FRIDAY MORNING
I set off straight away, crossing the piazza and taking an even narrower road on the far side that also climbed steeply. A sign on a lamppost indicated that the hotel was barely two hundred metres away, and Oscar and I sprinted there in less than a minute. A doorman in uniform greeted me, and I asked him where I might find my daughter, who was on a tour of inspection of the wedding venue. He pointed off to the right.
‘If you go around the corner of the building, sir, you’ll find yourself on the terrace. I imagine that’s where they are. The terrace gives onto the dining room and the pool is just below it, and most of the wedding receptions take place out there.’ He shot a suspicious look at Oscar. ‘Probably best if you stay outside, because you have the dog with you.’
Oscar looked vaguely offended, but I had other things on my mind than hurt canine feelings so I thanked the doorman and we hurried off. When we came to the end of the building, I turned to the left and a magnificent panorama opened up before me. I found myself at the start of a long terrace paved with terracotta tiles, enjoying a splendid view over an inviting-lookinginfinity pool and on down the steep hillside covered with olive groves and luxury villas, towards the city of Florence visible below in all its majesty. More importantly, as far as I was concerned today, I could see Anna, Tricia and Shaun halfway along the terrace talking to a young woman in a smart blue and white uniform.
I hurried along the terrace and murmured my apologies for lateness as I joined the group. Anna gave me a little smile in which I detected relief and no small amount of surprise. She fended off Oscar’s boisterous greeting with one hand while putting her other hand on my arm and leaning close enough to my ear to be able to whisper at me. ‘Ciao,carissimo, I knew you would make it.’
Tricia introduced me to the young woman, the events manager, who spoke excellent English and continued to extol the virtues of the hotel. In fairness, I had to agree that she had a point. The position alone was magnificent, and from what I could see of the facilities, these also looked first class. I had little doubt that hospitality here wouldn’t come cheap and, as I had promised I would be contributing towards the cost of the event, I found myself wondering how much this was likely to eat into my savings. Still, I reminded myself, Tricia was my only daughter and I loved her dearly, so I gritted my teeth and listened in without comment as the young woman asked whether they would like French champagne or Prosecco. I was secretly impressed that I successfully managed to resist the temptation to suggest that Prosecco would do just fine.
We followed the events manager down a flight of steps to the poolside, where there was a large, flat area with tables and chairs and an outdoor bar at one end. I had put Oscar on his lead and I kept a firm hold of the end to prevent him from diving into the pool. Having a wet Labrador wandering around somewhere likethis was unlikely to endear me to the management. There were a couple of people in the pool and half a dozen more stretched out on sun loungers on the far side. There was a barman behind the bar and three or four of the tables were occupied with people enjoying a refreshing drink. Although it was barely mid-morning, it was already very hot and I could sympathise with my dog’s desire to leap into the water.
The events manager led us across to the bar and asked if she could offer us something to drink. The others accepted some champagne while I opted for an ice coffee, and we took our drinks over to an unoccupied table. As I reached it, I glanced across at the occupant of a table just a little further along, and as I did so, everything changed in an instant.
Sitting there was a dark-haired woman, sipping what looked like a large brandy. She was wearing dark glasses, but there could be no mistake – this was none other than Emilia Cortez Garcia.
As I recognised her, she recognised me, and I saw her tense, hands on the arms of her chair, ready to spring up and run. I was little more than twenty feet from her and, although I don’t need reminding that I’m not getting any younger, I knew I could get to her before she could escape. The same thought must have permeated through to her, and I saw her shoulders droop. She reached for her glass of brandy and took a mouthful. Without taking my eyes off her for a moment, I caught hold of Anna’s arm and whispered back in her direction.
‘Call Virgilio. You’ve got his number. Tell him the suspect is here, and I have her in my custody. Okay?’
I heard her give a murmur of comprehension, laced with curiosity, but I was already on the move. Accompanied by Oscar, I walked slowly over to Emilia’s table, pulled up a chair and sat down. She appeared to ignore my presence completely and made no comment. I waited for a few moments before pullingout my phone, pressing Record, and placing it on the table. She didn’t appear to notice. I gave it a little longer before finally speaking.
‘The police have found your fingerprints on a little shovel. They know it was you. Want to talk about it?’
Oscar had positioned himself alongside me, sitting to attention doing his ‘well-trained police dog’ impression. Sensing the tension in the atmosphere, he made the first move. He got up and walked the couple of steps over to the Spanish woman’s side, where he sat down primly and rested his nose on her knee. This simple action broke the ice, and I saw her reach down to stroke his ears. As she did so, she looked across the table at me.
‘You have a lovely dog.’
I gave her a little smile. ‘He’s my best friend. We all need friends.’ I didn’t try to hurry her, aware of the emotions that must be coursing through her. I didn’t have too long to wait.
‘I’m not sorry.’ We both knew to what she was referring. Once again, I said nothing and let her speak. ‘They deserved to die. You can’t imagine how much blood they had on their hands.’
I nodded slowly. ‘I think I can, actually. I’ve been learning a lot about the arms trade, and TXA Supplies in particular, over the past few days. Their weapons have been responsible for thousands of deaths, I’m sure.’ I paused for a few moments before risking a question. ‘Feel like telling me why you decided to take the law into your own hands?’
I had a long wait before she reacted. Finally, she reached up and pulled off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but I saw no tears. ‘I expect you know by now, or at least the Italian police know by now, that I’m a human rights lawyer by profession. At least, I was until last year when I decided that nothing was going to change unless I took direct action to bring about that change. I worked in my home town for years, processing andsupporting asylum requests from refugees of some of the bloodiest conflicts of the century, and the realisation grew in me that, as nobody else seemed to be doing anything about it, it was up to me to act.’
Although I could see her eyes, they weren’t trained on me any more. They were directed out over the olive trees towards the beauty of Florence below. I saw her take a few breaths before continuing.
‘I used to deal with people from all over Africa and the Middle East and I heard some gut-wrenching stories of appalling atrocities. My colleagues told me that I’d eventually get used to it and inured to it, but I didn’t. As the years went by, I felt a growing anger burning me up inside and, finally, I knew I had to do something. Time and time again, the name that came up has been TXA.’ She suddenly turned her head and looked me straight in the eye, an expression of anguish, but also of bitter resolution, on her face. ‘There’s an old Arabic expression that says that if you want to kill a serpent, you have to cut off its head.’ She looked away again and her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. ‘That’s what I came here to do, and I did it. And I would do it again.’
Behind her, I saw movement and spotted Virgilio and Marco at the top of the steps leading down from the terrace. As they caught my eye, I gave them the slightest shake of the head, telling them to back off for now, and I saw them stop. I returned my attention to Emilia.
‘Tell me about Shabah.’
Her eyes focused on me again and for a moment, she looked surprised. ‘You found out about that?’
‘The police checked Angel’s emails.’
After a few seconds’ pause, she answered. ‘I never met Shabah and I don’t even know if he exists.’ She immediatelystopped and corrected herself. ‘That’s not true – even ifhedoesn’t exist, there are hundreds, thousands of Shabahs out there. People who’ve seen more horrors than you and I can possibly imagine, people who’ve lost loved ones and have nothing to live for except revenge. I used his name, but I could just as easily have taken the name of any number of freedom fighters.’
‘So when Tristan Angel went to the duomo to meet Shabah, it was you he met?’ She gave the slightest nod and I carried on. ‘Why did you choose the confessional and the plastic pistol?’
‘The last time I saw Angel in Paris, he was boasting to me about this new sort of weapon that didn’t show up on metal detectors. The way he was talking, it was clear he was quite happy to sell these to anybody, to commit any manner of atrocity. I told him I’d never seen one, and he said he’d invite me to Florence and show me, because he had one in his collection. It was at that moment that I resolved to turn his own evil weapon against him. The choice of the duomo and the confessional was deliberate. I thought that if I killed him in such an iconic place, people might sit up and take notice, and people in the arms trade might change their ways.’ She reached for her glass and took another sip of cognac. ‘Thinking back on it now, I was very naïve. They’ll never change. That’s why I had no alternative but to kill him.’
‘And you thought that, by killing Angel, you would cut off the head of the snake, but why kill Hicks as well?’
‘He was the worst of the lot.’ Her eyes were trained on me again now and there was real fire in them. ‘It only took me a matter of minutes after meeting him to realise that if I killed Angel, Hicks would take over and simply press on with the same unscrupulous policies, maybe even worse.’ She dropped her eyes to Oscar and I saw him lick her hand. When she spoke, I could hardly hear her words. ‘He had to die. There was no alternative.’
