There was a lift, but she chose to take the red-carpeted and wooden-banistered stairs, passing the Trinidadian nurse she’d often seen while on surveillance, who was descending. He smiled and wished her a good afternoon, his arms laden with packs of incontinence pads.
A doorway led off the first landing, a small sign beside it announcing that this way lay bedrooms 1 to 10. Robin set off along the corridor, reading names off doors. Unfortunately, “Mrs. Enid Billings” lived behind door number 2 and, as Robin swiftly discovered, Ricci wasn’t on her floor. Aware that this was going to make any claim of having got lost on the way to Enid’s room implausible in the extreme, Robin doubled back, and climbed up to the second floor.
A few steps along an identical corridor to the one below, she heard a woman with a strong Polish accent in the distance, and backed hastily into an alcove where a sink and cupboard had been placed.
“D’you need the bathroom? Do—you—need—the—bathroom, Mister—Ricci?”
A low moan answered.
“Yes?” said the voice. “Or no?”
There was a second, answering moan.
“No? All right then…”
Footsteps grew louder: the nurse was about to pass the alcove, so Robin stepped boldly out from it, smiling.
“Just washing my hands,” she told the approaching nurse, who was blonde and flat-footed and merely nodded as she passed, apparently preoccupied with other matters.
Once the nurse had disappeared, Robin proceeded down the corridor, until she reached the door of number 15, which bore the name “Mr. Nico Ricci.”
Unconsciously holding her breath, Robin knocked gently, and pushed. There was no lock on the inside of the door; it swung open at once.
The room inside, while small, faced south, getting plenty of sun. A great effort had been made to make the room homely: watercolor pictures hung on the walls, including one of the Bay of Naples. The mantelpiece was covered in family photographs, and a number of children’s paintings had been taped up on the wardrobe door, including one captioned “Grandpa and Me and a Kite.”
The elderly occupant was bent almost double in an armchair beside the window. In the minute that had elapsed since the nurse left him, he’d fallen fast asleep. Robin let the door close quietly behind her, crept across to Ricci and sat down on the end of his single bed, facing the one-time pimp, pornographer and orchestrator of gang-rape and murder.
There was no doubt that the staff looked after their charges well. Ricci’s dark gray hair and his fingernails were as clean as his bright white shirt collar. In spite of the warmth of the room, they’d dressed him in a pale blue sweater. On one of the veiny hands lying limp on the chair beside him glistened the gold lion’s head ring. The fingers were curled up in a way that made Robin wonder whether he could still use them. Perhaps he’d had a stroke, which would account for his inability to talk.
“Mr. Ricci?” said Robin quietly.
He made a little snorting snuffle, and slowly raised his head, his mouth hanging open. His enormous, drooping eyes, though not as filmy as Betty Fuller’s, nevertheless looked dull, and like his ears and nose seemed to have grown while the rest of him shrank, leaving loose folds of dark skin.
“I’ve come to ask you some questions,” said Robin quietly. “About a woman called Margot Bamborough.”
He gaped at her, open-mouthed. Could he hear her? Could he understand? There was no hearing aid in either of his overlarge ears. The loudest noise in the room was the thumping of Robin’s heart.
“Do you remember Margot Bamborough?” she asked.
To her surprise, Ricci made his low moan. Did that mean yes or no?
“You do?” said Robin.
He moaned again.
“She disappeared. D’you know—?”
Footsteps were coming along the corridor outside. Robin got up hastily and smoothed away the impression she’d left on the bedspread.
Please God, don’t let them be coming in here.
But God, it seemed, wasn’t listening to Robin Ellacott. The footsteps grew louder, and then the door opened to reveal a very tall man whose face was pitted with acne scars and whose knobbly bald head looked, as Barclay had said, as though something heavy had been dropped on it: Luca Ricci.
“Who’re you?” he said. His voice, which was far softer and higher than she’d imagined, made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. For a second or two, Robin’s terror threatened to derail her carefully worked out contingency plan. The very worst she’d expected to have to deal with was a nurse. None of the Riccis should have been here; it wasn’t Sunday. And of all the Riccis she would have wanted to meet, Luca was the last.
“You his relative?” Robin asked in her North London accent. “Oh, fank Gawd! He was making a weird moaning noise. I’ve just been visiting my gran, I fort he was ill or somefing.”
Still standing in the doorway, Luca looked Robin up and down.
“He doesthn’t mean anything by it,” said Luca, who had a lisp. “He moanth a bit, but it don’t mean nothing, do it, eh, Dad?” he said loudly to the old man, who merely blinked at his eldest son.
Luca laughed.
“What’th your name?” he asked Robin.
“Vanessa,” she said promptly. “Vanessa Jones.”
She took half a step forwards, hoping he’d move aside, but he remained planted exactly where he was, though smiling a little more widely. She knew he’d understood that she wanted to leave, but couldn’t tell whether his evident determination to keep her inside was done for the simple pleasure of keeping her momentarily trapped, or because he hadn’t believed her reason for being in his father’s room. Robin could feel sweat under her armpits and over her scalp, and hoped to God that her hair chalk wouldn’t come off.
“Never theen you around here before,” said Luca.
“No, it’s my first time,” said Robin, forcing herself to smile. “They look after ’em well, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” said Luca, “not bad. I usually come Thundayth, but we’re off to Florida tomorrow. Gonna mith hith birthday. Not that he knowth it’th hith birthday—do you, eh?” he said, addressing his father, whose mouth continued to hang open, his eyes fixed vacantly on his son.
Luca took a small wrapped package from under his jacket, leaned over to the chest of drawers and laid it on top without moving his large feet so much as an inch.
“Aw, that’s nice,” said Robin.
She could feel the sweat on her breastbone now, where it would be visible to Luca. The room was as warm as a greenhouse. Even had she not known who Luca was, she’d have known what he was. She could feel the potential for violence coming off him like radiation. It was in the greedy smile he was giving her, in the way he was now leaning up against the door jamb, reveling in the silent exercise of power.
“It’th only chocolateth,” said Luca. “Who’th your granny?”
“Great-granny, really, but I call her ‘Gran,’” Robin said, playing for time, trying to remember any of the names she’d passed on the way to Ricci’s room. “Sadie.”
“Where’th she?”
“Couple of rooms that way,” said Robin, pointing left. She hoped he couldn’t hear how dry her mouth was. “Promised my mum I’d pop in and visit her while she’s on holiday.”
“Yeah?” said Luca. “Where’th your Mum gone?”
“Florence,” Robin invented wildly. “Art galleries.”
“Yeah?” said Luca again. “Our family’th from Napleth, originally. Innit, Dad?” he called over Robin’s head at the gaping old man, before looking Robin up and down again. “Know what my old man uthed to be?”
“No,” said Robin, trying to maintain her smile.
“He owned thtrip clubth,” said Luca Ricci. “Back in the old dayth, he’d’ve had your pantieth right off you.”
She tried to laugh, but couldn’t, and saw that Luca was delighted to see her discomfort.
“Oh yeah. Girl like you? He’d’ve offered you a hothtess job. It wa
th good money, too, even if you did have to blow thome of Dad’th mateth, hahaha.”
His laugh was as high-pitched as a woman’s. Robin couldn’t join in. She was remembering Kara Wolfson.
“Well,” she said, feeling the sweat trickling down her neck, “I really need—”
“Don’t worry,” said Luca, smiling, still standing firmly between her and the door, “I’m not in that game.”
“What do you do?” asked Robin, who’d been on the verge of asking him to move aside, but lost her nerve.
“I’m in inthuranthe,” said Luca, smiling broadly. “What about you?”
“Nursery nurse,” said Robin, taking the idea from the children’s daubs on the wardrobe door.
“Yeah? Like kidth, do you?”
“I love them,” said Robin.
“Yeah,” said Luca. “Me too. I got thix.”
“Wow,” said Robin. “Six!”
“Yeah. And I’m not like him,” said Luca, looking over Robin’s head again, at his gaping father. “He wathn’t interethted in uth until we were grown up. I like the littl’unth.”
“Oh, me too,” said Robin fervently.
“You needed to get knocked down by a car to get hith attention, when we were kidth,” said Luca. “Happened to my brother Marco, when he wath twelve.”
“Oh no,” said Robin politely.
He was playing with her, demanding that she give him appropriate responses, while both of them were equally aware that she was too scared to ask him to move aside, afraid of what he might do. Now he smiled at her feigned concern for his brother Marco’s long-ago car accident.
“Yeah, Dad thtayed at the hothpital with Marco for three weekth tholid, till Marco wath out of danger,” said Luca. “At leatht, I think it wath Marco he wath thtaying for. Might’ve been the nurtheth. In the old dayth,” said Luca, looking Robin up and down again, “they wore black thtockingth.”
Robin could hear footsteps again, and this time she prayed, please be coming in here, and her prayer was answered. The door behind Luca opened, hitting him in the back. The flat-footed blonde nurse was back.
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Ricci,” she said, as Luca stepped aside. “Oh,” she repeated, becoming aware of Robin’s presence.
“’E was moaning,” Robin said again, pointing at Mucky, in his chair. “Sorry, I shouldn’t’ve—I fort he might be in pain or something.”
And right on cue, Mucky Ricci moaned, almost certainly to contradict her.
“Yeah, he does a bit of that, if he wants something,” said the nurse. “Probably ready for the bathroom now, are you, Mr. Ricci?”
“I’m not thtaying to watch him crap,” said Luca Ricci, with a little laugh. “I only came to drop off hith prethent for Thurthday.”
Robin was already halfway out of the door, but to her horror, she’d walked barely three steps when Luca appeared behind her, taking one stride to her every two.
“Not going to thay goodbye to Thadie?” he asked, as they passed the door of Mrs. Sadie O’Keefe.
“Oh, she fell asleep while I was in there, bless her,” said Robin. “Flat out.”
They walked down the stairs, Luca slightly behind her all the way. She could feel his eyes, like lasers, on the nape of her neck, on her legs and her backside.
After what felt like ten minutes, though it was barely three, they reached the ground floor. The almost life-size plaster Jesus looked sadly down upon the killer and the impostor as they headed toward the door. Robin had just placed her hand on the handle when Luca said,
“Hang on a moment, Vanetha.”
Robin turned, a pulse thrumming in her neck.
“You’ve got to thign out,” said Luca, holding out a pen to her.
“Oh, I forgot,” said Robin, with a breathless giggle. “I told you—it’s my first time here.”
She bent over the visitors’ book. Directly below the signature she’d written on entering the building was Luca’s.
LUCA RICCI
In the space left for “Comments” he’d written,
BROUGHT HIM SOME CHOCOLATES FOR HIS BIRTHDAY ON THURSDAY, PLEASE GIVE HIM THEM ON THE MORNING OF THE 25TH JULY.
Robin scrawled the time beside her signature, then turned back to the door. He was holding it open for her.
“Fanks very much,” she said breathlessly, sidling past him into the fresh air.
“Give you a lift anywhere?” Luca asked her, pausing at the top of the steps to the street. “My car’th round the corner. Athton Martin.”
“Oh, no, fanks very much, though,” said Robin. “I’m meeting my boyfriend.”
“Be good, then,” said Luca Ricci. “And if you can’t be good, be thafe, hahaha.”
“Yes,” said Robin, a little wildly. “Oh, and enjoy Florida!”
He raised a hand to her and began to walk away, whistling “Begin the Beguine.” Light-headed with relief, Robin walked off in the opposite direction. It took the utmost restraint to stop herself breaking into a run.
Once she’d reached the square, she slid behind the lilac bush and watched the front of the nursing home for a full half an hour. Once she was certain that Luca Ricci had genuinely left, she doubled back.
62
Oftimes it haps, that sorrowes of the mynd
Find remedie vnsought, which seeking cannot fynd.
Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene
The row, for which Robin was braced, was one of the worst she and Strike had ever had. His fury that she’d approached Mucky Ricci, after his clear warnings and instructions not to, remained unabated even after a solid hour’s argument in the office that evening, which culminated in Robin seizing her bag and walking out while Strike was mid-sentence, leaving him facing the vibrating glass door, wishing it had shattered, so he could bill her.
A night’s sleep only slightly mitigated Strike’s anger. Yes, there were major differences between Robin’s actions this time, and those that had seen him sack her three years previously: she hadn’t, for instance, spooked a suspect into hiding. Nor was there any indication, at least in the first twenty-four hours following her visit, that either the Ricci family or the nursing home suspected “Vanessa Jones” of being anyone other than she’d claimed to be. Above all (but this fact rankled, rather than soothed), Robin was now a partner in the firm, rather than a lowly subcontractor. For the first time, Strike was brought up against the hard fact that if they ever parted ways, a legal and financial tangle would engulf him. It would, in fact, be akin to a divorce.
He didn’t want to split from Robin, but his newly awakened awareness that he’d made it very difficult to do so increased his ire. The atmosphere between them remained strained for a fortnight after her visit to St. Peter’s until, on the first morning in August, Robin received a terse text from Strike asking her to abandon her fresh attempt to befriend Shifty’s PA, and come back to the office.
When she entered the inner room, she found Strike sitting at the partners’ desk, with bits and pieces of the Bamborough police file laid out in front of him. He glanced up at her, noted that her eye and hair color were her own, then said brusquely,
“The Shifty clients have just rung up. They’ve terminated the job, for lack of results.”
“Oh no,” said Robin, sinking into the chair opposite him. “I’m sorry, I really tried with Shifty’s PA—”
“And Anna and Kim want to talk to us. I’ve set up a conference call at four o’clock.”
“They aren’t—?”
“Winding things up?” said Strike unemotionally. “Probably. Apparently they’ve had a spur-of-the-moment invitation from a friend to join them on holiday in Tuscany. They want to talk to us before they go, because they’ll still be away on the fifteenth.”
There was a long silence. Strike didn’t appear to have anything else to say, but resumed his perusal of various bits of the case file.
“Cormoran,” said Robin.
“What?”
“Can we please talk about St. Peter’s?�
�
“I’ve said everything I’ve got to say,” said Strike, picking up Ruby Elliot’s statement about the two women struggling together in the rain, and pretending to read it again.
“I don’t mean about me going there. I’ve already said—”
“You said you wouldn’t approach Ricci—”
“I ‘agreed’ not to go near Ricci,” said Robin, sketching quotation marks in the air, “just like you ‘agreed’ with Gregory Talbot not to tell the police where you got that roll of film.” Hyperaware of Pat typing away in the outer office, Robin was speaking quietly. “I didn’t set out to defy you; I left him up to you, remember? But it needed doing, and you couldn’t. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a damn sight better than you are at disguising my appearance.”
“That’s not in question,” said Strike, throwing aside Ruby Elliot’s statement and picking up Gloria’s description of Theo, instead. “What bugs me, as you bloody well know, is that you didn’t tell me you were going to—”
“D’you ring me every three seconds and tell me what you’re going to do next? You’re happy enough for me to work on my own initiative when it suits—”
“Luca Ricci’s done time for putting electrodes on people’s genitals, Robin!” said Strike, dropping the pretense that the description of Theo had his attention.
“How many times are we going to go over this? D’you think I was pleased when he walked in the room? I’d never have gone in there if I’d known he was about to make a surprise appearance! The fact remains—”
“—it’s not a fact—”
“—if I hadn’t—”
“—this theory—”
“It isn’t a bloody theory, Strike, it’s reality, and you’re just being pig-headed about it.” Robin pulled her mobile out of her back pocket and brought up the photo she’d taken on her second visit to the nursing home, which had lasted barely two minutes, and involved her taking a quick, unwitnessed photograph of Luca Ricci’s handwriting in the visitors’ book.
Troubled Blood: A Cormoran Strike Novel Page 79