The Faces of Angels Read online

  A half-hour later, when I arrive and buzz the intercom, nobody answers, so I figure the match has already started and punch in the security code myself. Piero has never actually given me permission to do this, or explicitly told me what it is, but I’m sure he knows I know it. One of the talents you acquire if you grow up around an accountant is an excellent memory for numbers. Mamaw taught me how to read columns of figures the same way she taught me to read books, and all I have to do is look at a sequence once. I still feel a little funny, though, letting myself into his building like this, so to make up for it, when I get out of the elevator on the top floor, I knock on his apartment door.

  There’s no answer, and I don’t hear fans screaming and frantic Italian commentary, or the sound of Piero’s footsteps coming across the living room. Which is weird. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. Maybe he isn’t even back yet, and I should wait out here. But the food’s getting cold and the bags aren’t that great. They already feel like the bottom might drop out of them, and I don’t want to be stuck with a pile of noodles at my feet, so I figure What the hell? And punch myself into the apartment too.

  The lights are on, and the first thing I notice is Pierangelo’s overcoat thrown across the sofa. So he is here, somewhere. Probably in the shower. I go into the kitchen, study the Ferrari-like stove, turn the oven on to warm, and stick the food in. Then I listen. At first I think I’m hearing the radio, but no, it’s Pierangelo’s voice, raised and angry and coming from the study.

  The apartment is L-shaped, the master bedroom, bathroom and living room in the long front wing, kitchen in the corner, a utility room and hallway leading down the short arm, where the girls’ bedrooms look onto the side alley, and, opposite them, Piero’s study looks over the inner courtyard. Good manners demand I should go find a magazine, or hang around humming and pretending I can’t hear, but I’ve literally never heard Pierangelo angry before, and I’m curious, so I sidle into the utility room and hover beside the washing machine and linen closet. Then I step into the hall. The study door’s ajar, and now I can hear Piero clearly. My Italian has improved, and I get that he’s arguing, hard. Something about the police. Then I hear the word mostro, monster. There’s no answering voice, so he must be on the phone.

  ‘What do we start if we start this?’ he says. ‘This girl, and then after her, how many? I don’t know how long you want to cover their asses.’

  There’s a pause, and I’m not aware of it, but I must have stepped forward, because I can see Piero’s shoulders, the back of his head. He senses me, swings his desk chair around, and pulls the door open.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Pierangelo says to whoever he’s talking to. His eyes meet mine. ‘I get that,’ he adds. ‘I just think it’s a lousy idea. We’re not in the business of covering up. For anyone.’ He listens again for a second and then nods. ‘OK. OK. I do see the point. I just don’t agree.’ His voice drops, indicating either acquiescence or defeat. ‘Well, fine. But you know what I think,’ he adds. ‘Certo. Ciao.’

  Pierangelo puts the phone down and sighs. His eyes are on me, but mine are on the long, polished expanse of his desk. Photos of the girl they found by the Arno, Ginevra Montelleone, are splayed across it like playing cards.

  ‘She didn’t commit suicide, did she?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, she did not.’

  Pierangelo looks at me for a second. Then he begins to gather up the photos and slide them into an envelope. I feel a sudden wave of irritation.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Pierangelo! I won’t go to pieces, you know!’

  He stops, his hands in mid-motion. ‘I know,’ he says, ‘it’s just—’

  He doesn’t like talking about this kind of thing with me, and he’s not alone. I’ve noticed this in other people, too. Back home in the States, the ones who didn’t want me to write or talk endlessly about what happened to me seemed to feel they couldn’t mention the words death, attack, kill, or murder in my presence. Some even struggled over saying knife. I know it was well intended but, frankly, it really pissed me off, just like this is pissing me off now. Between Billy’s pop-up priests and Pierangelo suddenly treating me as if I’m made of glass, it’s turning out to be a really crappy evening.

  ‘Look,’ I say with more force than is probably strictly necessary, ‘I was attacked two years ago. And it was terrible. But every awful thing that happens to someone else does not threaten my sanity.’

  I’m probably glaring at him because he sighs, runs his hands through his hair, and leaves the photos where they are. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘She was murdered.’ He waves his hand over the desk. ‘Of course, you can see for yourself.’

  And so I do. I step forward, look down at what are obviously copies of Ginevra Montelleone’s crime-scene pictures, and see that she wasn’t just murdered. She was butchered.

  She looks unusually clean, as though she’s been washed, which makes the wounds, if you can call them that, even more graphic. Strips of skin have been peeled back from her ribcage. And despite my determination not to, I feel sick.

  ‘Here,’ Pierangelo jumps up from the chair and starts to take my shoulders, but I push him away. I can’t stop looking at her.

  ‘What’s that?’ I point towards Ginevra’s white naked shoulder, which is partially covered by her hair. Long and dark, it looks as if it’s been combed, and in the midst of it, above her naked breast, there is a lump, something bulging. Pierangelo picks up the photograph.

  ‘Una borsa di seta rossa.’ His voice sounds flat and tired.

  ‘A bag of red silk?’ I think I must have misheard him, but he looks at the photo and nods.

  ‘Si, signora,’ he says. ‘A bag of red silk, stuffed with bird-seed. It was pinned to her shoulder with a giant safety pin. You know, one of those things they use in upholstery shops.’

  We don’t watch the football. Instead, we take the food out of the oven, open a bottle of wine, and eat sitting at the shiny kitchen counter.

  ‘We’ve been asked not to run the story.’ Piero dips his egg roll in the hot Chinese mustard and takes a big bite, as though this will make him feel better.

  ‘Because?’

  He shakes his head and swallows. ‘Because of the “public good”.’ So this is what he was fighting about on the phone. ‘Because it will cause panic. Because there is an ongoing investigation. Because blah, blah, blah,’ he mutters, picking up his wine glass. ‘They’re scared shitless,’ he adds, ‘because, to use your colourful American phrase, they haven’t got jack shit, and they’re wetting themselves because they can’t blame Indrizzio any more. Shit!’ He fans his mouth and swallows more wine, ‘That mustard’s hot!’

  Piero gets up and pours himself a glass of water. ‘Do you think they make it like that so you can’t taste the food?’ he asks. ‘Boiled dog, or whatever the hell it is the Chinese eat? Although we should talk.’ He turns the tap off and a smile flashes across his face, the first one I’ve seen tonight. ‘In the twenties,’ he says, ‘restaurants in Florence were fined for serving cat.’

  ‘Oh yuck! And yeah,’ I agree, ‘they probably use the mustard to mask taste, like the English used curry in India.’

  ‘India? They should use it in England.’ Pierangelo’s faith in the supremacy of the Italian cucina is unshakeable. He sits down again and pours us more wine. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘here’s the really weird thing. You saw her, right? So you know how she died?’

  ‘Well.’ A vivid picture of the strips of flesh hanging off Ginevra Montelleone’s torso flashes in front of me, and I put my fork down. I’m not so certain I’m hungry any more. ‘Sure.’ I nod. ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  Piero shakes his head and watches me for a second. Then he says, ‘She drowned.’

  I look at him as though he’s crazy, but he nods. ‘I didn’t believe it either. But the paper has “friends” in the morgue, that’s how we got the pictures. I thought they were crazy. Just plain wrong. Wrong girl, you
know, wrong body. Some idiot making a mix-up. So I called a friend of my own, at the Questura.’

  As far as I can figure, Pierangelo knows half of Florence through his family or Monika’s, and the other half from his days as a reporter. His contact at the police headquarters could equally be some obscure cousin or a tame cop. Maybe both.

  ‘She really drowned?’

  This sounds so goofy to me that I can’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. Pierangelo raises his eyebrows, inviting me to think about it. I picture Ginevra’s body, how it looked unnaturally clean.

  ‘You mean, they found her in the river?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. Nuh-uh,’ he says, his mouth half full of egg roll. ‘That’s it. They didn’t. Her lungs were full of water, but the guy, the rower who found her, he says she was lying there on the river bank, cut to shreds, naked, on her back, her hands folded across her chest as if she was asleep.’

  It’s still dark when Pierangelo leaves in the morning. He bends down to kiss me and I smell the lemony scent of his cologne and the minty tang of toothpaste. ‘Sleep,’ he says. ‘I’ll call you.’

  I hear him pick up his bag. His footsteps cross the living room and the front door of the apartment opens and closes. I don’t really go back to sleep afterwards, but doze, aware that I’m alone in this bed that isn’t mine, and finally decide to get up and have a bath. Pierangelo’s bathroom is vast. It has a sunken tiled pool set into the floor with steps down into it, like the ones I imagine in those Japanese bathing houses, and as the water starts to gush in I stand watching it, and thinking about Ginevra Montelleone.

  Pierangelo’s ‘friend’ at the Questura says the medical examiners are sure she died, by drowning, after the cuts were made. In other words, whoever did it flayed her alive.

  Then drowned her.

  Then brushed her hair, and laid her out on the river bank. And pinned a red silk bag stuffed with birdseed to her shoulder.

  I think of my little mask, which seems like nothing in comparison. The nun, Eleanora Darnelli, and Benedetta, they had things left too, souvenirs like mine. But as I lower myself into the water and think about it, I realize that, beyond the fact that they were knifed, I don’t know exactly how they were killed.

  It’s odd, but I was too embarrassed to ask. Ispettore Pallioti told me about the other women, but after I didn’t bleed to death, and my lung was reinflated, and the infection went away, and everyone kept telling me how lucky I was to be alive, it seemed like enquiring for details about the less fortunate victims of Karel Indrizzio would be somehow ungrateful. More than that, unseemly. Almost pornographic. So, although I wanted to know, I never asked. And I still have no idea.

  Pierangelo does, though, because he wrote the newspaper stories. I lean back, turn off the taps, and consider this. He keeps files here, in his desk in the study. I know because he’s pulled them out occasionally to show me something he’s worked on in the past. And he won’t be back until late Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. He’s spending the weekend following D’Erreti around the Vatican City. I pour some of the special bath salts Piero buys for me into the tub. Acacia. He orders body oil for me too. For my scars, or so he says. He has it made up specially. And perfume. He loves acacia. He even likes to taste it on my skin. I swirl the water back and forth, making the sea-green tiles shimmer. Did Ginevra wear perfume, I wonder. Did the others?

  It’s an hour later when I stand in the doorway of his study. I’ve washed up the dishes from last night, made the bed, and even done a little sweeping, as if that can make up for what I’m about to do. At best, I’m about to abuse his hospitality, and at worst, his trust. But I want to know. I have to. The murder of Ginevra Montelleone has ignited the need like an itch.

  I pull open the flush wooden filing cabinet, and tell myself that all I’m doing is saving myself a session in the library. I’m sure I could look up there all the same things Pierangelo has here. After all, it’s public information. Then I tell myself that if what I’m looking for is in the safe, even though I know the combination, I won’t open it. I’ll only look if the file is right here in front of me.

  It’s the third one under D, fat and bulky, and I take just a second to peek inside and check it’s what I want. Then, before I can think any more about what I’m doing, I pull it out and slip the whole thing into my shoulder bag. I slide the drawer closed with a click, my heart giving a little flicker of excitement because I know this is bad. Then, as I turn to go, I see the pictures of Ginevra, right where we left them last night, and before I can stop myself, I reach out and take one of those too.

  Now that I have the damn thing, I feel bad about taking it. Which is typical. Somebody once said guilt is how us Catholics get what we want; we do bad stuff then feel bad about it, which makes it OK. Sort of.

  I decide I’ll return it, right now. Then I decide that’s really stupid. Pierangelo won’t be back until Monday night at the earliest. I’ll keep the file for a day and see how I feel about it. I’ll test it out. He’d let me read it, if I asked. I know he would, so there doesn’t seem to be much point wasting time doing research he’s already done and that won’t be as good anyways. I reassure myself that this is perfectly reasonable, but as I walk towards Santa Maria Novella, where I am going to a lecture on the Spanish Chapel, I can feel the file weighing me down, dragging on my shoulder as if the words written in it are made of lead.

  The frescoes in the Spanish Chapel are an allegory on the philosophy of the Dominicans, the Dominus Cane, Dogs of God, bent on protecting the church. On the walls around us, the good brothers arrange the redemption and salvation of man, ushering the chosen up the path into paradise, while below, the dogs, who are also them, stand watch, ready to attack the wolves of temptation and sin. At the gates of hell devils dance in rage and cover their hairy faces in distress, curling their claw toes and whipping their spiked tails as the friars hold them back, protecting Florence and all the souls within her.

  The colours are vivid, even after six hundred years, and when I come out of the church the city seems monochrome in comparison, as if the struggle depicted inside is somehow more real than the people who surround me. A languid drizzle, half mist, half rain, hangs in the air, unable to summon up the energy to actually fall. Moisture beads on my cheeks and the backs of my bare hands. A bevy of pale grey nuns appears out of nowhere and sweeps across the wet paving stones, causing the pigeons to rise in a cloud, and groups of students hurry past me, their excited voices rising in a crescendo as they cross the street.

  The apartment Ty and I were assigned by the exchange programme is near here. It was a small, cramped, ugly place, my marriage home, furnished with a green tweed sofa and mustard-coloured curtains. And although I used to walk here almost every day, this is not a part of the city I like. In medieval times, the streets of Florence were so narrow and the buildings so tall that even during daylight the passages had to be lit with torches. These days, they’re clogged with traffic and lined with cheap hotels that cater for the hordes of newly arrived tourists. Three of them are bearing down on me now, in close formation, dragging their wheeled suitcases behind them like reluctant pets, and I step out into the traffic in order to avoid being trampled. A taxi driver swears at me, telling me I’ll meet God sooner than I might have planned and, as if in agreement, the bells of Santa Maria Novella begin to ring in a low lugubrious boom.

  By the time I weave my way out of there, down Via Belle Donne, the street of beautiful women, and Via Tornabuoni, the street of very expensive shops, the tourists have thinned and the drizzle has thickened. Fat grey drops fall straight down out of the sky and splat on the sidewalk as I walk back across the river and into the warren of alleys that lead to our building.

  Despite the undeniable fact that I’m getting wet, I dawdle, walking almost in circles, exactly the same way I used to when I was a kid trying to delay the inevitability of going home after school. I tell myself that this is because, after last night, I don’t know what kind of mood Billy will be in,
and I don’t feel like summoning the energy to deal with her. But that’s not the truth. The truth is that I’m putting off being alone in my room with Pierangelo’s file. I don’t want to have to see whether, when left to my own devices, I’ll succumb to the wolves of temptation, and read it.

  I make another turn, and another, and end up in a narrow walled alley where suddenly I’m hit by a high-pitched wave of laughter. Ahead of me, the gates of a school fly open, tipping a squadron of children out onto the street, and I realize it’s past noon already, and that there are parents, smart-suited men, some of them with briefcases, and mothers in overcoats and leather boots, leaning against the wall opposite, chatting or reading newspapers. The children surge towards their parents, who fold their papers and open their arms.

  And that’s when I see her, the woman from the apartment opposite. Almost directly in front of me, she’s wearing a red coat with a red velvet collar. Her pale hair is pulled back in a pony-tail, which does not suit her, and her face splits into a grin as the little boy we saw on the bridge last night comes running towards her. She grabs him and lifts him straight into the air. ‘Paolo!’ she exclaims. ‘Paolo!’ And his small, peaked face opens like a flower as he looks down at his mother.

  The boys are already in the shorts of their summer uniform, and when she puts him down, her son bends to pull up his knee socks, exposing the soft crown of his head. She tousles it with one hand, reaching with the other for the shopping bag she has left leaning against the wall. As she does, Paolo giggles and bats at her, and steps sideways. His foot hits the edge of the sidewalk, and suddenly two things happen at once: I see him begin to fall, to topple in slow motion like a statue tipping, and I hear the loud roar of a motorcycle.