The Faces of Angels (44 page)

He's dressed in black, in what looks like a cape or a cassock. I stop dead, and must make some kind of noise, a gasp, or a mew, because he turns round, and I realize it's Kirk. ‘Hey,' he says. ‘I was just going to leave you a note.'

When he gives me a hug, his shoulders are stiff and unyielding. He smells of mint, and underneath it something slightly sour, as if he hasn't washed or brushed his teeth for a while, just thrown on aftershave and used mouthwash instead.

‘So, does the coffee at the police station suck, or what?'

It's meant to be a joke, but Kirk's voice is cracked, and neither of us laugh. A second later he says, ‘Henry's in the bar. He said he'd pay if I came over here and convinced you to give us an espresso. We tried your cell,' he adds, ‘a few times yesterday. We didn't have what's-his-name's number.'

‘Pierangelo. My cell's broken.' I don't tell Kirk I'm using one of Piero's spare ones, and I don't offer the number.

A flood of light hits us as I push the apartment door open, and I see that Kirk's already fair skin is sickly white, and the rims of his eyes are as pink as a hamster's. Despite the warmth of the day, he's shrugged deep in his overcoat. I remember what Henry said about cocaine, and wonder exactly how much chemical help he's had in the last few days.

‘Kirk, are you OK?'

‘Not really,' he says as he steps past me into our hallway. ‘Are you?'

‘No. I don't know.'

The door swings shut behind us, and it occurs to me that I haven't even asked him how he got in here. I didn't know Billy had given him a key. I open my mouth to say something, then stop. Kirk is standing in the hallway staring through the open door of her room.

‘Fuck,' he says. ‘Oh fuck.'

He looks like a hound scenting, as if he can smell her here. As if the memory of her might gain flesh and bone and actually appear, if he just stands still enough.

‘Kirk?'

I say his name as softly as I can, reach towards him, half intending, somehow, to comfort him. But I don't get the chance, because what happens next happens too fast.

‘You bitch!' Kirk yells. ‘You fucking bitch!'

He swings round and hits me in the jaw. ‘What are you?' he screams, as I stagger backwards. ‘What are you? Some kind of fucking death angel?'

I drop the cookies, arms flailing, and collide with the little hall chair. One of the legs cracks and snaps as I fall, and I reach for it, for anything I can use to defend myself. The hall lamp. That's heavier, a better weapon. I grab the cord, start to pull it off the table, blood pounding in my ears, and look up, to see where he's coming from, how he's going to hit me next. But Kirk has apparently forgotten all about me. Standing in the hallway, staring into Billy's room, his hands hang at his sides. Long ugly streaks of tears run down his cheeks. His nose has started to run.

‘I loved her,' he says. ‘I really, really loved her.'

I don't know how long we stay like that for, me sitting on the floor grasping the chair leg in one hand and the electric cord in the other, and Kirk staring into Billy's room as if I'm not even here, weeping. It seems like for ever, but it's probably only a minute. Finally I lever myself to a crouch and crab around the wreckage of the chair, hoping he won't notice I'm moving. Then I sidle into the kitchen.

My head is hammering and my mouth is like sandpaper. There's a knife. A sharp one. I bought it. Or I could open the windows and scream for Sophie, scream anything, to anyone. I remember waking up on the couch. Because I heard a noise. The door. He has a key. He was going to come in.

I glance backwards at Kirk, standing in Billy's doorway, and my hand reaches for the French windows, fingers scrabbling for the tight little knot in the kitchen string. ‘Come on, come on, come on!' I whisper, certain that any second I'll hear him come up behind me. Then someone bangs on the front door.

It's a hollow thud-thud-thud, and my hands freeze. I can't make them work right.

‘Mary,' Henry calls. ‘Hey, Kirk, Mary, are you there?'

I sprint down the hall, my hands stretched for the big brass lock as though I'm reaching for the finishing tape in a race. When I open the door, Henry envelops me in a bear hug.

‘Shit,' he says. ‘I have been so worried about you. Your buzzer's broken, by the way. Some Albanian lady let me in.' He steps back and holds me at arm's length, looks at my face, his shrink's eyes sharp behind his round John-Boy Walton glasses. ‘Mary?' Henry asks. ‘What's going on?'

The blood in my head is slowing down, and I can hear my heart beating. I catch my breath, so relieved to see him that I actually laugh. The noise comes out of my mouth high and crackling. It sounds like electricity in a cartoon, a jagged yellow line. Henry looks past me, into the apartment.

‘Kirk?' he mouths.

‘In there,' I gesture with my head. ‘In Billy's room.'

Her door is closed now, and Henry follows me inside. Cookies are scattered across the floor, and when I pick up the broken chair and prop it against the wall, Henry steps around it without saying anything.

‘I'll get him out of here,' he mutters, as we come into the kitchen. ‘Just give him a couple of minutes with her stuff and I'll get him out of here.'

My eyes tear up and blur as I nod, fill the kettle for something to do, and turn on the halogen.

‘Mary?'

I don't turn round. I'd rather Henry didn't see that I'm shaking.

‘How much do you know?' I ask. I don't know what Kirk has found out about me, but obviously it's something. Billy must have told him.

‘Just what's in the paper, really.' There's apology in Henry's voice, and I glance at him over my shoulder.

‘Haven't you seen it?' he asks.

I shake my head, standing on tiptoe to open the top cabinet and reach for the mugs we bought because we were so scared of using Signora Bardino's eggshell cups. ‘No, not really,' I say, as I get them down. ‘I saw the headlines. I guess she'd be happy they called her an art historian.' Henry makes a strange sort of noise and I turn round and look at him. ‘What?'

He shrugs, as if he's embarrassed.

‘I didn't mean that,' he says. ‘I meant the part about you.'

‘About me?' My hand stops in mid-motion, holding the cheap blue mug.

‘Yeah. I thought you'd have seen it.'

‘No.'

‘Well, it just says it's a big coincidence that you were Billy's room-mate because you were attacked, before, two years ago, but survived. Just.'

I can't believe what I'm hearing. I had no idea there was anything about what happened to me in the paper, and part of me thinks it's a mistake, that it has to be. Pierangelo would never do this. Would he?

‘In the Boboli Gardens,' Henry's saying. ‘Right?' The kettle begins to whistle and I turn it off. A second later, Henry says, ‘I wish you'd felt like you could have told me, Mary. I thought we were friends. Or at least I thought you knew I'm not the enemy.'

‘I do know that.' I reach for the coffee, my hands moving by themselves, my mind clicking over. What has Pierangelo written? Why didn't he tell me?

‘Well, at least that's something.' Henry gives an uncomfortable little laugh.

I spoon coffee and pour water into the French press, and we watch in silence as it swirls and foams. Brown flecks ride to the top of the bubbles.

‘Mary, I could help. Really. It's what I do, for Christ's sake.' I can sense the frustration in Henry's voice, but I can't give in to him. I'm afraid that if I do, I might dissolve altogether, melt onto the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West and never be able to get up again.

‘I know, I just—' I have the sense that I'm going deaf, that I can't hear other people properly, or hear myself speaking, and I don't finish the sentence.

‘Listen'—Henry glances at the door and drops his voice—‘Kirk is going nuts. He'd asked her to go back to New York with him. To live with him. Did you know that? Did she tell you?'

I almost drop the coffee pot. I'd had no idea.

‘That's what they were fighting about,' Henry whispers, ‘on Saturday night. She wouldn't say yes. Or no.'

Typical, I think. Billy playing both sides of the deck. Keeping her options open. Refusing to be pinned down. A bright glob of mercury splitting and rolling away. I look at the doorway and see her standing there the afternoon before the party. What did she say?
He's driving me crazy.

‘Look,' Henry goes on. ‘I tried to talk him out of it, but you should know that he went to the police. I know it's garbage, but he's convinced you had something to do with this.'

I put the kettle back on the stove, and turn off the switch, watching the little red circle flare and die, remembering the questions Francesca Giusti asked me, and the sheepish look in Pallioti's eyes.

‘He was convinced she was seeing someone else,' Henry adds, and I almost laugh out loud.

‘And he thinks it was me?' I ask. Then I remember the way Kirk was looking at me in Fiesole, and something else clicks in my head. I've just remembered what I couldn't think of yesterday. Billy's ring. It sparkled in the grime on her dead hand. After she pulled it off her finger and hurled it at Kirk in the piazza.

‘Henry,' I ask suddenly, my voice sinking to a whisper, ‘how many times has Kirk been here before, to Florence? Do you know?'

Henry shakes his head. He starts to open his mouth, but before he can say anything we hear Kirk's footsteps in the hallway. He appears in the door holding one of Billy's shirts and a couple of her art books.

‘I'm taking these,' he says. It isn't a question. His face is naked, stripped down to its thin, fine bones, his lips set in such a hard line that they've almost disappeared. When he rakes his hand through his hair I can see it's lank and greasy. Kirk puts the things on a chair and accepts the coffee I put on the table, but he doesn't apologize for hitting me.

‘How much did Billy know?' he asks suddenly. ‘Exactly, I mean. About you? About what happened here before?'

There's no trace of tears in his voice now. It's hard and clipped and I look him right in the eye, and remember that, for all the twisted, bottled-up jealousy and grief inside him, Kirk's a prosecutor, and probably a good one.

‘Everything,' I say. ‘She knew everything. I told her. A while ago.'

‘She didn't say anything to me.'

I shrug. ‘She knew it was something I didn't like to talk about. I guess she respected my privacy.'

Kirk digests this for a second, stirs four teaspoons of sugar into his coffee and looks up at me.

‘Your privacy,' he says. ‘Well. Isn't that nice? So why are you here, Mary, if you care so much about “privacy”? Why come back here? Is it lover boy, or closure? Isn't that why you really came back? To face your demons? Maybe even track them down?' His voice is nasty with sarcasm.

‘Is that what you got Billy into?' he asks. ‘Some kind of little detective game so you could finally face your attacker? A little truth and reconciliation, maybe? Or, who knows, vengeance? What were you going to do, cut his balls off?'

‘Don't be ridiculous.'

‘What's ridiculous about Billy being dead? Is that your idea of a joke?'

Henry shifts uneasily, and when I don't answer Kirk takes a sip of his coffee and says, ‘So come on. Let us in on it. The paper wasn't all that clear. What, exactly, did happen two years ago?'

I pick up my own mug and stare at him.

‘I was attacked. In the Boboli Gardens, on a Sunday afternoon.'

‘But the guy didn't kill you.' Kirk looks up at me and actually smiles. ‘Why not?' he asks.

‘I guess,' I say, ‘because he killed my husband instead.'

They leave a few minutes later, Henry following Kirk down the stairs, turning around and making phone gestures at me. I watch them sink into the shadows, listen until their footsteps cross the marble foyer and reach the courtyard below. Then I dart back inside, close the apartment door and lock it. My heart is fluttering, jumping around, and instead of the hallway and half-moon table and broken chair, what I see is Billy: her tufted head hanging sideways, her red-tipped hand, cut and grubby, the heart ring winking in the ashes.