Before There Were Angels (24 page)

“Your husband informs us that you attacked him with a knife.”

“Attacked him? With a knife? I would never do that, Luke, you know that. I love you more than life itself. How could you think that I would ever do a thing like that? I would never even think of doing a thing like that.” She stared at me tearfully, trying to create a connection between us.

Meanwhile the second officer was examining the back of the door. He called the first officer over. “This certainly looks like a knife cut.” He turned to Belle. “Do you happen to have a knife in the room, m
a’am?”

“Yes,” she replied eagerly. “I always keep a knife under my pillow.”

“Would it be there now?”

Belle rummaged
around under her pillow but failed to find her knife. “It is always here,” she explained, confused. “Luke, have I been sleepwalking?”

“No, Belle, you have been
Rafaella.”

“
Rafaella? Why would I want to be Rafaella. I hate her. I want to kill her.”

That did it. The first officer recited her Miranda rights.

“I am being arrested?” she asked quietly.

The second officer emerged from the bathroom holding the knife in a dry face cloth. “It was in here,” he said. “It was as well that the other door was locked. She was probably trying to attack you via the other door and then dropped the knife.”

“I did that?” said Belle.

“It appears that you did, m
a’am.”

Belle stood up from the bed and held her hands out. “Then arrest me.
I don’t know what happened. I can’t remember anything. It’s like I’ve been in a fever or a trance or something. But I’m obviously a danger to Luke and Stevie, and maybe to myself too, so it is for the best if you take me away with you. I wouldn’t hurt either of them for the world, not if I am in my right mind, that is.”

It was a sad procession down the stairs, with Belle constantly looking over her shoulder at me and the two cops gently guiding her.

“I’ll see you soon, Belle,” I said. “I love you. I love you so much. I’ll fix this for all of us.”

“I love you too,” Belle replied. “I am so sorry this happened. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“I know you wouldn’t. But Rafaella would. She would be delighted to hurt all of us.”

“That bitch!” exclaimed Belle, showing some of her honest fire for the first time for weeks, “That bitch deserves to burn in hell. She will burn in hell, even if I have to go there with her to make sure that she is there and that she stays there.”

“That’s my Belle,” I smiled.

“
Your Belle,” Belle confirmed. “I am all yours and you are all mine. Forever.”

I let my tea towel drop.

“And that,” Belle crowed, “is definitely mine. All mine. Take care of it for when I get back to you.”

I located my cell phone and called Stevie.

Chapter 29

I woke up to a weight pressing on my chest and a face looking into mine.

“I got you,” Zack exulted. “And I’ve got her too.
I’ve got her
. I know where she is.”

“Who?”

“Rafaella, you idiot. I know where she lives. I’ll take you there. I don’t know what happened but she fucked up. I have been trying to track her for weeks but whatever she is isn’t easy for me to see. Kind of like you find it hard to see ghosts. They must be in a different dimension or something. She kept losing me. But tonight she left a trail. She’s living just around the corner, in Clayton Street. Come on, let’s go get her!”

I was struggling to breathe. “How comes you have got so heavy all of a sudden?”

Zack chuckled. “I don’t know. Don’t care.” He moved down the bed nevertheless.

“Let’s be clever about this,” I said. “I want to serve her with the divorce papers. Now we know where she is, we can catch her tomorrow when I have been to see Carol
Jasinski, my divorce lawyer. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. She’ll be plotting something new. She won’t be on the move just yet. We have time.”

Zack looked doubtful. “I
t looked like she was packing.”

“I’ll take that chance,” I said. “I’m going to serve those divorce papers on her if it kills me.”

“You’re the boss,” Zack conceded. And from Zack, that was almost as good as him calling me ‘Dad’ too.

*  *  *

I phoned Carol first thing in the morning. She said she would be in her office for two hours. She would print off the divorce package immediately. As Rafaella was in the country, we didn’t even have to worry about the Hague Convention. We were not at risk of violating Britain’s sovereignty if she was living over here, however temporarily.

I ran
down to her office in Market Street and grabbed the papers.

“Go get her,” Carol said as I headed back for the door.

“Oh, I will,” I said, “I will.”

*  *  *

Zack and Stevie met me outside the house.

“What are you doing here,
Stevie,” I asked. “You’re supposed to be in school.”

Stevie punched Zack, a blow which naturally passed straight through him. Zack punched Stevie back. That one didn’t.

“I’m getting a broader education,” Stevie declared. “And I’m working. I’m your witness.”

“You are related to me,” I objected.

“No, I’m not,” countered Stevie. “Not if you aren’t divorced. I am only related to you if you are divorced.”

I la
ughed. “Perhaps you should think about becoming a lawyer,” I said.

Zack wrinkled his nose. “All lawyers go to hell, even the good ones. Everyone beyond the veil knows that.”

We stood outside the house where Rafaella was living. Now what?

“I’m going to ring the
doorbell,” Stevie said.

“She won’t answer it,” I replied.

“You two hide, then.”

It wasn’t hard for Zack to hide. I hugged the wall in the covered area to the side of the front door.

I was right. There was no answer.

“Maybe she’s not home
,” suggested Stevie.

“Maybe
she’s gone for good,” replied Zack.

“Perhaps we should loiter outside her front door,” I added.

“We’ll come back in an hour,” suggested Zack. “There’s no cover here. She’ll see us.”

We returned in an hour. Stevie rang the bell. I could hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

It wasn’t Rafaella.

“We are looking for
Rafaella,” I said.

“Who?” the girl replied.
I looked at her hard to see if she might be Rafaella in disguise. She didn’t appear to be.

“Do you have a woman living with you in the hou
se? About thirty years old, blonde hair?”

“Yes,” the girl replied, “but I can’t let you in if you don’t even know what she is called.”

Zack slipped past her and ran up the stairs. A few seconds later he was back doing a thumbs-up sign.

“I think we can,” I said as Stevie and I pushed past her and followed Zack.

“Denise!” the girl shouted up the stairs. “I couldn’t stop them!”

Rafaella
had reached the door as we appeared panting on her landing. Well, I was panting, Stevie not so much and Zack not at all.

She looked startled. “I was just going out,” she said.

“You have just been out,” I riposted.

“I can do as I like,” she insisted.

“Not this time. This time you do what I want.” I pushed her through her doorway. “Firstly, here are our new divorce papers.”

She didn’t look pleased. “So that is what this is all about …”

“No, it isn’t what this is all about. This is all about Zack here, and Belle, and the five DeGamo people you killed.”

“Zack where?” she asked, startled.

“Oh, he is here.”

“I’ve never killed anyone,” she protested. “You have finally gone completely mad, Luke. I said you needed to see a psychiatrist. Now it is probably too late. You’ll end up in a lunatic asylum. I did try.”

“And you’ll end up in prison,” I said.

Rafaella
laughed. “What evidence do you have that I killed anyone?”

“Zack is a witness. You killed him.”

“Zack is dead. Dead people make terrible witnesses.”

“And then there are the
DeGamos too …”

“Dead too, apparently.
You are not learning, Luke.”

“You are right,” I said. “All the witnesses to your crimes are dead. That should tell us something.”

“It tells me that you are completely deranged.”

I shrugged. “At least I have served my divorce papers on you in front of a witness.”

“Your step-son.”

“Not yet. We have gone through all that outside.”

Rafaella pulled her face. “OK, I’ll accept the divorce papers. I’ll even sign for them. Will that make you happy?”

“It is certainly a start.”

“Good, then you can go. Do you have a pen?”

I looked
Rafaella up and down. She was caught off-guard but determined to take charge of the situation. I wondered what I had ever seen in her but I could see it in front of me now - a small child who was afraid. I had wanted to protect her but I had realized before I left her that no amount of concern for her, care for her or love for her would ever satisfy her, would ever make her feel protected.

Despite her
fighting stance, she was nervous and vulnerable as Stevie and I stood there. She was, after all, a woman facing a tall man and a tough twelve year old boy, not sure how this scenario would play out, what we would demand of her.

“Are you goin
g now?” she demanded. “I have a friend I am meant to see. He is a hundred times the man you are, Luke, you will not be surprised to know, far better looking, slim, and he really cares about me, really loves me.”

I didn’t even feel a tiny pang of jealousy. “Good for you,” I said. “I hope he is all those things.”

Rafaella lurched forward into me. At first I thought she had launched a surprise attack on me, especially as I discovered I had blood all over my hands as I caught her back. Whose blood? Mine?

I pushed her away from me and checked my front. There was no ripped shirt, no sign of injury on my body at all.

Rafaella crumpled into the fetal position on the rug in the middle of her room and started moaning.

“What
just happened?” I asked Stevie.

“Zack stabbed her in the back.”

Zack was standing there, a long vegetable chopping knife in his right hand. Blood was dripping down half the blade. “I’m being kinder to her than she was to me.” He laid the knife down on the draining board next to the sink.

“That will take even more explaining,” I sighed.

Zack smiled. “It will shorten the divorce proceedings, though. By about six months or so, I heard you and Mom say.”

“Is she really dying?” I asked, wondering if I would
start to feel something for Rafaella as she bled copiously into the rug and mentally drew into herself to counteract the pain.

“I hope so,” said Zack. “I’m sorry, Luke, th
is may be hard for you. I’m guessing you loved her once. But she has killed six people, including me, and tortured you and Mom and I don’t know how many other people. Probably thousands. She is better off dead.”

That is when the police arrived and
came pounding up the stairs. It was Officers Martinez and Nielsen.

“Back on duty again, I see,” I greeted them.

“And yet another serious incident with you right smack in the middle of it,” Luiz Martinez replied. “The second in a few hours or so, I hear. I think we had better deport you before there is any more trouble. I’m not saying that you are responsible for any of it, but you are always where trouble is. You can say goodbye to your wife, or lover, or whatever she is on the way.”

“
Nooo!” shouted Stevie. “You can’t do that.”

I tousled his hair. “Do
n’t worry, Stevie, the officer is joking and maybe in a bad mood today. They can’t deport me. We have just served the divorce papers. This is a mess we can definitely fix.” I looked down at Rafaella’s body. “If we could solve that one, it’s a home run.”

“Like you
even know what that means,” scoffed Zack.

This
book is dedicated to Kathleen, who has lived

this
story far more than anyone will ever know.

Coming shortly …

‘Before they were ghosts’