The Faces of Angels (12 page)

But despite the inevitable whispering in the confessional, the threats of damnation, the cold shouldering and general pressure I am absolutely certain she endured, Eleanora apparently stuck to her guns, because by January the Mother Superior had finally given permission for her to move in with a friend in Fiesole, a lay teacher from the day-care centre, so she could think over her final decision.

A better Catholic than I ever was, Eleanora continued to go to Mass every day, and the afternoon of the twenty-first was no exception. The last time anyone admitted to seeing her was in the cathedral in Fiesole where, after the service, she had a conversation with the local priest about helping with the flowers for Lent. According to him, she was in good spirits and optimistic about the future, whatever it held, when she walked out into the piazza shortly after six p.m. By that time the hazy sun would have been long gone, the winter night dropping like a blanket over the hills.

When she didn't come home for supper, her friend went looking for her. By nine p.m., she had called the local
carabinieri
, who advised her that Eleanora had probably gone into the city, maybe to do some late shopping. After all, they suggested, the sales were on. It was possible, the friend thought. Eleanora had talked about needing clothes for her new life. But still she was uneasy, and she was right to be, because Eleanora Darnelli had gone no further than the Roman Ruins. She was found the next morning behind the amphitheatre, not five hundred yards from where she had heard Mass, her throat cut, a white satin ribbon tied in a bow around her left wrist.

Benedetta Lucchese, a nurse at one of the big city hospitals, disappeared about two weeks later, on the night of 4 February. She lived north of Fortezza da Basso with her fiancé, a Moroccan contractor called André Dupin, and at six p.m. that evening they quarrelled. Loudly. Several of the neighbours heard them. André was leaving to visit his aunt and uncle in Tangier early the next morning, and her sister, Isabella, later said he was pressing Benedetta to set a date for the wedding so he could make plans with them, something she was apparently reluctant to do. André eventually stormed out and went to drown his sorrows in the local bar, where several people saw him.

While André was drinking himself silly, Benedetta went to see her sister, who still lived in the family house on the other side of the city, on Via San Leonardo, a beautiful road that winds through the hills beyond the Belvedere fort. She didn't get there, however, until just before nine p.m. According to Isabella Lucchese, Benedetta went to a late Mass first.

By eleven p.m., Benedetta decided she was ready to go. Her sister urged her to spend the night, but Benedetta insisted she ought to go home and make things up with André since he was leaving very early the next morning. She refused a ride, saying she'd rather walk the five minutes to the main road, the Viale Galileo, and catch the last bus. Her sister kissed her goodbye shortly before eleven-fifteen, and watched her walk down the drive and out through the front gate. It was the last time anyone saw her alive. Except Karel Indrizzio.

Her fiancé assumed she'd stayed with her sister, so he left on schedule the next morning, planning to call Benedetta and make it up when he arrived in Tangier. But he never got the chance. She was found late the next day in the olive groves below the walls of the Belvedere fort, a burnt-out candle clutched in her folded hands. Until 25 May, when Indrizzio chased me into the maze in the Boboli Gardens, a place he probably knew well since he frequently slept rough in the area, André Dupin was the prime suspect in Benedetta's killing, and still fighting extradition from Morocco.

I put the file down, feeling as if something cold has brushed very close to me. Billy comes home, and shouts through the door that she's going to the movies with Kirk and Henry, and do I want to come? It's Nicole Kidman wearing a fake nose in
The Hours
, and I shout, ‘No thanks.' Even if I hadn't seen it last night, I can't imagine sitting still in the dark. She hovers a little, and finally asks if I'm OK. I say, ‘Sure,' mumble something about how maybe I have a cold, and she leaves again.

The pictures are the hardest part. Sometime during the day, I got back into bed, as if snuggling under a pink duvet would make reading this stuff easier, and now I finally force myself out, pull up the covers and lay the photos on Signora Bardino's embroidered silk counterpane. Then I make myself study the faces and bodies of Eleanora Darnelli and Benedetta Lucchese.

Both of them were found fully clothed, and in Benedetta's case the extent of her injuries isn't even apparent in the crime-scene photos. She just looks dead. Not asleep; dead. You can tell because, even on film, there's nothing in her face. Lying in the frosted grass, holding her candle, she's utterly empty, like one of those awful Victorian monuments, an angel or a praying virgin, knocked over in a graveyard.

It wasn't until they got Benedetta back to the morgue and undressed her that it became clear she had been savagely beaten, tortured really, burnt, and cut. Her breasts had been carved up, a similarity that—along with the souvenir and the type of knife—added to Pallioti's conviction that Karel Indrizzio had attacked us both. Like me, Benedetta had been tied up. Marks on her arms and legs showed that she'd struggled hard. The patholo-gist thought she'd been dead for somewhere between twelve to fifteen hours when she was found, and that the single stab wound that killed her had been delivered last, after the other injuries had been inflicted.

Indrizzio kidnapped her, tortured her, finally killed her, and then dressed her up again, like a doll. He washed her before he put everything back on: underwear, socks, boots, blouse, skirt. Even her overcoat. He cleaned her hands and face, and combed her hair. The only thing he forgot was her wristwatch. According to Pierangelo's notes, the police thought that that was probably calculation rather than carelessness because everything else was obviously so meticulously planned.

Eleanora, on the other hand, does not look doll-like. She is lying on a large slab of grey stone, also fully dressed, wearing everything except one shoe, which makes her stockinged foot look oddly vulnerable. But although her injuries were nowhere near as horrific as Benedetta's—if you can apply that kind of sliding scale of horror—she looks much worse. Because there is a lot of blood. Everywhere. Eleanora Darnelli was not washed and she had no other injuries, but the pathologist said Indrizzio cut her throat with a stroke that was so clean, he nearly severed her head.

I have not nearly finished reading and examining everything in the file yet, but I keep seeing him. I feel his hands on my body, his tongue on my cheek. Finally I have to get up and walk around the room, chafing my palms as if I'm cold, because at last, and maybe fully for the first time, I understand now what Ty saved me from. To look at Eleanora and Benedetta is to see what I would have been.

I knew this before, of course. But now I feel it in my gut. The lamb to my Isaac, Ty sated whatever terrible thing it was that turned and writhed in the void of Karel Indrizzio's soul. By accident or not, he gave his life for mine. The blunt truth is I am only here because he did the thing that had always annoyed me most; he refused to leave me alone.

I feel as though cold water has just been dumped all over me and, suddenly weepy and light-headed, I long to talk to someone. I am not sure what I need to say, but I want to spill words out. Offer them up. But to who? If I call Pierangelo, he'll want to know what's wrong with me, why I have suddenly come to this realization, and I can't tell him without confessing to rifling his desk. Besides, he doesn't like to talk about Ty. I could call a friend in the States, but then the word would get out that I was finally cracking up, and I have a feeling that that is what most of the people I know have been expecting, and they would shimmer with self-satisfaction, possibly even volunteer to fly over here and bring me home ‘where I belong', tutting at me all along that coming back was a bad idea. I even consider going and knocking on Sophie's door. Consider the idea, and dismiss it. I ran into her in the shop when I ducked out earlier today to buy a sandwich, but beyond the two conversations we've now had, I don't know her, and what I want desperately is to be with someone I know well. Or, more importantly, to be with someone who knows me. For the first time in a long time, I miss Mamaw.

Finally, after washing my face and making myself a large, bitter espresso, I decide what I am going to do. I will read through Pierangelo's file, every single word of it, then I will return it to his apartment. After that, I will know everything there is to know and move on.

Determined, I go back into my room, sit down by the photos on my bed, and run my fingers over the faces of the two women. Then I select one picture of each, and add them to the collection in my bottom drawer. Pierangelo won't miss them. And I tell myself that, although I plan to seal the envelope, I need them more than he does. I can't afford to forget what they looked like, what I would have looked like, if not for Ty. I didn't give him much while he was alive, but I can give him at least that much now.

There are a few more things in the file, some clippings, a note remarking that Eleanora Darnelli's left shoe was missing and never recovered—possibly taken by local dogs? Results of the pathologist's toxicology screenings, both of which came back clean, and some indecisive DNA—not the silver bullet it's cracked up to be, as everyone now knows—and one more manila envelope. I assume this has copies of Piero's finished article, or articles, and although I've already read the rough drafts, in the interests of thoroughness, I open it and tip the contents onto the bed.

But it's not copies, it's more pictures. There are about six of them, all obviously from a crime scene, and it takes me a moment to understand that they are of a woman I have never seen before. I hold one up to the light, just in case I'm making a mistake. But I'm not. She looks a little like the others, in that she has long dark hair, but she's a total stranger.

This woman is lying on what appears to be scrub grass. I can see pieces of a bush or shrub, and some twigs. Like Eleanor and Benedetta, she has the forensics unit's little markers laid alongside her for scale, so there is no question she's anything but a murder victim. Her hair is fanned out around her face, which is bruised and cut. Her nose is broken, even I can tell that. A little trickle of dried blood is caked on her upper lip. Blood has soaked her pale-coloured T-shirt too, covered it in blotches so it looks like some hideous Rorschach test, and her hands are on her stomach, holding something. I find a close-up. Her nails are long and painted a dark colour, plum or black. One thumb nail is broken, and her fingers are wrapped around a tiny dead bird, its head lolled sideways in her hands.

Pierangelo is usually extremely thorough, keeping both handwritten stuff and printed write-ups, but the notes with these photos are thin at best. They don't tell me much of anything. Only that the bird is a goldfinch, her bag was missing, and she was a hooker called Caterina Fusarno.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, not knowing what to think. The only explanation is that there must have been a third woman, one I was never told about. Maybe the police weren't sure they could tie Indrizzio to her murder so they never mentioned her. Or maybe they just didn't want me to know, thought somehow three would be that much worse than two, and that my brain was overloaded enough as it was. It's possible. Thanks to the punctured lung and the fact that it got infected, I did nearly die.

I decide that has to be it. She must be Indrizzio's third victim, another one of us. So I get down on my knees and put her picture where it belongs, with the others. Then I shove the manila envelope as far back into my bottom drawer as it will go and think:
Enough
.

It takes me less than five minutes to stuff everything in the file, pull my jeans and boots on, and get out the door. By the time I cross Ponte di Santa Trinita, I'm almost running, desperate to get back to Pierangelo's and dump this awful archive where it belongs, in his desk, with his records of the past.