The Garden of Evil nc-6

by David Hewson

  She began to protest, and her colleague across the way too.

  “Sister,” Peroni interrupted, “you have the right to remain silent. Or call the Pope. But he might be busy today.”

  “You’ve no idea how many women there are in Rome like us,” the senior one hissed at him. “None at all.”

  He didn’t. Nor was it important. There was only one thing that mattered.

  Costa started running north, back into narrow streets and lanes beyond the Piazza Navona, back into the streets of Ortaccio, letting the long-forgotten rhythm of his movement across the cobbled streets of Renaissance Rome remind him of a time before this pain, a time when he was nothing more than a single, insignificant agente in a city full of wonders.

  Two

  By nine-thirty Gianni Peroni was sick of seeing nuns and sisters. It seemed as if an army had assembled on the streets of Rome, every last woman in a religious order who could walk, flocks of them, no longer scampering through the streets quickly, discreetly, like skittish blackbirds brought to earth, but instead throwing off their shy invisibility to stomp around the deserted city with one idea only: putting up Agata Graziano’s curious message in places even the most adventurous flyer-posters would never dare to venture. Her adaptation of Dante, with Franco Malaspina’s name and crimes now attached, was plastered on some of the most famous and visible buildings in the city.

  Copies ran like a line of confetti across the roadside perimeter of the Colosseum, to the fury of the architectural authorities, who had interrupted the peace of their holiday break to call the Questura in a rage. All the other talking statues were now covered in them, too, as was the statue of Giordano Bruno in the Campo dei Fiori and the stone sides of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, the pedestrian pilgrims’ bridge across the Tiber on the way to the Vatican. A handful of sisters had even managed to attach several to the front of the Palazzo Madama, the Senate building where Caravaggio once lived under the patron age of Del Monte, an act that had brought down the tardy wrath of the Carabinieri, who now, the TV stations said, had fifteen sisters and nuns in custody, for vandalism against public, though never church, buildings throughout Rome.

  The Questura, Peroni was alarmed to discover on his return with the two silent, smug women from the Piazza Pasquino, was in possession of no fewer than twenty-three, which was why Prinzivalli, the duty uniform sovrintendente at the front desk, threw up his hands in horror at the sight of Peroni leading two more through the door and wailed, “What are we doing, man? Collecting them?”

  Peroni turned and looked behind him. The quieter of the two women he had apprehended was patiently taping a poster to the notice board in the public waiting room. She seemed to have an entire roll of them stuffed inside the voluminous dark folds of her gown. He found himself wondering at the idea that a community of sisters should have a photocopying machine, then cursed his own ignorance. All along, Nic had understood something that had eluded the rest of them. These women were not shy and weak and unworldly. Some, perhaps. But not all. Many had a determination and a conviction that escaped the daily population of the city who nodded at them on buses and in the street, never thinking for a moment there was much life or interest beneath that drab uniform. Yet they possessed a certain kind of courage, needed it to withdraw from conventional humanity in the first place.

  When that resolution was tested… Peroni checked himself. They were still women on their own, and Agata Graziano a defenceless sister, seemingly alone in a city where at least one ’Ndrangheta thug remained on the loose and looking to take her life.

  Falcone bustled in. The inspector looked bright-eyed, full of vigour… and damned angry.

  “What is this?” he demanded, ripping the sheet from the wall, staring at the words as if they were in a language he couldn’t understand. “Well?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Peroni answered. He nodded at the two by his side. “Ask them.”

  “I’ve been asking their kind all morning. All they do is stare back at me, smile sweetly, and say nothing. Well?”

  The two women smiled at him, sweetly, and said not a word.

  “Dammit! Where’s Costa?”

  “He had a message,” Peroni replied, fully expecting the storm to break, and utterly without a care about its arrival. “Sister Agata passed it on through this lady here.”

  Falcone asked tentatively, “And…?”

  “He’s gone. He didn’t say where. She—”

  “I don’t know,” the older sister interrupted. “So please do not be unpleasant. You will only make yourself more choleric.”

  Falcone’s eyebrows rose high on his bald, tanned forehead. The door opened and two uniformed officers walked in with four more women in long, flowing winter robes.

  “Arrest no more nuns,” Falcone ordered. “Put that out on the radio, Prinzivalli.”

  The sovrintendente nodded with a smile, made some remark about this being one of the more unusual orders he’d had to pass to the control room of late, and disappeared.

  “Sister,” Falcone went on, standing in front of the woman who had delivered the message to Costa, “you must tell me where Agata Graziano is. Where our officer is too. I don’t understand what she’s doing, but it is a distraction, perhaps a dangerous one, in a case of the utmost seriousness. I cannot allow her to be dragged in any further. I regret bitterly that I allowed this involvement at all.”

  The woman’s grey eyes lit up with surprise and anger. “You arranged it in the first place, Falcone.”

  The inspector’s cheeks flushed. “You know my name?”

  “Naturally. Sister Agata spoke to us at length last night. We broke our own rules. We were awake long past the due time.” She smiled at Peroni. “We know about you all. And more.” Her face became serious. “We know you have no case, Ispettore. This man… Malaspina. He has defeated you. He has money and the law on his side. He is one of those nasty, thuggish Renaissance knights Sister Agata told us of, a man who has” — to Peroni’s astonishment she stabbed Falcone in the chest with a long, hard finger — “bested you entirely. For all your power. All your” — this time her eyes flashed in Peroni’s direction — “men.”

  “That is an interesting observation, Sister,” Falcone barked. “Now, where the hell are they?”

  “You think God has nothing to do with justice?” the woman asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “If he has,” Falcone answered immediately, “he’s been doing a damned poor job of it lately. If…”

  The tall, lean figure in the slick grey suit went quiet. Peroni hummed a little tune and rocked on his heels. It was a remarkably stupid — and quite uncharacteristic — comment for such an intelligent man to make.

  The long, bony finger poked at Falcone’s tie again.

  “God works through us,” she said. “Or not, as may be the case.”

  “Where are they?” he asked again.

  She took his wrist and turned it so that she could see his watch. “All in good time.”

  Then the woman took one step back and exchanged glances with the others there, all of whom had listened to this exchange in silence. She was, it seemed to Peroni, the senior among them, and they knew it.

  “There is one thing,” she said with visible trepidation.

  “What?” Falcone snapped, but not without some eagerness.

  “Sister Agata told us your coffee isn’t like our coffee. From powder. In big urns. She said… your coffee was… different. May we try some? It is Christmas.”

  Falcone closed his eyes for a moment then took out his wallet.

  “The Questura coffee is not fit for animals,” he declared. “Take these women out of my sight, Agente. If you can find them somewhere that’s open, buy them whatever they want.”

  Three

  Ten minutes later they were in the nearest cafe that was open, a place famed for both the quality of its coffee and cakes and its foul-mouthed owner, Totti, a middle-aged bachelor now stiff with outrage behind his counter, like a cock whose territory
had been invaded by an alien species.

  “It’s not right,” he confided to Peroni behind his hand as they stood at the end of the bar, a little way away from the gaggle of black-clad women sipping at their cups of cappuccino and tasting cornetti and other cakes as if this everyday event were entirely new to them, as it probably was. “It’s bad enough when there are more women here than men. But these women.”

  “They are just women,” Peroni grumbled.

  He didn’t like Totti. The man was a misanthrope. If there had been anywhere else within walking distance that was open… But the coffee was good. From the expressions on the women’s faces, it was a revelation.

  “A waste of a life,” Totti replied. “What good does that do any of them? A couple would look decent scrubbed up and in a dress too.”

  Peroni gave him the stare, a good one. There were, he reflected, decided advantages to being an ugly brute at times. Totti’s tooth brush moustache bristled, and without a word, the man walked off to polish, halfheartedly, some beer glasses by the sink.

  Each of the sisters now possessed a half-brown, half-white cappuccino moustache above her top lip. Oblivious to something they seemed not to notice even on one another, they were gossiping, the way all Roman women did, but quietly.

  He walked over, trying to make sense of the thought that kept bugging him.

  “Ladies!” he said cheerily, picking up one of the empty coffee cups. “So, how was it?”

  “Very rich,” the senior one said immediately, for all of them, that was clear. “Enjoyable but a luxury. Perhaps once a year. No more.”

  “Once a year is better than once a lifetime, Sister,” Peroni observed.

  “Before Rome, I worked in Africa,” she answered tartly. “They would have been happy with once a lifetime there.”

  “Happy?” Peroni echoed. “I doubt it, don’t you?”

  “I never realised a police officer would be so precise about words. Sister Agata said you were remarkable. The three of you. So what now?”

  He beamed at them. “Now you clear your debts. You tell me something.”

  “Falcone paid,” she said. “He’s not here.”

  “It’s a small thing and, being sisters, you believe in charity. It is this.” He had checked with Prinzivalli while Falcone was berating them in the Questura. It had seemed, to him if not to Leo Falcone, an obvious question to ask. “You’ve performed Sister Agata’s bidding on most of the prominent buildings in the centro storico. It’s an impressive feat. You must have been very busy.”

  “Thank you,” she said, bowing her head gracefully.

  “Yet there is not a scrap of paper on the walls of the Palazzo Malaspina, even though it would be an obvious place for your attention, with or without the connection you suppose.”

  They became very still and stared at him.

  “I believe Count Malaspina will know what has happened,” the vocal one said eventually. “It’s everywhere. One would have to be blind, surely…”

  “One would,” Peroni agreed. “All the same, I don’t see why you should leave that building untouched, almost alone of any of some importance.” He paused. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless that is precisely where you do not wish us to be.”

  She fell silent. Peroni leaned forward.

  “Sister,” he said quietly, “I don’t know how much you comprehend of the game you are playing. But understand this. If your colleague and my friend are in that place, there is nothing we can do to help them. Nothing. Without cause. Without evidence. Without a reason so compelling we feel able to drag away a magistrate from his lunch to beg for the right papers. The Palazzo Malaspina is inviolate in Rome, beyond our powers, outside our jurisdiction. We can’t go there under any circumstances at the moment. It might as well be the Vatican for all we can do.”

  “I can go to the Vatican anytime I like,” she said, and laughed. It occurred to Gianni Peroni that he might not, in everyday life, like this woman very much at all.

  Four

  It was a brief phone call. Falcone listened to his request. Then he said no.

  “You didn’t hear me correctly, Leo,” Peroni insisted. “I know we can’t go inside. I am simply telling you. These witches in wimples are up to something and it involves Malaspina’s place. They think they can handle this on their own. We know differently. I want five good men and an unmarked van. No one will see us. No one will know.”

  Falcone’s voice went up a couple of notes. He was furious; he was flustered.

  “I don’t have five good men to spare, sitting in some van, waiting for God knows what. Everyone we have is out there, looking for Agata Graziano and Costa. What else do you expect me to do?”

  “Something that isn’t obvious,” Peroni replied. “Something that’s you, not an order handed down from upstairs.”

  The line went silent. Peroni could imagine the flush of rage racing up Falcone’s tanned cheeks at that moment.

  “Listen to me,” he went on hastily. “You know you won’t find them. They don’t want to be found. That’s the point.”

  “What is?”

  “The boss sister you just met told us. We’ve failed. The law’s failed. All the ways we have of dealing with situations like this… they’re done with, busted, and Agata knows it. The best we can hope to come out with at the moment is a green light from Grimaldi to start using Teresa and her magic DNA machine again on anyone except Malaspina. That’s the payoff… and your cunning little sister thinks she has another way.”

  He didn’t hear an instant explosion. That was good.

  “Five good men,” he added hopefully. “An unmarked van. An hour or two. No more. I don’t think we’ll need it.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “If she’s in there, she will surely need our help before long. Whether she — or they — know it or not. Do you want to leave that to a phone call and the off chance we might have a spare car to send round from the Questura? Would that make you happy?”

  Falcone uttered a quiet, bitter curse, then added, “For a mere agente you have a lot to say.”

  “Nic’s there. I rather like Agata too. What do you expect?”

  “Wait outside,” he ordered. “And don’t let anyone know what you’re doing.”

  Five

  She had specified the place, and the location filled him with dread. It was the area behind the studio in the Vicolo del Divino Amore, the dank cobbled yard full of junk and stray weeds where he had first encountered Malaspina, hooded, armed, and deadly, before chasing him out into the open streets, towards the Mausoleum of Augustus.

  Towards Emily.

  Costa stopped for a moment as he entered the narrow brick corridor from the street, the place where Malaspina had turned and made that perfect O shape behind the fabric, murmured “boom,” and then dodged his fire in return. After that…

  He didn’t want to think about it. There wasn’t time. He retraced his steps down the alley, wondering where she might be, whether he was too late already. The place seemed different. Smaller. Even more squalid. Looking everywhere, half running, close to the wall, trying to move with as little noise and visiblity as possible, he went on until he got to the small enclosed yard at the end.

  The sight of the junk, and the vicious, clear memory of Malaspina hidden behind it, brought back such bitter recollections. For one fleeting moment he could see Emily’s face rising in his imagination, staring at him, angry, determined, the way she always was when danger threatened.

  Then a sound, thankfully, sent her ghost scattering from his head.

  Agata emerged in the far corner of the yard, creeping out from behind some discarded mattresses leaning against the blackened stones of the grimy terrace that had once been the home of Caravaggio. She was trying to smile. There was something in her hand he couldn’t see.

  Her clothes were ordinary: a simple black nylon anorak and plain jeans. The kind the convent probably gave out to the poor, he thought.
She looked like many a young woman in Rome at that moment, except for the expression on her face, which was excited, with a fixed resolve that worried him.

  He walked over and stood in front of her.

  “You will come with me now,” Costa said forcefully. “You will leave this place and go to the Questura. Even if I have to carry you.”

  “Do that, Nic, and you lose forever. Franco Malaspina will walk free. He will negotiate with that lawyer of yours. His guilt will be forgotten in return for allowing you to establish that of others. Do you wish to bargain with the devil? Is that who you are?”

  “Agata—”

  “Is it?” she demanded, her dark eyes shining.

  “I lost my wife to that man,” he said quietly, hearing the crack in his own voice. “I don’t wish to see another life wasted.”

  “Don’t fear on my account. That’s my responsibility. How did he come here for those women?” she asked. “Did you think about that? He’s a well-known man. He wouldn’t walk in the front door. It was too obvious. Nor…” She turned her head briefly to the brick corridor. “.…would he have risked that. It opens out into the Piazza Borghese. He would have been seen there too. People notice. You hardly ever meet Franco out in the open, in the street. It’s beneath him.”

  “This is all too late.”

  She leaned forward, smiling, her pert, smart face animated as always. “He owns everything. Every square metre. Every last brick and stone. He came through his own house.” She glanced towards a shadowy alcove half hidden behind some discarded chests. “You never looked. It never seemed important. After all, you couldn’t enter his palace anyway.”

  Costa struggled to find the words to make her understand.

  “Malaspina wants you dead.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Her dark curly hair flew wildly around her with the violence of the gesture. “That’s only a part of it. What he wants is to forget what he is, where he came from. All those black women. Women like me. ‘The sport in the blood.’ He’s ashamed of his lineage, as were Ippolito Malaspina and Alessandro de’ Medici before him. There is your resolution, if only you knew it. Franco Malaspina is at war with himself and flails at everything in order to hide that simple fact.”