Alberti checked the first landing: no signs of anything odd. Opening out from the landing were four doors without fixtures through which you could see unfinished apartments, the floors littered with garbage and evidence of bonfires. “I don’t think I see anything here.”
“Keep climbing. We can rule out the second floor from the start. Too close to the ground; by the time you realize someone’s coming upstairs, it’s too late.”
“In your opinion, just who is this mysterious woman?”
“I only know that she’s not a member of ISIS, the way your bosses insist on maintaining.”
Alberti kept climbing. The walls on the third floor were covered with dirty words and graffiti, while the floors were dotted with human excrement. In one of the apartments there was a filthy mattress, and next to it a candle and a stack of newspapers. “Someone lives here,” he said.
“Go on in and take a look around, you never know, you might find an eyewitness.”
Alberti did so, breathing through his mouth and taking care where he set his feet: the newspapers were covered with dust and at least two years old. “It seems to me that this guy must have moved away some time ago,” said Dante. “Would you be so kind as to go up to the next floor?” The fourth floor had all its apartments boarded up, and in front of one of the doors, a cat was gnawing on a live mouse. Alberti let out a yell before he realized just what it was, and Dante laughed from outside, where he sat comfortably on the wheelbarrow. “Come on, you’re almost there. Try pulling on the boards to see if any of them are loose.”
Alberti did as he was told, but the boards were fastened securely in place with twisted, rusty nails. “I’d say no.”
“Another floor up, another prize.”
Alberti climbed the stairs, which creaked under the soles of his shoes, and little by little, he was captivated by the atmosphere of the place. In his imagination the woman who Dante claimed had kidnapped Musta was transformed into a monster sitting at the center of a giant spiderweb, awaiting new victims. The hand with which Alberti held the pistol was trembling slightly, and he leaned against a window on the fifth-floor landing to catch his breath. “Signor Torre . . . at this rate, we could be here all night.”
“You’re right,” said Dante. “Wait a second: I just had an idea.” He got up off the wheelbarrow and walked along the exterior of the building until he was at the foot of the rear facade, the one overlooking the field they’d just walked across. The trees concealed the road from view. “Try going in the door facing east,” he said.
“Which way is east?”
Dante guided him, and Alberti ventured into a grim abortion of an apartment, identical to the one before. Two bedrooms and a living room/kitchen carved out of raw concrete. A dusty floor, stacks of newspaper, empty cans, more mattresses, cobwebs. But this time . . . he sensed something.
“Here,” Alberti said impulsively.
“What did you find?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”
“Excellent. Instincts are your best adviser. Give me a panoramic view, please.”
Alberti went to the middle of the room and swiveled around, and on his second full turn, he understood what it was his brain had registered without passing through his conscious thoughts: it didn’t smell as bad here as on the other floors.
Dante studied the image, which was shakier than he would have preferred. A cement column bracing the ceiling, right in the middle of a room without any of the partitions that would have separated the living room from the kitchen. It was too inviting. “Let me see the column, please,” he said.
Alberti went over to it, and once again, he had an indecipherable sensation. This time he had to wait a couple of seconds before he realized what was wrong. “It’s clean,” he said. “That is, one face of the column seems cleaner than the other. Maybe it’s just my impression . . .”
“Do you smell anything?”
Alberti leaned down. “Ammonia or bleach.”
“No organic traces. But maybe something’s still there. Take some dust and throw it on there.”
Luckily for Alberti, he was already wearing latex gloves and didn’t have to touch the filth directly. With the third handful, a bit of fluffy dust remained on the column, leaving a horizontal stripe just an inch or so wide. Alberti put the beam on it in surprise. “Do you see it?”
“Duct tape.”
“But for what?”
“It’s an excellent way to tie somebody up. Musta had traces of it on his body.”
Alberti again looked at the column, which, in the gathering shadows, had taken on the appearance of a torture stake. “So it was there . . .”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe we should call the Forensic Squad and get them over here.”
“They wouldn’t find much more than you did, and if we do, she’d know that we found it.”
“Maybe we’re letting ourselves get carried away,” Alberti said cautiously. “There could be a thousand explanations.”
“Exactly what your bosses would say. Let me give you a free piece of advice: never become like them.”
“I should be so lucky. But are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Go to the window on your left.”
Alberti obeyed.
“What do you see?”
“The trees . . . and beyond them . . . the piazza. The flashing lights of your colleagues’ cars.”
“People like her enjoy watching without being seen, keeping an eye on the territory.”
“And who are people like her?”
Dante grinned his grin, even if Alberti couldn’t see it.
“Predators,” he said.
21
Colomba returned home on foot, taking it nice and easy, though perhaps that isn’t the expression to use when you’re so tired that you struggle to keep your eyes open, and so nervous that you know you’ll never shut them at all. To cheer her even further, she got a phone call from her mother, who’d called to complain that she hadn’t heard from Colomba in days. “I’ve been kind of busy with that attack on the train,” Colomba told her with some annoyance. “Did you hear about it? The dead bodies, the terrorists . . .”
“And what would you have to do with that?”
“I’m a policewoman.”
“But it’s not the police who are supposed to look into terrorism.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone knows that’s what they have the intelligence agencies for,” said her mother indignantly. “But if you’re interested in using your work as an excuse for not calling me, that’s fine. Pardon me if every once in a while I dare to disturb you. I’m still alive, you know.”
Oh my God, thought Colomba, and spent the next ten minutes listening to a cavalcade of maternal recriminations and tears, finally capitulating and agreeing to a lunch in a few days. When at last she was able to hang up, she sat down, exhausted, in a café across from the staircase in Piazza Venezia; the barista glared at her until she finally pulled out money and ordered a cappuccino. I must really be in bad shape, she thought. A quick glance in the mirror behind the counter confirmed that theory. She looked like a homeless person: her hair was a mess and her clothing was rumpled. As was always the case lately, there was a nearby television tuned to the news, even though this time the general tone of the reports seemed to concern the narrowly averted danger. They broadcast photos of Faouzi and Youssef, and the customers applauded when the newscaster said they’d both been killed.
The prime minister appeared as well, trying to reassure the viewers. The terror cell had been eliminated, they were still hunting for accomplices, but the worst was over. He had only the highest praise for law enforcement.
Law enforcement, my ass, thought Colomba, sipping her cappuccino with too much foam. Still, the emergency was over. Hurrah.
When she got to her building, it was past ten o’clock. She climbed the stairs, as was her habit, but she heard something rustling on the landing before the last
flight of stairs. In a split second, she was back in the Islamic center, and she reached for a pistol she no longer had. But the man in the motorcycle jacket had a familiar, friendly face. “Enrico?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice, caught by surprise. Thirty-nine years old, the smile of someone who knows he’s good-looking. “God, you scared me.”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, confused.
“They told me they had let you go home, but you weren’t answering your phone.” Enrico had lots of friends in law enforcement, people he’d met through her. “So I hurried straight over here after work. I was worried.”
“My cell phone’s broken,” lied Colomba. Suddenly, her neglected appearance mattered a great deal to her.
Enrico gave her a hug, and she didn’t push him away: she desperately needed the hug. “Let me unlock the door,” she said into his shoulder.
“Of course, sorry.”
She let him in. “Do you want something to drink?”
He took off his motorcycle jacket. Underneath, he wore a dress jacket and tie. “Let me try to make you something to eat, and you go get yourself a shower, because you look like that friend of Charlie Brown’s who goes everywhere in a cloud of dust.”
Colomba chuckled. “You’re not going to find much in the pantry.”
“I can do miracles even with canned food, remember?”
Colomba remembered a lot of things, while the other things, the things that she had hated about him, didn’t come to mind right then and there. She agreed, and half an hour later, when she emerged from the bathroom wearing a clean T-shirt and sweatpants, she found the kitchen table set with a tablecloth that she’d bought a year ago and never taken out of the drawer. At the center of the table, a bottle of red wine. Enrico poured her a glass, and Colomba sipped it slowly. “Where does this come from?”
“I brought it. Sit down and I’ll serve you.” He came back with a pan that smelled good. “Pasta with tuna. I had to put together the leftovers from I don’t know how many cans and packages to make two decent portions. I think some of the stuff was past its sell-by date, but I didn’t look closely. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
He served her, then he served himself and sat down across from her. It seemed like one of the many thrown-together dinners from when they’d been a couple. Colomba took a forkful of a mix of macaroni, fusilli, and rigatoni, which had all miraculously come out perfectly al dente. “Good,” she said even before tasting it, but the first bite proved she’d been right. Nothing that would be featured on a menu in a fancy restaurant, but very nice, especially after twenty-four hours without food. Her salivary glands practically hurt.
“They told me that you stopped a guy who wanted to blow up a business owned by a Jew,” said Enrico.
“More or less.”
“First the train, now this. Are you thinking of selling your life story to the movies?” he asked with a smile.
“Who’d be interested in it?”
“Well, I would, for instance.” He poured her another glass.
“My head is already spinning,” she said.
“Let it spin. All right, are you satisfied?”
Colomba shook her head. “What’s the opposite of satisfied?”
“Dissatisfied.”
“That’s not the right word. I’d say pissed off, furious, outraged, but definitely not satisfied.”
Enrico was astonished. “You stopped two terrorists.”
“There’s plenty more where they came from.” Colomba pushed her plate away, still half full. “Sorry, I just can’t eat the rest, but it was delicious.”
“Have some more wine, at least, it’s the perfect thing to dispel a bad mood.” He poured for her.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“If that’s what it takes to cheer you up, sure.” Enrico, too, pushed his plate away. “I missed you, copper.”
“Really?”
He took her hand. “Really. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re here. But you weren’t when I really needed you.”
“I tried. You want to know the truth?” Enrico turned serious. “I didn’t know how to act. You were scared, and so was I, but I felt guilty about saying so, because you were the one who had come close to dying. So I ran away, and when I understood what I was doing . . . it was too late.”
The wine spread a pleasurable red glow over Colomba’s face, but it was her hand, which Enrico had taken, that felt scorching hot. It was as if, by holding it, he’d initiated an incandescent resistance that ran up her arm and then dropped into her lower belly. “I missed you, too,” she said, unable to hold back.
“Really?” asked Enrico, getting up and sliding behind her.
“Really.”
She raised her face and Enrico kissed her, letting his hands drop to her breasts. Then down her sweatpants. Colomba arched against him and let Enrico’s fingers enter her. He turned her around on the chair and pulled her to her feet, touching her the whole time. She slid the zipper down on his pants.
They kissed and touched each other all the way down the hallway to her bedroom. They hastily took off their clothes and Enrico climbed onto Colomba, who grabbed his member and pulled it into her. “I’ve been wanting you for so long,” he said, starting to move slowly. “I don’t know how I managed to hold out.”
Colomba wrapped her legs around his, pulling him in deeper, hungrily, angrily. She held him tight as she felt the pleasure rise and spread, grow more powerful. She’d never been fast with orgasms, she didn’t especially enjoy quickies, but this time she knew she wouldn’t last long, because she needed to feel the world around her disappear for an instant. “Tell me again that you’ve missed me,” she said.
“I’ve missed you,” Enrico whispered in her ear. “I tried to forget you, but that was impossible.”
“And all the women that you’ve had in the meanwhile,” she breathed, increasing the rhythm.
“They were nothing. Zero. Nothing.” He kissed her again, suffocating her. Colomba savored his taste, and the taste of the wine, as they mixed together.
The wine.
Colomba started to feel a cold chill. A chill that sank into her head, extinguishing all lust. She wriggled out of his embrace. “Stop it.”
He continued to penetrate her; if anything, he sped up. “Let me finish,” he said.
Colomba bent her legs and drove one knee hard into his chest, knocking him to the floor, where he rolled a time or two. Ridiculous: now he just seemed ridiculous.
“Have you gone crazy?” he asked, struggling to his feet. He’d hit his tailbone on the floor when he fell. “You could have broken my back.”
“Too bad,” she said, getting up and putting on the bathrobe she’d abandoned there two mornings earlier.
“Do you mind if I ask what I did wrong?”
“The wine.”
“The wine?”
“You were so worried about me that you just rushed over to my house, right?” she asked sarcastically. “But you didn’t forget to stop off and buy some wine. Because you knew how it would end. In fact, you wanted it to end this way.”
“And what’s so bad about that?”
“The fact that you were taking advantage of me, you bastard.”
“You’re crazy.” Enrico was dripping indignation. “And then you say that I was the one who was distant! You’re the one who sent me away. With your typical fucked-up way of acting!”
“And now I’m sending you away again. Get out,” she said, shoving him toward the front hall.
He hopped along, trying to get his pants on. “Just let me get dressed, for fuck’s sake!”
“You can get dressed outside! Get out, get out, get out!” She shoved him onto the landing and shut the door.
“My cell phone,” he said from the other side of the door.
“What?”
“My cell phone. I left it on the charger.”
Colomba grabbed the phone, yanked open the door, thr
ew it at a half-dressed Enrico, shut the door again, and went over to sit down in her favorite armchair and have herself a good cry. You could have just said what the hell, she thought. You could have had a nice fuck and then said so long. But she’d never been able to think that way; she could never figure out how to turn off her brain. She was always on the alert, ready to mistrust the world.
She went from sobbing to laughter and then threw herself onto the bed and slipped into a troubled sleep. She opened her eyes again at seven in the morning, tickled by a strange aroma. For a second, she thought she was still on the train, then in the restaurant in Paris. At last she realized that it wasn’t the smell of charred tables or blood but a sweeter, lighter smell of fresh-roasted coffee.
Coffee and cigarettes.
She came fully awake and leaped out of bed, clutching her bathrobe around her nude body. The apartment was freezing cold because of the window thrown wide open in the living room, with the curtains drawn back and the shutters rolled up. The front door was open to the landing, and the draft had tumbled the utility bills stacked up on the front table onto the floor. Even though it was broad daylight out, all the lights were turned on. In the kitchen, she found Dante fiddling around with a small pan that contained a pitch-black substance. He wore a mock turtleneck and a pair of jeans the same shade of black. Instead of the Clipper boots, he had on a pair of studded combat boots to go with the likewise studded black leather jacket hanging on the handle of the refrigerator.
“Ciao, CC,” he said. He sprinkled a pinch of salt into the brew, then turned off the flame and swiveled around with the little pan in his bad hand, using the glove as a pot holder. Colomba realized that his eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been up all night. “Your coffeemaker is a disgusting excuse for one, so I threw it out. I made Turkish coffee, which does have a reason for existing. I brought my own coffee beans, of course; that moldy ground coffee you have in your pantry is mostly good for use as rat poison.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Aside from making coffee? I wanted to see how you were doing. As long as I was here, I washed the dishes. I didn’t know you knew how to cook. Do you have two clean espresso cups?”
Kill the Angel Page 18