The Body in the Piazza - By Katherine Hall Page Page 0,18

closed. He was clutching at his chest, fumbling for the knife. The blood from the wound was beginning to seep onto his dark shirt.

“Freddy, no! Don’t try to pull it out!” Faith screamed. His hand dropped to his side and his eyelids fluttered open. “We’re getting help! Just hold on!” Dimly aware that Tom had his phone out, she moved nearer and gently cradled Freddy’s head in her lap, Tom knelt down beside Faith. “I’ve called one-one-two,” he said. “The operator spoke English, thank God. I told her a man had been attacked and was seriously injured. She said help would come immediately.”

The Italian equivalent of 911 is 112, and it was one of the things both Fairchilds had learned before the trip. Tom was spreading his jacket over Freddy—surely in shock—and Faith quickly added the cardigan she was wearing.

“Faith, Tom,” Freddy whispered.

“Don’t try to talk,” Tom said. He took Freddy’s hand.

Freddy shook his head. “Too late. Stupid. Should have known.” He was groping inside his jacket with his other hand.

“My pen.” The words were barely audible. With obvious effort, he repeated them. “My pen.”

Tom reached into one of the inside pockets and pulled out a fountain pen. “Look for his notebook, Tom,” Faith said. “He must want us to write down what he’s saying.”

A name? Did he know who had attacked him? she wondered.

The previously empty piazza was rapidly filling up with people, but it felt as if the three of them were completely alone on a stage.

“His notebook’s not here,” Tom said. “His wallet and anything else he was carrying are gone, too. Just the pen.”

Freddy brought his hand up and pushed at the pen. “You have to stop them. They’re going to ki . . .” He slumped back, exhausted by the effort. “Pen,” he said once more, and then all was silent save the welcome sound of the police—the raucous two-note wails Faith had noted until this moment with mild annoyance. Now they sounded like the horn of Gabriel.

Guards from the French embassy were streaming out from the entrance on the piazza, joining the polizia who were jumping from vehicles ranging from motorcycles to Lancias. The French force had what looked like small machine guns at the ready; the Italians were holding pistols. It was terrifying. Faith assumed that Tom’s call must have been followed by so many others that the police decided to send a battalion. The ambulance arrived, and one of the Italian police shouted into a bullhorn. The onlookers melted back against the perimeter. Faith and Tom didn’t move.

“Non parlo l’italiano,” Tom said loudly. “Sono un americano.”

The EMTs rushed to Freddy and the Fairchilds moved out of the way. One of the policemen walked over to them after speaking to two others from the force that was rapidly encircling the area. He did not look friendly. He did look in charge “Your names?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Fairchild. We are in Rome on vacation. The injured man is Frederick Ives, British. A friend of ours,” Tom said.

They were loading Freddy into the back of the ambulance. Faith cried, “Where are you taking him? We need to go, too!”

The policeman didn’t pay the slightest attention to her request and the vehicle sped off. Suddenly she felt the full weight of being in a foreign country. “We have to be with our friend! Please!”

He ignored her again. “Your address here in Rome?”

Tom gave him the information and answered the questions that followed as well. Home address in the United States, arrival and departure dates. Occupations. The inspector appeared to be filling out a form. Faith had heard about Italian bureaucracy—one friend described the lengths she had had to go through simply to buy postage stamps—but this was intolerable. Next it would be mother’s maiden name. But it wasn’t.

“Which of you was holding the knife?”

A nightmare. A complete nightmare!

Tom asked, his tone puzzled, “Do you mean did we touch the knife?”

“Did you touch the knife?”

Was the first question a trick? Could the man possibly think they had attacked Freddy? Faith wondered. That they were somehow a team of deadly U.S. crooks who were expanding their turf to Rome?

“No, neither of us touched the knife. We did not want to do any further injury to Mr. Ives.”

“Then who did?”

Tom sighed and described the attack, finishing with the statement: “His wallet is gone as well as any other papers like his passport that he may have been carrying.”

Their interrogator raised one eyebrow. “You seem to know the contents of