‘I know,’ says Samir, raising his head. ‘God bless you.’
‘Have the police released you?’ says Ruth.
‘I am released on bail,’ says Samir, ‘but my lawyer thinks they might drop the charges. He is a good man. He came from Rome and brought me these clothes’ – he touches his shirt – ‘so that I look respectable. And Commissario Valenti says that he will help look for my family.’
‘That’s good,’ says Ruth, feeling inadequate. ‘I do hope you find them.’
‘Pray for me,’ says Samir, seizing her hand.
And Ruth finds herself promising to do just that.
*
Judy is not quite sure what she is doing here, standing outside the Nelsons’ house. Although her meeting with Micky Webb had left her feeling unsettled, she doesn’t think that he would really be a danger to Nelson’s family. But something has made her drop by this lunchtime. She had thought that Michelle might be at work, but her car is in the drive. Judy rings the bell and waits. She has only been to this house a few times. Nelson and Michelle invited her for Sunday lunch once, something they have done for all the team. She remembers that the food had been good and plentiful, but the formality of the occasion – best china, two sorts of wine, lots of cutlery and different shaped glasses – had made her feel rather uncomfortable. She was used to seeing Nelson at work, brisk and uncompromising, barking orders. It had been a shock to see him pouring wine and getting things from the kitchen, carving the meat, making jokes about the gravy. Michelle, she remembers, had been pleasant but slightly reserved. She’d looked fantastic though and had only eaten two potatoes. Judy had had eight and two mini Yorkshire puddings as well.
Where is Michelle? She hasn’t taken the dog for a walk, because Judy can see him through the frosted glass, wagging his tail, obviously realising that she is a friend. Judy stands back and looks up at the windows. All the blinds are drawn. This cul-de-sac is a sought-after location, Judy knows, and the houses are all large and detached with big gardens and double garages. Even so, Judy prefers her tiny cottage on the coast at Wells. This place reminds her of the semi-detached where she had lived with Darren during their short marriage. Everything neat and tidy, everything the same. She’s just debating whether to ring again when the door opens.
‘Judy!’ Michelle says, very loudly. She sounds surprised and not entirely welcoming.
‘Hi, Michelle. Can I come in for a minute?’
‘Is it Harry? Has something happened to him?’
‘No. Nothing like that. I just wanted to have a word about something else.’
Michelle stands back and lets her into the house. ‘Let’s go into the lounge,’ she says. ‘Do you want anything to drink? Tea? Coffee?’
‘No thanks. I’ll only stay a minute.’
The sitting room looks very tidy to Judy, but Michelle whisks around, clearing away jackets and papers. When she sits down, Judy thinks that she looks tired, but that’s probably the pregnancy. Judy felt exhausted in the first few months with both Michael and Miranda. Michelle is also dressed unusually casually in leggings and a loose sweatshirt. Her feet are bare. Judy wonders if she was lying down upstairs and feels guilty for disturbing her.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ says Judy, ‘but has Nelson mentioned a man called Micky Webb to you?’
Michelle frowns. ‘Was he the man who burned down his house and killed his children? Harry said that they’d let him go. It’s not right, in my opinion. He should have got life.’
Michelle sounds a bit like someone on a radio phone-in but Judy doesn’t necessarily disagree.
‘Yes, he’s out on licence. The thing is, before he went inside, Micky vowed to get even with Nelson. I know DCI Nelson’s been to see Micky, and I have too. He claims to be a changed man, got religion and all that. I just wanted you to be on your guard, that’s all. I’ll send a PC round to your house now and again. I don’t think you’re in any danger. It’s just to be on the safe side.’
There’s a sound upstairs and Michelle jumps. Judy feels guilty again. She has obviously spooked her. The boss will be furious with her for upsetting his pregnant wife.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ she says. ‘And you’ve got Bruno to look after you.’
Bruno wags his tail on the wooden floor.
‘I’ll keep an eye out,’ says Michelle. ‘I’d better get dressed now. Bruno needs his walk.’
*
The church is packed for Don Tomaso’s funeral. Ruth and Shona squeeze into a pew at the back, where their view is partly obscured by an ornate pillar. ‘It’s so difficult to know what to wear,’ Shona had said earlier. ‘My only black dress is rather formal.’ But she has worn the dress anyway (it’s not formal as much as tight and short), and very gorgeous she looks too, with her red hair piled up on top of her head. Ruth has had to settle for black trousers and a grey top. The church is a sea of deepest black. There’s none of this ‘no black, please, we’re here to celebrate life’. This congregation have come here to mourn, and they are mourning in black to the sound of Latin chanting from the choir above. Ruth sees Elsa near the front, sitting next to Angelo, who usually wears black anyway. This time he’s in a dark suit, as are most of the men, even though the temperature is steadily rising. Ruth spots Graziano, Marta, Roberto and many others that she knows by sight: the old men from the café, the woman at the panetteria, the lifeguard at the swimming pool. Among the group of men standing by the doors, she sees Samir in his white shirt. It was brave of him to come, she thinks, given that yesterday he was in custody, charged with Don Tomaso’s murder. There seems something almost ominous about the way the whole town has gathered together, like actors in the last scene of an Agatha Christie play. The last time the community was assembled like this it was for the cultural association dinner with food and dancing and lights in the trees. This is something else entirely.
When Don Tomaso’s coffin is borne into the church, a sigh runs through the congregation, almost a moan. Behind the coffin comes an elderly figure in purple robes carrying a staff, presumably the bishop, and what looks like a whole shoal of priests, six of them, followed by altar servers carrying candles and incense. The high altar is soon full of men. No women, of course. Ruth’s friend Hilary, a woman priest in the Anglican church, would have something to say about that, but to Ruth the whole ceremony seems so alien that this gender imbalance hardly matters. The clothed saints watch from the alcoves, the air is full of smoke and, when the Mass starts, the chanted words seem neither Latin nor Italian but another language altogether.
Ruth thinks of the church three days ago, the dark space lit only by a single candle, the dead body on the altar. The whole town had known that Don Tomaso was in the church, preparing for Mass. Who had entered the church, presumably through the graveyard, and killed the priest? Samir had left the church at five thirty; Ruth and Elsa had entered at about six fifteen. Who had taken advantage of those forty-five minutes to commit murder? As Marta had said, the churchgoers had all been gathered on the steps, chatting. It would have been easy for someone to arrive – and leave – without being noticed.
More chanting, more singing, the smoke rising upwards. Ruth begins to feel very hot indeed. Maybe she’s having a hot flush? She’s about the age for them, after all. Or maybe it’s just because the church now resembles a cauldron. She fans herself with the order of service.
‘Are you all right?’ whispers Shona.
‘How long have we got to go?’ Ruth whispers back.
‘I think we’re about halfway through. This is the Eucharistic prayer.’
Suddenly Ruth knows that she has to get some air or she will faint. She mutters an excuse to Shona and slides out of the pew. She sees Samir looking but no one else seems to notice when she opens the small hatch within the double doors and edges out.
Outside, the air is not noticeably cooler. Ruth sits in the shade of the porch for a bit but her head is still pounding. The square is completely silent, the café and the sho
ps are all closed, their shutters down. A black cat walks slowly across the cobbles, pausing to wash itself by the fountain. It’s like High Noon, Ruth thinks. Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’. She feels quite desperate for a glass of water. Soon, this need overpowers everything else. She knows she will have to go back to the apartment, open the fridge and take out that glorious green bottle of San Pellegrino.
The walk up the hill seems longer than ever. Will she be back in time for the end of the service? Shona won’t panic if she doesn’t reappear – she’ll gravitate to Graziano and weep a few picturesque tears in his arms. Thank God, here’s the green door. Ruth can almost taste the water, imagines it filling her dry mouth, running down her throat. She lets herself in and climbs the stairs. Then she stops. A woman is letting herself out of Ruth’s apartment, a middle-aged woman smartly dressed in black. The woman pauses on the landing for a moment and then continues up the stairs without noticing Ruth in the darkness of the stairwell. Ruth doesn’t recognise her, but there’s something familiar about the woman’s face. She’s willing to bet that her mysterious visitor is Marta’s mother, Anna.
Chapter 24
Ruth doesn’t go back to the church. She lets herself into the apartment, goes to the kitchen and drinks the mineral water straight from the bottle. It’s only when her thirst is quenched that she thinks about the woman in the hallway. Why was Marta’s mother coming out of her, or Angelo’s, flat? She must have known that Ruth, in common with everyone else in the town, would have been at the church. Why wasn’t Anna there too? She had been planning to go to Mass on Sunday, after all, so she must be fairly devout. Marta had been with her mother when she saw Samir leaving the church. Ruth walks around the apartment. She doesn’t think anything has been moved, but the place is in rather a mess, so it’s hard to tell. She recognises signs of Cathbad’s play style, the chairs pushed together to form a den, the books spread across the floor, the felt-tipped pictures depicting unicorns and dragons.
She is just starting to tidy up when Cathbad himself appears, accompanied by Kate and Louis, all bearing branches from olive trees.
‘We’re having a funeral rite,’ says Kate. ‘We’re waving leaves and Cathbad has poured some wine on the ground.’
This doesn’t really seem any stranger than the ceremony in the church.
‘You didn’t pull those branches down from the trees, did you?’ says Ruth.
‘They were already on the ground,’ says Cathbad. ‘One of the farm workers said we could have them.’
‘We’re doing a funeral for Don Thingummy,’ says Kate.
‘Don Tomaso,’ says Ruth.
‘Yes, him. We’re remembering him because he’s dead.’
‘We’ve poured wine on the earth as a libation,’ says Cathbad, ‘and we’re raising a cairn to Don Tomaso, to mark his transition to the Otherworld.’
‘A cairn is a pile of stones,’ Kate explains.
Ruth is not sure that she can cope with any more funeral rites. She wonders if she should object to Cathbad teaching Kate about the Otherworld. She had always intended to tell Kate, calmly and quietly, that death is the end, there’s no heaven or hell and we only live on in the memories of our families and friends. The trouble with this is that, when faced with an actual death, it seems a shocking and unbearable proposition. Ruth found herself telling Kate that Granddad believed that Grandma was in heaven, without adding her own total disbelief in this cosmology.
‘How long were you outside for?’ she asks Cathbad.
‘About ten minutes,’ says Cathbad, ‘not long.’
Anna must have been waiting for her chance then, maybe listening from above as the children clattered downstairs. Why had she been in the apartment?
‘Is the funeral over?’ says Cathbad.
‘No, but it was too hot. I came back for a glass of water.’
‘It’s nearly three now.’ Cathbad doesn’t wear a watch, but always mysteriously knows the time. ‘It’s not worth going back now. Shall I make us a cup of tea?’
‘That would be lovely,’ says Ruth.
*
Nelson has been trying to book tickets home. His daughters always say that he’s not computer literate, and it’s true that in the office he leaves anything complicated to Leah, his PA. But he booked his flight out to Italy so he thinks he can manage to book seats for himself and Cathbad on the way back. But he had reckoned without several crashing websites, a fluctuating internet connection and a baggage controllers’ strike at Fiumicino. Eventually it becomes obvious that he can’t get a flight home tomorrow. He will have to stay in Italy another day and go back on Friday. He won’t be there for the scan. What the hell will Michelle say?
He’s been working on the laptop in Luca’s room, and he gets up now and stretches. He needs some air. The house is quiet; Paolo is at work and Linda is in the kitchen preparing food for tonight. Massimo, the youngest son, is out somewhere on his moped. Cathbad is babysitting and Ruth will be at the funeral. Nelson wonders what she will think of a long church service in another language. He knows that Ruth’s tolerance for organised religion is pretty low, thanks to her evangelical parents. But he understands why Ruth will feel that she has to go – she was the one who discovered the body. He can’t help wondering what is going on at the police station. Will Valenti have released Samir on bail? Has he any other suspects? And what is Angelo’s role in all this? Valenti seemed to be implying that Angelo had invented a plot to kill him. Why would he do that? Nelson hadn’t greatly taken to Angelo – he still can’t forgive him for being relatively young and good-looking – but the man had seemed quite rational to him. Ruth seems to rate him as an archaeologist. Why would he make up stories about a murder attempt?
On his way to the front door, he passes the kitchen. Linda is making pasta using a small machine like a mangle. Nelson wonders why she bothers when the shops are full of the stuff, every shape and colour that you can imagine, but he’s touched that she’s making so much effort for their farewell meal.
Linda looks up when he passes, pushing her hair back with a floury hand. ‘Any luck?’
‘No. The internet kept crashing and there’s a baggage controllers’ strike at the airport tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. The reception is bad here in the hills. Will you be able to get tickets for Friday?’
‘I think so. The only thing is I’ll miss my wife’s scan. You know, I told you she was expecting a baby.’
‘Yes, so exciting for you. I would have loved to try for a fourth, a girl perhaps, but Paolo wasn’t keen. He thinks the world’s overpopulated. Has your wife got someone else who can go to the hospital with her?’
‘Yes, our daughter Laura’s at home. She’ll go with her.’
‘That’s all right then,’ says Linda comfortably.
Is it all right? wonders Nelson. He goes out onto the terrace and stares moodily over the valley. Will Michelle forgive him for not getting back in time? And what will happen when the baby is born? He implied to Ruth that maybe, at some point in time, they could be together. Is he imagining a scenario where the baby isn’t his, but Tim’s? But he can’t believe that. Michelle would never betray him like that, whatever he has done to her. He must have mistaken the expression on Tim’s face at Cloughie’s wedding. The baby is his and he must go home and play happy families. At this moment, the thought brings him no pleasure at all.
*
Ruth is trying to get ready to go to Linda’s, whilst keeping an eye on both children. Shona has shut herself in her room ‘to talk to Phil’. Ruth wonders what she is saying. Shona had come back from the funeral in the company of Graziano, both of them looking very cheerful in the circumstances. Shona hadn’t minded Ruth disappearing. ‘It was very hot,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to faint at one point. I’m glad I stayed though. I took communion, the first time in ages. I think I might start going to church again.’ She had shaken down her red-gold mane, Graziano staring at her admiringly.
Shona will no doubt hav
e the perfect outfit for dinner at Linda’s but Ruth feels quite unequal to the challenge. She looks at the garments hanging in the corner of the cavernous wardrobe in something like despair. She’d like to look mysteriously glamorous, but she hasn’t exactly brought the clothes for it. She will have to settle for cotton trousers and a white shirt. Maybe she could borrow a scarf from Shona, but she never really knows what to do with scarves. How can women like Shona and Michelle keep them draped all day? Ruth’s scarves either fall in her coffee or try to strangle her.
Kate and Louis run in, halfway through a game of chase. They haven’t had enough exercise today and are both rather giddy. Even so, Ruth doesn’t think that chase is a good idea in a rented apartment. She manages to persuade them to sit down and watch yet another DVD. It is the holidays, she tells herself, they can’t be doing creative stuff all the time. And they did have that craft/folklore/witchcraft session with Cathbad earlier.
But no sooner has the comforting Disney castle appeared on the screen than there’s a buzz from the intercom. Ruth freezes. Who can it be? Angelo? Marta’s mother again? She’s surprised to find herself feeling rather scared. It’s just because she might have to talk Italian, she tells herself.
She picks up the receiver. ‘Ciao?’ That’s the wrong thing to say on the phone but she can’t remember what the phrasebook recommended.
‘Hello, Ruth,’ says a woman’s voice, in accented but clear English. ‘It’s Elsa Morelli. Can I come up?’
Why is Elsa here? Ruth thought that she’d still be at the reception after the funeral, which is being held in the church hall. Ruth presses the button to open the door. What can Angelo’s mother want with her?
Elsa looks as smart as ever, in a slim back dress and a silver scarf (here is a woman who knows how to do scarves), but when Ruth switches on the hall light, she sees that Elsa’s eyes are bloodshot and her face looks more lined than it did before. The elegant high cheekbones look almost skull-like.
‘I’m looking for my son,’ says Elsa. ‘Is he here?’
The Dark Angel Page 19
