‘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.
Chapter Twenty
PIERANGELO 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.
Annika is sitting alone. Again. I have the feeling that she always sits alone these days, that it’s almost part of an act, like the horrible clashing clothes she wears. Today it’s a pink turtleneck and a purple-and-green-spotted sweater. Her jeans have patches in the shapes of daisies on them, presumably in deliberate contrast to the heavily inked eyeliner and dark gothish lipstick.
I have been lying in wait for her for the better part of an hour, lurking around the coffee bar where, according to Billy, Ginevra Montelleone held court. Now, I give her five minutes to buy herself a cappuccino and settle in before I make my approach. When I do, she looks at me with a mild amount of interest, then digs in her bag for a cigarette. I pull out a chair, half expecting her to tell me to fuck off.
‘I don’t know if you remember me, we met at—’
‘I remember you.’ Annika doesn’t stop ferreting in her knapsack as she says this, but I think I see a flicker of a smile cross her face, like lightning in the afternoon.
‘May I?’ I nod at the chair and she waves a hand, either in dismissal or vague invitation. Today, her bitten fingernails are painted bright blue.
She pushes the rumpled pack across the table towards me. I don’t really want one, but I’m trying to make her like me, or at least talk to me, so I take a slightly bent Marlboro and the box of matches that Annika drops on the table. The flame flares in front of my face with a whiff of sulphur.
‘How are you?’
She shrugs, her thin shoulders jumping and settling again as if the bones aren’t connected by much flesh. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them rattle. ‘You know,’ she says. ‘Busy. I have exams coming.’ She lights her own cigarette and pulls on it.
‘She was your friend, wasn’t she?’ she asks suddenly. ‘The one who was killed up at the fort. I recognized her picture. You left together,’ Annika adds, as if I am likely to dispute this. ‘From the thing for Ginevra. I saw you.’
‘Yeah. She was my friend.’
‘And it happened to you too. Some creep got at you with a knife. The paper said so.’
I nod.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘That’s too bad.’
For the next few seconds, we watch each other through our respective clouds of cigarette smoke, playing chicken, waiting to see who will make the next move. This is a game I’m really good at so, finally, it’s Annika. She works on the cigarette some more, then stubs it out in the ashtray and runs her blue-tipped fingers through her short white hair, pulling it from the roots.
‘So,’ she says, ‘now you come and see me. And I wonder why. To tell me, maybe, that you think Ginevra didn’t jump off a bridge after all?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think that’s the only reason you’d have for wanting to talk to me again.’
She stares at me with her odd opalescent eyes. I can see a pale blue vein throbbing at her temple, looking as if it might burst through the thin papery parchment of her skin.
‘So what are you going to tell me?’ she asks. ‘That you think some creep is running around killing women and Ginny was one of them? She didn’t know your friend, if that’s where you’re going.’
I reach into my bag and pull out the envelope I took from Billy’s drawer yesterday morning.
‘Did she know this guy?’ I drop the picture of Kirk and Henry and me on the table, and for a second I think she isn’t even going to look at it. Then she reaches out with the tips of her fingers, turns it towards her.
‘Which one?’
A horrible cold feeling grips me when she says this, and for a nightmarish second I imagine she’s going to point to Henry. But she shakes her head.
‘Not really,’ she says, and my heart stops.
‘Not really?’
‘They came in here. Him, the red-haired guy, and your friend. I think maybe once or twice before Ginny died. And maybe a couple of times afterwards.’ She shrugs. ‘I mean, you guys go to lectures at the university, right? So it’s hardly unusual. This is where everybody comes. I’ve never seen him before.’ She puts her finger squarely on Henry’s face and slides the photo back to me.
‘Did Ginevra know them? I mean, did she speak to them?’ I don’t know how Annika can possibly know this, but I ask it anyways. She looks at me as if I’m a little crazy, which probably isn’t too far
off the mark.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘But I doubt it.’
‘Why?’
Annika gives a little cough of laughter. ‘They’re not Ginny’s type,’ she says, pulling another cigarette out of the pack and lighting it. ‘Americans. There’s this place called Iraq, remember?’
‘We didn’t all think it was a great idea either.’
Annika rolls her eyes and shrugs again. ‘So what? You think that guy killed them? Why does it matter,’ she demands suddenly, ‘how it happened? The point is, Ginny’s dead. So is your friend. It doesn’t matter how it happened.’
I open my mouth, about to point out that it does, kind of a lot, actually. That other people are dead too, and more could be, but then I close it again. Annika is glaring at me, and although I know that her anger is really pain, rage at having her friend plucked out of the world like this, she still looks as though she half suspects that I might have wielded the knife myself. I slip the picture back into the envelope and drop it in my bag, trying to tamp down a little surge of disappointment. The fact that Billy and Kirk came in here for an espresso after a lecture one afternoon isn’t exactly damning evidence.
‘If she knew him,’ I ask, ‘would you know about it? I mean, could she have known him without you knowing?’
‘Of course she could, I was her friend, not her jailer. But I told you, I doubt it. Ginny wasn’t really into men.’
I open my mouth and close it again, digesting this. ‘She was gay?’ I ask finally.
Annika laughs, the short little coughing sound again. It makes it seem as though she has TB, and I wonder if maybe that explains the pale-skin-and-bones look. ‘She just wasn’t into men,’ she says. ‘Definitely not right now, anyways. She thought they were basically assholes.’
‘Why?’
I expect her to laugh again, tell me this is obvious, but she doesn’t. Instead, Annika studies the slowly burning tip of her cigarette, watching a column of ash form and drop onto the table. She flicks it away with her blue fingers, watches it disinte-grate as it falls to the floor like snow.
‘The last time we met, you told me that on the night she died, Ginevra was depressed. Is that why?’ I ask. ‘Because of some guy?’
At first I think she’s not going to answer. The café is almost empty, and she looks away from me, staring at the newspaper racks that hang beside the big wooden doors. Corriere della Sera and yesterday’s La Stampa flutter slightly in the draught as a couple come in and go to the bar. Eventually, Annika looks at me.
‘You might say that,’ she says. Then she adds, ‘It was because of the baby. I guess I shouldn’t say anything. But I can’t see that it matters, now that she’s dead.’
‘Baby?’
I try to keep the surprise out of my voice. After all I didn’t even know the girl, but surely, I think, Piero’s contact in the coroner’s office wouldn’t have missed this. ‘Was Ginevra going to have a baby?’
‘Not any more.’
I am not sure if she means because Ginevra’s dead or because she had an abortion but, before I can ask, she shrugs her bird-like shoulders again and tugs the cuffs of her sweater down over her hands as if she’s cold.
‘She got rid of it. A couple of months ago.’ Annika shakes her head. ‘It’s not as if she was even sure who the father was, you know. But afterwards, it wasn’t as easy as she thought maybe it would be.’
I stub my cigarette out and think about this for a minute, about being twenty-one and coming face to face with the chasm between ideals and deeds.
‘She was Catholic, you know,’ Annika is saying. She smiles suddenly, and makes a strange sound, like something ripping inside her. ‘I mean, everybody here is,’ she says, ‘aren’t they? So, so what? It’s not like Ginny went to church any more or anything, except at Easter and Christmas, you know, to make her mother happy. But I think it got to her, afterwards. The brainwashing’s hard to undo when you’re being told you’re damned. You think you don’t care, and you know you shouldn’t. I don’t see why the church bothers with damnation,’ she adds. ‘Isn’t knowing yourself bad enough? Ginny loved her country,’ Annika announces. ‘She wanted it to be better. For everybody. She was like that.’
There’s so much jumbled up in this that it takes me a minute to sort it out. I knew Ginevra was idealistic, of course, she was an activist. And I knew she was Catholic. I remember the picture in the wine bar, and Rinaldo. Something contracts in my stomach. Something familiar that Annika just said. Damned. Who told Ginevra she was damned?
‘Annika, do you know if she went to church, maybe to confession, after the abortion?’
‘Yeah. I think she hoped it would make her feel better. The habit was hard to break. You know?’
I do know.
‘Do you know who her priest was?’
She shakes her head. ‘I have no idea,’ she says. ‘Priests all look the same to me. She went to Mary Magdalene though, over by the synagogue. I know that. Because she liked the name. Mary Magdalene was her favourite saint. At least she wasn’t a goody-goody.’
I know the church, Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, but as far as I know Rinaldo has no connection with it. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t. Or that Ginevra didn’t go back to her family’s church, to San Miniato, without Annika knowing about it. Or that she didn’t run into him somewhere else. I think of the clean-cut boys and the scrubbed girl handing out leaflets on the street.
‘Did she ever talk about a certain part of the church?’ I ask. ‘I mean, did she ever, for instance, mention a group called Opus Dei?’
‘The right-wing cuckoo pots?’ Annika shakes her head again, stubs the cigarette out and immediately lights another one. She seems to like to play with them as much as smoke them. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I mean, we all know who they are. They think they’re all secretive, but they stick out a mile. Like FBI agents in American movies. You know, they all have short hair and smile too much. They don’t let women go in bars, right?’
For a second I’m not sure if she’s talking about the FBI or the Opus, and I can’t help smiling, thinking this is probably not the single thing Father Rinaldo would want them to be known for.
‘That sounds about right,’ I agree. ‘Did Ginevra ever talk about them, or campaign about them, or anything?’
‘You mean, was it one of her things?’ Annika shakes her head. ‘She was worked up about the clinics, yeah. And about Palestine and what’s going on in Africa. But stuff in the church, no. I mean, she wanted to be a lawyer, like for people’s rights.’ She pushes her sleeves back and glances at her watch. ‘Shit!’
Annika jumps to her feet, almost pushing the pile of books on the table in front of her onto the floor. ‘I have a lecture I can’t miss.’ She shakes her head rapidly, and starts stuffing her books into her bag. ‘I only meant to come in for a coffee.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I feel responsible for this, which I think is what she intends, and I stand up too, as if it will somehow help speed her on her way.
‘Was there anything else?’ She is shrugging into her jacket, which looks like something Billy would have owned, short and suede, and definitely second-hand.
‘No. But thanks for talking to me. I’m sorry if I kept you.’
Annika shrugs, her peaky face closed and angry again. ‘What the fuck does it matter?’ she says again. ‘What does any of it matter? You know? You can be twenty-one and end up dead on a river bank.’ And with that she’s gone, pushing through the big wooden doors, her canvas knapsack clutched to her chest, empty coffee cup and smouldering cigarette left on the table behind her.
Back in Pierangelo’s apartment, I check all the rooms. I know he shouldn’t be here now, but I want to be sure. There’s a flickering feeling running through me, like electricity jumping between wires. This has been happening. Either I’m groggy, slow and stuffed up, or jumping and twitching. In the bathroom, I stand looking at the pill bottles lined up on my side of the basin. Then, before I can stop myself, I grab them and empty the
m into the toilet. I don’t want to be calm and I don’t want to forget. What I want is to think straight. I push the button, and feel a moment of sheer panic as the little dots whirl away like confetti at a wedding.
A few seconds later, the panic is replaced by a surge of excitement. My mind is hopping and snapping again, reaching for something that feels so close I can almost touch it. In Piero’s study it takes me five minutes to find what I’m looking for—an article on Caterina Fusarno from a women’s magazine, detailing how sad her story was because she was a single mother and ex-addict who was getting her life back together, kicking her habit with the help of a methadone clinic called Vita Nuova out in the north of the city.
Despite my best efforts, I end up getting on the wrong bus. Then I get lost, so it’s late when I finally find Vita Nuova.
From the outside the clinic looks as if it’s seen better days. It’s the ground floor of a concrete-block building with wired-in, plate-glass windows, and somebody’s painted the front bright yellow, presumably as a sign of optimism. Or maybe because it was Dante’s favourite colour. Who knows? Outside there’s a bench that’s chained to bolts in the sidewalk. When I try the door, it’s locked.
I’m more annoyed by this than I would expect myself to be, and I stand there for a second, frustrated, but telling myself I can come back tomorrow. Then I notice the security camera, and remember what I’ve read about drug-treatment places, how they keep the doors locked because of the stuff they have inside. I start to knock and notice the bell, camouflaged because somebody painted it yellow too. I don’t hear the ring when I push, but the black eye of the little camera is watching me, so I look right into it and try not to be threatening. I even smile. It must work, because a second later the buzzer sounds, and I push the door open.
The clinic’s front room is painted yellow too, bright yellow that collides with an icky brown rug that has worn patches. Plastic modular chairs are lined up below bulletin boards covered with notices and posters, and there’s a round table with stacks of leaflets on drug addiction, AIDS and STDs. The reception desk is behind a thick panel of glass, like one of those things you see in the Mafia trials. It’s brightly lit and empty, just like the room, and I’m wondering what to do, knock or holler or just wait, when a young woman in jeans and a white lab coat appears from somewhere in the back of the building. I imagine Billy would pinch me if she were here, because the woman’s name tag reads, ‘Beatrice Modesto.’
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