The Dark Angel

by Elly Griffiths

  But Angelo had maintained a shred of decency. He hadn’t wanted Samir to be blamed for the murder that he alone knew he hadn’t committed. Ruth hopes that this counts in his favour. In the earthly courts of justice, at least.

  As she dials Valenti’s number she thinks she really should have known.

  Angelo. The dark angel.

  Chapter 34

  The next morning, Marta drives Ruth, Shona and the children to the airport. It’s a tight squeeze in the Fiat 500 but Ruth is grateful not to have to face Angelo or Graziano. She doesn’t know if Valenti has taken Angelo into custody. She only knows that the policeman was not surprised to hear her story. He too must have suspected as soon as he saw the stone, which is why he asked Ruth not to mention it to anyone.

  What will Marta say if her professor is charged with murder? Marta says that she is going to switch back to computing anyway. ‘You know where you are with computers,’ she says. Roberto is changing to zoology. It turns out that Marta and Roberto are dating, to use Angelo’s phrase. That must have been why Roberto seemed to have been following them home that time. He had actually been on his way to see Marta, perhaps to sing at her window like a troubadour. Marta explains earnestly to Ruth that she believes in premarital chastity for both sexes. Good luck with that one, thinks Ruth.

  Kate and Louis wave goodbye to the square and the fountain. Federica is setting up the tables outside the café, ready for breakfast. The church is still closed. The angels on the roof are white sentinels against the sky as Ruth looks back to get her last glimpse of Castello degli Angeli. Will the church ever open again? Despite herself, Ruth hopes that it will. We always leave part of ourselves behind. What has she left behind in Italy? Part of her heart, perhaps. She has fallen in love with the Liri Valley and the little terracotta town on the hill. She will never forget swimming in the sea with Nelson and, best of all, the day that had spent alone together. If it’s the only day they ever spend as a couple, at least it was a good one. She’s left some of her professional vanity behind, too, because she is sure that Marta was right: Angelo only asked her to advise on the bones in order to tempt the TV company back to the Roman dig and deflect attention away from the body in the churchyard. Possibly he had asked her because she hadn’t said no to him in the past. What was it that Angelo said? The presence of a foreign expert made all the difference.

  They are on the motorway now, Marta following signs for Fiumicino airport, manoeuvring the little car through the maze of traffic. ‘Did Angelo ever borrow your car?’ she asks Marta. ‘All the time,’ says Marta, ‘it’s easier to drive on the mountain roads.’ Ruth had once thought that it was Elsa, driving her little car, who had tried to drive them off the side of the mountain that night? But it must have been Angelo, driving Marta’s Fiat. Had he been prepared to silence her, to kill Linda, Shona and the children too? Ruth will never know for sure.

  Marta parks so near to the departures hall that they are almost at the check-in desk. ‘Goodbye,’ says Ruth, giving her a hug, ‘Keep in touch. Good luck with the computers.’ Marta has bought farewell presents for the children – two fluffy wolf cubs – and these enliven the endless queues inside the terminal as the children make the little creatures talk and howl.

  ‘You should call them Romulus and Remus,’ says Ruth.

  Kate looks as her as if she is mad. ‘We’re calling them Ant and Dec.’

  They check in their bags and prepare for the security ordeal. Shona has all her make-up in a see-through container, but Ruth invariably has a bottle of water or some hand gel buried at the bottom of her travel bag. The official motions Kate through the scanner first, and Ruth hates to see her go alone, through the sinister, empty door frame that looks like the portal to the other world in Prince Caspian. But Kate skips through quite happily. It is Ruth who is stopped and searched, though why, exactly, she never discovers. Perhaps it’s the interesting flint in her pocket; it’s certainly not a preponderance of metal jewellery. Shona makes a great fuss about removing her earrings, bracelets and necklace, but she passes through the portal without a sound.

  Then they are on the other side and waiting for their gate to be called. It’s a strange in-between place, thinks Ruth, neither Italy nor England, neither earth nor air. Like the landing at the apartment, like the wood between the worlds, like the liminal zone between life and death. Travellers wander up and down carrying duty-free bags as the dead are meant to carry coins to take them to the Underworld. Overhead screens carry messages from distant lands: Paris, Hamburg, New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo. So many places, so many destinations.

  ‘Will you keep in touch with Graziano?’ Ruth asks Shona while the children are busy making the wolves present a talent show.

  Shona sighs and passes a hand through her bright hair. There are a few strands of grey near the parting, Ruth notices. No doubt Shona will deal with this abomination as soon as she gets back to her hairdresser, but the sight of them lifts Ruth’s spirits slightly.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Shona. ‘I liked Graziano, but it was just a holiday fling. No, my life is with Phil now. Phil and Louis.’

  She doesn’t say it sadly or happily. She says it as if it is a fact of life, which of course it is. Soon Ruth will have to pick up her bag and pass through the gate, back to her own life. She sits patiently, watching the ever-changing screen in front of her.

  Epilogue

  It’s a full policeman’s funeral. The streets are closed and uniformed officers form a guard of honour as the hearse bearing Tim’s coffin makes its journey from the police station to the church. Tim’s mother opted to have the funeral here, in King’s Lynn, rather than at home in Essex. ‘He loved it here,’ she tells Nelson, ‘he loved being part of the team. He always spoke so fondly of you, DCI Nelson. He said you taught him a lot.’ Nelson bears this as another nail in the crucifix of guilt he’s been carrying around for the last few weeks. Meeting Tim’s mother had been torture. Not that Edina Heathfield had been angry or accusatory. She was a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman in black, who held his hands and talked about Tim being with the angels now.

  After Castello degli Angeli, Nelson thinks that he’s had enough of angels for a lifetime. But he’s glad that Tim’s mother has this belief; she’s going to need it in the days to come.

  ‘He admired you very much,’ said Edina. ‘The boss. That’s what he always called you.’

  ‘He was a first-class police officer,’ said Nelson. ‘And he died a hero.’

  Both these things are true, but Nelson notices that they don’t stop him being intermittently angry with Tim. He had been having an affair with Nelson’s wife, after all. Michelle admitted as much to Nelson as soon as he returned from Italy. She said it like it didn’t matter much any more and, in the relief of knowing that Michelle and Laura were unharmed, adultery seemed almost an insignificant detail. That day, all Nelson had wanted to do was hold his wife and daughter close. Rebecca was home by midday on Friday and, that first evening, they had all sat in a huddle on the sofa, facing the mended French windows, as if they couldn’t bear to be separated. At one point, Bruno had felt left out and heaved himself onto their joint laps. No one told him to get down. It is the considered opinion of the Nelson household that nothing is too good for Bruno.

  It was in the long nights afterwards that the other feelings came back to Nelson: anger, loss, jealousy and, especially, guilt. The guilt of knowing it was his actions that had sent Micky Webb to his front door with a gun; that he had ignored warnings – from Jo, from Freddie, even from Cathbad – and left his family to go swanning off to Italy; the guilt of knowing that Laura had sent the same message to him and to Tim (the last two contacts on Michelle’s phone) and that it was Tim who had come to the rescue while Nelson had been eating with Ruth, kissing her, driving off and leaving his phone bleeping its SOS to the empty air. In these moments, Nelson grits his teeth and curses the day Tim ever arrived at Lynn police station. It all started there, he thinks, ignoring the fact that it started long be
fore. It started the day that he walked into the University of North Norfolk looking for an archaeology expert.

  Now he watches as Tim’s coffin is taken from the hearse and borne on the shoulders of six uniformed officers. Edina walks behind, brave in an enormous hat, supported by a son on each side. Tim’s sisters follow; one of them (Blessing?) is quite young and weeping copiously. Nelson never heard Tim mention a father and no paternal figure is in evidence today. Jo comes next. Jo never met Tim, but she is the superintendent and it’s up to her to lead the troops, a responsibility that she takes very seriously. Superintendent Gerry Whitcliffe, Nelson’s former nemesis, will also be at the church. Whitcliffe had at least known Tim, who had been one of his protégés. Even so, Nelson bets that Jo will insist on reading the lesson.

  Jo is in uniform, which came as quite a shock to Nelson. It makes her look rather formidable, although he is sure she’s had the jacket fitted to be more flattering. Judy walks with Jo, her eyes downcast. She has been deeply shaken by Tim’s death. Judy was fond of Tim, they worked closely together for a while, and she too feels guilty. She had followed up Marj Maccallum’s allegation but had, like Nelson, dismissed Micky Webb as weak and ineffectual. And that may have been true: Micky would never have dared confront Nelson to his face, but he was brave enough to come after his wife and children with a gun.

  Nelson and Clough are next in line. Clough has come back early from his honeymoon, looking incongruously tanned and well. When Clough first appeared at the station, bearing duty-free gifts because, even in an emergency, he couldn’t see why people should be denied chocolate, Nelson had been so pleased to see him that he had wanted to cry. He’d compromised by giving Clough a half hug, half handshake. ‘Good to see you, boss,’ Clough had said. ‘Bloody Tim, eh? Always wanting to be centre of attention.’ There had been tears in his eyes at the time, but Nelson had welcomed the black humour as much as he welcomed Clough’s solid presence. Now, Clough is walking slowly beside him, unusually smart in a black suit and tie. ‘Tim was a proper copper,’ he had said to Nelson last night, when they had toasted Tim with duty-free whisky, Nelson’s office door bolted against outsiders. ‘There aren’t many of them about.’

  There’s one less today, thinks Nelson, as he follows the coffin, now draped with the union flag, into the church. Among the police dignitaries, he had been touched to see Sandy Macleod, his old colleague from Blackpool CID, who had also once worked with Tim. He nods at Sandy as he makes his way to the front of the church. Michelle, Laura and Rebecca come to sit with him, Michelle wearing a black shift dress that conceals her pregnancy. Michelle had insisted on seeing Tim’s mother in private. Nelson doesn’t know what passed between them, but now Edina turns round and takes Michelle’s hand. ‘God bless you, darling.’ Did Michelle tell Tim’s mother that she might be carrying his child? That is something that Nelson and Michelle have never discussed. The new baby is the one bright spot in their lives, and Nelson doesn’t want to spoil things by the slightest suggestion that all is not as it should be. They have settled on the name George and not a day passes without Laura and Rebecca speculating on ‘Baby Georgie’, the best and brightest baby in the history of childbirth.

  He looks along the pew at Laura. She’s pale but she looks composed, though she’s holding tightly onto Rebecca’s hand. The sisters, whose relationship has always improved with distance, have really supported each other in the last few weeks. Laura’s boyfriend Chad also seemed very supportive, but Laura told Nelson yesterday that they have split up. ‘I realised that I preferred Bruno,’ she said, enigmatically. Still, Nelson can relate to that: he prefers Bruno to most humans too.

  He allows himself one sweep of the church to look for Ruth. He hasn’t seen her since Italy but, according to Judy, she is planning to come to the funeral, accompanied by Cathbad. The church is too full, though; he can’t see a purple cloak anywhere. Perhaps Cathbad too has succumbed to the anonymity of a black suit.

  Nelson has kept in touch with Valenti, who told him that Angelo Morelli has been charged with Don Tomaso’s murder. Nelson had been shocked. He would never have considered Angelo, whom he had filed away, despite the height and the good looks, under the heading ‘academic’. But he had confessed, according to Valenti. ‘Sing like a canary,’ he said, obviously in high good spirits. ‘Isn’t that what you say in England?’ Nelson wonders what Ruth thinks about this development. She had seemed very friendly with Morelli. In fact, Nelson had sometimes wondered if it was more than just friendship – not that he has any right to speculate in this way. Valenti has also managed to locate Samir’s wife and children and the family have now been reunited. ‘Samir send his thanks to you and Dottore Galloway,’ said Valenti. ‘He is very grateful for all that you did for him.’ Nelson thinks that he did very little, but any amount of goodwill is welcome now; any suggestion that he’s not a thoroughly terrible person. He wonders how the hell he is going to get through the hours, days, weeks and months ahead.

  *

  Laura stares at the flower arrangements on the altar, at the satin flowers on Tim’s mother’s hat, at the shoulders of his two brothers, massive in black. She mustn’t cry, she tells herself. Not when Tim’s family are being so brave. The youngest sister is crying though, proper tears, her body bent forward as if she’s in pain. She’s only young, still at school, Laura thinks. What can it feel like to lose your brother when you’re so young? Laura squeezes Rebecca’s hand, as if this will keep her sister safe. And they’ve got a brother too, now. Dear Baby Georgie. He will never know how much he has helped over the last two weeks, how he has managed to restore his family’s sanity.

  That was why she had finished with Chad, really. He was nice enough, but he could never mean as much to her as her family, including the canine member. Surely the whole point of a boyfriend is that they could, at some point, become the most important person in your life. A lot of things had become clear to Laura in those stretched-out seconds when Micky Webb had pointed the gun at her. She realised that she loved her family and that they loved her. She realised that motherhood can make you as brave as a lion and that nothing stands in the way of a German Shepherd who is determined to protect his family. And, for now, she’d rather be on her own that trying to assemble a pale imitation of that devotion. She will go back to university, become a teacher and hope to meet someone as nice as her dog. Dad keeps saying that she should think it over, go back to counselling and all that. Funny, Dad has never liked any of her boyfriends, and now he seems to think that Laura breaking up with Chad is a sign that she’s cracking up. But it all makes perfect sense to her.

  She has been seeing a post-traumatic stress counsellor called Pippa and she’s been quite helpful, has taught her a few breathing exercises (though she still prefers her amino acids routine) and got her to visualise her feelings and all the rest of it. Judy has been great, too. She has kept Laura and Michelle up to date with the case against Micky Webb. They will both have to testify in court which, in her present state of mind, Laura quite welcomes. ‘You might be able to give evidence via video link,’ said Judy. But Laura is looking forward to staring him in the face. You tried to kill me, but you didn’t succeed.

  Her only problem is sleeping. She’s tired all day, but when she goes to bed, the whole sequence starts again in her brain: the knock on the door, the gun levelled at them, the dog breaking through the window, her mother screaming with Tim in her arms. The only thing that banishes these images is putting on her headphones and watching old episodes of Parks and Recreation. She’s on series seven now.

  Walking the dog helps, too. Dad doesn’t like her going out on her own, but more and more these days she is conscious of two entirely contradictory emotions: the desire never to let her family out of her sight and the desire to be alone. Walking Bruno seems to be the only way to achieve both these things. Last week she took him to Holt Country Park where, walking through the pine trees, she’d seen Cathbad, Dad’s druid friend, walking his bull terrier. She hadn’t recognised h
im at first because he wasn’t wearing his cloak. In fact, in jeans and a T-shirt with chemical symbols on it, he had looked like any other ageing hippie, like half the science lecturers at uni. It was the T-shirt she had noticed first, because it showed the chemical structure for Valine, one of her favourite amino acids. She’d slowed to look at it and the man had said, ‘Laura?’

  She’d only met Cathbad a few times before that, and he’d once given her a dream catcher for her birthday, but it had seemed quite natural to walk with him for a while. When Cathbad had said, ‘How are you feeling after last week?’ she found that she didn’t mind talking to him about it. In fact, she told him lots of things she had never told anyone before, including the fact that she had seen Tim’s spirit leave his body in the form of a bird. Cathbad had taken this quite seriously. ‘Many people believe that the soul leaves the body at the moment of death or just afterwards,’ he said. ‘That’s why nurses in hospices will often leave the window open in a room where someone has died.’

  ‘Our windows were broken,’ said Laura, ‘it could just fly straight through.’

  ‘Bruno cleared a path for Tim,’ said Cathbad. ‘It’s often the way.’

  ‘Do you think I really did see it?’ said Laura. ‘I’ve been wondering if I’m going mad.’

  ‘Never think that,’ said Cathbad. ‘Madness is just a word people use when they suppress their spiritual energies. You saw Tim’s spirit and that should be a great comfort to you. He has flown to the other realm, where he will watch over you all.’ He’d looked to the sky when he had said that and smiled. The memory of his smile is a comfort now.