Robin was reminded of that occasion when Matthew had deleted a voicemail from Strike on Robin’s phone in an attempt to stop Robin going back to work at the agency. She was surprised to see Gloria didn’t seem to hold her husband’s intervention against him. Perhaps Gloria could read her mind, because she said:
“Hugo assumed I wouldn’t want to talk about what happened with strangers. He didn’t realize that, actually, you’re the only people I’d ever want to talk to, because you’re trying to find out what really happened, and if you succeed, it’ll be—well, it would lift a huge weight off me.”
“D’you mind if I take notes?” Strike asked her.
“No, not at all,” said Gloria politely.
As Strike clicked out the nib of his pen, Gloria reached out of shot for a large glass of red wine, took a sip, appeared to brace herself and said rather quickly,
“Please—if you don’t mind—could I explain some things first? Since yesterday, I’ve been going over it, in my head, and I think if I tell you my story it will save you a lot of time. It’s key to understanding my relationship with Margot and why I behaved… as I behaved.”
“That’d be very helpful,” said Strike, pen poised. “Please, go on.”
Gloria took another sip of wine, put her glass back where they couldn’t see it, drew a deep breath and said,
“Both my parents died in a house fire when I was five.”
“How awful,” said Robin, startled. The 1961 census record had shown a complete family of four. “I’m so sorry.”
Strike gave a kind of commiserative growl.
“Thank you,” said Gloria. “I’m only telling you that to explain—you see, I survived because my father threw me out of the window into a blanket the neighbors were holding. My mother and father didn’t jump, because they were trying to reach my elder brother, who was trapped. All three of them died, so I was raised by my mother’s parents. They were adorable people. They’d have sold their own souls for me, which makes everything I’m about to say even worse…
“I was quite a shy girl. I really envied the girls at school who had parents who were—you know—with it. My poor granny didn’t really understand the sixties and seventies,” said Gloria, with a sad smile. “My clothes were always a bit old-fashioned. No mini-skirts or eye makeup, you know…
“I reacted by developing a very elaborate fantasy life. I know most teenagers are fantasists, but I was… extreme. Everything sort of spun out of control when I was sixteen, and I went to see the movie The Godfather…
“It’s ridiculous,” said Gloria soberly, “but it’s the truth. I… cleaved to that movie. I became obsessed with it. I don’t know how many times I saw it; at least twenty, I expect. I was an English schoolgirl from seventies Islington, but what I really wanted was to be Apollonia from forties Sicily, and meet a handsome American Mafioso, and not to be blown up by a car bomb, but go and live with Michael Corleone in New York and be beautiful and glamourous while my husband did glamourously violent, criminal things, all underpinned, you know, by a strict moral code.”
Strike and Robin both laughed, but Gloria didn’t smile. On the contrary, she looked sad and ashamed.
“I somehow thought all this might be achievable,” she went on, “because I had an Italian surname. I’d never really cared about that, before The Godfather. Now, out of nowhere, I asked my grandparents to take me to the Italian church on Clerkenwell Road for mass, instead of their regular church—and bless them, they did it. I wish they hadn’t. I wish they’d told me not to be so selfish, because their regular church gave them a lot of support and it was the center of their social life.
“I’d always felt entirely English, which I was on my mum’s side, but now I started trying to find out as much as I could about my dad’s family. I hoped to find out I was descended from Mafiosi. Then I could get my grandparents to give me the money to go and meet them all in Sicily and maybe marry a distant cousin. But all I found out was that my Italian grandfather immigrated to London to work in a coffee shop. I already knew my dad had worked for London Transport. Everyone I found out about, no matter how far back I went, was completely respectable and law-abiding. It was a real disappointment,” said Gloria, with a sigh.
“Then one Sunday, at St. Peter’s, somebody pointed out a man called Niccolo Ricci, sitting at the back of the Italian church. They said he was one of the very last of the Little Italy gangsters.”
Gloria paused to take another mouthful of wine, replaced the glass out of shot again, then said,
“Anyway… Ricci had sons.”
Strike now set pen to paper for the first time.
“There wasn’t much resemblance, really, between Luca Ricci and Al Pacino,” said Gloria drily, “but I managed to find one. He was four years older than I was, and everyone I asked about him said he was trouble, which was exactly what I wanted to hear. It started with a few smiles in passing…
“We went on our first date a couple of months before I was due to sit my exams. I told Granny and Gramps I was revising at a schoolfriend’s house. I’d always been such a good girl; they never dreamed I could be fibbing.
“I desperately wanted to like Luca, because this was my way into my fantasy. He had a car, and he was definitely criminal. He didn’t tell me anything about summit meetings between heads of crime families, though… mostly he talked about his Fiat, and drugs and beating people up.
“After a few dates, it was obvious Luca was quite keen on me, or… no,” said Gloria, unsmiling, “not keen, because that implies genuine affection. He really just wanted to fix me down,
