by David Hewson
She thought about this, and the stirring in her stomach ceased. She asked, “I imagine you never put much store in forensic evidence, did you?”
“Not unless I was really desperate,” he admitted. “That’s all they think of these days, isn’t it? Sitting around waiting for some civilian in a white coat to stare at a test tube, then point at a suspect lineup and say, ‘That one.’ Use science if you have to. But crimes are committed by people. If you want answers, ask a human being. Not a computer.”
“I have a pathologist friend you should meet. She half agrees with you.”
“She does?”
“I said ‘half.’ Now may I make a call?”
Arturo Messina passed over the handset, then, out of idle curiosity, plugged in the conference phone too.
He listened to the brief, lucid, and highly pointed conversation that followed. Then he observed, “I would like to meet this Dr. Lupo sometime, Emily. You should rest now. We men here must think about lunch.”
* * *
The prevailing wind had changed direction overnight. Now it was a strong, blustery westerly drawing moisture and a bone-chilling cold from the grey, flat waters of the Mediterranean before rolling over the airport and the flat lands of the estuarial Tiber to form a heavy black blanket of cloud which killed the light, casting the city in a monotone shade of grey.
They were standing in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, shivering, wondering where to begin. Get nosy, Falcone had said. It was, for him, an exceptionally vague command.
Peroni was crouching down, peering through the keyhole.
“I can’t see a thing,” he complained. “Are you sure about this? It’s not just one of your tricks?”
“What tricks?” Costa demanded, pushing him out of the way to look for himself.
The avenue of cypresses was there as he remembered, and the gravel path, now shiny with rain. His own father had showed him this small secret when Costa was no more than a boy. That day, the sun had been shining. He could still recall St. Peter’s standing proud and grand across the river, set perfectly at the centre of the frame made by the trees and the path under a sky the blue of a thrush’s egg. But today all he saw after the dark green lines of foliage was a shapeless mass of cloud, deep swirls of grey obscuring everything they consumed. From the corner behind them, which led off in the direction of the Circus Maximus, came a sound that reminded him of why they were there. The noise of happy young voices rose above the high wall keeping the school from the public, a vibrant clamour of life protected from the harshness of the world by Piranesi’s tall, white defences, like the ramparts of some small, fairy-tale castle.
“I’m sure,” Costa told Peroni, and took his head away from the door. The two Carabinieri who were always stationed here, for some bizarre reason deputed to guard the mansion of the Knights of Malta, were watching them, interested.
“Childhood memories are rarely reliable, Nic,” Peroni declared with a sage nod. “I spent years convinced I had an Aunt Alicia. Right up to the age of… oh, twelve or so. The poor woman was completely fictitious. Which was a shame, because she was a sight nicer than most of my family.”
One of the blue uniforms came over and gave them an evil look.
“What do you want?” the Carabiniere asked. He was about Costa’s age, taller, good-looking, but with a pinched, arrogant face.
“A little comradely help wouldn’t go amiss,” Peroni replied, pulling out his ID card and the most recent photo they had of Giorgio Bramante. “Please tell me this charming individual is fast asleep on a bench round the corner somewhere. We can deal with him after that. No problem.”
* * *
Leo Falcone knew it had to be said. Out of necessity. And to bring Arturo Messina back down to earth.
“He could be somewhere else altogether,” Falcone insisted. “Perhaps they argued. The child ran away…”
Messina’s scowl returned. “They didn’t argue. The father would have mentioned it. I do wish you’d concentrate on what’s important here, Leo. A missing boy.”
“I am,” Falcone replied sharply. “There’s very little left for us to do other than the obvious. The Army have sent in two more specialists to see how far they can get. Those caves are unmapped. From what I’ve been told, some probably run as far down as ground level, then to springs or waterways. The channels could be just large enough for a child, but too small for anyone else.”
Messina nodded at the two small excavators that had been brought there on his personal orders. “From what I’ve seen of the map, we can lift the lid off the whole thing in thirty minutes. Like taking the roof off an ants’ nest. We could see right inside.”
Falcone had been hoping it wouldn’t come to this.
“It’s not that simple. This is a protected historical site. It was even before anyone knew the full truth about what Bramante found here. Now they understand that… The city authorities would have to give permission. Bramante himself would be involved.”
“There’s a child’s life at stake here! And you’re talking about paperwork again?” Messina glowered at him.
“I’m merely reminding you of the facts.”
“Really. Go get me Giorgio Bramante. Now!”
* * *
It took fifteen minutes, during which Falcone received a phone call he’d been half expecting. Bramante was with a team of uniformed officers and civilians combing the grass verge of the rough field that fell down from the Orange Garden towards the winding road that led to the Tiber. He came without a question, without protest. He had a dark, bleak look on his face. It didn’t stop him staring at the photographers when they found him, or pausing briefly to talk to the reporters to make another plea for assistance from the public. The gash on his forehead seemed a little less livid. Soon it would look like a mere bruise.
Falcone waited until this brief interview was over, saying nothing in response to the reporters’ questions, wishing more than ever that he could get Bramante alone in a room to himself for a little while. Then they walked to join Arturo Messina, who still stood above the entrance to the excavations, staring down at the culvert with its old iron gates, now unlocked. This was a small indentation in the Aventino, almost like a bomb crater, a pocket of flat land on the hill which was reached by a little path that wound down from the park. The miniature excavators had made their way along it. Their operators now sat on the machines which rumbled in the warm late afternoon air, like iron beasts of burden resting before the exertions they knew were to come.
“There’s news?” Bramante asked the moment they joined him.
“No—” Messina began to say, then Falcone interrupted him.
“We have Ludo Torchia, sir. He was picked up in a bar the students use in Testaccio. Somewhat drunk. He’s at the Questura now.”
An unexpected grin lit Messina’s gloomy features. “See, Giorgio! I told you. We make progress.”
The man wasn’t paying much attention. He was staring down at the excavators. “So what are you doing?” he asked warily.
“Nothing,” Messina answered. “Without your permission.”
Bramante shook his head. “This is…” The digger drivers were looking up at them in anticipation. “A historic site. You can’t just destroy it…. Not again.”
Messina put a hand on his shoulder. “We can’t go any further down there without those machines. If the boy’s still inside, we could lift off the roof and see a hell of a lot more than we can now.”
“It’s irreplaceable.” Bramante shook his head again. “I suppose it’s too much to expect the likes of you to appreciate.”
Arturo Messina blinked, clearly taken aback by this vacillation. Then he said, “You’re exhausted. It’s understandable. You don’t have to be here. Go home to your wife. You’ve done everything you can. This is our job now. I’ll send someone to be with you. Falcone. Or someone less miserable.”
Bramante glanced at them and licked his lips. “You’ve got Ludo,” he said quietly. “I know hi
m. If I speak to him, perhaps he’ll see sense. He wouldn’t want this place damaged either. Just give me some time.”
Falcone was shuffling from side to side, frantically coughing into his fist. Interviews in the Questura were for police officers, lawyers, and suspects. Not the desperate parents of missing children.
“Let me think about this,” Messina replied. “Falcone. Take Giorgio back to the Questura with you. I’ll be along very shortly. I want to see what happens here. And I begin the questioning. No one else. Well?”
Falcone didn’t move. He said, “An interview conducted in the presence of a potential witness, as Professor Bramante undoubtedly is, would be… rather unorthodox. It could cause problems with the lawyers. Immense problems.”
Messina smiled, then put his hand on Falcone’s arm and squeezed. Hard.
“Fuck the lawyers, Leo,” he said cheerfully. “Now off with you.”
Falcone caught the expression in his superior’s eye. Messina wanted the two of them out of there. The commissario wasn’t waiting for anyone.
“Sir,” Falcone replied stiffly, then led Giorgio Bramante to a squad car, closed the door on him, and ordered the driver to take the man to the Questura to await his arrival.
After which, he lit a cigarette, took two rapid draws from it, then threw the thing beneath one of the parched orange trees.
The relationship was damaged already, Falcone decided. There was no more harm to be done.
He walked back and joined Messina, who glared at him, furious.
“You’re disobeying my orders. How do you think that will look on the report sheet when it comes to the promotions board?”
“There’s something wrong here,” Falcone replied. “You know it. I know it. We have to—”
“No!” Messina barked. “That child is missing. Once those machines go in, I could turn him up at any moment. Until we do that, I don’t give a shit what you think, or what Giorgio Bramante gets up to. Understood?”
* * *
The older carabinieri officer laughed. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sound.
“You think we don’t know who Giorgio Bramante is?” he asked Costa. “We work the Aventino. We’re not strangers here.”
“So you’ve seen him?” Costa asked.
The two uniformed officers exchanged sly glances. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. They were rival forces — one civilian, one military. Not exactly at loggerheads, but rarely bosom friends either.
“Listen,” Peroni said in his best charming voice, one that was at odds with his thug-like appearance, “we can either play the game and pretend we don’t exist. Or we can have an easy, amicable chat and then go our own ways. I won’t tell if you won’t. Where’s the harm in that?”
“He came here two or three weeks ago,” the older officer said, and got a filthy look from his colleague for his pains. “He put some flowers down in the park over there. Where the kid went missing, I guess.”
“No one ever said he was a bad father,” Peroni agreed sweetly.
That got the young one going.
“He was the best kind of father you could get, wasn’t he? Some scum went and killed his kid like that! What the hell do you expect? If you’ve got kids—”
“You’ve got kids?” Costa interrupted.
“No…” the young one answered with a surly expression.
“Then—” Costa said. A painful dig in the ribs from Peroni stopped him.
“I’ve got kids,” the big man said. “If anyone touched them…”
“Quite.” The young officer nodded.
“Professor Bramante never came back?” Costa asked.
The two Carabinieri glanced at each other again.
“The wife did,” the older one replied. “We didn’t even know who she was until one of the mothers from the school pointed her out. No one gets to keep any secrets around here. It’s that kind of place.”
“What did she do?” Peroni asked.
The Carabiniere grimaced. He seemed a decent man.
“She put down some flowers, too. Then she sat in that park for hours. It got so late I wondered if I shouldn’t have gone and talked to her. It was freezing, for God’s sake. But she left, in the end.”
The officer hesitated.
“You think he might be around here?” he asked finally. “After what went on in the Questura last night? What a mess. I don’t envy you cleaning up after that.”
Peroni patted him on the arm and said, very sincerely, “Thanks.”
“Lax,” the young one declared. “Downright lax. That’s what it was.”
The older one rolled his eyes, looked at his colleague, then said, with a sad air of resignation, “You know, I wish you’d keep your mouth shut a little more often. It just leaks out crap day after day.”
“I only said…” The young man was getting red in the face.
“I don’t care what you said. These men asked for our help. If we can give it to them, we do.
“One thing,” the friendly one continued, nodding at his colleague. “He spoke to Bramante. Didn’t you? He walked right up to him, as if the man was a football star or something. Did you get an autograph, huh, Fabiano? Have you washed your hand since he shook it or what?”
Fabiano’s face got a touch redder. “I just told him what I thought. That he ought never have gone to jail for what he did.”
“You mean killed someone?” his colleague demanded. “Doesn’t look like it was that much out of character either, does it?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Here…”
He took some money out of his pocket, then threw it at the younger officer.
“Go down the road and buy me a coffee. The usual. One for yourself, if you want it. And two for our friends here.”
“We don’t have time,” Costa said. “But thanks anyway.”
They watched the younger Carabiniere shuffle off across the road, tail between his legs.
“You know what worries me?” the older man said, shaking his head. “If it all happened again — same situation, same people — an idiot like Fabiano there would make exactly the same mistakes. He’d still think you could fix it all with your fists.” He peered into their faces. “Let me tell you two something. Bramante was no hero. I don’t judge people on how they look. I’m not that stupid. But there was something about that one. He let that moron partner of mine suck up to him as if he was God or something. It was… bad.”
Peroni nodded. “Understood.”
“No. Listen. I’m not so good with words. Meeting him felt very creepy. Same with his wife too. I’ve seen what happens when you lose a kid. It’s not easy. But all those years later, still looking as if it happened yesterday…”
Costa hadn’t given Beatrice Bramante much thought. Rosa Prabakaran was keeping an eye on her. If she was involved, she’d surely keep away from her ex-husband from now on.
“Do you think the two of them met? The wife and the husband?” he asked.
“I didn’t see it. They came here on different days. Who’s to know?” He licked his lips. He seemed as if he needed that coffee. And something else too. As if he wanted to say what was on his mind before his colleague returned.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though. It wasn’t just the once. He came back one more time. Five days, a week or so ago. Went in that place over there.”
He pointed along the square, to a small dark door with a sign by it, unreadable from this angle.
“There being…?” Peroni prompted him.
“Where he used to work,” the officer answered, as if it were obvious. “Where all those archaeologists are doing whatever they do. He went in there and next thing we know they were shouting and yelling. We could hear them from here. I was about to go and ask whether someone needed a little help. But then Bramante came out again, face like thunder, and just walked off down the road as if nothing had happened.”
Costa stared at the sign on the w
all: the archaeology department of La Sapienza had a small office here, hidden behind a wall, just like the mansion of the Knights of Malta. When he’d gotten out of prison, Giorgio Bramante had turned down his old job. Yet he’d returned to where he used to work, and he wasn’t a man who did anything without a reason.
“Are they still investigating the site?” Costa asked. “The place where Alessio went missing?”
The Carabinieri officer shook his head.
“Not if they’ve any sense. It’s all cordoned off down there. Whatever happened to it back then left the whole area a death trap. Every time it rains badly, we have a mud slide. Kids mess around in it from time to time. If we find them, they go home with boxed ears. And I mean boxed. I don’t want them coming back.”
Peroni looked at Costa, stared at his shoes, then sighed.
“What’s wrong?” the officer asked.
“I just cleaned them this morning,” the big cop moaned.
* * *
It was almost seven before Arturo Messina felt able to leave the Aventino. A lazy orange sun hung over the Tiber. Its mellowing rays turned the river below into a bright still snake of golden water, patterned on both sides by two slow-moving lines of traffic. The squad car, with its siren and blue flashing light, worked its way through them laboriously. Arturo didn’t have the heart to yell at the driver to make better progress.
He cast a final glance back towards the hill. Crowds were gathered on the Lungotevere below, and on the brow too. No one moved much. Even the jackals of the press were beginning to look bored. Messina had been a police officer all his life, worked uniform, plainclothes, everything, before joining the management ladder. The commissario understood that feeling of stasis, of wading through mud, that gripped an investigation when the first buzz of adrenaline and opportunity was lost. There were now only a few hours of light left. The machines had struggled against the patch of ground hanging precipitately beneath the Orange Garden. What initially seemed a simple task had turned into a nightmarish attempt to shift a small mountain of earth and soft stone that kept collapsing in on itself. The amateurish surveyor supplied by the company that brought in the excavators appeared hopelessly out of his depth. Not one of the archaeologists from Bramante’s team was willing to help; they were too infuriated by what was happening. With Giorgio Bramante departed to the Questura, there was no one in the vicinity who could give them an expert opinion on how best to proceed.