The Villa of Mysteries

Falcone was astonished she would have the nerve to play these games twice in twenty-four hours. “Go out where?” he bellowed.

Di Capua shrugged, looking miserable and scared.

“Get her here,” Falcone barked. “Now. And where the hell are Peroni and Costa? Didn’t anyone call them like I asked?”

“On their way,” one of the bunny suits mumbled. “They went back to the Questura. Didn’t know you were out. They got something, they said.”

“Jesus,” Falcone cursed. “It’s about time someone got something. What’s going on around here?”

Then he stopped. Rachele D’Amato was standing by the late accountant’s body, looking at the table, smiling. There were papers everywhere, printouts from computers, pages from a typewriter that seemed to pre-date these. Even a couple written in a careful, childlike hand.

They were just numbers, a sea of numbers, spilling everywhere. Apart from a single sheet with text on it, scrawled in a different style of writing, using a black felt-tip pen left by the paper. The ink looked fresh. The page depicted a phone keypad and beneath it a selection of numbers copied from the typed page next to it. The relevant section was ringed on the original page. Falcone had realized almost immediately what it was: the key to a code. A date. A phone number. An amount. And then some more codes that were impenetrable, because they probably related to the kind of transaction involved. Maybe, with more work, they could crack them too. This was a rich and generous gift. A deliberate escalation of the odds.

She reached for the papers, elated. He stopped her.

“We haven’t gone over those yet,” he cautioned. “Afterwards, you’ll get to see them. I promise.”

“Do you know what this is?”

“I didn’t. From what you’ve said, I think I do now.”

She was ecstatic, triumphant. He wished he could share her elation. “These go back years. We can put Emilio Neri away for good. We may be able to nail anyone who did business with him. Have you thought of that, Leo?”

“Right now I’m thinking about a murder,” he answered. Then he wondered: was that the direction you were supposed to take in the circumstances? Did this bloody dumb show exist in order to make you miss a larger though more subtle point? He couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the information that lay on the table. However useful it was, something about its provenance troubled him. This wasn’t the way the mobs normally went to war, killing underlings, leaving damning information on their enemies for the police. Not without some payoff anyway.

For a fleeting moment he wished he’d never left that beach in Sri Lanka, never caught the plane home to these complexities. He’d felt old recently. The renewed, chaste presence of Rachele D’Amato did his mental state no good at all. The pressure was something he could take. It was the doubts that bothered him. He wanted certainties in his life, not shadows and ghosts.

“Where the hell is everyone?” he scowled, and felt, for the first time in many a month, the edges of his temper beginning to fray.

THE MOMENT TERESA LUPO LEFT Regina Morrison’s office Monkboy was on the line, screaming for all he was worth, making it dead plain that Falcone was possibly in the foulest mood in history and wanted her on the scene now. She drove through the choked streets, thinking about what she had heard, not wondering for a moment how she would explain her absence or the fact that, for the second time in two days, she’d wilfully trodden on cop territory.

Dead people didn’t run away. There was nothing she could do for this new corpse that Silvio Di Capua couldn’t. All the hard work came later. Falcone would surely realize that. Most of all, she had a result. She didn’t expect him to be grateful. She didn’t expect to get bawled out either. While the rest of them were stumbling around in the dark, grasping at cobwebs, she’d found something concrete: the photograph of Barbara Martelli and Eleanor Jamieson in the private files of Professor Randolph Kirk, a man the lovely Barbara had despatched so efficiently the day before.

“Shithead,” she mouthed, with precious little enthusiasm, at a white van blocking the street. Some Chinese guy was unloading boxes out of the back and, very slowly, running them into a little gift shop. She looked into the window. It was full of the crap cheap Chinese gift shops sold: bright pink pyjamas, plastic back-scratchers, calendars with dragons on them. It all seemed so irrelevant.

She opened the window and yelled, “Hey. Move it.”

The man put down the box he was carrying, turned and said something which sounded very like “Fluck you.”

Red mist swirled in front of her eyes. She pulled out her ID card, hoping the state police seal would do the trick, waved it in his direction and screeched, “No, asshole, fluck you.”

He hissed something underneath his breath that made her glad she didn’t understand Cantonese, then slowly climbed into the van and started to clunk it through the gears.

The riddle still hung in front of her, grey, shapeless. Was her own presence at the site merely a rotten coincidence? Did Barbara decide to off the professor anyway—maybe through some recurring bad dreams—then add the one and only witness to the list? Had Kirk called her to say someone was around asking awkward questions, in such a panic that she decided to shut him up for good? Was that what a Maenad did? Dispose of the god if he lost his sparkle? Or did Kirk phone someone else, someone who knew Barbara Martelli, understood she’d become a Maenad somewhere along the way and just given her the job: out you go, girl, it’s whacking time, and don’t forget to clear up any prying pathologists who happen to walk into the firing line.

They’d never know. The first thing the cops had checked was the phone records. She’d asked that morning. They hadn’t a clue whom Kirk had called. There was no redial button on Kirk’s ancient handset. The phone company didn’t log local calls.

She was starting to think like a cop now and it scared her. All these possibilities lay in the dark, limitless recesses of the imagination, a place she was trained to avoid. A place that, if she were honest with herself, had begun to scare her. That was why she started blubbing in front of a complete stranger, why it took her a good fifteen minutes to recover sufficient composure to get on with the day. That and the shitty virus fighting it out with two quick shots of Glenmorangie in her bloodstream. Life would be so much easier if the dead could come back and talk, just for a little while. She’d drive over to the morgue, stare at the mummified cadaver that had once been Eleanor Jamieson, and murmur, Tell Teresa all about it, sweetie. Get it off your mahogany chest.

Still, that corpse had spoken to someone. It had said: not everything dies. And Suzi Julius, with her fateful blonde looks, had sparked something too. Cause and effect didn’t respect mortality.

The white van lumbered off the pavement and rolled down towards the low shape of the Colosseum at the end of the street. Teresa Lupo’s new yellow Fiat, provided by the insurance company and already sporting a couple of fresh dents, sat stationary in the road. The horns behind her began to yell.

She wound down the window and yelled back at the creep in the Alfa on her tail. “Can’t you see I am thinking, you crapulent piece of pus?”

Then she put the car gently into gear and drove down the Via dei Serpenti at a measured, steady pace, trying to put her thoughts in order.

When she walked into Beniamino Vercillo’s cellar she felt like putting her hands over her ears, like running away from everything and finding some oblivion in a long, cold drink. She’d seen this so many times before, the path team hanging round the corpse, waiting to be told what to do, the scene-of-crime men in their white bunny suits combing the place for shards of information. And Falcone, this time with the woman from the DIA, standing at the back, watching everything like a hawk, throwing questions at Nic Costa and Peroni, unhappy, uncommunicative.

The tall inspector broke off from barking at his men. “And where’ve you been? In case you haven’t noticed there’s work to be done.”

She held up both hands in deference. “Sorry,” she answered meekly. “Don’t feel the need to ask how I am. I get people trying to kill me most days.”

Falcone demurred slightly. “We need you.”

“I’ll take that as an apology though a simple sorry would have sufficed. How’s it going with the missing girl by the way?”

“What?”

“The girl?”

Falcone scowled at her. “Leave the live ones to us.”

She looked at the body behind the desk. There’d been so many over the years, it was like being on a factory line. Now something was different. When Teresa Lupo looked at this corpse, the professional, unconscious side of her already assessing what she saw, a low, rebel voice started sounding in her head, getting louder and louder and louder, until it drowned out everything else, the blood, the questions, the tension and the fears.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she murmured, and wondered who was speaking: her or the rebel voice. And whether they were, perhaps, one and the same.

Monkboy hovered over the body, watching her, waiting for a lead.

The voice got louder. It was her voice.

“Is anybody listening here?” she yelled, and even the forensic people dusting down the office furniture became still.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Teresa Lupo said again, more quietly. “He’s dead. That’s all there is to say. There’s a girl out there still breathing and here we are, like undertakers or something, staring at a corpse.”

She felt a hand on her arm. It was Costa.

“Don’t try that one,” she murmured. Her hands were shaking. Her head felt as if it might explode. She could hardly open the bag, hardly get her hands around the file Regina Morrison had given her, find the strength to take out the pictures. “I trained as a doctor. I learned how to distinguish the symptoms from the disease. This is irrelevant. This is a symptom, nothing else. This—”

She scattered several of the photos on the table, over the sheets of numbers, obliterating them. She made sure the most important one, Barbara and Eleanor before, was on the top.

“—This is the disease.”

Falcone, Costa, Peroni and Rachele D’Amato had to push their way through the men in bunny suits to get a good look. Someone swore softly in amazement. The girls looked even more beautiful now, Teresa thought. And it was so easy to imagine Suzi Julius just walking into the frame, shaking hands with them, not knowing they were both dead, sixteen years apart, but dead is dead, dead is a place where the years don’t matter.

“Where did you get these?” Falcone asked, furious.

“Randolph Kirk’s office. This morning.”

“What?” he roared.

“Don’t rupture something,” she said quietly. “You didn’t look there. You weren’t even interested.”

“I didn’t have the damn time!”

His long brown nose was sniffing at her. She thought of the drinks Regina Morrison had given her. The bastard never missed a thing.

“Jesus Christ, woman,” he snapped. “You’ve been drinking. This is the end. Because of you—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He was too livid.

“Because of me what?” she yelled back. “What? Your beautiful traffic cop is dead? Is that what you think?” She stared at the men in the room. “Is that what you all think? May I remind you of one fact? Your beautiful traffic cop was a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe she did it for herself. Maybe she did it because someone told her to. But she killed someone. She’d have killed me too if I’d let her. I didn’t cause any of this. It was just there waiting to happen, and if it had been somebody else maybe there’d be two victims, more even, lying in the morgue right now, not one. Hell, maybe there are, maybe there have been more over the years. And we wouldn’t know. Because Barbara Martelli would still be riding that bike of hers, smiling sweetly all the time to fire up all your wet dreams, because none of you, not one, could possibly believe what she really was. Thanks to me you found out. Sorry—” She said this last very slowly, just to make sure the point went in. “I apologize. That’s the trouble with the truth. Sometimes it hurts.”

“You have damaged this investigation,” Falcone said wearily. “You have overstepped your position.”

“There’s a missing girl out there!”

“We know there’s a missing girl out there,” Falcone replied, and threw the four photos Peroni had given him onto the table to join the others. “We know she’s been abducted. We know, too, that somehow these things are all linked. This is a murder inquiry and an abduction inquiry and I will allot what precious resources I have in my power to try and ensure no one else gets killed.”

“Oh,” she said softly, staring at the pictures. “I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head. She looked utterly lost. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve got the flu, I think. What a pathetic excuse.”

Costa took her arm again and this time she didn’t resist. “Go home,” he said. “You shouldn’t be working anyway. Not after what happened yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday is why I’m working. Don’t you understand?”

“Teresa,” Silvio Di Capua bleated. “We need you.”

“You heard the man,” she whispered, knowing the tears were standing in her eyes again, starting to roll, starting to be obvious to them all, like a sign saying, Look at Crazy Teresa, she really is crazy now. “I’m sorry, Silvio. I can’t do this… shit anymore.”

The place stank of blood and the sweat of men. She walked to the door, wanting to be outside, wanting to feel fresh air in her lungs, knowing it wasn’t there anyway, that all she’d inhale was the traffic smog of Rome, waiting to poison her from the inside out.

And she was thinking all the time: what was it the crazy god offered Barbara Martelli and Eleanor Jamieson really? Freedom from all this crap? A small dark private place where you were what you were and no one else looked, no one else judged, where duty and routine and the dead, dull round of daily life were all a million miles away because in this new place, just for a moment, you could persuade yourself you had a part of some god inside you too? Could that have been the gift? And if it was, could anyone in the world have turned it down?

EMILIO NERI REFUSED TO SKULK around like a criminal, hiding from everything, a fugitive for no good reason at all. But even without an unwelcome visit from the cops and the DIA he could read the signs, digest the intelligence coming in through the channels he’d created over the years. He had to face decisions, make choices, and for the first time in his life he found that difficult. This was a new, unprecedented situation. Until he made up his mind how to proceed he felt he had little choice but to hole up in the house, trying not to let Adele and Mickey’s endless bickering get on his nerves. It was time to stop pretending he could lead from the front, as he had twenty years before, when he moved from capo to boss. Now he had to act his age, directing his troops, being the general, keeping their trust. He was getting too old for the tough stuff. He needed others to do the work.

There were risks too. He wondered what they thought in the ranks. When he was with the men, he had them tight in his hand. Now he was in danger of seeming aloof, his grip less sure. Adele and Mickey didn’t help either. A man who couldn’t control his own family could hardly demand respect from the ranks. He’d asked Bruno Bucci to keep an ear open to listen for any whispered remarks that might be the first indication of revolt. These were hazardous times, and not just from the obvious direction. Whatever he said in private, he had to make sure the Sicilians remained happy. He had to convince the foot soldiers it was in their interests to keep their hats in the ring with him too. Money only went so far. He needed to cement their respect, to continue to be their boss.

Then Bucci came in with more news about Beniamino Vercillo. The cops were trying to keep things quiet, but Neri’s mob had good sources. They mentioned the oddest part of the case: that the killer had been wearing some kind of ancient theatrical costume. This was, it seemed to Neri, a message, surely. The situation was more serious than he had foreseen. For a while, he was dumbstruck, floundering in his own doubts with no one to turn to. He blamed himself. As soon as he’d known a war could be on the way—as soon as those reports of American hoods coming in through Fiumicino reached him—he should have acted. If conflict was inevitable, the advantage always lay with the party that struck first. The Americans understood that lesson instinctively. Instead, he’d hesitated, and now they’d punished him in the most brutal and unexpected of ways.

Vercillo was a civilian. If they’d wanted to make a hit in order to prove a point, there were plenty of accepted targets they could nail: neighbourhood capi, underlings, street men, pimps. Instead they picked a skinny little accountant. It made no sense. It was offensive. Neri had no time for Vercillo personally. He wasn’t even a real employee. It had never occurred to Neri to warn the man to stay at home for a while, to keep his head down until the air cleared. However bitter a war got, it just didn’t involve people that far down the ladder. This was an unwritten rule, a line you never crossed.

Like killing someone’s relative, a wife or a daughter, Neri thought.

Bucci watched him, impassive, stolid, waiting for instructions.

“Boss?” he said finally.

“Give me a chance,” Neri replied with a scowl. “You got to think your way through these things.”

The big tough hood from Turin was silent after that. Neri was glad of his presence. He needed a man of substance in his trust.

“How are the boys feeling?” Neri asked.

“About anything in particular?”

“The mood. Morale.”

Bucci squirmed a little. Neri recognized the signs. They weren’t good. “They get bored easy, boss. Men do in situations like this. They get hyped up like something’s going to happen. When it doesn’t they get to feel awkward. Like they’re wasting their time.”

“I’m paying them well to waste their time,” Neri grunted.

“Yeah. But you know their kind. It’s about more than money. Besides, one of them’s cousin to that poor bastard Vercillo. He’s got a score to settle.”

“So you’re saying what, Bruno?”

Bucci considered his answer carefully. “I’m saying that maybe it’s not a good idea to sit here waiting for the next thing to happen to us. They’re good guys but I don’t want to push them too far.”

Neri’s cold gaze didn’t leave Bucci for a second. “Are they loyal?”

“Sure. As loyal as anyone gets these days. But you got to recognize their self-interest. You got to massage their egos too. These are made men. They don’t like thinking they’re just doing security work or something. It’d help me no end if we saw a little action. Let these assholes know where they stand.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Neri lied. Something else was bugging him. How had they known about Vercillo? He was a back-room guy. From the outside he looked straight. How did Wallis find him? Maybe Vercillo was less discreet than Neri expected. Maybe he’d been selling information on the side, and found out how dangerous that game can be. “You got any information about who’s doing this? Names? Addresses?”

“Not yet. The street’s not talking much out there at the moment. Hell, if it’s some people the American brought in for the job, our people probably don’t know them anyway. If you want my honest opinion—” Bucci dried up.

“Well?”

“We’re not going to get any more information than we have right now. People are bound to be sitting back on the sidelines, watching. They want to see who comes out on top. No one’s going to want to do you any favours, not unless they’re in with us deep already. It doesn’t make sense.”

Neri said nothing.

“You don’t mind me being frank,” Bucci said carefully.

“No,” Neri moaned, “it’s what I need. Jesus, these are people who’ve been sucking my blood for years!”

“Look, boss. You got plenty of respect with the guys here. Provided they don’t get pushed too far. Outside—” He didn’t say any more. He didn’t have to.

“Respect,” Neri grumbled, his face like thunder. “Tell the truth. Do they think I’m too old or what?”

Bucci hesitated.

“They don’t think that,” the man from Turin said eventually. “But they think about what comes next. You got to expect it. Anyone would in the same circumstances. Also, there’s rumours.”

“Rumours?” Neri wondered.

“The people I got in the cops are being real secret about this. Falcone isn’t letting anyone near except those close to him. And the DIA.”

Neri shook his head in disbelief. “The DIA? What the fuck has this got to do with them?”

“They think they got our books from Vercillo.”

Neri laughed. “Sure they got our books! Can’t do a thing with them. The little guy put a code on them or something. He was good with numbers. That was his thing. He told me. They could work on it for years and they’d never get nowhere.”

“They got the code. The DIA’s trying to work it all out now.”

“What?” It was impossible to work out what this all meant. Vercillo had been doing the books for almost twenty years. He was a meticulous man. He logged everything. Emilio Neri understood instantly that if the DIA and the cops managed to peer into that black hive of past misdeeds they could throw all manner of shit in his direction: fraud, tax evasion. Worse.

“Are you sure?” Neri asked in desperation.

“I’m sure,” Bucci replied. “Also they want to nail you over this dead girl. They seem to think they got something there. This dead professor guy left some photos or something. There’s this other girl, the one that’s missing now. They think she’s down to us too.”

Neri was outraged. “Do I look like the kind that goes around snatching teenagers off the street? Why’d I need to do that?”

“They think… it points in our direction,” Bucci said carefully.

Neri understood what he was saying. “And does it?”

“Not with anyone under me, boss.”

Neri raised an eyebrow, waiting.

“But I don’t get to control everyone. Mickey, for example. He’s just a loose cannon. God knows what he gets up to when none of us are around.”

“Such as?”

“We know about the hookers. I think maybe he’s back on the dope too. Maybe he’s been doing other stuff.” Bucci paused, reluctant to continue. “I don’t know where he is half the time. Do you?”

“No,” Neri grunted.

“And this thing years ago with the dead girl. It was before my time. But they seem to think he was there.”

Neri shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I understand. Look, boss. I don’t feel right saying this kind of thing. It’s between you and him. It’s just that… Mickey affects the way the guys are thinking right now.”

“And you?” Neri asked. “I got this American asshole fitting me up for the cops and the DIA. I got a dumb son who can’t keep his dick quiet. What do you think should come next?”

“Whatever you want. This is your organization. You get to say what happens. It’s just…”

Bucci didn’t go on. Neri couldn’t work it out.

“Well?” he asked.

“It’s Mickey. He don’t help. Not with him and Adele.”

“Yeah,” Neri said, waving a hand, “I know, I know… it pisses me off too.”

He looked at Bruno Bucci. The man appeared deeply uncomfortable. He’d seen him less nervous than this when they were about bad business. It didn’t add up. Then Neri wondered about this idea that had been nagging him for a day or more. It was crazy. It was the kind of thing old men got into their heads for no reason whatsoever and that made fools of them if they blurted it out into the light of day. Which always happened anyway, even if they knew as much, because it was the kind of idea you couldn’t keep inside forever.

Neri put an arm around Bucci’s shoulder and said, “You wouldn’t lie to an old man, would you, Bruno? I always thought you were a bad liar. It was one of your limitations.”

“No.” Bucci’s eyes never left the floor.

The old man’s hand squeezed, hard. “You’ve been in the house a lot recently. When I’m not here. Tell me, Bruno. Mickey’s fucking her, right? That’s what’s really going on, huh? All this bad feeling between them. That’s just for my benefit? Right?”

Bruno Bucci let out a long sigh and struggled to say something.

“No problem,” Neri said, slapping him on the shoulder. “It just adds another job to the list. Now sit down. I want to talk.”

FALCONE LOOKED UP from the scattered piles of photographs on the table in his office.

“Close the door,” he said quietly. “We don’t have much time. I want this Julius girl found. I want that to be the focus of what we do from now on. Understood?”

“Sure.” Costa nodded.

Falcone looked beyond the glass partition, out into the office. He’d managed to fill most of the desks. The men and women out there were busy, following up calls, chasing the couple of possible sightings they’d had. “I’m stepping up the media on this. We’re telling them we think she’s in real danger, not that I’m saying why. We’ve as many people as I can afford on the case. But we need to go back over what’s gone before. Someone’s collecting the mother. When she gets here, you can talk to her, Nic. Just you. Too many people will make her clam up. Tell her what we know so far. Just the broad details. And go over everything with her again, every place she and the girl visited since they arrived here. There’s got to be something she remembers that’s of use.”

“Details?” Peroni asked. “We’ve got details? I’m missing them. What is it we’re supposed to think has happened here?”

Falcone didn’t look too confident. “We’ve got Kirk on her camera. That’s enough for me. Kirk has to have been involved in taking her. If that’s the case, we have to assume she’s where he left her for safekeeping. We have to find where that is. Not Ostia for sure. I’ve got a team rechecking that now. She’s not there.”

The three men looked at each other. No one liked to think of a kidnap victim being left stranded, trapped in some hole, unable to call for help.

Peroni wasn’t happy. “I buy that but some of these things still don’t add up. Kirk was just a dirty old man. The mother said Suzi went off willingly. We’ve got it on CCTV. The boyfriend riding that motorbike wasn’t some man in his fifties.”

“I know,” Falcone agreed. “I’ve got men looking into Kirk’s background. Trying to work out if he had any close friends. Nothing so far.”

“And Neri?” Costa asked. “Wallis?”

“All we have on them are some rumours from the past,” Peroni suggested. “Why put a fire under some old feud after all this time? Why start playing these games all over again?”

Costa thought of the mummified body in the morgue next door. “Perhaps because we found Eleanor Jamieson. Because that reminded someone of… the possibilities.”

“Let’s stick with the facts,” Falcone said firmly.

“Which are?” Peroni asked.

Falcone stared at the pictures. “These.”

Neither of them argued. The pictures were all home-developed. A search of Randolph Kirk’s house off the Via Merulana had revealed a darkroom in the cellar. A couple seemed innocent: young girls, clothed, smiling with older men. But most looked as if they were taken later, when the party began. When the rules disappeared.

Falcone glanced at Peroni. “Gianni. This is more your field than ours. What do you make of it?”

He shrugged. “Pretty obvious, isn’t it? We have a phrase for this kind of thing in vice. We call it a fuck club. Sorry. The language isn’t so great where I come from. What happens is you get some guys. You get some willing girls. Young girls in this case. Then you put them together and, without telling anyone, stick a camera up in the corner of the room, probably on a remote operated from somewhere else.”

Falcone turned over one of the prints. On the back, scribbled in pencil, was the date: 17 March, sixteen years before.

Peroni nodded. “These days they’ve got remote controls. Even things that let you see through the viewfinder from another room. Back then they didn’t have the technology to do this kind of shot too well. They just pressed the remote shutter and got whatever was there at the time. Hence all these heaving butts, all these shots where you can’t really see who’s doing what to who. You wouldn’t get that nowadays. Now it’d come back on DVD or something.”

“Why is it we just have the year the Jamieson girl went missing?” Falcone wondered. “Why would he just keep the one set?”

“Search me,” Peroni replied, flipping through the prints. “Maybe he only took pictures the once. Maybe they still had some value. Or it just happened on that scale once. Who’s to know? I’ll tell you something though. This is not the work of anyone on our books. These kids look like amateurs. Not hookers. Not that I recognize anyway. And the clientele? This is the fanciest fuck club I’ve ever seen. Where is this place? On the Via Veneto? Next door to Harry’s Bar or something? Hell, they do have some value. I could pick up the phone and do business with these today.”

Costa scanned the men in the photos. It was a little before his time but he still recognized plenty of faces.

“You got TV people,” Peroni went on. “You got newspaper people. Couple of bankers I dealt with in the past. And politicians too. They’re bound to be there. You know what puzzles me? Only one cop. What kind of club is it that has just one cop on board? And him that penpusher Mosca guy too? Can we go talk to him?”

“Dead,” Falcone said. “Died in prison. Knifed.”

“Shame. He’s in almost all of them. Seems he got pretty friendly with Barbara. I guess that tells you everything.”

“It does?” Costa wondered.

“Sure, Nic. Like I said. This is not just some gentleman’s evening. It’s a sting. Why else would they leave the likes of us out? If this was just a plain party for the boys we’d have a few more people there. You agree, Leo?”

Falcone nodded and left it at that.

“So,” Peroni continued, “it was a sting. When this was over and done with, when these morons had gone back to their wives and moaned about how late the trains were getting these days, they got a phone call. Maybe a photo of their heaving butt. News of an account to settle. Or a favour to be called in sometime in the future. And my, what favours. You ever seen a cast list like this, Leo?”

“No.”

Peroni smiled. “Embarrassing, huh? Couple of these guys are still jerking our chains now, aren’t they? Are we going to ask them if they saw the Jamieson girl before she died?”

“All in good time,” Falcone said. He sorted the photos in front of them, and pulled out a single shot: a beaming Filippo Mosca and Barbara naked, locked together on a thin mattress on the stone floor.

“Nice,” Peroni said.

Falcone threw another picture on the table. “This one’s even nicer.”

Peroni swore under his breath. The final shot almost looked posed: Barbara and Eleanor, dressed, standing around holding wine glasses, looking nervous, as if they didn’t know what came next but thought it might not be too great. They were wearing some kind of costume: a thin sackcloth shift, the one Eleanor Jamieson had on when she was placed in the peat. Next to them stood Randolph Kirk, Beniamino Vercillo and Toni Martelli, looking at each other expectantly, grinning guiltily.

“Jesus,” Peroni said. “So Mosca wasn’t the only one playing this game? Can you believe it? That sonofabitch Martelli was pimping his own daughter and getting off too? Look at the expression on those guys’ faces. ”Aren’t we the lucky ones?“ Assholes.”

“But they’re not,” Costa pointed out, “lucky, I mean. Three of them are dead. Martelli doesn’t look as if he’ll be around much longer either.”

Peroni picked up the picture. “Let me take this and ram it down the bastard’s throat. He’ll start squealing then.”

“Later,” Falcone said. “Martelli’s been out of the picture for years. Like I said. We’ve got to focus.”

“On what?”

“Where this happened,” Falcone said. “We’ve checked out the backgrounds. We know it wasn’t Ostia.”

Peroni’s eyes lit up. “Excuse me for pointing this out, but Toni Martelli surely knows where.”

Falcone glanced at the table. “Do you want to spend the rest of the day sitting with him in an interview room listening to nothing? I spoke to him a few minutes ago. I offered him a deal. He’s not doing a damn thing. You’ve talked to him. We can’t afford the time.”

“A deal?” Peroni looked amazed. “You offer someone who could do this kind of thing to his own daughter a deal?”

“Yes!” Falcone snapped. “Do you want to argue with the Julius girl’s mother about this? Do you want to tell her it’s wrong?”

Peroni stared at the photos. “And I thought I had a conflict of morality on vice. So what do we do?”

Falcone had already made up his mind. “We let the DIA handle the mob stuff. Watching Wallis. Going through the accounts from Vercillo’s office. We let them see what they can turn up on the Vercillo killing too. It’s theirs by rights anyway and I’m happy to unload whatever I can. And we try for the girl. Gianni—”

He looked desperate, Costa thought. It wasn’t like the Falcone they knew.

“What do you want us to do?” Peroni asked.

“Nic can get a room ready for the mother. For God’s sake see if she can remember something. There has to be a face, a name, anything. I want you to get a couple of spare men out there and run through everything we have on the Julius girl so far. See if we’ve missed anything.”

“OK,” Costa said, and headed for the door. The two older men watched him go.

“It’s a good idea, letting him talk to her on his own,” Peroni said after he’d gone. “She’s an attractive woman. He’s noticed that already. Hell, I noticed that. Not you, Leo? Just eyes for the one, huh?”

“Don’t start—” Falcone was staring at the pictures on the desk. “And don’t make assumptions either. I don’t live in the past any more than you.”

“No,” Peroni said, sounding unconvinced, watching Falcone pore over the photos. “You can ask if you like. I’m menial class for the time being. You’ve got the right to ask anything you want.”

Falcone turned over another set of prints, revealing another set of familiar faces. “What the hell do I do with these things?”

“This lot…” Peroni pushed the last pile of pictures, with Barbara and Eleanor in them, to one side, “… you guard with your life, because they may be all we’ve got between that Julius kid and the grave.”

“I know that,” Falcone replied testily.

“Oh.” Peroni placed his index finger gently on the others. “You mean these?”

He pulled away his hand and took a good look at them. “You know, I hate to place your ego in jeopardy, Leo, but it is possible for other men of your rank to come and dip their beak here. You’ve now got three murders under your belt and an abduction. Maybe there’s been some blackmail going on here too. It’s a lot for one man. Pass the goods around a little.”

“They’re linked,” Falcone insisted. “I’ve had this argument upstairs already. If I’d wanted to split these inquiries off into different teams I’d have done that. My view—their view too—is that it would be counter-productive. We don’t have the time or the resources and we could end up missing some connections too. I know it’s stretching things but we really have no option.”

“No option?” Peroni grinned. “Give me a break. I’m hearing ambition here, Leo. You bored with being inspector? After a commissioner’s badge? Or is it higher than that?”

“I want this girl found,” Falcone snapped. “Don’t judge everyone by your own standards.”

“So why are you worried about the photos? Just put them in a drawer. Wait and see if they ever become useful.”

“Useful—”

Peroni laughed. “Leo, Leo. You’re not cut out for this, are you? You can go upstairs and hard-ball your way through anything. Except—” He glanced at the photos. “This kind of stuff. It embarrasses you, doesn’t it?”

Falcone sighed. “We should be playing to our strengths here. You ought to learn from what we’re trying to do, which is make some connections. That’s why I don’t want this split up any more than it is. In return I’m asking for your advice. This must have happened to you plenty. You go in somewhere. You find the wrong people inside. What do you do?”

Peroni thought about it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have taken a pop at you like that. You’re right. I’ve got a lot to learn from you people. I just wonder what the point is because, believe me, I am not staying in this asylum for long.”

Falcone stared at him frankly. “You seem very sure of that. If we screw up on this case…”

“You mean if you screw up. Look, here’s my advice. There’s no easy answer, Leo. It depends on the circumstances. But I’ll tell you one thing you don’t do.”

He picked up the bigger pile of pictures and flicked through them, shaking his head.

“You don’t sleep on it. Either you walk upstairs with these things now or you let it drop forever. Hesitate and you become something they hate. An unknown quantity, with a little time bomb sitting in his desk drawer. If you’re going to lay all the rest of this on them, you’ve got to do it this very moment. If not—”

He picked up one of the prints and walked over to the shredder that stood by Falcone’s office printer. Then he fed the photo into the plastic jaws and watched as it sprang to life, devoured the picture, tearing it into a million tiny, irretrievable pieces.

“Ambition’s an interesting thing,” Peroni said. “I had it once. I thought nothing could touch me. And look what happened. Tell me, Leo. If you’d been on that DIA bust, if you’d walked in and found me there with my pants down. Nothing going on except the usual. What would you have done? Looked the other way?”

Falcone didn’t even give it a moment’s thought. “No. Because there’d have to be something going on. Why else would you be there?”

“She was beautiful.” Peroni looked at him and almost pitied the man. “You really don’t get that, do you? It just couldn’t be enough?”

“No. And I still don’t believe it was enough for you.”

“You’re a bad judge of character. Is that because you don’t have the same feelings the rest of us have? Or you’re just scared of them? We’ve all got to let go sometimes. Even you.”

Falcone nodded at the pictures. “This is letting go?”

“Probably all it is. Listen, Leo. Unless you’ve got the stomach for it, don’t complicate things. There’s something really bad about this whole thing. Why don’t we just get that girl out from wherever she is then close the door and let the dead stay dead?”

Falcone stared at the pile of photographs. “There could be any amount of information in here. They could be invaluable.”

“Hand those over to the people upstairs and they’ll smile, say thanks, and hate you forever because you just made their lives hell.”

“If I gave them to the DIA—”

“If you gave them to the DIA they’d be all over you, telling you how wonderful you are, and what a credit to the police. Maybe you’d even get the D’Amato woman back in your bed. Then you know what? In six months your career would be dead. You’d be running traffic, cutting up credit cards ”cos you can’t afford them anymore. And the DIA wouldn’t want to know you. Nor would she. No one likes a man who passes the buck, particularly one as dirty as this. You know that already if you’re honest with yourself.“

Falcone took one last look at the pictures then turned his back on them. “Do it,” he ordered.

Peroni laughed, picked them up and pressed them into Falcone’s hands.

“No, sir,” he said, then walked out of the room, closing the door behind him, and paused for a moment, listening. It didn’t take long. Soon there was the whir of distant electric teeth.

Rachele D’Amato was walking down the corridor towards him, smiling, looking as if she owned the place.

“You moved in?” Peroni wondered.

She didn’t answer, just gave him a cold look that said it all.

Peroni pointed at the door. “You go easy with our boy in here. Some of us have fond feelings for him even if he doesn’t feel that way about himself. We don’t like the idea he might get hurt twice.”

“You have absolutely no worries on that front.”

“Yeah. Just joking.” He grinned. “I know. Really. I know. Nothing could bring you two back together, could it?”

“I got a call asking me to come. You people should talk to each other more often.” She pointed towards an open door at the end of the corridor. “There.”

Vergil Wallis sat stiff-backed, eyes closed, waiting patiently.

WHEN BUCCI OPENED UP it was hard to stop him. Neri listened until he’d heard enough then motioned for him to shut up. “You could have told me, Bruno. You owed me that.”

“I didn’t—” Bucci looked scared. He was hunting for the right words. “I talked with Mickey about it. Once. He said you knew. It was part of the deal.”

Neri’s big shoulders heaved in a humourless laugh. “Part of the deal?”

“Yeah,” Bucci replied coolly. “Pretty stupid of me, huh? The thing is… I don’t like the idea of you getting fucked around.” He flashed a cold stare at Neri. “But it’s not easy telling a man his wife’s cheating on him. With his son. I don’t know how to handle that kind of thing. I guess I knew Mickey was lying. To be honest though, I wondered how grateful you’d be if I came running with the news.”

Now that Neri thought about it, Bucci had been acting a little odd for the past few weeks. He was a good man, a loyal lieutenant. Neri could understand his point of view too. Mickey’s perfidy was outside the box. He couldn’t expect a street hood like Bucci to get involved in that kind of family betrayal.

“It’s Mickey, you know,” Bucci said suddenly. “Not her. I’m not saying you shouldn’t blame her, but I don’t think she wants it. Not really. You don’t see Mickey the way the rest of us do. He just doesn’t give up. He just goes on and on until you give him what he wants.”

Neri thought about that. “But she’s got other men, right?”

“I don’t think so. You want my honest opinion? It’s just boredom. Nothing more.”

Boredom. Neri could understand that one all right.

“I’m sorry, boss,” Bucci said softly. “If you want me to ship out or something when this is done I’ll understand. I don’t like letting you down.”

Neri’s grey eyes shone with amusement. It was a good show of contrition. “You let me down? Come on, Bruno. Let’s not play games with each other.”

“All the same—”

Neri stared at him and Bucci fell silent. “All the same nothing. Let me tell you a little secret. I’ve been getting bored too. Been thinking about that for a while. I got a little house in Colombia. Way away from all the trouble. No one can touch me there.” He nodded upstairs, in the direction of Adele and Mickey. “And I could leave some excess baggage behind too.”

“Sure.” Bucci nodded.

“Would you run things for me when I’m gone? All straight and honest? This shit with the DIA won’t come close to you, I promise. There’s just my name in those files. I’d be wanting to give a few people some leaving presents, you understand. Something to remember me by. I owe them that. But you get a clear run. Nothing touches your name.”

Bucci shuffled awkwardly on the chair. “You want me to act like I’m the boss?”

“No. I want you to be the boss. I can’t do this forever. Someone’s got to take over. I’d rather it was a man of my choosing, not some bastard from outside.”

“I could do it,” Bucci said. “I don’t think Mickey would be too keen.”

“Mickey, Mickey. Leaving this Adele crap to one side… what do you think of him? Be honest. Say I could straighten him out. Would it be worth it? Is he ever going to make something?”

“I don’t know,” Bucci said carefully. “I don’t feel qualified to make that judgement. There’s things he’s been doing I don’t understand.”

“What things?”

Bucci rolled open his big hands in a gesture of despair. “I dunno. Things he don’t want any of us to hear about. And I’ll tell you this, boss. He’s good at that. Keeping stuff quiet.”

Neri wondered about all the crap that had come out into the open these past couple of days. Falcone wasn’t going to leave them alone. It was only a matter of time before he came back, maybe with papers, turning the place upside down. “We’re going to have to hole up here for a couple of hours. There’ll be cops swarming front and back. You get busy, Bruno. Find out how long we’ve got before they come calling again. Find out where they got people waiting out there, who needs to be paid to make those guys out there look the other way for a while. When we can crawl out from under their noses, we go out to play.”

“To play?”

Neri laughed. “Yeah. If I’m going into retirement I want one last piece of fun first. I got some evening up to do, all round. When that’s done I’m gone. You call someone. Make sure I can get the hell out of here come tomorrow night, some way nice and discreet. The Albanian boys can do something. They owe me favours.”

Bucci blinked. “Tomorrow night?”

“That too soon for you?” Neri cast an eye around the room. “I got to tell you, Bruno, I can’t wait to be out of this dump.”

Bucci didn’t seem too happy.

“What’s up?” Neri asked. “I’m offering you your own empire on a plate.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful. I’ll see you right. But there’s… stuff I can’t control.”

It was obvious what he meant. “You’re still worried about Mickey?”

Bucci shrugged. He was too polite, too respectful to push it. Neri looked at Bruno Bucci and wondered why he never got a son like that. Bucci was the one guy he could rely on. And if he wanted to fuck with Mickey when the time came, what the hell? To his surprise, it wasn’t the news about him and Adele that made him feel that way. He just wasn’t particularly warm to his own flesh and blood at that moment. They messed up his life. They leeched off him and gave nothing back in return. This wasn’t what family was supposed to be about. As he got older, as he felt less need for the physical pleasures that Adele could deliver with her own particular skill, he was, he realized, beginning to feel happier in the company of men. He knew where he stood with them. So long as he kept to his part of the deal—being a good, fair, profitable boss—they would stick by him.

The old man smiled. “The kid’s right. It’s time he got tested. Go get him. Tell him to meet me, up on the terrace.”

“The terrace?” Bucci asked.

Neri was already walking towards the stairs. “You heard,” he said.

THERE WERE PICTURES of Suzi Julius everywhere. Blow-ups from Miranda’s original snaps carpeted the whiteboard on the main wall of the operations room. Smaller colour copies were pinned to people’s PCs, scattered across desks. Costa walked Miranda Julius through the twenty-strong team, introducing her to a couple of people along the way, making sure she understood how important the case had become to them. Then they went along the corridor to a smaller room where a further group of officers, most of them female, were manning the phones set up to handle any calls that came in from the public appeals. Suzi’s picture was on the TV now. More photos would soon be in the papers. They had an anonymous hotline into the station ready for anyone who answered their plea for even a hint of a sighting. The full-scale hunt for Suzi was under way. But like every other case of its kind that Costa had worked on there was, at the onset, a frustrating lack of information. No one had seen her since she was driven out of the Campo dei Fiori the day before. Not a single clue to her movements had appeared in the three hours since Falcone gave the green light to turn the Julius case into an abduction inquiry.

He led her into a small interview room overlooking the courtyard behind the Questura. She sat down immediately and said, “I know you’re looking, Nic. You don’t have to prove that to me.”

“I just wanted you to see it for yourself.”

The stress was starting to show. The impression Nic Costa had first had of her—as a model who’d gone into something manual just to prove she was more than she looked—came back to him. She sat on the other side of the table, hunched inside a plain black bomber jacket, snatching anxiously at a cigarette, trying to blow the smoke out the half-open window. Her sharp, intelligent eyes never left him.

“Do you have any idea where she is?”

Costa was careful with his answer. “It takes time.”

She stared out the window, squinting at the bright, late afternoon sun. “I ought to say it again. I’m sorry. About last night. It must have been very embarrassing for you.”

The sudden close contact they shared continued to bother him. He could, he knew, have gone along with her so easily. “Forget it. I have.”

For a moment an odd look, almost like anger, crossed her face. He wondered if he’d said the right thing.

“Sometimes I drink,” she said. “Not to blot things out. It’s just that events can make more sense that way. Or it appears they do. I don’t imagine you understand what I’m talking about.”

He’d never forget the lost days after his father died, when he would sit alone in the old man’s wheelchair for hours on end, talking to the bottle, trying to gauge how much of the hurt was physical, from his wounds, how much existed in his head alone. And how easy it would be to drown both in booze.

“I understand. Will you promise me something?”

“I don’t like making easy promises,” she answered quickly. “You disappoint people if it turns out you can’t keep them.”

“It’s just this. We need you, Miranda. We need you to think about anything we find. Possibly to react to it. I just don’t know. But when that moment happens, it’s important for all of us, Suzi most of all, that you’re not—” He let the sentence drift off into nowhere.

“Drunk?” she wondered. “Don’t worry. That won’t happen.”

“It’s not a great idea being on your own. Isn’t there someone from home who can come? You mentioned your mother.”

“She’s on holiday at the moment. In California. I spoke to her this morning. What with the time difference, changing tickets… she can’t be here until Sunday.” She gave him a sudden intense glance. “By then… We’ll know, won’t we?”

There was no avoiding an honest answer. “I think so. All the same… I could arrange for a woman officer to be with you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “I don’t need to be treated like a victim. Suzi’s the victim here. She’s the one I want to help. You just do your job and I’ll try my best. Any way I can.”

“Good,” he said, then reached for the tape recorder button, dictated the standard header to the interview—date, time, subject, interviewee, officer—and tried to think of the right questions, the ones that would unlock something hidden, something lost inside Miranda Julius’s complex, hurting head.

“Is there anything new that’s occurred to you?”

“Not really.” She shook her head, as if she hated herself for being like this. “I keep trying to think of something. There’s nothing that stands out I haven’t mentioned already.”

“The people you’ve met here—”

“They’re just people. People in shops. People in cafés. People in restaurants. We’ve talked to them. Of course we have. But nothing stands out. It never went beyond just being polite.”

He placed one of the photos from Suzi’s camera on the table. Randolph Kirk was there at the edge of the crowd by the Trevi Fountain, staring directly into the camera with an odd, focused expression.

“Do you recognize him?”

She peered at the picture. “No. I’ve never seen him before. Not until I saw the paper this morning. My Italian’s not great but I get the message. He was the man killed out at this archaeological place, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

She came directly to the point. “You think he had something to do with this other murder too? The girl from sixteen years ago?”

“There’s evidence that he used young girls for his own… entertainment. With others.”

She swore under her breath. “So what happens now? Where is she, Nic? Just locked up somewhere this monster’s left her? Waiting to be found? It could take forever. God—” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t bear to think of her like that. It’s just so horrible.”

“We’re circulating her picture everywhere. Someone must have seen her.”

“None of this makes sense. Suzi wouldn’t just disappear with a man like that. It’s preposterous. He’s old. Look at him. What could he possibly offer her? You don’t think he was on that motorbike, do you?”

“No,” he admitted. “Maybe he just found her. Someone else did the rest.”

“But why Suzi? Why her?”

“Bad luck,” he said with a shrug. “Coincidence. These cases are sometimes just that. Kirk seemed to have a fondness for blondes. Maybe she reminded him of someone else.”

She knew immediately what he was talking about. “The dead girl you found? I saw pictures of her. They do look similar, I suppose.”

“It’s just a theory. We have two avenues to work on here. We can do all the usual things. Make sure as many people as possible see her picture. Monitor the calls we get from that. And we can work to try to understand what really happened. Why Kirk played these games. Who with, and where.”

“It could be anywhere, couldn’t it?” she asked.

“No.” There was an important point here somewhere, he thought. This was a ritual. It didn’t take place at the Villa of Mysteries in Ostia. Teresa’s careful forensic work had proved that much already. Kirk had to have another location, larger, more important. In the city most probably. Perhaps Suzi was there now, trapped, waiting. But for whom?

“I need you to look at some more pictures,” he said, and reached for the files.

Miranda Julius stared at a standard police ID photo of Barbara Martelli. “I saw her picture in the papers too,” she said. “Blonde. She was another one of his women? The police officer?”

“We think so.”

“Was that why she killed him?”

“We’ve no idea,” he admitted. “Have you seen her before, Miranda? Please. Think. Is it possible you or Suzi met her somewhere? Anywhere.”

She sighed. “We’ve asked the police for directions a few times, I suppose. Maybe we talked to her. I don’t know. I don’t think I’d remember one way or another.”

“OK. Point taken. How about him?”

He placed a photo of Vergil Wallis on the table.

“No,” she said immediately. “Is he Italian?”

“American. Have you talked to any Americans since you arrived?”

She couldn’t understand the point of the question. “I don’t think so. I think I’d remember someone as distinctive as that. What’s the meaning of this, Nic? Why would an American be involved in this kind of thing?”

“Bear with me,” he said. “We have to keep trying. Do you know this man?”

She looked at a photo of Beniamino Vercillo. “No.”

“Him?” Emilio Neri’s big, ugly face glared up at her from the table.

She shook her head. “He looks like a crook. He looks… horrible. Are these the kind of people you think could have Suzi? She’d never go away with someone like that. She’s not stupid.”

Costa shuffled through the pile of pictures. “That was taken in the Questura, when we were interviewing him about something. He doesn’t always look like that. People have different faces for different occasions. You have to try to think beyond what you see sometimes.”

“Thanks for the advice,” she said icily.

“Look.”

This was a new set of pictures, ones they’d brought in from a photographer covering a social evening at the opera. Neri was there in his other guise, as an art-loving businessman, his wife at his side. They were both dressed to the nines, Neri in a dinner suit, Adele wearing a long, tight-fitting silk gown.

“He does look different,” she conceded. She stared at the picture. “Is that his wife?”

Costa nodded.

“She looks very young for him. He’s that kind of man?” Costa didn’t answer.

“Nic? The kind who likes young girls?”

“She’s not as young as she looks. Not Suzi’s age anyway. He likes lots of things. Maybe he was involved in Kirk’s games. Maybe it’s more complicated than that.”

She peered at the picture again. “She doesn’t look happy. She looks like a possession or something. Someone he owns.

“You read a lot into pictures.”

She nodded in agreement. “You forget. I take pictures for a living. It’s like trying to tell a story. You want people to see it and get some sense of what’s happening. What the people there are like. Otherwise it’s just a snapshot. There’s no meaning. No drama. No humanity. Just shapes on a sheet of paper. It’s the back story that makes it work.”

She flicked through the set of photos from the opera. “These are quite good. Whoever he is, whoever his wife is, they make interesting subjects. There’s a lot going on there between them and I don’t think it’s nice. I could imagine photographing them myself. I could—”

Miranda Julius stopped at one picture. She separated the photo from the rest and stared at it in silence, thinking.

“You remember something about him?” Costa asked when he couldn’t wait any longer.

“No. I don’t know him from Adam. But him—”

She turned the photo round and stabbed at a figure at the edge of the photo. Younger, dressed in an evening suit, looking bored.

“I have seen him somewhere.” She stopped, trying to order her thoughts. “It was just after we arrived. We were in the Campo, having coffee outside. He was at the next table. I went to the loo. When I came back he’d been pestering Suzi. Asking for her phone number. Trying to chat her up.”

Costa looked at the photo and felt a sharp stab of excitement.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I think. He wasn’t… very nice. He was so persistent. His English wasn’t that great either. I didn’t like him, Nic. I really didn’t like him now I come to think of it. He was creepy. Just the kind of pushy young jerk I thought we’d be dealing with in Rome all the time.”

“But he could have given Suzi his number?”

“I’m trying to think—”

There was something here. Costa could feel it.

Miranda Julius looked into his face, her eyes wide open, worried. “Oh my God. I do remember. Suzi was odd afterwards for a while. Almost shifty. We nearly had an argument. It wasn’t like her.”

“So he could have passed her something? A phone number? She might have taken it.”

“Possibly. I don’t know, Nic. I don’t… It was days ago.”

“And she wouldn’t have told you?”

He didn’t like seeing the pain when she answered. “I suppose not. Kids of that age do stupid things and don’t want to admit it. I know I did. She was shifty about something. I should have known—”

Her eyes became misty.

“… Jesus, what an idiot I am. Thinking a girl of her age would be happy spending an entire holiday with her mother, never seeing anyone else. As if I’m good enough company for her. For Christ’s sake. I haven’t even been around for most of her life. Why should she want to be with me? How arrogant can you get?”

Then firmly, with absolute conviction, she said, “I remember I told her what an utter creep I thought he was. Exactly the sort of Italian man you get warned about. And she looked at me as if I was talking crap. As if I was old. Then we just didn’t talk about anything for a while. We just let it blow over.”

He was anxiously gathering up the pictures, keen to end this.

“Except it didn’t, did it?” she asked.

“This could really help us.”

“How? You know who this man is?”

Costa wondered how much to reveal. He reached over the table and took her arm. “Miranda,” he said. “We have rules about how much we can say in the middle of an investigation.”

“To hell with the rules. I’m her mother. I’m the reason she’s in this mess.”

His voice rose. “You’re not the reason. Suzi’s sixteen years old. She’s not a child you can care for twenty-four hours a day.”

She was shaking her head. “You don’t know her. You don’t know me. Don’t make these judgements.”

It wasn’t self-pity, he thought. More self-hate. “I know enough. You’re doing everything anyone could in the circumstances. Don’t start blaming yourself before—”

The word just slipped out. She stared at the bright dusty window, blinking back sudden tears. “Before what? Before there’s a reason?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that.”

She paused, trying to let the temperature fall a little.

“Who is he?” she asked. “You can at least tell me that.”

“He’s the old man’s son. His name is Neri. Mickey Neri.”

Nic Costa got up, thinking about the possibilities, what Falcone could do when he got the news. Outside the afternoon was dying. It would soon be dark. These operations were never easy at night. They had to move. There was so little time.

She was by his side, a shadow of hope in her face. “What kind of man is he? Mickey?”

“The best kind,” Costa said, smiling. “For us anyway. Not a university professor. Not some anonymous figure in a suit. Mickey Neri’s a crook, from a family of crooks, not a smart one either. We know him. We know where he lives. We know how to get what we want from him. Miranda—”

They just needed the warrants, and her ID of Mickey in the photo would surely put that straight in Falcone’s hands. Then they could storm the big house in the Via Giulia, take Mickey in for questioning, and start to tear apart the whole Neri empire along the way.

Costa rested his hand on her shoulders and wished he could make her feel the same rising sense of anticipation he was beginning to recognize within himself. “We’ll find her. I promise.”

She stepped back from him, doubt still in her eyes.

“Promises,” she said.

THE DAY WAS DYING. Emilio Neri stood on the terrace, leaning on the handrail, looking down into the street, breathing in the smog from the Lungotevere. When he was a kid Rome was cleaner. More whole somehow. It had gone wrong, like most of the world, over the years. Back when he was young, people would walk around the centro storico on a night like this, arm in arm, just looking in the shops, stopping for a drink before supper. Now they rushed everywhere, or tried to if the traffic would let them. They stood around whispering into mobile phones instead of talking to people directly. Rome wasn’t the worst place either. When he went to Milan or London it seemed they spent their entire lives locked in solitary conversations with lumps of plastic. At least his native city maintained a stubborn streak of humanity at its heart. He could still walk across the Ponte Sisto and feel a kick of sentiment.

Except there wasn’t time. There never would be time. That part of his life was past. Now he had to consolidate the future, and the reputation he’d leave behind.

He turned to see Mickey clamber up the stairs. The kid stood by the pots of anaemic palms that were still suffering from the winter. He was now wearing a different set of stupid clothes, too young for him as usual: flared jeans, a thin black sweater one size too small. He was thirty-two. He ought to stop trying to look like a teenager. He was shivering too.

Neri waved him over. They stood together by the iron balcony. He put an arm around his son’s shoulder and looked over the edge. “You never liked heights, Mickey. Why’s that?”

Mickey shot a fleeting glance down at the street and tried to take one step back. His father’s huge arm stopped him. “Dunno.”

“You remember what happened to Wallis’s wife? When she couldn’t handle it anymore—at least I guess that’s what happened—she walked straight out of some apartment block in New York, fifty floors up. One minute she’s weeping at the window. Next they’re scraping her off the street. You wonder what could make someone do that. Guilt maybe? Or just plain stupidity?”

Neri’s arm propelled Mickey straight onto the iron railing. Hard. The kid tried to push back but Neri had him trapped.

“You know,” Neri said, “sometimes just one simple thing clears up so many problems. The cops get a body. They look at that mess down there on the pavement and come up with a story to fit. It can work out for everyone.”

“Pop—” Mickey gasped, struggling in vain to get free.

“Shut up. You want to know why you hate heights? I’ll tell you. One day when you were real young you and your mamma were pissing me off no end. It was summer. We were up here on the terrace. I didn’t allow no servants in the house in those days. That was all Adele’s idea. Adele gets lots of ideas but I guess you know that. So there’s you and your mamma, and you no more than three or four and you’re shouting and screaming at her ”cos she ain’t got the right toy or something. And I’m lying there on the old wicker sofa we used to have before all this fancy stuff got bought. And I’m thinking: fuck this. I work all day. I keep you parasites alive. And all you can do in return is shout and scream and moan.“

Neri squeezed Mickey’s shoulder. The old man stared his son straight in the eye. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“N-n-no—” Mickey stuttered.

“Except you do. A part of you does anyway. It’s just stuck deep…” He took his arm away for a moment and prodded Mickey in the right temple with a finger, “… in there, along with all the other shit you’ve got.”

“I don’t—” Mickey was saying, and then the old man moved. Two big strong hands took Mickey by the scruff of his neck, bounced him painfully against the railing, propelling him half over the edge, balanced over the tiny cobblestones that, from this height, looked like the pattern on a dead butterfly’s wing.

Emilio Neri upended Mickey’s legs with a brutal jerk of the knee, dangling his son over the street, letting the kid cling to his arm just as he’d done more than a quarter of a century before. The old man felt just as strong as he had back then, more so maybe. And just as in control. His face was up close to Mickey’s this time round though and both of them were starting to sweat like pigs.

“You remember now?” the old man demanded.

Tears were starting to fill Mickey’s eyes, his feet kept scrambling against nothing, looking for some kind of hold. Neri could smell fresh piss coming from the crotch of the flared jeans. “Please—” he croaked.

“I heard a story, Mickey. Just a little fairy tale running up and down the stairs, in and out of the bedrooms of this stinking place. I heard you’ve been fucking Adele behind my back. People have seen you. People have heard you. Plus there’s all manner of other stuff you think I don’t know about. Don’t you see this from my point of view? Don’t you see how nice and easy it would be for me to let you go wipe your face on the cobblestones down there and bite down the blame with your broken teeth?”

Mickey made an unintelligible squeak. Nothing more.

“You’re not saying anything, son. You’re not telling me I got it wrong.”

The kid scrunched his eyes shut then opened them again, blinking as if he hoped this were all some dream. “You got—”

Neri pushed down with his arm just for a second. Mickey’s head bobbed down on the wrong side of the railing. The kid let out a terrified screech and went quiet: his father was holding him again.

“You mustn’t lie to me, Mickey. If I think you’re doing that I just let go. What use is a son I can’t trust?”

Mickey sobbed and said nothing.

“So tell me,” Neri said calmly. “Think about what you’re going to say. This story about you and Adele. Is it true?”

The kid’s head went from side to side.

“Say something,” Neri ordered.

“It’s a lie. It’s a lie.”

Neri gazed into his son’s terrified face, thinking. Then heaved him back over the railing. Mickey sent a couple of plant pots tumbling down to the street as he scrambled back to safety. Neri watched them shatter on the cobblestones. Down the road a man in a dark suit jumped at the noise and looked up at the rooftops.

“You should be more careful,” Neri said and offered his son a handkerchief. “People could get hurt that way.”

Tears were streaming down Mickey’s face. His breath was coming in short sobs. He looked at his father and asked, “Why? Why’d you do that?”

Neri shrugged. “A father deserves the truth. If you’d told me different you’d be down there now. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he whispered, and Emilio Neri had to fight to stop himself laughing. The kid really did think he’d got away with it.

“I’ve been a bad father,” he said. “I tried to protect you instead of letting you get tough from all the shit that people like us have to deal with. I hear you want in on the action.”

“Yeah,” Mickey mumbled uncertainly. Even through the tears he still had the teenage pout. Got that straight from his mother, Neri thought.

“Good. It’s time.” Neri opened his jacket and took out a gun. It was a small, black Beretta. Mickey just looked at it, wide-eyed, speechless. Neri pushed it into his hands.

“Take it. The thing won’t bite. It’s one of mine. I know it works.”

“W-w-what—?” Mickey asked.

“You know the rules. You only go so far in these circles without whacking someone. You never did that, son. You just beat up a few people from time to time. It’s not the same, is it? Be honest with me.”

“No,” Mickey moaned.

Neri patted him on the back. “So look happy. It’s whacking time. Nothing complicated. All nice and simple. You walk in, you don’t say nothing, you put the gun to his head and you pull the trigger. You can manage that?”

“On my own?”

“That a problem?”

“No,” he stuttered. “Who?”

Neri looked at his watch. His mind was already elsewhere. “Just some cop. Sorry. That’s the best I can do right now. Next time round I’ll try to find you a real human being.”

VERGIL WALLIS WORE a black suit with a crisp white shirt and black tie. He looked ready for a funeral.

“I’d like to see Eleanor’s body.”

“You’re in mourning,” Falcone replied. “Who for? Yesterday you seemed to think there wasn’t much point.”

D’Amato glowered at him. Maybe it was rude to talk to retired mobsters like this. Falcone wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

“You took me by surprise yesterday. I wasn’t thinking straight. I hope you never know what it’s like, Inspector. You spend all those years praying you’ll discover the truth. Then, when you do, you wish you’d never wanted it so badly. You wonder if you somehow brought it down on your own head.”

“We don’t know the truth,” Falcone observed. “We’re not even halfway there. There aren’t many people helping us either.”

Wallis nodded, conceding the point, and said nothing.

“If we agree to let you see the body, we get to talk afterwards,” D’Amato demanded. “Both of us.” The impassive black head nodded. “Not that I think you’re in much of a position to bargain. Do you want me to call a lawyer?”

“You don’t need a lawyer,” Falcone said. “Not yet.”

He led the way downstairs, out to the morgue in the adjoining building. There was one assistant on duty, a short, dark man with a ponytail. Falcone had never seen him before and didn’t feel too impressed. Silvio Di Capua and the rest of the path crew were still at Vercillo’s, trying to pick up the pieces without Teresa Lupo. It wasn’t going to be easy. Too few people, too little talent.

The morgue official nodded when he heard the name. “We’ve got a place for that one. Teresa says it needs special treatment. She’s gone loopy or something? Is that true?”

“Just show us,” Falcone snapped.

The ponytail headed for a corridor, moaning constantly. “Jesus, are we in trouble now. They’re not going to let Monkboy loose on the shop, are they? Don’t get me wrong. He’s a nice guy. Knows his stuff. But managerially… You should see his locker.”

They entered a side room. Eleanor Jamieson’s mahogany corpse lay on a surgical table surrounded by a panoply of technical equipment that looked like a life support system arriving too late. Silver tripods sprouted from the floor, transparent plastic tubing wound around them feeding a network of tiny pipes and nozzles. These sprayed a fine mist directly onto the body, giving it a bright, leathery sheen in the harsh light of the room. The place had a chemical stink from whatever solution was being used to preserve the body. It made Falcone’s throat ache.

“Don’t ask me what to do when the stuff runs out,” the assistant said. “Teresa fixed all this up. Says some academic in England e-mailed her the recipe. Told her it was the best way to stop the thing shrivelling up like a pair of old shoes.”

“Out,” Falcone barked, and the ponytail disappeared back into the morgue.

Wallis had taken a seat in the corner of the room. His eyes were fixed on the body. Eleanor still wore most of the sackcloth shift. The autopsy proper hadn’t even begun. Falcone understood too that she would remain untouched for the foreseeable future. This strange, half-mummified corpse was beyond Silvio Di Capua. They would surely have to call in help from outside or persuade Teresa Lupo to come back to work. He wasn’t sure which was preferable. The woman was a loose cannon. Only her considerable skill had kept her in the job in the first place. But it would be faster if they were spared more interruptions.

D’Amato took a seat on one side of Wallis. Falcone fell into a chair on the other. The room overlooked the street. The sounds of everyday Roman life drifted in through the tiny window: cars and human voices, stray music and the angry honking of horns. In spite of countless murder inquiries, Falcone never felt entirely comfortable in the morgue. It wasn’t the grim presence of the cadaver that bothered him. It was the way death sat so easily, so effortlessly in the midst of life, just behind the curtain, unnoticed except by the few people it immediately affected.

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.

He returned to the four men with him on the terrace. “You’re all straight about this? You know what’s got to be done?”

Bucci nodded.

“No doubts?” Neri said. “No more questions? When we leave here, it’s a one-way trip. You don’t get to change your minds. None of us.

“You wake up tomorrow morning and this is a different world. You wake up the day after and you’re talking to Bruno here. He’s your boss and he’ll be a good man. Plus you know what you get from me in the way of gratitude. You’ll be happy guys. Rich guys. You got opportunities. This city’s yours. Understand?”

They were sound men. They wouldn’t let him down.

“You gotta understand this too,” Neri added. “No fuck-ups. We got no room for them. Any one of you fucks up it reflects on everyone else. So everyone else gets to pass judgement on you. That clear?”

“They got that, boss,” Bucci said.

“I hope so,” Neri muttered then sucked on the dying cigar and threw the stub over the railings, watching the red light flare as it fell. “You know when the cops are coming?”

“Soon. Maybe half an hour.”

“And you think we can get out of here clean?”

“Piece of cake,” Bucci said confidently. “We get your car up front really quickly. Franco here bundles inside. Then he’s gone like he’s running for his life. Stupid bastards will be after him straightaway. We got some more cars out back. We just crawl off through the Campo. They’ll never see us.”

Neri stared at him. “You know that? You paid your dues to these bastards?”

“Yeah.”

“See?” Neri said, stabbing a finger at Bucci. “You got a guy here who knows how to handle himself. You look after me. Then he looks after you. That’s how it works. Now you wait for me downstairs. I want to talk to the family. Bruno, you send Mickey up. I want things straight with him.”

They left without saying another word. Neri sat down at the big table. Crumbs from breakfast were still on it. There was a noise at the door then Mickey stumbled in, looking lost, scared.

He got up and walked over to the kid, took him in his arms, kissed him on both cheeks.

“Mickey, Mickey. Son. Why are you looking so fucking miserable? This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? To become a made man?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

Neri tweaked his cheek. “You’re still mad at me? Over our little falling out earlier? Mickey. If I hear stuff like that I got to ask. You understand that, don’t you?”

Mickey stared at the floor. “That was asking?”

“Yeah.” Neri laughed. “So your old man’s a bastard. Why d’you think you live in a place like this? Why d’you think you never went short of a damn thing? That little scene is behind us now. I’m giving you the present I should have given you years ago. This is your coming of age, son. You got to go through with it. I blame myself for not letting you get on with it earlier. I’ve pampered you, Mickey, and that was wrong. A father wants to shield his boy from all the shit you get in the world. Can’t blame him for that. But it don’t work. Not forever. Every man’s got to prove himself sometime. Now’s your chance.”

He embraced him again, squeezing hard.

“You’re not scared, are you?” Neri whispered. “Tell me. You can be frank with your own father.”

“No.” He looked terrible. He was back on the dope again, Neri guessed. “It’s just—”

“There’s nothing wrong with being scared, Mickey. It clears your head sometimes. First time I killed a man I was real terrified. He was some old asshole who was pimping out in Monti. Wouldn’t pay his dues. Thought he was bigger than he was. I stood outside that pit of his with a shotgun underneath my coat for ten minutes, wondering if I’d got the guts to go inside. Then you know what?”

“What?” Mickey wondered. His blonde hair looked more stupid than ever. Neri wondered if he’d been piling on the dye that evening, as if it might protect him from something.

“I realized if I didn’t kill him, some fucker would come along and kill me. That’s the way it works in this business. Sometimes you don’t get choices. You just go out and do your job. And…” Neri drew Mickey close and whispered in his ear, “… you want to know something else? It gets easier. The first time, you got doubts, you wonder what it’s like when the light goes out in some poor bastard’s eyes. You’ll be thinking that, won’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“No. For sure. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. The point is… second time it ain’t so bad. Third time out, you’re curious. You’re watching, wondering what’s going on in his head. You’re looking into his face and thinking, hey, maybe I’m doing the moron a favour! He gets to know some big secret quicker than me. Huh?”

He grinned and slapped the kid on the shoulder. “Except there is no big secret. Fourth time out you know that for sure. They’re just breathing one moment and gone the next. Which is as it should be. So after that you don’t even think about it at all. If it’s some scumbag you hate you even get some pleasure out of it too. Trust your old man. It’s in your blood, Mickey. Once you get the feel it just comes natural.”

He didn’t look convinced. He didn’t look as if he were all there. “Why a cop?”

“Because that’s what I need. Does that worry you?”

“No one likes it when a cop gets killed.”

Neri wrinkled his nose, not liking what he was hearing. “Depends on the cop.” He nodded downstairs. “You got to make your mark. You’re the boss’s son. Don’t ever forget it. You’ll never get to lead them if they think you’re on the same level. Understand?”

Mickey nodded. Neri leaned forward and took the gun from his son’s jacket. He examined it carefully, checking the magazine, ensuring it was fully loaded.

“Killing someone’s the easiest thing in the world, provided you do it right. Just walk up, pop the bastard quick in the head, and it’s done. Work on it, Mickey. It’s a talent you’re going to need. On your way now.”

“And afterwards?”

A shifty look crossed Neri’s face. “Didn’t I mention that? Afterwards things get a little hot for all of us around here. Best we don’t hang around this place for a while. We’re going to be flexible for the next few days. You just keep that phone of yours switched on.”

“What? Where am I supposed to go?”

He was so slow. Sometimes Neri wondered whether he really was the kid’s father at all.

He handed the gun back. “I’ll call. Trust your old man. He’s got your best interests at heart.”

Mickey shoved the pistol back into his jacket. “OK,” he murmured listlessly.

“And when you see Adele tell her to come up here. I want to talk to her.”

Neri had been thinking about this side of things. Maybe there was another way of dealing with it. But that would have been indulgent. That could have wider repercussions. He didn’t want to complicate matters any more than necessary. “You know, now I come to think about it, I never should have swallowed that story about you and her. I always did believe the bad stuff about you and that’s unfair. I owe you an apology, son. You never did get on with Adele, did you? You and her just rub each other up the wrong way.”

“Never did,” the kid said, not quite able to meet Neri’s eyes.

COSTA WAS WALKING down the corridor to the big conference room for Falcone’s briefing when she came round the corner.

“You look terrible,” Teresa Lupo croaked.

He stopped and squinted at her, trying to work out what was going on. “I do?”

“No. I just wanted to say it first.”

Then she coughed into a fistful of tissues and stared at him with pink, watery eyes.

“Actually,” he said, “you don’t look bad at all. It’s amazing what drugs can do.”

“Lying cop bastard—” she mumbled.

“Ah, ah, ah. You’re feverish. You have to try to keep the temperature down.”

“I ought to be in bed feeling sorry for myself. But then that asshole Falcone did the worst thing. Unbelievable.” She looked hurt for a moment. “He apologized. Can you believe that?”

Costa thought about this. “No. Do you have it on tape?”

“I wish. I doubt I shall hear its like again.”

“I doubt any of us will. So what are you doing?”

“Oh, just came in to fill in an expense form. Pick up my mail. Scratch my ass. Doesn’t seem much for the likes of me to do around here. Or did I get that wrong?”

“Teresa—” he said, and took a step towards her.

“Don’t stand too close. Germs. If I start infecting his men he’ll just get mad at me again.”

“Are you OK?”

“No.” She shrugged. “But I’m back to being as mad as I was before. I’m sorry, Nic. I don’t know what came over me. It was the thought of that poor kid being out there somewhere, abandoned, all because of me. And with you guys thinking about nothing but the lovely Barbara. Having people try to kill you is somewhat unsettling, I find.”

“I’d go along with that.”

“Of course!” She brightened a little. “Finally, we do have something in common. We could discuss it over dinner. Nightmares we have known.”

“Not till this is over,” he said. “Which it will be. Soon, I hope.”

She nodded towards the room. Officers were steadily filtering through the door. A lot of them. Most of the Questura’s denuded complement by the look of things.

“You have that look about you, I must say. Is it promising?”

He tried to look confident. “I think so.”

She sniffed again and didn’t look too convinced. “That’s good. So what am I supposed to do if you smart-asses have it all wrapped up? Why is boss man practicing his apology routine on me?”

“You could deal with the autopsy queue perhaps. Your deputy looks ready to crack up.”

“Silvio always looks ready to crack up. You have to give these people some room from time to time, Nic. Can’t mother them every waking moment of the day.”

“Point taken. How about this? Take a look at Eleanor Jamieson. See if there’s any DNA we can use.”

Her pink eyes grew bigger. “DNA? As I keep pointing out to people around here, she’s been in a peat swamp for sixteen years. What do you think I am? A miracle worker?”

“Yeah. That’s what Falcone wants anyway. And while you’re at it, we’d really love to know who Kirk phoned while he had you locked in that office.”

She put a finger to her cheek. “Oh, let me think now. Can I remember the ring tones? Beep, beep, fucking beep. No, you just lost me there.”

“You asked. I answered. Now I’ve got to go. Bad guys to catch. Missing girls to find.”

She was dabbing at her nose again, looking a little happier for the conversation anyway. “Have you talked to the university woman since I stormed in there? Regina Morrison?”

He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of. Why should we?”

“Regina was Kirk’s new boss. Somewhere in those files of hers she must have a list of every archaeological dig he’s ever worked on. Him being dead and what, I can’t check this out for sure. But where do you think a man like that would hide someone?”

Costa nodded. “Where did that thought come from?”

“I was putting myself in your shoes. Or at least I was trying to imagine what it was like being a cop.”

Teresa didn’t say it this time but he got the message. They should have thought of it themselves. They would have, if there’d been the time and the people to manage the workload.

“Thanks,” he said, and walked down the corridor, the last man to enter the room.

ADELE NERI DIDN’T BOTHER to put on a jacket when she went outside. Maybe she hadn’t expected to be there long.

“You’re shivering. Here.” Neri shrugged off his overcoat, walked behind her, and placed it on her bare, slim shoulders.

“You’re thoughtful tonight,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“That tongue of yours is getting too sharp, Adele. It never used to be like that.”

He sat down at the table, making a point of brushing away the crumbs. She joined him there, in the seat directly opposite, looking uncomfortable, looking as if she were struggling to read his mood.

“We’re just at that stage of being married,” she said. “Where some of the sheen’s come off.”

He scowled. It was a lame suggestion. “Is that right? I don’t recall it being like this with anyone else. Not with Mickey’s mother. We were working. Then we weren’t working. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other one moment. Couldn’t stand the sight of each other the next. It doesn’t feel like that now. Not for me. For you… I dunno. You’re young. Tell me, Adele. Does the sight of me turn you on? Thinking about how old I am and that?”

There was a flash of edginess in her bright green eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, darling. Why would you even think such a thing?”

“Why? Because I’m an ugly old man. Fat too. And you. Look at you. You can’t walk down the street without some kid giving you the eye.”

“Kids never interest me. You know that.”

“And I did interest you?”

“You do.”

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe it’s just the money. I don’t know any longer, Adele. The thing is, we got to spend a little time apart. That’s a practical matter. All this trouble I’ve got. There’s no reason to fuck your life too. It’s none of your business.”

She gave him an acid glance. Maybe she thought he was fishing for sympathy. “I’m your wife. Your problems are my problems. If—”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to give me that shit. You don’t have to pretend. We don’t have time. Let me put it another way. I don’t want you involved in what’s going down right now. That’s for selfish reasons too. It’s men’s stuff. We got things to do a woman shouldn’t have to know about. You’d complicate matters.”

He looked at her from across the table and felt no feelings for her. “Maybe some people are going to get hurt. If I have you close it might give the wrong impression. As if you’re part of it or something. Some of these southern families… you’d think the women are running them sometimes. Don’t work like that here. I want you separate from me because I don’t want to have to wonder what that mouth of yours is saying. Understood?”

She bridled at his suggestion. “I wouldn’t talk out of turn.”

“Who knows what anyone would do once those bastards from the DIA come calling? The cops I can deal with. These others—”

He looked at his watch. “The point is I’m going now and I don’t know when I’ll be back. If I’ll be back. We need some time apart.”

She nodded. Neri was unsure whether she was upset or not. “Where will you be?”

He gave her a glassy, dead-eyed look and said nothing.

“How will I contact you, Emilio? I’m your wife.”

He stifled a laugh. “Don’t worry. There’s money in the bank. You can pay bills. Buy stuff. Do whatever you like. Give me a couple of months. Then I’ll be in touch. Maybe we’ll have a second honeymoon. Maybe we’ll be ready for that by then. If you feel otherwise, I’ll call the lawyers. It’d be best to do it friendly if we can.”

“And now?” She looked as if she wanted to scream at him for behaving like this. She just didn’t dare. “What do I do now?”

He waved an arm around the terrace. “Stay here. You got a beautiful house. You can bring back all those servants you love. I know how much you hate cleaning up yourself. I could never stand the idea of servants. Myself I gave you your head on that one. Maybe I was wrong. Who’d want strangers in their own home? But hell, when I’m gone I don’t care what you do.” He made sure this last point came across clearly. “I don’t care who you see. I don’t care how you spend your time.”

She got up and took off his coat, laying it on his lap.

“You’ll be needing this,” she said.

“Yeah. Tell me one thing, Adele.”

“What?”

“You ever been unfaithful to me? Not that it matters anymore. I don’t care right now. I got bigger things to think about.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

“I dunno. For the sex. For the hell of it. Or maybe—” It occurred to him that neither of these would really move a woman like Adele. “Because it suited you.”

“Those are little reasons. Too small to get yourself killed for.”

He laughed. “Yeah. You’re right. You’re a smart girl. That’s what impressed me most about you in the beginning. I never liked stupid women.”

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“Just remember this. Things have got to come out in balance at the end. Some American creep kills one of my men. I do something in return. Someone screws with me. I screw with them. Except I do it better. Bigger. I make it final. I win because that’s how the balance is, that’s my place. This is serious stuff, Adele. You don’t want to go pushing your pretty face into it. Believe me.”

He stood up, walked over to her, kissed her on the cheek. Just one short kiss.

“You just stay here. Watch TV. Make yourself a drink. And when the cops come, you tell them nothing. Say I went fishing. OK?”

Outside a familiar engine was gunning hard. Tyres were burning along the cobblestones of the Via Giulia. Emilio Neri knew what this meant. The first part of the deception was under way.

“Ciao,” he said, and waddled towards the stairs.

IT WAS A COLD, CLEAR NIGHT, bright with stars and the silver disc of a waxing moon. The police convoy, a marked car at its head, blue light flashing, siren screaming, cut straight through the evening rush hour. Falcone rode with Costa and Peroni just ahead of the heavily manned riot van that was the last in the line. The radio was hot with chatter and none of it sounded good. The plainclothes men stationed outside Neri’s had reported the sudden departure of his car just fifteen minutes before. One team had detached itself to give chase but lost the vehicle somewhere over the river. The second saw two more vehicles scream away from a rear alley and were left standing in the street, with no chance of pursuit.

“What are we going to do?” Costa wondered. “Go after him?”

Falcone shook his head. “Go after what? We only have a number for Neri’s own car, and what’s the money on him being in that? Let’s see who’s still in the house. It’s the son I want to talk to first. Wherever he is. Jesus, the timing. How the hell did Neri know?”

Costa and Peroni looked at each other. Falcone had ordered a big operation: ten vehicles, half of them marked. The DIA had two other cars along for the ride, with Rachele D’Amato at the head. It wasn’t going to be easy keeping something of this size quiet.

They turned into the narrow lane of the Via Giulia, rattling across the cobblestones, and saw the flash of cameras, the lights of the TV men, a full-scale media mob waiting on Neri’s doorstep.

Falcone went rigid with fury at the sight of them. He recalled Rachele D’Amato’s promise to Neri that morning. One way or another, she said, his fall from grace would be a very public event. He swore under his breath, peered ahead and saw her car, saw her slim figure getting out and slipping through the pack of hacks, towards the house.

“Stop here,” he ordered. “We don’t want that mob on our backs. And I’d rather not have her getting into the place before us.”

Costa pulled into the side of the road, next to a medieval fountain, and all three of them watched, with rising trepidation, the melee happening in the street. Broadcast crew fought with press journalists, jostling to be close to the action. The first marked police car had arrived and men were leaping out. D’Amato and some of her team stood by as a bunch of burly uniformed officers went through the motions of waiting to be let in then, in the space of a couple of seconds, began attacking the expensive polished wood door with sledgehammers. There wasn’t much room. A small van marked with the logo of one of the minor cable channels was parked directly outside, its back end almost up against the building. The hammer men had to squeeze behind it to tackle their target. The vehicle cramped their action, made it impossible to get the swing they needed.

Then one of them climbed onto the bonnet and took a hefty lunge at the woodwork. The door crumpled. Hands shot through to tackle the locks inside. Rachele D’Amato was over the door first, a couple of DIA men on her heels as the cops stood back, open-mouthed, wondering.

“Shit,” Falcone hissed and started running towards the mob followed closely by Costa and Peroni. When they got there the uniforms were stuck outside the shattered door, looking for direction.

“Next time wait for me,” Falcone barked at them. “Don’t let anyone else in. Don’t let anyone out without my permission.”

Falcone in the lead, they went up the stairs. The DIA crew had a good start on them. The first-floor room, where they’d seen Neri’s hoods that morning, was empty. The butt of a cigarette still smoked in an ashtray. There was a half-full coffee cup on the low table.

Peroni picked it up. “Still warm. They really did cut this fine.”

“They knew what they were doing,” Falcone murmured then stopped. The DIA team were clattering downstairs, arguing among each other until a female voice told them to clam up. Rachele D’Amato walked into the room with her team, stood in front of Falcone and his men, and folded her arms, furious.

“There’s not a soul in the house, Leo. Is the Questura leaking again or what?”

“Don’t start,” Falcone snapped back at her. “Who the hell do you think you are, jumping in ahead of us? And this joke out on the street? You had the nerve to call the media? This is a police investigation. Not yours. The DIA don’t even have warrants—”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “You want to read them?”

He glowered at the documents. “You said—”

“I changed my mind. The information we got from the accountant’s office this morning is like gold dust. We can lock this fat creep away for years, and scores of others too.”

“If you can find him… What do you think the media will make of that?”

“Leo!” she screeched. “I didn’t call the media. No one inside the DIA did. This was as secret as we get. Don’t look to me.”

Falcone stared at her. “No. You people are all so clean, aren’t you?”

“Leo—?”

Costa was on the phone, talking to the ops room. He finished the call. “They’ve found Neri’s car. It just had a couple of his hoods in it. They were riding around, no destination in particular, down in Testaccio. It was just a blind.”

“Where the hell are they?” Falcone demanded. “The son? The wife? He didn’t pack for a family holiday. What’s he doing?”

“Getting ready for a war maybe,” D’Amato suggested. “We still have the house. We’ve got free run of it. We can tear the place apart. It’s a gift.”

Peroni gingerly placed a hand on her slender shoulder. “We appear to have a conflict of interest, lady. We’re looking for a missing girl, in case you forgot. Right now we don’t care about finding Mr. Neri’s cooked books. They can wait for another day.”

“We need the son,” Falcone said, then walked over to the long window and gazed down into the street. The hubbub was dying. The media crews were starting to pack their bags. They’d been cheated too. There was a story for them. A failed raid on a city hoodlum. But there was no real action, nothing to splash over the front pages and the newscasts. A bunch of cops hammering down a door in the Via Giulia was second division news. Whoever tipped them off surely knew they would be disappointed, which pointed the finger at Neri himself, though Falcone couldn’t begin to fathom the reason.

He looked at Rachele D’Amato. “You can do what you like here. If you find something that has a material bearing on the Julius case, call me. That isn’t a request. If you delay what we’re doing by a single second I’ll be talking to the media about why we’ve been hampered unnecessarily. We’ve got to look for Mickey Neri and that girl. We’ve got to find someone to talk to.”

She wagged a long, elegant finger at him. “No, no, no, Leo. Don’t try and pass that responsibility on to me. We do DIA business, not yours. Leave some men if you want that.”

“I don’t have the damned men,” Falcone yelled at her, so loud even the cops outside stopped talking for a moment. “Don’t you get it? We’ve a day to find that girl. Maybe less. We haven’t a clue where she might be. We don’t even know where to begin looking. But it isn’t here. It’s not in your damned books. It’s wherever Mickey Neri is.”

Maybe, he thought. Leo Falcone didn’t know anymore. All he understood was that it was important to cling to the human side of the investigation. You only got results by finding the right people and making them talk.

“Leo? Leo!”

Her voice dogged them halfway down the stairs, arguing all the way. Then she turned back to join her team, to get on with the job. Her job. Falcone didn’t get it. Rachele D’Amato had won what she wanted. Neri was on the run. She had carte blanche to investigate every last aspect of the old crook’s empire. What was it to her to repay a little of the debt? Why was this vendetta the DIA had with Neri more important than the life of a teenage girl?

They stormed out of the house, out into the street, pushing past the TV van which was still backed up against the ruined door. The media mob was almost gone now. There were just a handful of cops, in uniform and out, waiting outside, looking uncomfortable, guilty that they’d overheard the argument.

“You can stand down,” Falcone told them. “This is a DIA deal for the time being. Let’s get back to the Questura. See what’s happening with the phones.”

The men nodded. They’d caught the atmosphere.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Falcone repeated as they walked to the car.

“They just got their priorities, Leo,” Peroni observed and got a cold, hard glance for his pains. “Sorry, sir. You can’t expect anything else. The kid and me could go back in there and watch for a while.”

“No point,” Falcone said. “She’ll let us know if she finds something. How would it look otherwise? Besides—” He needed to get this clear in his own head too. “There can’t be a damn thing there that’s any use to us. Neri had this planned, right down to the last detail. He’s making monkeys of us. He’d love it if we stayed in that place, peeking under the carpet, scraping through dust.”

“Yeah,” Peroni agreed. “I can see that. Sorry, I still find it hard trying to think like you people. It’s all so damn sneaky.”

Costa’s phone rang. He stepped aside so that he could hear the anxious voice on the other end.

“Why did Neri set this up?” Falcone wondered. It was all too small. It just caused the police some embarrassment, and Neri had to be above that. The media didn’t even hang around once they realized there was no big arrest coming, no sign of the fat old hood being led out in handcuffs, bundled into a car, head down for the cameras. They’d disappeared altogether.

Apart from the van.

“Boss,” Costa said anxiously. “I think we’ve got something. An anonymous call just came in. Someone looking just like Suzi. No more than half an hour ago.”

“Where?” Falcone asked, still thinking about what had just happened, trying to make some connections.

“Somewhere along Cerchi. Didn’t get an exact position.”

“Quite some road,” Peroni said. “We could spend all night going up and down there.”

Cerchi ran the length of the Circus Maximus, now an empty, stadium-shaped field behind the Palatine Hill, overlooked by the ruins of Augustus’s palaces.

Costa remembered what Teresa had said about Regina Morrison. “Kirk and Mickey could have used old archaeological digs if they wanted to. We can talk to his boss at the university. She should have a list of everywhere he worked.”

“Get her,” Falcone ordered. He reached the car, put his hand on the door, still thinking. “Chase it, Nic. Let’s go there straightaway. This place is dead.”

He looked back at the street. They were parked a good fifty metres from Neri’s door. There wasn’t a TV crew in sight. The van was still there, up at an angle over the pavement.

“See the vehicle at the front door?” Falcone asked. “Either of you notice someone using it? Any of those TV bastards go near at all?”

“Not me,” Peroni answered, puzzled.

Falcone looked at Costa, his mind full of possibilities.

“Me neither,” Costa replied. “What do you think—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. The earth began to tremble beneath their feet, cobblestones shaking as if hit by an earthquake. Then came a roar so loud it was unreal, a physical wall of audible fury burying itself deep in their heads.

A fierce, fiery tongue leapt out of the rear end of the van. The vehicle rose off the ground as if tugged towards the sky by an invisible force. For a brief moment the world stood still, then a cacophony of furious noise hit them, followed by a vicious, punishing force as hard as a fist.

When it ended Costa was on the cold hard ground, holding his hands to his ears, stunned, panting too. Peroni leaned against the car, mouth open, looking shell-shocked, gasping for air. And Falcone was running, frantically, as fast as he could, back towards Neri’s house where a firestorm now raged out of the blackened, torn tangle of wreckage that was the van, flames licking greedily up into the shattered remains of the building.

Costa staggered in his footsteps, Peroni behind him. The air stank of smoke and the chemical smell of spent explosives. Car alarms, triggered by the shock wave of the blast, sounded all around. A man was screaming in the gutter, clutching at his stomach. Two others lay still on the ground. A team of uniformed officers materialized from a riot van around the corner, wondering where to begin.

It was impossible to think. Nic Costa looked at the faces of the men around him, faces locked hard in shock, and found it impossible to recognize any of them. In this sudden burst of insanity the world had become anonymous, simply a receptacle for its victims.

The blast had taken out two floors of the building. As the dust and debris cleared Costa could see, in the dim streetlights, entire rooms in Neri’s house now laid open to the elements: tables and chairs, a TV set, a kitchen cut in half by the savagery of the explosion. Flames raged in and out of the severed quarters. Somewhere on the second floor a dark figure danced crazily, as if trying to dodge the blaze that engulfed him, until he fell to the floor, rolled right off the edge and into the dust storm milling around the van.

Leo Falcone was fighting at the mountain of rubble which occupied the spot that, moments before, had been Emilio Neri’s front door, clawing at the bricks, snatching them out of his way one by one.

There was a broken body in front of him, poised at an impossible angle, a slender arm, bloodied, blackened by the blast, quite still in the smoking debris.

A small, calm voice spoke at the back of Nic Costa’s head and it said: think.

As the ambulances arrived, as a screaming fire engine bathed in blue light wove through the cars thrown into the road by the bomb, Nic Costa scanned his notes, found the number, then walked into the relative quiet of an antiques shop doorway to place the call.

“Miss Morrison,” he said when he heard the clipped female voice answer. “You don’t know me but I’m a friend of Teresa Lupo’s, a detective. I really need to talk—”

THERE WAS LIVE FOOTBALL on the TV: Roma versus Lazio. The big local derby. Roma were beating the crap out of their neighbours. Again. Toni Martelli could hear people yelling with delight in the neighbouring apartments. He was a Lazio man himself. For him Roma were still the team of the lower classes, the rabble, the people who ran things these days. Not that Martelli had been to a game in years. Now that he was out of the force he’d lost all the favours. With Barbara gone, he couldn’t even sponge a few off her.

Falcone had been on the phone earlier saying he could probably release the body for cremation within a week. Sooner if Martelli had something to say. Martelli had told him where he could shove his offer. The girl was dead. What else was there to talk about?

Then came another call with news he half expected to hear. And so he locked himself in the over-large apartment, snuggling up to some cigarettes and a bottle of grappa he’d had sent round from the bar on the corner, waiting, watching the game on the TV, war disguised as sport, brute humanity pretending it was something else, something noble and elegant, like a savage trying to dance ballet.

The key started to turn in the door just after ten, rattling around clumsily as someone fumbled trying to get in.

“Cowboys,” Martelli sniffed. “They don’t even have the decency to send a real man.”

He turned off the TV and the light by his side, making the room appear the way he had planned. He now sat in his wheelchair in the dark. It was not easy to see. He’d angled the two big standard lamps in the living room so they shone towards the door at the end of the corridor. The man would have to walk straight into the light, maybe shade his eyes a little. Toni Martelli had thought this through. He half-guessed what the outcome would be but he didn’t plan on making it easy.

A figure blundered down the corridor, too scared to hit the lights. Martelli had the remote control the social work people had given him. You had to work your advantages when you were a cripple. He waited for the figure in the shadows to get close to the door then he hit the corridor light. Three big bulbs running the length of the long passageway came on in tandem. Mickey Neri stood there, dressed in black, hands empty, waving stupidly in front of him.

“I got a gun, asshole,” Martelli grunted from the pool of darkness in the corner of the living room. “I got a big shotgun. You want to see me use it?”

Mickey turned round, ready to run. Martelli pumped the twelve-bore noisily, ramming one of the four remaining cartridges he owned into the chamber.

“Sit down, sonny,” he bawled. “Let me take a good look at you.”

Mickey Neri moved cautiously into the room and fell into the chair Martelli had nodded towards.

“Mickey,” Martelli sighed. “Your old man sent you? That right?”

“Yeah.” There was a pathetic snarl beneath the fear. “We met before?”

“A long time ago. When we were all up to things we hoped were dead and buried. I’m offended you don’t remember. I seem to think—” Martelli started coughing, couldn’t help it, and the fit went on and on until he fought back the phlegm. When it was over, he said, simply, “I seem to recall that, when I gave my daughter up for you and your pop, not quite knowing what was on the cards, you were one of those who got to taste the goods.”

“Like you said,” Mickey grumbled, face screwed up, looking as if it were a struggle to remember. “It was a long time ago. Lots of people got confused memories about what happened then.”

“Not me.”

Mickey nodded. He was staring frankly at Martelli, who knew exactly what he was wondering. How sick was this frail old man really? “Also,” he added, “I don’t recall you pulling out of what you got, Mr. Martelli. I seem to think you had your fun too. All you old guys… You just wanted to get into something fresh and young. You were as greedy as the rest of them.”

Martelli waved the barrel then coughed again, not quite so bad this time. “You kids are all the same. No respect.”

Then he jerked the barrel and fired. The shotgun exploded a metre or so to the right of the terrified Mickey Neri, blowing a huge tear in the dining room table. And Toni Martelli started counting. This was an apartment block. Someone would hear. Someone would call the cops.

“You fucking madman!” Mickey whined. “You—”

“Shut up. We got a deal, your old man and me. Not that he told you, naturally. If you walk out of here alive, then everything’s square with you. If you’re a piece of meat on the floor by the time the cops come, then I’m just sweet. I killed some creep who was trying to rob my apartment. I got Emilio Neri in my debt. And I took his scummy little kid out too. What d’ya think, Mickey? Is your old man pissed off with you or what? Where’s your money going?”

“You believe that?” Mickey yelled, bright eyes bulging, terrified. “Are you telling the truth? ”Cos if you are we’re both dead, mister.“

“I’m dead already, moron.” Martelli coughed. And coughed some more. Then it was as if something had come alive inside him, as if the cancer had got scared by all this noise and violence too. A big, black pain rose up from inside his guts, freezing what little sensation remained in his spine, making his mind go blank with the agony.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeee—” Toni Martelli screeched, rocking from side to side in the chair, trying to keep hold of the shotgun in his arms, which had a life of its own now, wanted to call time on this craziness and go for a walk somewhere else.

There was morphine somewhere. Barbara kept it safe for him. He’d not needed it since she died. Something seemed to kill the needling agony the sickness inflicted on him from time to time. Now it was back, with a vengeance, clouding his vision, dimming his thoughts.

Martelli couldn’t stand it any longer. He let go of the rifle, let it fall on his lap, and, with his free hand, started spinning the wheelchair, as hard and as fast as he could, fumbling for where he left the ammunition. Two cartridges made their way into the chamber, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember willing them there. Two explosions rocked the room. The first blew out the big window looking onto the courtyard. Through the shattered glass came the sound of the football match, a wild, insane roar, blaring out of the neighbouring sitting rooms, where another noise, the lowing, frightened murmur of people, was growing too.

The second went in the opposite direction, somewhere towards the figure of Mickey Neri, who’d now thrown himself off the chair, trying to find cover.

Martelli’s head cleared a little and the pain diminished. The chair stopped going round and round. The stupid screeching noise died in his throat. And at that moment Toni Martelli knew this was the end, one way or another. Neri’s offer was meaningless. A bigger, blacker fate was rising up to grip him now, and all the hoodlums in the world couldn’t keep it from his throat.

Mickey Neri was writhing around on the floor. Martelli heard his desperate shrieks, wondered how badly he’d hit the kid, and shook his head.

“Listen to the little rabbit,” he croaked. “What makes him squeal? The pain? Or knowing what’s gonna end it? You got no balls, boy?”

“You crazy old fucker,” Mickey whispered from somewhere beyond Martelli’s receding vision. “I could give you something. We could both walk out of this.”

“You got nothing for me,” Martelli said simply. “No one’s got a damn thing I can use anymore.” He raised the gun, knowing there was just the one cartridge left and this had to count, because if it didn’t Mickey Neri would somehow walk out of this place alive, and that, surely, was a crime.

Then he coughed some more, coughed and coughed, until the sound of his own breathing entered his ears, grew and grew.

Toni Martelli was choking on his own blood, wondering where this had come from, why the doctors never told him it would end this way. The shotgun still lay on his lap but he hadn’t the strength to touch it. And Mickey Neri had stopped wriggling around on the ground. He was half out in the open now, looking up, a little hope in his eyes. The little jerk wasn’t even hurt.

“What the fuck—” Martelli tried to mumble, but it all came out wrong because his mouth was full of stuff, his head was all over the place.

And the pain…

Different this time.

He looked down at the gun. It was covered in blood. His own. It came out of his chest somehow, poured down the front of his shirt.

He wanted to get angry. He wanted to kill someone.

A woman walked into view from the door. A skinny woman with red hair and a face that made him feel fear.

“Who the fu—?” Toni Martelli began to say.

She had a gun in her hand. She held the weapon purposefully, the way you were supposed to.

Mickey Neri crawled to his knees and looked up as if the light of God was shining out of her bright, glittering eyes.

The woman shook her head, disappointed. The red hair moved slowly in the light of the old apartment.

“You do it like this,” she said, then walked up to Toni Martelli, smiled briefly, coldly into his face, and put a bullet into his brain.

THERE WAS ONLY SO MUCH a man could do with his hands. Brick and glass and rubble tore at Peroni’s fingertips. The coarse, choking dust filled his mouth, solidified in his eyes. Every time he and Falcone tried to snatch something away from Rachele D’Amato’s torn, unconscious body, another piece of debris seemed to fall around them to fill its place. Neri’s house was losing its solidity, just like the world itself. The ancient structure was on the point of collapse, a huge hole rent in its belly. There was so little time. Falcone was grappling with an ancient timber beam that had shattered like an overlong, rotten tooth and now lay across her chest. It refused to move and it occurred to Peroni that maybe this was for the best. In the dark it was impossible to see what part of the wrecked building depended on the rest for support. If they shifted the wrong thing, the fragile remnants of wall around them could so easily topple down too.

He put a hand on Falcone’s arm. “Leo,” he gasped, snatching for breath. “This is crazy. We could bring the whole thing down on her.”

The tall inspector continued to claw at the rubble and brick. Peroni grabbed him roughly by the shoulder. “Leo!”

Falcone stopped. He looked lost just then. Peroni had never seen him this way. It was unnerving. They needed Falcone to keep his cool. The shaky department was beginning to pivot around him. There was no one else. “The rescue people are here. They know what they’re doing. This is their job. Let’s stick to ours, huh?”

Vehicles were arriving all around, fire trucks with shifting gear, their officers moving quietly among the carnage of the blast, trying to assess how best to proceed, paramedics in vivid yellow jackets, wondering where to start.

“She’s breathing,” Falcone murmured. “I can see it—”

Rachele D’Amato was alive, just. Peroni nodded at a bunch of paramedics placing black plastic sheets over several unmistakable forms. “She’s lucky. We got at least three dead already.”

Peroni knew it could have been even worse. If the riot men around the corner had been standing outside their van instead of in it. If the media animals had bothered to stick around to see what this was really about. It was too much for his head to handle right then. This was premeditated slaughter on a scale the city had never known, a calculated act of murder.

Two firemen elbowed past, took a good look at Rachele D’Amato, then yelled at Falcone and Peroni to get out of the way.

“We were trying to help,” Peroni shouted back.

“Nice of you,” the lead fireman retorted, dragging some gear behind them, calling for a back-up team to bring some lifting equipment. “Now give us some room.”

Falcone closed his eyes for a moment, trying to quell the fury. He gripped the man by the shoulder.

“I’m the officer in charge here—” he began to say. Something in the man’s eyes made him stop.

“I don’t care who the hell you are,” the fireman bellowed back. “We’re here to get these people out, mister. If you stand in my way God help you.”

“OK, OK,” Peroni said softly, putting a hand on Falcone, gently guiding him away.

The firemen weren’t even listening. The two of them were on the ground, carefully scraping rubble away from her body, yelling for more gear and paramedics.

Falcone watched them, his face a picture of misery. “Gianni? You got any cigarettes? I was trying to give it up.”

Peroni brushed some of the dust off his sleeves, then did the same for Falcone. The two men were filthy and they’d hardly even noticed. “When it comes to cigarettes, I’m always prepared. Walk with me. I’m flattered, by the way, to hear you using my first name again. I thought, perhaps, we’d never get back to that.”

Falcone followed him to the far side of the road, putting just enough distance between them and the wreck of Neri’s house to be out of the immediate stench of smoke and dust. Three more ambulances tore down the cobblestones and screeched to a halt next to the emergency rescue unit. New teams of paramedics burst out of their brightly lit interiors and started to work the scene. A short line of black cars arrived behind them. Both Falcone and Peroni knew what that meant. The big guys were coming in to pass judgement: men from the security service, the bureaucrats, the hierarchy of the DIA. This was no longer a simple crime investigation. It bordered on terrorism, and that changed the name of the game.

Peroni used his sleeve to wipe some debris off the bonnet of a Renault Saloon and they sat down. He lit a cigarette and passed it over. Falcone’s slim, tanned hands were shaking. He took a couple of drags at the thing then cursed and threw it to the ground.

“You know how much those things cost?” Peroni asked. “I’m the only man in the Questura who buys them straight and honest. No black market stuff for this boy.”

“Yeah,” Falcone grunted. “You and your cock-eyed ideas about honesty. I don’t get it. You were the one man in vice I thought we could trust. Then you go and ruin it all over a woman. What for?”

Peroni cast a sideways glance at Falcone. He was a handsome man, in a hard, emotionless way. This inability to address the real seat of his fears—his apparent concern for Rachele D’Amato—was a rare weakness, one that made him briefly more human. “She was a beautiful woman, may I remind you. A hooker, true, but let’s not leave out all the salient facts. People make fools of themselves from time to time, Leo. There’s a crazy gene in all of us. You convince yourself otherwise. You say to yourself, nah, the job’s bigger than this. Or the marriage. Or the kids. You think: I can just push these thoughts back into the dark where they belong. Then one day, just when you’re least expecting it, the crazy gene wakes up and you know it’s pointless trying to fight. For a while anyway. Because fighting could be even worse. You’re just beating up on yourself. But I think you already know that.”

Falcone glanced back at the chaos across the road. “A bomb, a bomb. What the hell is Neri thinking?”

Peroni’s mind had been working along the same lines. “You think it has to be him? He had enemies. The American for one.”

Falcone stared dolefully at the firemen working to free Rachele D’Amato. “Why would any of them bomb an empty building? No one’s that stupid. Neri knew we were coming. The bastard left us this as a present and—”

Falcone was struggling to tie the ends together in his head. Peroni hated seeing him filled with doubt like this. “And it doesn’t make sense. This is so final. He can’t talk his way out of this one. He can’t pick up the phone and bribe some politician, some cop to look the other way.”

That was true, Peroni thought. This was the end of Neri’s career. There was no other possibility. Or, to be more precise, it was the act which Neri was using to announce the closure of his time in Rome. Something, the papers on the dead accountant’s desk, some threat they failed to understand, must have convinced him there could be no turning back. He had to flee, to seek anonymous sanctuary somewhere he hoped the Italian state could no longer reach him.

Peroni thought of the body, the brown, shining body in Teresa Lupo’s morgue. Everything led back to that first corpse. Every event that followed stemmed from its discovery, and still they had no idea why, no clue to explain the strange and deadly demons that flew out of the ground once that small patch of peat near Fiumicino was exposed to the light of day.

Falcone turned a sudden, sharp gaze on him, the one that said: don’t lie, don’t even think of it. “Tell me the truth. Do you think I’m losing it? Is this getting too much for me?”

“What?” Peroni stared at him, almost lost for words. “Since when did you get to be super-human? This is too much for all of us. This…” he waved a hand at the scene across the road, “… is the world gone mad. Not just that bastard Neri.”

There was a sound from the house. The lifting gear around Rachele D’Amato was being cranked into action. The firemen were shouting to each other. Timbers were moving. Walls were starting to shake. And there was more light now. The bright, unforgiving light of the TV cameras, back to see what they were supposed to witness all along.

Falcone stood up and shook the dirt and dust off himself, getting ready to go back. Peroni was with him instantly, a hand on his arm.

“Leo,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do. And whatever state that woman’s in, you can’t change it. Furthermore, if she does wake up, she’ll be livid to find you sitting by the bed like some dumbstruck husband.”

“Really?” Falcone gave him a familiar, cold look. “You know her well enough to say that?”

“I know she’s just as married to the job as you are. And when she does get conscious the first thing she’ll ask is what you’ve done to get the sons of bitches who did this. You offer a bunch of flowers and you’ll get it straight back into your face. Now am I right?”

Falcone glanced at him and Peroni wondered if he had read everything the wrong way. “You think that’s what this is about, Gianni? Me and her?”

“I dunno,” he mumbled, and Peroni realized that at that moment he really didn’t. There was more going on in Falcone’s head than he appreciated.

“She’s got another man,” Falcone said flatly. “She told me so.”

“Gimme a break,” Peroni answered immediately. “Does she look like a woman with a man in tow? She’s just playing with you, Leo. Women are like that.”

“Maybe.”

Falcone was focused on the meeting going on across the road. The men from the black cars were engaged in an impromptu conference near the sight of the blast. He knew, surely, he ought to go and join them. He ought to answer their questions, try to keep them happy.

Peroni looked at the shattered building and sighed. “For God’s sake, Leo. It’s times like this people look to you. If you’re riddled with self-doubt, how the hell do you expect them to go on? Here—”

He lit another cigarette and offered it. Falcone accepted reluctantly.

“Listen to your friend Gianni, please. Because he’s just got a stupid vice cop brain in his skull and this primitive organ doesn’t have a clue what’s going on here. All these crazy genes bouncing around tonight. Where’d they come from, Leo? What the hell for? Who flipped that switch and why?”

Falcone scratched his chin and said nothing.

“This is good,” Peroni said carefully. “This is indicative of cerebral activity. Come on. Reel off some options.”

Falcone shook his head miserably and threw the cigarette away.

“You are costing me big time, man,” Peroni groaned. “OK, let me change the subject. How about this? You can bawl me out. Sometime over the past half hour—don’t ask when exactly because I can’t tell you—Costa went off on his own, chasing this wild goose story about some blonde girl over in Cerchi. He didn’t want to. Or rather, he did but he didn’t want to let it show. So I told him to get his ass on the road anyway. Who knows? Anyway, it was me giving orders. So bust my ass.”

There was a flicker of interest in Falcone’s face. Peroni was glad even that much was there.

“It was just a report of a blonde girl?” Falcone asked. “Just that she looked like Suzi Julius?”

“Nothing more,” Peroni agreed. “You seemed to think—this was just before the big bang event took place—it was worthy of attention, I believe.”

“It was. Hell, it is.” Falcone wasn’t looking across the street now. His mind was getting back into gear. “Or maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

The old Falcone was lurking there somewhere. The one who didn’t let go. And the men in black across the road were starting to look around them, wondering why no one had seen fit to acknowledge their presence.

“I’m not messing with you now, Leo. Either you pull yourself together or someone at the Questura’s going to be sending you back on leave and finding some young smart-ass to warm your seat. Probably for good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Falcone conceded. “Maybe it’s what Rachele said all along. A war. And somehow the Julius girl—” He waved his hand at the mess across the street, “All these people, they’re just, what do they call it? Collateral damage. Bodies caught in the crossfire. It’s a war. Neri against Wallis. Or Neri against us, the world, everything. I don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Every word. But remind me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know.”

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

The cold grey eyes just stared at him.

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

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

“Not yet.”

“Get him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shit,” Peroni murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

So what do you do? Costa wondered.

Go home, a weary inner voice said. Sleep.

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

Even a family torn apart by tragedy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberalia

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you want?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What else could it be?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Unless it’s over already,” she suggested. “The American’s thrown in the towel.”

Peroni didn’t look convinced. “Maybe. A part of me hopes that’s so. The trouble is, I can’t help thinking that if that is the case we’ll never get to the bottom of anything. We never get to understand why poor Barbara whacked the professor and then drove into that big hole chasing you.”

This repetitive refrain was beginning to piss her off. “Poor Barbara… Why’s she always ”poor Barbara“?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Because she’s dead, Teresa. And whatever happened, whatever she tried to do to you, it wasn’t her. It was something else. Something that affected her. Surely you can see that?”

She could, but she didn’t want to face it just then. She’d come close to the edge herself at times. There was craziness in the air.

“What about poor Suzi Julius?”

He shrugged and looked abruptly despondent. “We thought we had a sighting last night. Just before the bangy thing went off. Nic went over there to chase it.” Peroni hesitated, reluctant to go on.

“Well?” she wondered.

“Haven’t heard a word from him since. His phone’s dead. No sign of him in the street. Never went home.”

It always happened with bad news. A picture of the person involved just flew into her head. Teresa Lupo had, maybe unwittingly, got very close to Costa over the last year. He had qualities she didn’t see in abundance around the Questura: persistence, compassion and a dogged sense of justice. And he never caught the cynicism bug either, which, perhaps more than anything, made him stand out from the crowd. “Oh crap. What the hell can have happened?”

“We have no idea,” Peroni said honestly. “But I like that young man, Teresa. He is going to be driving me around when I go back to my old job. No one’s taking that privilege away from me.”

He flexed those big shoulders and she began to understand something else about Peroni. He wasn’t a man to give up easily.

“You could have told me about Nic earlier.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“So what do you want from me?” she asked again.

“Look, I’m not telling you how to do your job. Nor is this a request from Falcone or anything. To be honest with you, everyone back there’s clutching at straws anyway. I just want to say this. We’re all short on resources right now. We all have to think about priorities. You’re a good pathologist, you know the rules, you stick by them, mostly—”

She finished the coffee, looked him in the eye and said, “Cut the crap.”

“OK, OK. I just can’t help thinking that somewhere in that workload of yours there’s something that can help us. And it’s not going to be in the obvious places, or the most recent ones. I know you got to do it on all those poor bastards. I was just hoping you wouldn’t kind of focus on the easy ones first. I mean, Toni Martelli, the accountant guy. Those people from outside Neri’s house. We know how they died. We need forensic, sure, but I don’t think our answer’s going to come from looking at those corpses. Whereas—”

He left it at that, hoping she’d pick up the bait.

“Whereas—?” she wondered.

“Oh God. Do I have to say this? You were right all along. Whatever prompted this shit began with that kid we dug out of the bog. If we could work out what the hell happened to her, and where, then maybe we’d get some better perspective on what’s going on.”

She looked across at the skinny bartender playing with his ponytail and said, “After you’ve washed your hands you can make me another coffee.” The youth slunk off to the kitchen then returned and started working the espresso machine.

Peroni eyed her, just a hint of admiration in his face. “You’re direct, Teresa. I like that in a woman.”

“This Mickey Neri. He killed Barbara’s old man. The Julius woman identified him hanging around her daughter too.”

“Yeah?”

“And if I recall correctly,” she continued, “this same Mickey Neri met Eleanor Jamieson. I saw the notes. They said Wallis and she took a family holiday in Sicily with the Neris six weeks or so before she died.”

“Stands to reason—”