The Villa of Mysteries nc-2

by David Hewson

“What do you mean you’re sticking around with me?” Costa asked. “I thought you were going back to pushing a desk in vice.”

  Peroni took another look at the single rosebud struggling into bloom on the bush next to them then snipped off the stem with his forefinger and thumb and placed the flower in his jacket pocket. “You wouldn’t believe it. That Bucci bastard, the hood I knocked around good in Cerchi, laid in a complaint about me. Amazing. He may even sue too. Police brutality. First time I ever truly hit a man on the job, and he’s a murdering goon. What with all the hooker stuff that went down before, they wanted to kick me out altogether. But old Leo waded in and started screaming at everyone high and low. At least so I gather. He’s not even said so much as a word either way to me.”

  Costa tried to decode the expression on Peroni’s face. “Is that good or bad? You staying with me?”

  “It’s good for me,” Peroni yelled. “I got a job still, and a partner I can live with. How about you?”

  Costa shrugged. “I may need to think about it for a while.”

  “Jesus,” Peroni gasped. “Will you analyse every last fucking event on the face of this planet until it rolls over and dies? It is how it is. Nothing I can do will change things. So why sweat over it?”

  Costa chuckled.

  “Your sense of humour could do with some improving,” Peroni moaned. “Country boys like me don’t get these finer points.”

  “I’m sorry, Gianni. Really I am. What about your wife? How are things going there?”

  Peroni looked shifty. “We met at the weekend. I had to go to a funeral back home. She wanted a reconciliation but… You know the one thing I have learned from you people? To recognize that dead means dead. And that marriage is dead. I’ll see the kids don’t get damaged though, as much as I can.”

  His battered face was unreadable. “A funeral?”

  “Yeah. That old cop. The Tuscan amateur plastic surgeon.”

  Peroni pointed to his scars. Costa was surprised to discover he was now very used to them. This was Gianni Peroni. “The nice guy who did this to me.”

  “You went all the way home for that?” Costa asked, astonished.

  Peroni laughed and shook his head. “Christ, Nic. What a pair of lousy detectives we make. You can’t see it any better than I could, not that you had as much time, of course. He was my old man. He begat me. Half my genes are his. He… oh shit, even now I find it hard to use the f-word. He was my father. There. I think my mamma must have thought keeping him sweet was part of the terms and conditions of working behind that bar. Who knows?”

  Costa looked at his partner. When he was getting to know Gianni Peroni he’d always thought of him as a rock, impervious to the mundane tragedies of the world. It was, he now realized, such a superficial view.

  “When did you find out?” he asked, knowing the answer already.

  “Just after Christmas. When they worked out his liver was finally throwing up its hands and surrendering. He wanted to see me one last time. So I went and guess what? It was all about him really, not me. He wanted to explain that when he was remaking my face it was nothing personal. It was just himself he was beating up all along because of how guilty he felt about having fathered a bastard at all. So we shed a few tears together, me being the utter fool I am, and yes, maybe twenty-four hours later I break the habit of a lifetime and fall into bed with a Czech hooker because, well, why not, why the fuck not?”

  Peroni put a big hand over his crooked mouth, thinking. “You’re wrong about Teresa, by the way. I just know it.”

  “But—” Costa wanted to ask so many questions.

  “Ssshhh,” Peroni interrupted, watching a tall figure stride down the arcade opposite. Then he glanced at Costa. “What I just said is between the two of us, Nic. No one outside my family knows that little secret. No one else will. You share a little of my private burden. I’ll share a little of yours if you want me to, before I go back to my true vocation in life and you become my driver. At which point I doubt I’ll talk to you at all, the class war being what it is.”

  Costa laughed. “I can’t wait for that day.”

  “Good. What’s more, now we’re back on duty, we both get to share a whole load of old Leo’s burden. And that is one big load to bear.”

  Falcone was beckoning for them to join him. He looked spruced up and dressed in his Sunday best. In his hands was a fine bouquet of roses and carnations.

  “Hospital visits,” Peroni said, getting to his feet and patting the tiny rose in his jacket pocket. “Don’t you love ”em?“

  RACHELE D’AMATO SAT upright in her bed in a private room. She wore a white silk shirt, torn up to the right elbow to make room for the cast on her arm, with sheets up to her waist. The fading remains of a livid bruise stained her forehead close to the scalp. Leo Falcone, watched by Costa and Peroni from the door, kissed her gently on the left cheek, presented a small golden box of chocolates then removed some old flowers from the vase by her bed and replaced them with his own.

  “Here.” He passed the dead lilies and gladioli to Peroni who grimaced at the things then dumped them in a wastebasket in the corner of the room.

  “Flowers,” she said, smiling. “Chocolates. Oh, Leo. How… quaint.”

  The three men looked at her and understood the position. Nothing had really changed. She wielded the same control over her emotions. Even a bomb couldn’t change Rachele D’Amato.

  “You’re welcome,” Falcone mumbled.

  “Sit, if you like. I thought—” She looked at Costa and Peroni. “I thought you might have come before. I rather expected you on your own when you did find the time.”

  Falcone stayed on his feet. “I’m sorry. They say you’re doing well. A couple of days more—”

  She played with the flowers, improving the arrangement. “Can’t wait. I’m bored to death. I want to get back to work.” She hesitated. “I keep hearing all these stories. So tell me. Will you find this woman?”

  “We will.” He nodded.

  The firmness of his answer surprised her. “Really? I heard people were starting to consider it was a waste of time. She’s out of the country. You don’t know where to start. You don’t even know her real name.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  She stared at the chair next to the bed until he sat down in it. Then he opened the leather document case he’d brought with him. “When you go back to work you’ll have to deal with this one.”

  Falcone threw a photo of the young Adele Neri onto the sheets. She picked up the colour print and looked at it.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Falcone had lost some of his winter holiday tan. He looked tired and troubled. “The Julius woman was careless. She must have scanned Kirk’s photos into the computer to mess with them or maybe just for safekeeping. She thought she’d wiped the ones she didn’t want to fool with. She hadn’t. Our computer people managed to recover a few. Quite a lot actually. Adele Neri was on several.”

  “Oh.” She stared at the photo then gave it back to him. “Are you telling me Neri’s mob is now in the hands of his widow? These are changed times. I know that happens in the South. But in Rome—? It seems wrong somehow.”

  “It seems wrong,” he agreed.

  “And you think she was involved in what happened? With this in mind?”

  “Partly with this in mind. I’m certain of it.”

  “Can you prove anything?”

  He said nothing, watching her open the chocolates, put one in her mouth, smile faintly with pleasure then close the lid.

  “Life will be interesting when I get out of this bed,” she said, still chewing.

  “Quite,” he replied, then very suddenly, too quickly for her to protest, began to extend the tear in the silk shirt, ripping it up her arm with both hands until he reached the shoulder.

  “Leo!”

  The three men stared at the pale patch there, round, like the mark of a coin. Or a badge. Skin that was unlike the rest of
her, bleached, changed.

  “I remembered that,” Falcone said.

  “I imagine,” she replied, “you remember most of me. Oh, Leo. You’re not that kind, are you? Lying in bed at night, on your own, just thinking of me? Trying to picture what I looked like when I was there under the sheets with you? Really. Aren’t you a little old for that kind of thing?”

  Falcone couldn’t take his eyes off the white patch of skin. “It never quite works, does it? I imagine they promise no one will ever notice. The tattoo will just go and you get old skin in its place.” He touched her on the shoulder. “What you really get is new skin that never ages. Not quite right.”

  “It’s a birthmark,” she said very patiently. “I told you, surely.”

  Falcone wasn’t listening. “Neri worked so hard to clean this up, to keep you all sweet and silent. He married one of you. Barbara he put in the police. He put you through law college, then into the DIA. And another ran away for some reason. She knew all along Eleanor never died from drugs. She just didn’t dare say so. Then, when a body turns up, she decides to put matters right. She comes back to make sure you all know the price of what you’d won.”

  Rachele D’Amato was into her second chocolate by now. “These really are delicious, you know. You don’t mind my not sharing them. I am still an invalid. Just. And frankly I always feel good chocolate is wasted on men.”

  “So she tells Vergil Wallis, who goes along with everything,” he continued. “Perhaps he bankrolls things. This fake abduction. He leans on Randolph Kirk to cooperate. Never understanding that you know already who killed Eleanor. And it’s not just him you want. It’s all of them, him included. Him especially.”

  She closed the box. “No more. I’ve put on enough weight in this place already. I must say, Leo. You are entertaining today. Is this how the police intend to pursue investigations in the future? Just guess your way through everything until you find an answer that fits?”

  Falcone took no notice. “Someone had to tell her about Vercillo. Kirk wouldn’t know him as anything other than a face at the party. There’s no reason to think Wallis could have provided his address. But the DIA—”

  “No reason?” She laughed. “Have you actually run these fantasies past a lawyer? Is this what constitutes evidence in the police force these days?”

  He shook his head. “And someone had to drive that bike with the bogus Suzi Julius on the back. You have a licence.”

  Rachele D’Amato stared coolly at the three of them. “I have a licence? My. That’s incriminating.”

  “It bothered me afterwards. I talked to you that day. You were in a hurry to leave for an appointment. I told you, I checked. There’s nothing on your DIA diary to account for that.”

  “I told you. I met a man. I’m sorry if that hurts your tender ego.”

  “Does he have a name?” Falcone asked.

  “He’s married. I’m not dragging him into this for your sick curiosity.” She nodded at Costa and Peroni. “Is that why they’re here? Is this a formal interview?”

  “Just came along to wish you well, ma’am,” Peroni said with a little bow. “So pleased to see you’re recovering your customary composure so quickly.”

  “Jesus,” she murmured. “That man gets uglier by the day, Leo. Did you have to pick him?”

  “And your charm too,” Peroni said with a smile. “Glad that’s returning.”

  “There was no man,” Falcone said. “There never has been. Not even me. What was I for, Rachele? Promotion? Or did you just feed back information to Neri even then?”

  “This is ridiculous,” she hissed.

  “That’s what they did to you,” he continued. “All of you. Barbara. Miranda Julius. They took away any chance you had of a normal relationship. Perhaps that’s what you hated most, even more than the thought that they’d tricked you over Eleanor.”

  He threw another photo on the bed. She looked at it. “And what’s this supposed to be?”

  “You. Dressed up and ready just like all the others. You were there. Which one was it? Do you remember? Toni Martelli? Wallis? Or did they take turns?”

  She flung the picture at him. “Take this away. Go find something better to do, Leo.”

  “It’s you,” he insisted. “They even got you to dye your hair blonde back then. Whose idea was that?”

  She was laughing at all of them. “What are you talking about? Look at this girl! It could be anyone!”

  “It’s you.”

  Rachele D’Amato sighed and leaned back into the pillow. “Do you think you could convince a court of that? And even if you could, does it matter? It’s just a picture.”

  “What about those people outside Neri’s house?” Costa asked. “Don’t their relatives deserve some answers?”

  “I was one of them,” she snapped. “In case you forgot. Neri placed that bomb. Neri’s dead. How many answers do you need?”

  Peroni sniffed and looked at her. “What about Barbara Martelli? No feeling there?”

  She picked at another chocolate then said, “I never knew the woman.”

  “Rachele,” Falcone said, and heard the note of pleading that had crept into his voice. “You can’t just bury this.”

  “It’s buried already, Leo. You just don’t see it. Ask yourself a question. Are we living in a better world now? Or a worse one?”

  “That’s not for the likes of us to decide.”

  “No!” she yelled. “Don’t take that line with me. You make those decisions just as much as anyone. If you think you have one piece of hard evidence against me then use it. If not I suggest you keep your mouth shut and try catching a few criminals instead of boxing shadows. Now get out of here. And take these with you!”

  She picked up the vase of flowers and launched them against the wall next to Peroni and Costa where they shattered noisily, dispensing water, petals and fragments of pottery everywhere.

  IT WAS DARK by the time they got outside. Falcone clutched his leather case to his chest, looking lost. Costa shuffled on his feet, hunched up inside his jacket, silent, thinking.

  “I know—” Peroni said hopefully. “Let’s get a drink. Something to eat. There’s a place near here—”

  “Is the wine good?” Falcone asked. “I don’t drink any old shit.”

  “Me neither,” Costa grumbled. “And I don’t just want salad.”

  “Boys, boys,” Peroni sighed. “Stick with your old uncle Gianni. He’ll see you right.”

  Ten minutes later they were in a tiny bar behind the Colosseum. Falcone sniffed approvingly at an expensive glass of Brunello and some prosciutto crudo. Nic Costa was testing a Tuscan chardonnay and some porcini on crostini. Gianni Peroni had one beer under his belt already, along with some translucent slices of expensive pork lardo on a slab of country bread.

  “I can give everything I’ve got to the DIA,” Falcone said to no one in particular. “Let’s see what that does for her career.”

  “You can, Leo,” Peroni said. “And by the way, thanks for putting in a word for me.”

  The tall inspector rolled back on his seat as if affected by some slight. “I just did my job. They asked my opinion. I gave it to them.”

  Peroni ordered another beer and said, “For which I’m grateful. Let me offer a thought in return. Do you really think the DIA will appreciate if it we keep this thing on life support? I mean, either they know already, in which case it’s their problem. Or they don’t and frankly I’m not sure they’ll be pleased to have it laid on their plate. I mean, she’s good at her job, isn’t she? She didn’t kill anyone. She didn’t do anything except ride a motorbike and hand out some information, not that we can prove any of that. Also, maybe they’re aware of some of the people who had their photos taken in that place. Maybe some of them are those very people.” He paused. “Have you thought of that?”

  Falcone glowered back at him. “Are you ever going back to vice?”

  Another beer landed on the table. Peroni took a deep swig. “Who knows? Wh
o the hell knows anything these days? How’s your drink? How’s the food?”

  Falcone sniffed at the wine. “The Brunello is as good as one might expect for the price. I don’t mean that as a criticism. The ham is… fine.” He took another sip then nodded with a measure of approval before grumbling, “And we still don’t know that damned woman’s name.”

  Gianni Peroni sighed and stared at his beer glass.

  “A good white,” Costa said, holding his glass up to the light. “Well-balanced. A little under-chilled.”

  It was the colour of old straw under the yellowing candle bulbs of the bar. He took a gulp, larger than normal, and paused over the sudden and unexpected kick of the alcohol.

  One pill makes you bigger, she sang, and he wondered, once more, why she’d dyed her hair that night.

  He recalls a face now, frightened, furious and dying, under the same light, something glittering in its throat, choking as it tries to speak the same word, over and over again into the echoing darkness.

  “We do know her name,” Nic Costa says, mind half recoiling from the memory, half flying towards it like a moth dancing for the candle.

  “She told us time and time again.”

  And no one else was fool enough to listen, says an old, cruel voice, still locked somewhere at the back of his imagination.

  “Her name is Suzi.”

  About the Author

  DAVID HEWSON is a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times. The Villa of Mysteries is the second novel in a crime series which began with A Season for the Dead, set in Rome and featuring Detective Nic Costa. He is also the author of Lucifer’s Shadow. A former staff writer on The Times, he lives in Kent, where he is at work on the third Nic Costa crime novel, The Sacred Cut.

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  David Hewson