by David Hewson
“I’m sorry,” Mirko Oliva said quietly.
“Yeah. Well …” Bartoli called for grappa. “He should never have been there. He was useless. Couldn’t even shoot straight. Couldn’t think straight. If I’d been on duty …”
“Wait.” Costa was trying to get the sequence of events straight in his head. “According to the files, Rufo and Cattaneo came to the local station after they’d found Gregor and Alyssa Petrakis dead.”
The man looked incredulous. “Says who?”
“The files.”
Bartoli shook his head. “Even Lorenzo would have called for help if that had happened. The way I heard it, those guys were just asking directions.”
“When did you know the parents were dead?” Costa asked.
“Afterwards, I guess. It all got complicated. All these people turned up from Rome. All I could think about was my brother.” He stared at Costa. “It kind of happened all at the same time.”
“Tell us about them,” Mirko suggested. “The Petrakis family.”
The coastguardsman squirmed on his seat, looking uncomfortable. “No one liked that pair. They never did a stroke of real work that I could see. Had enough money to keep a little plane down at Civitavecchia, though. The kid liked to fly it. Used to buzz the town sometimes. Flying low. Thought it was some kind of joke. I had words with him. With them. They laughed in my face … didn’t give a damn.”
“Did you have any idea they might be involved in terrorism?” Costa asked.
Bartoli shook his head. “Course not. I would have reported them. I kept my eye on them, though. They were always going places they weren’t welcome. Those tombs. The scary place they found the Blue Demon. They had a thing about all that stuff. The museum people got nervous once or twice and called me. The Petrakis kid thought he knew everything.”
“How did he get on with his parents?” Rosa asked.
The man shrugged. “Fine, as far as I could see. The son was probably the only person they didn’t argue with. Everyone else — us. The police.” He hesitated. “Look. Afterwards, when they told us what had gone on in Rome …” Bartoli scratched his gray head. “It never made sense to people. Why would someone name themselves after some painting in a tomb somewhere? All that Etruscan stuff is history.”
“Not to Andrea Petrakis,” Rosa said.
“Then he’s crazy.”
“Where did Gregor and Alyssa Petrakis get their money?” Costa asked.
Bartoli grimaced. “I asked myself that question a lot. Before all this happened. Every time I tried to get permission to get serious with the Petrakises, someone on high told me to mind my own business. I wondered if it had to do with drugs. There was talk about that in the town. People in Rome were watching them. I was beginning to wonder if maybe they were informers. And then they were dead. Killed by their own son, supposedly.”
He slammed his glass hard on the table. Alcohol spilled over his shaking hand. The barman walked over without being asked and placed another grappa on the table. He knew Aldo Bartoli, knew what he needed.
“Why am I wasting my time telling you all this? I told the big people who came up from Rome after Lorenzo got killed. When they buried my poor, stupid brother … I told them then something wasn’t right. When they didn’t listen, I went to the police. When you kicked me out, I tried to tell the newspapers, until someone got hold of the reporters and whispered in their ears that Aldo Bartoli was a little soft in the head.”
He downed the drink in one shot.
“I don’t think I ever saw my mother smile again after that day. She went to her grave and my old man drank himself to death. So I got the hell out of there, found myself a job watching rich people bump their yachts into each other, sticking tickets on them for bringing in too many cigarettes from time to time. This story’s dead. As dead as my brother. You can’t do a damn thing to change that.”
Costa looked at his watch. It was close to five. There would still be people around in Tarquinia they could talk to.
“So what do you think?” Aldo Bartoli demanded. “Does it sound like I’m a lunatic?”
“We need facts …” Costa began.
“Facts. I saw the parents’ bodies in the morgue,” Bartoli snapped. “They’d been dead a week, maybe more. Andrea was living in Rome. He didn’t come home at all during that time, not as far as I could see. Why kill them? What was his motive? He didn’t look like the most loving son around. He didn’t look like he wanted them dead, either.” Bartoli grinned. He looked a little drunk. “Maybe the Carabinieri were just cleaning up the statistics, huh? Dumping the deaths of the parents at the kid’s door so they didn’t have to report it as one more unsolved crime?”
Rosa Prabakaran brushed away a strand of long brown hair from her dark, thoughtful face and said, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Bullshit,” Bartoli mumbled. His eyes looked redder, mistier. “There’s something else you should know. This is the one where you start to know I’m crazy.”
“Try me,” Costa suggested.
“They didn’t want us to see Lorenzo when he was dead. The big men in the Carabinieri said it was a bad sight. Not for a mother or a father. Mine being the nice, trusting people they were, they believed that too.”
Aldo Bartoli was beginning to enjoy this, Costa realized, as if he had something to say that had been waiting for years.
“Being a country carabiniere, I’d gotten used to dead bodies. Usually in pieces inside a car stinking of drink, smashed up against a tree or a wall. I wanted to see my brother before they buried him. Whatever he looked like. A friend of mine worked in the morgue. He got me in when no one was looking. Five minutes. Was enough.”
Someone at the bar was getting bad-tempered. The TV news went off. It was as if no one wanted to see any more.
“The story,” Bartoli continued, “was that Lorenzo and those two carabinieri from Rome were walking up the front path of this crappy shack of the Petrakises when the kids inside opened fire. Lorenzo was hit straightaway. The other two got lucky. They fought back, and by the time they got to the shack, the kids inside had killed themselves.” He raised a long, skinny finger. “One problem. Lorenzo didn’t look bad at all. I’d seen much worse out on the roads on a Saturday night. He had just one bullet wound.…” Aldo Bartoli swiveled his head and indicated the nape of his neck. “Close up, from what I could make out. Here. In the back. The way the mob used to execute people. Which is odd, when you come to think of it, since he was walking forward at the time. Those university kids must have been real clever to have killed him like that.” The coast guard officer pushed back his beer.
“A cynical man might have thought those students didn’t kill him at all. Those two carabinieri from Rome did, and then went on and murdered those kids, which is what they came for in the first place.”
“Why would they do that, Aldo?” Costa asked him.
“I’ve no idea. But I talked to someone who said they’d seen those two before. A week or so earlier. Around the time the Petrakises got shot. How’s that for a coincidence? If those two guys were good at murdering my brother, maybe they were good at murdering those Greeks too. Nothing to do with Andrea Petrakis. He just got the blame, because someone decided that was what was going to happen.”
Costa shook his head and was silent.
Aldo Bartoli blinked. “And you know another odd thing? A few years later they found one of those carabinieri—Cattaneo, I think his name was — shot dead. Bullet through the back of the skull, though for some reason this one came out a little messier than it did with Lorenzo.” He grinned. “They never did find out who did that. I guess it’s like my kid brother. There’s no knowing now, is there? I’d like to ask the other guy. Rufo’s his name. Except I never managed to find him to talk to, not that I haven’t tried. If you get lucky there …”
Costa glanced at the two young officers with him. Both looked glassy-eyed, a little shaken.
“I need names in Tarquinia,” he told Bartoli
.
“I don’t know any worth talking to.” He leaned forward. Costa could smell the strong spirit on his breath. “Did you understand what I just told you?”
“I think so,” Costa replied, getting up and throwing some money on the table for the drinks.
26
They spent an hour in Tarquinia, trying to find someone who would talk. In the local police offices, in the Carabinieri station, the council. It was as if they were intruders at a funeral. No one had time for anything except the events in Rome. An uneasy silence grew among the three of them. Costa was still hoping he would be able to sneak back to the city late that evening, after dark, when the roads might be more manageable. The younger officers had their doubts. Rosa had called a local hotel and booked three rooms as a precaution. Mirko Oliva was making noises about food. They recognized a wasted trip when they saw one, understood instinctively when it was time to take a break and hope the following day would be more promising.
Costa insisted on one final visit, out to the tourist tombs on the edge of town. They found only a couple of women closing the site for the day, one tall and surly, one dumpy and pleasant, shooing out the last straggle of visitors. Costa left Rosa and Oliva talking to the pair, found a quiet corner, and took out the cell phone that Dario Sordi had given him.
It seemed to take forever for someone to answer. It didn’t sound like Sordi’s voice, and there was no name.
“Who are you?” Costa asked.
“The president told you I’d answer this call, Sovrintendente. Ranieri of the Corazzieri. You remember? The man who found that microphone in your house last night.”
Dario Sordi’s visit seemed an age away.
“Can I speak with him?”
A pained sigh briefly filled the earpiece. “The president is with his guests, welcoming them to Italy. If one can call it that, in the circumstances. I doubt he would appreciate the interruption. On a day like this …”
“I’m sorry. I’m not in Rome.”
“Oh … where?”
“I’m in Tarquinia.”
“Indeed.” Ranieri didn’t sound surprised.
“Do you know the area?” Costa asked.
“Only as a place in the distance from the road when we drive north to see my wife’s parents in Livorno. It looks beautiful. Is your visit proving … educational?”
“Not very.”
“Perhaps you would like me to pass on a message?”
Costa couldn’t think of one. He wasn’t really sure why he had called.
“Where were you twenty years ago?” he asked the Corazzieri officer.
There was a lengthy pause before Ranieri replied.
“The NATO offices in Brussels. Military liaison. A cold place, but the food could be quite good if you knew where to eat. I missed the Blue Demon episode, I’m afraid. Those years …” Ranieri’s voice sounded hesitant, almost guilty. “I was scarcely in Italy at all. Reading about what happened in the papers — it was as if it was a different country. One I would prefer not to meet again.”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“No,” the man said emphatically. “You were told to call when it was necessary. I will tell him you will get in touch some other time. If you make it after nine-thirty tonight, then the formal proceedings will be over. Perhaps …” There was an unexpected silence, as if Ranieri was waiting for someone to leave the room. “Once the food is cleared away, the evening is Campagnolo’s. An appropriate time for the cabaret, don’t you think? I feel sure the president will not wish to linger.”
Costa walked back to the gatehouse and the tombs complex. Mirko Oliva was still talking to the two women. Tempers were rising.
“Why can’t we see the tomb?” he asked.
“Because it’s closed,” the tall woman insisted. “Permanently. If you want access, you’ve got to talk to the museum. Why do you want to see it, anyway?”
“Why do we?” Costa asked Mirko, trying to bring down the temperature.
“Because,” the young officer stuttered, “it’s the Blue Demon.”
He paused and looked lost for a moment.
“The thing we’re supposed to be looking for,” Oliva added quietly. “Let’s face it — what else do we have? Aldo Bartoli’s nuts.” He looked searchingly at Costa. “Isn’t he?”
“It’s not worth it,” the other attendant cut in before Costa could reply. “Trust me. I’ve been down there.”
She gestured toward the site. The burial mounds rose like gigantic anthills, most with explanatory signs next to them. There was another archaeological area covered in corrugated iron and plastic sheeting, running through what looked like an abandoned parking lot.
“Aldo Bartoli thinks that’s scary?” Rosa Prabakaran asked.
“Like you said,” the tall one declared. “Nuts.”
She made another gesture: swigging back a bottle. The other attendant scowled at her.
“That man lost his brother. Then his parents,” the woman snapped. “You leave the poor soul alone. He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Good riddance …”
Costa watched the friendly one. There was something she wanted to say. “Did you know the Petrakis couple? The son?” he asked her.
“We all knew of them,” she answered.
“Signora,” Rosa pleaded. “We’ve spent hours here, elsewhere in the Maremma. Trying to get people to help us. And …” She swept the warm early-evening air with her hand, and for a moment Costa found himself imagining her in this place two and a half millennia before, dark-eyed, attractive, an Etruscan, someone from a different world. “It’s as if the Petrakis family never existed.”
“They didn’t,” the first attendant said. “Not for us. Foreigners. Greeks. Selling drugs to our children. Getting up to God knows what in that place of theirs — not that you or the Carabinieri ever took much interest.”
“None of us understood them,” her colleague added, more calmly. “That’s the honest truth. If people tell you nothing, it’s because they know nothing. The Petrakis family spoke to no one except to insult us. Then, one day, they were gone. All we could do was read the papers and think: These were the monsters that lived among us, and we never really noticed. I suppose you never do.”
Costa found himself looking at the tomb, with its corrugated-iron roof and air of abandonment. “How on earth did Andrea become obsessed by that?” he asked.
“He didn’t,” the tall woman declared. “That’s our Blue Demon tomb. The one Andrea used to hang around is on the road to Monte Romano. Middle of nowhere. You’d never know it was there unless someone told you. Just a heap of earth near the wood. No one goes near.”
Her colleague was thinking. “Someone does. I saw people there two days ago, when I went to my sister’s. From the museum, I imagine. They were …” She scratched her cheek, remembering. “They looked as if they were going inside.”
The other woman drew herself up to her full height. “I am the senior assistant here, Felicia. I know what the museum is doing. No one has been inside the Monte Romano site for years. Not since …” She grimaced. “Not since we used to have to chase the Petrakis boy out of there.”
Felicia was not budging. “I saw someone. Two men. In the afternoon …”
Costa picked up a map of the area from the ticket counter. “Where?” he demanded.
Felicia drew a circle by the side of a narrow country road leading inland, three kilometers away. “It’s in the wood off the Strada di Santa Amaia. No one goes down there except a few farmers.”
“Thank you,” Costa told her, then looked at his two officers. “We have one more call to make.”
“That’ll be five euros,” the tall woman said, holding out her hand. “For the map.”
27
Around five Anna Ybarra went back to the palatial living room and sat next to Deniz Nesin, who was glued to the television. All the afternoon programs — the cartoons and the kids’ features, the contests and the old-fashioned song-and
-dance shows, with their aging singers and prancing, half-naked dancers — had been canceled. There was only one story, and that was Rome: a city in agony, shaken, living off its nerves.
The Turk didn’t want to talk, so Anna went outside. It was still burning hot. The garden, with its dainty bushes and too-new white statues, was empty. Finally she found Andrea Petrakis by accident almost, noticing that the doors to the aircraft hangar — a gigantic garage-like structure built next to the parched grass strip — were half open.
She walked in, not caring whether or not he would be offended. The plane looked like an exaggerated child’s toy. High wings, a slender, shiny wooden propeller. A tiny engine that might have seemed more at home on a motorbike.
He was poking at the silver metal behind the propeller with a wrench. She opened the flimsy cabin door — the window was little more than clear plastic sheeting attached to a bare metal-tube frame. Then she eased herself into the right-hand seat and played with the joystick in the center, aware of the intense way Petrakis watched her from the other side of the windshield.
“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered.
“I’ve never been in a little plane before.” Anna found herself avoiding his eyes. In truth she had never been in a plane at all until they spirited her away to Pakistan.
The panels and instruments were in front of the left seat — the pilot’s, she guessed. There weren’t many. It didn’t look complicated.
Petrakis was eyeing her avidly, and there was something soft, something intriguing in his eyes that she liked.
He put down the wrench.
“I need to check the engine. The way everything is rigged. There’s only so much you can manage on the ground. You can come along, if you like.”
“Oh.”
She was surprised by the note of excitement in her voice.
“It’s got a little autopilot,” he added. “Just a couple of cheap servos hooked up to the ADI. The only way to work out if it’s accurate is to take the thing up.”
