On Monday morning, the Italian press printed a grainy photograph of Helen sitting in an outdoor café with some other girls from the Cleopatra set, and it was only then Scott realised that she was the person who had been killed at Torre Astura.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he yelled, startling his secretary. ‘I know her.’
She was beaming at the camera, holding up her drink as if toasting someone, and she looked heartbreakingly young and pretty. Tears came to Scott’s eyes. What the hell had happened?
The story alongside the photograph said that the police were treating her death as suspicious and straight away Scott guessed she had been killed because she’d blurted out something about drugs to the wrong person. Maybe Luigi had got wind of it. It had been foolish of him to take her to the Ghianciaminas’ villa. She was young and garrulous and seemed to have no sense of caution. If word got back to Luigi that she was talking about it, he would have had no option but to shut her up.
Scott checked the date on which she had drowned and realised it was the day after he last saw her. She’d been distraught that evening. Maybe she already knew that Luigi was after her. He tried to remember exactly what she had said: she’d complained that she couldn’t afford the vitamin treatments any more, and implied that she was taking drugs again. Scott had assumed that she was upset because she hadn’t managed to get off the heroin as easily as she’d hoped – but perhaps there had been something else going on. Had Luigi been threatening her? Was he even inside her room at the time? Is that why Helen wouldn’t let him come in?
Scott was determined to get to the truth. First, he decided to ring the vitamin doctor to find out whether she had gone for the vitamin shot that night, the one he gave her the money for.
‘Helen Sharpe? I haven’t seen her in almost a week.’
‘Did you realise that she is dead?’ Scott asked. ‘She drowned last Thursday night. It’s all over the morning newspapers.’
There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘I had no idea. I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I saw her the night before she died and she told me she’d had to start taking drugs again because she couldn’t afford any more of your treatments. But that made me curious, because I thought you said she would only need one or two injections before she would be cured.’
‘Yes, that’s how it should have been,’ the doctor told him. ‘But Miss Sharpe was a very anxious young lady who didn’t believe herself capable of beating the addiction on her own. If I’d known she was struggling I would have offered her free treatments.’
As they spoke, Scott was scribbling down the doctor’s responses in shorthand. ‘What else is in those shots? Why did she need to keep coming back for more?’
‘I don’t need to tell you …’
‘Shall I suggest to the police that they come and test your formula to see if it could have contributed to Helen’s death?’
There was a long pause. ‘I always include some amphetamines to give patients a boost. You’ll find that’s normal practice. Otherwise it’s mostly vitamins B and C.’
‘Oh Christ!’ Scott was furious with himself. Looking back, all the signs were there but it had never occurred to him. Lots of doctors gave amphetamine shots – it was said that the Cleopatra director Joe Mankiewicz had one every morning – but it was the last thing Helen needed in her fragile condition. She’d gone from one highly addictive drug to another. ‘You’d better tell the police about that.’
The doctor cleared his throat. ‘I don’t see why I should. It’s not as if she died of an overdose, is it? I thought you said she drowned?’ He sounded defensive.
‘The police are treating her death as suspicious.’
‘That has nothing to do with me. I’m bound by the Hippocratic Oath not to discuss my patients, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate this call.’
‘Surely the Hippocratic Oath—’ Scott had been going to say that he thought it no longer applied when a patient died, but the doctor had hung up.
Scott was furious with himself. Why had he taken her to someone he couldn’t personally vouch for? He should have made more enquiries first. That evening, as he nursed a Peroni in the piano bar where he’d often seen Helen and her friends, Scott felt very emotional. He gazed at their usual table and tried to imagine her sitting there. She’d been troubled, for sure, but she was a lovely girl, entirely without guile. If only he hadn’t left her that last evening. He should have insisted she told him what she was upset about.
He knew he should go to the police and tell them about Helen’s drug habit, in case they hadn’t figured it out already. He’d say he was a friend who met her in a nightclub and was trying to help her to break her addiction. He should also tell them about seeing her the night before she died.
Scott wondered what theories they were pursuing. Maybe they already had someone in custody. Oh crap! Suddenly it occurred to him that he could find himself being called to testify in court against Luigi or one of his cronies. That wasn’t a position he wanted to find himself in. Apart from anything else, it would make it very difficult to continue writing his story. Perhaps Alessandro Ghianciamina would remember him as the guy who chatted up his sister. It was far too dangerous.
All in all, he decided he would wait a few days and see if the papers reported any more before he raised his head above the parapet. One way or another, there was a lot at stake.