They would seek out Paolo di Fazio’s studio, she told him. Between their interview with the sculptor and Barbara Havers’ report of her conversation with Bella McHaggis about Paolo and the pregnancy test, there existed an ocean that wanted swimming.
Lynley nodded, amenable to anything, it seemed. She said she would meet him at her car. Five minutes for her to use the ladies’, she told him. He said certainly in that well-bred fashion of his and she felt him watching her as she walked off. She stopped in her office to grab her handbag, and she took it with her to the toilet. No one could possibly fault her for that, she thought.
As before, he was waiting patiently at her car, but this time on the passenger’s side. She raised an eyebrow, to which he said, “I expect you need the practice, guv. London traffic and all that…?”
She tried to read him for underlying meanings, but he was very good at a poker face. “Very well,” she told him. “And it’s Isabelle, Thomas.”
“Due respect, guv…”
She sighed impatiently. “Oh for God’s sake, Thomas. What did you call your last superintendent behind the scenes?”
“Sir, mostly. Other times it would have been guv.”
“Fine. Wonderful. Well, I’m ordering you to call me Isabelle when we’re alone together. Have you an aversion to that?”
He seemed to consider this, the aversion bit. He examined the door handle on which he’d already placed his hand. When he looked up, his brown eyes were candidly on her face and the sudden openness of his expression was disconcerting. “I think ‘guv’ gives a distance you might prefer,” he said. “All things considered.”
“What things?” she said.
“All things.”
The frank look they exchanged made her wonder about him. She said, “You play your cards quite close, don’t you, Thomas.”
He said, “I have no cards at all.”
She snorted at this and got into the car.
PAOLO DI FAZIO’S studio was near Clapham Junction. This was south of the river, he told her, not terribly far from Putney. Their best course was to drive along the Embankment. Did she want him to give her directions?
“I think I can just about manage the route to the river,” she told him.
Paolo di Fazio himself had indicated where to find him. Upon being contacted he’d declared that he had given them all the information there was to give about himself and Jemima Hastings, but if they wanted to spend their time going over old ground, then so be it. He’d be where he was most mornings, at the studio.
The studio turned out to be tucked into one of the many railway arches created by the viaducts leading out of Clapham railway station. Most of these had long ago been put to use, being converted from tunnels into wine cellars, clothing outlets, car repair shops, and-in one case-even a delicatessen selling imported olives, meats, and cheeses. Paolo di Fazio’s studio was between a picture framer and a bicycle shop, and they arrived to find its front doors open and its overhead lights brightly illuminating the space. This space was whitewashed and set up in two sections. One section appeared to be given over to the early work that went on when an artist took a sculpture from clay on its way to bronze, so there were masses of wax, latex, fibre glass, and bags of plaster everywhere, along with the grit and the grime one might associate with working with such substances. The other section accommodated workstations for four artists, whose pieces were currently shrouded in plastic and likely in varying stages of completion. Finished bronze sculptures had places in a row along the centre of the studio, and they ranged in style from the realistic to the fantastical.
When they came upon it, Paolo di Fazio’s style turned out to be figurative, but of a nature that favoured bulbous elbows, long limbs, and disproportionately small heads. Lynley murmured, “Shades of Giacometti,” and he paused in front of it, and Isabelle glanced at him sharply to gauge his expression. She had no idea what he was talking about, and she absolutely hated a show-off. But she saw he was taking out his spectacles to give the sculpture a closer look, and he seemed unaware that he’d even spoken. She wondered what it meant that he moved round the sculpture slowly, looking thoughtful. She realised yet again that he was impossible to read, and she additionally wondered if she could actually work with someone who’d so mastered the art of keeping his thoughts to himself.
Paolo di Fazio wasn’t in the studio. Nor was anyone else. But he entered as they were having a look at his work area, which was identifiable by more of the masks-similar to those he made in Jubilee Market Hall-that stood on dusty wooden pedestals upon shelves at the rear. Specifically, they were having a look at his tools and at his tools’ potential to do harm.
Di Fazio said, “Please touch nothing,” as he came in their direction. He was carrying a take-away coffee and a bag from which he brought out two bananas and an apple. These he placed carefully on one of the shelves as if arranging them for a still life. He was dressed as he’d been dressed when they’d earlier seen him: blue jeans, a T-shirt, and dress shoes, which as before, seemed an odd getup for someone at work with clay, particularly the dress shoes, as he somehow managed to keep them perfectly clean. They would have passed muster at a military inspection. He said, “I’m at work here, as you can see.” He gestured with his coffee in the direction of a shrouded piece.
Isabelle said, “And may we look at your work?”
He apparently needed to think about this for a moment before he shrugged and removed its swaddling of plastic and cloth. It was another elongated, knobby-limbed piece, apparently male and apparently in agony if the expression was anything to go by. A mouth gaped open, limbs stretched out, the neck curved back, and the shoulders arched. At its feet lay a grill of some sort, and to Isabelle it looked for all the world as if the figure were in anguish over a broken barbecue. She reckoned it all meant something deep and she readied herself to hear Lynley make an insufferably illuminating remark about it. But he said nothing, and di Fazio himself didn’t shed any light on matters for Isabelle when he identified the figure only as St. Lawrence. He went on to tell them that he was doing a series of Christian martyrs for a Sicilian monastery, by which Isabelle took it that St. Lawrence’s gruesome means of death had actually been by barbecue. This made her wonder what belief, if any, she’d be willing to die for, and this in turn made her wonder how or if the deaths of martyrs tied in with Jemima Hastings’ own end.
“I’ve done Sebastian, Lucy, and Cecilia for them,” di Fazio was saying. “This is the fourth of a series of ten. They’ll be placed in the niches in the monastery chapel.”
“You’re well known in Italy, then,” Lynley said.
“No. My uncle is well known in the monastery.”
“Your uncle’s a monk?”
Di Fazio gave a sardonic laugh. “My uncle is a criminal. He thinks he can buy his way into heaven if he makes enough donations to them. Money, food, wine, my art. It is all the same to him. And as he pays me for the work, I don’t question the…” He looked thoughtful, as if seeking the proper word. “…the effectiveness of his actions.”
At the street end of the studio, a figure appeared in the double doorway, silhouetted by the light outside. It was a woman, who called out, “Ciao, baby,” and strode over to one of the other work areas. She was short and rather plump, with an enormous shelflike bosom and coils of espresso-coloured hair. She whipped the protective covering off her piece of sculpture and set to work without another look in their direction. Nonetheless, her presence seemed to make di Fazio uneasy, for he suggested that they continue their conversation elsewhere.
“Dominique didn’t know Jemima,” he told them, with a nod at the woman. “She’d have nothing to add.”