The Blue Demon

by David Hewson

  He was poking at the silver metal behind the propeller with a wrench. She opened the flimsy cabin door—the window was little more than clear plastic sheeting attached to a bare metal-tube frame. Then she eased herself into the right-hand seat and played with the joystick in the center, aware of the intense way Petrakis watched her from the other side of the windshield.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he ordered.

  “I’ve never been in a little plane before.” Anna found herself avoiding his eyes. In truth she had never been in a plane at all until they spirited her away to Pakistan.

  The panels and instruments were in front of the left seat—the pilot’s, she guessed. There weren’t many. It didn’t look complicated.

  Petrakis was eyeing her avidly, and there was something soft, something intriguing in his eyes that she liked.

  He put down the wrench.

  “I need to check the engine. The way everything is rigged. There’s only so much you can manage on the ground. You can come along, if you like.”

  “Oh.”

  She was surprised by the note of excitement in her voice.

  “It’s got a little autopilot,” he added. “Just a couple of cheap servos hooked up to the ADI. The only way to work out if it’s accurate is to take the thing up.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Put on your belt,” Petrakis ordered.

  She began to wrestle with the buckle. He seized the little plane’s nose and pulled the aircraft out of the hangar, hauling it until they stopped next to the brown grass of the strip.

  “Don’t you need to swing the propeller or something?” she asked as he clambered into the pilot’s seat.

  “This is the twenty-first century,” Petrakis said, smiling so freely at that moment, Anna Ybarra felt she was in the presence of a stranger.

  He strapped on his belt and brought the engine to life. Its odd, high-pitched whine made her grip the seat tightly in anticipation. Then he edged the push-pull throttle forward and they moved onto the makeshift runway. The miniature aircraft picked up speed with a rapidity that threw her back into her seat. Its tiny frame was shaking around her, as if it might fall to bits. The volume rose, the vibration made her feel giddy. He watched the dials and then, when some magic moment was reached, jerked back on the stick, bringing up the nose, and they were airborne, free of the earth, unhooked from gravity, climbing more rapidly than she thought possible, as if on some fairground ride that didn’t know when to stop.

  It took only a couple of minutes for them to reach a height where she felt as if she were in a real plane, high above the earth. To the north she could see the flat Maremma coast stretching toward the outline of Monte Argentario, a place they’d visited four days before, to eat fish at some fancy restaurant in Orbetello. In the distance, to the south, was the ugly smear of smog that was Rome.

  “Here,” Petrakis shouted over the engine noise, giving her the stick. “Fly straight and level. No sudden movements.”

  She gripped the control between them. It shook in her hands, as if the plane wished to resist. Petrakis wrapped his fingers round hers and taught her how to manage the thing. It was obvious, really. She kept the stick stiff and immobile and the aircraft followed, as if in harness to it.

  He looked pleased. Almost impressed.

  “How does it feel?” she yelled over the wind and the engine noise.

  “What? Flying?”

  “No. Knowing they’re afraid of you.”

  “Of us,” he corrected, watching her.

  “Of us.”

  “It feels good,” he answered, and abruptly grabbed the control from her.

  She didn’t know what he did then, but it felt wonderful. The tiny plane turned and became locked into some steep circling turn. Her body was thrust down into the cheap plastic seat by the force of the maneuver. They were both giggling like kids, though he was checking things too: tapping panels, looking at readings there, getting through the jobs he had in mind all along. He was never far away from that, even a thousand feet or so above the Etruscan countryside in little more than a motorized kite.

  “I wish I could fly,” she said softly.

  “You did fly, Anna. You have.”

  “Not really,” she murmured, and found herself hoping he hadn’t noticed the doubt she felt, the uncertainty that was never far from the surface.

  He wasn’t listening. Andrea Petrakis was staring down through the open side window, onto a shallow, bowl-like expanse of dry farmland—olive groves and empty fields—stretching behind the town of Tarquinia that sat beneath the left wing.

  “We need to go back,” he said, and his voice sounded the way it did on the ground, hard and determined.

  “No,” she said, looking at the blazing horizon. “Not yet.”

  He looked at her and it was the old Andrea.

  Without saying another word, he moved the stick. The little plane turned on its axis, then rolled into a steep descent, toward the coast and the villa in the lowlands.

  28

  IT TOOK THEM MORE THAN AN HOUR TO FIND THE PLACE, tracing and retracing the tiny rural lanes that crisscrossed the hills behind the town. The site turned out to be a tract of land in a dip along a winding single lane to the hill village of Monte Romano. The main road was half a kilometer away. Few people would pass by; even fewer would see the archaeological site located in a shady rectangle cut from the lines of straggling trees.

  Costa told Mirko Oliva to pull over. There were three flashlights in the trunk. The light was failing. The dying sun hung as a bloody red disc sinking toward the hidden Tyrrhenian Sea past the line of the ridge.

  “Can we eat something after this, boss?” Oliva asked.

  “Yes, Mirko,” he said patiently.

  Rosa took the flashlight he offered. She looked exhausted. Events in the city seemed to hang over them all, impossible to dismiss or discuss in any meaningful way.

  “Why are we here, Nic?” Rosa asked.

  “If you’d been living in a foreign land, a distant one. For twenty years. Among people from a very different culture. People who didn’t speak your language … Then one day you came back to the country where you grew up. Wouldn’t you want to take a look around the places you used to know?”

  “He’d be happy out there,” Oliva said. “In Afghanistan.”

  They stared at him.

  “He thinks he’s an Etruscan, doesn’t he?” the young officer explained. “Centuries ago … They must have been hard men. Maybe Andrea would feel more at home out there than here. We’re all Italians now. We’re soft, aren’t we?”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” Costa observed.

  “Pleased to be of assistance, sir,” the young officer said with a little bow.

  Rosa was laughing at him. Costa looked at her and smiled.

  Mirko Oliva nodded at the clearing in the woods. “So is this where the Blue Demon lives? The real one? The scary one?”

  “Guess so,” Rosa agreed.

  His genial face fell. “Can I ask a favor, boss? If this involves going down there … You need someone to stay up here. Let it be me. I don’t much like being underground. I get claustrophobic. It’s like being in the grave. If you really need me …”

  “Did you mention all this at the interview board?” Rosa demanded, staring at him.

  “Yes,” the young officer answered, “but they sounded desperate.”

  Costa had no idea whether or not that was a joke. He phoned Falcone to brief and be briefed. Then he agreed that Oliva would remain outside, in touch with Rome if need be, keeping an eye open for anything that might be useful.

  After that, he and Rosa went off with their flashlights to the tomb in the woods.

  29

  THEY CONTINUED TO WORK IN THE APARTMENT IN THE Via di San Giovanni in Laterano, listening to families return to the neighboring homes, grumbling out in the corridor, resigning themselves to days of uncertainty and disruption.

  Teresa Lu
po had rarely been so close to the hourly grind of investigative research and fact-checking, and it both surprised and impressed her. Peroni and Falcone would take a single name attached to a report on the Blue Demon investigation, then try to forge some connections. If there were none in the computer systems, they would look through whatever online news-service reports they could track down. When that failed, they turned to the phone directories, calling people with the same last name, asking if they knew of someone who’d been involved in the case.

  It was a painstaking, hit-and-miss process. One that should have been undertaken by a substantial team of officers. Not two middle-aged cops who were struggling to make any headway at all. Peroni’s pale, damaged face seemed more bloodless than usual. Falcone’s lean, tanned features had lost their customary urgency, and his eyes, usually so sharp, were fast becoming glazed and weary.

  Around six they took a call from the team in Porto Ercole. Falcone put Costa on the speakerphone, and so they listened to the story of Aldo Bartoli, the drunk who had, perhaps, confessed to murdering the carabiniere he believed had killed his brother. Why had Lorenzo Bartoli died? No one had any good answers, and Costa wanted to be on his way. The information gave Falcone some focus, though.

  Teresa was making one more round of coffees—the best support she felt able to give at that moment—when Peroni whooped with something close to joy.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth Murray asked, lifting her head up from the file reports that Falcone had given her.

  “Ettore Rufo. I tracked down a relative. Rufo moved to America within a year of leaving the Carabinieri.” He waved a piece of paper in the air. “Got a restaurant now. In Chicago. Called it after himself.” Peroni looked at Falcone. “You want me to ask about a reservation?”

  “Do it,” the inspector ordered.

  Elizabeth Murray watched him, worried. “This might get back to Rome,” she cautioned.

  “It’s the only name we’ve picked up all day,” the inspector complained. “I’ll take that risk.”

  Peroni was on the phone already. Teresa Lupo sat next to him, playing with the computer keyboard, listening, a little in awe as she always was when he turned on both the pressure and the charm, switching from Italian to English and back, talking his way past whoever answered the phone. It was lunchtime in Chicago, and by the sound of it Ettore Rufo had wound up with a busy restaurant.

  She did a search on the name and found out that her instincts were right: Rufo’s looked big and popular on its website, full of leather seating and shiny tables, pretty waitresses bearing cocktails, a couple of chefs holding steak and lobster aloft. It was all a long way from a bloody shoot-out in the Maremma. The obvious question rose in her head: Would a payoff from the Carabinieri really fund a venture of this scale?

  “Ettore?” Peroni cried, when he finally got through. “It’s Martelli. Calling from Rome. You remember? We talked twenty years ago when we were on the Blue Demon case together.”

  Then he hit the speaker button so they could all hear.

  “Twenty years ago … I don’t remember much,” said a cold, unpleasant voice. “No one called Martelli, either. Who are you?”

  “I was a cop then.”

  “Weren’t no cops involved. Who the hell is this? Gimme your badge number.”

  “Sure,” Peroni answered, and rattled off some digits. “You want to call me back?”

  “No. I wanna make sure you don’t bother me no more.”

  “Why’s that? You’re in Chicago. It’s all safe there, Ettore. I’m in Rome. You don’t watch the news? That bastard Petrakis has popped up again. I thought you’d want to help.”

  “Petrakis, Petrakis …” Ettore Rufo sounded as if he never wanted to hear the name again. “I got a restaurant to run. Who are you?”

  “Just a cop. Just looking for answers.”

  “Some cop. You didn’t even ask me a question.”

  “You sure about that? Also, I wanted to pass on some more news. We found the guy who killed your friend Cattaneo.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “You remember Beppe?” Peroni pressed. “The two of you went to Tarquinia. Got in a shoot-out with those three kids in the shack that belonged to the Petrakis family. Some local officer died.”

  “I remember. Who the hell …?”

  “The brother killed your friend.”

  “Whose brother?” the voice on the phone yelled.

  Peroni sighed, as if exasperated. “Does the catering business make you slow or something? Lorenzo Bartoli’s brother. Seems he came to believe those kids in the shack didn’t shoot Lorenzo at all. You two did. You and Cattaneo. So Cattaneo got it in the head in his car a while back. I have the pictures here somewhere. You think I should email them? Not pretty. Best you finish your lunch first.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’d just like to know the truth, Ettore. It might help us stop him from coming after you. Can’t pick him up ’cause, to be honest, his confession is a little shaky, see. Not one he will repeat for the lawyers, even if we had some means of bringing him in. Which we don’t, not right now.”

  “This thing is closed.…”

  “Don’t they have TVs in Chicago? You’ve watched what’s happening here and you’re telling me it’s closed?”

  “For me it is.”

  “Not if Aldo Bartoli finds you, Ettore. He’s a dedicated man. Real angry too. If someone was to point his attention to some nice restaurant in Chicago … What does an airline ticket cost these days? You get my point? If I can find you, so can he. With a little help. This is in your interest, just as much as ours.”

  “You don’t have the first clue what you’re into,” Rufo snarled, then the line went dead.

  “He may have a point,” Elizabeth Murray said quietly.

  “I’ve a good mind to call up Aldo Bartoli and give him the bastard’s address,” Peroni grumbled. “Ettore’s a Roman. He knows what’s going on here. And he doesn’t even ask what it’s like. How bizarre is that?”

  The phone on the table rang, so loud it made Teresa jump. Peroni stabbed the speaker button and said, “Ettore?”

  It was Costa again, calling from the car. “You found Rufo?” he asked.

  “Don’t be so quick off the mark. It makes us old guys feel, well, old.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Selling pizza in Chicago. Too busy to talk to the likes of us. You got something?”

  After the visit to Tarquinia, Costa wanted Falcone to consider the possibility that Petrakis and his team were not in Rome at all, but out in the countryside, dashing in and out of the city as they pleased.

  “Unlikely,” the inspector commented when Costa finished speaking. “They need resources. Good transport access. Speed. Terrorists work from urban locations.”

  “That,” said Costa, a little sharply, “is conventional thinking. It’s not going to get us anywhere. All I’m asking is that you consider the possibility they’re in the Tarquinia area. That …”

  The call became muffled. Teresa thought she heard something competing with the sound of Nic’s voice, a high-pitched drone, like that of a far-off scooter somewhere in the background.

  “… we’re going to take one last look anyway.”

  “Nic …” she found herself saying.

  But the line was dead. The three young officers were out in the bare, empty Maremma. Teresa could picture some of the places she’d visited out there: beautiful sights, old and rich in history, separated by long stretches of desolate wilderness.

  “I’m going to call that bastard Rufo again,” Peroni growled.

  “No,” Falcone told him. “He won’t talk. We’ve done enough. Go home. Get some sleep.”

  “Can we even get home?” Teresa asked.

  “You can,” Silvio Di Capua said. He showed them a map on the computer screen, the Carabinieri’s official ruling on where the public could and could not go. A red ring marked out a lozenge-shaped forbidden zone in the city’s
center, from the road past the Forum to the Quirinale hill, then down again to the Piazza Venezia. Teresa Lupo couldn’t imagine the constantly bustling center of her native city depopulated in this way. It was eerie, wrong.

  “We can go by the river,” Falcone pointed out.

  “You can stay with us, Silvio, if you like.”

  Her deputy lived way out in the suburbs and had left his car at the Questura. Even if he managed to retrieve it, there was no guarantee how long it would take to drive home, or to get back in the morning.

  “Silvio and I discussed this,” Elizabeth Murray told them. “There’s plenty of space here.”

  Outside, a siren sounded. Almost immediately another, more distant, appeared to answer its call, then a third, then another. This was not their city anymore. They were simply one more group of civilians, trapped by the machinations of Andrea Petrakis and the state’s response to them.

  “What is it?” Teresa asked, seeing the expression on Peroni’s face.

  “The Petrakis couple were messing around with drugs,” he said, looking at Falcone. “Or so Aldo Bartoli seems to think.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “They wouldn’t dare do that without permission.” Peroni reached for the old, battered address book he kept in his jacket pocket. “Let me call a man with a past. See if he’s hungry.”

  30

  THERE WAS A SINGLE HUMPBACKED MOUND, MUCH LIKE the ones they had seen at the public site on the outskirts of Tarquinia. Around the perimeter was a low, rusty barbed-wire fence. Parched grass surrounded the grave site. A narrow path of bare earth ran from an unlocked gate to a metal door set against the nearest side of the knoll that rose ahead in the trees.

  “Someone’s been here,” Rosa said, looking at the ground.

  “We know that already,” Costa replied. “It could just have been sightseers.”

  “Out here? Have you ever been inside one of these things?”