Costa 08 - City of Fear (10 page)

“And then?” Peroni asked, interested now that the conversation had moved on.

“Then along came Rome. The Estruscans got assimilated. We beat them at war, looked at their culture, adopted what we liked, and destroyed the rest. The Etruscans were the victims of what we think of as civilization. Organized society, materialism, greed, pursued by a single-minded and fierce warlike state.
Us
. The Romans marched north and eradicated their language, their customs … everything. It says here that sophisticated ancient Romans were bemoaning the death of Etruscan culture as early as the first century
A.D
. They looked on it as a lost golden age, a kind of paradise, one they’d destroyed themselves.”

Peroni put down his knife and fork. “That boy. The one we think killed Batisti …”

“Batisti was shot,” Falcone reminded him.

“Fine, fine.” Peroni’s large, bloodless face contorted in puzzlement. “The boy was dressed up as if he was in some kind of ceremony. That knife he had. The blood on him. Maybe he believed he was the Blue Demon. Whatever that was.”

“A figure from Etruscan mythology,” Teresa interjected. More taps at the phone, yet another set of photos, one of them recognizable from the briefing in the Quirinale. “There are plenty of their burial sites north of here, near Viterbo, Grosseto, Tarquinia, in the Maremma. The early ones depict a paradise that’s almost Christian. A happy afterlife, parents meeting with their children. Our idea of Heaven. Then this.”

She brought up the most vivid of the pictures: the long-bearded blue face, the eyes that burned, fangs dripping blood.…

“I know that face,” Peroni said.

“We all do, Gianni. It’s Satan. The bringer of damnation. Before the Blue Demon came along, the Etruscans inhabited a world that was either good or nothing. After this charming gentleman turned up, the place possessed evil. Someone had devoured the apple or opened Pandora’s box. Or perhaps he was just a gift the Romans brought to make all those pleasure-loving Etruscans feel the weight of human guilt. The Devil was in the room and he wasn’t going to leave. If you look at the wall paintings, you get the picture. The Blue Demon stands between the living and Paradise. He decides who gets to live happily ever after, and who goes into a new place he’s invented. Somewhere called Hell. Good name for a terrorist group, don’t you think? Or its leader. No one was ever sure which it was supposed to be. There were only four in the cell anyway, as far as anyone knew. Maybe it didn’t matter.”

“I remember that case,” Peroni said miserably. “I was a young
agente
. It was all so … inexplicable. A decent family destroyed. Those kids in Tarquinia too. And all for what?”

“Still,” Falcone declared, “it’s not our business, is it?” He picked up a piece of ham in his fingers and stared at the others. There was some kind of challenge in his expression. “You heard Luca Palombo. We need to think about traffic. Crowds. Public relations.”

The lines of command had been made crystal clear on their return, in a series of further communications between the control room in the Quirinale Palace and the Questura. The investigation into the death of Giovanni Batisti would be the responsibility of the Carabinieri and the secret-service team assembled around the man from the Ministry of the Interior. The state police would focus on security for the coming summit, ensuring that the strict limitations on traffic and pedestrian movement in the street would be made clear to the public and maintained throughout.

“Police work is our business,” Costa grumbled. “If I wanted to be a security guard …”

Falcone called for the waiter and asked for some more water. The
carafe came, he waited for the man to go back down the stairs, then he poured himself a glass and raised it.

“I’m very glad we didn’t lose any friends today,” he said. “Let’s drink to that.”

“An Etruscan toast,” Teresa observed, watching him. “We all lose friends in the end.”

“Really? You have a feel for these things, you know. And no evidence to look at, no forensic leads to work upon.”

“Stinking body snatchers …” she hissed.

He put down his glass and smiled at her. “There’s no reason why you couldn’t spend a day out of the office tomorrow. Go to the Villa Giulia. Ask a few questions about Andrea Petrakis and what happened there twenty years ago. The Frascas were that boy’s parents. It would be curious if the son murdered Giovanni Batisti in the same way Andrea Petrakis dealt with his own mother and father. Symmetrical.” The smile disappeared. “The older I get, the more I hate symmetry. It’s so … unnatural.”

“Leo,” Peroni scolded him. “That’s
police
work.”

“The Villa Giulia is a museum. Anyone can go there and ask as many questions as they like.”

“It’s police work, and you know it. We’re not supposed to be involved.”

“That’s not entirely correct,” Falcone responded, staring at the table.

“I knew there was a reason you invited us out for a meal. Is this on expenses?”

“Certainly not. I’m paying. We’re merely being”—an expansive wave of his long arm—“released from conventional duties for the duration.”

“On whose orders?” Costa asked.

“Esposito’s, as far as the Questura’s concerned.”

Some ideas were starting to clear in Costa’s head. “This is Dario Sordi’s doing, isn’t it?”

“I’m not answering that question,” the inspector replied. “We have an office set aside. Don’t bother reporting to work tomorrow. As far as they’re concerned, we’re on a training course. All four of us. Along with Teresa’s deputy and your young officers. Prabakaran and Oliva.”

He wrote down an address twice on the napkin, ripped it in half, and
passed over the pieces. “That makes seven in all, with an eighth, who’ll join us tomorrow.”

“The Via di San Giovanni in Laterano,” Peroni murmured, reading Falcone’s scribble. “I know this place. It’s that apartment in the old monastery, isn’t it? The safe house?”

“It’s police property that is currently going unused. Seems a shame to waste it. We will have facilities. Whatever we require.”

Peroni picked at his pizza in silence.

Teresa looked mildly excited. “And I’m allowed into this monastery?”

“Very much so.”

“In order to do what, exactly?” Costa asked.

“Whatever we like. Let’s sleep on it. Things will be clearer in the morning. Without files, or evidence, or—”

“We’re in the middle of a turf war between Dario Sordi and that devil Campagnolo,” Peroni said, interrupting. “I’d stake money on the angels losing this one, Leo. Don’t put anyone else’s neck on the line.”

The lean inspector stroked his beard and stayed silent.

“There were numbers on the wall,” Costa said. “Roman numerals. Beneath the poster of the Blue Demon.”

“Oh, yes,” Teresa remembered. “It seems to me that Petrakis is crazy in the highly intelligent and complicated way only an educated man can be. He adores games and codes and riddles, and the opportunity to show off his erudition. This is the same key as with the dead Frasca couple. Different numbers, though. III. I. CCLXIII. Three. One. Two hundred and sixty-three.”

Peroni looked at the two of them and shrugged.

“Shakespeare?” Costa suggested.

“Congratulations,” Teresa said, beaming. “It’s the same schema. Act, scene, line. From
Julius Caesar.”
They waited. She watched them as she spoke:

Falcone pushed back his glass and said, “San Giovanni in Laterano. Tomorrow. Eight o’clock.”

THEY WERE ALREADY IN THE DRIVE OF THE FARMHOUSE off the Via Appia Antica. The president, two bodyguards, and Capitano Fabio Ranieri of the Corazzieri. Costa had checked out the regiment with Peroni. As Sordi said, they were formally under the control of the Carabinieri, though with effective autonomy. No one in the Questura had much experience in dealing with the Quirinale’s equivalent of the Swiss Guards. They were regarded as dedicated soldiers committed to a single duty, the protection of the head of state. For this reason their presence beyond the palace was limited, without the contacts—official and informal—that took place in the occasionally uneasy relationship between the Polizia di Stato and the Carabinieri.

Ranieri was out of the car first as Costa arrived. The officer was a massive man around Peroni’s age, taller than Dario Sordi himself, broad-shouldered in a black suit, with close-cropped dark hair and alert, searching eyes.

“Capitano …” Costa began.

“This isn’t a formal visit,” the Corazzieri captain interjected. “Call me Ranieri. The president does not wish news of your meeting to become public knowledge. I expect—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Sordi said, patting the man on the back. “Nic—Ranieri. Ranieri—Nic. Or Costa, if you prefer. For myself, I cannot think of him as a surname, but then …” He stopped beneath the porch light and
gazed at the low stone villa that had been the Costa family home for almost forty years. “… I have memories.”

He pointed to the long field leading back to the road. “I helped your father plant those grapes. Before you were born, Nic. It was backbreaking work, for which I was repaid with terrible wine. Did it get any better over the years?”

“Not much.”

“I thought that might be so.” He held up a bottle. “From the Quirinale cellars. Brunello. A glass now? Or would you prefer to keep it as a gift?”

“Neither,” Costa said, and opened the door.

Sordi sighed. “Then I shall take a drop alone. Let’s go out to the patio,” the president suggested. “These men have work to do.”

When they reached the old wooden table, he handed Costa a small cell phone.

“If you need me, call Ranieri using this thing. Do not use any landline or cell, personal or police.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. I must sound paranoid to you. But I would not assume an indirect conversation through any other medium is secure. Campagnolo is beside himself with rage. He has many friends in the security services. We must be prudent.”

This was not what Costa wished to hear.

“I can’t get involved in some vendetta between you and the prime minister.”

Sordi eyed him, half-amused. “You really think that’s what this is about? Personalities?”

“I don’t know. But …”

“Ugo Campagnolo is a highly flawed politician who feels, with some justification, that he’s been sidelined. I make no apologies for that. He should never have invited the summit to the heart of Rome in the first place. I cannot allow the man to take responsibility for the mess he’s created. He’s too keen to shake hands with the mighty to see the true picture, the genuine threat we face. I have a duty and I will fulfill it. As far as the main issue here—the Blue Demon—he’s a minor nuisance, nothing more. I would like him to remain that way.”

There was a noise from behind. Ranieri and his men were in the house.

“They’re looking for bugs,” Sordi explained. “Purely a precaution.”

“Bugs?” Costa asked, astonished.

“Bugs,” the president of Italy repeated, then pulled a corkscrew out of his jacket pocket and began to tug at the dusty bottle of Brunello. “Now, fetch a couple of glasses.”

Costa went back into the house. Ranieri’s men were wandering around the living room, headphones on, some kind of electronic equipment in their hands.

When he returned, Sordi had a cigarette in his mouth. He raised the bottle to the harsh outdoor lights, three bare bulbs, an ugly feature that Costa’s late wife, Emily, had nagged him to fix.

“This should have been opened hours ago. I’m wasting the state’s wine collection. Don’t tell.”

He looked at the glasses. Costa’s was already filled with orange juice.

“Oh, well,” the president sighed, and served himself an immodest measure. “I haven’t been here in a while. Did you throw out your father’s books?”

“Of course not.”

“Good,” he said, getting up suddenly. “Let’s look at them.”

Costa followed him back into the house. The library sprawled untidily across a set of shelves that spanned an entire wall in his father’s study.

“Here,” Sordi said, finding two copies among the foreign novels jumbled together in a section closest to the window. “Have you read them?”

They were by an English writer, Robert Graves.
I, Claudius
and
Claudius the God
.

“Years ago, but I don’t remember them much,” Costa admitted. “History’s not to my taste.”

“They’re about history only tangentially. In truth, they’re about us. The human animal. About society. How it works, or attempts to. How it fails when we forget our ties to one another. Read them again sometime, properly. Your father and I …”

Sordi opened the covers of each, so that he could see. Inside was an identical inscription:
To my dearest friend, Marco. From Dario, the turncoat
.

“We were still friends when I gave him these. Not for much longer, though. What came after—by which I mean the end of the commission
looking into the Blue Demon case—perhaps it was inevitable we would drift apart.”

He waved the books at Costa and placed them on Marco’s desk. “These were a gift I hoped might explain a little. Your father lived for his principles. He would rather die than compromise them. I …” Sordi grimaced. “A politician reaches a point in his life when he or she must decide. Do you wish to hold steadfast to your beliefs? Or do you become pragmatic and attempt to turn some small fraction of them into reality? I chose the latter, and look what it made me. A widower living in an isolated palace, with a slender grip on power and a prime minister who would send me off to an old people’s home if he could. King Lear of Rome. Perhaps your father was right. I betrayed what we once stood for.”