by David Hewson
He looked at Rachele D’Amato, nodding at her to start, wishing he could find more answers to all the questions that were bothering him. She’d brought the DIA into the case with a consummate skill. It was made easier by the fact that she and her colleagues seemed to know so much more than the police did. Someone was leaking, too, and she assumed, all along, it was the police. Maybe she was right. Everyone knew the Questura had its share of compromised cops. But it bothered Falcone that no one ever asked any hard questions of the DIA. Did she ever wonder whether the tip-offs could be coming from within her own ranks? If she did, would she let on to a mere cop? This was a one-way relationship. Just like the personal one they’d enjoyed for a while. He was, once again, at a disadvantage, and it bothered him deeply.
“Mr. Wallis,” she said. “We’re in the dark on almost everything here. A motive. A precise time. Perhaps even a place. What do you think happened?”
Wallis shook his head. “Why ask me? You said yourself I was not under suspicion.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Really?” Wallis asked. “Why does that necessarily follow?”
“Was Emilio Neri involved?” D’Amato asked. “How well did he know Eleanor?”
“Neri?” He hesitated. “The name rings a bell. You should put that question to him, surely.”
“You went on vacation together,” she said. “To Sicily. Please don’t play games with us. Neri was there, and his son. Who else?”
Wallis nodded, conceding the point. “Hell. It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”
Falcone sighed. “I was hoping you could help us somehow. I told you yesterday. There’s another girl missing now, in very similar circumstances. We’re certain she’s in danger.”
Wallis thought for a moment then said, “What you say doesn’t make sense. You told me at the outset you didn’t know the circumstances of Eleanor’s death. Now you say this other girl is in the same position. I don’t understand. Which is it?”
“This isn’t a time for playing games,” Falcone snapped. “We need your help.”
Wallis’s gaze was fixed on the corpse, bright and glossy beneath the artificial shower of stinking fluid. “I don’t know anything about this other girl.”
Very carefully, watching his reaction, D’Amato said, “What about Eleanor’s mother?” He flinched, just a little. “Your wife. Wouldn’t you want some justice for her?”
“Her mother took her own life,” he replied. “No one did that for her.”
“You feel no sense of regret?” she asked. “No . . . responsibility?”
“She died because she wanted to.” The words came out with difficulty. D’Amato was touching a nerve here.
“My question wasn’t about her. I wondered what you felt.”
The man looked at his watch, his eyes glassy. “This isn’t something I want to discuss.”
Falcone watched Rachele D’Amato’s face harden. There was such resolve there. It was good for the job. It was what they needed. Surely she’d changed over the years, though. The woman he remembered, the woman he had, perhaps, once loved, was not this detached from her feelings. “Did you love them?” she asked. “Eleanor wasn’t yours. Your wife had left you already. Did you love them at that point? When the marriage appeared over?”
Wallis bridled at the question. “You’re a very persistent woman. Let me say this once and for all. They changed me. Before, I was what I was. They saw something in me that I didn’t see myself. In return I learned to love them, and resent them too. A man like me isn’t made to change. It’s not good business. It makes for an uneasy relationship with one’s masters.”
Falcone glanced at the body. “Could your masters have done this?”
There was a sudden burst of anger on his face. “What kind of people do you think I mix with? She was a child, for heaven’s sake. What possible reason—?” He stopped, his voice breaking. “This is a personal matter. I’m not talking about it anymore. It’s no business of yours. I have nothing to tell you.”
“Where were you this morning?” Falcone asked directly.
“At home,” he said immediately. “With my housekeeper.”
“And your associates?” D’Amato demanded.
“Associates?”
She pulled out her notepad and read off some names. “We have a list of them. Men you know. Men with the same kind of background. They arrived in Rome yesterday.”
“Sure!”
They waited.
“Golf!” Wallis declared. “Do you think everything’s bad news around here? We meet once a year in spring. I’ve booked a round at Castelgandolfo for Sunday, then dinner. Phone them if you like, and check. They can tell you. We’ve done this for years. Since I first came to Rome. It’s an annual event for old men. Old soldiers if you like. Retired soldiers. Do you play golf, Inspector?”
“No.”
“A shame.” He paused to give his words some weight. “I thought the cops were fond of clubs. You get to meet people that way.”
“Not all of us,” Falcone replied. “You didn’t ask.”
“Ask what?”
“Why I wanted to know where you were this morning.”
Wallis shifted on his chair. He didn’t like being caught out. It was, Falcone thought, the most promising sign he’d seen of an opening in the man’s guard.
“I assumed you’d tell me,” Wallis said lamely.
“Neri’s bookkeeper, a man named Vercillo, was murdered.”
He didn’t even blink. The sombre, expressionless face stared at him and Falcone appreciated, for the first time, how Wallis must once have been a powerful, imposing presence. “Inspector, do I look like the kind of person who goes around killing bookkeepers? If I engaged in that kind of behaviour, do you honestly think that is where I’d start?”
“No wars,” Falcone warned. “You hear me. I don’t want any of that crap on our streets. If you people want to fight it out for some reason, you do it somewhere else and make sure no one else suffers.”
“War?” Wallis answered, amused. “Who’s talking about war?”
“I’m just saying,” Falcone said and heard how lame he sounded.
“Saying what?” The American took his arm. Falcone could smell something sweet on his breath. “Nothing but the obvious. You’ve got to know, Inspector, you of all people. War’s the natural state of humanity. It’s peace and harmony that are foreign to us, which is why it’s so damned hard to create them out of all this shit. Wars aren’t part of my world, not any longer. Not here. Not anywhere. Others . . .” he opened his hands in a gesture of regret, “. . . they may feel differently. That’s none of my business.”
“And if they start to make war on you?” D’Amato asked.
He smiled. “Then I’ll expect the police to earn their keep.”
There was, Falcone thought, only one way to tackle the next question. Directly. “I’ve already spoken to Emilio Neri. He suggested we ask you about what happened to Eleanor. He seems to think your relationship was . . . not simply that of a stepfather and daughter.”
Wallis closed his eyes briefly and uttered a low, unintelligible sound.
“He suggests you had a sexual relationship with her. I have to ask, Mr. Wallis. Did you?”
“You’re going to believe scum like him?” Wallis asked quietly. “You think a man like that would tell you the truth, even if he knew how?”
“I think he knows more than he’s telling me. I think the same about you.”
“I can’t help what you think about me.”
Falcone took a photograph out of the folder he’d brought with him: Eleanor and Barbara Martelli, with their little coterie of admirers. They were dressed, Eleanor apparently unaware of what was to happen next.
Wallis stared at it. “What’s this?”
“We think it was taken shortly before Eleanor was killed.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I can’t discuss that,” Falcone said. “This is evidence. Do
you know these men? Do you know what kind of . . . event this is?”
“No,” he replied immediately.
“The other woman. Do you know her?”
“No.”
Falcone glanced at Rachele D’Amato. There was too much hard work here. Wallis’s response was all wrong. He should have been asking questions.
“Does this photograph mean anything to you?” he demanded. “If we’re right, it preceded her death probably by no more than a few hours. One of these men may have killed her. You really know none of them?”
He pointed at one figure. “I know him. So do you. He was your colleague. Mosca, wasn’t it?”
“How did you know him?” D’Amato asked.
He shrugged. “A social event, if I remember right. Nothing more.”
Falcone held up the photo. “A social event like this? You understand where Eleanor spent her last few hours? You understand what went on?”
He took out more photos. From later. Barbara and Mosca, rolling on the floor, naked.
“This is not how I spend my time,” Wallis said coldly. “Nor was it then. Nor do I believe Eleanor would have gone to something like this willingly, knowing what was involved. Do you have pictures of her like this, Inspector?”
“No,” Falcone conceded. “Which is interesting in itself. But you see my problem? The idea that Eleanor just walked out of your house one day and disappeared, was abducted in some random way by a complete stranger. It’s not true. This was where she was before she died. In the company of men who moved in circles you knew. Crime. The police. As if she were . . .” he paused, determined this would hit home, “. . . a gift perhaps.”
Wallis nodded, considering this. “An interesting idea. But it presupposes that the men to whom she was given had something to offer in return. To whom? Not me. So who could that be?”
“We may have DNA evidence from the autopsy,” Falcone said. “I can only request this at the moment, but it would help us if you were to provide a sample. Our forensic people can do what is necessary now. It won’t take a moment. It’s just a mouth swab. Or a piece of hair if you’d prefer.”
“DNA?” He didn’t flinch. “You’re telling me that’s some use after all these years?”
“Possibly. Is that a problem?”
“Tell me what you need.” Wallis was staring at the body. It was, they understood, a final act. He would not return. “I’ve seen enough. I don’t want to answer any more questions. You’ll let me know when I can make the burial arrangements?”
Falcone called the lab assistant over and told him to organize the sample. They watched the two of them leave the room.
“DNA,” she said when Wallis was gone. “There’s an interesting thought. Wallis asked the right question straightaway, though. Is it possible? I thought the pathologist said there’d be nothing useful because of the peat.”
“I’ve no idea,” he admitted. “I just wanted to see if he’d refuse.”
“And the fact that he doesn’t?”
“It leaves us in the dark. He could have been there. He could be thinking we wouldn’t find out anyway. Maybe we just don’t have the photo.”
“Without a real sample it doesn’t matter, Leo.”
“No. What about the material I gave you from Vercillo’s office? When will you be in a position to get a warrant to raid Neri? I want to be in there as soon as I can.”
She was putting on the diplomatic smile again, the one that said: no way. She was so wrapped up in all this. It consumed her more than he’d appreciated earlier. She wanted to own this case. She wanted it to own her too. There was, he thought, nothing else in her life right then. All the glamorous clothes, all the semi-flirtatious, teasing behaviour . . . these were simply the tools of her current trade.
“That’ll take a week at least,” she said firmly. “I can’t risk screwing up a case like this out of haste. We’re writhing in regulations when it comes to privacy these days. All that information is about fraud, financial misdeeds, tax evasion. We have to know for sure what we’re dealing with before I can go before a judge. It’s easier for you. A murder investigation. An abduction. You’ll get a warrant. Just ask.”
He grimaced. “I talked to legal. They won’t countenance it on what we have. I need more.”
“I can’t help there.”
She was thinking. Perhaps she really was trying to help. “You know, Leo, your life would be so much easier if you could get some physical evidence out of Eleanor’s body. The trouble is you’ve lost the best pathologist you have. You could call her. This is bigger than your ego.”
He groaned. “This is nothing to do with my ego. That woman is the bane of my life. Also, she’s sick.”
“She would crawl out of her deathbed to work on this if she thought she could help. If you could convince her of that—”
“Possibly.”
He moved over into Wallis’s empty chair and peered into her face. It wasn’t a professional look. This was just him now, trying to be what he once was, trying to test the water. “Do you ever wonder about what-ifs?” he asked. “What would have happened if you’d turned left at the corner instead of turning right?”
“What’s the point?” she asked warily.
“None, I imagine. I just do it anyway. For example, what if you’d said yes to me when I invited you out to lunch yesterday? When all we had here was an ancient corpse? Costa would have talked to that woman and called in whoever else happened to be on duty. We’d have walked back here, got in a car, gone to see Wallis feeling entirely different about everything.”
She didn’t like this conversation. “It would have come your way eventually, Leo. It was on my desk anyway.”
“I know. But maybe we’d have had the chance to put things straight between us before all the crap began to happen. I would have liked that.”
She smoothed down her skirt. “Things are straight, aren’t they? Do I need to spell it out?”
“Not really. After you turned me down I made one more call. When you’d gone. Just to see if anyone knew what meeting you were in. There wasn’t a meeting, was there? There’s someone else.”
Her cheeks flushed. “You checked on me?”
He shrugged. “I’m a cop. What do you expect?”
“Jesus,” she hissed, then stabbed him in the chest with a long, slender finger. “Understand this, Leo. I have a life. It is nothing to do with you. And it never will be. You keep your nose out of my business. You don’t even peek through the door when you’re passing.”
“I guess he’s not a cop, then. Or a lawyer. We’d all know about it.”
“If I were you I’d be focusing on what’s in front of you. Not my personal life. Call the Lupo woman. Apologize and try to get her back here. You need her, Leo.”
He nodded. “I will. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. It was just—”
But she wasn’t listening. Nic Costa was walking down the corridor towards them and, from the look on his face, Leo Falcone realized he wouldn’t be thinking about Rachele D’Amato for a while.
It was six forty-five. Emilio Neri was wearing a long grey overcoat, feeling content and, with a fat Cohiba smoking between his fingers, reflective. It was cold on the terrace of the house in the Via Giulia but he wanted to watch the last scrap of sunlight die in the smog and haze to the west. This was part of the ritual, an element in the growing rite of passage. Rituals . . . sixteen years before another one had touched him. He’d been dubious at the time, cynical even. The professor from the university was a nut, just a lonely man looking for some easy company. Neri had gone along with the idea because it suited him and he could see some profit from the photographs. He’d never believed what he heard. He was like the others, just along for the ride and whatever it offered him. Older now, touched by time, he wondered if he’d been wrong. He’d never forgotten what Randolph Kirk had told him. How it was a cycle, one that underpinned the whole of life: the hunting, the courtship. Then the marriage, the consummation. And finally
the madness, the frenzy that was, perhaps, the real point of it all, because inside that brief bout of insanity lay some arcane secret about human nature, the simple truth that there was a beast beneath the skin, always was, always would be. When the moment came you had to acknowledge its presence then watch it slink, sated, back into the cage. There was, he now understood, no alternative. Randolph Kirk called it ritual. For Emilio Neri it was human nature, plain and simple. If he’d been smarter all those years before perhaps they could have avoided this mess. Perhaps now he would make better choices.
Neri was not a man to dwell on his regrets. Within the coming frenzy lay an opportunity, the chance to rebuild his life, shape it in his own image. He could throw away the pretence that had consumed him for twenty years. He need never waste his time at the opera again, or sit through interminable meetings for charities he didn’t understand, fighting to stay awake. The money, the power, and the control they gave him over men outside his normal circles had all blinded him to what he truly was. Apart from that brief time sixteen years ago the beast had never been free of the cage, and even then its journey was constrained by circumstances. Now it was time to put things straight, let the world remember him as it should, then flee to a comfortable retirement somewhere on the far side of the Atlantic, someplace where he’d be untouchable.
Bucci and the three soldiers he’d hand-picked now stood on the far side of the terrace, waiting for orders. Neri didn’t know any of them too well. He trusted Bucci’s judgement all the same. The man had too much to gain to get this wrong. This was a night the city would remember. This was a time that would go down in the annals of mob history. A moment when a man of the old guard made his stand, pointed out what belonged to him and how he’d decided to bequeath it.
He recalled some of the crap Vergil Wallis used to spout years before. About history and duty and how this was ingrained into the true Roman soul, how these qualities would always come out, whatever the cost or the risk. Maybe the American wasn’t that stupid after all. Surveying the city like this, for one last time from the home he knew he could never see again, Emilio Neri felt like a man moved by destiny, shaped by what had gone before him, determined now to leave his mark.
