Dante's Numbers

by David Hewson

  “I don't have time for this and nor do you,” Costa interrupted him. “Look at the card, see my rank, and tell your superior officer. I know the Farnesina. It's got a history he needs to understand. If you don't take me to him now, I will make damned sure afterwards he gets to understand you kept me away.” Costa pointed at the small, elegant villa that had been built five centuries before on the orders of some wealthy Roman noble as a salon for artists and gamblers and beautiful, occasionally dubious women. “There are things he needs to appreciate.”

  “Get lost,” the idiot said, waving him away. “This is nothing to do with you.”

  A large, ruddy-faced man in an immaculate uniform swept past. Costa was never good at Carabinieri ranks but something in the officer's face spoke of seniority.

  “Sir, sir…”

  He ran into the individual's path, waving his police ID. The man looked at him as if this were an act of the utmost impertinence. Costa could see his own colleagues, who had followed him from the Via Giulia, being apprehended at the villa gates, along with a furious Catherine Bianchi.

  “My name is Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi. This crime scene is in our possession. Go away.”

  “I know this building,” Costa insisted. “Do you?”

  “When I wish the opinion of civilians, I will ask for it. Now stand aside…”

  Two sets of strong arms pulled Costa away. Quattrocchi marched forward, flanked on either side by half a dozen uniformed officers. An elderly civilian was unlocking the doors, seemingly shaken by the fuss.

  “It's all about illusion,” Costa yelled. “ Trompe-l'oeil. A trick of the eye. What you see is not what's real!”

  Just like the movies, he thought, as he watched the group of men stomp towards the villa's elegant entrance. Under the harsh white floods, the building looked like a sketch from Piranesi scribbled into life with the crayons of a giant.

  Quattrocchi turned and, to Costa's astonishment, grinned sarcastically. Then he made a coarse and sexual street gesture not normally associated with senior military officers.

  Very little in the Farnesina was as it appeared, Costa recalled, as the dark uniforms of the Carabinieri vanished through the doors. Inside, there were paintings masquerading as tapestries, a cryptic horoscope depicted as a celestial relief, artificial views of a lost Rome that may never have been quite as real as they suggested. The villa was a temple to both illusion and the sensuality of the arts.

  He turned on his heel and headed for the gate. It was quieter now. Falcone was there, and for once the inspector wasn't shouting. The game, for them, was surely lost.

  MAKE NOTES,” THE MARESCIALLO ORDERED AS they entered. “Take photographs. Video. I wish a record of everything. We will release it to the media when we're done.” He glanced at his large gold watch, then at Morello, who already had pad and pen in his hands.

  “How much time do we have left?” Quattrocchi demanded, walking on.

  “Seven minutes and…” The Carabiniere held up his phone to try to see the picture there. “No. It's gone again. Seven minutes at least. Ample time.”

  “You!” Quattrocchi said to the elderly caretaker they had jerked away from the TV soccer in his tiny apartment adjoining the villa. “Take us to Galatea.”

  “This is the Loggia of the Psyche,” the little man said with pride, immediately falling into a fawning tourist-guide voice. “You will note, sirs, the work of Baldassare Peruzzi and Raphael. These fruits, these flowers… once this would have opened onto the garden, hence the horticultural theme. And the so-called tapestries, which are painted, too. The Council of the Gods, Cupid and Psyche's wedding banquet—”

  “This isn't a damned social visit,” Quattrocchi snapped. “Where's Galatea?”

  “We don't get many visitors at night,” the caretaker replied, hurt. “Not from officers of the law.”

  “Where—” Quattrocchi snarled, then stopped himself, realising the man had been leading them there all along. Now they had wandered into the loggia, which connected with that of Psyche.

  He stared ahead. The painting was there, and many others, too. There was nothing else. The place was empty.

  The maresciallo muttered a curse under his breath and found himself briefly wishing he hadn't shooed away the young police officer quite so quickly. What had he said? This is a place of illusions. The images on the web had guided them—or, more accurately, the state police—to this building, and this room. But one more trick, one more sleight of hand, still stood between them and Allan Prime edging towards death.

  “Someone told me,” Quattrocchi said, “that this villa was a place of tricks. What does that mean?”

  The caretaker rubbed his hands with pleasure. “There are many, sir. Allusions. Illusions. Codes and cryptograms. References to the stars and alchemy, fate and the fleeting, intangible pleasures of the flesh.”

  “Spare me the tourist chat. Where do I look to find them?”

  “Everywhere…” The old man spread his arms.

  “Where more than any?”

  “Ah,” he replied, and nodded his head as if something had been suddenly revealed. “The Salone delle Prospettive. But it's closed for restoration, and has been for many months. I'm sorry. What visitors we have… they always ask. The matter is out of my hands…”

  The Salon of Perspectives. Quattrocchi knew it was the place the moment he heard the name. This was part of the cruel game. Playing with viewpoint. Changing a familiar aspect of the world through a trick of the light, a twist of the lens through which one saw the scene.

  “Show me.”

  “It's closed. No one enters except the restoration people.”

  “Show me!”

  Morello had found a sign to the place and was pointing to it. Quattrocchi brushed the caretaker aside and led the way up a flight of marble stairs, breath rasping.

  The younger officer was staring at his phone again. He had a picture back.

  “Time?” Quattrocchi asked.

  “Less than five minutes.”

  The door was locked. They bellowed at the caretaker until he came up with the key. Then, with Quattrocchi in the lead, they went in.

  It was dark and church-like. The only illumination came from a low light in the ceiling which was focused on a mass of tangled wires, mechanical contraptions, and constricting devices near the end of the room. A man—Allan Prime—was at the heart of this ganglion of metal and cable, strapped tightly into an upright frame, the open iron device around his head. A tourist print of the painting of Galatea fluttered behind him, animated by the breeze from an open window. On the floor, connected to the whole by a slender cable, sat a single notebook computer, its screen flashing a slow-moving image of something so unlikely it took Quattrocchi a moment to recognise what it was…the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

  From behind, the caretaker, unaware of what lay before them, chanted, “You will note, sir, the perspectives of another Rome… Trastevere and the Borgo… the centro storico… painted as if real views from real windows. Also—”

  Coming in last, he finally saw, and stopped.

  Allan Prime whimpered. Pain and relief mingled with the tears on his sweat-stained face.

  Quattrocchi walked forward, as close as he dared, and took a good look around the mechanical apparatus into which the actor had been strapped, checking carefully for traps or some kind of light signal device that might have been set to warn of an intruder's approach, and perhaps trigger the mechanism early.

  He saw none, but the gleaming sharp point had now edged its way to within a centimetre of the actor's left temple.

  The mechanism that held the deadly device was hidden in the deep, dark shadow outside the garish, too-bright overhead light. Carefully, barely breathing, Quattrocchi took out a penlight and shone it on the space there. A low, communal gasp of shock ran through the cluster of officers behind him. A full-size crossbow, of such power and weight it could only be designed for hunting, stood loaded, locked inside some ratchet mechanis
m that shifted it towards its victim with each passing minute. It was not just the spear—which he now saw to be an arrow—that was moving in the direction of Allan Prime. It was an entire weapon, ready to unleash its sharp, spiking bolt straight into the man's skull.

  “Four minutes,” Morello said, and sounded puzzled.

  “We will release you immediately,” Quattrocchi said calmly.

  “You have nothing to fear. Four minutes is more than enough—”

  “Sir…” the young Carabiniere interrupted.

  Quattrocchi turned, annoyed by this intrusion.

  “Something is happening,” the officer pointed out.

  He walked carefully towards the maresciallo and showed him the phone.

  The picture was changing. Quattrocchi grappled for the correct term. Finally it came. Zooming. The camera was zooming out of the scene. He looked at the single grey eye of the device that had been set up in front of Allan Prime. Its glassy iris was changing shape, as if trying to focus on something new.

  When he returned to Morello's phone, Quattrocchi saw himself there, looking surprised, angry, red-faced, and, to his dismay, rather old and lost as he stood next to the terrified actor strapped into the deadly frame.

  From a place Quattrocchi couldn't initially pinpoint came the deep, loud, disembodied rattle of a man's laughter, cruel, uncaring, determined too. Someone gasped in shock and, perhaps, terror.

  A lilting, laughing voice, male, probably American, issued from the computer, and spoke in English.

  “Say cheese. Say…”

  There was a sound like water rushing through air, then a scream that was strangled before it could grow into a full-throated cry.

  Quattrocchi turned his back on the apparatus, not wishing to witness what was happening to Allan Prime. On the floor of the Salone delle Prospettive, in a sixteenth-century nobleman's version of an illusory paradise, he saw instead an elderly caretaker who was on his knees, crossing himself, turning his eyes to heaven and starting to pray.

  Something had been written on the dusty tiles in multicoloured aerosol paint, letters a metre high, the way teenagers sprayed graffiti on the subway. Maresciallo Gianluca Quattroc -chi gazed at the message and remembered his lessons on Dante from college some thirty years earlier. The letters were ragged and rushed, but the words were unmistakable.

  The Second Circle. The Wanton.

  “What next?” Morello asked, unseen by his side.

  “The third circle, of course,” Quattrocchi answered numbly.

  COSTA AWOKE WITH A START. HE'D SLEPT IN Leo Falcone's Lancia, which, after much argument, had been allowed to enter the secure area created by the Carabinieri in the Via della Lungara and the streets beyond and park close to the Farnesina. The Lungotevere was closed to traffic, which explained the strange silence. There would be media everywhere, cameras and reporters, crews from around the world, switched from the year's grandest movie premiere to a terrible death, and eager for a story that would surely occupy the headlines for weeks to come. But none of the morning hurly-burly of commuters fighting to get to work.

  Beyond the window, he could see Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo talking to Catherine Bianchi near the villa's entrance. Maggie Flavier was joining them, a seemingly uncomfortable Carabinieri officer by her side. He couldn't help but notice the young actress glanced in the direction of the car after she spoke to them. He looked at his watch. It was nearly seven in the morning. Costa turned on the car radio and listened to the news. There was only one story, and one law enforcement agency to tell it. Not the Polizia di Stato.

  No one had been apprehended. The idea that Inferno would receive its world premiere in Rome had been abandoned. Instead, the entire cast and security operation would bring forward their planned move to California. The exhibition created for the Casa del Cinema would be rebuilt instead at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once that was complete, Inferno would be launched there, leaving Roman filmgoers to wait weeks for a domestic public release, a decision that was already creating fury among local fans.

  The name of the place rang a bell. Costa closed his eyes and recalled Emily, then unknown to him, in a room in the American Embassy displaying a picture of a beautiful, half-ruined classical building by a lake as part of the investigation that had brought them together.

  Then he was brought to earth by the gruff Roman voice of Gianluca Quattrocchi giving the news his somewhat over-dramatised version of events. Allan Prime, he claimed, was beyond rescue from the very beginning. The videos of the actor on the web—and his savage demise, which was now on many millions of computers and phones around the world—were all part of a sadistic murder plot played out with heartless deliberation over the Internet. Why? Quattrocchi had the answer. The clues were there throughout. In the message scribbled on the dummy's head—Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. In the words written on the floor in front of the trapped actor, which had been shared instantly with the world as the webcam panned the scene. In the constant stream of hate mail and dark threats sent to the production for months and now released to the Carabinieri by the movie's publicist, Simon Harvey, who had— unwisely, Quattrocchi suggested—kept them quiet out of a mistaken belief they came from a crank.

  “Cranks they may be,” the maresciallo went on, playing for the cameras, “but they are also killers.” He lowered his voice to make sure there could be no mistaking the seriousness of his message. “Killers obsessed with the works of Dante. They wish to punish those who made this movie for what they see as some kind of blasphemy. The star is dead already. We are redoubling security for everyone else involved—cast, crew, all of them. We will cooperate with the American authorities in this, and, since Italian citizens are under threat, participate in the operation in California as well.”

  “Nice work if you can get it,” Costa muttered. Quattrocchi had never mentioned that the unfortunate Peter Jamieson had been carrying a gun loaded with blanks. He wondered how that awkward fact could possibly fit in with such strangely histrionic theories.

  Feeling stiff and hungry, he got out of the car. Two more state police vehicles were set close to the far side of Falcone's Lancia like a wagon train surrounded by a sea of dark blue Indians. He ambled over to the discussion Falcone was conducting. Maggie Flavier looked pale and pink-eyed as if she'd been crying. When she saw him, she turned to the Carabiniere and ordered him to fetch coffee and cometti. The man slunk off with a mutinous grunt.

  “Be kind. He's only doing his job,” Costa suggested.

  “If I want protection, I choose who does it,” she retorted. “And I choose…” Her slender finger ranged over the four of them, before adding Catherine Bianchi, too. “…you.”

  “Oh no,” the American policewoman responded, half amused. “I'm just the captain of a little San Francisco precinct, and one that won't be there much longer either. If the Palace of Fine Arts didn't happen to be around the corner, I wouldn't be here at all. All the important stuff gets assigned to the people downtown at Bryant Street. Frankly, they're welcome to it. Guarding celebrities is out of my league.”

  “There are protocols here, Miss Flavier,” Falcone added. “You must do as the maresciallo says. He seems very sure of himself.”

  “People don't murder for poetry,” Costa reminded him. “You said it yourself.”

  “Allan Prime's death is none of my business. Our business. That…” Falcone's bright eyes shone with some inner knowledge. “…has been made very clear to me indeed by people with whom I am not minded to argue. Besides, Quattrocchi has created for himself a very certain picture of what is happening, one that seems to fit well with his own theatrical ambitions. Far be it from us to disturb his reveries.”

  “Leo…” Teresa interrupted. “We have some interesting material from that place in the Via Giulia. Get us a little time. Perhaps we could get something useful.”

  The inspector shook his head. “You must hand it over. It's theirs now. All of it. Everything pertaining to Allan Prime and that
American actor they shot dead in the park. Besides, whoever is responsible is surely gone from Rome already. That circus trick they performed with Prime…It could have been run from anywhere. America even. If Quattrocchi is correct and this is connected with the film—and I do believe this to be true—their attentions will surely follow that, too, across the Atlantic, far from Rome.”

  Costa waited. He recognised that glint in Falcone's eye.

  “All we have,” the inspector went on, “is a missing death mask. A priceless historical object. And several other similar exhibits that will shortly be crated up and air-freighted to America.” He scratched his chin. “Is it possible they might also be at risk? If so, would it be fair to add to the Carabinieri's burden by asking they take responsibility for that role, too…?”

  Peroni laughed.

  “I'm not sure it's a possibility I can ignore,” Falcone went on, then pointed a commanding finger at Costa.

  “Your English is good.” He peered at Peroni. “What about yours?”

  “Mine? Mine?” the big man replied, aghast. “I spent six months on assignment with the Metropolitan Police in London, eating nothing but pies and fried potato. In some place called…” He thought about this. “The Elephant and Castle.”

  “A bar?” Teresa asked.

  “No,” he replied, outraged. “A place.”

  “How long ago?” Falcone demanded.

  Peroni shrugged. “Fifteen, twenty years… They were first-class police officers. And also good…” He searched for the word. “…blokes.”

  “Your English, Gianni,” Teresa wanted to know. “How is it?”

  Peroni drew himself up and looked officious.

  “Ecco!” he declared, stabbing a finger straight into Costa's face. With his scarred and beaten-up face, he suddenly seemed remarkably threatening. “Consider yourself well and truly nicked, sonny,” he roared in a thuggish London accent that Costa thought comprehensible—just.