The Villa of Mysteries

by David Hewson

  Bucci hesitated.

  “They don’t think that,” the man from Turin said eventually. “But they think about what comes next. You got to expect it. Anyone would in the same circumstances. Also, there’s rumours.”

  “Rumours?” Neri wondered.

  “The people I got in the cops are being real secret about this. Falcone isn’t letting anyone near except those close to him. And the DIA.”

  Neri shook his head in disbelief. “The DIA? What the fuck has this got to do with them?”

  “They think they got our books from Vercillo.”

  Neri laughed. “Sure they got our books! Can’t do a thing with them. The little guy put a code on them or something. He was good with numbers. That was his thing. He told me. They could work on it for years and they’d never get nowhere.”

  “They got the code. The DIA’s trying to work it all out now.”

  “What?” It was impossible to work out what this all meant. Vercillo had been doing the books for almost twenty years. He was a meticulous man. He logged everything. Emilio Neri understood instantly that if the DIA and the cops managed to peer into that black hive of past misdeeds they could throw all manner of shit in his direction: fraud, tax evasion. Worse.

  “Are you sure?” Neri asked in desperation.

  “I’m sure,” Bucci replied. “Also they want to nail you over this dead girl. They seem to think they got something there. This dead professor guy left some photos or something. There’s this other girl, the one that’s missing now. They think she’s down to us too.”

  Neri was outraged. “Do I look like the kind that goes around snatching teenagers off the street? Why’d I need to do that?”

  “They think . . . it points in our direction,” Bucci said carefully.

  Neri understood what he was saying. “And does it?”

  “Not with anyone under me, boss.”

  Neri raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  “But I don’t get to control everyone. Mickey, for example. He’s just a loose cannon. God knows what he gets up to when none of us are around.”

  “Such as?”

  “We know about the hookers. I think maybe he’s back on the dope too. Maybe he’s been doing other stuff.” Bucci paused, reluctant to continue. “I don’t know where he is half the time. Do you?”

  “No,” Neri grunted.

  “And this thing years ago with the dead girl. It was before my time. But they seem to think he was there.”

  Neri shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I understand. Look, boss. I don’t feel right saying this kind of thing. It’s between you and him. It’s just that . . . Mickey affects the way the guys are thinking right now.”

  “And you?” Neri asked. “I got this American asshole fitting me up for the cops and the DIA. I got a dumb son who can’t keep his dick quiet. What do you think should come next?”

  “Whatever you want. This is your organization. You get to say what happens. It’s just . . .”

  Bucci didn’t go on. Neri couldn’t work it out.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “It’s Mickey. He don’t help. Not with him and Adele.”

  “Yeah,” Neri said, waving a hand, “I know, I know . . . it pisses me off too.”

  He looked at Bruno Bucci. The man appeared deeply uncomfortable. He’d seen him less nervous than this when they were about bad business. It didn’t add up. Then Neri wondered about this idea that had been nagging him for a day or more. It was crazy. It was the kind of thing old men got into their heads for no reason whatsoever and that made fools of them if they blurted it out into the light of day. Which always happened anyway, even if they knew as much, because it was the kind of idea you couldn’t keep inside forever.

  Neri put an arm around Bucci’s shoulder and said, “You wouldn’t lie to an old man, would you, Bruno? I always thought you were a bad liar. It was one of your limitations.”

  “No.” Bucci’s eyes never left the floor.

  The old man’s hand squeezed, hard. “You’ve been in the house a lot recently. When I’m not here. Tell me, Bruno. Mickey’s fucking her, right? That’s what’s really going on, huh? All this bad feeling between them. That’s just for my benefit? Right?”

  Bruno Bucci let out a long sigh and struggled to say something.

  “No problem,” Neri said, slapping him on the shoulder. “It just adds another job to the list. Now sit down. I want to talk.”

  Falcone looked up from the scattered piles of photographs on the table in his office.

  “Close the door,” he said quietly. “We don’t have much time. I want this Julius girl found. I want that to be the focus of what we do from now on. Understood?”

  “Sure.” Costa nodded.

  Falcone looked beyond the glass partition, out into the office. He’d managed to fill most of the desks. The men and women out there were busy, following up calls, chasing the couple of possible sightings they’d had. “I’m stepping up the media on this. We’re telling them we think she’s in real danger, not that I’m saying why. We’ve as many people as I can afford on the case. But we need to go back over what’s gone before. Someone’s collecting the mother. When she gets here, you can talk to her, Nic. Just you. Too many people will make her clam up. Tell her what we know so far. Just the broad details. And go over everything with her again, every place she and the girl visited since they arrived here. There’s got to be something she remembers that’s of use.”

  “Details?” Peroni asked. “We’ve got details? I’m missing them. What is it we’re supposed to think has happened here?”

  Falcone didn’t look too confident. “We’ve got Kirk on her camera. That’s enough for me. Kirk has to have been involved in taking her. If that’s the case, we have to assume she’s where he left her for safekeeping. We have to find where that is. Not Ostia for sure. I’ve got a team rechecking that now. She’s not there.”

  The three men looked at each other. No one liked to think of a kidnap victim being left stranded, trapped in some hole, unable to call for help.

  Peroni wasn’t happy. “I buy that but some of these things still don’t add up. Kirk was just a dirty old man. The mother said Suzi went off willingly. We’ve got it on CCTV. The boyfriend riding that motorbike wasn’t some man in his fifties.”

  “I know,” Falcone agreed. “I’ve got men looking into Kirk’s background. Trying to work out if he had any close friends. Nothing so far.”

  “And Neri?” Costa asked. “Wallis?”

  “All we have on them are some rumours from the past,” Peroni suggested. “Why put a fire under some old feud after all this time? Why start playing these games all over again?”

  Costa thought of the mummified body in the morgue next door. “Perhaps because we found Eleanor Jamieson. Because that reminded someone of . . . the possibilities.”

  “Let’s stick with the facts,” Falcone said firmly.

  “Which are?” Peroni asked.

  Falcone stared at the pictures. “These.”

  Neither of them argued. The pictures were all home-developed. A search of Randolph Kirk’s house off the Via Merulana had revealed a darkroom in the cellar. A couple seemed innocent: young girls, clothed, smiling with older men. But most looked as if they were taken later, when the party began. When the rules disappeared.

  Falcone glanced at Peroni. “Gianni. This is more your field than ours. What do you make of it?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty obvious, isn’t it? We have a phrase for this kind of thing in vice. We call it a fuck club. Sorry. The language isn’t so great where I come from. What happens is you get some guys. You get some willing girls. Young girls in this case. Then you put them together and, without telling anyone, stick a camera up in the corner of the room, probably on a remote operated from somewhere else.”

  Falcone turned over one of the prints. On the back, scribbled in pencil, was the date: 17 March, sixteen years before.

  Peroni nodded. “These
days they’ve got remote controls. Even things that let you see through the viewfinder from another room. Back then they didn’t have the technology to do this kind of shot too well. They just pressed the remote shutter and got whatever was there at the time. Hence all these heaving butts, all these shots where you can’t really see who’s doing what to who. You wouldn’t get that nowadays. Now it’d come back on DVD or something.”

  “Why is it we just have the year the Jamieson girl went missing?” Falcone wondered. “Why would he just keep the one set?”

  “Search me,” Peroni replied, flipping through the prints. “Maybe he only took pictures the once. Maybe they still had some value. Or it just happened on that scale once. Who’s to know? I’ll tell you something though. This is not the work of anyone on our books. These kids look like amateurs. Not hookers. Not that I recognize anyway. And the clientele? This is the fanciest fuck club I’ve ever seen. Where is this place? On the Via Veneto? Next door to Harry’s Bar or something? Hell, they do have some value. I could pick up the phone and do business with these today.”

  Costa scanned the men in the photos. It was a little before his time but he still recognized plenty of faces.

  “You got TV people,” Peroni went on. “You got newspaper people. Couple of bankers I dealt with in the past. And politicians too. They’re bound to be there. You know what puzzles me? Only one cop. What kind of club is it that has just one cop on board? And him that penpusher Mosca guy too? Can we go talk to him?”

  “Dead,” Falcone said. “Died in prison. Knifed.”

  “Shame. He’s in almost all of them. Seems he got pretty friendly with Barbara. I guess that tells you everything.”

  “It does?” Costa wondered.

  “Sure, Nic. Like I said. This is not just some gentleman’s evening. It’s a sting. Why else would they leave the likes of us out? If this was just a plain party for the boys we’d have a few more people there. You agree, Leo?”

  Falcone nodded and left it at that.

  “So,” Peroni continued, “it was a sting. When this was over and done with, when these morons had gone back to their wives and moaned about how late the trains were getting these days, they got a phone call. Maybe a photo of their heaving butt. News of an account to settle. Or a favour to be called in sometime in the future. And my, what favours. You ever seen a cast list like this, Leo?”

  “No.”

  Peroni smiled. “Embarrassing, huh? Couple of these guys are still jerking our chains now, aren’t they? Are we going to ask them if they saw the Jamieson girl before she died?”

  “All in good time,” Falcone said. He sorted the photos in front of them, and pulled out a single shot: a beaming Filippo Mosca and Barbara naked, locked together on a thin mattress on the stone floor.

  “Nice,” Peroni said.

  Falcone threw another picture on the table. “This one’s even nicer.”

  Peroni swore under his breath. The final shot almost looked posed: Barbara and Eleanor, dressed, standing around holding wine glasses, looking nervous, as if they didn’t know what came next but thought it might not be too great. They were wearing some kind of costume: a thin sackcloth shift, the one Eleanor Jamieson had on when she was placed in the peat. Next to them stood Randolph Kirk, Beniamino Vercillo and Toni Martelli, looking at each other expectantly, grinning guiltily.

  “Jesus,” Peroni said. “So Mosca wasn’t the only one playing this game? Can you believe it? That sonofabitch Martelli was pimping his own daughter and getting off too? Look at the expression on those guys’ faces. ‘Aren’t we the lucky ones?’ Assholes.”

  “But they’re not,” Costa pointed out, “lucky, I mean. Three of them are dead. Martelli doesn’t look as if he’ll be around much longer either.”

  Peroni picked up the picture. “Let me take this and ram it down the bastard’s throat. He’ll start squealing then.”

  “Later,” Falcone said. “Martelli’s been out of the picture for years. Like I said. We’ve got to focus.”

  “On what?”

  “Where this happened,” Falcone said. “We’ve checked out the backgrounds. We know it wasn’t Ostia.”

  Peroni’s eyes lit up. “Excuse me for pointing this out, but Toni Martelli surely knows where.”

  Falcone glanced at the table. “Do you want to spend the rest of the day sitting with him in an interview room listening to nothing? I spoke to him a few minutes ago. I offered him a deal. He’s not doing a damn thing. You’ve talked to him. We can’t afford the time.”

  “A deal?” Peroni looked amazed. “You offer someone who could do this kind of thing to his own daughter a deal?”

  “Yes!” Falcone snapped. “Do you want to argue with the Julius girl’s mother about this? Do you want to tell her it’s wrong?”

  Peroni stared at the photos. “And I thought I had a conflict of morality on vice. So what do we do?”

  Falcone had already made up his mind. “We let the DIA handle the mob stuff. Watching Wallis. Going through the accounts from Vercillo’s office. We let them see what they can turn up on the Vercillo killing too. It’s theirs by rights anyway and I’m happy to unload whatever I can. And we try for the girl. Gianni—”

  He looked desperate, Costa thought. It wasn’t like the Falcone they knew.

  “What do you want us to do?” Peroni asked.

  “Nic can get a room ready for the mother. For God’s sake see if she can remember something. There has to be a face, a name, anything. I want you to get a couple of spare men out there and run through everything we have on the Julius girl so far. See if we’ve missed anything.”

  “OK,” Costa said, and headed for the door. The two older men watched him go.

  “It’s a good idea, letting him talk to her on his own,” Peroni said after he’d gone. “She’s an attractive woman. He’s noticed that already. Hell, I noticed that. Not you, Leo? Just eyes for the one, huh?”

  “Don’t start—” Falcone was staring at the pictures on the desk. “And don’t make assumptions either. I don’t live in the past any more than you.”

  “No,” Peroni said, sounding unconvinced, watching Falcone pore over the photos. “You can ask if you like. I’m menial class for the time being. You’ve got the right to ask anything you want.”

  Falcone turned over another set of prints, revealing another set of familiar faces. “What the hell do I do with these things?”

  “This lot . . .” Peroni pushed the last pile of pictures, with Barbara and Eleanor in them, to one side, “. . . you guard with your life, because they may be all we’ve got between that Julius kid and the grave.”

  “I know that,” Falcone replied testily.

  “Oh.” Peroni placed his index finger gently on the others. “You mean these?”

  He pulled away his hand and took a good look at them. “You know, I hate to place your ego in jeopardy, Leo, but it is possible for other men of your rank to come and dip their beak here. You’ve now got three murders under your belt and an abduction. Maybe there’s been some blackmail going on here too. It’s a lot for one man. Pass the goods around a little.”

  “They’re linked,” Falcone insisted. “I’ve had this argument upstairs already. If I’d wanted to split these inquiries off into different teams I’d have done that. My view—their view too—is that it would be counter-productive. We don’t have the time or the resources and we could end up missing some connections too. I know it’s stretching things but we really have no option.”

  “No option?” Peroni grinned. “Give me a break. I’m hearing ambition here, Leo. You bored with being inspector? After a commissioner’s badge? Or is it higher than that?”

  “I want this girl found,” Falcone snapped. “Don’t judge everyone by your own standards.”

  “So why are you worried about the photos? Just put them in a drawer. Wait and see if they ever become useful.”

  “Useful—”

  Peroni laughed. “Leo, Leo. You’re not cut out for this, are you? You ca
n go upstairs and hard-ball your way through anything. Except—” He glanced at the photos. “This kind of stuff. It embarrasses you, doesn’t it?”

  Falcone sighed. “We should be playing to our strengths here. You ought to learn from what we’re trying to do, which is make some connections. That’s why I don’t want this split up any more than it is. In return I’m asking for your advice. This must have happened to you plenty. You go in somewhere. You find the wrong people inside. What do you do?”

  Peroni thought about it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have taken a pop at you like that. You’re right. I’ve got a lot to learn from you people. I just wonder what the point is because, believe me, I am not staying in this asylum for long.”

  Falcone stared at him frankly. “You seem very sure of that. If we screw up on this case . . .”

  “You mean if you screw up. Look, here’s my advice. There’s no easy answer, Leo. It depends on the circumstances. But I’ll tell you one thing you don’t do.”

  He picked up the bigger pile of pictures and flicked through them, shaking his head.

  “You don’t sleep on it. Either you walk upstairs with these things now or you let it drop forever. Hesitate and you become something they hate. An unknown quantity, with a little time bomb sitting in his desk drawer. If you’re going to lay all the rest of this on them, you’ve got to do it this very moment. If not—”

  He picked up one of the prints and walked over to the shredder that stood by Falcone’s office printer. Then he fed the photo into the plastic jaws and watched as it sprang to life, devoured the picture, tearing it into a million tiny, irretrievable pieces.

  “Ambition’s an interesting thing,” Peroni said. “I had it once. I thought nothing could touch me. And look what happened. Tell me, Leo. If you’d been on that DIA bust, if you’d walked in and found me there with my pants down. Nothing going on except the usual. What would you have done? Looked the other way?”

  Falcone didn’t even give it a moment’s thought. “No. Because there’d have to be something going on. Why else would you be there?”

  “She was beautiful.” Peroni looked at him and almost pitied the man. “You really don’t get that, do you? It just couldn’t be enough?”