Maureen didn’t think it was worthwhile trying to explain. Instead, she changed the subject. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Nine-thirty. Time you got ready. Don’t forget, our appoint ment with Professor Roscoe is at eleven.’
How could I forget? I’ve been counting the hours and the minutes.
‘All right, I’ll get dressed.’
‘Perfect. I’ll order a cab for ten-thirty. Estrella, you stay here, and this time be careful what you’re doing.’
When her mother had gone, Maureen let Estella guide her back to the bathroom and help her to undress.
‘What a lovely body you have, miss. Not an ounce of fat. Just like a movie star.’
Maureen remained silent, picturing Estrella’s plump figure and middle-aged face, which must once have been beautiful. She turned on the faucet and let the warm water pour over her. She forced herself to talk in order not to think about what had happened and what was about to happen.
She dried herself and got dressed in clothes she had learned to recognize by touch, letting her hair be combed by hands not her own and accepting the judgement of eyes not her own.
‘There now, miss. Trust me. You look beautiful.’
Estrella’s words reminded her, strangely, of Duilio, the manager of the garage where she kept her car in Rome. God alone knew if he was still alive. God alone knew if Rome still existed. Or the world.
God alone knows if I’m still alive . . .
When her mother came to tell her that the cab was waiting in the street, she followed her out, hoping for an answer to that question.
CHAPTER 26
As soon as they got out of the cab, Maureen and her mother were greeted by a male nurse, and now another unknown man with toothpaste breath was pushing her in a wheelchair along the corridors of Holy Faith Hospital, the institution where she had had her operation. She knew New York well enough to remember that Holy Faith was on the Lower East Side, just below Tompkins Square Park. Several times during her brief stay she had wondered if you could see the tops of the trees from the window. And every time it had occurred to her that she might never see trees again.
Maureen had been silent during the taxi ride, letting her mother guide the driver, who spoke English with a strong Russian accent.
She had tried to imagine what he looked like.
His guttural accent had reminded her of another voice, inescapably connected to the image of a cross-shaped earring with a little diamond in the middle. She strove to think about something else, but the only thing that came into her mind was that strange experience she had had in the bathroom – the memory of it scared her. She wasn’t sure whether or not to mention it to Professor Roscoe, but in the end had decided against it. She imagined the surgeon telling her, in an embarrassed tone, that she might benefit from some psychological support. And the last thing she needed right now was people suspecting that what she had been through had affected her mind.
Holy Faith was a small hospital, focusing entirely on the field of ophthalmology. And in that field, Professor William Roscoe was one of the greatest specialists in the world. Although he was still relatively young, some said that his research into stem cells could well earn him the Nobel Prize before too long.
And, if everything had gone as he’d predicted, he would soon find a place of honour in Maureen Martini’s private pantheon.
Whoever was pushing her wheelchair made a right turn. There was the sound of a door opening and the wheelchair was pushed into a room – and then she felt her father’s hand brushing her cheek and heard his voice.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hello, Daddy.’
‘Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.’
‘I second that, Miss Martini.’ The voice of Professor Roscoe. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Quite well.’
‘I don’t suppose you got much sleep last night?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘It’s normal to feel nervous. Nurse Wilson, pehaps you’d give Miss Martini a tranquillizer.’
‘Actually, I’d prefer to do without.’
‘Please, Maureen.’ Her mother’s voice. ‘Do what the Professor tells you.’
She heard footsteps approaching. The nurse gave her a plastic cup containing a pill and another cup with water, and helped her to get them both down.
‘Good,’ Roscoe said. ‘Nurse Wilson, would you be so kind as to lower the blinds and switch on the little lamp on my desk?’
Maureen heard the noise of a stool that the doctor was moving in order to sit next to her.
‘Excellent. Now let’s see how we’re doing.’
A slight pressure under the chin to lift her head, and then two expert hands carefully removing the Band Aids.
First one . . .
oh God please please God
. . . then the other
please God please please
There was the touch of cool air on her closed eyelids. Time seemed to be standing still, and so was her breath. It felt to her as if everybody in the world was outside the window, looking in at the drama being played out in that room.
‘Now, Miss Martini, I want you to slowly open your eyes.’
Maureen did as she was told . . .
please God please God please!
. . . and saw only more darkness.
She felt her heart explode in her chest, as if it had wanted to give one last noisy sign of its presence before it stopped beating forever.
Then out of that darkness there came a sudden light and she saw a figure of a man leaning over her with his hands raised towards her face.
A moment later, pitch blackness again.
Maureen heard her own voice emerge almost breathless from her dry mouth. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Just wait,’ Professor Roscoe said calmly. ‘It’s perfectly normal. You have to give your eyes time to get used to the light.’
Maureen closed her eyes again. There was a slight burning sensation in them, as if they had been sprinkled with sand.
When she opened them again she saw the most beautiful dawn in the world. She saw a soft pink light rise over the office and a man with the same face as before leaning over her in a white coat and some colourful paintings on the bright walls and a small lighted lamp like a beacon on the desk and a red-headed nurse at the back of the room and her mother in a blue suit and her father with a hopeful expression on his face and the usual regimental tie around his neck and she finally managed to allow herself, after all that had happened, the luxury of unbridled tears of joy.
The man in the white coat smiled and spoke to her, and at last Professor Roscoe had a face as well as a voice.
‘How do you feel now, Miss Martini?’
She was silent for a moment, then she, too, smiled. ‘Professor, has anyone ever told you you’re a very handsome man?’
William Roscoe stood up, took a step back, and grinned. ‘Yes, they have, Maureen. But this is the first time a woman has said it after being treated by me. Usually, as soon as they get a good look at me they stop saying it.’
Mary Ann Levallier and Carlo Martini had been silent, as if not quite sure what was happening. Now they ran to hug their daughter, without realizing that they were also hugging each other.
‘Now, then, after this understandable outburst, may I continue with my work?’ Roscoe held out a hand to Maureen. ‘Let me take a proper look. I’d like you to get up slowly. You might feel slightly dizzy, after all this time without sight.’
He helped her to the other end of the room, where he sat her down on a stool in front of what looked like a complex piece of machinery and placed her chin on a rest.
‘Don’t worry. It looks worse than it is.’
Roscoe sat down facing her and started a careful examination. There were flashing blue lights and instruments that tickled her eyeballs and made her eyes water.
‘Good, very good.’
Roscoe stood up and helped her to her feet.
‘As
I said, you’ll have to wear dark glasses for a while longer. The sense of discomfort will gradually ease. Nurse Wilson will give you an antibiotic to be taken in drop form. I’d also like to prescribe a collyrium – which is a special eyewash. Don’t use computers, avoid television as much as possible, try not to tire yourself, get as much sleep as you can, and come back and see me in a week for a check-up. Depending on how well you’re recovering, we’ll decide then when to insert the second lot of cells. Well, that’s it. As far as I’m concerned, you can go.’
As they exchanged the ritual farewells, Maureen took a moment to fix Professor William F. Roscoe in her memory. He was three or four inches taller than her, not exactly a handsome man but certainly attractive, with his greying temples, healthy, outdoor complexion and slim build, not to mention his contagious smile and natural ability to communicate.
As she was wheeled back to the main door of Holy Faith Hospital, Maureen looked around her with wonder. The pale green tiles on the walls were like a Roman mosaic, the sun waiting for them outside like the light off the Bay of Naples.
She gave her father a farewell hug. He could now go back to Rome in a very different frame of mind from the one in which he had travelled to New York.
The ride back to Park Avenue was another feast for the eyes. Mary Ann Levallier was silent while her daughter savoured the colours and the images. She felt as if she could actually see the noise of the traffic and smell the odours of the city. The electronic clock next to the Virgin Store on Union Square was a work of art, not just a monument to the passage of time, and Grand Central Station was a magical place where trains set off for all kinds of wonderful destinations.
When they entered the apartment they were greeted joyfully by Estrella, who followed Maureen apprehensively to her room, as if she still needed a guide. Maureen asked to be left alone, only requesting Estrella to lower the blinds before she went out.
The release of tension suddenly sent her tumbling into a pit of exhaustion. She sat down on the bed and started taking off her shoes, then lay down and decided to commit a brief transgression, a treat after all the time she’d spent listening to faceless voices on the radio.
She picked up the remote, switched on the TV, and hopped to the Eyewitness Channel.
‘Investigations continue into the mysterious death of Chandelle Stuart, sole heir to the Stuart steel fortune, found dead two days ago in her apartment in the Stuart Building on Central Park West . . .’
The image of a dark-haired, thin-faced young woman appeared on the screen.
‘Although the authorities have been keeping many details of the case confidential, reliable sources are linking this homicide to that of Gerald Marsalis, better known as Jerry Ko, the Mayor’s painter son, found killed in his studio three weeks ago. It’s believed that a press conference . . .’
Maureen had stopped listening to the words. A man’s face had come up on the screen.
A face Maureen knew.
She had seen it that very morning, during what she had taken for a hallucination.
It was the man who had smiled at her from a mirror, with a face as red as if it was covered with the blood of a thousand wounds.
CHAPTER 27
The taxi stopped at the end of Carl Schurz Park, near Gracie Mansion. After paying the turbanned driver, Maureen got out and set off along the slightly sloping asphalt path that led to the official residence of the Mayor of New York. From the right came the cries of children in the playground. Below was the little square with the statue of Peter Pan.
Maureen came to a bench and sat down. She had the strange feeling that she was being led against her will to play a role someone else had assigned her, in a story she didn’t understand.
Anyone looking at her would have simply seen an attractive young woman, resting in a park for a moment before resuming her day. And that was exactly what she would have liked to be right now. A normal person with a normal life, without memories, especially without memories that weren’t hers. The discovery she had made the previous day had left her shaken. The violent images that had come to her out of the blue had turned out be messages from a place where a murder had been committed.
Maureen took off her dark glasses and put them down beside her on the bench.
When she had seen the image of that murdered young man on television, and had discovered who he was and what had happened to him, it had taken her several minutes to recover her composure. Then she had picked up the telephone and called Professor Roscoe at Holy Faith Hospital.
‘Hello, Maureen. Is something wrong? Are you feeling all right?’
‘No, I’m fine. No physical problems, if that’s what you mean. I just wanted to ask you something.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Do you know the identity of the donor? Do you know whose corneas you gave me?’
There was a pause at the other end. Maureen wasn’t sure how to interpret it. Maybe Roscoe would say he didn’t know, or maybe that he knew but couldn’t tell her.
‘No. We’re informed that organs are available, and we’re told the genetic type of the donor, but not his or her identity. The organs are removed elsewhere and for reasons I’m sure you can understand, the whole thing is completely confidential.’ He paused. ‘Maureen, I know how you’re feeling. It’s quite understandable, especially when you’ve been through such a terrible ordeal. But you have to think about yourself now and nobody else.’
Maureen had again been tempted to tell him about the things she had been seeing, but she suspected that if she did, she would just be going from one cage to another, gawped at by people who thought her deluded.
No, this was something she would have to deal with by herself for the moment.
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘I know I am. Not because I’m conceited, but because I’ve had a lot of experience of these things. Just go with the flow, take what life has to offer. And if you don’t like what life has to offer, I’m sure you’ll find the strength within yourself to change it.’
She had said goodbye to Professor William Roscoe, the man who, in saving her from one nightmare, had unwittingly landed her in another. She had put the phone down and looked around the room, wondering whose eyes she was seeing it with. And then she had found herself in the same state of mind as the day before, when she was still waiting to know if she would regain her sight or not.
With one difference.
This time she had actually been able to see night turn to dawn after all those sleepless hours spent trying to find a way out of the impenetrable forest of her thoughts.
In the end, she had clung to the only rational thing she still had left. She was a police officer and she might be able to help solve a murder. How, she didn’t yet know.
She was still afraid of the reactions she would get from her family and colleagues, but that was a risk she had to take. And that was why she now found herself sitting on a green-painted bench in the park beside Gracie Mansion. She was aware that Mayor Marsalis knew her mother well, and she hoped that this, as well as evidence of her impressive service record in Italy, would somehow mitigate the enormity of what she was planning to tell him.
But now that she was about to do it, her courage failed her for a moment. She wondered if a guilty person felt the same way before turning themselves in. Picking up her dark glasses and putting them on to give herself at least the semblance of shelter, she stood up, took a deep breath and walked towards the gate.
CHAPTER 28
‘How is it possible you don’t have a single fucking lead?’
Christopher Marsalis stood up from the chair behind his desk. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie, and his dark jacket was thrown over the back of the chair.
He then ran his hand through his white hair, looked at the two men sitting in silence facing him, and sat down again.
‘I’m sorry. I’m just a bit nervous.’
Jordan had never before heard his brother apologize for anything.
>
‘Mr Mayor,’ Detective James Burroni said, ‘I assure you we’re following every avenue. We have men interviewing all the teaching staff who were at Vassar College at the time Chandelle Stuart was there. We’re talking to United Features Syndicate, who publish Peanuts. We’ve even contacted the heirs of Charles Schulz to see if there’s anything that might prove useful in the notes and papers in their possession.’
Christopher moved his chair away from the desk, trying to find a more comfortable position. There were dark circles under his eyes. Looking at him, Jordan guessed that he hadn’t slept much since this whole thing had started.
‘Detective, I’m sure you’re doing all you can. What I can’t stand is knowing that we’re in here twiddling our thumbs while a serial killer is out there planning another homicide.’
Jordan got up out of his chair. ‘I’m not convinced about that. A serial killer usually loves publicity. He wants his actions to be known to the media – that’s how he gets his kicks. In this case, he hasn’t made the slightest attempt to break the blackout we’ve managed to maintain so far regarding his MO.’
‘That may be true, but I can’t think of a better name for someone who goes around killing people using a comic strip as inspiration.’
‘That comic strip has to be the key to everything. But I can’t yet see how.’
Jordan started walking around the room, once again thinking aloud in a way that Burroni had by now learned to recognize and respect. He listened in silence to his cold analysis of the facts, as impersonal as if one of the victims wasn’t his nephew and he wasn’t in the presence of the victim’s father.
‘Let’s think. We have a person who carries out murders inspired by comic strips. The first victim is an important figure, not only a famous painter, but also the son of the Mayor of New York. The second victim – a woman this time – also belongs to a very high-profile New York family. And this new homicide also points in the same direction: a world-famous comic strip called Peanuts.’
Jordan paused, as if an idea had flashed into his mind for a moment and immediately vanished again.