The Killer in My Eyes (10 page)

Maureen had no time to reply, because at that point the lights went down and the audience fell silent.

From the darkness had come a soft guitar arpeggio, a sound so delicate as to be quite sensual, with a delay effect that seemed to make it roll around the walls of the auditorium. Maureen had the impression it was echoing in her head. Then a light had struck the centre of the stage from above, and into that beam, so white as to appear fluorescent, Connor Slave had stepped, wearing a dark suit with a Korean collar that was almost monastic in its plainness. His head was tilted towards the audience and his arms hung casually at his sides. In his hands he held a violin and a bow.

A synth pad had been added to the sound of the guitar, a low electronic vibration that seemed to move straight from the ground into the spectators’ bodies. Then Connor had slowly lifted his head and started singing. The unique charm of his hoarse voice had immediately relegated the accompaniment to the background. For a few blissful moments, Maureen had had the absurd sensation that the song was dedicated exclusively to her – then she had looked around at the dimly lit auditorium and saw from the expressions on the other spectators’ faces that everyone there was feeling the same thing.

It was a song called ‘The Buried Sky’, a gentle melody with anguished lyrics that some critics had accused of being blasphemous. The song was about Lucifer, the rebel angel, meditating in the darkness of hell on the consequences of his act, an act not so much of rebelling against God as of daring to think for himself.

How strange it was to choose a day

and say, ‘The day has come to pass’ –

a day that on the hill of heaven

was nothing but a blade of grass.

The day I disobeyed the rules –

the game would never be the same.

How strange it was to see the sky

and say, ‘Now I don’t need the light’ –

then stand and watch the sun go down

and bring about eternal night.

The day I took the rebel’s mark –

condemned myself to endless dark.

Another voice had joined Connor’s then, a voice as pure as crystal, and a beautiful female singer had appeared from the shadows at the back of the stage to share the spotlight with him. Their two voices were completely different in timbre and colour, and yet they had harmonized so perfectly as to make them one voice. That vocal union had embodied everything the song was about: the light and the dark, the regret and the pride, the sense of setting out on a journey from which there was no return.

Instinctively, Maureen had felt a sharp sense of jealousy towards the clear-voiced girl who was sharing a fragment of Connor’s life with him on the stage. It was hard to believe that her obvious passion and devotion were just pretence.

But the feeling went as suddenly as it had come, because at that point Connor Slave had stopped singing and lifted the violin to his shoulder. When he started playing, it was as if he had disappeared, leaving only the music. His body was there, in front of everyone, but he was surely elsewhere, in some parallel universe. Perhaps influenced by the words of the song, and by that supernatural talent, Maureen had become convinced that, if the devil did really exist, at that moment He was there, playing the violin.

For the rest of the concert, Maureen was kept spellbound by this man. He was with the audience listening to him and with the band accompanying him and with the music he was playing, and he was with whoever wanted to go with him – and at the same time he was nowhere and belonged to nobody.

As she watched him receiving the tumultuous applause at the end of the concert, Maureen had found herself thinking that for someone like Connor Slave, real life was hard work, and the only time he felt free was during those few hours up there on the stage, making music.

Then the curtain had fallen, the lights gone up, and the magic had ended. Marta turned to her with a triumphant expression. ‘What did I tell you? Is he great or what?’

‘Absolutely extraordinary.’

‘And there’s more – a little surprise. That’s why I wanted you to come. Guess where we’re going for dinner?’

‘Marta, I don’t think I—’

‘Maureen, your father owns one of the best restaurants in Rome, probably in the whole of Italy. You’re my friend, and by some incredible conjunction of the stars, this evening I even managed to persuade you to come out. In your opinion, where else could I take a brilliant American who’s hungry, in every sense of the word, for Old Europe?’

Marta wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was in charge this evening, and that was it.

They waited outside Connor’s dressing room for him to change, and after the introductions, Marta led them towards a dark Lancia Thesis waiting for them outside the theatre. She sat down next to the driver, leaving Maureen and Connor sitting side by side in the back. They had started talking and getting to know each other as they moved through the traffic of Rome towards her father’s restaurant in the Via Dei Gracchi.

‘How come you speak English so well?’ Connor asked her. ‘You sound more American than I do.’

‘My mother’s from New York.’

‘And she not only lives in Rome but has you as a daughter? What a lucky woman.’

‘Not exactly. She and my father are divorced. She went back to live in the United States.’

From the front seat Marta butted into the conversation in her Roman-accented English. ‘You may have heard of her mother. She’s a very well-known lawyer. Her name’s Mary Ann Levallier.’

Connor had turned to her. ‘
The
Mary Ann Levallier?’

‘That’s right.’

From her tone of voice, Connor quickly gathered that this wasn’t a subject to pursue. He opened the car window a little, as if to relax the slight tension inside the car: a touch of sensitivity that made him rise in Maureen’s estimation. She had known other people in showbusiness, especially musicians, and had never felt especially attracted to them, coming to the reluctant conclusion that few of them were as good as their music.

Connor smiled. ‘Well, you know what I do for a living. How about you?’

In her excitement, Marta had tried to answer for her. ‘Oh, Maureen’s a—’

From the back seat, Maureen had stopped her with a glance before she could launch into a sales pitch.

‘Maureen’s a . . . a really bright girl.’

At that point, they had arrived at the restaurant, and all conversation ceased. Once inside, Maureen and her friends were warmly greeted by the head waiter, Alfredo, who had been there forever and had known her since she was a child.

‘Hello, Maureen,’ he said, embracing her. ‘What a surprise! Having you here is a real event. A pity your father is away. He’s in France right now, selecting wine. I hope you’ll accept this poor old man in exchange . . .’

He led them to a table, and she and Connor found themselves sitting opposite each other.

Over dinner, they had continued talking. As the conversation flowed and became increasingly intimate, Marta, bless her heart, had discreetly faded into the back ground. Maureen remembered the exact moment when Connor finally captured her heart. It was when she asked him what kind of music he listened to.

‘My own.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

Maureen had looked at him, trying to read vanity and conceit in his eyes. And all she found was the serene gaze of a man who knew he had everything he needed.

‘But it isn’t easy music to listen to,’ she said gently.

‘Nothing’s easy. Maybe I’m not easy either.’

‘Then your success shows that people aren’t as stupid as we think.’

Connor had smiled in amusement, as if at a joke he had been mulling over for some time. ‘They aren’t as stupid as we think – and they’re never as intelligent as we’d like.’

Since that moment, they had hardly been out of each other’s sight.

The telephone rang in the bedroom, reminding the lovers that, beyond that view that seemed to go on forever, there was still a world with its own agenda. Reluctantly, Maureen broke free of Connor’s embrace and went to pick up the phone from the night-table.

‘Hello?’ she said in English.

‘Hi, Maureen, it’s Franco.’

Maureen sighed. The world could not be kept out forever, even from the happiest of rooms.

‘Hi, Franco. What’s up?’

‘They’ve fixed the date for the hearing. Next Thursday morning.’

‘So soon?’

‘It’s such a high-profile case, there’s no way they’d have agreed to postpone it any longer. What about your end? Have they suspended you?’

‘Officially, no. But I’ve been assigned to the Academy as a consultant. In practice, I’m a kind of janitor.’

‘I know it’s hard, Maureen. But if possible, I’d like you to drop by my office today. There are some proxies I need you to sign.’

‘How about in an hour?’

‘Perfect, I’ll expect you and . . .’ There was a pause at the other end of the line, then: ‘Listen, don’t worry.’

‘No, I’m not worried.’

‘Everything’s fine, Maureen.’

‘Sure, everything’s fine.’

She put the phone down again, gently, although she would have liked to smash it down on the glass table-top.

Everything’s fine.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t fine, because of the work she’d always done with passion and a desire for the truth. It wasn’t fine, because of all the people who’d once assured her of their total trust in her, but who were now keeping out of her way. It wasn’t fine, because of the sunset, and the wonderful man who was with her, and who had come so unexpectedly into her life.

It wasn’t fine, because just two weeks earlier, Chief Inspector Maureen Martini, working out of the Casilino station of the Rome police, had killed a man.

Maureen slipped into the gloom of the garage 100 yards from her apartment, where she kept her car. When he saw her come in, Duilio, the manager, emerged from his glass-fronted cubby-hole and came towards her. He was a man whose age placed him out of the running, but in his friendly way he had always made it known that he had a soft spot for her. Maureen had grown to accept this fictitious courtship, which had lasted a long time now without ever becoming invasive or suggestive.

‘I’ll get the car for you, Signora Martini. It’s always a pleasure to drive a treasure like that.’

Maureen handed him the keys. ‘Enjoy.’

Duilio went down the ramp and disappeared into the darkness. As she waited to hear the sound of her Porsche Boxster coming back up, Maureen couldn’t help thinking about what a lucky woman she might be considered, in normal circumstances.

Her family had owned Martini’s Restaurant for as long as she could remember, and over time her father Carlo had transformed it from a simple trattoria into one of the leading lights of Italian cuisine. When he had met and married her mother, the adventure had even continued beyond the ocean and there was now a Martini’s in New York, a favourite haunt of movie and TV stars. In the meantime, her mother had become one of the best criminal lawyers in that city, spending more and more time over there, with the result that their marriage had gradually unravelled.

Maureen’s relationship with her mother had never really been close. Mary Ann Levallier’s cold pragmatic temperament left little room for the kind of affectionate give and take that existed between the girl and her father. And so, at the time of the divorce, Maureen had chosen to remain in Rome with Carlo and, after gaining her law degree, had decided to join the police.

Maureen remembered only too well how badly her mother had taken it when she had told her of her plans. They had been sitting in the restaurant in the gardens of the Hilton, which was where she stayed whenever she came to Rome. Mary Ann was, as always, perfectly dressed, in a Chanel suit, and perfectly groomed.

‘The police, you say? What foolishness. I was thinking of a future for you in New York. In my firm we handle many cases in conjunction with Italy. There could be a great future for a bilingual lawyer with your training.’

‘Just this once, Mother, can’t you forget about what you want for me and think about what I want for myself?’

‘On the basis of what you’ve just told me, I doubt you have a very clear idea of what you want.’

‘No, unfortunately for you, I know
exactly
what I want. It’s a question of attitude. I want a job that allows me to catch criminals and put them in prison, regardless of what I earn. Your work is the exact opposite: you help criminals to get out of prison, and make a good living at it.’

Her mother had surprised her by using what, for her, was very explicit language. ‘You’re an asshole, Maureen.’