The Villa of Mysteries nc-2

by David Hewson

  “Be there,” he yelled and cut the call.

  MICKEY NERI STOOD with Adele in the shadows, watching his father walk into the big, brightly lit chamber. The old man was grinning at the pictures on the walls, happy as could be, as if they brought back good memories, which was, Mickey knew, ridiculous. Something else must have been making the old man feel this way.

  The shadows in this stupid place had such substance. They were places you could hide and feel you didn’t really exist as you watched what went on in the light. Mickey Neri knew he would be happy to stay in shadows like this, all the way to one of the several exits she’d talked about and out into the bright new day. Then Adele gave him a short, damp kiss on the cheek, whispered “Ciao” and propelled him out into the yellow light.

  Neri opened his arms in a welcoming, paternal gesture. “Son, son—”

  Mickey didn’t move. Neri took two steps towards him. “Mickey… Why the long face? Are we going to argue about this forever?”

  He stood his ground, fearing the presence of the old man.

  “I gave you a test, Mickey. What do you do? Not just kill that talkative bastard Martelli but come up with a present for me too? So you’ve been screwing Adele. What the fuck? If it’s gonna happen best it’s kept in the family. I don’t care. Screwing around’s such a little thing for a man of my age.”

  He looked around the chamber. “Jesus, we had some times in here. Where is Adele exactly?”

  “Dunno,” Mickey mumbled. “She said she’d leave us two alone. Catch up with you later.”

  The old man gave him a cold smile. “Yeah. I guess that will happen sometime. Except I won’t be in Italy much longer so maybe she knows I won’t be fixing social appointments for a while. It’s always the same with that woman. Adele’s in it for herself. Forget that and things just might get dangerous.”

  Mickey wanted to kick and scream and yell at the fat, grinning figure in front of him. Neri was behaving as if what happened the previous night was just one of those things. “Fuck her! You nearly got me killed! Like you wanted it or something.”

  Neri took one more step towards him, opened his arms wider, embraced his son, overwhelmed him with his strong, commanding presence. Mickey couldn’t remember when they’d last touched like this but he knew that had been a bad time too.

  “Don’t make so much noise,” the old man whispered. “You could wake the dead screaming like that.”

  “You—”

  The big arms enfolded him, buried him in Neri’s bulk. “I’ve been a lousy father. I know. You’ve every reason to feel mad at me.”

  “Yeah—”

  “Quiet,” Neri said. “I’m talking. I brought you up bad, Mickey. I left you with that bitch of a mother for too long. When you weren’t with her I didn’t spend the time with you I should.”

  “Yeah, right—”

  “Shhhhh.” Neri put a fat forefinger to his son’s lips. “Listen.”

  Mickey pouted and the kid could have been ten years old again. Emilio Neri wanted to laugh out loud.

  “There are so many things I never taught you. When it’s time for a little honesty for one. People like us need to know that. Sometimes it’s the most important thing of all.”

  He looked at the photos on the walls, holding on tight to Mickey, turning his head to see. “She was a good-looking girl, his stepdaughter. Anything you want to tell your old man about her now, huh? And this other one too. All these games on the side. Jesus—”

  Mickey’s head shook from side to side. “No. I got nothing to tell you.”

  “You think that’s what Vergil Wallis is coming all this way to hear? He’s not falling for this ransom shit, Mickey. He don’t give a damn who you’ve been messing with now or what you wind up doing with them. He’s coming to find out why we lied to him all those years ago. He’s looking for answers. When I think about it I got to be honest with myself. Maybe he deserves some.”

  His rank, old man’s mouth came close to Mickey Neri’s face. “You gonna tell him, son?”

  “I didn’t do nothing!”

  “Mickey, Mickey.” Neri was smiling all the while, loving this. “You were banging her in Sicily. I may have been a lousy father but I knew that. You banged her so well she was carrying some little bastard for you by the time we came back here. You told me so yourself once I beat it out of you. Remember?”

  Mickey didn’t look his father in the eye. He thought this was all dead and would stay that way.

  Neri kept staring at her photo. “That kid. Lovely as an angel but she was so damn stupid. Stupid as you in a different way. I mean, I know why you wouldn’t bother with a rubber. I wonder if you use them now with those African whores of yours. But her… I guess she just didn’t know any better. Tell me now. In Sicily. It was the first time for her, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey mumbled.

  “So it makes sense. When she told you there was something on the way that made you real worried, I guess. I mean, Vergil… he’s not a man to cross now.”

  “I told you years ago. I didn’t k… k… k…”

  It was just like when he was a kid. Even down to the stammer. “You didn’t k… k… k… ?”

  “K… kill her.”

  The old man withdrew his arms and looked sternly at his son. “Maybe not. But you know something? After all these years I’m not even sure it matters.”

  Emilio Neri put his hand gently to the back of his son’s head and stroked his soft hair, wishing it wasn’t that stupid blonde colour. There were tears in Mickey’s eyes.

  “Don’t cry, son,” Neri said, then brought his head down hard on the table, slamming it onto the old wood, ignoring his screams.

  He pulled out the tape and wound it first round his mouth then his eyes. He bound Mickey’s wrists, kicked his feet from under him so he landed roughly in the nearest chair and tied him tightly to the back, circling the rope around his chest.

  “Plenty of time for crying later.”

  Emilio Neri looked at his handiwork.

  “Hear that, Adele?” he roared into the darkness. “Just so much time for that later. You listening?”

  TWO TIMES MERGE NOW, and in each he’s leading the way, looking, staying close to the walls, in the shadows, Miranda behind, whispering, whispering. Nothing stands between her words and the images in his head. There is a light in one of the side chambers. They steal to the door, peer inside. Something flashes at the back of his imagination. The pictures he saw in Leo Falcone’s office rise again in his muddled head, real this time, rolling past his eyes. A fat, white naked shape rolls around on the bed lunging at something only dimly seen beneath him. The air reeks of dope. A spent needle sits by the table. On the floor lies the girl’s sackcloth shift and the garlands of flowers, discarded like an old skin, shed for her becoming. The man grunts like a pig. The girl beneath him squeals: pain, he thinks, revulsion. Is this the first time? In a dank underground chamber reeking of stagnant water and mould? In the sweating arms of a middle-aged man who comes bearing flowers and oblivion in a syringe?

  Can you see who she is? Miranda asks.

  No, he says, not looking.

  You have to know, Nic.

  He walks on, knowing she’s behind, talking, talking, and here is another chamber, deeper into the pulsing vein of rock, the light a little brighter inside. More cries of pain, a young girl’s voice, sobbing.

  Look, she says.

  Costa leans against the dusty wall. His breath comes in snatches. His body feels like a lumpen machine beyond his control. He’s stiffening, ashamed of the fact. She sees this, touches him there.

  We’re only beasts sometimes.

  No, he answers. Only if we allow it.

  Then the old voice sounds, deeper, impossible to ignore, chanting, Look, you fucker, look and learn.

  The shape in the shadows is pumping from behind at a girl who straddles the back of a big armchair, face upturned towards them. His arms hold her legs and the memory of a childhood game—wheelba
rrow, wheelbarrow, an act so innocent the memory hurts—races into his head.

  There are tears in Eleanor Jamieson’s eyes. The girl looks at them from across the years, pleading. Two voices burn in Nic Costa’s head, one young and innocent, one old and knowledgeable.

  The man cranks up his grinding a gear, forcing himself into her with a brutal, punishing force. She screams from the agony. She begs for his intervention.

  This is just a dream, kid, no one gets to change the past, grunts the old voice.

  Then he hears her screaming… I’ll tell I’ll tell I’ll tell.

  Nothing changes, not even a break in the rhythm of the panting man behind.

  The figure forces himself harder into her. The chair leaps forward propelled by his momentum. A face emerges into the light, distorted, ugly. It wears the mask, grunting, grunting.

  He tries not to watch but the mask is staring at him, something alive behind those dead black eyes, the old voice rising, laughing, Look, you fucker, look.

  And in the corner, in the darkness, something else. Another pair of bright young eyes, hidden, terrified.

  ADELE NERI WALKED out into Cerchi the way she had come, through the main entrance, straight to where Neri had left his men. She blinked at the sunlight then brushed down the cobwebs and crap from her black cashmere coat. Bruno Bucci and his men were standing in the shadows next to a “Keep Out” sign that lay half askew behind some barbed wire marking the site.

  She smiled and walked over to him. Bucci nodded.

  “Mrs. Neri,” he said carefully. The other men watched him like a hawk. “Is your husband OK in there? I’m a little concerned, if you want to know the truth.”

  She put a slim hand on his arm. “Of course he’s OK, Bruno. You know him.” She stared at the men, not letting go until they dropped their eyes to the ground. “You all know him.”

  Bucci was trying to make some private contact with his eyes. She didn’t play ball. She just lit a cigarette and stared down the big, busy road, watching the traffic.

  “He told you what to do, didn’t he?” she asked without looking at him. “Mickey couldn’t hurt his old man.”

  A taxi drew up a little way along from them. They watched a tall, dark figure get out. He was carrying a leather bag.

  “It’s not Mickey I’m worried about,” Bucci grumbled.

  They watched Vergil Wallis walk slowly towards them, swinging the bag, whistling some old tune, face expressionless, eyes never leaving the mouth of the cave. He came to stand between them, raised his arms high up in the air and said to Bucci, “Well—?”

  A couple of strong hands undid the leather overcoat and went up and down Wallis’s chest, then down to his belt, down his trousers. Bucci swore, put a hand around the man’s left ankle and came up with a gleaming silver hunting knife. He held the blade up in front of Wallis’s face.

  “Forget something?” Bucci asked.

  “Guess so,” Wallis replied nonchalantly. “It’s these early mornings. I’m getting too old for them.”

  Bucci looked at the knife then passed it to one of his minions. “This has gone far enough, Mr. Wallis. Why don’t you just walk away? We can pass on the money. We can pass on any messages too. You can count on me to get what you’re buying. This… disagreement needs to stop now.”

  Wallis laughed in his face. “Wow. I knew Neri was losing it. But so soon? Are you making the decisions already, Bruno?”

  The big Italian hood fought to control his temper. “I’m just trying to draw a line under all this shit.”

  Wallis patted him hard on the shoulder. “Don’t bother. You’re still new to all this, man.” He nodded towards the rock. “You don’t want to step out of line now, not with him still around. Mr. Neri wants to see me. I want to see him. That’s all there is to it.”

  Bucci shook his head and reached for the leather bag.

  Adele got there first and said, “I can do this.”

  She lifted it up to her chest, ran open the big bronze zip and rummaged thoroughly through the contents with her right hand. It took a good minute or more. Then she smiled at Vergil Wallis.

  “You got a lot of money there,” she said. “I hope you think it’s worth it.”

  “I hope so too,” he murmured and caught the bag as she flung it at him.

  Vergil Wallis walked into the darkness. They listened to him whistling and then the sound died altogether.

  Adele leaned close to Bruno Bucci, looked up into his big, impassive face and ran a finger down his arm.

  “Bruno?” she asked. “Do you boys really want to hang around here all day?”

  BY THE TIME Teresa Lupo arrived, the door to Miranda Julius’s apartment was down, torn from its hinges by the entry team. Men were swarming everywhere, opening drawers, scattering their contents on the floor, looking for anything.

  She walked straight into Suzi’s room. They hadn’t reached there yet. She was glad. It gave her time to think.

  There was a sound from the corridor, a gentle cough. She turned to face it and Falcone stood in the doorway looking as grateful as he could manage.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said.

  “Why am I here?”

  Falcone stroked his angular silver beard and looked as if he were asking himself the same question. “For luck I guess. Maybe I’m getting superstitious in my old age. We could use some luck.”

  “No sign of Nic or Wallis? I heard when I was leaving.”

  He shook his head. “What made you come to this room first? Do you think there’s something we should be looking for?”

  “No. Nic and I did look, didn’t we? It’s just—” The conviction had grown in the speeding police car on the way. “I should have said something when we were here before. This room doesn’t feel lived in. Not at all. People leave their mark. If you go into the mother’s room you can still feel her presence. There’s mess. Chaos. This—”

  She took another look to make sure. “This is for our benefit. Do we really know for sure that Suzi Julius exists?”

  Falcone’s eyes didn’t leave her. “We’ve got video of someone getting on that bike. We’ve got the photos the mother gave us.”

  “I know. But apart from that?”

  “No.” Falcone sat down on a small cheap chair and looked around the bedroom. “Maybe that was all for our benefit too. Let’s face it. If you wanted to stage something for the police there’s no better place than the Campo. We’re always around. She’d know she wouldn’t have to scream for long. You don’t need to be a genius to see there’s CCTV there either. It’s hanging from the lamp posts.”

  Teresa could see he was right. “But why?”

  Falcone walked silently back into the big living room. She followed, becoming aware of the roar of traffic from outside.

  “Look,” he said, and pointed to a pile of old maps. They were detailed drawings of archaeological digs, all over the city out into the suburbs and beyond. She sifted through the top of the pile. There wasn’t one she’d heard of. “The Julius woman was interested in these places too,” he said. “How many reasons can there be for that?”

  Peroni was bent double over the woman’s notebook computer, thrashing at the keyboard. Teresa crouched next to him, unthinkingly put her hand on his shoulder and watched, in amazement, as he hammered the keys, working through the machine.

  “How the hell do you know about computers?” she asked.

  He stopped for a moment and stared at her, bemused. His right eye was a puffy red mass, almost closed. He looked awful. “I got kids, Teresa. Who else is supposed to fix their problems?”

  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 as
ked 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.