Kill and Tell Read Online Free PDF Page A

newly re-upholstered Georgian settee. He places his hands on his knees in deference to her years and to her anxiety. ‘You have heard about Signor Trapani?’
    Appolina puts her hands together, in prayer. She closes her eyes and nods her head slowly. ‘Attilio told me what happened. They are beasts.’
    ‘Who are beasts?’
    ‘Whoever did it.’
    The way Appolina said, ‘They are beasts’ implies particular beasts. ‘Who do you think did it?’
    ‘I barely saw Carmelo. It was Jacobo who spent the time.’
    ‘Jacobo will be very upset,’ says Staffe.
    ‘All his life he devoted.’
    ‘And have you heard from Jacobo since?’
    ‘No.’ She shakes her head solemnly. ‘He went there to prepare dinner. Carmelo adored Jacobo’s puttanesca . He took his suitcase with him.’
    ‘Would he normally take a suitcase to work?’
    ‘He has a room there. Carmelo kept asking Jacobo to go to Beauvoir Place. To live.’
    ‘You have a beautiful home here.’ Staffe looks around the sitting room of the double-fronted Victorian villa. They are in Cranley Gardens, briefly famous for Dennis Nilsen having killed three of his many just up the road at number twenty-three. Staffe resists the urge to ask Appolina if she was one of the neighbours who reported the smell to the police, or found body parts in her plumbing.
    ‘It is our home. Our life. Not Carmelo’s.’ Her eyes glisten and they each look at the photographs on top of her cocktail cabinet, which has cabriole legs – just like the one in Carmelo’s drawing room. The photographs chronicle Jacobo’s life, from young man in a baggy suit and fedora to an old man in baggy suit and fedora. He cuts a slight figure with soft eyes and a bobble on the end of his nose. Staffe picks up an early photo of Jacobo with an ice-cream, a sandstone cliff towering behind him. ‘He is a handsome man.’
    ‘It was taken in Cefalù.’
    ‘In Sicily?’
    She nods, smiles briefly but it goes out, like a snuffed candle. ‘That was a long time ago but every year I love him more. When you get close, when there is less time to come, life is more precious. Some people say life is less when you are old, but it is more. So we must be together, you see. I can’t bear it – for Jacobo to leave me alone.’ She fixes her sights on Staffe, imploring. ‘You will find him?’
    ‘Of course. We need to ask to him about Carmelo.’ He picks up a photograph of Jacobo beside a bandstand with a pier and seams of pebble beach and milky sea in the background. He recognises it as Brighton. ‘Can I take this? I will get a copy made and return the original.’
    ‘If it helps,’ says Appolina, resigned.
    Staffe knows Jacobo is Carmelo’s housekeeper. He knows Jacobo gets four thousand a month from Carmelo’s account, and he knows this is clearly too much. He knows, also, that Jacobo and Appolina’s house, were it to be sold tomorrow, would fetch well over a million. In crime, as in life, everything has to add up.
    And he remembers what Jessop said – dear, deluded Jessop. ‘Follow the money, William. Follow the money and you’ll find the shit.’
    He hates himself for saying it, but he asks Appolina nonetheless: ‘If Jacobo had to run, where would he run?’
    A tear from each eye runs down her cheeks. Staffe goes to her, wrapping her in his big arms – careful not to crush the frail thing. Feeling the soft skin of her forehead cold against his neck and looking over her head, Staffe sees a little of Appolina on display. On shelves, there is Dante and Vasari’s Lives of the Artists , as well as Danielle Steel and Esther Samuels. And there are opera scores, too. On the sideboard, a copy of today’s La Stampa . ‘Jacobo knows something, doesn’t he? You must tell me, if you want us to save him.’
    ‘Save?’ she whispers, hardly daring to utter.
    ‘We must save him. What does he know?’
    ‘There was—’
    ‘Tell me,’ implores Staffe.
    ‘Nothing. I’m being silly.’
    ‘Tell me. His life