Sign of the Cross Read Online Free PDF Page A

English had an Italianate bounce, more aggressive than Spike’s gentle Hispanic lilt. The legacies of Empire ran to accents.
    ‘Yes, but I’m here in a professional capacity.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Executor of the wills.’
    The man stopped and turned. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, a full decade younger than Spike. ‘Assistant Commissioner Mark Azzopardi,’ he said, holding Spike’s gaze. ‘I had charge of the case.’
    ‘Spike Sanguinetti.’
    Azzopardi pumped Spike’s hand, then ushered him through another door. Given the colonial scale of the main building, the squad room was surprisingly small, a dozen or so plain-clothed officers squeezed opposite one another at desks, computer monitors back to back. Azzopardi glanced at each as he passed; they responded with a polite nod.
    The assistant commissioner’s office was little more than a desk surrounded by filing cabinets. Evidently the Curia was winning the battle for Malta’s taxes. The walls were crammed with diplomas: between Azzopardi’s ‘Firing Range Commendation’ and ‘Malta Police Academy Order of Merit’ hung a cracked icon of the madonna.
    ‘My condolences,’ Azzopardi said as he sat. ‘Now, how can I help?’
    ‘I was just curious,’ Spike said, folding himself into a chair opposite, ‘to understand why you aren’t still at the murder scene.’ The back of the desk obliged him to contort his long legs to one side.
    ‘The case is closed.’
    ‘You don’t think it’s strange that a man with no history of violence would kill his wife then himself?’
    Azzopardi uncrossed his arms. He wore a striped friendship bracelet on one wrist. ‘Solicitor or barrister?’ he said, as though offering Spike a choice between heads or tails.
    ‘In Gibraltar the profession is fused.’
    ‘Malta too. But do you do much criminal work?’
    ‘Enough.’
    Azzopardi reached into a drawer and pulled out a file. His hand hesitated. ‘Mrs Mifsud . . . Teresa. I presume she’s the blood relative?’
    Spike shook his head. ‘David was my mother’s brother.’
    An edge of reappraisal entered Azzopardi’s gaze. ‘But you were close?’
    Trying to read Spike’s expression, but failing, Azzopardi passed over the first photograph. David Mifsud lay on his back on the tiled kitchen floor. He wore black tie, his dinner jacket open, tails splayed behind. His hands were clasped across his stomach, like a knight on the lid of a tomb, Spike thought, dimpled knife hilt glinting between interlaced fingers. The entire blade was concealed beneath his ribcage. What had once been a white dress shirt was now rusty with blood.
    ‘Mr Sanguinetti?’ Azzopardi said.
    Spike stared down at his uncle’s bespectacled face. The grey tip of his tongue was visible, as though he were doing up his shoelace, or trying to change a light bulb. His expression of concentration reminded Spike so much of his mother that he had to lay the photograph on his lap to stop his hands shaking.
    ‘They’d been out at a ceremonial dinner,’ Azzopardi said, tipping his chair back and tucking his hands behind his head. ‘Drunk a lot of wine. Your uncle topped up with rum when they got home.’
    ‘Who called it in?’
    ‘Neighbour said they weren’t answering the door. The bodies had been there forty-eight hours by the time we arrived.’
    ‘Suicide by stabbing . . . Seen much of that?’
    Azzopardi said nothing.
    ‘Why not just slit the wrists?’
    ‘The forensic psychologist tells me a knife to the belly is a sign of the profoundest self-loathing. It does happen, apparently.’
    Azzopardi tipped his chair forward, then handed Spike two more photographs. The first showed Teresa, slumped on her front on the kitchen table. Her grey hair pooled around her head; her cheek lay flat on the knotted wood between her arms. Decorating the wall behind her was an explosion of blood. There followed a close-up of her face, sagging neck encrusted with blood, eyes pearlescent, glaring down with