The Villa of Mysteries (33 page)

“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?”