Caravaggio's Angel (27 page)

Lying beside Joe later that night, enveloped in post-coital drowsiness, I thought of Rigaut. To tell the truth I’d been thinking about him ever since we’d said our goodbyes, his face imposing itself upon Joe’s just as mine, I was willing to bet, haunted his dreams. He’d be in Paris now, in his own bed – perhaps (though this seemed improbable) beside his wife. They might even be lying in that very bedroom, in the rue d’Assas, where his uncle had lived and died. And tomorrow he’d wake up and do whatever it is prime ministers do on a Sunday – read papers, attend to urgent business, play golf, meet his mistress. But by then Pascal would have published his story. By midday it would be the lead on the television news. Journalists would be ringing Rigaut’s office – soon he would be besieged. The inquiry into Antoine’s death would be reopened, the question of Juliette’s revived, perhaps Delphine’s as well. And that would be that – disgrace, maybe even prison. The end.

What would he feel? Fury, resignation? Chiefly, I suspected, surprise. The dead were dead – buried in the hectic flurry of present life, necessary rungs on the ladder. Why resuscitate them? Although for a moment I’d had him rattled, the possibility that they might rise again was something he’d never seriously considered. All that had been dealt with: we’d struck a bargain, last night’s dinner the final flourish on the signature. He’d done his bit and he hadn’t a doubt that I’d do mine. Didn’t he have me entranced?

But there he was wrong. That was the Angel: true keeper of my heart.