The Garden of Evil nc-6

by David Hewson

  If Bea had had a daughter, she would have been about Agata’s age. He had seen that glint in her eyes the moment this bright, dishevelled young woman had walked through the door. The poor thing’s positively feral.

  Costa found himself amused by the description. It was both apposite and somehow ridiculous. Agata was an extraordinarily sophisticated woman. She simply chose not to show it on the outside.

  He found his coat, walked down the drive, and went to the men in the marked car blocking the entrance. It was a cold, clear night, full of stars, bright with the light of a waxing moon.

  Peroni was there with an officer Costa didn’t recognise. They were listening to the radio — old, bad Italian jazz, the kind Gianni would force on anyone given half the chance — and drinking coffee from a thermos.

  “Is there anything I can get you gentlemen?” he asked as they wound down the window.

  “Some ladies, some wine, some food,” Peroni responded instantly. “Actually, just the food will do. Got any?”

  “You know where the kitchen is. I’m going to bed.”

  “How’s the shoulder?” Peroni asked, suddenly serious.

  “Aching. But it’s not worth worrying about. Is everything OK here?”

  “It’s good,” Peroni said, nodding, meaning it. “Better than it looked. You know, when that bastard stormed out of here all smug and knowing this afternoon, I didn’t think so. I thought… there you go. Some rich jerk is going to walk all over us again. But I don’t now. I have no idea why. It’s probably the early onset of mental degeneration. I just think… we will nail him, Nic. We’re here. There are a hundred good men and women or more on the case back at the Questura. This new commissario is on our side too. It will work out. Somehow or other. I promise.”

  He turned and stared out of the car window. “You know what makes me so certain? It’s that awful detail Rosa got out of the hooker who went away. The idea that these animals photographed those women like that. You know. Just when…”

  He did know. Costa thought he understood why too. It was the precise instant captured on the canvas. Agata described it exactly: the moment of the fall. In the cries of those women, however unreal, however they were brought about, by sex or violence or — and he had to countenance this — the imminence of death, lay some secret pleasure the Ekstasists craved to witness.

  “I don’t believe in God,” Peroni went on, “but I’m damned sure that men like that will not walk away from us, not in the end. It’s only Malaspina now, and we will have him.”

  Costa agreed. “We will,” he said, then went back to the house, poured himself a small glass of the Verdicchio, which was barely touched, and found the chair by the fire, once his father’s, always the most comfortable in the house.

  The dog was there already, a small, stiff furry shape curled up in front of the burning logs, slumbering.

  There was a photo on the mantel. He reached up and took it in his hands, wishing, in the futile way one did, that his father could have seen this before he died.

  He and Emily stood where newly married couples often did on their wedding day in Rome, by the Arch of Constantine, next to the Colosseum, in their best clothes, Emily with a bouquet in her arms, smiling, happier than he had ever seen her, he in a suit Falcone had helped him buy, the best he’d ever owned, a perfect fit, now consigned to Teresa’s evidence pile, torn apart by Malaspina’s pellets, stained with Costa’s own blood.

  Lives were drawn together by invisible lines, unseen contours that joined waypoints one never noticed until they were already fading in the receding distance of memory. From the moment captured here to Emily’s death was but a few brief months, and nothing could have told him that then, nothing could ease the ache he felt now, the pain, the regret over so many unspoken words, such a proliferation of deeds and kindnesses that never took place.

  Time stole everything in the end. It had no need of an accomplice, some arrogant, deranged aristocrat hiding behind a mask and a gun.

  From above him he heard a sound, one he struggled, for a moment, to recognise. Then it came… laughter. Bea and Agata, happy together, their amusement running like a river, almost giggling, the way that children did, or a mother and daughter, joined by some mutual amusement over something that would never, in a million years, reach his ears.

  This was how it was supposed to be. This was how it should have been.

  He closed his eyes and held the photograph in its frame close to him.

  God gave us tears for a reason.

  Perhaps, he thought. But something stood between him and Emily’s pale, remembered face, still alive, still breathing in his memory. It was a figure in a hood, one who now possessed a voice and a face and a black, evil intent that was not yet sated.

  PART TWELVE

  One

  They left the house at midday, in a convoy of three vehicles, Agata and Costa in the centre, with a specialist driver at the wheel, an arrangement Commissario Esposito said would be standard practise until Franco Malaspina was in jail.

  Agata had risen early, spending most of the morning alone in the studio with her books and the computer, coming out only for glasses of water, saying nothing. Halfway through the morning, Rosa had arrived with fresh reference works… and new clothes. Agata had snatched at the former and scarcely even noticed the latter. When she emerged for the conference at the Questura, she had, it seemed to Costa, no conscious knowledge of the fact that she was now wearing, probably for the first time in her life, the kind of apparel most Roman women would regard as standard, half-elegant office wear: smart black slacks and a matching jacket, with a cream shirt. With Bea’s help, her hair now seemed relatively under control, snatched back in a band. The dark, angular lines of her face made her look a little older, a little more businesslike perhaps, though the effect was somewhat ruined by her insistence on wearing her old shoes, a pair of worn, black, deeply scuffed half-boots that looked as if they had marched over most of Rome several times over. She continued to carry two overstuffed plastic bags, one so heavy it gave her a marked tilt.

  Agata said nothing in the car, and walked through the Questura, catching curious, occasionally admiring looks along the way, as if heading for some routine academic conference, not a desperate convocation of law enforcement officers struggling to find some way back into a case of multiple murder, one in which she might be the only worthwhile witness.

  Finally, at one o’clock, as sandwiches were passed around the table, the meeting began, with a summary of the case from Falcone and the forensic from Teresa Lupo. Costa, with Agata on one side and Rosa Prabakaran on the other, listened avidly, hoping there would be some lacuna in the exposition of what he knew by heart, some gap or flaw in what they had done which would give them some new foothold that would lead into the Palazzo Malaspina.

  He heard none. Falcone described at length the extended Questura investigation into the murders in the Vicolo del Divino Amore and Emily’s. Rarely had such resources been brought to bear on a single investigation in recent history, in part because of the continuing media and public outcry over the case. There was shock that such dreadful events could be uncovered in Rome. The newspapers were outraged at the lack of progress and ran editorials daily, lamenting the seeming impotence of the police. At the same time, they were — with the lack of logic allowed to the journalistic profession at times — beginning to question the expense of the operation, with its thousands of officer hours and overseas trips, which now included Angola, Nigeria, and Sudan, all without the least sign of progress.

  Nor was the usually productive route of forensic making much of a contribution. The new rules brought into force following Malaspina’s legal applications made most of the conventional processes — the accidental, covert, and deliberate sampling of DNA in particular — unusable. The deaths of Castagna, Buccafusca, and Nino Tomassoni two nights ago had left Teresa Lupo’s team swamped with work, and would doubtless provide a sea of evidence which might one day prove useful. But neither she nor
Falcone had any fresh material which linked Malaspina directly with the case outside the forbidden area of genetic identification.

  Malaspina’s lawyers had dispatched the Questura back to the age of intellectual deduction, with little recourse to science. Castagna’s suicide would, Teresa felt sure, soon prove to be fake. There was, however, no calling card from Malaspina, not a phone call or a speck of physical evidence that could connect him with the man’s death. The two were acquaintances, perhaps even friends. This was only to be expected among two leading members of Rome’s younger glitterati. A magistrate like Silvia Tentori would not give a moment’s consideration to a name in a contact book or a few bland emails on a computer. They were, for the moment, entirely reliant on the relationship Malaspina had had with the reclusive Nino Tomassoni, and there, Falcone said, something different surely existed.

  In the way of Italian law enforcement, it had only that morning come to light that both men’s names were on Interpol’s list of artsmuggling suspects, which had been handed to the Carabinieri’s specialist team in the field. That same list, Falcone had gleaned from his contacts within the Carabinieri, also identified Véronique Gillet as a suspect, to the extent that there was active discussion about whether to question her shortly, an act which would inevitably have led to her suspension from the Louvre.

  “Sick, out of work, and on the verge of getting busted,” the pathologist interjected. “No wonder she was feeling a touch suicidal.”

  “Isn’t that enough to get us a warrant for Malaspina on its own?” Rosa asked.

  It was Esposito who intervened. “Not at all. If Gillet or Tomassoni had named him, of course. But since they are dead… Malaspina is simply one name on a long list, the result of anonymous information. Rich men attract this kind of gossip all the time. On its own it’s worthless. We need more than tittle-tattle.”

  They stared at one another, and Agata Graziano eyed them in turn, waiting.

  “So?” she asked. “Is that it?”

  “There may still be some room for opportunity here,” Falcone suggested. “We know he was obsessed with that painting in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. If we can prove some connection there… We don’t need evidence of the other crimes. It’s a stolen artwork like the rest, even if it’s not on the list. We can proceed on that basis alone.”

  She glanced at Costa and he knew, immediately, why.

  “That painting wasn’t stolen, sir,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” Esposito snapped. “Of course it was stolen. We have seventeen like it from Tomassoni’s house. Positive identification for fifteen of them now. Every one taken from some European art institution over the past decade. You’re telling me this one is different?”

  Agata’s small hand banged the table. “Of course it’s different.”

  Teresa Lupo wore a sly smile. “It was in a different place, gentlemen,” she said. “It was on a stand, out there to be viewed. Those others were items of trade, in storage, awaiting a buyer. I believe our sister here is right.”

  “Thank you,” Agata murmured, with the briefest of glances at Teresa as she spoke. “I am. This painting cannot have been stolen, not in the same way, for one very simple reason. As far as any of us knew, it didn’t even exist. Explain that to me, Leo. I am listening.”

  “So what did happen?” Esposito asked, looking prickly when Falcone stayed silent.

  “I have no idea,” she replied, shrugging her small shoulders. “I’m simply telling you what didn’t happen. Isn’t that important too?”

  Teresa nodded. “Very. But if it wasn’t stolen, where the hell has it been for these past four hundred years?”

  “Here,” Agata cried. “In Rome. Where it belongs. Where else? If it had been sold or gone abroad, we would have known. Who could have kept quiet about a work like that? An unknown Caravaggio, with a secret no one might guess at?”

  “A secret?” Falcone asked.

  Costa sketched out the details of the hidden signature and the alternative title. They looked baffled. This was beyond conventional police work.

  “All of which means what exactly?” Peroni asked in the end.

  Agata sighed and looked at Costa hopefully.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  “It means,” she said brusquely, “this was a private work of art for a gentleman’s bedroom. One that had a certain moral ambiguity that came from the artist, and was not, I suspect, part of the original commission, or indeed noticed by the men who owned it. For them, it was a kind of pornography. For Caravaggio, it was a discourse on the nature of love, a question for the viewer, asking him or her to define an attitude towards the origin of passion. Did it come from earthly flesh or was there some divine intent, some holy, sacred plan there, daring you to find it?”

  “And this is important?” Peroni asked.

  “For Franco Malaspina,” she said quietly, “this painting is the most important thing in the world. Why else would he risk so much to regain possession of the work? He needs it. So did Véronique Gillet. Castagna. Buccafusca. Everyone except Nino Tomassoni, who was a quiet, sad little thing, I think.”

  “He said something,” Falcone pointed out. “Tomassoni. Before he died. ‘The Caravaggio is mine. Ours. It’s the only one that is.’ ”

  “Then Franco took it from him,” Agata responded. “To enjoy what it brought. Which was… you tell me.”

  They were looking at each other, wondering who would be the first to say it.

  “I cannot assist you if I don’t know the facts,” Agata complained. “You are all very bad liars, by the way. So kindly stop.”

  Costa took the leap. “We have evidence that the Ekstasists took photos of women while they were having sex. That they tried to capture the instant of passion, not that it was passion, of course, but that doesn’t seem to have mattered.”

  She took a deep breath and asked, “You have the photos?”

  “We have a few,” Teresa replied. “Some of the victims are among those who died in the studio. Others… they don’t seem traceable.”

  “What do they show?” Agata asked.

  Costa intervened. “They show women in the throes of sexual ecstasy or some kind of torture, or perhaps even a fatal spasm. There’s no way of knowing.”

  Agata took a sip of water from the glass in front of her.

  “They wish to experience the moment of the fall,” she said quietly. “The transformation Caravaggio’s painting describes. The very second the world turns from Paradise into what we know now. If they do that, they become part of that moment, something witnessed only by God. They celebrate their own power over everyone, over these poor women. Over you and me. This was Franco’s doing, not the others’.”

  The slight, dark woman ran her fingers through her hair, exasperated. “You should surely realise this for yourselves by now. He is an obsessive human being. This is not just a painting for him. It is a hunger. An object of worship. A need. Something that acts as a catalyst to deliver what he wants.”

  Costa looked at her. He had an objection. “They didn’t know about the other title,” he pointed out. “Or the signature beneath the paint.”

  “They must have known. Perhaps Tomassoni had passed it on as some family history. Perhaps they simply read it in the canvas itself. This is art of the highest order. That painting was designed to be some cunning kind of mirror. It gave back to the viewer what he himself sought in it. For someone like Franco that would be the equivalent of turning the key in some dreadful lock. He found what he sought. Caravaggio painted it that way deliberately. Were I writing some dry academic paper, I’d be tempted to hypothesise that this was his revenge on the commissioner, if you like, since he clearly wasn’t in the habit of painting this kind of material, and probably didn’t enjoy it. He was paid to produce pornography. In return, he created something infinitely more subtle. Crude and lascivious to those who wished to see that. Subtle and spiritual and didactic — a warning against lasciviousness and decadence �
� for those who sought that. And perhaps…” She stopped in midthought, looking lost for a moment. “.…a little of both for those who deem themselves ‘normal.’ Do you understand what I am saying now? Or do I have to spell it out?”

  No one spoke.

  Agata groaned. “Franco and his friends needed to see this voluptuous Eve because what they did became more important, magnified, by her presence. I know nothing of these things, but I know what ecstasy means. Is it possible that this work would so infect a man that, in its absence, he was unable to achieve that state? And perhaps Véronique Gillet too? I am asking you this because I cannot know. Is that possible?”

  They were all silent, until Teresa Lupo wrinkled her nose and said, “One thing you learn in this job, Sister, is that it’s amazing what pushes some people’s buttons. I think you just put your finger on our man. Not that it helps. In fact, it makes him scarier than ever.”

  Agata smiled. “Does it? I thought it made him more human. Now I would like to go to the Vicolo del Divino Amore, please.” She waited, staring at Commissario Esposito. “Unless someone has a better idea…”

  “You have helped us enormously,” Falcone interrupted. “We’re very grateful. Now, please, return to the farmhouse. You will be safe there. We will provide what you want.”

  “What I want,” she said bitterly, “is to help. How can I do that if you treat me like a prisoner?”

  “Agata…” Falcone began.

  Esposito waved him down. “She’s right,” he conceded. “We need all the help we can get. Costa, you take her with your team, since you all seem to know each other. Falcone and I will stay here and go through what little we have so far.”

  He stared at Agata Graziano. “There is a condition, though.”

  She listened, arms folded.

  “You will do as you’re told, Sister. In particular what Agente Prabakaran advises, since she will be by your side throughout.”

  Agata nodded and said simply, “I know a little of obedience, Commissario. You have my word.”