David Hewson (45 page)

What
mattered was bringing events to a close quietly, with as little damage as
possible. Nic didn't know if he could do that. Falcone was in his
meeting, but once he emerged he'd be on the phone, asking questions. Would
Costa have any answers? If he did, would he be inclined to share them with his
boss?

And...

He
had to ask himself. How much of the truth was Emily telling him? Ever since the
previous night when he'd forced her to confront the idea that her father
was the man behind Kaspar's miserable fate in Iraq, he'd felt there
was something she was concealing.

Teresa
had looked up the report on the attack in the Piazza Mattei the previous
October and tried, in vain, to find something new. The facts were plain,
baffling and suspiciously scarce. The American professor had been staying
temporarily at Number Thirteen as a houseguest, while conducting some academic
research at the American embassy. He'd been assaulted in the square by
the fountain. It was pure luck that a couple of cops were in the vicinity. No
assailant had been apprehended. No motive could be found. It could be a blind
alley...

Then
Teresa had suggested she try to find something out about the property itself. After
fifteen minutes--a period of time in which Costa, to his frustration, had
gotten nowhere--she phoned back, ecstatic. The earliest deeds she could
track showed Number Thirteen had been owned by the same private company based
in Washington as far back as 1975. That, in itself, was unusual. Foreign owners
rarely kept properties for that length of time. The firm wasn't listed in
the US phone book. It didn't show in any of the financial records which
she'd bullied some lowly minion in research into checking. Something
stank, Teresa thought. Costa felt sure her instincts were correct. The tough
part was turning instincts into hard fact. It was all going nowhere unless he
could prise something out of the memory of someone who'd lived in the
square for some time.

"What
you do in circumstances like these," Costa thought, trying to still those
images running around his head, "is get yourself a coffee."

He
walked into the little cafe on the square, ordered a large macchiato and dumped
a couple of extra shots of caffeine inside it from the coffee and sugar sludge
parked on the bar in a bowl. Then, as he waited for the sudden caffeine jolt to
hit, he tried to think what Falcone would have done in the circumstances.

The
inspector had just a few mottos, all of them rarely heard, all of them
apposite. One came to Costa at that moment.
Curiosity is the basis of
detection
. Without it, a man learned nothing. Without it, you might as
well be an accountant.

He
tried to recall the substance of the reports he'd read over the last few
days and set them against the conversation he'd had with Emily after
Kaspar had handed the phone back to her. Then he finished his coffee and called
over the middle-aged proprietor.

He
should have figured this out earlier. The ghetto never changed. Places were
handed down from generation to generation. He was just a short stroll from the
commercial heart of the modern city, but this was a village, one where everyone
knew everyone else. Rome was, in some ways, still a collection of individual
communities living noisily cheek by jowl. It was what separated Rome from other
capitals he had visited, cities that seemed metropolitan sprawls, with
ill-defined borders and areas where not a soul lived at night.

"Who's
the oldest resident in the square?" Costa asked, flashing his card.

The
man kept polishing a glass with a spotless cloth, thinking. "You mean the
oldest who's still got half a brain?"

Costa
sighed. "Listen. I don't have the time..."

The
cloth came out of the glass and jabbed at a house on the other side of the
square. "Sorvino. Number Twenty-one. Ground floor. Don't say I told
you."

No
one liked talking to the police. Not even cafe owners, who'd be the first
to start screaming down the phone if someone walked off with an extra sachet of
sugar.

"Thanks,"
Costa murmured. He threw a couple of coins on the counter, then walked out into
the cold morning air.

Number
Twenty-one, thanks to the vagaries of house numbering in the ghetto, was four
doors down from Thirteen. He pushed the bell marked "Sorvino." A
stiff-limbed little woman in a faded blue floral-pattern dress came to the door
and peered at him through round, thick glasses. She was eighty, maybe more, at
an age when it was difficult to tell. Short, but proudly erect, as if to say:
to hell with the years. She took one look at the badge and nodded him into the
living room. It was immaculate: crammed with polished antique furniture, a
selection of framed photographs, and what seemed like hundreds of pieces of
Jewish memorabilia.

"I
was hoping to talk to someone with a memory," he said urgently. "Someone
who's lived here a long time."

"Is
eighty-seven years long enough for you?"

"More
than enough," he replied, smiling, hoping he didn't look too
impatient.

She
picked up a delicate porcelain cup, still half full. "Camomile tea. I
recommend it for people of a nervous nature."

"Thanks.
I'll remember that."

"No
you won't. You're young. You think you can live through anything. What
are you looking for? It must be something important."

"Very.
Facts. Names." He hesitated. "Names mainly. I've been
knocking on doors. Getting nowhere."

"The
ghetto's changing. You don't see families the way you used
to."

"I
want to know about Number Thirteen."

"Ah."
She nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. "II Duce had a
girl there during the war. German. Ilse, I think she was called. Not that he
ever visited, you understand. He wouldn't dirty his hands coming to meet
the likes of us, now would he?"

Jews
of her generation had a mixed attitude towards Mussolini. Until the later stage
of his career, Il Duce had taken little interest in anti-Semitism. Costa could
recall his father telling stories of how some Jews even joined the fascist
party. Relatively limited numbers had been transported to the concentration
camps. It was the old Roman story: nothing was ever quite black and white.

"What
happened to the house after the war?"

She
looked at him severely. "I'm not an estate agent."

"I
know that. I just wondered who lived there. You're a kind woman, Signora,
I'm sure. You would want to know your neighbours."

"No
more than they want to be known," she said primly.

"Of
course."

"Soldiers,"
she said with a shrug. "American soldiers, for a while anyway. Nice men.
Officers. They had beautiful manners, not like Roman men. They were strangers.
I was of assistance to them now and again. I like strangers to go away with
fond memories of Rome. As any good citizen would."

"Of
course. And then?"

"You're
asking me who's lived there for the last fifty years?"

"That
would be useful."

"Huh."

It
was never easy dealing with this generation. They resented something. That the
world had changed. That they were getting older within it, powerless.

"Please
try to think. A man was attacked there earlier this year. Do you
remember?"

"I
heard it! Fighting in the street! Here! Not since the war..." She
frowned. "The world gets worse. Why don't you do something about
it?"

"I'm
trying," he replied.

"Not
hard enough, it seems to me."

It
was a reasonable observation. "Perhaps. But I can't..."
He corrected himself. "None of us in the police can do that on our own. We
need your help. Your support. Without that..."

She
was a bright-eyed old bird. She didn't miss a thing. "Yes?"

"Without
that we're just people who enforce the laws made by politicians. Regardless
of what anyone thinks. Regardless of what's right sometimes."

"Oh
my," she said, smiling, revealing small teeth the colour of old
porcelain, a little crooked. "A policeman with a conscience. How they
must love you."

"I
don't do this to be loved, Signora. Please. The house. Whose is it? Who's
lived there over the years?"

"Who
owns it? Americans, I imagine. They look like government people to me. Government
people who don't want to
say
they're government people. Not
that I care. They keep it in good repair. What more can I say? They come. They
go. Different ones. Not for long, usually. Just a few weeks, as if it were a
hotel. Not long enough to get to know the likes of me. Pleasant men, mind.
Always men, too, on their own."

She
was trying to remember something. Costa waited, knowing he couldn't let
this interview run and run, wondering whether there were any other avenues left
open to him.

"And?"

"They
were solitary creatures," she said testily. "Not the kind you could
talk to easily in the street."

"All
of them?"

"Most."

"Do
you remember any names? It's possible this man who was attacked was
mistaken for someone else."

"So
many," she said, frowning.

Even
the old ones didn't try much these days. Costa took out his card and gave
it to her, pointing out the mobile number.

"If
you think of anything. I was probably mistaken in any case. If these men were
only here for a short time... I was hoping there was someone who stayed
there longer. Some years ago. A man, perhaps, who regarded it as his
home."

The
old eyes sparkled. "There
was
one. Ten, fifteen years ago. I
recall now. I think he stayed there for a year. Possibly more."

"His
name?"

"Even
less talkative than most of them, from what I remember. Somewhat abrupt I
thought, but perhaps that was just his manner."

"His
name?" he insisted.

She
shook her head. "How could I possibly know that?"

Teresa
had checked. If Number Thirteen was a normal rental property there would be
residency records. None existed. It was a bolt-hole for one of the American
agencies, surely. They would have a way around all the regulations ordinary
citizens had to face.

"I
may have a photograph, though," she added brightly. "Would that help?"
She nodded at the gleaming walnut sideboard next to him. It was covered in
small, mounted pictures. She passed him one. "You know what time of year
that is?"

It
was winter. Men, women and children, all in heavy coats, stood in front of the
fountain of the tortoises holding lit candles.

"No."

"Shame
on you! Have you never heard of Hanukkah? Why should the Catholics steal all
the fun for Christmas?"

"I'm
sorry. I'm not a Catholic."

"How
shocking," she said with a laugh. "Still, I forgive you. We have a
little tradition. Every year we take a photograph of ourselves. Just the people
living here. By the fountain.
Every
year. I can show you ones when I
was a young girl before the war." Her eyes twinkled. "You
wouldn't recognize me. I wasn't the old thing I am now."

Costa's
brain was working overtime. "He was in the photograph? This
American?"

"He
didn't want to be! The poor man was walking home just as we were lining
up out there. We insisted. A little
vino
had been drunk, you
understand. He didn't have a choice." She paused to let this point
go home. "We can be very persuasive when we want to be, you know."

"I
can believe that. When?"

She
frowned. "I really couldn't say. I've so many
photographs."

"Possibly
ten, fifteen years ago?"

She
crossed the room, picked up a couple of photos, took off her glasses to peer at
them, then returned with one in her frail hand and passed it to him. Costa
scanned the faces there. He looked at the back. There was a year, scribbled in
pencil:
1990
.

Bingo.

"YOU
WANT TO KNOW who Bill Kaspar is?"

Joel
Leapman looked like a man speaking from personal experience, and there was
something in his eyes--impending pleasure, or a hint of a nasty surprise
around the corner--that Gianni Peroni really didn't like.

"OK.
I'll tell you. Kind of a soldier. Kind of a spy. A mercenary. A
go-between running shuttle between men who, like Kaspar, didn't really
exist either. One of the best. Take it from me. He was the sort of guy
you'd follow anywhere, right into hell if that's where he wanted to
go. An American hero, we thought. Not that anyone would ever call him that out
loud, you understand. And now we're going to hang him out to dry. Life's
a bitch sometimes."

Leapman's
tale confirmed just about everything Emily Deacon had discovered. Back in 1990,
William F. Kaspar had been called to lead one of two covert teams into Iraq on
an intelligence mission well behind hostile lines. The venture was a disaster.
The day after they arrived to establish a forward base inside an ancient monument
outside Babylon, the Republican Guard had attacked in force. Dan Deacon was out
on patrol with his own team when it happened. Deacon radioed for assistance and
was ordered not to engage. Forty-five minutes later, two Black Hawks, backed by
fighter support, arrived on the scene. The ziggurat was a smoking shell. From
what surveillance could see, Kaspar and his team were dead. Deacon's crew
managed to escape to a deserted farm two miles away, where a helicopter
snatched them from the approaching enemy, though one female member was badly
wounded along the way.