The Faces of Angels (45 page)

Pallioti keeps me waiting. I left the apartment and almost ran straight here, and now I can barely stay still. My legs and arms twitch, and when he does finally appear, I take the cigarette he offers almost greedily and suck on it long and hard.

‘I've remembered,' I say. ‘That night in the piazza, Saturday, when Billy and Kirk had the fight.'

Pallioti looks at me out of the corner of his eye. I told him I didn't need to go up to his office, so we're standing in a narrow little interior courtyard, next to a modern fountain, an obelisk of granite that piddles into a shallow green pool.

‘The thing is,' I continue, ‘when I was talking to you and Dottoressa Giusti, I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn't remember what.' I close my eyes, squeeze them tight shut, and see Billy standing beside the low plastic hedge outside the bar, leaning forward, spitting words I can't hear over the music. Then I see her yank something off her hand. She hurls it to the ground and spins away, her red dress swirling in the coloured lights.

‘She threw it at him.' I open my eyes and look at Pallioti. ‘She was wearing this ring he gave her, two heart-shaped stones intertwined, and she pulled it off her finger and threw it at him.'

Pallioti looks at me, his face impassive.

‘She was wearing it when she died!' I almost shout. ‘It was on her hand when you found her at the Belvedere. I saw it.'

‘So, she retrieved it after the fight.' Pallioti almost smiles. ‘She wouldn't be the first woman,' he says, ‘who thought better of throwing away a piece of jewellery.'

I shake my head. ‘No. Kirk picked it up. I saw him. He put it in his pocket. And he has a key to our building. He turned up there today. He was waiting for me. Or maybe he was just about to let himself in.'

Pallioti narrows his eyes. He's looking at my jaw, at the red swelling that is already beginning to stand out, but he doesn't say anything. He just nods his head for me to go on, like old times.

‘Kirk's been here before. I don't know when, or for how long. But he has. And I know he's been to Mantua. He said so, one day when we went to the gardens. At least ask him,' I beg. ‘Please. At least find out the dates when he was here.'

Pallioti considers the cigarette in his hand, flips it into the green gutter of the fountain and nods. ‘I will, signora,' he says. ‘Thank you. Now, will you do something for me?'

I look at him. ‘Of course. What?'

‘Be careful.' Pallioti says this without so much as a tremor passing over his face. It's so deadpan, it's almost funny.

‘I am careful, Ispettore Pallioti. Believe me.'

Something about this almost makes him smile. He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out one of his cards. ‘I'm sorry I can't let you have your phone back,' he says. ‘But if you need anything, signora, or think of anything else, please don't hesitate. Call me.'

I tuck the card into my wallet. I know he's just doing his job, but it does make me feel better. And I thank him.

Pallioti ushers me back into the entrance hall, asks me if I want a car to take me home, and almost smiles again when I say no. Then he shakes my hand and starts to walk away. After a few steps, he stops and looks back at me.

‘
Carpaccio
,' he says suddenly.

I look at him, confused.

‘Raw beef.' Ispettore Pallioti shrugs. ‘Some people think it's an old wives' tale,' he says. ‘But, really, it is the best thing. At least that's what my mama always told me, when I'd been in a fight.'

After I leave the Questura, I pick up a paper, sit at a café in Piazza della Repubblica, and read the whole thing. Then I read it again, the music of the merry-go-round rising and falling in the background.

‘You could have at least warned me!'

The newspaper skids to a halt at Pierangelo's feet where I have thrown it, Billy's face smiling up at us.

‘I guess I should be thankful you didn't put my picture in it! And my birthday and my fucking phone number!' I shout. Then I slam the study door. I am so angry, I barely know what to do with myself.

In the kitchen, I try to pour myself a glass of wine, but I can't even stand still for that. My jaw has begun to throb, and when I catch a glimpse of myself in the shiny distorted surface of the bread box, I see a big red blotch. Tears prick at the back of my eyes. Suddenly I miss Billy so much it's like a physical pain.

The piece about me was on an inside page, in a side bar, a neatly placed little black box that denoted ‘special interest'. The headline was: ‘Apartment-mates Share More Than a Kitchen.' As an article, it was straightforward enough, gave my name, noted that Billy and I were room-mates, and outlined the attack in the Boboli two years ago. All without mentioning that Ty had been killed. Or that he'd even been there. In fact, the article didn't mention Ty at all. He might never have existed, never mind been murdered, and I'm as angry about that as anything.

When Pierangelo comes into the room and puts his arms around my shoulders, I try to shrug him off, but he's too tall and too strong for me. He rests his chin on top of my head, holding me from behind so I can't see his face.

‘I'm sorry,' he says. ‘But they were going to put in the story about you anyways, and it was better if I did it. I was going to tell you this morning. I should have. I'm sorry.' I make a halfhearted attempt to squirm away, but he holds on. ‘I said as little as I could,' he adds. ‘But you had to know this was going to happen. It's too big a coincidence. We had to cover it.'

‘You left Ty out. Altogether. You didn't even mention him.'

I'm aware that the grievance of this is vinegar poured on my own guilt, and I think Pierangelo is too. ‘Isn't it better that way?' he asks as he touches the sore place on my jaw.

‘I tripped over a chair,' I say.

‘The chair belong to anybody I know?'

I shake my head. Stupidity or playground ethics, I don't know, but, either way, my instinct tells me that mixing it up between Kirk and Pierangelo will only make a bad situation worse.

‘You need a treat,' Pierangelo says. ‘Go wash your face and I'll take you for a Martini at the Excelsior.'

‘Piero, what about Kirk?'

‘Batman?' Pierangelo looks at me over the rim of his glass. ‘What about him?'

‘Do you think he could have done it? Do you think he could have killed Billy?'

The spindly palm trees in their pots bow in an invisible puff of air, and on the other side of the Excelsior bar, the pianist breaks into ‘Night and Day.' No one could possibly hear us in the corner where we are nestled on a gold brocade sofa, but Piero lowers his voice anyways. ‘Could have, or did?' he asks. His pale green eyes glint in the low light.

I shrug. ‘Does it matter?'

‘Sure,' Piero says. ‘Almost anyone can kill anyone, given the right circumstances.' He contemplates the gold signet ring he wears for a second, then he asks, ‘Did he? I don't know. Unless you think he's a serial killer.'

‘You're sure the same person who killed the others killed her, aren't you?'

Pierangelo considers me then nods. ‘Yes,' he says. ‘I am.'

‘And that's what the police think?'

‘From everything I hear.'

‘So, no matter what the story is with Karel Indrizzio, the same person who killed Caterina Fusarno and Ginevra Montelleone killed Billy?'

‘In my opinion, yes.'

‘Why?' I can feel something slipping into place in my head, pieces of a puzzle that I only need to tilt the right way for them to make sense. ‘I mean, I agree with you,' I add. ‘So I don't mean “Why do you think that?” What I mean is, out of all of the women in Florence, why pick those three? What connects them?'

Pierangelo is watching me as I go on, groping towards something I can't quite grasp, fuelled by the cold silky gin and vermouth.

‘If Billy was killed because of me, because she knew me, which I think is probably true, then that's not the right question, is it? It's not what connects them to Billy, it's what connects them to me.'

Pierangelo watches me for a second before he says, ‘You know,
cara
, Pallioti is really a very good cop. He's very highly thought of.' He reaches out and smooths a strand of my hair. ‘Come on,' he says. ‘Let's let the police do their work, and we'll do ours.'

‘Ours?'

‘
Certo
. We have a wedding to plan.' Piero reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out his date book and drops it on the table. ‘I'm going to the men's room,' he says, standing up. ‘When I come back, we'll pick a date.'

I watch his back as he walks away, weaving between the tables, then I reach out and take the little leather book. I riffle through its gold-edged pages, but I can't see the dates. Finally I drop it and sink back on the sofa, taking in the room around me. The piano is playing something I don't recognize. The tune winds itself through the sounds of people's voices. Above me, chandeliers wink. A champagne cork pops. A woman walks past, her high heels clicking on the marble, and squeals in greeting, hands outstretched when she sees her friends. This place is a cocoon, its beauty makes it safe, and yet, during the war, a man was shot in this bar, perhaps not feet from where I'm sitting. It was in the winter of 1944. He stood up and shouted that Mussolini was a bastard, and someone took out a gun and shot him.

Sitting here now, I can imagine the silence that followed. The piano notes hanging in the air, the stunned terror as the dead man's blood seeped in rivulets across the floor. And then the music starting again, a little sharper, a little faster, and, quickly, the resumption of conversation, high and brittle; the voices of people with eyes averted, people who are trying not to look, trying to pretend that what has just happened has not happened at all. Or, worse, that it's perfectly normal.

P
IERANGELO HAS AN
editorial meeting, and in the morning he's in more of a hurry than usual. As he rushes out of the door, still tying his tie, he suggests I stay home for the day, maybe watch a movie or read a book. Get some rest. I promise I will.

The lie rolls off my tongue too easily. I watch from the living-room windows as he comes out of the building and walks down the street. Standing up here, I'm like Rapunzel in her tower. When he looks back, waving before he turns the corner, I lift my hand, although I doubt he can see me.

I've left things out—committed sins of omission—but I've never actually lied to Pierangelo before, and it makes the inside of my chest feel heavy. Perhaps, I think, I'll tell him, eventually. Make right what I have done wrong. But not now. Because if I told him now what I'm about to do, he'd stop me.