The Villa of Mysteries (13 page)

Until she came along he’d been of the opinion that Italian was the structured, civilized tongue he knew from books and newspapers and conversation with fellow students in the monastery school. Teresa Lupo dispelled this myth within a matter of weeks, filling his head with all manner of slang and colloquialisms so colourful and bizarre that, for the naÏve and awestruck Silvio Di Capua, it was as if he had entered some new and glorious world.

Even three years on he found listening to her in full, florid flow a thrilling experience, one that revealed arcane, hidden dimensions of profundity to a language transformed from that of his childhood. He swore like a trooper now too, not always appropriately and, he knew, without her masterful timing. On occasion he muffed his words, which had led to some awkward situations and, once, almost got him beaten up by a uniformed gorilla who misinterpreted a friendly jibe as some obscure hint at unnatural private practices.

Sometimes he wondered if he were in love with his boss. In his imagination this occurred in a wholesome, chaste and ethereal way, one that precluded physical sex, something Silvio Di Capua found as baffling and undesirable now as it was when first described to him in all its squalor fifteen years before in the school dormitory.

Nor would he dwell long on these thoughts. Di Capua accepted his failings. He was marginally shorter than Teresa. His thick black hair had begun to fall out when he was eighteen. Now it formed a priestly fringe around his bald skull, which, out of laziness, he allowed to grow lank and long. His voice was a scratchy falsetto that some found deeply annoying. He was chubby running to fat. His face was so blandly amorphous he had to reintroduce himself to people all the time. And he looked a good ten years younger than his true age. Silvio Di Capua’s life was an incidental happening in the passing of human history and he knew it. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop his admiring Teresa Lupo to the point of adoration, more with every new day of this warm spring.

There was, also, the matter of the nickname which had been inflicted on him the previous year by a garrulous traffic cop and stuck with a dogged and annoying persistence. No one dared call Teresa Lupo “Crazy Teresa” to her face. Silvio Di Capua’s standing within the morgue was less sure. He just had to learn to answer to it. On occasion even Teresa used the damn thing.

He’d just pushed the body from the bog back into what the morgue drones now called the shower when the thug from plainclothes appeared at the door. There was a dead junkie fresh on the slab awaiting Di Capua’s attention. Teresa had done a little work on the corpse — the usual overdose precheck, this time on a grubby hirsute man who’d been stripped for the examination — then passed it over to him with a few brief instructions before grabbing her coat and leaving. He was head down into the PC, logging some records, lost in thought.

“Hey, Monkboy,” the cop barked. “Why don’t you go to Google and type in ‘a life’? But before you do, tell me where Crazy Teresa is. Falcone says he wants that autopsy on his desk soonish and I, for one, don’t wish to disappoint him.”

Di Capua looked up from the screen and scowled at the moron. “
Doctor
Lupo is away from her desk.”

The detective was messing with some of the specimen trays, picking up scalpels, touching stuff he was supposed to leave alone. He sniffed over the corpse and then, gingerly, with the end of a pair of forceps, flicked the dead man’s grey, flaccid penis.

“Listen, sonny. Don’t get snappy with me. It’s bad enough dealing with her. What’s with that woman? It’s like the red flag’s flying every day of the month. Don’t tell me you got the same problem?”

Di Capua got up and walked in between the jerk and the cadaver, pushing the cop out of the way. “You should never go near junkies unless you’ve had the right injections,” he said. “There’s a theory doing the rounds now that you can catch AIDS just from the smell. Did you know that?”

The cop took one step back. “You’re kidding me.”

“Not at all. The early symptoms are very like this flu that’s doing the rounds. Sore throat. Mucus.” He paused. “And a nose so itchy you just can’t stop scratching it.”

The cop sniffed then started dabbing at his face with a grubby handkerchief. Di Capua pointed at the sign that hung on the wall above the dissecting table. “I don’t suppose you happen to read Latin?”

The cop stared at the words.
Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae
. “Sure. It says, ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here but it helps.’ ”

“Not quite. ‘This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live.’ ”

“What kind of crazy shit is that?”

Di Capua looked down at the corpse. The bloodless Y-incision Teresa had made earlier, from the shoulders to mid-chest then down to the pubic region, sat on the dead man’s flesh as dark, narrow lines. The same feature ran across the scalp which was now loose, ready to be reflected back to enable entry to the skull. Ordinarily, if they had the staff, he’d expect some assistance, but Teresa was gone and, what with the flu epidemic, there was no one else around. Except the cop.

“Pathologist shit,” he replied, and with a firm, sure hand took out the vibrating saw, turned back the loose scalp and began carefully to carve open the skull vault from the front.

The cop turned white then belched.

“Don’t throw up in a morgue, please,” Di Capua cautioned him. “It’s bad luck.”

“
Shit
,” the man gasped, watching goggle-eyed the path the small electric saw was taking.

“The preliminary report’s over there,” Di Capua said, nodding towards Teresa’s desk and the folder that sat next to the PC. “Note that word ‘preliminary.’ It’s just a scant first look. And next time, for your information, the name is Silvio. Or Dr. Di Capua. You got that?”

“Yeah,” the cop answered with a burp.

He watched the idiot vacate the room, clutching the report with one hand and his mouth with the other.

“What
is
all the fuss?” Di Capua wondered out loud. “It’s just a body, for chrissake.”

There were bigger things to worry about. Teresa, for one thing. Where she’d gone, feeling so mad he didn’t even dare question her wisdom. Why she was poking her nose into police work. Again. And, most of all, why she never noticed the way he felt.

“DO YOU KNOW what month this is?” Vergil Wallis asked. “The month of Mars. Do you know what that means?”

They sat in the main room of the fortified villa on the Janiculum Hill. The place was odd: half oriental, half classical Roman. There were statues from imperial times, copies maybe, next to delicate porcelain vases covered in Japanese designs: chrysanthemums and country scenes sparsely populated with stick figures. A slight, pretty, oriental girl in a long white smock served tea. Wallis scarcely noticed her presence.

In a brief conversation as they walked to the villa Rachele D’Amato had told them the man was long gone from the mob and now spent most of his time in Italy or Japan, source of his twin obsessions. In retirement he was a history freak: imperial Rome and the Edo period. Wallis looked about fifty, a good ten years younger than his true age. He was tall, fit and strong. His dark hair was cropped short. He possessed an alert, fine-featured face dominated by large, intelligent eyes which were constantly active. Without the benefit of D’Amato’s briefing, Costa would have said he had the dignified bearing of an intellectual or an artist. There was just one outward sign of his past that she’d warned him about. Before coming to Rome as an emissary for his bosses, Wallis had lived in Tokyo for several years, liaising with the
Sumiyoshi-gumi
, one of the three big Japanese yakuza families. Somewhere along the way the little finger of his left hand had gone missing in some kind of brotherhood ritual with the Japanese mob. Unlike most ex-yakuza gangsters, he didn’t try to disguise the loss with a prosthetic. Maybe Wallis seemed to think himself above that kind of trick. Or past it, if they were to believe Rachele D’Amato. It occurred to Costa, too, that this act was in itself a ritual, one of belonging, in this case brotherhood. If Teresa Lupo was right, something similar had claimed the life of his stepdaughter.

“War,” Costa said. “Mars is the god of war.”

Wallis beckoned to the girl for more green tea. “Right. But he was much more than that. Indulge me. This is how
I
amuse myself these days, for half the year anyway, when I’m here.” His Italian was near perfect. If Nic Costa closed his eyes he could have convinced himself he was in the presence of a native. Wallis’s soft, intelligent tones sounded like those of a university professor. “Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus. In a sense he was the very father of Rome. They worshipped him more for that than his warlike aspect. The month of Mars was about the health of the state, which for Romans meant the health of the world. It was about rebirth and renewal through the exercise of power and force.”

“And sacrifice?” Costa asked.

Wallis looked around him, considering his answer. “Maybe. Who knows what you would have seen on this spot two thousand years ago?” He scanned their baffled faces. “You don’t know? Really. I thought the DIA knew everything. I built this villa from scratch ten years ago, on the site of an old temple. It filled my time. I have plenty to fill. Some of the pieces you see here came out of the ground. You won’t tell the Soprintendenza Archeological, will you? I’ve left them to the city in my will. It won’t harm anyone if they spend a little time with me, surely? You’ve got plenty else besides.”

“We’re not here about statues,” Rachele D’Amato said.

Wallis stared at her and there was a note of icy disdain in his dark eyes. “Listen to the Roman talking. You grow up in a place like this and walk around with your eyes closed. Still, people change. It was easier to handle the planning people a decade ago than it would be now. They were more . . . pliable. I would never have done this today, of course. They’re different. So am I.” He waited. “Signora. You’re from the DIA. We’ve met before, of course. Twice is it? Three times?”

“Twice I believe.”

“Quite. I was generous with my time then. I don’t feel that way anymore. This doesn’t require your presence. You know as well as anyone that I retired not long after my stepdaughter disappeared. You’ve no cause to be here now. I can understand why, in the present circumstances, the police have to call. But I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Peroni caught Costa’s eye, winked and held up a sly thumb.

“I know all this—” she said, taken aback by his frankness.

He interrupted her. “Then why are you here?”

“Because of who you were.”

“Were,” he repeated. “I try to take this lightly but you must understand. These are recollections of a double loss for me.”

“A double loss?” she asked.

“My wife died in New York not long after Eleanor disappeared.”

The memory broke her confidence. “I forgot,” D’Amato stuttered. “I apologize.”

“You forgot?” He seemed more perplexed than offended. “A detail like that?”

She was struggling to come up with something to keep this conversation alive.

“What happened?” Costa asked, trying to help.

“Ask her.” He nodded. “Like I said. They’re supposed to know everything.”

“I don’t recall,” she murmured.

“No?” There was a brief hint of ironic victory on Wallis’s handsome face. It gave Nic Costa pause for thought: something dark still lurked inside this man. “Read the files. My wife and I separated a year before this happened. I rented an apartment for her on the fiftieth floor of a block near Rockefeller Center. Shortly after Eleanor went missing she stepped off the balcony.”

The three men looked at each other. Costa knew what each of them was thinking: it was impossible to work out precisely how Wallis felt about this event.

“I’m sorry. Nevertheless,” D’Amato persisted, “the protocols demand that the DIA are present if the police interview someone with your kind of record.”

Wallis smiled wanly. “What record? No one’s ever prosecuted me for a thing. I’ve never confessed to any crime. Perhaps I have never
committed
any crime.”

“Then I apologize but it’s how it must be.”

Wallis shrugged. “The Italian love of bureaucracy is one of the few things about this country I fail to understand. I don’t wish to offend, Signora, but I will repeat myself: you are out of line. I don’t see how I can refuse to speak to the police in these circumstances. You are different.” He pointed to the double doors that led outside to the patio. “This is nothing personal. You must go. If you don’t, I talk to no one. Please . . .”

“I . . .” she stuttered, looking at Falcone for support. The inspector shrugged his shoulders. Peroni uttered a low chuckle.

“This is wholly improper,” she hissed, rising from her seat. “We . . .” she glared at Falcone, “. . . will talk outside.”

Wallis smiled and watched her walk brusquely out the door. “There’s a Japanese saying: ‘Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend.’ Not always. A shame. She’s a charming woman.”

“First time I heard her called that,” Peroni grumbled.

Wallis looked at him, just a hint of reproach in his eyes. “You think you’ve found my stepdaughter. Are you sure?”

“We’re sure,” Falcone said.

“So why the hell has it taken this long for you to tell me? It’s two weeks since that body turned up.”

Falcone was off his guard. “You knew we had a body?”

“Give me credit,” Wallis said pleasantly. “Eleanor may not have been mine but I loved her anyway. She was a great kid. Bright, charming, interested. I loved her mother too, not that it was easy. I blame myself for most of that. But Eleanor . . .”

His eyes sparkled when he spoke of her. “She took every good point her mother possessed and just made it bigger. Even at sixteen she was just full of life, involved in everything. History. Language.” He waved his hands around the room. “Let me tell you something I never told that woman from the DIA. Together Eleanor and her mother gave me . . . this.”

“How?” Costa wondered.

Some long-hidden pain flickered in his eyes. “Because they made me realize it existed. They had the education. They opened the eyes of some kid from the ghetto who’d only dreamed about things up till then. The guys back home put me through a law degree. I got a taste for Latin through that. But until Eleanor and her mom came along I just didn’t get it. The irony is that, if she were alive today, I wouldn’t be what I am. It was her disappearance made me consider what I was. Her loss reshaped my life. It was a bum deal for her. I wish it had never happened.”