Dante's Numbers

1

They sat in the back of the Lancia, with a plainclothes female driver at the wheel.

“Sir,” Costa said, as they slowly negotiated the bickering snarl of vehicles arguing for space in the Piazza Venezia. “Miss Flavier … I don’t understand why she should be here.”

The woman by his side gave him a puzzled look but for once remained silent.

Falcone sighed, then turned round from the passenger seat and extended his long tanned hand. Maggie Flavier took it. She was more composed now and had wiped away the stray makeup from her face. She looked younger, more ordinary. Prettier, Costa realized.

“My name is Leo Falcone. I’m an inspector. His inspector.”

“Nice to meet you. Why am I here?”

The inspector gave her his most gracious and charming of smiles. “For reasons that are both practical and political. You were the victim of some strange kind of attack. Perhaps a joke. But a very poor one, it seems to me. Allan Prime … Maybe it was a joke in his case, too. I don’t know and I would like to. One man is dead. Prime is missing. The Carabinieri, meanwhile, are wandering around preening themselves while trying to work out which day it is. We have no need of further complications. Would you rather they were in charge of your safety? Or us? The choice is yours, naturally.”

“My safety?”

“Just in case.”

“What’s going on here?” she demanded. “I was supposed to be at a movie premiere tonight. People shooting blanks. Fake death masks.” Her bright, animated face fell. “Someone getting killed.” She looked at Costa. “Why would they shoot him? The uniformed man on the horse?”

“Because they thought he was dangerous. They didn’t know any better. Whoever he was …”

“Not Carabinieri, that’s for sure,” Falcone intervened.

“Whoever he was,” Costa continued, “this is now a real case and it’s not ours.” He caught the dismay in the inspector’s eye. “I’m sorry. That’s a fact, sir. The Carabinieri were given the job of security tonight. Also, there’s the question of jurisdiction. Allan Prime is an American citizen. If he’s missing, someone has to inform the U.S. Embassy and allow them a role in the investigation. We all know the rules when a foreign citizen’s involved. We can’t just drive away with a key witness and hope it’s all ours. I should never have left the scene in the first place, or taken that weapon.”

The car came to a halt in the traffic in Vittorio Emanuele. He didn’t understand why they were taking this route. There were quicker ways through the tangle of alleys behind the Campo dei Fiori. A good police driver should have known about them.

The woman at the wheel turned and smiled at them. “The U.S. authorities are involved already,” she said. “So don’t worry about that. Captain Catherine Bianchi. San Francisco Police Department. Is there a better route than this? I don’t drive much in Rome usually. I lack the balls.”

She was about forty, slim, with a pleasant, bright face, Italian-looking, he would have said until he looked at her hair. That was straight and coal-coloured, with a henna sheen, tied back behind her head in a severe way that would have been rare on a Roman woman. She spoke good Italian, though with an American inflection. This was the woman he’d heard about, the one who’d caught Falcone’s eye.

The inspector outlined a faster route to the Via Giulia, with a degree of patience he would never have used on one of his officers.

“Can I hit the siren?” Captain Catherine Bianchi asked.

“No,” Falcone replied. “That will just give them warning.”

“Give who warning?” Maggie Flavier asked.

“The Carabinieri, of course,” he answered.

Costa looked out the window, at the swarming people and the tangled cars, the familiar crush of humanity in his native city.

He understood why Maggie Flavier was in the car. A man had died in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. Some strange, gruesome caricature of a human head had been substituted for the precious death mask of Dante which they were supposed to be guarding. A world-famous actor was missing, and his co-star had been the victim of an attack that seemed to be some kind of prank.

There were crimes here, perhaps serious, perhaps less so. Leo Falcone had clearly had no desire to try to go near the shooting. It would have been pointless. The man who attacked them had been killed by the Carabinieri. Only they could investigate themselves. What Falcone was quietly attempting to do was position himself to steal any broader case concerning the death mask and, more important, the fate of Allan Prime. The two principal national law-enforcement agencies in Italy usually managed to avoid turf wars over who handled what. In theory they were equals, one civilian, one military, both capable of handling serious crimes. Often the decision about which organisation handled a case came down to the simplest of questions: Who got there first?

“We will have to offer them a statement,” Costa insisted. “Miss Flavier and I. We were witnesses.”

“There’s no hurry,” the inspector observed. “Neither of you knows this man, do you? Nor did you see how he died. It’s better that Miss Flavier remains in our company. For her own sake.”

“Absolutely,” the American policewoman insisted from the front seat. “No question about it.”

Maggie Flavier leaned back in the deep leather of Falcone’s Lancia, flung her arms behind her head, and sighed, “I love Italy.”

She gazed at Costa, smiling wanly, resigned. He found himself briefly mesmerised by her actor’s skill, the ability she possessed to turn her gaze upon someone, seize his attention, to look at him with her bright green eyes and hold his interest, make him wonder what came next. This was the way she stared into the camera lens. For reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint, he found that thought vaguely disturbing.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Here I am being kidnapped by two charming Roman cops. And why? So you can steal some case you don’t understand right from under the noses of the opposition.”

At the wheel of the Lancia as they negotiated the narrow, choked lanes of the centro storico, Catherine Bianchi chuckled and said, “You got it.”

Costa didn’t laugh, however. Nor did Leo Falcone. The inspector was on his mobile phone, engaged in a long, low discussion he clearly didn’t want anyone else to hear.

They rounded one more corner, past a house, Costa recalled, that was once supposed to have belonged to the mistress of a Borgia pope, Alexander VI. An image flashed through his head: Bartolomeo Veneziano’s subtly erotic portrait of Alexander’s bewitching daughter Lucrezia, ginger hair braided, a single breast bared, catching the artist’s eye with an unsmiling sideways glance, just exactly as Maggie Flavier regarded Roberto Tonti’s camera, and through it the prurient world at large. It was a strange memory, yet apposite. Lucrezia, like Beatrice, the character Maggie played in Tonti’s movie, was an enigma, never quite fully understood.

The Lancia turned into the Via Giulia, one of the smartest streets in Rome, a place of palatial apartments and expensive antiques stores. A sea of blue state police cars stood motionless ahead of them. There were dark blue vans of the Carabinieri in among them. Traffic was backed up on the Lungotevere by the river which ran above the street. A battle was looming.

Maggie nodded at a house in the centre of the tangle of the vehicles. “It’s that one there.”

“You know it well?” Costa asked.

“Allan threw parties,” she said with a shrug. “A lot.” She looked at him, her smile gone. “Everyone likes a party from time to time, don’t they?” She paused and looked, for a moment, very vulnerable.

“You don’t want me to come in, do you?” she said, and the question was asked of Falcone.

The inspector seemed puzzled. “Would you rather stay here?”

“If that’s OK.” She put a hand to her close-cropped hair, tousled it nervously, the way a child did. “You’ll think I’m crazy but I get a feeling for things sometimes. I’ve got one now. It’s not good. Don’t make me go in there. Not unless you know it’s all right. I need the bathroom. I need a drink.”

“Soverintendente Costa,” Falcone ordered.

“Sir.”

“Find two women officers who can take Miss Flavier to the wine bar round the corner. Then you come with me.”

2

Gianni Peroni had enjoyed standoffs with the Carabinieri before. Just never over a dummy’s head with an apparently genuine death mask attached to it. He had four plainclothes state police officers with him to form a physical barrier between the evidence and the grumbling crowd of smart uniforms and surly faces getting angrier by the moment. The small police forensic crew had, meanwhile, gathered what passed for some of the strangest evidence Peroni had ever seen.

What really took his breath away were the movie people. Roberto Tonti, storming at anyone within earshot, grey hair flying as his gaunt frame hobbled around the stage. The producer Dino Bonetti, who’d pass for a mob boss any day, stabbing his finger at anyone who’d listen, demanding that the evening proceed. And, more subtly, some quiet American publicity man backing the two of them up during the rare moments either paused for breath. Even the Carabinieri balked at the idea everything could go off as planned. While the arguments ensued, Teresa and her small team worked quietly and swiftly, placing items very quickly into evidence bags and containers, trying to stay out of the melee. Peroni hadn’t told her they didn’t have long. He hadn’t needed to.

“There’s been a death,” Peroni pointed out when Tonti began threatening to call some politicians he knew. “And …” He gestured at the bloodied fake head. “… this. The entertainment is over, sir. Surely you appreciate what I’m talking about?”

The publicist took him by the arm and requested a private word. Glad to have an excuse to escape the director’s furious bellows, Peroni ordered the plainclothesmen not to move an inch and went with the man to the back of the stage.

He had seen Simon Harvey on their visits to Cinecittà to discuss arrangements for the exhibition. The American seemed professional, obsessed with the job as much as the rest of them, but, perhaps, with some rare degree of perspective. Peroni recalled that, on one occasion, the man had even given them a brief lecture on Dante and the origins of Inferno, as if somehow needing to justify the intellectual rationale behind the movie. He’d even declared, “This will be art, promise.” This had struck him as odd and unnecessary at the time. But then the movie industry was rarely predictable, for ordinary human beings anyway. That day in the film studios he’d watched hideously disfigured ghouls sipping Coke, smoking cigarettes, and filling in crosswords during their time off camera. After that, he’d been glad to get out into the dull suburb surrounding the studio and breathe the fume-filled air.

“Listen,” Harvey went on. “Forget about Roberto and Bonetti bawling you out. That’s how they work. The point is this. There’s big money at stake here. Italian money.”

Peroni stared at the man, wondering what to make of this strange comment. “Italian money?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

Harvey cast a backwards glance to make sure no one was listening. “Do I need to spell it out?”

“For me you do.”

The publicist placed a conspiratorial hand on Peroni’s arm. “You’re a cop,” he said with a sigh. “Please don’t act the innocent. And God knows it’s been in the papers anyway. Bonetti has all kind of friends. Government friends.” He winced. “Other … friends. There’s more than a hundred and fifty million dollars running on this horse. Money like that creates debts that need paying. This is your country … not mine, Officer. We both know there are people neither of us want to piss off, not for a three-hour private screening in front of a handful of self-important jerks in evening dress, anyway. All I ask is you give us a break. Then we’re done. It won’t get in the way. I’ll make sure. That’s a promise.”

Peroni couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Someone’s been shot. They heard it. We all did. There’s also the question of a death mask which, in case you’ve forgotten, is not only a national treasure. It also seems to resemble your missing movie star.”

He pointed at the head, which was now on a plastic mat on the podium table, being prodded and poked by Teresa and her deputy, Silvio Di Capua. She caught Peroni’s eye; he got the message instantly. It was time to get the evidence out of there as soon as possible, before the Carabinieri grabbed it. The dark blue uniforms seemed to be breeding around them, and some of them had fancy stripes and medals on their jackets that denoted the arrival of more-senior ranks.

“Ever heard the saying ‘The show must go on’?” Harvey retorted.

“Don’t tell me: it’s what this missing star of yours would have wanted.”

“Precisely. Imagine. All these people can go tell their friends tomorrow they still got to the premiere, even after all this mess. This is the world I live in, friend. It’s about status and money and one-upmanship. Inferno is the biggest release of this summer, worldwide. They get to say they saw it first. We get to keep our backers happy. You escape the phone calls from on high. Please.”

“This is a police investigation—”

“No, it’s not,” Harvey interrupted. “Let’s speak frankly. I oversaw those security arrangements. By rights, this belongs to the Carabinieri. Not you. All you guys had to look after was the stuff.”

“The stuff,” Peroni repeated.

“No fun doing the menial work while others get to stand in the spotlight, is it?” The American smiled. “I forget your name, Officer.”

“Gianni Peroni,” he answered. “Like the beer.”

Harvey stuck out his hand. Peroni took it.

“Simon Harvey. Like the sherry. Here’s the deal. You let this little show go on tonight. I’ll do what I can to ensure this investigation comes your way. The Carabinieri won’t argue. Not until they’ve phoned home, and by then you and your friends will be away with the goods.”

Peroni thought about this. Harvey had no idea how these matters worked. The probability was that the Carabinieri would get the investigation in any case, however hard Falcone tried to steal the job. The men from the military had been given cast and crew security from the beginning. Murder or no murder, this was their call.

“Why would you want to give me a deal like that?”

The American nodded in the direction of the dark blue uniforms. “Because I’ve had a bellyful of those stuck-up bastards for the past few months and they won’t cut me a deal on anything. Is that good enough?”

Peroni discreetly eyed the opposition. Some boss figure had emerged and was now bravely taking on the police forensic team, not even blinking at Teresa’s increasingly desperate attempts to shout him down. There was strength in numbers, particularly when it came backed up by medals and rank. It was definitely time to leave.

“You must have seen that film a million times,” Peroni observed.

“A million times is not enough,” Harvey replied. “Roberto Tonti’s a genius. I’d watch it a million times more if I could. Inferno is the finest piece of cinema I’ve ever worked on. I doubt I’ll ever have the privilege to get my name attached to anything better. What’s your point?”

“My point, Signor Harvey, is I’m willing to let you have your little show. Provided you can help us get out of here the moment my colleagues are ready.”

“It’s done,” Harvey said immediately. “You have my word.”

“And I want someone to come along with us. Someone from the studio. Bonetti, Tonti …”

The man waved his hand in front of Peroni’s face. “Don’t even think about it. They don’t do menial.”

“In that case, you. Seen inside many police stations?”

Harvey’s pleasant demeanour failed him for a moment. “Can’t say I have. Is this relevant?”

“Not at all.”

“Then what am I supposed to talk about? Dante? I’ve got a degree in classics.” Harvey caught Peroni’s eye and nodded at the fake severed head. “That … thing. It’s about Dante, you know. The line they wrote on the skull … ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.’ ”

Teresa had what she wanted. He could see the boxes and bags ready to go. The pathologist took a break from bawling out an entire line of Carabinieri officers to issue a sly nod in his direction.

Harvey wriggled, a little nervous. “You know something, Officer Peroni? We’ve been getting strange anonymous e-mails. For months. It happens a lot when you’re making a movie. I never thought too much about it.”

“Strange?”

“They quoted that line, always. And they said …” Harvey tugged at his long hair. “… they said we were living in limbo. I never took it literally.”

“What do you mean?”

The American grimaced. “I mean literally. The way it appears in Dante.” He sighed. “Limbo is the first circle of Hell. The place the story begins.”

Just the mention of the film revived some memories Gianni Peroni hoped had been lost. Things seemed to be happening from the very opening moment in Tonti’s version of the tale. Not good things either.

“And then?” Peroni asked. “After limbo?”

“Then you’re on the road to Hell.”

3

The door to Allan Prime’s apartment opened almost the moment Falcone pushed the bell. Nic Costa felt as if he’d stumbled back through time. The woman who stood there might have been an actress herself. Adele Neri still looked several years short of forty and was as slender and cat-like as he recalled. She wore designer jeans and a skimpy white T-shirt. Her arresting face bore the cold, disengaged scowl of the Roman rich. She had a tan that spoke of a second home in Sicily and a heavy gold necklace around a slender neck that carried a few wrinkles he didn’t recall from the case a few years before, when she had first come to the notice of the Questura. That had taken them to the Via Giulia, too, to a house not more than a dozen doors away, one that had been booby-trapped with a bomb by her mob boss husband, Emilio, as he tried to flee Rome. Adele Neri was an interesting woman who had led an interesting life.

“I thought I was past getting visits from the likes of you people,” she said, holding the door half open. “Do you have a warrant? Or some reason why I should let you into my home?”

“We were looking for Allan Prime,” Costa replied. “We thought he lived here.”

“He does. When he’s around. But this is my house. All of it. Several more in the Via Giulia, too. Do you mean you didn’t know?”

She gazed at Falcone, thin arms crossed, smiling. Costa recalled seeing the intelligence reports after Emilio’s death. They said that Adele had taken over leadership of her husband’s local clan for a while before selling on her interests to a larger, more serious mob and, if rumour was correct, removing herself from the murky world of Roman crime to enjoy her vast, illicitly inherited wealth.

“Inspector Falcone. The clever one.”

“Signora Neri,” Falcone said pleasantly, nodding. “What an unexpected delight.”

“Quite. So tell me. Why didn’t you try to put me in jail? After Emilio got shot?”

“Because I didn’t think it would stick,” Falcone replied, looking puzzled. “Isn’t that obvious? I’m a practical man. I don’t fight lost causes over trivia.” He got one foot over the threshold and tried to look around. “This is nothing to do with you. We merely wish to locate a lost Hollywood actor.”

“Join the club,” she sighed, then stepped back. “I’ll let five of you in here and they’d best have no dirt on their shoes. This place rents for eight thousand dollars a week. For that, people don’t expect muddy cop prints on the carpet.”

Costa issued some orders to the officers left outside, then began to prowl the vast, airy apartment. There was a spectacular view of the river and the busy Lungotevere through long windows, with a vista of the dome of St. Peter’s in the distance, and by the external terrace a circular iron staircase to what he took to be a roof garden. To their left stood a large open kitchen with the kind of fittings only the rich could think about.

He sat down on a vast leather sofa. Falcone joined him and they waited. She wanted to make an entrance, a point. Adele Neri slipped briefly into the kitchen and came out with a glass of blood-orange juice, a spremuta freshly pressed, probably from one of the stalls in the Campo dei Fiori. The drink was almost the colour of her hair, which was now longer than he recalled, clipped bluntly against her swan-like neck. Emilio Neri had been one of the most important mob bosses in Rome until his past caught up with him. Adele, more than thirty years his junior, with a history in vice herself, had been complicit in his downfall, though how much of that was greed and how much hatred for her husband they had never been able to decide. The gang lord was dead, his empire shattered, soon to be disposed of by his guilty widow. One crime clan left the scene, another took its place. Life went on, as it always would. He’d felt happy about Neri’s fate at the time. A man had died at Costa’s hand in pursuit of the answers Adele Neri had held in her smart, beautiful head all along. He had never quite shaken off a misplaced sense of guilt over that particular outcome.

“Where’s Allan Prime?” Falcone asked.

“You tell me. I was supposed to have lunch with him today, at noon. I came over, rang the bell. No one answered, so I let myself in. Then some people phoned from the studio. They said he hadn’t turned up for the premiere either.” She took an elegant, studied sip of the scarlet drink. “This is my place. I can do what I damned well like.”

“You and Mr. Prime …” Costa asked.

“Landlady and tenant. Nothing more. He tried, naturally. He’s the kind who does that anyway, just to see who’ll rise to the bait. It’s a form of insecurity, and insecure men have never interested me.”

“You have no idea where he might be?”

She made a gesture of ignorance with her skinny, tanned arms. “Why should I? He pays the rent. I indulge him with lunch from time to time. It’s a kindness. He’s like most actors. A lot less interesting than he thinks. A lot less intelligent too. But …” She gazed at them, thinking. “This isn’t like him. He’s a professional. He told me he was going to that premiere tonight. He moaned about it, naturally. Having to perform for free.” The woman laughed. “Allan’s an artist, of course. Or so he’d like to pretend. All that razzmatazz is supposed to be beneath him.”

“Girlfriends—” Falcone began.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Adele interrupted. “He had women here. What do you expect? He had a few parties early on, and I had to get someone to speak to him about that. There are some nice old people living in the other apartments. They don’t like movie types wandering around with white powder dripping from their noses. It’s not that kind of neighbourhood. Also …”

She stopped. There was something on her mind, and she was unsure whether to share it with the police, Costa thought.

“Also what?” he asked.

“Why should I tell you people anything? What do I get in return?”

The inspector frowned. “Some help in finding your tenant, perhaps. Does he owe you money?”

“Three months outstanding. Show business people never pay on time. They think we should be grateful they’re here at all. That we should put up a plaque on the wall when they’re gone.”

“Twenty-four thousand dollars,” Falcone observed. “A lot of money.”

“Don’t insult me. I spend more than that in one day when I go to Milan. I’ll tell you one thing, though. For free. Prime and his cronies had interesting friends. I came to one of his parties. Him and that evil bastard Bonetti. The company they kept.” She smiled. “It was like the old days. When my husband was alive. The same dark suits. The same accents bred in cow shit. A bunch of surly sons of bitches from the south who think they own you. That kind never changes. They just put their money in different places. Legitimate places. And movies, too, not that they’re the same thing.”

“You seem to know about the movie business.”

“I’ve made my contribution. Shits like Bonetti know how to screw you. ‘It’s only a million. Think of the tax write-off. If the worst comes to the worst, you get your money back anyway.’ Then …” She clapped her skeletal hands. The loud noise rang round the room like a gunshot. “It’s gone, and Bonetti or one of his creatures is phoning from L.A., full of apologies, promising that maybe a little of it will come back one day. After everyone else has taken their cut.” Adele Neri leaned forward and her sharp eyes held them. “Allan moves in dangerous circles and he doesn’t even know it. I told him, but he isn’t the kind of man who listens to anyone else. A woman least of all. That’s the truth. You don’t honestly think I’d be sitting here waiting for the doorbell to ring if I’d done something, do you?”

“Do you read Dante, Signora Neri?” Falcone asked.

The unexpected question amused her. Adele Neri looked human, warm and attractive and perhaps even a pleasure to know at that moment.

“Dante?” she asked, amazed. “I’ll go see the movie sometime. Preferably when Allan gets me some free tickets. But reading?” She finished what remained of the spremuta. “I’m the merry widow now, Falcone. I shop, I spend, I travel, and when I feel like it, when I see something that interests me, I take a little pleasure. Life’s too enjoyable for books. Why leave this world for someone else’s? Reading …” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “… is for people without lives. No. I know no more of Dante than you.”

“Actually, I know quite a lot,” Falcone replied almost apologetically. “Not that it matters.”

“It doesn’t?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because I find it hard to believe that anyone would commit much of a crime over poetry. However much they might wish us to think otherwise.”

“You really think something’s happened to Allan?”

“He’s missing. We have some very strange evidence. One man is dead. Perhaps there’s no connection. Perhaps …”

She cut the air with her hand and said, “This does not involve me. If you want to talk any more, we need to do this with a lawyer around.”

Taccone, the old soverintendente Falcone liked to use, had returned from looking around the apartment and stood waiting for the inspector to fall silent.

“You need to see this,” he told them.

The two men got up and followed him into what appeared to be the master bedroom. Adele Neri came in behind them. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up a packet of cigarettes and was quickly lighting one.

“What is it?” Falcone asked Taccone.

Costa walked forward to stand a short distance from the bed. He looked at Adele Neri and asked, “Didn’t you come in here?”

“Why would I want to sneak around his bedroom?”

“Call in forensic,” Falcone ordered. “Let’s not touch anything. Did you find any signs of violence?”

Taccone shook his head. “We didn’t find anything. Except this.”

The bed was covered with a green plastic ground sheet of the kind used by campers. The shape of a man’s body was still visible on it, set deep enough to imprint itself on the mattress below. Around the outline of the upper torso there was a faint sprinkling of pale grey powder which grew heavier around the head.

Taccone reached down and, using a handkerchief, picked up the handle of a brown bucket that had been hidden on the far side of the bed.

“It looks like clay or something,” he said.

Costa’s phone was ringing. The doorman who had been on duty that morning had gone home at lunchtime. It had taken a while to trace him. Costa listened to what the officer who’d finally found the man, in a Campo dei Fiori café, had to say. Then he asked to be passed to the agente who had handled the second inquiry.

“Seal off this room,” Falcone ordered. “Assume we have a murder scene.”

“We don’t,” Costa said simply. “There’s no CCTV in this building, but we’ve found one of the staff who was on duty. There are details in the visitors’ book.”

He looked at Adele Neri and asked, “Is the name Carlotta Valdes familiar?”

She drew on the cigarette and shook her head. “No. Spanish?”

“A woman calling herself that arrived to see Allan Prime at eight-thirty this morning. They left together around ten. Mr. Prime looked very happy, apparently. Expectant even.”

Falcone shook his head in bafflement, lost for words for a moment, as if the investigation were slipping away from them before it had even begun.

“A man is dead,” Costa reminded him.

“His death is the Carabinieri’s problem, as you have made very clear.”

“Also …”

“Also the death mask we were supposed to protect is missing,” Falcone went on. “I am aware of that. It may be all we have. A case of art theft.”

Costa struggled to see some sense in the situation. It was impossible to guess precisely what kind of case they had on their hands. The loss of a precious historic object? Or something altogether darker and more personal?

“The man who was killed in the park,” he persisted, regardless of Falcone’s growing exasperation. “He’s been identified. We were told by the Carabinieri as a matter of course, at the same time they put in a formal request for an interview. I need to report to them with Signora Flavier.”

“Well?” Falcone asked.

“His name was Peter Jamieson. He was an actor, originally from Los Angeles. The man moved to Rome a decade ago, principally playing bit parts, Americans for cheap TV productions at Cinecittà.”

“Tell me. Did he have a part in Inferno?” Falcone looked ready to explode.

“Nonspeaking. Barely visible. There’s no reason why anyone from the cast should have recognised him at all.”

The inspector pointed a bony finger in Costa’s face, as if he’d found the guilty party already.

“If this is some kind of publicity stunt gone wrong, I will put every last one of those painted puppets in jail.”

“If …” Costa repeated, and found himself staring again at the powder on the bed, and the silhouette of Allan Prime’s head outlined there.

4

Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi was furious on several fronts. The screening had begun without his permission. Key pieces of evidence had been removed from the scene by the morgue monkeys of the state police, under the supervision of Teresa Lupo, a woman Quattrocchi had encountered, and been bested by, in the past, on more than one occasion. And now Leo Falcone had placed a team in Allan Prime’s home without consulting the Carabinieri, though the state police inspector knew full well that security for the film cast was not his responsibility and never would be.

As a result Quattrocchi’s bull-like face appeared even more vexed than normal, and he found himself sweating profusely inside the fine wool uniform he had chosen for an occasion that was meant to be social and ceremonial, not business. He stood at the back of the projection room, temporarily speechless with fury, not least because his principal contact within the crew, the publicist Simon Harvey, appeared to have been spirited away by Falcone’s people, too. All he got in his place was the smug, beaming Dino Bonetti, a loathsome creature of dubious morality, and two young ponytailed Americans with, it seemed to him, a hazy grasp of the seriousness of the situation.

While everyone else wore evening dress, the two young men had removed their jackets to reveal T-shirts bearing the name Lukatmi, with a logo showing some kind of oriental goddess, a buxom figure with skimpy clothing, a beguiling smile, and multiple arms, each holding a variety of different cameras — movie, still, phones, little webcams of the kind the Carabinieri used for CCTV — all linked into one end of a snaking cable pumping out a profusion of images into a starry sky.

Quattrocchi peered more closely. There were faces within the stars, a galaxy of Hollywood notables — Monroe, Gable, Hepburn, James Stewart, their heads floating in the ether.

“Note,” the skinny one identified by his shirt as Josh Jonah, Founder, Ideologist, Visioneer, ordered, “the absence of noise.”

“I can hear you,” Quattrocchi snapped, to no avail.

“If we were in an ordinary projectionist’s room,” Jonah continued, “we wouldn’t be able to have this conversation. There would be film rattling through the projector. Physical artefacts. Needless expense. Time and money thrown away without reason.”

“I am an officer of the Carabinieri. Not an accountant.”

“We’re all accountants in the end.” It was the other American, a big muscular man with a boyish face and a ponytail of long wavy dark hair. Quattrocchi peered at his T-shirt. It read, Tom Black, Founder, Architect, Corporate Conscience. Black seemed younger than his partner. A little less sure of himself, too. “In the sense that we pay for things. You’d like to get movies quicker, cheaper, easier, wouldn’t you?”

“Right now,” Quattrocchi blurted out so loudly that he felt sure his voice had carried into the cinema beyond, with its audience of VIPs, “I would like to know where Allan Prime is, why we have a dead actor in the park out there, and what the hell is going on around here.” He glowered at their shirts. “Who is Lukatmi anyway? Some Indian god? And who the hell are you?”

The two men looked at each other and Tom Black smiled.

“That was kind of the positioning we were looking for. Three million dollars got blown there. Worth every penny,” he said.

“We’re backers,” the skinny one boasted. “We’ve got money in this thing. Without us, this movie would never have got made.”

“What—” Quattrocchi began to say.

“Lukatmi’s got nothing to do with India,” the quieter American interrupted. “Lukatmi. ‘Look at me.’ It’s a philosophical statement about not hiding away, about being a part of the digital lifestream, a star in your own right, out there for everyone to see.”

“Like YouTube,” Bonetti added, and Josh Jonah howled, “No, no, no, no, no! How many freaking times do I have to say this? YouTube is yesterday …”

“When Google bought them …” Tom Black shook his head. His broad, young face was so sorrowful it looked as if someone had died. “… it was all over. They don’t understand the whole mash-up thing. The behemoth days are past.”

“Lukatmi is just the medium, not the message,” Jonah added, taking over, clearly the boss. “Except for the paid-for content, we don’t own a damned thing. It’s not for us to dictate to human beings what they create or what they see. If you have a problem with that, don’t watch.”

Quattrocchi suddenly realised he’d read about these people in the newspapers. They’d found some loophole that allowed them to be absolved of any legal responsibility for what was, on the surface, carried by their network. They were, if he understood this correctly, like a dating agency. Their computers put someone wanting something in touch with someone offering it. The relationship was consummated in a way that had, so far, allowed them to escape the attentions of the law, on the simple grounds that they never published anything directly themselves. If the material that people found on Lukatmi turned out to be copyrighted, blasphemous, or, with very few restrictions, pornographic, they weren’t to blame. It was anarchy with a listing on NASDAQ. Millions and millions of people had flocked to their site since it had gone live less than a year before. The two founders had become paper billionaires as staid investment houses and international banks poured vast sums of money into a company that seemed to be little more than two geeks with a big and possibly dubious idea.

One thing still puzzled him. “What on earth has all this got to do with the movie business?”

“Everything,” said Bonetti. “This is a revolution. Like when silent movies got sound, when black-and-white turned to colour. It means we can finally reach people direct, any way we want, without getting screwed by the distributors or anyone else.” He cast a sour glance at the Americans. They saw it, as the Italian producer intended. “Except them.”

Quattrocchi massaged his temples. There was a persistent, low ache there and had been ever since the shooting. An internal investigation team was now overseeing that, following the procedures after the deaths of civilians at the hands of a Carabinieri team. He wasn’t looking forward to having to face the investigators. He’d been absent from the Casa del Cinema when the killing took place on highly spurious grounds, a call of a personal nature. That was one more secret to keep under wraps.

“Who’d want to watch a movie on a phone?” he demanded, unable to take his eyes off the screen beyond the room. It seemed to be on fire. The flames of Hell licked everywhere, and through them burst the faces of grinning, leering demons, their green and purple mouths babbling profanities and obscenities at the stricken, cowering figure of Dante, who shrank back at the horrific sight, the beautiful Beatrice at his side.

“Millions of suckers everywhere,” Bonetti crowed. “A dollar a clip. A monthly subscription for twenty. And then they go to see it in the theatre anyway. And buy the DVD. Then the director’s edition. Then the collector’s …” The Italian producer’s fleshy face beamed. “It’s a dream. You sell the same old junk over and over again.”

“With absolute efficiency,” the skinny one, Josh Jonah, emphasised. “Not a wasted piece of celluloid. Not a single cassette or DVD in inventory. And this”—he patted the silver box streaming light into the theatre beyond—“is ours. Every last piece gets streamed straight here for less money than it costs to produce a single cinema print. The crap the masses turn out gets fed from PC to PC for free. The people that junk brings in become the movie audience of the future, and we serve them direct, same price they’d pay in a theatre, but at a fraction of the delivery cost.” He clicked his fingers. “Voilà. Big money.”

“Big money,” Bonetti insisted.

Quattrocchi shook his head and grumbled, “So much for art. Also …”

This had bothered him all along. The picture on the screen didn’t look right. It wasn’t as sharp, as detailed, as engaging, as he’d expect of a movie like this. It felt wrong, however smart the toys these kids used to fool Bonetti and anyone else throwing their hats into this particular ring.

He stopped, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“What on earth is that?”

The scene was dissolving in front of their eyes. The flames faded. The faces of the demons, Dante shrinking in terror before them, now gave way to something else. Quattrocchi had seen Roberto Tonti’s movie that afternoon, at the private screening. He knew for sure that what was now emerging on the screen in front of a selected audience of some two hundred international VIPs, politicians, and hangers-on had never been there before.

It was Dante again, still terrified, his face frozen in dread. Or rather, it was Allan Prime. In close-up, grainy, as if from some CCTV camera.

An open-faced black metal mask, ancient, medieval looking, enclosed his head, one band gripping his mouth. Behind its bars, the man’s horrified features seemed exaggerated. His eyes were locked and rigid with terror.

There was utter silence in the projection room and in the theatre beyond. Then, nervously, someone in the crowd laughed, and another coughed. A voice rose. Quattrocchi recognised it: the furious, coarse bark of Roberto Tonti complaining about something yet again.

Josh Jonah wiped his skeletal forearm over his eyes. “Was this an outtake or something?” he asked no one in particular. “I don’t recall seeing it. Tom. Tom?”

The other American was staring at his silver machine, punching keys, watching numbers fly up on the monitor.

“This isn’t coming from us.” Sweat was starting to make dark, damp stains across his burly chest. He looked almost as frightened as Allan Prime. Or Dante. Whichever, Quattrocchi thought. “I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“Cut it,” Jonah ordered. “Stop the frigging thing. If someone else has got hold of the stream …”

“Sure …”

“No,” Quattrocchi ordered, and found he had to drag the American away from his strange projector.

They both stared at him. Bonetti, too, though there was no expression Quattrocchi could read on the producer’s dark, lined face.

“This isn’t part of the show,” Josh Jonah stated firmly. “It’s not supposed to be up there.”

“Yes, it is. Your star’s missing. Someone has taken control of your toy. What if they’re trying to tell us where he is? Or why? Or …”

He was about to say Or both.

But the words never reached his lips. Two things had happened on the screen. In the right-hand corner a digital stopwatch appeared, counting down from the hour. 59:59, 59:58, 59:57 …

As it ticked away, an object entered from centre left, first in a sudden movement that darted in so quickly he was unable to see what had happened, only the result, that it had inflicted yet more pain and fright on the trapped man struggling on the screen in front of them, and that blood was now welling from some fresh wound that had appeared on Allan Prime’s left temple.

The image vanished. After a long break the picture resumed. A narrow, deadly spear, the shaft as shiny as a mirror save for the bloodied tip which had just stabbed the trapped man’s face, had slowly emerged, sharp and threatening, aimed directly at Prime’s temple.

The stopwatch flicked over from 58:00 to 57:59. The spear moved on a notch towards Allan Prime’s head, as if attached to some machine that would edge it forward, minute by minute, until it drove into the actor’s skull.

Quattrocchi stared at this gigantic, real-life depiction of a captive man waiting to die. There were hints to be found in this sight, surely. Clues, keys to unlock the conundrum. Otherwise why broadcast it at all? Simply to be cruel? Behind the head, he could just make out some shapes in the darkness, paintings perhaps, images, ones that might have been familiar had he possessed some way to illuminate the scene.

Beyond the projection room, out in the cinema, Tonti ceased roaring. Someone moaned. Another voice cried out in outrage. A woman screamed.

Bonetti threw open the door and bellowed at an attendant, “Clear the room, man! Everyone!”

Then he returned and stared at Quattrocchi, shocked, finally, babbling, “Find him, for God’s sake. Find him!”

“But where?” Quattrocchi asked, to himself mostly, as he held down the shortcut key for headquarters on his phone, praying that there was someone there who was good at riddles.

He got through. The wrong man answered. Morello. A good officer. Not a bright man. Not the one Quattrocchi hoped for, and there was no time to locate others. He had to work with what he had.

“Are we listening to our friends?” Quattrocchi asked.

There was silence on the line. The Carabinieri weren’t supposed to eavesdrop on the police. And vice versa. But it happened. In both directions.

“We can be. Are we listening for anything in particular?”

“I would like to be informed of any mention of the actor Allan Prime, from any source whatsoever.”

“Of course.”

“Good,” Quattrocchi said, then got himself put through to forensic.

While waiting he caught the attention of Tom Black. The young American stood back from his silver machine, staring at the flashing monitor with concern.

“I need my scientific officers to see what’s happening,” Quattrocchi told him.

The American winced, as if afflicted by a momentary pain. “Tell them to find a computer and tune in to Lukatmi,” he answered glumly. “These bastards are putting it out to the public, too. Through us. We can stop them, but the only quick way would mean we lose the stream here, too …”

“Touch nothing!” Quattrocchi roared. He pointed through into the cinema, where Prime was screaming on the screen again. The small, deadly spear had moved closer to its destination. “If we lose that, we lose him.”

Josh Jonah walked up to the machine and peered calmly at the monitor. “I can read off the URL,” he said. “Are you ready?”

5

One kilometre away, in the forensic lab of the centro storico Questura, the same word was puzzling another law enforcement officer, though one from a very different agency.

“Url? What’s a URL?” Peroni asked.

He thought they were in Teresa Lupo’s morgue to stare at the head of a store window dummy and the curious death mask that had been attached to it. And to talk to Simon Harvey. At the age of fifty-one, with an understanding of the cinema industry which extended to no more than a few security duties at the Cinecittà studios over the years, Peroni felt it was time to become better acquainted with the working methods and mores of the movie business, such as they were. He had an inexplicable feeling they might come in useful, and that Simon Harvey was a man who could impart much worthwhile information on the subject if he felt so minded.

No one answered his question. Harvey and Silvio Di Capua had exchanged a brief conversation, and the whole game plan seemed to disappear in smoke. While Teresa and her two young white-coated trainee assistants played halfheartedly with the head and mask — finding no new information — Di Capua and Harvey had gone over to the nearest computer and started hammering the keys, staring at the gigantic monitor as it flipped through image after image.

“Will someone please tell me what a URL is?” Peroni asked again.

“Universal resource locator,” Di Capua grumbled. “What I’m typing. Any the wiser?”

“No. Enlighten me. How is this helping exactly?”

“Gianni,” Teresa said. “If I’d been allowed to set up some kind of a crime scene on that stage … If we were in control in any shape or form …” She opened her hands in a gesture of despair. “We have nothing to work with. Nowhere to begin. If staring at a computer helps, I’m all for it. What else is there?”

“This is my fault,” Harvey apologised. “I didn’t mean to start an argument. It was only a suggestion.”

The suggestion being, Teresa explained patiently, that they use the strange, unexplained Internet service owned by two American geeks who’d helped finance Inferno to try to find out what people at large were saying about Allan Prime.

“Think of it this way,” Harvey went on. “Would you like to be able to tune in to every TV newscast around the world that was covering Allan right now? Every little net TV channel, every vidcast, too?”

Peroni shook his big, grizzled head. “Every what?”

“If it gave us a clue …” Di Capua said. “I’d take anything. This thing …” He blinked, incredulous at the flashing series of moving pictures on the monitor. “… is unbelievable. I never realised …”

“They bring stuff online before announcing it,” Harvey said. “It’s all part of the hype. You never know what they’ll turn up with next. You just have to tune in to check.”

Teresa had her head bent towards the screen. Peroni felt like an unwanted intruder from a different century.

“How the hell do they do it?” Di Capua asked, still in a state of awe.

Harvey sighed. “I don’t really understand it myself. From what they said, it’s a mixture of reading keywords, transcribing speech, recognising faces … All the TV stations are now online and streaming. Add to that new video material. Blogs. Small web stations. I guess they have some way of consuming it all as it appears, reading it, then serving everything up. Google for video and audio, only ten times bigger, ten times faster, and deadly accurate. That’s why they’re worth a billion or so each.”

Peroni cleared his throat. “This is so interesting. Is anyone going to find something for me to look at?”

Teresa stepped back and gestured at the screen. “Take your pick.”

What enthusiasm he had left swiftly dissipated. The monitor was crammed with moving pictures the size of postage stamps, each with odd graphs and a geographical location.

“Allan Prime’s a star,” Di Capua observed. “When someone like him disappears, it’s a big story.”

Peroni leaned forward and found himself wishing he could rewind the clock to enter a simpler, more straightforward universe. Each postage-stamp video represented a TV channel, usually news, seemingly issuing some kind of bulletin about the Prime story. The BBC in London. CBS in New York. A channel in Russia. Somewhere in Japan, Australia, the Philippines … “This can’t all be live …”

Harvey nodded. “Pretty much. With Lukatmi, if it’s going out real time, it’s being relayed by them that way. With maybe a few seconds’ delay, that’s all.”

Peroni felt he could soon start to lose his temper. “This is of no use to me whatsoever. How many channels are there, for pity’s sake?”

Di Capua hammered some keys and said, “More than four hundred sources have run a story on Prime in the last hour.”

Peroni watched as the monitor cleared again, then very slowly came back to life, painting a set of new tiny videos on the screen at a snail’s pace.

When the images returned, they were all the ones Peroni expected. Local and national news channels, familiar presenters reading from their scripts, all with images of the missing actor and shots from the park and the production of Inferno. A counter by the side of the screen was some kind of popularity meter. The audience seemed to be running at seven figures and rising, most of them for a single video channel, one that was blacked out at that moment.

“Why can’t we watch the one that’s top of the list?”

“It won’t load for some reason,” Di Capua said, trying something with the keyboard. “Too many people watching it, I imagine. Or maybe their fancy computer system can’t cope.”

“I want to see it …” Peroni began, and then fell quiet. Teresa’s deputy had made the black window occupy the full screen of the path lab monitor. As he watched, the empty space filled, line by line, with a real moving image.

They all crowded round to see. It was a man in fear for his life, trapped inside some cruel and ancient cast-iron head restraint. The digital stopwatch imprinted by his neckline turned from 28:31 to 28:30, and the seconds kept on ticking. Allan Prime’s eyes were as large as any man’s Peroni had ever seen. He looked ready to die of fright even before the bright, shining spear with the blood-soaked tip reached his head, which surely would happen soon. Within less than thirty minutes or so, this strangely hypnotic little movie, the most personal Prime had ever made surely, seemed to be saying.

Teresa leaned over Di Capua and said, “Get me more detail.”

Harvey’s eyes were glazed, filling with tears. Peroni looked at him and said, “You don’t have to watch this. Why not go and sit somewhere else? I’ll come for you when there’s news.”

“I’ve got to watch it,” the movie man croaked, then dragged up a chair.

There was no caption. Only the image of the terrified actor, the time ticking away, and, by the side of the video, the digital thermometer that was the popularity counter. It was now flashing red. Peroni stared at it. Allan Prime’s dying moments seemed to be the most sought-after thing in the world at that instant. A real-life drama being watched by a global audience that was growing into the tens of millions and swelling by the second.

He pressed a finger against the screen and indicated the area behind Prime’s quaking head. “There’s something there, Silvio. Can you bring it up?”

The pathologist’s hands raced across the keyboard. Prime’s features began to bleach out. From the dark background it was now possible to make out some kind of shape. Di Capua tweaked the machine. It was a painting, strange and old and, Peroni thought, possibly familiar.

“Get that to the art people straightaway,” he ordered.

Teresa was staring at him. He knew what she was thinking.

“Has Nic got one of those new video phones?” he asked.

“You all have them,” she said, and folded her arms. “Even you if you bothered to look.”

“I deal in people, not gadgets,” Peroni replied, then called Costa on the fancy new handset the department had issued to everyone only a few months earlier.

“Silvio,” he said, listening to the ring tone.

“Yeah?” the young pathologist answered absentmindedly, still punching away at the keyboard, trying to improve any recognisable detail in the swimming sea of pixelated murk that now filled the screen.

“Best give me the URL, please.”

6

They went back to the Lancia in the Via Giulia. The forensic team would go through the clay dust and any other evidence they might find in the apartment Adele Neri had rented Allan Prime. It felt better to be outside. Something about the information they had gleaned from Neri’s widow depressed Costa. The movie world was not all glitter. Allan Prime, along with the producer Dino Bonetti, kept the company of mobsters and thieves. Costa wondered why he was surprised. There had been plenty of scandals in Italian show business over the years. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to discover they spilled over into something as important and lucrative as the comeback blockbuster for one of the country’s most reclusive directors.

Maggie Flavier came and stood next to him by the wall beneath the Lungotevere. The traffic made a dull, physical sound through the stone that separated them from the busy road and the river beyond. She was smoking and had the sweet smell of Campari on her breath, a lightness that might have been the onset of drink in her eyes.

She smiled at him and said, “We all lead different lives. What’s yours?”

“Being a police officer. It’s enough.”

She drew hard on the cigarette, then tossed it to the ground and stamped out the embers with her shiny, expensive-looking evening shoe.

“In my line of work you become more conscious of words,” she said quietly. “You used the past tense when you talked about your wife …”

He nodded. He liked her directness. Perhaps it was an actor’s trick. Perhaps not.

“She died six months ago.” He thought of the mausoleum of Augustus, less than ten minutes away on foot, and the terrible events of the previous December.

“I’m sorry. Was it unexpected?”

“You could say that.”

She breathed in deeply, quickly. “I don’t know what to say. I felt something, that’s all.”

“ ‘Sorry’ is just fine.” There isn’t a lot else, he thought. People died all the time. Those who survived got on with their lives.

She turned to look at the building housing Prime’s apartment, now surrounded by blue police cars, with only a handful of Carabinieri vehicles in the street.

“Do you know where Allan is yet? Is he OK?” she asked.

“He was fine when he left here this morning.” His eyes rested on Falcone, serious and intent by the door, busy on the phone. “Perhaps he’s just gone walkabout.”

She shook her head. “When he’s due to open the premiere for the biggest movie of the summer? I don’t think so …”

The thought wouldn’t leave Costa’s head. “Could this all be some publicity stunt?”

She stared at him in disbelief. He caught the bittersweet aroma of Campari again.

“Someone died, Nic. The premiere’s been cancelled. A publicity stunt?”

“The man who attacked you was an actor. His name was Peter Jamieson. He was an extra on the set of Inferno. Did you know him?”

Maggie Flavier didn’t blink. “A movie set’s like a football crowd. The only people I see are the ones I’m playing a scene with. I don’t even notice Tonti. Just hear him. You couldn’t miss that.” She gazed directly into his eyes, to make the point. “I didn’t recognise that poor man. I’ve never heard of someone named Jamieson. If I had, I would tell you. I may be an actor, but I’m a very bad liar.”

His phone rang. It was Peroni, excited, trying to explain something he clearly didn’t understand himself. Nic heard Teresa snatch the thing from him at the other end.

“Nic,” she said anxiously. “Don’t ask, just listen. Allan Prime is captive somewhere and it’s being broadcast on the web. He’s in danger. It looks bad. We need you to see the pictures and tell us if you recognise anything.”

“Pictures?”

“Live pictures,” she emphasised, then told him how to find the Lukatmi page.

Costa had to cut the call to try to get the web on his phone. When he did, and keyed in the address she gave him, all he got was a blank page and a message saying that service was unavailable. He called Teresa back. There was a brief exchange between her and someone who sounded like Silvio Di Capua.

“Nic, forget that idea,” she ordered. “Silvio says the network must be breaking up under the strain. Everyone’s watching this poor bastard trying to stay alive. Listen. It’s possible there’s a hint about where he might be. The background to the picture is blurry, but it seems to contain some kind of painting. We think we’ve captured some of it. We’re trying to circulate it to the art people here to get their opinion, but they’re all out taking tea with their maiden aunts or something. Look at it for us. Please.”

A beep told him there was an incoming e-mail. Costa opened it, looked, thought for a moment, then told her, “It’s just smudge and ink. I’m seeing it on a phone. Tell Silvio to get more detail and blow the thing up until it’s breaking.”

There were curses and shouts on the end of the line. Two more images arrived on Nic’s phone, each little better than the first. Falcone came over. Costa told him what was happening, while Maggie stood by his shoulder, trying to peek at what was on the phone. It was impossible to recognise anything on the tiny, pixelated screen.

“Bigger, brighter, louder,” he ordered.

They waited. One more e-mail arrived.

He looked at it and thought of a bright day the previous autumn when he and Emily had bought ice cream from the little café near the Piazza Trilussa, then gone on a long stroll to the Gianicolo, past the house that was supposed to belong to Raphael’s mistress, La Fornarina, through the still-quiet part of Trastevere the American tourists rarely found.

The image was cruelly disfigured by both Silvio Di Capua’s digital surgery and the distorting electronic medium through which it had been relayed. But he recognised those lovely features all the same, and could picture the figure beneath the face, half naked, racing her scallop shell chariot over the surf, surrounded by lascivious nymphs and satyrs.

“This is from a painting called Galatea,” he said with absolute certainty. “It’s in the Villa Farnesina in the Via della Lungara in Trastevere. It’s just a small museum and art gallery, not well known. Quite deserted at night, and in secluded grounds.” He thought of the way there across the river. It was perhaps four minutes if they crossed the Mazzini bridge.

“Four cars,” Falcone ordered, walking back to his Lancia. “Leave Miss Flavier under guard here.” He opened the driver’s door and beckoned for Catherine Bianchi to move. “In the passenger seat, please,” Falcone ordered. She obeyed immediately. Costa followed.

From somewhere came the wail of a siren. Falcone looked surprised, and more than a little cross. More so when it became apparent from the timbre that it was the sound of the Carabinieri.

7

Across town, in the control van maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi had positioned outside the Casa del Cinema, there was excitement and amusement.

Quattrocchi put down the mike and, with the same coded instruction to Morello that he had used earlier, ordered an end to the eavesdropping. Then he closed his eyes and pictured the layout of his native city, the place where he’d grown up, where he felt he knew every brick and alley, every corner and battered statue. Falcone and his team were in the one-way streets of the Via Giulia, trapped in the sixteenth-century warren that had once been created as a wealthy suburb for the Vatican across the river, a little way along from Trastevere itself.

Quattrocchi had ordered officers and cars to all of the key crossings in the centre of the city, a trick he had developed and perfected in the past. The Tiber would once more be his ally.

“Close the Mazzini,” he ordered. “And the Vittorio Emanuele. There will be only one easy way left to the Via della Lungara then. We go south to the Garibaldi. Falcone will never reach there. Not till sometime tomorrow.”

This was a Carabinieri case and it would stay that way.

8

It was the smallest camera Allan Prime had ever worked with. The device hung in front of his face, dangling from a flickering light in the ceiling, a wire trailing off somewhere to the computer he’d seen on the way in. Prime never did understand technology. It was tedious, even now. Nothing had ever really mattered except the monocular glass eye that watched him, never blinking, never ceasing to pay attention. In his head it had always been there. Even in the dim, dark, noisome movie theatres of Manhattan when he was a sweaty teenager dreaming of stardom, determined to achieve it, whatever the cost.

Whatever the cost.

The idea provided some amusement in his present odd predicament. He wanted to laugh even as sobs came rippling up from his body, physical reactions, tricks of the trade, not conscious, personal responses. He was able to divide the self from acting. That was always the first deceit. And this was acting. He kept reminding himself of that. This whole exercise, once complete, would be an end to things. A wiping out of all debts, financial and otherwise, with a considerable prize in private, too.

It hadn’t been the decent lunch and a little afternoon delight he’d been hoping for following Miss Valdes’s work on the clay mask. She had turned somewhat coy, to his surprise. Long term, though, maybe it was for the better. Hide away for the day. Miss the premiere, stoke up some publicity. Then let her put him in some weird, sadomasochistic rig set up in a tiny museum that had been closed for renovation. The camera came out. A fake kidnapping, an act of terror played out in front of millions. A world-famous star in a one-man show that would make headlines everywhere. Hell, she sold it so well Allan Prime thought for a moment he would have paid to be in the thing. This one stupid prank would set up queues outside movie theatres everywhere, sell millions of pieces of merchandise, bring a flood tide of money into the coffers of Inferno, a cut of which, after producer fees, would come his way. And the rest …

The performance was what really mattered, though. It was always about the performance.

So he had allowed himself to be strapped into the black metal frame, worked with her to perfect the focus on the tiny, bug-eyed camera, and sat patiently while she faked the spear thrust into his skull — plastic point, stage blood — that was used for the opening sequence.

He’d done this kind of thing a million times and, given the swift, smooth professional way she went about her business, he assumed Carlotta Valdes — or whoever she really was — had too.

After that, she actually called “Action” and he was on, moaning and writhing for the tiny white light that sat blinking on top of the camera, unwilling, and unable, to focus on anything but the tiny lens for the next sixty minutes, an hour which, Carlotta promised, would make him the biggest, most talked-about star in the world.

And then the cops would come. Rescue him. One more piece of deceit, of acting, was required to explain his abduction. This was, Prime thought, a piece of cake. He was used to faking it for millions. By comparison, fooling a few dumb Italian cops would be child’s play.

The movie business was weird sometimes. It ran in uncertain directions, was diverted by fate and circumstance and, on occasion, pure luck, both good and bad. The debts were worth losing. So was the rape complaint still hanging over him from that weekend in Rimini three months before. What the dark suits behind Dino Bonetti surely promised — he assumed Carlotta came from them, though she never said — was a fresh start, a vast private payoff, and a mountain of free publicity and global sympathy that would make him bigger even than Inferno itself. Plus the fringe benefits only a few — Carlotta among them — understood.

The unseen clock tick-tocked once more. The device to his left moved another notch towards his face. It would stop, she said, when the rubber tip reached his cheek, before the supposedly razor-sharp blade bent beneath the pressure, revealing the legerdemain, exposing the lie. That couldn’t be long now. He felt he’d been trapped in the rig for hours. It was starting to become painful. He couldn’t wait for this scene to be over, for the cameras to die, and for her next trick: his astonishing, headline-grabbing rescue.

Prime was wondering how he could vary the act, too. Sixty minutes of writhing and yelling would be boring. He’d be marked, rated, critiqued on this performance, just as on every other.

So he stopped crying, made an effort to appear to be a man struggling to recover some inner resolve and strength. Then, trying to find some way round the awkward iron bar over his mouth, he began to bellow, as loudly as his lungs allowed.

“Carlotta,” he cried, not minding he was yelling out her name to millions, since it could only be a sham, like everything else. “CARLOTTA!”

There was no reply. None at all. Not a footstep, not a breath, not the slightest of responses. In some chilling, inexplicable way, Allan Prime came to understand at that moment that he was alone in the small, dark museum to which she had taken him in the early evening after eating ice cream together in a secluded corner of the Gianicolo.

And something else. He remembered where he’d heard her name before, and the recollection made his blood run cold.

Carlotta Valdes was a ghost from the past — vengeful, vicious.

The unseen clock must have ticked again somewhere. The invisible device to his left lurched another ratchet, ever closer. As it did so, it made a heavy, certain clunk, quite unlike that of a stage prop, which would have been cheap, throwaway stuff, its own soft, revealing sounds covered by the insertion of a Foley track dubbing menace and the hard clash of metal to lend a little verisimilitude to flimsy reality.

This is for real, Allan Prime realized.

Real as pain. Or blood. Life. Or death.

A warm, free flow of stinging liquid was spreading around his crotch. He stared at the bug-eyed camera and began to plead and scream for help, for release, with more conviction than he’d ever possessed in his life.

Somewhere at the back of his head he heard Roberto Tonti’s disembodied voice.

Stop acting. Start being.

It sounded as if the vicious old bastard was laughing.

9

Falcone screamed out of the open Lancia window, not at anyone in particular, but the world in general. They hadn’t moved more than fifty metres in the Via Giulia, and traffic was backing up in every side road around. Sirens blaring, lights flashing, it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. These were medieval cobbled streets, made for pedestrians and horses and carriages. There was nowhere left for the civilian cars stranded in them to move to allow another vehicle past. They were trapped in a sea of overheating metal.

Costa called the control room and asked what was happening. He looked at Falcone.

“The Carabinieri have thrown up roadblocks on the bridges. They won’t even let pedestrians across.”

“I will crucify those stuck-up bastards for this—”

“They think it’s their case,” Costa pointed out. Then, before his superior exploded, he added, “We can get there across the footbridge. The Ponte Sisto. Go over, turn right, and find the Via della Lungara. It’s the long way round—”

“How long will it take?” Catherine Bianchi wanted to know.

But Costa was getting out of the car already, signalling to two of the younger men in the vehicle behind to come with him. “That depends how fast you can run.”

He began to backtrack along the Via Giulia, towards the shallow uphill slope that led to the Lungotevere and the old footbridge crossing, setting up a steady pace, aware he’d be well ahead of any of the men behind him. Since Emily had died, Costa had got back into running, spending long hours pounding the stones of the Appian Way near his home. It helped, a lot sometimes.

He was at full pace by the time he got to the bridge, pushing past the importunate beggars and their dogs, the hawkers with their bags and counterfeit DVDs. On the Trastevere side, he had to leap across the hoods of the cars which were so tightly and angrily backed up along the river they didn’t leave space for a pedestrian to get through. Costa ignored the howls of outraged drivers. He was sprinting through the Piazza Trilussa, turning in towards the Via della Lungara.

There were Carabinieri everywhere, but no barriers within the road itself yet. They were still getting into position, leaving some movement in the area to allow senior officers to decide their tactics.

Costa pulled out his police ID, held it high, and kept on running. The sight of him took them by surprise so much he managed to get through the gates of the Farnesina and into the beautiful, secluded garden before anyone stopped him.

Finally a large, gruff minion stuck out his arm and immediately launched into the customary litany of excuses that were trotted out, on both sides, when some conflict occurred in public.

“I don’t have time for this and nor do you,” Costa interrupted him. “Look at the card, see my rank, and tell your superior officer. I know the Farnesina. It’s got a history he needs to understand. If you don’t take me to him now, I will make damned sure afterwards he gets to understand you kept me away.” Costa pointed at the small, elegant villa that had been built five centuries before on the orders of some wealthy Roman noble as a salon for artists and gamblers and beautiful, occasionally dubious women. “There are things he needs to appreciate.”

“Get lost,” the idiot said, waving him away. “This is nothing to do with you.”

A large, ruddy-faced man in an immaculate uniform swept past. Costa was never good at Carabinieri ranks, but something in the officer’s face spoke of seniority.

“Sir, sir …”

He ran into the individual’s path, waving his police ID. The man looked at him as if this were an act of the utmost impertinence. Costa could see his own colleagues, who had followed him from the Via Giulia, being apprehended at the villa gates, along with a furious Catherine Bianchi.

“My name is Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi. This crime scene is in our possession. Go away.”

“I know this building,” Costa insisted. “Do you?”

“When I wish the opinion of civilians, I will ask for it. Now stand aside …”

Two sets of strong arms pulled Costa away. Quattrocchi marched forward, flanked on either side by half a dozen uniformed officers. An elderly civilian was unlocking the doors, seemingly shaken by the fuss.

“It’s all about illusion,” Costa yelled. “Trompe-l’oeil. A trick of the eye. What you see is not what’s real!”

Just like the movies, he thought, as he watched the group of men stomp towards the villa’s elegant entrance. Under the harsh white floods, the building looked like a sketch from Piranesi scribbled into life with the crayons of a giant.

Quattrocchi turned and, to Costa’s astonishment, grinned sarcastically. Then he made a coarse and sexual street gesture not normally associated with senior military officers.

Very little in the Farnesina was as it appeared, Costa recalled, as the dark uniforms of the Carabinieri vanished through the doors. Inside, there were paintings masquerading as tapestries, a cryptic horoscope depicted as a celestial relief, artificial views of a lost Rome that may never have been quite as real as they suggested. The villa was a temple to both illusion and the sensuality of the arts.

He turned on his heel and headed for the gate. It was quieter now. Falcone was there, and for once the inspector wasn’t shouting. The game, for them, was surely lost.

10

“Make notes,” the maresciallo ordered as they entered. “Take photographs. Video. I wish a record of everything. We will release it to the media when we’re done.”

He glanced at his large gold watch, then at Morello, who already had pad and pen in his hands.

“How much time do we have left?” Quattrocchi demanded, walking on.

“Seven minutes and …” The Carabiniere held up his phone to try to see the picture there. “No. It’s gone again. Seven minutes at least. Ample time.”

“You!” Quattrocchi said to the elderly caretaker they had jerked away from the TV soccer in his tiny apartment adjoining the villa. “Take us to Galatea.”

“This is the Loggia of the Psyche,” the little man said with pride, immediately falling into a fawning tourist-guide voice. “You will note, sirs, the work of Baldassare Peruzzi and Raphael. These fruits, these flowers … once this would have opened onto the garden, hence the horticultural theme. And the so-called tapestries, which are painted, too. The Council of the Gods, Cupid and Psyche’s wedding banquet—”

“This isn’t a damned social visit,” Quattrocchi snapped. “Where’s Galatea?”

“We don’t get many visitors at night,” the caretaker replied, hurt. “Not from officers of the law.”

“Where—” Quattrocchi snarled, then stopped himself, realising the man had been leading them there all along. Now they had wandered into the loggia, which connected with that of Psyche.

He stared ahead. The painting was there, and many others, too. There was nothing else. The place was empty.

The maresciallo muttered a curse under his breath and found himself briefly wishing he hadn’t shooed away the young police officer quite so quickly. What had he said? This is a place of illusions. The images on the web had guided them — or, more accurately, the state police — to this building, and this room. But one more trick, one more sleight of hand, still stood between them and Allan Prime edging towards death.

“Someone told me,” Quattrocchi said, “that this villa was a place of tricks. What does that mean?”

The caretaker rubbed his hands with pleasure. “There are many, sir. Allusions. Illusions. Codes and cryptograms. References to the stars and alchemy, fate and the fleeting, intangible pleasures of the flesh.”

“Spare me the tourist chat. Where do I look to find them?”

“Everywhere …” The old man spread his arms.

“Where more than any?”

“Ah,” he replied, and nodded his head as if something had been suddenly revealed. “The Salone delle Prospettive. But it’s closed for restoration, and has been for many months. I’m sorry. What visitors we have … they always ask. The matter is out of my hands …”

The Salon of Perspectives. Quattrocchi knew it was the place the moment he heard the name. This was part of the cruel game. Playing with viewpoint. Changing a familiar aspect of the world through a trick of the light, a twist of the lens through which one saw the scene.

“Show me.”

“It’s closed. No one enters except the restoration people.”

“Show me!”

Morello had found a sign to the place and was pointing to it. Quattrocchi brushed the caretaker aside and led the way up a flight of marble stairs, breath rasping.

The younger officer was staring at his phone again. He had a picture back.

“Time?” Quattrocchi asked.

“Less than five minutes.”

The door was locked. They bellowed at the caretaker until he came up with the key. Then, with Quattrocchi in the lead, they went in.

It was dark and church-like. The only illumination came from a low light in the ceiling which was focused on a mass of tangled wires, mechanical contraptions, and constricting devices near the end of the room. A man — Allan Prime — was at the heart of this ganglion of metal and cable, strapped tightly into an upright frame, the open iron device around his head. A tourist print of the painting of Galatea fluttered behind him, animated by the breeze from an open window. On the floor, connected to the whole by a slender cable, sat a single notebook computer, its screen flashing a slow-moving image of something so unlikely it took Quattrocchi a moment to recognise what it was … the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

From behind, the caretaker, unaware of what lay before them, chanted, “You will note, sir, the perspectives of another Rome … Trastevere and the Borgo … the centro storico … painted as if real views from real windows. Also—”

Coming in last, he finally saw, and stopped.

Allan Prime whimpered. Pain and relief mingled with the tears on his sweat-stained face.

Quattrocchi walked forward, as close as he dared, and took a good look around the mechanical apparatus into which the actor had been strapped, checking carefully for traps or some kind of light signal device that might have been set to warn of an intruder’s approach, and perhaps trigger the mechanism early.

He saw none, but the gleaming sharp point had now edged its way to within a centimetre of the actor’s left temple.

The mechanism that held the deadly device was hidden in the deep, dark shadow outside the garish, too-bright overhead light. Carefully, barely breathing, Quattrocchi took out a penlight and shone it on the space there. A low, communal gasp of shock ran through the cluster of officers behind him. A full-size crossbow, of such power and weight it could only be designed for hunting, stood loaded, locked inside some ratchet mechanism that shifted it towards its victim with each passing minute. It was not just the spear — which he now saw to be an arrow — that was moving in the direction of Allan Prime. It was an entire weapon, ready to unleash its sharp, spiking bolt straight into the man’s skull.

“Four minutes,” Morello said, and sounded puzzled.

“We will release you immediately,” Quattrocchi said calmly. “You have nothing to fear. Four minutes is more than enough—”

“Sir …” the young Carabiniere interrupted.

Quattrocchi turned, annoyed by this intrusion.

“Something is happening,” the officer pointed out.

He walked carefully towards the maresciallo and showed him the phone.

The picture was changing. Quattrocchi grappled for the correct term. Finally it came. Zooming. The camera was zooming out of the scene. He looked at the single grey eye of the device that had been set up in front of Allan Prime. Its glassy iris was changing shape, as if trying to focus on something new.

When he returned to Morello’s phone, Quattrocchi saw himself there, looking surprised, angry, red-faced, and, to his dismay, rather old and lost as he stood next to the terrified actor strapped into the deadly frame.

From a place Quattrocchi couldn’t initially pinpoint came the deep, loud, disembodied rattle of a man’s laughter, cruel, uncaring, determined, too. Someone gasped in shock and, perhaps, terror.

A lilting, laughing voice, male, probably American, issued from the computer, and spoke in English.

“Say cheese. Say …”

There was a sound like water rushing through air, then a scream that was strangled before it could grow into a full-throated cry.

Quattrocchi turned his back on the apparatus, not wishing to witness what was happening to Allan Prime. On the floor of the Salone delle Prospettive, in a sixteenth-century nobleman’s version of an illusory paradise, he saw instead an elderly caretaker who was on his knees, crossing himself, turning his eyes to heaven and starting to pray.

Something had been written on the dusty tiles in multicoloured aerosol paint, letters a metre high, the way teenagers sprayed graffiti on the subway. Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi gazed at the message and remembered his lessons on Dante from college some thirty years earlier. The letters were ragged and rushed, but the words were unmistakable.

The Second Circle. The Wanton.

“What next?” Morello asked, unseen by his side.

“The third circle, of course,” Quattrocchi answered numbly.

11

Costa awoke with a start. He’d slept in Leo Falcone’s Lancia, which, after much argument, had been allowed to enter the secure area created by the Carabinieri in the Via della Lungara and the streets beyond and park close to the Farnesina. The Lungotevere was closed to traffic, which explained the strange silence. There would be media everywhere, cameras and reporters, crews from around the world, switched from the year’s grandest movie premiere to a terrible death, and eager for a story that would surely occupy the headlines for weeks to come. But none of the morning hurly-burly of commuters fighting to get to work.

Beyond the window, he could see Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo talking to Catherine Bianchi near the villa’s entrance. Maggie Flavier was joining them, a seemingly uncomfortable Carabinieri officer by her side. He couldn’t help but notice the young actress glanced in the direction of the car after she spoke to them. He looked at his watch. It was nearly seven in the morning. Costa turned on the car radio and listened to the news. There was only one story, and one law enforcement agency to tell it. Not the Polizia di Stato.

No one had been apprehended. The idea that Inferno would receive its world premiere in Rome had been abandoned. Instead, the entire cast and security operation would bring forward their planned move to California. The exhibition created for the Casa del Cinema would be rebuilt instead at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once that was complete, Inferno would be launched there, leaving Roman filmgoers to wait weeks for a domestic public release, a decision that was already creating fury among local fans.

The name of the place rang a bell. Costa closed his eyes and recalled Emily, then unknown to him, in a room in the American Embassy displaying a picture of a beautiful, half-ruined classical building by a lake as part of the investigation that had brought them together.

Then he was brought to earth by the gruff Roman voice of Gianluca Quattrocchi giving the news his somewhat overdramatised version of events. Allan Prime, he claimed, was beyond rescue from the very beginning. The videos of the actor on the web — and his savage demise, which was now on many millions of computers and phones around the world — were all part of a sadistic murder plot played out with heartless deliberation over the Internet. Why? Quattrocchi had the answer. The clues were there throughout. In the message scribbled on the dummy’s head—Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. In the words written on the floor in front of the trapped actor, which had been shared instantly with the world as the webcam panned the scene. In the constant stream of hate mail and dark threats sent to the production for months and now released to the Carabinieri by the movie’s publicist, Simon Harvey, who had — unwisely, Quattrocchi suggested — kept them quiet out of a mistaken belief they came from a crank.

“Cranks they may be,” the maresciallo went on, playing for the cameras, “but they are also killers.” He lowered his voice to make sure there could be no mistaking the seriousness of his message. “Killers obsessed with the works of Dante. They wish to punish those who made this movie for what they see as some kind of blasphemy. The star is dead already. We are redoubling security for everyone else involved — cast, crew, all of them. We will cooperate with the American authorities in this, and, since Italian citizens are under threat, participate in the operation in California as well.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” Costa muttered. Quattrocchi had never mentioned that the unfortunate Peter Jamieson had been carrying a gun loaded with blanks. He wondered how that awkward fact could possibly fit in with such strangely histrionic theories.

Feeling stiff and hungry, he got out of the car. Two more state police vehicles were set close to the far side of Falcone’s Lancia like a wagon train surrounded by a sea of dark blue Indians. He ambled over to the discussion Falcone was conducting. Maggie Flavier looked pale and pink-eyed as if she’d been crying. When she saw him, she turned to the Carabiniere and ordered him to fetch coffee and cornetti. The man slunk off with a mutinous grunt.

“Be kind. He’s only doing his job,” Costa suggested.

“If I want protection, I choose who does it,” she retorted. “And I choose …” Her slender finger ranged over the four of them, before adding Catherine Bianchi, too. “… you.”

“Oh no,” the American policewoman responded, half amused. “I’m just the captain of a little San Francisco precinct, and one that won’t be there much longer either. If the Palace of Fine Arts didn’t happen to be around the corner, I wouldn’t be here at all. All the important stuff gets assigned to the people downtown at Bryant Street. Frankly, they’re welcome to it. Guarding celebrities is out of my league.”

“There are protocols here, Miss Flavier,” Falcone added. “You must do as the maresciallo says. He seems very sure of himself.”

“People don’t murder for poetry,” Costa reminded him. “You said it yourself.”

“Allan Prime’s death is none of my business. Our business. That …” Falcone’s bright eyes shone with some inner knowledge. “… has been made very clear to me indeed by people with whom I am not minded to argue. Besides, Quattrocchi has created for himself a very certain picture of what is happening, one that seems to fit well with his own theatrical ambitions. Far be it from us to disturb his reveries.”

“Leo …” Teresa interrupted. “We have some interesting material from that place in the Via Giulia. Get us a little time. Perhaps we could get something useful.”

The inspector shook his head. “You must hand it over. It’s theirs now. All of it. Everything pertaining to Allan Prime and that American actor they shot dead in the park. Besides, whoever is responsible is surely gone from Rome already. That circus trick they performed with Prime … It could have been run from anywhere. America even. If Quattrocchi is correct and this is connected with the film — and I do believe this to be true — their attentions will surely follow that, too, across the Atlantic, far from Rome.”

Costa waited. He recognised that glint in Falcone’s eye.

“All we have,” the inspector went on, “is a missing death mask. A priceless historical object. And several other similar exhibits that will shortly be crated up and air-freighted to America.” He scratched his chin. “Is it possible they might also be at risk? If so, would it be fair to add to the Carabinieri’s burden by asking they take responsibility for that role, too …?”

Peroni laughed.

“I’m not sure it’s a possibility I can ignore,” Falcone went on, then pointed a commanding finger at Costa.

“Your English is good.” He peered at Peroni. “What about yours?”

“Mine? Mine?” the big man replied, aghast. “I spent six months on assignment with the Metropolitan Police in London, eating nothing but pies and fried potato. In some place called …” He thought about this. “The Elephant and Castle.”

“A bar?” Teresa asked.

“No,” he replied, outraged. “A place.”

“How long ago?” Falcone demanded.

Peroni shrugged. “Fifteen, twenty years … They were first-class police officers. And also good …” He searched for the word. “… blokes.”

“Your English, Gianni,” Teresa wanted to know. “How is it?”

Peroni drew himself up and looked officious.

“Ecco!” he declared, stabbing a finger straight into Costa’s face. With his scarred and beaten-up face, he suddenly seemed remarkably threatening. “Consider yourself well and truly nicked, sonny,” he roared in a thuggish London accent that Costa thought comprehensible — just.

The volume of this outburst caused the Carabinieri man newly returned with the coffees to tremble with shock and spill the hot liquid, cursing quietly under his breath.

“Works for me,” Costa murmured with an admiring nod.

“We fly out in two days,” Falcone announced. “I have reservations already. You must fly economy, I’m afraid. Budgetary restraints. Now go home and pack, both of you.”

Teresa danced a little dance, sang a short burst of “America” from West Side Story, and twirled around on her large feet with an unexpected grace.

Then she checked herself and prodded the inspector’s chest. “When you said ‘we’ …”

“Happily, the financial affairs of the forensic department are none of my business,” Falcone declared, and began walking off, turning only to add, “Since there is no death on our files, I doubt even you can persuade someone upstairs to foot the bill for that. Of course, if you have vacation owing and the money for a ticket …”

“I have to pay my own way?” she shrieked.

“Perhaps we can fit you in at the accommodation Catherine is arranging,” Falcone added, barely pausing. “The choice — and the expense — are both yours.”

Costa watched the two of them walk into the street bickering, both understanding neither would change his or her position, and that Teresa would be on that flight, even if she had to buy the ticket herself.

Maggie Flavier took a coffee from the silent Carabiniere’s hands and passed it over to him. “Will they find who did this?”

“They’ll try.” He didn’t want to pry. He knew he had to. “Was Allan Prime a friend of yours? A good friend?”

“No,” she answered with a shrug. “He was just a man I worked with. He tried his … charms, if you can call them that. Welcome to acting.” She stared at him and he knew: she had been crying, and was now allowing him to see, to understand. “It’s a solitary business. Being other people. The really odd part is you get to be alone in the presence of millions.”

“I can imagine,” he said.

She looked at him with a sharp, engaged interest that made him feel deeply uneasy.

“Can you?” she asked.