The Dark Angel

by Elly Griffiths

  Judy sighs and starts to perform a U-turn.

  *

  ‘Get into the house,’ says the man. ‘Unless you want to go the way your dog did.’

  ‘What have you done with Bruno?’ says Laura. She’s surprised to find that, for a moment, she isn’t even scared, just murderously angry.

  ‘Get into the house.’ The man gestures with the gun.

  Run, Mum. Laura tries to send a thought message but it can’t have worked because Michelle appears in the hallway. ‘Who is it?’

  Laura sees her mother’s face go pale when she sees the gun, but her voice, when it comes out, is harder and stronger than she has ever heard it.

  ‘Get out of my house!’

  ‘Not until I’ve paid your precious husband back for what he did to me,’ says the man. ‘I lost ten years of my life because of him. Now I’m going to get even.’

  ‘I’ve already called the police,’ says Michelle. ‘They’ll be here any moment.’

  Laura knows she’s lying – for one thing, she can see Michelle’s phone on the hall table – but she’s proud of her mother for putting up a fight, and it stiffens her own resolve. She picks up Michelle’s phone and, with quick digital native’s fingers, types ‘Help man with gun’ and sends it to the last two people on Michelle’s Messages list.

  ‘Put that down!’ the man shouts, and Laura obeys. ‘Get into the lounge.’

  He knows where the rooms are, thinks Laura, he’s been spying on the house. She follows her mother into the sitting room. Michelle takes her hand. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispers. Laura doesn’t see how it can be, but she’s grateful that her mother is taking charge again.

  ‘Sit down,’ says the man. Maybe he’s not going to kill us if he’s telling us to sit down, thinks Laura. She thinks of all the things she wants to do: become a teacher, get married, have children, swim with dolphins, go skydiving in Australia. What if this is it and she never has a chance to do anything else? She clings to her mother’s hand. At least she’ll die next to someone she loves.

  ‘You’re that man,’ says Michelle. ‘Micky something. The man who burned down his house.’

  ‘I didn’t burn down my house,’ says the man, sounding petulant, as if he’s a child being wrongly accused of breaking a plate. ‘I was miles away at the time.’

  ‘You still killed your wife and children,’ says Michelle. ‘You’re a coward.’

  Laura can’t believe that her mother is talking back to him like this, and she’s not convinced that it’s a good idea. She squeezes Michelle’s hand. ‘Mum, please.’

  This proves to be a mistake, because it focuses the man’s attention onto her. He moves the gun a few centimetres so that it’s pointing at Laura’s head.

  ‘No,’ says Michelle. ‘Not my daughter. Kill me instead.’

  ‘No!’ shouts Laura, as the gun moves slowly back.

  *

  Elsa gestures for Ruth to sit down, and she does so. Elsa takes a seat opposite her and places the gun carefully on the table. It’s like a queasy replay of the time that Ruth visited Elsa in her flat. She remembers the older woman plying her with food and drink, like a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Eat me. Drink me. The mad hatter’s tea party. Now there’s a potentially lethal weapon between them. Ruth only has to stretch out her hand to grab it. She starts to slide her fingers across the glass table.

  ‘I remember Giorgio so well,’ Elsa is saying. ‘I was only small when he died, but I remember. He was always with Papa, always laughing, joking with him. Papa protected him, like when the boar attacked him. Giorgio was charming but weak. He liked drawing and painting.’ She says this like it is a fatal flaw. ‘Papa was man of action. He liked hunting and shooting. I hunt, too – at night, when no one can see.’

  ‘I saw you,’ says Ruth. ‘I saw you from my balcony. You were walking through the olive groves with a gun. I took a photograph.’ Elsa must have been carrying the gun that is on the table now. Is it Pompeo’s old rifle? If Elsa was hunting with it, then the gun still works. She edges her hand closer. She can almost touch the barrel.

  ‘Angelo thinks I’m safely tucked up in bed,’ says Elsa, employing another of her Mary Poppins phrases, ‘but really I’m out hunting. Like Papa.’

  As soon as Elsa leaves, Ruth will be on the phone to Angelo, telling him about his mother’s late-night adventures.

  ‘Tell me about Pompeo and Giorgio,’ says Ruth, thinking that she must keep Elsa talking. Surely Shona will hear voices and wake up? She can hear Nelson’s phone buzzing in the sitting room. It’s almost as if it knows that Ruth desperately wants to contact its owner. ‘They were both in the resistance, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Elsa. ‘It was terrible time, frightening time. The Germans were here, in Castello. We see them here every day, swaggering around the streets, eating at the café. Papa and the partisans were hiding in the hills. We would leave food at the crossroads for them. Then, one night, Papa appears. I see his face at the window and I remember Mamma screaming because he looks so wild. He says that Giorgio is killed by collaborators and that he has to bury his body in secret. He is sitting at the table, crying, his head in his hands. I remember he has Giorgio’s boar’s tooth necklace with him. That’s how I knew it wasn’t buried with the body. Why I knew it was here.’

  ‘Did Don Tomaso know Giorgio?’

  ‘Of course. He knew them all. He was older than me and he used to run errands for the partisans. All the boys did. He saw some terrible things, too. Men shot, women raped. He saw the Nazis round up partisans in one town near here and shoot them like dogs. Tomaso once told me that was why he became a priest. I never thought he would. He was such a handsome boy . . .’

  She lapses into silence. Ruth remembers Elsa sobbing in the church. He was like my brother. I know him all my life. He was a holy man. A saint. It seems impossible, but someone killed the priest and, if it wasn’t Samir, then it was someone else who knew the church well. Could it be . . . ? No, surely not. Elsa isn’t capable of murder. But then, Ruth thinks, she hadn’t thought her capable of threatening her at gunpoint either. Maybe Elsa had killed Don Tomaso and then deliberately insisted that Ruth accompany her into the church so that they could discover the body together, so that attention would be diverted away from her. Ruth remembers Samir saying that Elsa used to give him clothes. Did she give him the distinctive black and white striped Juventus top that allowed him to be spotted from a distance?

  ‘Elsa,’ she begins hesitantly, still moving her fingers forward, ‘about Don Tomaso . . .’

  ‘Don Tomaso knew,’ she says. ‘And when Giorgio’s body was found, he thought we should tell Marta. He was going to tell Angelo. To get him to talk to Marta. Angelo adored his grandfather . . .’ Suddenly she puts her hands over her face and sobs. Ruth grabs the gun. She stands up, pushing her chair back.

  ‘Ruth?’ says a voice. ‘What’s going on?’ It’s Shona, standing there in her shorty pyjamas, taking in the scene: Ruth standing in the kitchen holding a gun, the chair on the floor, Elsa sitting at the table sobbing.

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Ruth. ‘Elsa’s just a bit upset.’ She wishes she knew how to check if the gun is loaded.

  Shona opens her mouth to speak but shuts it when there’s a buzz at the door.

  ‘Open it,’ says Ruth. For a crazy moment she thinks that it must be the police – and she’s almost right.

  ‘Hi, Ruth.’ Nelson now appears in the doorway. ‘I think I left my phone here. What are you doing with that rifle?’

  *

  ‘Get up,’ says the man to Laura.

  ‘No!’ Michelle leans across her, protecting her.

  ‘I’ll shoot both of you then,’ says the man. ‘That’s fair. I lost all my children, after all. Thanks to DI Nelson.’ He wipes his eyes with his free hand. Is it possible that he’ll start crying and they’ll be able to overpower him? Laura has read of such things. But how? They would be killed as soon as they moved. She prays Mum won’t remind the man that it�
��s his own fault, not Dad’s, that his children died. Michelle is half lying across her now, and Laura whispers, hardly more than a breath, ‘I sent a message.’

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ Suddenly the man is shouting, completely out of control. They stand, Michelle still in front of Laura, shielding her. He raises the gun.

  Then several things happen at the same time. When Laura retells the events later, she puts them in some sort of order, shaping, rationalising, but at the time they are a blur, moving so fast that the room seems to spin, colours merging into each other like the Wall of Death at the fair, and so slowly that sound is stretched out in an endless, distorted scream.

  The man levels his gun. Someone bursts into the room and throws himself at the armed man. At the same time the patio doors shatter as an animal – half wolf, half human, it seems to Laura – hurls itself into the fray. The gun goes off and there’s a smell of burning. Michelle screams – ‘Tim!’ – and carries on screaming. Bruno is standing over the prostrate body of a man, growling, the man’s arm flopping in his mouth. Michelle is cradling another man in her arms, sobbing and screaming.

  Laura feels as if she’s moving underwater. For a moment, no one is taking any notice of her and she wonders if she’s even there. Then she hears sirens and voices outside. Mum is holding the man in her arms. He’s a stranger, youngish, black, good-looking. There’s a stain of red on his chest that’s getting bigger all the time.

  ‘Tim,’ Michelle is sobbing, ‘don’t die, please don’t die.’

  The man opens his eyes and half smiles. ‘I love you,’ he mouths. Then his eyes close and, as clear as day, Laura watches his spirit leaving his body, a multi-coloured bird that flies out through the shattered glass doors and vanishes into the night. And, at the centre of everything – the sirens, the sobbing, the noise of the armed police entering the room, Bruno growling – there is an immense, immeasurable silence.

  Chapter 32

  Nelson takes the gun from Ruth and cracks it open.

  ‘It’s not loaded,’ he says. ‘What’s the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Elsa came to see me,’ says Ruth, ‘with the gun. I think she may have killed Don Tomaso.’

  Elsa is still sitting at the table. She has stopped crying and now seems almost in a trance.

  ‘We need to call Valenti,’ says Nelson.

  ‘Your phone’s in the other room,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s been buzzing all night.’

  At that moment the lights come on, leaving them all staring at each other: Shona in her pink-checked shorts, Nelson still holding the gun, Ruth steadying herself against the stove, Elsa at the table.

  ‘I’ll go and call,’ says Nelson. He leaves the room, taking the gun with him. Nobody in the kitchen speaks. It’s as if they are waiting for their cue. Seconds later, Nelson is back. His face, thinks Ruth, has completely changed. It’s as if the real Nelson has been replaced by an actor. He’s on the phone, listening to a message. They all watch as he stabs in a number. ‘Judy? What’s happened? . . . Jesus Christ . . . Are they all right? . . . My God . . . How did he . . . ? Can I talk to her? . . . OK . . . You do that . . . Call me later.’

  He clicks off the phone. Ruth and Shona are staring at him. Even Elsa looks round. Ruth has only once before seen that look on Nelson’s face. She had hoped never to see it again.

  ‘What is it?’ she says, suddenly scared.

  ‘Someone tried to kill Michelle and Laura. Someone with a grudge against me.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Ruth. ‘What happened? Are they all right?’

  ‘They’re in hospital, but apparently they’re not hurt. Tim saved them. Laura managed to send a message to Tim . . . and to me. Tim rushed in just as the man was preparing to shoot. He got in the way of the bullet.’

  ‘Is he OK?’ says Ruth.

  ‘He’s dead,’ says Nelson, and turns away from them, covering his face.

  *

  Laura doesn’t recognise Judy at first. She is just another person in dark clothes with a shocked expression. It’s only when Judy squats down on the floor next to her that her face seems to come into focus.

  ‘Laura. It’s me, Judy. Are you OK? Are you hurt?’

  ‘No,’ says Laura. ‘The man. The one who came to save us. I think he’s dead.’

  Judy’s face quivers as if she is about to cry, but when she speaks again, it is in the same calm voice.

  ‘I’m afraid he is.’

  I know, Laura wants to say, I saw his soul leave his body. But she doesn’t want Judy to think that the whole experience has deranged her.

  ‘Do you know who he was?’ she says.

  ‘His name was Tim,’ says Judy. ‘And he was a policeman. He used to work with your Dad.’

  Mum, who has been silent as the paramedics fuss around her, suddenly starts to cry, really sobbing, bending over with her head almost on her knees. Laura gets up and puts her arm round her.

  ‘Don’t, Mum. Please.’

  But Mum continues to sob as the body of the man – Tim – is lifted onto a stretcher. One of the paramedics pulls the sheet over his face in a gesture that seems both matter-of-fact and tender. Laura sees Judy watching, wiping her eyes.

  Something wet pushes itself into her hand. It’s Bruno, tail wagging as if the whole thing is a tremendous game. Laura hugs him. ‘Bruno! Are you all right?’

  She can’t see any glass in his coat or any marks on him anywhere. She buries his face in his thick, glossy fur.

  ‘Laura.’ It’s Judy again. ‘We need to get you and your mum to hospital. I’ll call Jan – she’s one of our dog handlers – to come and look after Bruno. And I’ll get a glazier to mend the windows.’

  The paramedics are helping Mum to her feet. She is still crying, but more quietly now. The room seems to be full of people – talking on their phones, checking the garden, running upstairs. The man with the gun has disappeared. They must have taken him out when Laura was still in a trance. Laura turns to Judy. ‘Are you coming with us?’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the hospital,’ said Judy. ‘I’ve got to sort a few things out here. I only came because I got the message that Bruno was missing.’

  ‘He was lost,’ said Laura, ‘but he found us. He saved us.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Judy. ‘He was a hero. Look, I’ve been talking to your dad. He sends his love and says he’ll be home tomorrow. Can you call him? He’s out of his mind with worry, as you can imagine.’ She hands Laura her phone. It looks like an object from another life.

  *

  Ruth calls Valenti on her phone. Nelson seems incapable of doing anything. He just sits on the sofa with his head in his hands. After a while his phone rings. ‘Laura? Hello, love. No, it’s OK. I’ll be home tomorrow . . .’ He goes out into the hall. There’s so much tenderness in his voice that Ruth finds herself wanting to cry. Again.

  Shona bustles around, making them all cups of tea. A typical Englishwoman, Elsa would say. Elsa herself is still sitting at the kitchen table. Ruth puts two sugars in her tea and urges her to drink it. She doesn’t want the woman to collapse, after all. Incredibly, the children stay asleep.

  Nelson comes back into the room. He goes to the window and looks out into the darkness. Ruth wants to talk to him, but she doesn’t know what to say. She can hardly believe that Tim is dead. Tim, the handsome, troubled man who had sat in her front garden talking about Michelle. I’m sorry, Ruth, but I feel like I’m going mad here. Now he has died saving Michelle’s life. Laura’s too. Ruth can only imagine what Nelson is feeling: guilt, sorrow, jealousy. She goes to him and puts her hand on his arm. At least he doesn’t shake it off.

  Valenti appears about thirty minutes later, accompanied by the woman police officer. He speaks in Italian to Elsa and gently helps her to her feet.

  ‘I’ll need a statement from you tomorrow, Dottore Galloway,’ he says.

  ‘Of course,’ says Ruth.

  ‘And you, Commissario Nelson.’

  ‘I’ll be in England,’ says Nelson. ‘I didn’t see or hea
r anything anyway.’

  He sounds as if he will fight anyone who disagrees with him. Valenti, at any rate, does not argue. The police officers leave the flat, Elsa walking between them.

  ‘I’d better go,’ says Nelson. ‘My flight is first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Be careful, Nelson,’ says Ruth. She doesn’t know quite what she means by this. Be careful driving back to Linda’s? Be careful that the plane doesn’t crash? Be careful when you get home and your marriage is in smithereens?

  Nelson smiles at her but it’s as if he’s already far away. She listens to his feet descending the stairs. She turns to Shona, who is standing in the hallway, looking rather helpless.

  ‘It feels as if I’ll never see him again.’

  *

  Laura is alone in the A & E cubicle. A woman called a forensic nurse practitioner was with her but she’s been called away. She’s not sure where her mother is. Michelle had become hysterical again in the ambulance, shaking and shivering, crying uncontrollably. Laura was really worried about her. ‘She’s pregnant,’ she told the paramedics. ‘Look after her.’ At the hospital, Michelle had been ushered away, a nurse on each side. Laura was left with the police officers, clasping a silver foil cape like she had just run a marathon. And she feels as tired as if she has just run twenty-six miles. It seems incredible, but the thing she most wants to do now is curl up on the floor of the cubicle and go to sleep.

  But she can’t sleep. Her mother might need her. Her mother, who had been prepared to die for her. Alanine, arginine, asparagine . . .

  Someone knocks on the flimsy side of the cubicle. ‘Laura?’ It’s Judy, who is now wearing a fluorescent police jacket. She comes in and puts her arms round her. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘You were really brave, but you’re safe now.’

  Laura struggles to control herself. Judy passes her a tissue and a cone-shaped paper cup of water. ‘Take a sip and try to breathe,’ she says. Laura does so. Aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamine . . .

  ‘What happened to the man?’ she says at last. ‘The one who wanted to shoot us?’

  ‘Micky Webb?’ says Judy. ‘He’s in custody, charged with attempted murder. He won’t see the light of day again, I promise you.’