by David Hewson
She stared up at him, her face creased with hate. “So why ask them now? Do you enjoy torturing me?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“We were an ordinary family until that day. No affairs. No secrets.”
“And yet Giorgio took Alessio down into that place,” he replied. “You didn’t know he’d done that. I know you never said that to us at the time. And I didn’t pursue it. You had enough to deal with. But you didn’t know. It was obvious you didn’t understand either. At least, that’s what I thought.”
“What is it you want from me? I ask myself that question every day. Every morning. Every night. What if I’d taken him to school instead? What if he’d been sick? Or gone in a different direction? When you lose a child, Falcone, a part of you never stops playing that awful game.”
The big sovrintendente shuffled next to Rosa, glanced at Falcone as if wondering whether he was allowed to intervene, then spoke anyway.
“And what if they’d turned the wrong corner and found some idiot drunk coming up the street, with his car on the wrong side of the road?” Taccone asked. “We’re police, signora. We hear people going through that kind of agony every day. It’s understandable. But it’s pointless too.”
Falcone wished he had Costa and Peroni by his side, not this well-meaning pair, one raw and unobservant, one decent and unimaginative.
“No,” the inspector said quietly, “it’s not pointless at all. Alessio didn’t disappear because of some drunk driver. His father took him to that place for some purpose. Perhaps what followed was an accident, but the reason he was there to begin with is something I can’t begin to comprehend. Can you?”
* * *
Police drivers possessed the same contempt for speed limits as the average civilian. So, to Emily Deacon’s surprise, it took less than two hours to get from the centre of Rome to Arturo Messina’s isolated villa on the outskirts of Orvieto. Her bedroom, which was next to Raffaella’s on the third floor of the palatial home, had an extraordinary view, out over the rolling countryside of Umbria towards the rock face fronting the small, castellated city which gave the region its name. The Duomo, Orvieto’s grandly elegant cathedral, stood proudly over the città, its single rose window staring out like a monocular eye, watching over everything in its care. But this was February. The light was gone too soon for them to enjoy much of the tour of the premises offered by Messina senior, a man of far more prepossessing character than his son. If Arturo felt any embarrassment about the circumstances of their visit and the fact that it stemmed from the case that had cost him his career, he didn’t show it. The old commissario must have been in his early sixties but looked a decade younger, of medium height and stocky build, with a dark, handsome face, a small, neat moustache, and bright, twinkling brown eyes.
The house was far too large for one man. Messina, who had lost his wife to illness some five years before, told, without hesitation, how it had been handed down from generation to generation after his great-grandfather had acquired it some eighty years before. From the ornate entrance hall on the ground floor to the guest quarters and the small but impeccable garden at the rear, with its view to the Duomo, it was a perfect little palace. When Emily asked what he did with his time, Arturo regaled them both with stories of trips into the wild hills to hunt game, fishing on the local rivers, and long outings to distant restaurants with his friends from the Questura. Orvieto appeared to be a retirement ground for old cops. Two had called by that afternoon, one for coffee and, Emily thought, a look at Arturo’s visitors, the second with a couple of pheasants for supper. Arturo Messina wasn’t lonely. This idyllic break from Rome seemed a little too good to be true, until he took her to one side and showed her the package Falcone had sent that afternoon.
She’d stared warily at the crest of the Rome Questura on the covering message. When she opened it, Messina stole one good look at the cover page, then went to a cupboard to find something which he retrieved and placed on the table. It took her straight back to her days in the FBI school in Langley, with an alacrity that was scary.
“That, Arturo,” Emily declared, “is a conference phone.”
“Even an old man like me knows what century this is,” he replied cheerfully. “I like to keep up with the times. Besides, if Leo Falcone is going to rope you into this case, I can surely come too. It was mine once, remember?”
“But…”
“But what?” The brown eyes gleamed at her. “Oh, come. There’s nothing personal here. Do I look like a man eaten up by resentment? Even if I was, isn’t the case more important?”
“That’s not really my decision, is it?”
“I’ll talk to Leo when we’re ready. Agreed?”
She said nothing.
“You are prepared for this, aren’t you?” the old man asked kindly.
She didn’t look ill. She didn’t even look pregnant. It was just tiredness. Mainly. The physical symptoms were just tiny, nothing. They would go away soon and she’d get that rosy bloom she expected to see on all pregnant women.
So the two of them sat down and began to pore over the documents Falcone had despatched to await her arrival. The Bramante case, Emily soon realised, raised many intriguing questions, some of which, as Arturo Messina readily acknowledged, had never been addressed at the time. This was common in all complex investigations, and one reason why cold-case analysis existed. A fresh eye didn’t just see new opportunities. It saw old ones that had been un-exploited or simply unobserved. And sometimes they were the most promising of all.
* * *
Beatrice Bramante got up and went to the small sink next to the hot plate. She took down a bottle of what looked like cheap brandy from the cabinet above and poured herself a large glass. Then she came back, sat down in front of them, and took a long, slow drink.
“It took me a year to find the courage to ask him,” she said. “Giorgio is not the kind of man you can interrogate. But I imagine you know that.”
“And he said?”
Beatrice Bramante was crying now, in spite of herself, in spite of the obvious shame she felt as they watched her try, and fail, to choke back the tears.
“He told me… there was a time in everyone’s life when they had to start growing up. That was all he had to say on the matter. Then he told me he wanted a divorce. Quick. Unchallenged. That was my reward for asking. There was nothing more to say. Nor is there now. This is enough for me, Falcone. Please go.”
Taccone was trying to read the old grubby carpet. Rosa Prabakaran was tidying her notepad into her bag, anxious to get out of there.
Falcone reached over, took the pad out of her bag, and put it back in her hands, then stabbed the pen that was still in her fingers onto the page.
“What did that mean, do you think, Beatrice?” he persisted. “That it was time for Alessio to start ‘growing up’ somehow?”
“He was a child! A beautiful, awkward, spoilt, bloody-minded, mischievous little boy. And…” She threw back her head, as if that could stop the tears. “And Giorgio loved him more than anything. More than me. More than himself. I don’t know what he meant. All I know…” — there was a pause as she wiped her face with the sleeve of the grubby blue cardigan — “…is that it wasn’t just my son who died that day. I didn’t know the man in that cell. I didn’t know him when I went to his apartment round the corner. He just looks like Giorgio Bramante. There’s someone else inside the skin. Not the man I loved… love. You pick the words. You make them up. You tell the whole stinking world if you want. After all…” — the lined, bitter face was glowering at him from across the narrow room again — “…that’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“When someone’s been beaten to death while I sit outside listening, twiddling my thumbs?” Falcone asked. “Of course. I also try to catch criminals before they can do more harm than they have already. I hope to lessen the hurt that people wish to do to one another, even if they have little desire to do that themselves. It’s a foolish idea, perhaps
.”
He struggled to his feet, then bent and took Beatrice Bramante’s hands. She stiffened at his touch. His fingers fell on the old blue cardigan, gripped tightly around her palms.
“May I?” he asked.
Gently, he pulled back the cheap fabric. He knew what he’d see there, why a woman like Beatrice Bramante would hide herself inside those long, baggy sleeves.
The marks on her wrists were fresh, dark red weals, not deep, not the kind of wound inflicted by someone looking to end their own life. She was harming herself, regularly he guessed. And perhaps…
He thought about something that had been nagging since the moment he first heard it.
“The T-shirt you gave to the church. The blood on it was yours, wasn’t it?”
She snatched her hands from him and dragged the blue sleeves over them again.
“What a clever man you are, Falcone! If only you’d been this perceptive fourteen years ago.”
“I wish that had been the case too,” he replied, and returned to the sofa. “The blood was yours. To begin with anyway. Did you go back to the church again after that?”
“Never. Why?”
“I have my reasons. Why that church in the first place?”
“Where else would I take it? Giorgio worked with Gabrielli. He was a part-time warden there. I didn’t know anyone else. I read about that little museum of theirs in the paper. I…” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve over her right hand. “I wasn’t myself at the time.”
“When did you tell Giorgio?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember. In prison. Not long before he asked for the divorce. He thought I was crazy. Perhaps he was right.”
There was another question. It had to be asked.
“Were you harming yourself before Alessio disappeared? Or did it begin then?”
“This is none of your business! None of your business…”
“No,” Falcone agreed, and felt he had his answer. “You’re right. All the same I think it would be advisable if I asked someone to come round to talk to you from time to time. The social people…”
The woman’s face contorted in a fit of abrupt fury. “Keep out of my life, you bastard!” she screeched, stabbing a finger at him, not minding that her sleeves fell back as she did this, revealing the crisscross pattern of marks on both her wrists, rising almost to the elbow. “I will not allow you in here again.”
“As you see fit, signora,” he replied simply.
* * *
It was dark outside. Thick black clouds were rolling in from the Mediterranean, obscuring the moon. Soon there would be rain. Perhaps a roll of thunder.
Falcone waited until they were in the car before giving his orders.
“How much experience do you have of surveillance, Prabakaran?”
“I’ve done the course, sir. Nothing… practical.”
“Tomorrow, and until I say otherwise, you will begin surveillance of Signora Bramante. I want to know where she goes. When. Who she sees. Everything.”
“But…?” She fell silent.
“But what? It’s important you tell me if an order is unclear. I abhor being misunderstood.”
“Beatrice Bramante has met me twice now. However hard I try, she’s bound to see me. She’ll know she’s under surveillance.”
The car wound past the market, which was now closed. Falcone peered at the shuttered stalls, the piles of discarded vegetables littering the pavement. As he watched, a burst of squally wind picked up some of the empty boxes, whirling the rubbish in a spiral, depositing the trash everywhere. A flash of thick greasy rain dashed against the windscreen. The weather was breaking.
“I would be very disappointed if she didn’t see you. If the woman has been assisting her husband in this, she’s a party to murder already. For her own sake, I do not wish her to become further involved.”
“But…?”
“Officer,” he said, a little impatiently. “I owe Giorgio Bramante nothing. He is, as far as any of us can determine, the one proven murderer in this whole sorry saga. Beatrice Bramante is different. All the same, it may well be that we have to arrest her before long. Nevertheless, we owe her the benefit of doubt and what charity I can provide. You will follow her. You will ensure you are seen. And at the end of each day, you will report back directly to me. Do I make myself clear?”
Rosa nodded and said nothing. Falcone scarcely noticed. His memories of what had happened fourteen years ago were getting clearer all the time. Now that he could look back with some perspective on what had happened, he was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy about several important aspects of the investigation.
“We also owe that woman truth of what happened to her son,” he added. “I want Giorgio Bramante. And I want truth.”
* * *
After just an hour of work — reading through Falcone’s documents and throwing questions at Arturo, whose replies proved he had a clear and capacious memory — it was clear to Emily Deacon that Falcone’s papers covered only a part of the story. When Bramante had been arrested for Ludo Torchia’s death, a grim case of child abduction had turned, instead, into a circus. The police and rescue services were out in force poring over the Aventino and through the labyrinth of tunnels and caves of Bramante’s excavation, looking for the missing boy. Hundreds of civilians had abandoned their jobs to join in the hunt. Swiftly, the investigation became swamped by controversy as the implications of Bramante’s arrest sank in, and it became apparent that the authorities had little idea how to find Alessio Bramante. Emily recognised the symptoms of a full-scale media onslaught: the blind, irrational fury of the public, the angry impotence of a police force driven by legal and public necessities, not what it believed was correct in the circumstances. Then it all petered out in the unsatisfactory way that was all too familiar in cases involving missing children. Alessio was never found. His father held out his hands and went willingly to jail. Five teenagers walked free, then vanished because every lawyer who looked at the case declared, very publicly, that it was impossible to bring anyone to trial after the prime suspect had been beaten to death in police custody. The rules of procedure and evidence had been torn to shreds when Giorgio Bramante had resorted to his fists to bludgeon some information out of the miserable Ludo Torchia. There was no going back.
It was, she thought, a particularly Roman mess, and if they were to stand the slightest chance of peering into this fading mist, it was vital, after so long an interval, for more insight than lay inside Falcone’s hastily assembled documentation.
She pushed the papers aside and looked at Arturo. She didn’t need to say anything. A good police officer still lurked there, she was certain of it, probably itching for a little action. He excused himself and made a phone call. When he returned, he led her to a small and elegant study at the front of the villa, then parked himself at a very new notebook computer on the mahogany desk there and began typing. The emblem of the Polizia di Stato flashed up on the screen, followed by an authentication login. Arturo glanced at a slip of paper with what looked like a username and password scribbled in ballpoint, hammered in a few quick characters, and they were in.
“Are we hacking into the central police network now?” she asked, pulling up a chair.
“No! I’m just… deputising for a friend.” He licked his lips and looked worried for a moment. “I try to stay up-to-date, you know. Up to a point. There’s a generation of police out there who are more at risk from repetitive stress injury than getting a punch in the face. This is not progress. You have to use the tools at your disposal.”
“I’d go along with that.”
“Good. You won’t tell my son about this little escapade, though, will you? He can be a stuck-up prick at times. The poor soul was born fifty years old and he’ll stay that way till he dies. Are we one on that?”
“He’s your son,” she said. “Now…”
It was all there. All the original reports. All the interviews. Photos. Maps. Even an independe
nt archaeological assessment of Bramante’s secret find. Arturo printed out what she asked for. He searched every last digital nook and cranny of the Questura’s system, trying to see if there was something they’d missed. Arturo Messina had hung on to his job for as long as he could during the Bramante investigation. He only got suspended when the hunt for Alessio was “scaled down,” a euphemism for giving up, he claimed, with an abrupt and unexpected bitterness. When there seemed to be no fresh information to uncover, he finally logged off, then they shuffled the stack of papers together and headed for the living room.
Raffaella was there with Arturo’s friend. He was an equally lively-looking pensioner, tall and slim, tanned, with a pleasant, aristocratic face.
“Did Pietro here lead you astray?” Arturo asked Raffaela. “I’m widowed. He’s divorced. Draw your own conclusions.”
She laughed. “I saw the Duomo. Such wonderful paintings.”
“Paintings!” Pietro declared. “Luca Signorelli. My favourite’s The Elect and the Condemned.” He nodded towards them. “That’s me and him. You just have to work out which is which.”
“Tonight,” Arturo said, “you’re the cook. Pheasant for four, please.”
Raffaella was beaming, keen to help. She disappeared with Pietro, into the kitchen, a different woman, Emily thought. Her relationship with Leo Falcone was odd, a little forced, a little subservient. She’d moved in after he’d been shot, cared for him during the long difficult months of convalescence. There was something that puzzled Emily about the bond between them. It was almost as if Raffaella had decided to look after Leo out of a sense of guilt, of responsibility for the tragedy in Venice involving her family which had also almost cost him his life. Free of her old home in Murano, of Rome, and, it seemed, of Leo, she seemed more relaxed, more independent.
Arturo was at the table with the papers again.
“There’s very little here I haven’t seen before,” he muttered. “This case was beyond me then and it’s beyond me now. Perhaps I should just go and peel potatoes with Pietro in the kitchen and let you women have some time together.”