by David Hewson
She left it there.
Teresa, astonished, asked, “You really think these bastards would go to those lengths to make some kind of obscure point? Why, for God’s sake?”
Falcone didn’t let the policewoman answer.
“To see how long it would take us to figure out what they were doing. Rosa’s right. This is a game, a test. The kick they get out of taunting us is as much a part of their pleasure as the crime itself.”
He stabbed a long finger at another message. This time Costa read it.
“The mouth of darkness truly bites.
Unlike the mouth of truth.
Ask dirty sweet Laeticia.”
“ ‘The mouth of darkness’ is presumably a play on the name Buccafusca,” Falcone said. “This one was pinned to Abate Luigi the day after an Angolan illegal immigrant, Laeticia Candido, landed in hospital. The staff—not the victim—called the Questura. She’d been found unconscious near the Bocca della Verità. The mouth of darkness and the mouth of truth.” He appeared stiff with visible outrage.
“The woman had bite marks on her breasts and other parts of her torso. The bites removed substantial amounts of flesh. She will be scarred for life. The only thing she would say about her attackers was that they carried a camera and filmed her throughout.”
Peroni gazed at the pages on the table and let loose a long, pained sigh.
“When Susanna Placidi’s people asked for a statement,” Falcone continued, “Laeticia Candido wouldn’t even file a complaint. If it weren’t for the message, we wouldn’t know there was a connection at all, which is one more reason why they send us these things. Now she’s gone. Home probably. I have the Angolan police looking and some of our officers on the way to help. I am not hopeful.”
Costa had a sudden picture in his head: the Bocca della Verità, where lines of happy tourists queued patiently to place a hand into the gap of an Imperial-era water cover, believing a spoken lie might snap it off, just as Gregory Peck promised Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. This was central Rome, out in the open, next to the busy Lungotevere, an area where street safety had never been an issue.
“How the hell can this happen, Leo?” Teresa asked, outraged. “Why didn’t someone pick it up?”
He frowned. “Susanna Placidi didn’t have the experience, the imagination, or the learning. Or the witnesses. We believe those women who survived the attacks were paid off, as was Laeticia Candido. We don’t have a single signed statement, one we could use in court. As far as we know, most victims have returned home, doubtless carrying the kind of money they wouldn’t pick up working the streets. Or they’re dead in that hellhole in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. What does that leave us? A few anonymous emails mentioning this odd and inexplicable term, ‘the Ekstasists,’ and some vile street graffiti that seemed unconnected until Rosa here put two and two together. Meanwhile, Placidi ignored everything of use and simply marched in on those grinning aristocrats, thinking they’d hold out their hands the moment they saw a badge.”
“Why did she do that?” Costa asked. “She must have had evidence.”
He caught the dark thunder in Rosa Prabakaran’s face.
“It was a routine follow-up. We had Malaspina’s licence plate caught on CCTV. Nothing more. We were just going through the routine and . . .”
They waited. She shook her head.
“You need to meet him to understand. He laughed at us. It was subtle. He didn’t say an incriminating word. He didn’t need to. I was there, with Placidi, and both of us knew immediately it was him. He wanted us to know. It was what he planned. And . . .” She raised her slender shoulders in a gesture of frustration. “Then Placidi did what Malaspina wanted of us all along, I guess. Brought in everyone, demanded DNA, warrants, the lot. We had nothing except a licence number and a smirk on that stuck-up face. It was impossible. Unbelievable. Malaspina and his cronies walked free because we lacked the evidence, and we never even tried to lay these messages at their door.”
“It’s not unbelievable at all.” Falcone reached for the photograph of the man, drawing a finger over his fine, dark features. “It’s the sequence of events he had in place for the moment we came for him.”
Rosa said something caustic under her breath.
“I know, I know,” Falcone said with a pained sigh. “You tried to tell Placidi. But this is a highly unusual case, and we are temperamentally inclined to struggle with anything that lies outside the norm. Would I have made the same mistake if you’d come to me? I’d certainly have wanted some answers. The rape unit doesn’t have that stretch of the imagination. It’s about rape. And this”—his eyes drifted to the window—“is about a lot more than that somehow.” He stared at the messages. “The Ekstasists. Why would wealthy, powerful young men wish to capture some wretched street prostitute reaching a moment of rapture? Educated men like these?”
“ ‘Educated’?” Rosa asked, visibly inflamed by the word.
“Educated,” the inspector repeated. “Listen to the words. Listen. They think they’re writing a kind of poetry. They believe they’re taking part in some kind of performance, one that’s not quite real, maybe. I don’t know. These people aren’t born criminals . . .”
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw some of the women they left raped and bleeding in the road,” Rosa spat back at him. “And they were the lucky ones.”
“These men are not ordinary criminals,” Falcone insisted. “Which means we cannot hope to apprehend them using ordinary means. If we treat them the way they want us to, then we will surely fail once more. Teresa will ensure her people rake over every last stone and speck of dust in that dreadful place to find some link with these men beyond the prints and DNA we can’t use for the moment. I have officers on two continents trying to find someone who will put their names in a statement.”
He stared at them in turn, to emphasise the point he was about to make. “But if we put them under formal surveillance with what little we have, they can and will go back to their lawyers. They will take us to court for harassment, and they will win. I do not intend to let that happen.”
Teresa Lupo pulled the set of photos in front of her and put a finger on Franco Malaspina’s swarthy, smug face. “You think you know what’s going on here, Leo. It’s time to share.”
He sighed, then shook his head. “I know very little. This is guesswork, and guesswork alone. I can’t broach it in the Questura. You all know the politics of the department at the moment. We have a new commissario, the man who turned up from Milan last week. I have scarcely discussed this case with him yet. That’s the way things are. Management comes before crime. Do not expect me to fight a battle I can’t hope to win.”
“What are you thinking?” Teresa persisted.
He took a deep breath. “I think this is some kind of strange brotherhood, a rite of passage with its roots in these men’s mutual affection for art, since that is the only thing they have in common apart from breeding. I believe Véronique Gillet was a part of it, an active member who came here to die in that place, at the hands of one, perhaps more, of these men, willingly. The unexpected arrival of Aldo Caviglia changed all that. They now no longer have this killing room of theirs or the painting which may have had some special significance. So what do they do?”
“They give up,” Costa said without hesitation. “They go back to being rich, ambitious private citizens, who keep quiet company with their criminal friends but do nothing wrong in public, not a thing. And then . . .”
It was so obvious and so simple. None of this happened through need or some conventional criminal urge. If Falcone was right—and he usually was—the entire deadly interlude was just a game, a bloody prank. Once the risk became too real, the men went back to leading apparently blameless lives, smug and safe inside their remembrance of the evil they had achieved, and their certain understanding that their guilt was known to the authorities too. Their lawyers killed what past suspicion might damage them. The police struggled to find a single new act w
ith which to pursue the case.
“That would be my guess,” Falcone agreed. “So in the circumstances we can only tread water, or be . . . a little creative.”
They were silent. There was a look in Falcone’s eyes Costa now knew well. This was the moment the case went beyond the usual. This was why they were here.
Falcone walked over to the long modern sideboard and came back with a new laptop. He placed it on the desk and turned it on. Very quickly three photographs appeared on the screen: live video, fed from cameras that must have been high up on a wall overlooking the street.
The lenses were focused on three figures everyone in the room knew by now: Pasquino, Il Facchino, and Abate Luigi, three grubby stone statues, damp, malformed shapes in the winter rain. Falcone pressed more keys. The screen was instantly covered in row after row of tiny video images, from all the CCTV cameras in all the familiar places every centro storico cop had come to know from past investigations.
“Obsessive men respond to obsessive acts. Count Franco Malaspina isn’t the only one who can write messages,” Falcone murmured, and threw on the table a sheaf of pages, each bearing the small obscure crest of the Ekstasists at its head. Each was also covered in the large spidery writing that Costa recognised as Falcone’s own.
Two
THREE HOURS LATER COSTA WALKED IN SILENCE WITH Leo Falcone to the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, wearing the suit, white shirt, and tie that had been brought from home, thinking about what he’d heard. Teresa had returned to the Questura to continue the difficult—perhaps hopeless—hunt for some clue in the wealth of material she was retrieving from the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Peroni and Rosa were mastering the surveillance system which Falcone had somehow inveigled from some acquaintances in the security services. It was sophisticated, quite unlike anything Costa had seen in use by the state police. Falcone must have pulled some important strings. In addition to the existing surveillance network, each of the talking statues was covered by three cameras, all capable of night sight. Every second, the computer logged a video frame from each. Whenever anyone approached a statue close enough to post a message on it, the monitoring system kicked in and generated an audible alert. That way whoever was on duty could be in constant touch with what was happening in the different locations without having to keep his or her eyes glued to the screen. It was better than standing out in a doorway in the miserable winter weather.
There was plenty of other work besides. Falcone had retrieved every last document in existence on the three suspects, from newspaper clippings to private internal reports held by the police and security service archives. The public information was depressingly predictable. Apart from a few traffic incidents, the newspapers had no evidence to suggest that Franco Malaspina, Giorgio Castagna, and Emilio Buccafusca were anything other than the rich, privileged individuals they purported to be on the surface. In private, however, Malaspina—and he alone—had been the subject of no fewer than five investigations by the police, the Carabinieri, and the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia. Each had ended in failure after intense legal threats and sudden silences among potential witnesses. Malaspina was a man who knew how to work with the system. In some ways he seemed to believe he owned it.
In the Piazza del Collegio Romano, Falcone stopped. This was where they would part: the inspector back to the Questura; Costa to meet Agata Graziano, at the inspector’s request, in the gallery set in the sprawling private palace that lurked behind the busy shopping street of the Corso.
“Are you OK with what I’m doing?” Falcone asked Costa. “Be frank.”
“I’m OK.”
“You’re involved. You probably feel that’s not enough. But this may be a long game, Nic. We need to improvise. We have to shake them out of their lair. Inside their rich men’s homes, locked up with their lawyers . . . they’re untouchable. If we can get them into the street, they’re on our ground. There we might bring them down.”
AFTER THEY LEFT THE APARTMENT, FALCONE AND COSTA HAD walked round to two of the statues, Pasquino and Abate Luigi, and, when there was a gap in the passing pedestrians, posted the scrawled message, with the Ekstasists’ copied insignia on the top.
It was Falcone’s wording, an adaptation of some doggerel from Dante in a book from the inspector’s own shelves.
Behold the solstice, brothers!
With it the shadows shorten,
On chestnut, thorn, and darkening mouth.
Now the light of truth falls on love, divine and profane.
Now you lose your Venus forever.
It was an obscure message for obscure criminals, one Falcone had to explain to Gianni Peroni. The big cop remained sceptical. The winter solstice was three days away. From that point on, the days lengthened, and the noon shadows began to abbreviate. The message for the Ekstasists, all three principals spelled out by name, was, the inspector hoped, cryptic but couched in their own kind of language: what had happened in the Vicolo del Divino Amore would soon be revealed. Furthermore, the painting, seemingly the talisman for their acts, was out of their hands, and would remain so.
“These are arrogant men,” Falcone had observed after the last message was posted. “Arrogant men. And, in the case of some, I suspect, scared. With luck this will prompt a response. Someone may panic. Perhaps even put up a reply of their own.”
“You think they’d take the risk?”
The inspector frowned. “Risk is a part of the thrill. Or so it seems to me. Why else do they keep taunting us? It’s like a bullfight. The closer they are to the horns, the more they feel alive. They will want to respond in some way. I’m sure of that. They like those talking statues because they’re public and that feeds their own vanity. No ordinary criminal would advertise his work that way. This scum thinks they’re special. Perhaps if we give them a little of their own treatment in return . . .”
He glanced at Costa with a mournful expression. “There was nothing you could do about Emily, you know.”
“How can you be certain of that?” Costa answered with a swift, unintentional brusqueness. “You weren’t there.”
“I know because I know you,” Falcone replied instantly. “If something was capable of being achieved, you would have achieved it, Nic. Not that any of this will help in the present circumstances. It’s only natural you blame yourself. I just hope that with time you can find some way to release your grief.” He frowned. “I speak for us all, Nic. You have friends. We care for you. We’re concerned that you must let this grief out from inside.”
“I’ll mourn when I’m ready,” Costa said simply. “When I have the time.”
“Don’t count on the time,” Falcone replied.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Malaspina is a man with many friends. People like that come up with tricks you’d never dream of, not in a million years.”
Money and position mattered in Rome, and always would. Falcone could not pass up any opportunity, or the chance to create one. Costa appreciated that.
“Why am I meeting Agata Graziano again?” Costa asked. “Is she allowed out whenever she pleases?”
“Not at all. She has a temporary dispensation,” Falcone replied. “Didn’t she tell you? Also, she’s a sister, not a nun. It’s different. Agata Graziano is a remarkable woman. I know that for a very good reason.”
Costa waited. Falcone had given something away, uncharacteristically, and now regretted it.
“Do I find out?” Costa asked.
“I suppose I’ll have to tell you now,” Falcone sighed, something like a blush staining his cheeks. “Though I do not wish this broadcast at large. A little over twenty years ago my marriage was collapsing, through my own stupid fault. It became clear to me I would never become a father. I wasn’t the only one,” Falcone hurried on. “It was a kind of tradition among a few of us in the same position. A little charity on the side sometimes made it easier to get through the day. So in that sense my generosity was selfish. Just as it is for Franco Malaspina.”
“I
never imagined.”
“Quite. I suppose you never imagined people knew about your habit of giving money to beggars every day, too.”
“That stopped,” Costa admitted with a little shame.
“You got married. You found someone you loved. You were looking to start a family of your own. It was only natural. I . . .” Falcone laughed at his own embarrassment. “They said I had to sponsor a particular girl in the convent orphanage. They chose her for me, naturally. As luck would have it, they chose Agata Graziano, though I’m still not sure she ever really was a child. I first met Agata when she was nine years old and she was just as serious and awkward and curious about everything as she is now.”
So that was the connection. “Did she have to become a nun? Because she was in the convent orphanage?”
“Sister! She belongs to a different order.”
“Sorry. Sister.”
“No,” Falcone replied with obvious care. “She could have done anything she wanted. In a sense she did, with university and her studies. I observed in silence from the sidelines, visiting her only three or four times a year. Taking her on trips occasionally. Watching her grow, which was wondrous, but no more so than for any other child, I imagine. I knew she was remarkable from an early age. Then . . . I imagine everyone thinks that.” His sharp eyes glanced at Costa. “In twenty years I haven’t heard her express the slightest desire to leave that convent and I never once questioned her decision. Agata has enough difficult ideas rattling around that intelligent head of hers without you adding to them.”