‘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 h
and. 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.
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.’
The Faces of Angels Page 31