He dropped his arm down at his side, as if the gun had suddenly become too heavy.
‘I was with him that day. I didn’t agree with the operation, and he knew it. But he asked me to go with him and I couldn’t refuse. We’re always weak when it comes to the people we love, aren’t we, Maureen?’
His gaze shifted to Connor for a moment. For the first time in her life, Maureen understood the true meaning of the word fear.
‘I’d been waiting for him in the car, but then I’d gone into the forest to take a leak. I heard all the noise, assumed that something had gone wrong, and decided to stay hidden. Then you appeared.’
He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He spoke calmly, as if the things he was talking about had nothing to do with him.
‘Avenir was an impulsive boy. Too impulsive, sometimes. Maybe it was my fault. I should have kept more of an eye on him, made sure he didn’t fuck up.’
Arben paused. He was looking straight at her but Maureen understood that he was not seeing her. He was reliving what had happened that day, just as she had relived it dozens of times in her mind.
‘I threw a stone into the undergrowth to distract you. When you moved away, I came out, took the gun and hid again. I know you’ve had a few problems because of that, but that’s not my concern.’
He smiled at her, quite gently, and that was the moment Maureen knew he was crazy. Crazy and dangerous.
‘And now we come to the reason for this encounter of ours. Do you think I want to kill you? No, my dear.’
As he talked, Arben Gallani had slowly approached Connor.
‘I think it’s time you found out what it means to lose a person you love.’
Oh no.
Maureen started screaming, without realizing she was doing it only in her mind.
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no . . .
Arben Gallani quickly raised the hand holding the gun and aimed it at Connor’s temple.
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no . . .
At the contact of the cold barrel, Connor instinctively closed his eyes. Maureen saw, or thought she saw, Arben’s knuckle turn white as he pressed the trigger.
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no . . .
One shot and Connor’s head exploded, splattering blood and brain-matter over the car next to him, blotting out the light of the headlamps. Maureen’s voice at last welled up out of her dry throat and, as Connor’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, taking with him their dreams and plans, she screamed, screamed endlessly with anger and despair and powerlessness.
Arben turned and looked at her with one eyebrow slightly arched, an expression of sick pity on his face. ‘Nasty, isn’t it?’
Angry tears poured from her eyes as she gasped, ‘I’ll kill you for this.’
Gallani shrugged. ‘That’s possible. But you’re going to live. In order to remember. And not only that . . .’
He dropped the gun on the ground and moved lazily towards her. When he came level with her, he struck her across the face with the back of his hand. Maureen fell back, surprised not to have felt any pain, as if her entire capacity for suffering had been absorbed in an instant by the death of the man she had loved. Gallani did not even grant her the dignity of fists. He continued slapping her across the face until she could no longer see his bloodstained hands. At last the pain came. She felt her body give way, and something hot and sticky covered her swollen eyes and coloured her tears. Arben Gallani gave a nod with his head. The man who had been holding her up let her slide to the ground, where he immediately pinned her down. Two other men came and lent a hand, squatting on either side of her to stop her moving her legs.
Arben took a switchblade from his pocket and snapped it open. The blade glinted for a moment in the light, like the diamond in his earring. He bent over her and started cutting her pants away from her body. Maureen heard the noise of the material tearing and felt the cold air on her skin as the blade stripped her. Through the veil of blood and pain that blurred her vision, she saw Gallani standing between her legs. Then she saw him loosen his belt and heard the noise of his zipper opening.
Arben then lay down on top of her. She felt the weight of his body, the roughness of his hands parting her legs, the pain as he thrust himself violently into her. Maureen took refuge in the memory of the beautiful things she had had and had now lost forever. The pain of that loss anaesthetized her temporarily against the physical pain she was feeling now. The man couldn’t take anything from her, because everything was already dead inside her. As the thrusts rocked her, the strange cross-shaped earring continued moving rhythmically a few inches from her face, glittering in the light of the headlamps, glittering, glittering . . .
Fate at last took pity on her, and she fainted. Before everything went dark, Maureen Martini found herself thinking how much it hurt to die.
CHAPTER 13
More darkness.
She was lying on sheets that felt slightly rough and, from the lingering smell of disinfectant in the air, she guessed that she was in a hospital. Her face felt strangely constricted. She tried to move her right arm, and heard the clinking sound of a drip knocking against the pole supporting it. With difficulty, she lifted her other hand to her eyes. She ran her fingers over what she realized was a bandage, held in place by a big Band-Aid. From somewhere in the distance, she heard voices whispering. That was immediately followed by footsteps, and then her father’s voice, full of an anxiety that not even affection could conceal.
‘Maureen, it’s me.’
‘Hi, Daddy.’
‘How are you feeling?’
How am I feeling? I’d like to disappear forever in the darkness.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied. ‘Where am I?’
‘In the Gemelli Hospital.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘They brought you here in a terrible state, and kept you under sedation for two days.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘When they abducted you, your lawyer, Franco, was at the window and saw everything. He immediately called the police. Unfortunately he couldn’t get the licence number, so all they could do was search for the model of car he described. Then the phone call came in . . .’
‘What phone call?’
‘A man with a foreign accent called your station and told them where they could find you.’
All at once, she remembered Arben Gallani’s voice whispering, ‘Nasty, isn’t it?’ after the noise of the gunshot. And that cross-shaped earring swaying and sparkling in front of her eyes as he . . .
She asked the question she had been dying to ask, stupidly hoping as she did so that none of it had been true. ‘What about Connor?’
‘I’m afraid Connor is dead. The US Embassy has taken care of all the formalities. His body will be transferred to the United States in a few days’ time. I don’t suppose this is any consolation to you, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘Connor has already become a legend. A legend that will live forever.’
Maureen had to make an effort not to scream.
I don’t want him to live forever. He was entitled to live his life and spend it with me.
And along with that thought came the terrible awareness that she was the cause of everything, because the day she had fired at Avenir Gallani, she had also killed Connor with the same bullet. She turned her head aside in order not to show the invisible tears she was weeping under the bandages, which became soaked with them. She wept in silence for herself and for that wonderful young man who had touched her life just long enough to say goodbye. Then her body yielded to the pain of it all, and even the tears ended.
‘When will they take the bandages off?’ she asked.
A second voice, a low one, joined Carlo Martini’s.
‘Chief Inspector, I’m Professor Covini, the Consultant Ophthalmologist here at the Hospital Gemelli. You’re a strong pe
rson, so I’m going to be extremely frank with you. I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s quite likely you had a congenital weakness you weren’t aware of, but the shock you suffered has caused what in medical terms is called a post-traumatic adherent leukoma. In layman’s terms, irreversible damage to the corneas of your eyes.’
It took a moment for what the doctor had said to sink in.
Then anger took hold of her, more violently than any man could ever possess her.
No.
She wouldn’t allow it.
She wouldn’t allow Arben Gallani to deprive her, not only of her sight, but also her revenge. Her voice, a voice she finally recognized, emerged from her mouth through clenched jaws.
‘Am I blind?’
‘Technically, yes.’
‘What does “technically, yes” mean?’
Maureen was glad not to see the expression on the doctor’s face that would corrrespond with his tone of voice.
‘There is the possibility of a surgical intervention, in other words, a transplant. It’s a recognized procedure with a reasonable success rate. In your case, unfortunately, there’s a problem. I’ll try to explain how it works. The cornea of a donor is always a foreign body to the eye that receives it. That’s why we have to use an appropriate cornea, in other words one compatible with the genetic type of the recipient. If we don’t, then when the new cornea is implanted in the receiving eye and isn’t recognized by the organism, we get the reaction that’s commonly called rejection. We’ve discovered from blood and hystogenetic tests that you’re a tetragametic chimera.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you’re the product of two eggs and two sperms. In other words, two different eggs from your mother were fertilized by two different sperms from your father. At a very early stage in their development the two embryos fused, giving rise to a single embryo in which two genetically different types of cell coexist. Unfortunately, in your case there exists a very severe problem of compatibility. In simple terms, there’s only a very tiny percentage of people who share this characteristic.’ Professor Covini paused briefly. ‘As I said, that’s the bad news.’
‘You mean after all that, there’s actually some good news?’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘I called your mother in New York,’ her father said at this point. ‘When I told her what had happened and explained your condition, she immediately got in touch with an acquaintance of hers, a doctor named William Roscoe. Right now, for someone with your pathology, he’s the best man in the world.’
‘That’s the good news I was referring to,’ Professor Covini said. ‘From a scientific point of view, it’s all highly complex, so I’m not going to bore you with facts you’d only find incomprehensible. The one thing that matters is that there is the possibility of a transplant. Professor Roscoe is one of the greatest experts in ocular microsurgery and has made incredible advances in embryonic stem-cell research. Unfortunately, you’ll have to go to the United States because here in Italy, thanks to the laws banning the use of stem cells in assisted fertilization, an operation like that is forbidden. The Professor and I had a long conversation on the phone, and what emerged from that is something not so much rare as unique.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘We have a donor who may be compatible. Professor Roscoe is able to use embryonic stem cells to inhibit the immune response to the donor’s corneas, in such a way as to avoid any possible rejection.’
‘The one condition is that we have to act fast,’ Carlo Martini said. ‘One of your mother’s biggest clients has put his private jet at our disposal. We can leave for America tomorrow and the operation can take place the day after. If you agree, of course – and if you feel up to it . . .’
‘Of course I feel up to it,’ she said. I’d feel up to it even if I had to suffer the pains of hell.
‘Good, very good,’ Professor Covini. ‘Now it’s better if we let her rest, Signor Martini. I think she’s had enough for today.’
‘All right, Professor.’
She felt her father’s lips on her cheek and heard his voice in her ear.
‘Goodbye, darling. I’ll see you soon.’
A thin hand she didn’t know rested on hers for a moment.
‘I wish you all the best, miss. And believe me, I’m not just saying that. Nobody should suffer what you’ve suffered.’
Maureen listened to their footsteps as they moved away from the bed. The noise of the door opening and closing left her alone in the silence of the room. The doctor must have put a sedative into the drip because she started to feel drowsy.
As she waited to drift into a few hours of non-thinking, she told herself she would do anything that was asked of her. Anything and more, for a single minute of sight.
That was all she needed.
Just one minute.
Long enough to see Arben Gallani’s mocking face blown away by a bullet at close range.
Let there be darkness.
PART THREE
New York
CHAPTER 14
Jordan drove the Ducati at moderate speed onto the access ramp that led to Brooklyn Bridge. The traffic was light at this time of day and, despite the powerful engine beneath him, he was content to join the orderly line of cars streaming across the bridge.
He had already passed Police Headquarters at One Police Plaza – the building where he had worked for years – and City Hall – that smaller-scale imitation of the White House where his brother exercised the power the city had granted him – without giving either a second glance. Right now, Water Street was just below him. If he had turned his head to the right, he would have seen the roof of the building where a young man named Gerald Marsalis had died bearing a name that wasn’t even his, but here, too, he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead.
It wasn’t that he was indifferent, just that he didn’t need to look at these places to know they existed. Each was clear in his memory, along with the price each had cost him.
Jordan Marsalis had often made decisions, knowing, but not caring, that he would have a price to pay later. That was why, one night three years earlier, he had taken the blame for an accident that was nothing to do with him.
He understood now that the journey he had been planning to make, and had had to put off, had actually started a long time ago. New York had only been a stopping-off point, one where he’d had to stay in order to pay his dues, before setting off again.
And this strange old heart of mine now sets sail across the sea . . .
Jordan drove off the bridge and along Adams Street until after the junction with Fulton Street, leaving Brooklyn Heights on his left. He passed Boerum Place and continued southward until he reached the area where Detective James Burroni lived.
He had phoned Burroni after yet another conversation with his brother at Gracie Mansion. Ever since Christopher had seen the corpse of his son sitting like a cartoon in the loft where he lived, he had been acting like a wild beast in a cage, and Jordan wasn’t sure if it was because of his anger as a father or because of his powerlessness as a Mayor.
After two weeks, the investigation into Gerald’s death had reached an impasse. The police had examined his life from every angle, revealing all kinds of unsavoury things, but not coming up with any usable leads. The media had had a field day – even, because of Jordan’s family connection with Jerry Ko, dredging up the old story of the automobile accident.
Then, when they could find nothing else to say, they had started making things up.
Luckily, LaFayette Johnson, although enjoying his sudden fame, had been prevented from causing any damage. Christopher had persuaded him not to talk to the media, thanks to the one incentive the man understood: money.
Jordan parked his bike across from Burroni’s house, the first in a row of houses with gardens that lined the dead-end street in a working-class neighbourhood. He switched off the engine and sat there for a moment, surprised by what he saw. He had imagined something diff
erent.
In front of the house was parked a white Cherokee, a fairly old model. All at once, the front door opened and a woman came out, holding a boy of about ten by the hand. She was a tall, blond, gentle-looking woman, with an expressive rather than pretty face. The boy, who was the spitting image of Burroni, had a metal brace on his right leg and limped slightly as he walked. Burroni emerged through the door behind them, carrying two suitcases.
When he looked up and saw Jordan, he stopped halfway along the garden path for a moment. Jordan realized he had recognized him in spite of the fact that he was still wearing his helmet. In the meantime, the woman and the boy had reached the car and opened the hatch at the rear.
Burroni put the two cases in the back. Jordan watched as he kissed his wife goodbye and bent to adjust a baseball cap on the boy’s head. He heard him say, ‘Bye, champ,’ as he hugged him.
Mother and son got in the car and the boy leaned out of the window for a last wave to his father, who was still standing on the sidewalk. Jordan watched until the car got to the intersection and turned right, then propped his bike on its kickstand, took off his helmet and crossed the street.
As he approached Burroni, he noticed that there was a slightly embarrassed look on his face, as if he had been caught in a moment of weakness.
‘Hello, Jordan. What do you want?’
His demeanour was cautious, his tone not hostile but not exactly cordial either. In spite of everything, Burroni still seemed to find it difficult to call him Jordan. Their relationship had neither improved nor deteriorated in the course of the investigation: it simply could not be called a relationship. They were still just two people forced to work together temporarily.
‘Hello, James. I wanted to talk to you – alone and in private. Do you have a moment?’
Burroni gestured in the direction in which the Cherokee had disappeared. ‘My wife and son have gone on vacation to my sister-in-law, on the coast, near Port Chester. I don’t have a moment, I have two weeks.’