The Villa of Mysteries (46 page)

It had never occurred to her how family shaped a man in such small, unpredictable ways. All her preconceptions about Peroni seemed false.

“Gianni,” she said softly. “What the hell happened to you? Have you seen a doctor about that?”

He laughed. “It’s a punch in the face, for Christ’s sake. Ask me something important. Ask me about her reasons.”

“Which are?” she asked and wondered whether she really wanted to know.

“Good ones,” Peroni replied and pulled up some photos on the computer.

Teresa Lupo watched as he flicked through shot after shot and wished she’d stayed where she belonged, safe in the morgue.

Peroni pointed to one of a contemporary Randolph Kirk standing at the dig in Ostia, clearly unaware someone was furtively taking his picture. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement and perhaps a little fear. “We’ve still no idea who she is really. According to the British the only woman of that name with a current passport is sixty-seven years old. Also we found these—”

There was a pile of passports on the table. “Another British one. American. Canadian. New Zealand. She looks different on every one. Different hair colour. Different style. If you’d given me this back when I was on narcotics and asked me her true profession, I’d have said she was a mule. But we just don’t know. She’s into photography though. This . . .” he picked up the picture of Kirk, “. . . was the inspiration for the photo she gave us to establish a link between Kirk and Suzi. It never existed. She just took his head from that picture and pasted it into the background of one she had of Suzi at the fountain.
Kirk was never there. Kirk never threatened anyone
.”

“Perhaps,” Falcone said, “it was the other way round. She was blackmailing Kirk.”

Teresa tried hard to think about Miranda Julius. If it was an act, it was a very good one.

Peroni pulled out an envelope, extracted two prints and she believed there was a glimmer of light in the darkness. These were, it seemed, from the series she had been handed by Regina Morrison. They had the same seamy quality, the same backdrop. The time was sixteen years earlier. In one the young Miranda Julius — or whatever she was really called — stood next to Emilio Neri, a big, innocent smile on her face, a glass of something in her hand. Flowers in her younger, brighter blonde hair, the petals falling down onto that stupid ceremonial shift. Teresa Lupo wanted to pick the thing up and tear it into shreds, unwind the years.

He took out the second print and placed it over the first. Miranda was naked now, pale body lolling back drunkenly on what looked like a cheap, fake Roman couch. Her legs were wound round the large, cloaked body of a man who was pumping away for all he was worth and not getting very far either. It was Beniamino Vercillo, already looking old and past it. Teresa stared into the blank eyes of that young face and tried to imagine what it would be like to be in that room. Maybe they thought Miranda was so out of it she didn’t understand what was happening. That if they poured enough booze and dope down these dumb kids they’d forget half of what went on and think the rest was as much their fault as anyone’s. You could work that trick on someone like Barbara Martelli, particularly if you threw in a nice job in the police as a reward. It wasn’t like that for Miranda. There was physical pain there. There was resentment, hatred too at having this animal steal her innocence on some cheap couch in a stinking damp cave.

“There are more,” Peroni said, reaching for the prints.

Falcone abruptly put his hand on the envelope. “Not now.” He looked at her a little slyly. “So what do you think?”

It didn’t require a genius. She smoothed back her dark hair, wondering how bad she looked just then. The work clothes were back on. Her mind was in order. But she still felt out of sorts. “Miranda, or whoever she was, came back for vengeance. But why wait so long?”

“Because this wasn’t just about getting raped by these creeps,” Peroni said. “One of those girls died and Neri told everyone it was a drug overdose. He told Wallis that too. From what we’ve seen it must have been a pretty plausible story. Until we fished that body out of the bog.”

There was some logic there, she thought. Just not enough. “So why doesn’t she just kill the bastard? Why go to this trouble?”

Peroni took out a handkerchief and dabbed his damaged eye, which was surely leaking something and must have hurt like hell. “Which bastard would that be?” he wondered. “Mickey? Maybe. Maybe she’s not sure. Maybe she knew all along and was just too scared to say. Until she realizes she can finally prove it and, bingo, it’s the first plane to Rome. So one day Barbara picks up the phone and it’s Miranda saying, ‘Hi, guess who’s in town and you’ll never guess what I heard. Our old initiation girlfriend from the fuck club didn’t OD. Some bastard cut her throat and got away with it.’ Can you imagine Barbara, even the somewhat crooked Barbara we now know existed, enjoying that?”

Teresa Lupo continued to be amazed by the respect they gave their murderous former colleague. She bent down, removed the handkerchief from him, dabbed gently at the wound. Peroni was right. Nothing was cut. It was just swelling, and some weeping from the bruised eye. She touched the corner of his cheek lightly to remove some of the liquid.

“This would explain why the lovely Barbara wanted to put a bullet in my head too, presumably. You can dab away anything wet here, Gianni, but if you touch anyplace else I’m confiscating the hankie and sending you to hospital. Understood?”

Peroni wriggled in his tight grey suit, took back the hankie and touched it gingerly on the precise spot. “Thanks. Be honest with yourself, Teresa. In her shoes, in those circumstances, what did you expect her to do?
Explain
? These were women with a mission. God help anyone who got in their way.”

Falcone bent down and peered into Peroni’s damaged face. “Miranda did kill someone. Beniamino Vercillo. We’ve got the mask. It was dumped in a bin nearby. It’s got blonde hairs on it. I’d put money on them being hers. She had the personal motive. We’ve got the proof here. But she also wanted to expose those papers and bring Neri down for good. It wasn’t enough, all this stuff about the missing girl. We’d got distracted then by Barbara killing Kirk.”

“And me . . . nearly,” she interjected.

“And you,” he agreed. “All the same, she had to keep the pressure up. She identified that hair-band from Ostia which could have belonged to anyone. She identified Mickey when I doubt he’s even been near whoever ‘Suzi’ really is. The rest, I don’t know. Maybe it would be hard for her to get to Neri and Mickey. Maybe . . . He’ll be OK, won’t he?”

Falcone was grasping for ideas in the dark and struggling to find them.

“He’ll be fine if he can stop poking it,” she replied. Teresa recalled what Regina Morrison had said about the ritual and the roles each participant would play. “She’s what they made her, Neri and the rest. A Maenad. A woman who’s all sweetness and light, a warm bed and anything else you want when times are good. And the banshee from hell when she feels she, or one of the sisterhood, has been wronged. Think of it from Miranda’s point of view.” She pointed at the picture, with the figure in the mask humping and grunting away. “Who would you want to kill? Just this sad bastard?”

“The whole damn lot of them,” Peroni said softly. “As nastily as possible. I’d want to watch them tear each other apart and dance on their graves afterwards.”

They looked at each other, lost for words. Then a woman officer walked through, smiled briefly at Teresa Lupo, and said, “We’ve picked up Neri’s lieutenant and a couple of sidekicks. In Cerchi. They’re not talking.”

Peroni raised a crooked, bloodied eyebrow. “Is that so?”

EMILIO NERI SAT at the head of the old table, smoking a Cohiba, ignoring his son, toying with the black gun he’d owned for years, used so many times it was like another limb. Thick grey cigar fumes curled their way up into the darkness, swirling on some unseen current. He watched Vergil Wallis walk in. The American was carrying a leather bag on one outstretched arm and had the other high up in the air.

Neri looked him up and down and said, “You met the guys outside?”

“Yeah. What’s his name? Bucci?”

Neri hated this man. He had no business knowing the names of his lieutenants. “He’s a good guy. I trust him. All the same—”

He waved the gun at Wallis. “Put the bag on the table. Take the coat off. Throw it on the floor. Then stand upright, keep your arms out. Fuck around and I just shoot you now.”

Wallis carefully eased the coat off, let it fall, then held his breath as Neri got up and walked round him, patting in all the right places, making sure.

“You can sit,” the old man said finally, indicating a seat at the table with the gun. Then he went back to the other side and resumed his place next to Mickey. “Show me the cash. Don’t reach inside or anything. Just turn it upside down and let me see.”

Wallis took the bottom of the bag and upsided the thing. Banknotes, big denominations, tucked into wads straight from the till, fell onto the table.

Neri gave it a derisory stare. “So this dumb shit of a son of mine’s willing to cause all this anguish for this. What an idiot. I’d have given him more as spending money if he’d asked.”

“Perhaps,” Wallis wondered, “that was the point. He got tired of asking. He wanted a little independence.”

Neri laughed and cast a brief glance at Mickey. “That worked, huh?” Then he looked at the pictures plastering the room. “What is it you think this is buying you, Vergil? That kid Mickey has stashed somewhere? Don’t ask me about it. I don’t know no details and I don’t want to. He was just playing freelance there. That kind of thing’s beneath me, but I guess you know that.”

Wallis frowned. “I got asked to come. I came.”

“You want justice or something?”

“Or something.”

“OK.”

Neri reached into his pocket, took out a knife, flicked open the blade and placed it on the table. He motioned to Mickey with the gun. “I’m a fair man. I’m going to let you take him. I got to be honest with you, I nearly did the same myself sixteen years ago. I mean, you got a nice party going, you’re thinking everyone’s having a good time. Then what happens? Your dumb kid comes in all doped up to the eyeballs, hysterical and weeping, saying look, look, look. Here’s my girlfriend, dead as they come, throat cut from ear to ear. And I watch him twitching away like that and I think, let’s make it two. Because this worthless piece of shit surely deserves it after what he’s done. I don’t know about you but I was never into beating up women. I’d kill them if it was necessary. But not out of anger or some weird doped-up pleasure. Also . . .” Neri took a last puff of the cigar then threw it on the floor, “. . . it spoiled a damn good evening. Had to cover up stuff to make sure you wouldn’t hear of it for one thing. Not that I remember the details, to be honest with you. Got to admit I was a little out of things myself.”

He looked for some sign of emotion on Wallis’s face. The American sat impassive, with his hands palm down on the table.

“We were all out of it,” Neri continued. “It was a lapse of concentration. Dangerous. But, hell, it was a good party anyway. From what I recall I banged three different girls. Adele being the best, which is why we ended up getting hitched in the end. But three! All in one night. Something else.”

He leaned forward, grinning. “What about you, Vergil? Tell me. Man to man. How many you’d bang, huh?”

SHE HOLDS HIS HEAD. Her tongue, chattering, chattering, soaks his cheek in desperate saliva.

What do you see
? she says.

Costa’s peering down the blackness, half visible as a corridor in front of him, trying to fight the confusion in his mind, trying to think of some way out.

You know what I see, he says.

Miranda takes his head in her hands, forces him to look into her bright eyes. No, Nic. Not what you know already. When you look into the corner. What do you see?

In his imagination, formed by her suggestions, he sees her for sure now. A huddled shape, wretched with fear and shame, hiding in the darkness, thinking itself safe.

What’s she thinking
? Miranda asks.

Tell me.

Her voice starts to break.
She sees, she knows, she never has the guts to tell
.

In the waking dream the figure sobs, bites her hand, trying to stifle the noise.

Who is she, Nic? Who
?

“YOU DON’T WANT TO SAY. Well, I guess it could be boasting.”

Wallis leaned back in his chair looking bored, saying nothing.

“Maybe you don’t remember, huh? It’s a long time ago. Which was what puzzled me, you see. When all this shit started happening. When we got to know that body was this stepdaughter of yours. I mean, a
stepdaughter
. Not like she’s your own flesh and blood, is it? You don’t have any of your own flesh and blood, do you? Problems down there or something?”

Wallis nodded at Mickey. “You think I’m jealous?”

Neri laughed and took the point. “Over this piece of shit? Nah. Who would be? But I know Mickey. He’s just a weak, stupid kid, same as he was then. And all this crap got me wondering. Got me trying to remember, which is hard after all this time. And you know one thing I remember?”

Wallis peered at his nails.

“Vergil, Vergil. This is important. This is the fate of your stepdaughter I’m talking about.”

“What do you remember, Emilio?” Wallis snapped.

“Two things now I come to think about it. Once Mickey started blubbing on about how he’d got the stupid kid pregnant I didn’t even ask why he’d cut her throat. And one other. She just didn’t get the game we were supposed to be playing. You said she’d get turned on by that jerk from the university. That we’d all be having fun. And we did, all except her. She didn’t want to fuck with anyone but Mickey. I asked, all nice and polite. Toni Martelli did too. And it was all just those flashing eyelashes, and lemme get you another drink, and then what do you know, she’s off with Mickey again. Maybe it wasn’t her kind of party. Maybe she was like that because — I got to be blunt here — it wasn’t the first time for her, like it was for the rest. And that, if you recall, was one of the rules that university guy you found for us laid down. He said bad things would happen otherwise. Maybe he was right. Where did you find him by the way? The cops seem to think he was something to do with me. As if—”