The Villa of Mysteries nc-2

by David Hewson

  Peroni didn’t feel convinced. “Don’t wars need something to start them?”

  “The girl. Wallis’s stepdaughter. Neri or maybe his son did something to her. Wallis wants payback. This is Neri getting his revenge in first. Against all of us.”

  “You people do live in a complicated universe. How’d you get there?”

  “It’s not ”there.“ It’s not even part way ”there.“ ”

  “So what do we do? What are cops supposed to do in a war?”

  Falcone gave him a withering look. “Do we have men outside Wallis’s place?”

  “No. The DIA took that one, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Falcone nodded, thinking. “You remember what Wallis said?”

  “Every word. But remind me.”

  “ ”War is the natural state of humanity.“ ”

  “Bullshit,” Peroni protested. “Lethargy’s the natural state of humanity. Look at this mess! What’s natural about that?”

  “Nothing,” Falcone said, looking at his watch. “Everything, if you’ve got the ”crazy gene.“ We’re seeing this all wrong, Gianni. We’re trying to rationalize something that’s not rational.”

  Peroni patted his shoulder. “Hey! See! You can still sound like the old Leo when you want to. Can we go out and do cop stuff now, please? This isn’t a place for the likes of us. You can phone the hospital later. We got work to do. Furthermore—” he pointed to the men across the street, who were starting to look thoroughly pissed off. “—I believe your presence is required.”

  Falcone nodded and walked over to talk to them. Peroni sat on the bonnet of the car and lit another cigarette, trying to think his way around what he had just heard. From across the road the inspector’s sombre voice rose in the darkness. He was yelling at these anonymous men, arguing his case, refusing to back down, and it was music to Peroni’s ears. Falcone really didn’t give a damn. It made him unique. It made him invaluable. It was the reason his men followed him everywhere, even though half the time they couldn’t stand him.

  In the harsh artificial moon of the TV lights across the road a stretcher moved out from the rubble. Rachele D’Amato was headed for an ambulance, a team of men around her, one of them holding a drip. Peroni could just about make out her face. She was unconscious. If he was honest with himself, she looked dead. He thought again about what Falcone had said, and the distinct impression he’d had that it was curiosity, not jealousy, that lay behind his interest. She didn’t look like someone with a man in tow. She was, surely, just saying: back off, Leo. Nothing more than that. It was a measure of Falcone’s awkwardness in these matters that he just couldn’t see this.

  And now he was watching the stretcher too, still talking to the men in dark suits, his face impassive. Then he murmured one quiet oath and stomped off, to stand by the doors to the ambulance.

  Peroni walked over to his side. “Leo. She’s in good hands.”

  “I know.”

  Falcone’s mind was turning somewhere else. Peroni didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sorry. “So what’d they say?”

  The cold grey eyes just stared at him.

  “OK, OK,” Peroni conceded. “Stupid question. They said: ”go fix this shit.“ I get the message.”

  Falcone scowled at the suits getting back into their cars. “Never mind what they said. I want the Julius girl. Have you heard from Costa?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Get him.”

  So Peroni called. And called again, getting madder and madder because of so many things: the dead ring at the end of the line, Falcone’s cagy diffidence, his own confused state of mind. Then he phoned the control room asking if Nic Costa had checked in.

  The woman handler couldn’t believe her ears. “Do you know what’s going down in this city tonight, Detective? I got bombs. I got people screaming blue murder about some shooting in San Giovanni. And you want me to find out which bar your partner fell into?”

  “He don’t drink!” Peroni barked down the phone.

  Except maybe he did now. Maybe they all ought to. Maybe something made sense if you saw it through a musky mist of red wine.

  “Yeah, right,” the handler snarled. “Maybe he’s gone to choir practice.”

  Then the line went dead and Gianni Peroni still didn’t know what to do. He thought about what the handler had said and felt his mind starting to turn again.

  “Shit,” Peroni murmured.

  “Where the hell is he?” Falcone wondered, taking his eyes off the ambulance screaming away down the narrow road, lights flashing, Klaxon screaming.

  “I dunno,” he replied. “But there’s trouble in San Giovanni now too. That address ring a bell?”

  CERCHI RAN beneath the overhanging escarpment of the Palatine Hill, all the way from the Tarpean cliff behind the Capitol to the busy modern street of San Gregorio that led to the Colosseum. Nic Costa had parked next to the open space that was once the Circus Maximus, wishing the tip-off had led him somewhere else. At night this was a seedy part of town, a haunt of down-and-outs and drug dealers who lurked in unlit corners, out of sight of the authorities.

  He’d been to all five sites which Regina Morrison’s records suggested were linked to Randolph Kirk. They were complex places, with multiple entrances, not all of them obvious. It took time but every last one seemed boarded up, abandoned long ago. He’d shown Suzi’s photo to some of the stragglers in the area. Most were too scared or too doped up to talk any sense, and the few that had their wits about them were unwilling to help a lone cop. Peroni was right: Cerchi was a big street.

  He thought about his partner and the rest of the team who’d been close to the blast outside Neri’s house. Costa felt guilty about leaving them, but Peroni was insistent. One more pair of hands would make no difference, and they had a duty to Suzi Julius too. They had, in all truth, neglected her. Miranda knew that just as well as they did. The knowledge lay in her intelligent, all-seeing eyes. And it was a neglect that could be hard to rectify.

  So what do you do? Costa wondered.

  Go home, a weary inner voice said. Sleep.

  He walked back towards his car, realizing how dog-tired he was, and how welcoming it would be to fall into the big, empty double bed in the old house off the Appian Way and listen to the comforting rustle of ghostly voices down the corridor. At that moment he remembered how important family, that tight, near-perfect bulwark against the cruelties of the world, was to him.

  Even a family torn apart by tragedy.

  The thought pricked his conscience. His father’s premature death still haunted him. Nic Costa wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. It was now nearly midnight. If they were right, sixteen years before Eleanor Jamieson had been butchered, victim of some obscure ceremony involving… who? The family of a Rome hood? A bunch of sleazy hangers-on out for fun and unaware that Neri’s cameras were filming their tricks? Suzi Julius could face a similar fate at any time over the next twenty-four hours, for no reason but bad luck, the misfortune of her looks, of turning the wrong corner at the wrong moment. And no one had the slightest idea of where she might be. Neri and his son had disappeared leaving a bloody trail of destruction behind them. Vergil Wallis, this time round anyway, seemed to be out of the loop. They had no real lead, just chaos and anarchy and violence.

  He took one last look around him and narrowed his eyes at a pool of half shade along the street. Twenty metres or more away something had moved, dashing into the shadow of the great Palatine cliff. A head of bright blonde hair disappearing into the darkness, with another shape, that of a man moving close behind. It could just be a pair of lovers. It could just be the break they’d been praying for.

  Costa patted his jacket, feeling the Beretta safe in its holster, and walked towards the shadows, listening to the sounds of the night: the chatter of sleepy pigeons, the low rumble of traffic speeding past the grassy stadium, the scuttering of rats among the crumbling rock face that sat beneath the remains of the imperial palaces.

  A DISTANT
VOICE, just recognizable as female, pleading, echoed out from the cavern mouth, now more visible in the leaking radiance of a bright yellow light within.

  Nic Costa took out his phone and knew what he’d see. He was directly under the lee of the Palatine’s rock face. The signal was blocked by the stone. The sensible thing to do would be to walk back out into the street, make contact with Falcone, call in help. But he had to keep the girl within his reach. Besides, this could just be a couple of secretive lovers. He didn’t like heroics, but this time, there seemed no alternative. So he crept into the shadows, letting his back fall against the dusty rock wall, edging his way forward towards the light, towards the sound which was the voice of a man now, talking so low Costa couldn’t make out the words.

  He aimed for the sound and it wasn’t easy. The place was a complex of dimly lit chambers, interlinked, set in a chain from the entrance, which was, Costa suspected, just one of many, eaten into the hill like giant rat holes. The site should have been on Randolph Kirk’s list. Maybe it was and Regina Morrison just hadn’t got to hear of it. Or perhaps, if it was Kirk’s most private sanctum, his holy of holies, he kept it private for his own good reasons.

  Costa passed through four small chambers, each barely lit by a single bulb dangling from a wire in the centre, just like at Ostia. In the shadows he could make out more rooms and corridors, stretching into the gloom. The place was a subterranean labyrinth, an ancient maze cut into the rock. He wished now he’d waited for back-up. He wished he could hear what the man in the darkness was saying.

  He tried to picture what lay ahead of him but it was impossible. When he thought he was heading for the sound, he would turn a corner and find himself floundering in an impenetrable darkness. After a while he couldn’t work out which way was forward, which back. His legs dragged across the rough stone floor. His head hurt. More than once he tripped, and was aware of the noise he made. The distant voices rolled incomprehensibly around him from every direction.

  Then he ducked to stumble through a low opening and found himself dazzled by the intensity of what lay beyond.

  Three bulbs dangled from this ceiling, burning like miniature yellow suns. On the rock walls around him, plastered everywhere, covering each other like an overlapping skin of living images, were colour photographs, all of the same two faces in the same two poses: Suzi Julius, happy and smiling, bright blonde hair waving around her face, and Eleanor Jamieson, this photo slightly faded from the years, still shocking in its similarity. They could have been sisters, he thought, not for the first time. No wonder Kirk saw her and began to remember.

  He turned around, feeling giddy, wondering where to look next, where to go, clutching for the gun instinctively, feeling his hand wander to the wrong places.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said a frightened female voice floating out of the darkness. Then the breathy words faded, were replaced by the sound of something sweeping through the air.

  Nic Costa felt an agonizing pain crash into the back of his skull. He was aware of falling, still dazzled by the bright intensity of the room. Then darkness.

  Liberalia

  SOMETHING STIRRED AT THE BACK OF TERESA LUPO’S MIND, rumbling around the darker corners of her sleep, buzzing, shifting position, now near, now far. She swore, felt her heavy eyelids start to stir, then rolled awake at her desk in the morgue, just in time to see an equally sleepy honeybee lurch through the air then head off back to the open window.

  It was morning. A warm spring morning, just after seven. The city was already alive beyond the window, cars and people, sounds so familiar, so normal that it took her a moment to remember this was no ordinary day.

  She’d called in help, from the carabinieri and the health department, from anywhere she could think of, old, retired colleagues, med students looking for some experience. For the moment it had been a question of coping rather than discovering, filing material as she thought of it. Then, sometime after three, she’d placed her head on the desk and fallen fast asleep. Silvio Di Capua had had similar ideas. He was still curled up in a crumpled, foetal heap on the floor in the corner of the morgue. A couple of admin people, only one of whom she recognized, were busy with paperwork. A bunch of medic types were working at the tables: the little accountant had just reached his place in the queue. Barbara Martelli’s father was next.

  “Any more signed up for the ride?” she asked the admin men.

  “No.”

  “Thank God for that.” She wasn’t sure she could cope with another damned corpse. She wasn’t sure she could cope with the ones she’d got. Her nose felt as if someone had jammed a couple of wads of leaky cotton wool up each nostril. Her throat was like sandpaper. Sweat soaked her hair. Teresa Lupo looked a mess. She knew it and she didn’t care.

  Then a figure came through the door, Gianni Peroni, so fresh and alert it was unnatural.

  He walked over and peered into her eyes, curious, a little judgemental perhaps.

  “What drugs are you on that make you so bright and chirpy?” she asked. “And do you have any for me?”

  “Let me buy you a coffee. Outside this place. By the way, have you seen Nic?”

  “No…” The question puzzled her. She’d almost forgotten she belonged to a world beyond those shining tables.

  “Come,” he said, and took her weary arm then led her down the corridor, out into the waking morning.

  It was the beginning of a beautiful day. She could even hear birdsong. Or perhaps, she thought, her mind had some preternatural acuity after the recent shocks. Her head didn’t feel right. It hadn’t for a while. Something was different after the sleep, though. She felt exhausted, drained, physically and mentally. But there was a measure of control inside this state too, and that was welcome.

  Peroni led her to the café around the corner, ordered two big black coffees, stirred some sugar sludge from the glass on the counter into his cup, then did the same for hers.

  “When you work vice,” he said, “you come to know about getting through the night. You get to like it after a while. The world’s more honest then somehow. People don’t have to look you in the face when they’re lying. You get to know about the value of coffee too. Here…”

  He held up his cup and, instinctively, she clipped it with hers.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Tidings of joy. Information. Enlightenment. For one thing, I’d like to know who Professor Randolph Kirk phoned to start all this crap.”

  “Nic asked me that too,” she said. “Tell you what. I’ll ask old Randolph when I get back.”

  “You do that. Any further gems for me?”

  “Stand in the queue. It’s a long one. How’s Falcone doing? How’s that woman of his?”

  He made a tilting motion with his hand. “She’s still in intensive. She’ll pull through. That woman’s made of stone. As for Leo, I dunno. He’s not looking lovelorn anymore. Maybe that pisses him off too. Who cares? We got work to do. Big work, Teresa, maybe bigger than even we can handle. We need to get somewhere fast. So you see why I’m here? We need all the help we can get.”

  She found herself thinking seriously about Gianni Peroni for the first time. He wasn’t the arrogant, bent vice creep she’d first thought. Underneath that curiously ugly exterior he possessed some stiff, unbending spine of integrity that made his disgrace all the more poignant, all the less understandable. Falcone and Nic Costa were lucky to have him around, although she wondered how much the older man appreciated that.

  “When are you going back to your old job?”

  Peroni winked. It was a comic gesture. She almost found the energy to laugh. “Between you and me? As soon as this shit is over. I bumped into my old boss in the corridor during the night. They drafted him in too. Nice guy. Understanding guy. He had some warm words for old Gianni. Thank Christ. This detective stuff is not my scene. It brings you into contact with the wrong sort of people.”

  She waited a moment to make sure she understood that last statement correctly. “And
vice doesn’t?”

  “In vice you just meet people who want to mess with your body. These guys are forever hanging around those who just can’t wait to mess with your head.” She didn’t say anything. “But then I think you know that already.”

  “Possibly,” she conceded. “So tell me what you want me to do.”

  “Me?” Peroni replied. “Hell, I don’t know. None of us has a clue where to begin here. We haven’t had a gang war in Rome in living memory. If that’s what it is—”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Search me. But if it is a gang war it’s a pretty one-sided affair, don’t you think? Somehow from behind his iron gates, with no troops whatsoever except a few golf buddies, the American whacks Neri’s accountant and lays out all those documents that mean Neri has to take to his heels. At least I guess that’s how he feels. Then the fat man goes ballistic and puts a little leaving present outside his own house for us.”

  She knew what he meant. “It’s a funny kind of war.”

  “Sort of unbalanced, don’t you think? And Wallis. He’s just sitting there in that big house of his, twiddling his thumbs, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. The DIA’s bugging his phones. Bugging him direct too, I suspect, because they just love playing with those toys of theirs. He’s not retaliating. He’s not doing a damn thing as far as we can work out.”

  Teresa sat up straight. She could talk cop again, and she liked that. She smoothed down the crumpled front of her blue shirt, wondered if it wasn’t time to lose a little weight from the old frame. She was big-boned. That was what her mamma always said. But she could get fit if she wanted. She could meet these men at their own game. “What about Barbara Martelli’s old man? You’re telling me Wallis didn’t do that?”

  “Now there,” he said with a sudden assurance, “we do know something. Wallis had nothing to do with it. Not unless he’s running Neri’s family for him. We got a good ID from a man who was seen leaving the building. The guy saw someone go in before Martelli got shot. It was Neri’s own son did that one. Dumb bastard left prints too. Makes sense. I guess Neri thought Martelli might tell us what was really going on in that fuck club of theirs. So he sent his boy round. Still doesn’t add up to a war. Not in my book.”