill site, the police called it.

A procession of classical statues, time-worn allegorical figures
on marble pedestals, loomed up in the light of my torch then
fell back into darkness as I walked down the central avenue,
the gravel crunching under my shoes. It’s not known if Sophie
came this way that night. The labyrinth of paths, laurel hedges,
and medulla-shaped borders didn’t yield a single clue as to
which route she took, or how her killer entered and left the
grounds.
The last time I was here the police refused to let me
enter the grotto, the scene of the crime, because it was still
being examined by Forensics. I’d just come come from
identifying Sophie’s body at the mortuary and I remember
standing in front of the limonaia, the colonnaded shelter
where lemon trees are kept in winter, and staring into that
dank cordoned-off opening, the white-suited figures creeping
about inside like maggots, and being overwhelmed by
a sense of utter devastation, unable to comprehend why this had happened.
I hadn’t returned to lay Sophie’s ghost, or to try to come
to terms with her loss (I knew I wasn’t going to find peace
or 'closure’, a word so false it makes me angry every time I
hear it), but the image of the grotto had become embedded
in my consciousness. It was like a black hole, a decaying star
at the centre of my existence into which I sometimes felt
everything was disappearing.
I needed to bear witness in some way to the absolute wrong
that was perpetrated here on my own flesh and blood … I
saw this as something left undone.
Yes, I took it personally.