The Dark Angel

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘It’s so spooky,’ says Shona. ‘Just standing there.’

  ‘I suppose they’re praying,’ says Ruth. ‘You should know.’ She’s a little fed up with Shona’s pretence at devout Catholicism when, to her knowledge, Shona has been to church twice in their eighteen years of friendship. Shona is also apparently devastated by Don Tomaso’s death. ‘Such a good man,’ she keeps saying, when she had barely exchanged two words with him. It was Ruth he had spoken to at the cultural association dinner. And it was Ruth he had invited to Mass, saying he had something to show her. What could it have been?

  They are at the café because there was nothing left in the house for breakfast and because the children were showing signs of becoming stir crazy. They could really do with going to the beach again but Ruth doesn’t like to ask Angelo or Graziano, not after the traumas of the last two days. At least the atmosphere in the town has had its effect on Kate and Louis. They are silent too, Louis playing on Shona’s iPad and Kate staring at the church.

  ‘Here are some more reporters,’ says Shona. Cars containing television crews have been appearing regularly all morning. Now a grey Fiat comes through the archway, going far too fast. For a moment it looks as if it’s going to plough through the tables outside the café, but then it comes to an abrupt halt by the church. Two men get out of the car. One is tall with greying dark hair, looking about him with obvious impatience; the other has long, grey hair in a ponytail and, to the obvious bemusement of the crowd, is wearing a purple cloak that gleams in the sunlight.

  ‘Dad!’ shouts Kate.

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Ruth.

  Nelson strides over to their table. For one crazy moment, Ruth thinks that he’s going to kiss her. Instead he grasps her arm, rather hard.

  ‘Ruth! Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ says Ruth, shaking him off. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I heard about the earthquake. I was worried. Your phone was turned off.’

  Guiltily, Ruth remembers that she turned it off outside the church the previous day, thinking it would have been embarrassing for it to ring during the service. What with one thing and another, she must have forgotten to turn it on again.

  ‘Dad,’ says Kate reprovingly.

  ‘Sorry, love.’ Nelson goes round the table to give her a hug.

  ‘Hi, Nelson,’ says Shona, looking delighted at this fresh drama.

  ‘Hello,’ says Nelson unenthusiastically. He’s not one of Shona’s fans.

  ‘You’re not my dad,’ says Louis suddenly.

  ‘You’re right there, son,’ says Nelson. ‘Your dad is currently driving me mad trying to send drones over a building site.’

  Ruth looks across to where Cathbad is deep in conversation with two elderly women in black.

  ‘Why is Cathbad here?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure myself,’ says Nelson. ‘As soon as I saw the news on TV, I rang the airline and got a last-minute booking. Then I rang Judy to ask her to stand in for me for a few days. Cathbad got wind of it and said he had a friend in the area who would put me up. When I got to the airport this morning, Cathbad had booked himself on the same flight. Gave me a bit of a turn seeing that cloak, I can tell you. We’ve driven straight from the airport. Cathbad organised the car hire. Apparently he speaks Italian.’

  They look over to where the women are showing Cathbad the church. He is speaking to them very intensely, his head bent to their level.

  ‘How come he speaks Italian?’

  ‘He once worked on a vineyard in Tuscany apparently. You know Cathbad, he’s full of surprises.’

  Cathbad leaves his new friends and comes to join them, smiling broadly.

  ‘Ruth! I told Nelson that I didn’t sense you were in danger.’

  Then why did you let him come all this way, thinks Ruth. She’s not sure how she feels. On one hand, she’s irritated that Nelson thinks he must come running to her rescue all the time. On the other, she can’t deny that it’s good to see him. It’s almost as if she summoned him when she thought about him in the church yesterday. It’s so strange to see Nelson in Italy. He seems like a man made for cold weather (he’s from the north, after all), not for blue skies and sunny piazzas. But, then again, Castello degli Angeli is now a murder scene. Perhaps it’s right that Nelson is here?

  ‘Terrible about Don Tomaso,’ Cathbad is saying now, taking off his cloak. Underneath he’s wearing shorts and a loose T-shirt. It’s typical that he has remembered the name.

  ‘Who?’ says Nelson.

  ‘Local priest,’ says Cathbad, ‘found dead in the church last night.’

  ‘I know,’ says Ruth. ‘I found him.’

  They all stare at her. Kate breaks the tension by saying, ‘Will you take us to the beach, Dad?’

  *

  ‘That was quick,’ says Michelle.

  ‘I came as soon as you texted,’ says Tim.

  ‘All the way from Essex?’ says Michelle.

  Tim smiles. ‘All the way from Essex.’

  Michelle stands aside to let Tim into the house. Bruno, who has been lying in the hallway, sits up and barks once, loudly.

  ‘Shh, Bruno,’ says Michelle. ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘He’s just protecting you,’ says Tim, patting the dog. Michelle remembers him saying that his brother had a German Shepherd. She knows nothing else about Tim’s family, and that thought makes her suddenly feel scared. What is she doing with a man she hardly knows? She has known Nelson since she was twenty-one.

  ‘Come through,’ she says. Tim and Bruno follow her in the sitting room, which is as tidy as ever. The morning sun streams in through the French windows; the flowers that Harry bought her at the garden centre yesterday stand proudly in their green vase. Laura is out at the pub, where she’s working until the university term starts in September. And Harry is . . . Well, she can’t even imagine where Harry is. Images of Italy have been chasing round in her head all night: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Vatican, the Colosseum, Pompeii, Venice. She can only picture him in the centre of a postcard, not in whatever squalid little town Ruth is holed up in.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?’ she asks Tim. Bruno’s tail thumps on the wooden floor.

  ‘No.’ Tim comes over and takes her hands. ‘Sit down and tell me what all this is about. You just said that Nelson had gone to Italy.’

  They sit side by side on the sofa. Michelle takes a deep breath. ‘He heard on the news about the earthquake. Apparently it’s where Ruth and Katie are. He couldn’t get Ruth on the phone, so he booked the tickets online. He never does anything like that. He hates holidays and he hates doing anything online. I always book everything.’ Against her will, she can feel tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ says Tim. He reaches in his pocket and comes up with a handkerchief. ‘Here. It’s clean.’

  It is clean, and it smells of Tim’s aftershave. Michelle breathes in the scent and finds herself soothed. Tim is here. He’ll look after her.

  ‘Couldn’t he have waited?’ says Tim. ‘Ruth’s phone signal may have been affected by the earthquake.’

  ‘That’s what I said. But you know Harry. He never likes to wait. He got the earliest flight this morning. I was meant to understand. Just like I’ve understood about everything else.’ She is shocked at how bitter she sounds.

  ‘I suppose he was worried about Kate’

  ‘It’s not Katie,’ says Michelle. ‘It’s Ruth. It’s always Ruth.’

  Michelle gets up and goes to the window. This house is her pride and joy. Her refuge. Now it feels as if it could be swept away in a puff of wind. What scares her most is that she almost wants it to happen. Bruno comes to sit next to her and she plays with his ears.

  ‘Michelle . . .’ Tim is standing behind her. ‘Michelle, it’s OK.’

  She turns and he puts his arms round her. He feels incredibly secure. Slimmer than Harry but just as solid.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says aga
in. ‘I’m here.’

  She says nothing, just continues to hold him. She feels the reverberations of his voice when he speaks.

  ‘Michelle, the baby. Could it be mine?’

  She’s glad that she’s not looking at him

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, into his chest. ‘It could be.’

  Tim holds her at arms’ length and looks into her eyes. ‘I don’t mind if it’s Nelson’s,’ he says. ‘I love you. I’ll love the baby. I want to look after you both.’

  Half laughing, half crying, Michelle raises her lips to his.

  *

  It’s not how Nelson imagined spending the day, but there’s no denying that it’s rather pleasant. Ever since he saw the news broadcast in the pub, he has been haunted by images of Katie and Ruth being pulled from collapsing houses, of bloodied faces, frantic rescue workers and bodies on stretchers. Even after he had calmed down enough to check the internet, learning that the main force of the earthquake had been felt by a village twenty miles away, Nelson knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he actually saw them. The fact that Ruth’s phone was switched off didn’t help either.

  Michelle had been, if not understanding, at least resigned. She had been angry, Nelson knew, but didn’t seem to want to confront him with the obvious question: why does Ruth mean so much to you? Laura had been the one who seemed most upset. ‘Where are you going?’ she’d hissed, when Nelson stood up and announced that he was leaving the pub. ‘It’s the first time you’ve met Chad.’ ‘Chad can wait,’ Nelson had said, but Laura looked as if this wasn’t an acceptable response. She’d hardly said goodbye to him that morning. But then it had been 4 a.m. when he left the house.

  What would Michelle and Laura say if they could see him now? If they could see him, the man who always complains about holidays, sitting on a private beach under an umbrella with an entirely different family. Ruth and Shona are in the water with the children, Cathbad is next to him, reading a book about ley lines. At Cathbad’s suggestion they had stopped at a supermarket on the way and Nelson bought shorts, two polo shirts and some swimming trunks. He also bought a blow-up water ring for Katie. It’s pink and has a unicorn’s head rather incongruously attached. She’s sitting in it now, like some sort of sea creature, bobbing in the shallow water. Nelson bought a water ring for Louis too (a manly thing with footballs on it), but he clearly prefers the unicorn.

  ‘Ruth seems well,’ says Cathbad.

  ‘Yes,’ says Nelson. He’d been surprised by how good Ruth looked in her swimming costume. He’s noticed before that the fewer clothes Ruth wears, the thinner she looks. In the severely cut costume, she looks curvaceous rather than overweight. She’s tanned, too, and her hair is longer.

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’ says Nelson. ‘Rushing off to Italy at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘All the best people are mad,’ says Cathbad. ‘It’s a good sign that you’re becoming more in touch with your emotions.’

  ‘I’m not sure Michelle thinks it’s a good sign,’ says Nelson. ‘I think she liked the old, buttoned-up me.’

  ‘Now you’re asking me a different question,’ says Cathbad.

  He’s right, and to avoid any more examples of Cathbad’s sixth sense, Nelson gets up to go for a swim. Rather to his surprise, Ruth says that she’ll come with him. Shona says she’s happy to watch the children. The bikini she has on doesn’t look as if it would survive proper swimming anyway. Ruth is wearing a far more sensible costume.

  The water is warmer than Nelson likes. Getting into the sea should be a test of endurance, in his book. He remembers mornings at Blackpool when the water was so cold that your arms and legs immediately went numb as all the blood rushed to keep your heart going. This is like getting into a tepid bath. Salty, too. Far saltier than the Irish sea. But as they swim out, the water becomes colder and clearer. Nelson is a strong swimmer – he was a lifeguard in his youth – but Ruth keeps pace with him. Together they swim far beyond the families and the old ladies in swimming hats. Eventually, they float on their backs for a while, not speaking. The land – the umbrellas and hotels, the men selling jewellery and sarongs – seems very far away. One of the vendors has a string of kites attached to his cart and they form a multicoloured line against the sky.

  ‘Nelson,’ says Ruth at last, ‘why did you come here?’

  ‘I told you,’ says Nelson, ‘I wanted to see if you and Katie were all right.’

  ‘You can’t keep doing things like that,’ says Ruth. ‘We’re not your family.’

  It’s the first time that she’s ever said this and he’s surprised how much it hurts. Nelson looks up at the sky, which is a bright, impossible blue. Strains of pop music drift from the beach, something about fun in the sun.

  ‘Katie is,’ he says. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘You’ve got another family,’ says Ruth, ‘and now you’re having another child.’

  ‘Ruth,’ says Nelson. ‘If Michelle wasn’t pregnant—’

  ‘No,’ says Ruth, so fiercely that he’s silenced. ‘Don’t say that. You can’t say that.’ And she turns in the water and heads back towards the shore.

  *

  ‘I should go,’ says Tim. He doesn’t make any move to put his words into action though. Michelle raises herself on one elbow to look at him.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  Tim groans, pulling Michelle down to him. ‘You’re a witch,’ he says into her hair. ‘You’ve bewitched me.’

  Maybe she is a witch, thinks Michelle, as she kisses the wonderfully soft skin on Tim’s neck. Cathbad once said that she had hidden psychic powers. On the other hand, it feels as if she is the one under a spell. Downstairs, the cuckoo clock chimes midday. Bruno whines softly from the hallway.

  ‘I should go,’ says Tim again. But his body is obviously saying otherwise.

  This time Michelle is the one to pull away. ‘You should go. You told them you’d be back at lunchtime.’

  Tim closes his eyes for a minute and then sits up. He has the most wonderful body, thinks Michelle, looking at his naked back. It still seems amazing to her that such a beautiful man would drive nearly a hundred miles to see her, would love her, make love to her. That, as much as anything else, feels like a dream.

  ‘All right if I have a shower?’ says Tim.

  ‘Of course,’ says Michelle although it feels almost more of a betrayal to let Tim use Harry’s en suite than to make love to him. She will have to change the sheets as soon as Tim has gone. But then, she thinks, Harry won’t be back for two days. She might as well keep the scent of her lover close for a little longer. The thought makes her heart harden. It’s not my fault, she says to the army of accusers in her head (led, disconcertingly, by her mother-in-law), he’s the one who abandoned me. She starts to put her clothes on. She’ll shower later.

  Tim comes back into the bedroom and dresses quickly. When they go out onto the landing, Michelle avoids Bruno’s eyes. She kisses Tim in the darkness of the porch and watches him walk to his car, which he has prudently left a few doors away. No neighbours about, thank goodness, though she can hear Mrs Firman’s grandchildren splashing in the paddling pool. Tim raises his hand in salute and the black car moves off, solemn and anonymous, like a politician’s limo. As Michelle watches, she sees a man walking slowly along the opposite side of the cul-de-sac. He’s a stranger, slightly shabby looking, with glasses. The man seems to look curiously at her so she shuts the door. Michelle goes into the kitchen to give Bruno a guilt snack. When she goes back to the window, the man has gone.

  Chapter 19

  Angelo is pleased to escape to the university. One of the problems about living with his mother is that she keeps talking, and this morning it seemed as if she would never stop. He knows she’s upset about Don Tomaso and, of course, he sympathises, but even before he’d had his breakfast coffee, he’d had the whole of their childhood, how handsome the young Tomaso had been, what a surprise when he’d become a priest, how much Papa had loved him, what a good man, a l
iving saint. Angelo had been forced to invent a meeting to get away from her. Well, now he’s here he might as well look at some of the filming from yesterday. Daniella has sent the files through.

  He’s borrowing this room at the University of Casserta from Graziano. It’s better than nothing but he misses his office in Rome, the shelves with all his books and awards, the sofa where he sometimes catches an hour of sleep and once seduced a visiting medievalist from Florence. He thinks of Ruth and their night together at the conference. He’d thought then what an interesting woman she was. She wasn’t beautiful by any means, but there was something about her, an intelligence, a refusal to compromise, that he’d found very attractive. She’d been surprisingly passionate too. He wonders if there’s any chance of a rematch. She’s obviously not with the father of her daughter and, from what Shona said to Graziano, it seems as if there’s some mystery there. Angelo ponders the possibility, drinking his third espresso and waiting for the files to upload.

  He’s mildly annoyed to be disturbed by a knock on the door. It’s Roberto, a nice boy, not as bright as Marta, but uncomplicated, eager to please. Angelo composes his face into welcoming lines.

  ‘Professore,’ Roberto dives in, obviously greatly exercised about something, ‘we’ve found some bones.’

  ‘Bones? Where?’ He hopes they haven’t been digging at the Roman site without his permission.

  ‘At the church. The graveyard. We went there this morning to lay flowers for Don Tomaso and Marta wanted . . .’

  Angelo can guess where this is going. Marta hadn’t been able to resist looking at the newly exposed earth in the graveyard. Well, he would have been the same at her age.

  ‘We saw some bones and we thought they were modern.’

  ‘What made you think that?’

  ‘There was a skull and we could see a filling . . .’

  Angelo thinks. No one has been buried in the graveyard at Castello degli Angeli for over a hundred years. They use the cemetery in Arpino now, and even there, bodies are routinely dug up after eight years and their bones put in the ossuary. This body must have been buried illegally. He also thinks that if Marta and Roberto have uncovered a skull, they must have been doing more than a bit of casual digging.