Die With Me (35 page)

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from House of Anansi Press

Read on for a preview of the next thrilling Mark Tartaglia novel,

OUR LADY OF PAIN

It was seven in the morning but so dark it might have been midnight. Snowflakes whirled like moths in the orange glow of the street lamps, blurring the skeletal outline of the trees, settling on the thick crust that already covered the ground. The gates to Holland Park had been unlocked only a few minutes before and she stopped just inside, jogging up and down on the spot and stretching her legs as she gazed around, her breath a pale cloud blown away on the air. There was nobody in sight, the only sign of life the keeper’s fresh tracks which disappeared from the gate in the direction of his office, its lights a dim blur in the distance. Squinting, she thought she saw his retreating shape but she couldn’t be sure.

The park lay before her, open and inviting. On one side, playing fields led away down the hill towards Kensington High Street. On the other, the black tips of the trees that marked the edge of the woods were just visible behind the walls of Holland House. The landscape was almost unrecognisable, outlines softened, features obliterated under a uniform sea of bluish white, strangely luminous under the dark sky. Marvelling at the transformation, she started to run slowly down the long, broad avenue, feeling the scrunch of the deep, powdery snow underfoot. The music from her earphones filled her head, a bass riff pumping, the song spinning round and round. Needles of ice stung her face and the cold penetrated through her trainers and clothing. But she didn’t care. Elated, still adrift on the tide of alcohol from the night before, she felt as though she could fly. She was out of control but it had been worth it.

She passed the ornamental gates of Holland House, the jagged ruins just behind, and turned up through the formal gardens, picking her way around the frosted patterns of low hedging which framed the empty flowerbeds. She climbed the steps to the North Lawn and ran towards the woods. The smell of bacon wafted momentarily on the air from the youth hostel just behind and she felt a stab of hunger. Only another ten minutes or so and she would be done; she would reward herself with a full English breakfast in one of the cafés along Holland Park Avenue.

Once in the woods, the track narrowed and the trees arched high above her, forming a tunnel. The few lamps were widely spaced, casting pools of weak light on the path below, which illuminated the trunks of the trees and the bushes immediately around. Beyond, in the thick undergrowth, everything was black. She lengthened her pace and drove herself faster now, down the hill. The freezing air made her lungs ache and her breath came in short, almost painful bursts. She felt tired already, each stride an effort.

Almost at the bottom, she tripped and fell hard on the ground. Winded, gasping, laughing at her clumsiness, she rolled over onto her back and lay there, gazing up at the murky sky, letting the flurry of fat, feather-like flakes melt on her skin. Her earphones had fallen off and she noticed how still everything was, how the snow seemed to deaden any sound. Apart from her own breathing, all she could hear was the distant call of a bird high up in the trees and the muffled drone of cars on the periphery of the park.

After a moment, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and stretched out her calves, flexing her feet backwards and forwards to get rid of any stiffness. She brushed away the thick dusting of snow from her hair and clothes and gathered up her earphones. About to stand up, she noticed that one of her laces had come undone. As she bent forwards to retie it, she heard the sharp crack of a branch close behind. Then someone softly spoke her name.

‘You work for a murder squad?’ Sarah asked, arching her dark eyebrows, as if the idea was extraordinary. ‘What’s it like? I mean… what you have to deal with, what you see… God, it must be awful.’ She gestured vaguely in the air with her hands as the words tumbled breathlessly from her lips.

Mark Tartaglia leaned back heavily in his chair, choosing his words carefully. ‘What can I say? It is awful, but someone has to do it.’

They were sitting together at one end of the refectory table in his sister Nicoletta’s kitchen in Islington. He took a gulp of wine, his eyes focusing fleetingly on the dark wood dresser that ran along one wall. As tall as the ceiling, it dwarfed everything else in the room. It had once belonged to his grandmother, salvaged many years before from his family’s first grocery shop in Edinburgh. Symptomatic of the rest of the house, the shelves were drowning under a sea of china, oddments, children’s pottery and artwork. Family photographs were dotted everywhere, including one of himself taken at Christmas, bleary-eyed, wine glass in one hand, cracker in the other, and wearing a stupid pink paper hat.

At the other end of the room, amid a cloud of steam and a theatrical clattering of pots, pans and crockery, Nicoletta was busy putting the final touches to the main course. She was wearing a simple navy blue and white wrap-around dress that clung to her body and emphasised her wiry thinness, a little too much, he thought. Her long, straight black hair was coiled up and loosely clipped on top of her head and, as she talked and moved around, nodding and waving her hands in the air, she looked as though she were conducting an orchestra. Her husband John stood at her side taking orders, pale head shiny with perspiration, sleeves rolled up, and an incongruous pink flowery apron protecting his front.

As with most Sundays, they had all been to Mass together that morning, along with their cousins Gianni and Elisa, who were now seated at the other end of the table, attempting to teach Nicoletta and John’s children, Carlo and Anna, how to play ‘I Spy’. Carlo, aged four, sat on Gianni’s lap, Gianni helping him with the words, while Anna, nearly six, sat beside Elisa. Their laughter and high-pitched voices reverberated off the low ceiling, piercing sharply through the thickness in Tartaglia’s head. Usually he was delighted to be around them, but he hadn’t been sleeping well and had drunk too much the night before in an effort to anaesthetise himself into a state of unconsciousness.

‘Do you only investigate murders?’ Sarah asked, after a moment.

Struggling to focus, Tartaglia looked back at her. ‘Can’t hear myself think over that racket. What were you saying?’

Sarah coloured. ‘I’m sorry. I asked if you only dealt with murders. I really didn’t mean to sound so surprised. It’s just that I spend my days with text books and students while you… you…’

‘It’s OK,’ he interrupted, before she went any further. ‘I’m used to it. I usually try and keep quiet about what I do for a living, at least when I meet someone for the first time, but you caught me off guard.’

‘Sorry again.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘Is it like on TV? Like
The Bill
or
Frost
?’

‘No. It’s actually quite different. We’re not attached to a police station. We don’t even have cells or interview rooms or anyone in uniform. We just work in a normal office and, as you say, murder’s all we investigate.’

‘I see. So you’re like a crack team?’

‘We’re specialists, if that’s what you mean.’

‘It sounds incredibly interesting, really it does.’

She still seemed embarrassed, as if she had said something rude. Not wanting to make her feel awkward, he was about to mutter some sort of vague palliative when Nicoletta rushed over to the table, carrying a dish of buttered spinach.

‘Mark’s a detective inspector,’ she said, dropping it down on a mat in front of them. She shook her hands vigorously and blew hard on her fingertips for a second. ‘He’s been involved in some very interesting cases. You should ask him to tell you about it.’

Sarah gave a wan smile.

‘Are you sure I can’t help?’ Tartaglia asked, half getting up from his chair.

‘Thanks, but everything’s under control,’ Nicoletta said briskly, before wheeling around and returning to the stove.

Usually when he went to lunch with Nicoletta and John, everybody mucked in. That’s what family lunches were all about, she always said, and he usually did more than his fair share of the washing up. But this time was different. She had him practically chained to his chair, his cousins deliberately placed out of range, forcing him to give Sarah his full attention. With his fortieth birthday looming in a few years, Nicoletta wasn’t content to leave anything to chance, especially not what she viewed as his generally lackadaisical approach to romance.

However, he could hardly blame Sarah, who was hopefully unaware of the setup. Compared to the motley array of Nicoletta’s female friends who had been trotted out for him over the years, she was actually quite attractive, with nice, hazel eyes and a shapely figure. If she hadn’t been a friend of his sister’s, if he had met her somewhere else, he might have made more of an effort. But he didn’t feel in the mood and he had no intention of letting Nicoletta pull his strings.

Noticing that Sarah had finished her wine, he reached across and poured the last inch in the bottle into her glass, carefully avoiding the thick, inky dregs at the bottom.

She smiled. ‘Thanks. The wine’s lovely. Is it Italian?’

Checking the label, he nodded. ‘From Sicily. Merlot apparently. I’d better get us some more.’

Grateful for an excuse to stretch his legs, he got up from the table with the empty bottle. He glanced briefly through the misted windows at the snow-covered back garden beyond. It was extraordinary to have so much snow in February, but then nothing about the weather was a surprise any longer. Even in the warm fug of the kitchen, just looking at it made him shiver. He hated winter, February particularly, the bitterest, blackest month of all, when it seemed that spring would never come again.

He went over to the kitchen area where John was busy straining some vegetables at the sink while Nicoletta transferred a roast from an oven dish to a carving board. Tartaglia leaned over her shoulder and inhaled the pungent aroma of truffle, porcini mushrooms and garlic. The smell was familiar, the recipe as usual one of their mother’s.

‘Veal?’

‘Veal. Go and sit down.’ Not even looking at him, she shooed him away impatiently with her hands, a gesture also reminiscent of their mother.

‘Here, you’d better take this with you,’ John said with a sympathetic smile, exchanging the empty bottle for a new one that was already uncorked. ‘What do you think of it?’

‘Very nice.’

‘It’s from a small producer just outside Palermo. Your dad’s just started to import it into the UK and he sent us a case for Christmas.’

‘Wish he was as generous with me. Thinks I can’t tell the difference between plonk and decent stuff.’

‘You can’t. Now go and sit down,’ Nicoletta hissed, elbowing her way past her brother with a stack of clean plates.

Tartaglia retreated back to the far end of the table, skirting around his nephew and niece, who had started to squabble for some reason.

‘What were we saying?’ he asked, sitting down again next to Sarah, trying to block out the noise.

She watched as he refilled their glasses. ‘Why do you think people are so obsessed with serial killers? It’s all so incredibly gruesome and horrifying, yet the TV and bookshops are full of it.’

Tartaglia nodded thoughtfully. It was a question he had often asked himself. ‘I suppose people like to scare themselves. The serial killer is just the modern-day bogeyman, the real-life stuff of nightmares. The fact that some of them are never caught just adds to the myth. Thank God they’re rare, at least in this country. Most of the murders we investigate are a lot more mundane.’

‘Still, it must be extraordinary. I mean, murder’s hopefully something none of us will ever come across in our lifetime. Don’t you find it odd?’

He shrugged. ‘Odd’ wasn’t the word he would have chosen.

‘I find the stuff in the papers bad enough, particularly when it’s about children. But you’re face to face with it every day. I’m surprised you can sleep at night.’

‘Sometimes I don’t.’

Sarah looked at him inquiringly over the top of her glass and he could see that she was hoping for more of an answer. But what was he supposed to say? Did she really want to hear how some cases preyed on his mind so that he couldn’t sleep, how some images were impossible to eradicate? If he were honest, he had never become hardened to murder, never managed to make himself entirely immune to the dirtiness and darkness of what he saw, or the personal tragedies and fall-out from every killing. But he had no desire to start analysing it over the lunch table with someone he barely knew.

‘It’s difficult to put into words,’ he said, hoping to change the subject, although he wasn’t sure what else they had to talk about. They had already exhausted the topic of her job as a lecturer, like Nicoletta, in the Modern Languages department at University College London, and nothing else had come up naturally in conversation.

She looked at him quizzically. ‘Well, considering everything, you look pretty normal to me.’

He took a sip of wine. ‘Thanks – if that’s meant as a compliment.’

‘It is. You know, if we were playing “What’s My Line”, I would never have guessed what you do for a living.’

‘I don’t look like a policeman? Now I’m disappointed. It’s the only job I’ve ever had, apart from working in my parents’ shop in the school holidays.’

She shook her head smiling. ‘You definitely aren’t how I imagine a policeman, not a real one anyway. You’re too, well…’ She hesitated, looking a little embarrassed. ‘On TV they’re too good to be true, aren’t they? And they always solve the crime.’

He nodded. ‘Unfortunately, real life’s not like that.’

There was a sharp scream from the other end of the table, followed by the sound of breaking glass. He looked over and saw Carlo and Anna being forcibly held apart by Gianni, while Elisa rushed to the sink to get a cloth to clear up the mess.

‘Anna, Carlo, if you don’t behave, you’ll go to your rooms,’ Nicoletta said, with a cursory glance in their direction as she swept over to the table, bearing large white platters of steaming polenta and sliced veal, topped with a layer of mushrooms. She placed them down carefully so as not to spill the juices and wiped her palms hurriedly on the front of her apron.

‘Do tell Sarah about some of your cases,’ she added to Mark, tucking a few stray wisps of hair behind her ears before striding away again to the stove. ‘Tell her about that bridegroom one,’ she shouted from across the room.

He stared at her, amazed that she should mention the case by name, but she looked away, occupied with something else. The case was too recent, too raw a subject, and one which was contributing to his current sleeplessness, although she wasn’t to know that. He and his colleague Sam Donovan had nearly lost their lives trying to catch the serial killer known as ‘The Bridegroom’. It was the closest he had ever come to dying. The sense of horror at what might have been still affected him, the sequence of events replaying in his mind over and over again in the small hours of the night.

‘I expect the last thing Mark wants to do is to talk shop on a Sunday,’ John said, arriving at the table with a huge jug of water and a fistful of serving spoons. ‘The rugby’s on later. Can you stay?’

Tartaglia was about to reply when he felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket. Taking it out, he saw Detective Chief Inspector Carolyn Steele’s name flash on the caller ID and got up hurriedly from the table, almost glad of the interruption.

‘Work, I’m afraid,’ he said to Sarah with an apologetic shrug, and rushed past Nicoletta, who was on her way back to the table with more food.

‘Hey, Marco,’ she shouted after him. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

He ignored her and went outside into the hall, closing the door firmly with his foot before he flipped open the phone.

‘Where are you?’ Steele asked, her voice quiet and crisp against the background of voices coming from the kitchen behind him.

‘At my sister’s. In Islington. About to have lunch.’

‘Good,’ Steele said, as if she hadn’t heard the final sentence. ‘That’s not too far away. I want you over at Holland Park immediately. We have a suspicious death. Sam’s there now with the crime scene manager. The rendezvous point’s in the main car park, on Abbotsbury Road, in between Kensington High Street and Holland Park Avenue.’

The Ducati slithered to a halt on the icy ground, front wheel nosing deep into a bank of shovelled snow. Tartaglia killed the engine and lights and dismounted, noting, as he removed his helmet, how dark it was even though it was still early afternoon. The whole of Holland Park had been sealed off and the car park had been cleared; the only remaining vehicles belonged to members of the police or forensic services.

He spotted DS Sam Donovan in a far corner. She was talking into her phone, standing beside a small semi-circle of uniformed police from the local station who were gathered around the open back of a van. One of them was distributing plastic cups and a thermos of something hot was making its way down the line. Judging from the colour of what was being poured, it looked like tomato soup.

As he walked towards her, Donovan gave him a small wave and, after a few more words, snapped her phone shut.

‘You got here quickly,’ she said, picking her way gingerly through the snow towards him.

Her short brown hair stood in spiky tufts in the cold air and her eyes were watering, a smear of mascara under one of them. She was wrapped up in a short, black and white checked coat that looked quite unsuitable for the weather, with a bright orange and red patterned scarf wound around her neck.

‘There wasn’t much traffic. Everyone’s having lunch, I suppose.’

He followed her up a steep, slippery flight of steps into the park, noting that she was wearing a skirt for a change, and quite a short skirt at that, barely longer than her coat, although he couldn’t see much of her slim legs as they were encased in a pair of enormous Wellingtons.