Free The View From the Tower by Charles Lambert Page A

gesture of delicacy, and stares at the wall. Giacomo is impressed again. After a moment, with a tiny shake of her shoulders, Helen goes on: “I stayed there for some time, I didn’t really look at my watch, twenty minutes maybe, half an hour.” She sighs. “I had the start of a headache, I thought a walk might make it better, so I left the library and decided to wander around the centre a little, look at a few shops, and wait for it to go. Walking usually helps. I didn’t need to be at work until twelve, you see…”
    All at once her tone has changed, become persuasive, that odd unnecessary you see has given her away. All at once, she needs to be believed. But why, in God’s name, did she lie in the first place? He couldn’t believe it when she told him in the car on the way to the morgue. I’ve done something foolish, she said. You won’t let me down, will you? For old times’ sake? The man must have noticed as well because he leans back in his chair, as obvious in his way as she has been in hers, and caps his pen. Secret service, decides Giacomo. And now I’m implicated, damn her.
    “You must be tired, Signora Di Stasi,” the man says before Giacomo can intervene. “I’ll arrange for you to be taken home.” He opens a drawer and takes out a card, which he gives to her. “I shall certainly be in touch, but if you would like to speak to me again–”
    “I’ll take you home,” Giacomo says as Helen puts the card into her pocket. But the man shakes his head.
    “I think it might be wiser, Dottor Mura, if you returned to your hotel.”
    Giacomo, affronted, turns to face him. “I’m sorry?”
    The man shrugs. “Naturally, you are free to do as you wish. I was merely offering a word of advice.”
    “I’m sorry?” insists Giacomo. “I didn’t catch your name.”
    “He’s right,” says Helen. “You’ve done quite enough already.” Giacomo can’t tell if he’s being thanked or dismissed. He stifles his resentment.
    “I’ll call you later.”
    “No, don’t do that,” she says, her voice still measured, in an oddly insistent way. “You won’t get through. I won’t be taking calls.”
    “If you’re sure that’s what you want,” he says. He opens the door for her, stands back to let her pass, but she takes his hand in hers and he can feel her trembling. “If you’re sure.”
    “I’ll call you,” she says. “Later. I promise.”
    Then, at a volume the other man is not supposed to hear, she adds: “I have to talk to you, I just don’t know where.” And Giacomo nods and presses her hand before letting it go.
     

9
     
    The flat is empty. Slowly, she lifts her hands to her face and holds it for a moment, skin against skin, her palms against her cheeks, as if to make sure she is really who she is, and not some other woman whose husband has been murdered. She has rushed at the stairs to be here, pursued by nothing but her growing horror of the world outside, the cars, the lights, the hustling intimacy of its demands. Outside the hospital, someone shouted as a man’s hand guided her lowered head into the car, one voice above the rest, Bravo Federico , and she flinched but didn’t turn. She sat straight-backed in the car with the police woman from that morning beside her, holding her arm the way a friend might although Helen didn’t see her as a friend and wished she wasn’t there. I’ve answered too many questions today, she thought. I shall be home soon. Part of her has been waiting to be alone for almost seven hours and now, with her back pressed to the front door, she closes her eyes and listens to her breathing as though there is nothing else to be done, as though – finally – she has what she needs.
    She steps out of her shoes, the wooden floor warm and smooth against her feet. Her first thought is to take a shower, but she is suddenly so tired she can barely walk across the room to the sofa and collapse. Clutching a cushion to her side, she sits in the corner, her legs