banks and insurance companies and big contractors who deal similarly.’
Chimes sounded inside the house and a stout, middle-aged woman answered the door. She beamed when she saw Coleman and the two exchanged a quick hug.
‘Rory, so good to see you.’ Her English was heavily Italian-accented.
‘Hello, Anna. God bless you. How are you?’
‘Not bad. Is this the man?’
Coleman stood aside. I felt I should bow, but I contented myself with getting through the door onto the white shagpile carpet and doing a little head-bobbing. ‘Mrs Fanfani.’
‘This is Mr Clifford Hardy. He’s a private investigator,’ Coleman said.
Her heavily-ringed hands flew up towards her face. She was a handsome woman in a fleshy, conventional way. ‘Oh, Tony wants to see him so much, I know. He’s in… that room, Rory. You know the way. I’ll bring coffee into the den, or perhaps Mr Hardy would like something else?’
Coleman had arranged his face in what I took to be teetotal lines; I was tired of playing by his rules. ‘I’d like some beer, Mrs Fanfani, if you have it.’
‘Foster’s or Resch’s?’
Someone in the family didn’t spend all their time praying and being polite. ‘Resch’s, thank you.’
Coleman led me through glass doors that opened onto a vast living room and down a passage to a part of the house where everything seemed to be on a smaller scale. He knocked on a plain door and a voice behind it said, ‘Si.’
We went into a cell. The room was tiny- grey painted walls, small window set high up, cement slab floor, camp bed along one wall and three wooden chairs opposite. A man was sitting on one of the chairs. He was cadaverous- dark, folded in on himself. Not old, not young. His skin was olive but unhealthy looking as if it had been deprived of the sunlight it needed. His white hair was thin. He didn’t get up. His hand, a claw coming out of a white cuff under a dark suit jacket indicated that we should sit on the chairs.
‘Antonio,’ Coleman said. ‘This is Mr Hardy’
Fanfani nodded at me. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ He had only a slight accent, more a hesitation before certain sounds.
‘Thank you.’ I didn’t sit down. I wasn’t going to stay in that room one second longer than I had to.
Anna’s bringing coffee to the den,’ Coleman said.
Fanfani nodded. ‘I just wanted you to see this place, Mr Hardy. Before we spoke. This is where I do penance for causing my daughter’s death.’
There wasn’t much to say to that. As a place for doing penance, it looked about right. It was the sort of room in which a smile would be out of place and a laugh unthinkable. We trooped out and up a flight of stairs and along to a room with armchairs, a writing table and a couple of filing cabinets in it. There were several photographs on the walls and I was careful not to look at them, not yet. Curtains drawn across the window kept the light down and if you wanted to call it a den you could. But there was none of that cosiness you associate with the word. It came to me then-everything and everybody I’d seen so far in this house carried an air of sadness.
Mrs Fanfani arrived with coffee and an ice bucket that held two cans of Reschs pilsener. She handed me a can and a frosted glass. We got the pouring and stirring and can opening over and settled back in our chairs. All except Mrs F., so far the least gloomy member of the party. She went out after squeezing her husband’s hand.
‘I had a daughter, Mr Hardy,’ Fanfani said. ‘Angela. Her picture is on the wall there.’
I looked at the family portrait. It showed a younger Antonio with more and darker hair, a slimmer Mrs Fanfani and a pretty, dark-eyed girl in her early teens. The affection between them was palpable, even in the posed, tinted studio portrait. It was obvious in the way they sat and the inclination of their heads.
‘She disappeared sixteen years ago. She would be twenty-nine if she were alive today’
He was talking about big stretches of time but his grief was mint fresh. I’d seen it plenty of times before-the anguish of parents who’d lost, or feared they’d lost, children. Exposure to it may be one of the reasons why I’ve never risked having children myself. There’s no other grief quite like it, and nothing like the relief of finding that it isn’t so. Some people can bounce back from it surprisingly quickly, others never do. Antonio Fanfani was in the latter category. There was plenty of force left in him, possibly even ruthlessness, but something vital had been cut away. I sat quietly, drinking the icy cold beer, and wondered why Coleman had brought me here. Was he proposing Fanfani as Schmidt/Bach’s killer? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
‘I believe that the man who abducted and raped Rory’s daughter was also responsible for the murder of Angela,’ Fanfani said slowly. ‘I tried to persuade the police of this. Tried to get them to talk to.. Schmidt about it. But…’ he opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
‘The lawyers prevented this line of enquiry’ Coleman said. ‘Completely cut it off. The prosecution agreed; it had a watertight case. It didn’t want any complications.’
I didn’t really want to know. I didn’t want to get in touch with the kind of pain that would cause a man like Fanfani to suffer for sixteen years, to have a mortification room in his house. I suspected that the fountain shrine was part of the same syndrome. My rational, atheistic spirit rebelled against it all. But I had Horrie and May Jacobs to consider. Professionalism. Connections. ‘Why do you suspect Schmidt was responsible, Mr Fanfani?’ I said. ‘Do you have any evidence?’
‘What did the lawyer call it, Rory? The one I talked to a hundred times?’
‘Circumstantial,’ Coleman said. ‘Angela was last seen on the Audley Road a few weeks before Greta was attacked. She had had an argument with Antonio…’
‘About sex,’ Fanfani exploded. ‘About boys and sex. My god, I wish she had taken a dozen lovers, a hundred. I… ‘ He buried his face in his hands and wept.
Coleman patted Fanfani’s bowed shoulders and went on talking, the man who had come through, who had understood. I felt some respect for him, but still no liking. He told me that Angela Fanfani had admitted to having sex with a boy at her school. Her father had found the contraceptive pills and he had shouted and struck her. ‘They are good Catholics,’ Coleman said, ‘You can imagine the scene.’
I could. I sympathised-with everyone involved, but I was still searching for the connection. Fanfani seemed to sense my puzzlement. He pulled himself together and drank some coffee. His pale claw of a hand brushed tears from his face. I took the opportunity to pop the second can of beer.
‘I joined Rory’s organisation and was one of its most passionate members,’ Fanfani said. ‘I was arrested several times. I was obsessed. I demonstrated at other rapists’ trials. I, what is the word? Lobbied, yes, lobbied, the ministers for stricter penalties for the rapists and murderers of women and girls. I was mad for many years, wasn’t I, Rory?’
‘Possessed, perhaps,’ Coleman murmured.
I drank some beer. Am I in weirdo territory here? I thought. Are we going on to seances and ouija boards? But Fanfani’s behaviour was acting against this doubt. He sipped some more coffee, blinked his eyes clear and seemed to be pulling himself up to some plane of rationality and strength.
‘Mr Hardy’ he said. ‘I gave up the idea of revenge for the loss of Angela. I still grieve for her and I still blame myself, most definitely. You have seen the room where I do penance.’
I nodded.
‘Rory was a great strength to me, us, through all this. He helped me, more than the priests, to understand that god has a purpose although we don’t always know what it is. He helped me to go on.’
Worth thousands of yards of burgundy Axminster, that, I thought. I didn’t say anything.
‘Eventually, I gave up my wish for revenge. I admit I had spent hundreds of hours thinking about how to kidnap Werner Schmidt and, god forgive me, torture him into admitting what he had done. I would then have killed him most cruelly, slowly…’
‘Antonio,’ Coleman said.
‘I am sorry, my friend. My wife and I have no other children, Mr Hardy. Just Angela.’
I looked at Coleman, hoping to get some clue as to why he’d brought me here. I could tell Fanfani of the possibility that Schmidt/ Bach had committed or planned to commit other attacks on women. But what good would it do to confirm his belief, after all this time? Coleman put down his coffee cup and nodded to Fanfani.
‘Talk to him, Antonio. He’s a reasonable man.’
