‘Don’t you want to tell anyone?’
‘Why? To run the risk of becoming a freak, having people laugh behind my back when they pass me in the corridor?’ Maureen smiled and placed her hand on his arm. ‘I’d rather it stayed one of our little secrets, Jordan. Just you and me. Knowing that there’s another person in the world who believes I’m not crazy is enough. And you?’
‘What about me?’
Maureen was not deceived by his casual tone. ‘Jordan, I know you by now. I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m boasting, but maybe I know you better than you know yourself. Isn’t there something you want to talk about?’
‘No,’ he replied instinctively.
But then it struck him that it was instinct that had got him in trouble before. Right now, he had a desperate need to understand. And to do that he required Maureen’s help. This would be another thing that linked them, another little secret to share.
‘Actually, yes. There is something I want to talk to you about. There’s this person . . .’
‘Is her name Lysa, by any chance?’
Jordan was not surprised to hear that name on Maureen’s lips. ‘Yes, it is. You heard what Roscoe said, the role she played in this story.’
Jordan kept touching his bandaged right shoulder with his good hand, as if checking that the doctor had done a good job. At last, he gathered up his courage and confided everything to Maureen.
As he proceeded with his story, Maureen looked at his eyes. The blue of his gaze seemed, as he spoke, to cleanse itself of all the ugliness he had witnessed lately. By the time he had finished, his eyes were as clear as a May sky and Maureen knew everything.
She knew all about Lysa and what had happened between her and Jordan, and she also knew what Jordan had not yet understood.
With extreme naturalness, she told him.
‘It’s all so simple, Jordan. Lysa is in love with you and had the courage to tell you. You’re clutching at any straw you can find in order not to admit that you’re also in love with the woman.’
Jordan was struck by these words. Without even knowing Lysa, Maureen had called her ‘a woman’. It was something it had taken him a long time to do.
‘She’s someone who made a mistake and is paying for it,’ Maureen continued. ‘Even now, at this moment, while we’re sitting here over a coffee, and talking about her.’
She paused, forcing Jordan to lift his head and look at her.
When she spoke again, she tried to put into her voice all the passion she possessed. ‘Now it’s up to you to make sure she doesn’t spend the rest of her life paying.’
Jordan made one last feeble protest. ‘But she’s—’
‘She’s love, Jordan. When you find love, wherever it comes from, accept it as a gift and hold tight to it.’
Jordan would never forget the tremulous light of tears in Maureen’s eyes as she looked at him and saw someone else.
‘Love is so hard to find and so easy to lose . . .’
Jordan turned discreetly to look out at the street, in order not to intrude on that moment of grief.
The coffee break was over, and so was what they had to say to each other.
They left the Starbucks, which was full of people they didn’t know, and found themselves out on the sidewalk, among other people they didn’t know, people in a hurry, for whom the things they had just lived through would be a headline to be skimmed over as they leafed through the newspaper.
Maureen raised her arm, and was immediately in luck. An empty cab pulled up at the kerb, just past where they were standing.
Jordan walked to it with her. As Maureen opened the door and before getting in, she stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Good luck, my knight in shining armour.’
When she was seated she looked up at him through the open window.
‘Lysa doesn’t know it yet, but she’s a very lucky person. If I were you, I’d try to make her see that as soon as possible.’
Maureen gave the address to the driver, and the shabby yellow cab moved away from the kerb and edged back into the traffic. As Jordan watched, he thought with a pang in his heart that, even after all that had happened, nothing had changed for her.
Maureen Martini was leaving his life the same way she had entered it.
Alone.
CHAPTER 53
It was late afternoon by now and Jordan stood outside the door of Lysa’s room with his helmet in his hand and his backpack over his shoulder. He had been standing there for what seemed like forever, unable to make up his mind to knock. He recalled the words Maureen had spoken that morning, that lesson he had been forced despite himself to learn.
She’s love, Jordan. Love is so hard to find and so easy to lose . . .
He finally made up his mind and rapped gently at the door.
He waited for the voice inside to give him permission to enter before opening the door.
Lysa was sitting in bed, propped up by pillows. They had removed the drip, but there was still a blue mark on her arm where the needle had been. Her hair was loose and her face had lost its pallor. She looked beautiful in the light of the sunset coming in through the window.
She was surprised to see him and made an instinctive, typically feminine gesture to straighten her hair.
‘Hello, Jordan.’
‘Hello, Lysa.’
There was a moment’s silence. Lysa was glad there was no monitor by her bed to display the beating of her heart.
‘How are you?’ Jordan asked, feeling stupid at the question.
‘Fine,’ Lysa replied, feeling stupid at the answer. Then she pointed to the TV set, which was tuned to NY1, with the sound off. ‘I just saw an item about you on the news. You and that girl, Maureen Martini, are the heroes of the hour.’
She had spoken in a tone that was meant to be neutral, but had unconsciously altered her voice as she uttered Maureen’s name. Although she knew who Maureen was now, in Lysa’s mind, she was still the woman she had seen embracing Jordan, that evening in the Meatpacking District.
‘I would have been proud of all that once. Now I think it was just something that had to be done. As for Maureen . . .’ Jordan walked to the table and put his backpack and helmet down on it. ‘Do you remember Connor Slave, the singer who was kidnapped in Italy with his girlfriend and then killed? The guy in the apartment below ours plays his songs all the time.’
The way Jordan had said the word ‘ours’ clutched at her heart. It was only one syllable but the whole world was in it. A world she had lost.
‘That girlfriend was Maureen.’
Jordan sat down on the aluminium chair, settling comfortably against the back of it to support his bandaged shoulder.
‘Now this is all over, I can get my life back. I don’t know if she can. I hope so. She deserves to be happy.’
And not only her.
Lysa pointed again at the TV set. ‘Look, there’s your brother.’
Jordan turned to look at the TV. Christopher had appeared on the screen, standing in front of a lectern studded with microphones in the press conference room at New York City Hall. He was alone in front of an audience of journalists, like a bullfighter in front of a bull. The camera went in for a closeup and Jordan felt sorry for his brother. In the short time that had passed since the death of his son, he appeared to have aged ten years. From what Jordan could see, he must have refused the attentions of the make-up artists his image adviser imposed on him before any television appearance that might include close-ups.
Lysa picked up the remote and turned up the volume just as Mayor Christopher Marsalis was beginning his speech.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, before anything else I feel it is my duty to thank you for coming here in such large numbers. That makes what I am about to say both easier and more difficult.’
Christopher paused, silencing any comment and making the tension almost palpable. Jordan was well aware that his ability to communicate wasn’t studied, but part of his nature. His voice, though, was tired, like his
appearance.
‘All of you know about the tragic events that have affected my family recently. The loss of a child is one event that always makes us stop and think. When it happens in such a tragic way, as is the case here, we are led to examine our own actions more deeply and critically. Well, I have done that, and have come to the conclusion that, although I have tried to be a good politician and a good Mayor, I had forgotten – and this is something for which I will never forgive myself – to be a good father. And so I now find myself unable to answer the question any one of you could ask me: how do you think you can do something for our children, if you weren’t capable of doing something for your own?
‘For that reason, and for others of a personal nature, I have decided to tender my resignation. But before I leave the post that the people of this city entrusted to me, I have to perform an act of justice towards my brother, Lieutenant Jordan Marsalis of the New York Police Department. Some years ago, to protect me, he took the blame for an act for which I alone was responsible. I allowed that to happen, and it is another thing for which I will never be able to forgive myself.
‘I remember the words he said to me that evening: “A good mayor is much more important than a good cop.” The successful outcome of this case is due above all to him, and my reply now to his words then can only be: “An exceptional cop is better than a Mayor who does not deserve to be one.” I hope this city will bear this in mind and, if not reinstate him in the post he deserves, at least give him back the respect to which he is entitled.
‘That is all I have to say. My decision to resign is irreversible. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.’
Christopher turned his back on the audience, which by now was in an uproar, and disappeared through the door at the back of the room.
With the remote, Lysa switched off the TV. Then she turned to Jordan with a smile on her face. ‘I’m pleased for you.’
Jordan made a vague gesture. ‘Believe me, I don’t really care any more. But I’m pleased for him. It wasn’t easy to take a decision like that, nor to make that kind of speech in front of tens of thousands of people. I’m glad he found the strength and courage to do it.’
From her place in the bed, Lysa finally pointed to the backpack and helmet she had been unable, despite her efforts, to keep her eyes off.
‘Are you leaving the city?’
‘I was always going to.’
Lysa would have preferred Jordan not to look at her like that. She would have preferred him to go immediately, so that she could imagine him on his bike as it took him ever further away, minute by minute, because any distance would have been less than the distance she felt between them right now.
‘Nothing has changed for you, then,’ she whispered.
Jordan shook his head. ‘No, something has changed and I can’t pretend it never happened.’
He stood up, took the backpack and opened it. He searched inside, took out a helmet and placed it on the table next to his. Lysa recognized it immediately. It was the one he had bought her the morning they had gone to Vassar.
‘When I leave, I’d like you to put this on and leave with me. If you want to, of course.’
Lysa had to catch her breath before replying. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m not sure about anything else, but I am sure about that.’
Jordan approached the bed, leaned down, and placed his lips for a moment on Lysa’s. She smelled the good masculine smell of his skin and at last felt free to imagine. She bent forward and hid her face in her hands, her eyes full of tears.
She would have liked Jordan to kiss her again, but it struck her that there was plenty of time for that.
PART FOUR
Rome
EPILOGUE
The plane touched down, and through the window, Maureen saw the familiar landscape of Fiumicino airport, somehow homely, on a human scale, so unlike the hi-tech bustle of JFK in New York.
Not better, not worse, only different.
The stewardess welcomed the passengers to Rome in Italian and English. Maureen spoke both languages fluently, but at that moment both sounded foreign to her.
The plane came to a final halt.
Maureen took her hand baggage from the rack and joined the line heading towards the front exit and out of the plane. She then followed the flow to the baggage reclaim area. She knew there was nobody waiting for her outside, and that was fine with her.
Her father had phoned her from Japan, where he’d gone for the opening of a new Martini’s in Tokyo. He had heard about the outcome of the investigation in which she had been involved, and in his book, this made her an international star.
From Franco Roberto she had learned that her colleagues from the station had decided to arrive en masse to greet her at the airport. That was why she had brought her departure forward, finding a seat at the last moment on the flight immediately before the one she had booked. She didn’t feel triumphant, and didn’t want to have people around her to fete her as if she was.
Maureen removed her case from the carousel, put it on a cart and headed for the exit.
She was on her way to the taxi rank when someone came up to her.
‘Excuse me, are you Signora Maureen Martini?’
Maureen stopped and looked at him. He was a middle-aged Chinese of slightly above average height.
‘Yes. What can I do for you?’
‘For me, nothing, signora. But I’ve been asked by someone in America to give you this.’
He held out a small box, covered in plain wrapping paper but with an elegant gilded ribbon around it.
‘But what—?’
‘The person who asked me to perform this errand told me you would understand. He also told me to thank you, and to tell you he doesn’t need a reply. Welcome home, signora. Have a good evening.’
Without another word, he gave a little bow, turned and walked away, and was soon swallowed up in the crowd.
Maureen looked at the box for a moment and then slipped it into her hand baggage.
During the taxi ride from Fiumicino, she looked out at the familiar landscape of the Roman campagna.
When she had left her mother, Maureen knew that something had changed between them. In the past, they had been so bound up in their professional roles as to forget they were just two women. Her mother had embraced her and Maureen had been grateful to her for having been there to say goodbye in such a physical, emotional way, without worrying about what she was wearing. It was a beginning – a small one, perhaps – but at least not an ending. Only time would tell where it would lead.
She had seen Jordan Marsalis for the last time at Police Headquarters, where they had gone to sign the final statements regarding the case of William Roscoe. They had not discussed the case, but he had seemed in a good mood and had promised to look her up if he came to Italy. That might or might not happen, but one thing was certain: they would never forget each other, or the experience they had shared.
The taxi dropped her outside her building, and the driver helped her carry her luggage to the elevator.
The letter box was full of mail. Maureen took it out and skimmed through it as the elevator carried her up to the top floor. Most of it was junk or bills, but there was a letter from the Ministry of the Interior, plus a few letters from friends. Maureen had no desire to open them.
Only one piece of mail drew her attention.
It was a large brown padded envelope. The postmark indicated that it had been mailed in Baltimore. Inside was a CD and a sheet of paper, folded in two. She opened it and read the letter.
Dear Maureen,
We’ve never met in person although I’ve heard so much about you, I feel I know you very well. My name is Brendan Slave and I’m Connor’s brother. We are united by our regret for what he took away with him forever, but also by the joy of being able to enjoy the words and music he left as a witness to his genius. Since that tragic event, I’ve come into possession of all his things and, going through them, I found the enclos
ed CD. It contains an unpublished song, and from Connor’s notes I discovered that he wrote it for you, as you will see from your name on the disc. It seemed only right for you to have it. It’s yours, it belongs to you, and you can do with it whatever you like. You can reveal it to the world or keep it as a little secret inheritance of your own.
From what my brother told me, I know the two of you were very much in love, so please allow me to give you a piece of advice. Never forget him, but don’t build your life around his memory. I’m sure that’s what he would say to you if he could. You’re young, beautiful and sensitive. Don’t dismiss the possibility that you can live and love again. If you find it difficult, there will always be this last song of Connor’s to remind you how it’s done.
Kindest regards
Brendan Slave
By the time she had finished reading, the elevator had stopped at her landing, but she stood there, surrounded by her baggage, unable to move, her eyes streaked with tears. Like a child, she wiped them on the sleeves of her blouse, heedless of the marks her make-up left on the material. At last she picked up her bags and stepped out of the elevator. As she was looking for her keys, she felt the box she had been given by the Chinese man at the airport.
As soon as she entered, she went straight to the shutters and opened them, letting the air and the sun and the view of Rome into this apartment she had thought she would never see again.
Standing there, watching the sunset, she loosened the knot on the ribbon and opened the box.
Inside, on a layer of cotton wool, rested a severed human ear. There was an earring still in the lobe – a strange earring in the form of a cross, with a little diamond winking in the middle.
Maureen recognized it immediately.
From someone in America, the Chinaman had said.
Maureen thought again of the words Cesar Wong had uttered, the evening they had taken a short car-ride together, and he had informed her of his son’s innocence and asked her to help him prove it.