"In Palermo. Why? What does this have to do with Jemima? I came here legally, if that's what you're interested in, not that it matters much these days with the EU mess and people wandering between borders whenever they feel like it."
Ardery, Lynley saw, indicated a change of direction with a slight lifting of her fingers from the countertop. She said, "We understand you were collecting National Portrait Gallery postcards for Jemima. Had she asked you to do that, or was it your idea?"
"Why would it have been my idea?"
"Perhaps you can tell us."
"It wasn't. I saw one of the cards in Leicester Square. I recognised it from the portrait gallery show - there's a banner out front and Jemima's picture's on it, if you haven't seen it - and I picked it up."
"Where was the postcard?"
"I don't remember ...near the half-price ticket booth? Maybe near the Odeon? It was stuck up with Blu-Tack and it had the message on it, so I took it down and gave it to her."
"Did you phone the number on the back of the card?"
He shook his head. "I didn't know who the hell it was or what he wanted."
"„He,'" Lynley noted. "So you knew it was a man who'd been distributing the cards."
It was one of those gotcha moments, and di Fazio - clearly no fool - understood this. He took a few seconds before he answered. "She told me her partner was likely doing it. Her former partner. A bloke from Hampshire. She knew from the phone number on the back of the card. She said she'd left him, but he hadn't taken it well and now, obviously, he was trying to find her. She didn't want to be found. She wanted to get the cards down before someone who knew where she was saw one and phoned him. So she collected them and I collected them. As many as we could find and whenever we had the chance."
"Were you involved with her?" Lynley asked.
"She was my friend."
"Beyond friendship. Were you involved with her or merely hoping to be involved with her?"
Again, di Fazio didn't reply at once. He was obviously no fool, so he knew that any way he answered could make him look bad. Yes, no, maybe, or whatever, there was always the sexual element between men and women to consider and what the sexual element could lead to by way of motives for murder.
"Mr. di Fazio?" Ardery said. "Is there something about the question you don't understand?"
He said abruptly, "We were lovers for a time."
"Ah," Ardery said.
He looked irritated. "This was before she came to live at Bella's. She had a wretched room in Charing Cross Road, up above Keira News. She was paying too much for it."
"But that's where you and she ... ?" Ardery let him complete the thought on his own.
"How long had you known her when you became lovers?"
He bristled. "I don't know what that has to do with anything."
Ardery said nothing in answer to this and neither did Lynley. Di Fazio finally spat out,
"A week. A few days. I don't know."
"You don't know?" Ardery asked. "Mr. di Fazio, I have a feeling that - "
"I went in for tobacco. She was friendly, flirty, you know how it is. I asked her if she wanted to go for a drink after work. We went to that place on Long Acre ...the pub ...I don't know what it's called. It was packed, so we had a drink on the pavement with everyone else and then we left. We went to her room."
"So you became lovers the day you met," Ardery clarified.
"It happens."
"And then you began to live together in Putney," Lynley noted. "With Bella McHaggis.
At her home."
"No."
"No?"
"No." Di Fazio took up his cigarette. He said if they were going to talk further - and it was costing him in bloody customers, by the way - then they were going to have to do it outside where he at least could have a fag while they spoke.
Ardery told him it was absolutely fine to move outside, and he gathered up his tools and shoved them under the counter along with the sample masks on their wooden plinths. Lynley noted the tools - sharp and well suited for activities other than sculpting - and knew Ardery had done likewise. They exchanged a glance and followed di Fazio out into the open air.