The Garden of Evil (23 page)

“Did he bring the painting here?” he asked.

The man said nothing and stayed on the floor, holding his knees, mute and resentful.

“The Caravaggio?” Falcone persisted. “After he stole it from the studio tonight, and killed your friend Buccafusca along the way, did he bring it here? If so, may I see it?”

“That animal was not my friend,” the figure on the floor muttered, still rocking.

“This is your decision,” Falcone observed with a shrug. “We will find out in any case. I was merely offering you an opportunity to demonstrate your willingness to cooperate. Without it . . .”

Tomassoni stabbed an accusing finger at him from the floor. “The Caravaggio was mine! Ours. It always has been. Since the very beginning.”

This was beyond Falcone. “I do not understand.”

“No! You don’t! It’s
ours
!” He glanced around the shrouded canvases mournfully. “It’s the only one that is. And now I don’t even have it. Now . . .”

He stopped. Falcone smiled. It was an answer of sorts. These interviews always began with a small, seemingly insignificant moment of acquiescence. It would suffice.

“Perhaps you would like to get dressed,” he suggested. “This is going to be a long day. I think pyjamas are not the best idea. You should bring some of your other things too. Whatever you want from this home of yours. I believe you will be in custody for a while. Safe and secure, I promise that.”

The man shuffled to his feet. He was short and overweight, perhaps thirty-five. Not Malaspina’s class or kind. Nino Tomassoni must have offered something different, something particular, for him to have moved in those circles.

“And thank you for those messages,” Falcone added. “The emails you sent to my colleague. They will work in your favour. As to the postings on the statues . . .”

He didn’t like the look on Tomassoni’s face. It was vicious and full of spite.

“What about them?” the man asked.

“Were they your work too?”

“For all the good it did me,” he replied. “I’ll get my things.”

Falcone bent down and retrieved the object he had noticed on the floor from the start. It was a specialist radio, and when he turned it on it was easy to see the unit was tuned to a police frequency. It wasn’t hard to understand how Tomassoni had worked out what had happened that evening. Buccafusca’s death had been broadcast on the network. The threat to himself must have been obvious after that.

“This is illegal too,” the inspector noted. “I hope I shall have reason to ignore it.”

The little man swore again and shuffled through the mill of bodies, then hurried downstairs a floor and walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

He got there so quickly Falcone was several steps behind, and fuming at the way the officers on the landing simply let him through.

“Rossi,” he yelled at the man closest to the door, “what the hell do you think you’re doing letting a suspect slam a door in your face like that? Get in there and watch him.”

He knew what had happened the moment he heard the noise: a loud, repetitive rattle that seemed to shake the very fabric of the ancient, fragile building in which they stood.

“Get down!” Falcone yelled, and pushed the nearest man he could find to the floor, watching the rest of them follow, terrified. A storm of dislodged plaster began to descend on them. The ancient wallpaper rippled beneath the deafening force of gunfire.

The nearest officer to the door got a foot to it, then retreated back behind the wall. Falcone could see—just—what was happening beyond the threshold, and imagine in his mind’s eye how this came about.

He had left the vehicles outside unattended, needing every man he had. Now someone was standing on one of them, possibly the Jeep that was directly beneath the window, and letting loose with some kind of repeating weapon—a machine gun or pistol—directly through the glass, straight into the dancing, shaking body of Nino Tomassoni.

Flailing across the floor, intent on avoiding the hail of shells that was pouring into the building, Falcone rolled towards the staircase, found it, then, followed by two other men who had the same idea, half fell, half stumbled down the steps to the ground floor. Clinging to the damp wall, he made his way towards the entrance and the collapsed door they had brought down earlier.

“Behind me,” Falcone ordered, and watched the shining cobbles and the dim streetlights, gun in hand, wondering what this might be worth against the man outside.

The noise had stopped. By the time he felt the cold night air drifting in through the empty space at the front, another sound had replaced it: an engine at full rev, squealing across cobbles.

“Damn you,” Falcone swore.

He threw himself out into the street, men yelling at his back, screaming at them to keep cover.

The figure was no longer on the roof of the Jeep. Falcone had no idea where he’d gone to. A black slug-like Porsche coupe was wheeling across the greasy cobbles, describing a fast arc in the space in front of the old church.

As he watched, it disappeared behind the group of police vehicles, and Leo Falcone found himself running again, with men by his side, good men, angry men, weapons in their hands, heat rising in their heads.

“Behind me!” he bellowed again, and forced them to fall back behind his extended arm.

A single raking line of repeat fire raged through the night air on the far side of the convoy of blue vehicles. He fell below the window line of the van in front, aware, as he did so, that thin metal was no protection against a modern shell.

It lasted a second, no more. They were going. This was a warning, not an act of intent. Falcone raised his weapon and pointed it across the open space of the Piazza di San Lorenzo in Lucina, back towards the Christmas lights still burning in the Corso, conscious that the men around him were doing the same.

“Do not fire,” he said firmly. “Do
not
fire.”

In the distance, walking down the road, struggling to get out of the way as the Porsche found the street and roared off towards the Piazza Venezia and the open roads of Rome, was a straggling group of revellers, with stupid Christmas hats on their heads, a bunch of happy young partygoers looking for the way home.

“Get the control room on this,” he ordered, barking the license plate number of the black vehicle at them as he returned towards the door. “As if they won’t know already.”

He raced up the stairs and found the bedroom. The place was beginning to stink of gas.

“Find the source of that smell,” he barked at the nearest officer. “The last thing we want in here is an explosion.”

Nino Tomassoni lay on the floor of his squalid bedroom, openmouthed, eyes staring at the ceiling, his blood-soaked, shattered body strewn with broken glass.

“There goes the witness,” Rossi observed with a degree of unhelpful frankness Falcone found quite unnecessary. “Do we have any more?”

“Just the one,” Falcone murmured. “Franco Malaspina will not touch her, I swear.”

One

W
HEN NIC COSTA OPENED HIS EYES, HE WAS SOMEWHERE
that smelled familiar: the scent of flowers and pine needles.

People, too, in a room that wasn’t meant for a crowd.

Christmas, Costa said to himself, waking with a start, then sitting upright in his own bed, in the house on the edge of the city, his head heavy, his mind too dulled by the hospital drugs to think of much at that moment.

He reached for the watch by the side of his bed, aware that his shoulder felt as if it had been run over by a truck, and saw that it was now almost four on the afternoon of December 23. He’d lost more than half a day to sleep and medication. Then his eyes wandered to the room and stayed fixed on the single point they found, the person there.

Franco Malaspina was wearing a grey, expensive business suit, perfectly cut, and sat, relaxed, on the bedroom chair where Emily used to leave her clothes at night. He stared back at Costa, legs crossed, hands on his chin, looking as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

“What in God’s name . . .” Costa found himself muttering, wondering where a gun might be in this place that was so familiar, so private, yet at that moment so profoundly strange to him.

Malaspina unfolded his legs, then yawned, not moving another muscle. He had strong, broad, athletic shoulders, those of a powerful man. In the bright daylight streaming through the windows, his dark Sicilian features seemed remarkably like those of Agata Graziano.

“This was their choice, not mine,” the man protested in his easy, patrician accent. “Take your anger out on them.”

Costa’s attention roamed to the others in the rooms. All eyes were on him. Some he knew. Some, mainly men in suits like Malaspina’s, were strangers, as was a middle-aged woman with bright, closecropped blonde hair who wore a black judicial gown over her dark blue business jacket and sat on a dining room seat in the midst of the others, as if she were the master of proceedings.

“What is this?” Costa asked.

“It is a judicial hearing, Officer,” the woman said immediately.

“Your superiors felt it so important, we came here and waited for you to wake up. This was their prerogative. My name is Silvia Tentori. I am a magistrate. These men here are lawyers representing Count Malaspina. The Questura has legal representation. . . .”

Toni Grimaldi stood next to Falcone, with Peroni on the other side. None of them looked happy.

“I thought he didn’t like being called Count,” Costa found himself saying immediately. His head hurt.

Agata Graziano sat next to Falcone, looking frail, bleary-eyed, and unusually upset.

“You know the judiciary,” Malaspina observed. “Very well, I imagine. It’s all formality, even these days. You can call me Franco.”

“Get out of my house . . .”

He tried to move and couldn’t, not easily, not quickly.

It was Agata Graziano who rose from her chair, picked it up, and came to sit by him. Costa couldn’t help noticing the pain this caused Leo Falcone.

“Nic,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry about this. It was never meant to happen.” She glared at Malaspina. “His lawyers made it so. If there was some other way. If I could prevent this somehow—”

“You could just tell Signora Tentori the truth,” Malaspina interrupted. “Then”—he purposefully looked at his watch—“I might be able to go about my business.”

“The truth,” Costa murmured.

“The truth?” Malaspina echoed in an amused, nonchalant voice. “Here it is. After the festivities I hosted on behalf of this ungrateful woman’s gallery, I spent last night in my own home, until eleven, when I went out to meet a companion, who will vouch for me. After that, I received a call saying the police were making enquiries. So”—he shrugged—“I did what any good citizen would. I went to the Questura. And sat there. From a little before one in the morning until five, when Inspector Falcone here finally managed to find the time to see me.”

“I did not know—” Falcone butted in.

“That is not my fault,” Malaspina responded.

“The others,” Costa said. “Castagna. Tomassoni.”

Malaspina’s dark face flushed with sudden anger. “My friends, you mean? And Buccafusca too. They are dead, murdered, and you sit here pointing the finger at me when you should be out there looking for whoever did this. I wish to see their families. I wish to help them make arrangements. Yet all I hear are these stupid accusations. Again. I tell you . . . there is a limit to what one man will bear before he breaks, and you have crossed that limit now. To be told one is under suspicion in these circumstances. Of crimes committed when I am sitting in your own Questura, offering whatever assistance I can . . .”

Costa could read the look in their eyes. It was despair. He could only guess at what the night had brought them: death and disappointment. Malaspina believed he had won again, and this informal judicial hearing, with his rich-man’s lawyers hanging on every word, was surely some formality he hoped to use to seal that fact. And to take pleasure from the act of entering the home of a man whose wife he had murdered. It was there, plain in his face.

Still, his timing was not perfect.

“Emilio Buccafusca was murdered . . . this painting was stolen . . . before you went to the Questura,” Costa pointed out.

Malaspina leaned forward, like a schoolteacher making a point to a slow pupil. “While I was at a private dinner. With someone who can vouch for me.”

One of the grey men in grey suits said, “It offends my client that you waste time on this nonsense when you could be looking for the real criminals in this case.”

“It offends me that the man who shot my wife is sitting in my bedroom, smiling,” Costa answered immediately. “Ask your questions, then get out of here. But this I tell you . . .” He pointed at Malaspina. “I am not done with this man yet.”

The woman with the robes around her shoulders sighed and said, “After that I wonder if there is really any point in going on. From a serving police officer . . .”

“One who was shot in the course of duty last night,” Peroni pointed out. “By this bast—”

A look from Falcone silenced him.

“The point of this proceeding,” the woman went on, “is to discuss the police application for papers which will allow you to search the Palazzo Malaspina freely, and take specimens from Count Malaspina. Or is there something new you wish to add to that list now, Inspector?”

“That will suffice,” Falcone replied. “It’s all we need.”

The woman picked up a briefcase and took out a substantial wad of papers.

“At a previous hearing, I established that you will not be allowed to ask Count Malaspina for specimens without firm and incontrovertible evidence linking him to these events, which you have so far failed to provide. There are rules about harassment. There are avenues open to an individual persecuted by the state.”

“Four men died last night,” Falcone pointed out. “One of them an innocent security guard. Sovrintendente Costa could have been killed. Sister Agata—”

“This is irrelevant to Count Malaspina unless you have proof,” she declared with a peremptory brusqueness. “How many times do I have to say this?”

“I don’t know,” Falcone barked back. “Given that it always seems to be you who deals with these requests when they are made, possibly many, many more.”

Grimaldi put a hand to his head and emitted a groan. The woman turned and glowered at him.

“Are you letting your officers accuse me now?”

“There is only one person in this room we accuse,” Grimaldi answered. “Please address the point, Falcone.”

“I merely note that,” the inspector added icily, “I find it intriguing that whenever the subject of prosecuting Franco Malaspina comes before us, the name of Silvia Tentori invariably appears on the sheet. It is . . . illuminating to discover that the judiciary works so efficiently these days that it is able to supply us with magistrates who seem already to be familiar with the case we wish to bring before them.”

“This will not take long,” the woman muttered. “Sovrintendente?”

Costa nodded at her, taking in Falcone’s bitter, resigned expression. “What do you want to know?”

“In spite of yet another application for discovery and specimens concerning Count Malaspina, your colleagues can supply no evidence linking him to these crimes. Nothing except this identification from you and Signora Graziano last night. Tell me. You are certain of this?”

Costa glanced at the seated aristocrat, who watched him, relaxed, waiting for an answer, a finger to his lips, something close to a smirk on his face.

“I am certain of it.”

“How is that?” she asked. “The man was hooded.”

“I recognised his voice. The tone of it. The way he spoke to Sister Agata.”

The lawyer in the grey suit leaned forward. “You had not met the count until last night, and then spoke to him only briefly. We have witnesses for this.”

“I spoke to him once before. When I followed him from the Vicolo del Divino Amore, the day he murdered my wife.”

There was a chill in the room and an awkward silence. Then the lawyer added, “Another hooded man, in another hurried situation. Furthermore, if this was true, you would surely have reported the fact to the Questura immediately. Not returned to the Barberini studio to look at this painting. All the more so because of the personal nature of this so-called identification.”

He was not going to pursue this. It was pointless.

“And what lying bastard was he supposedly dining with last night?” Costa asked. “When he stole that painting and killed Emilio Buccafusca?”

The lawyer sniffed. “The count dined with me, at home, just the two of us. My wife is away. We were together from eleven until twelve forty-five, when his household contacted us to say the police had enquired after him. After that I accompanied him to the Questura immediately in order to offer whatever assistance was required.”

“Then,” Costa replied, “after I am done with his lies, I will deal with yours.”

Silvia Tentori glared at him, furious. “Thank you, Officer. That is enough. I reject this identification entirely. It is clearly based on nothing more than personal animosity.”

“It is based on the truth,” Costa insisted.

“I doubt that,” the woman said. “This leaves one so-called identification alone. Signora Graziano.”

“Sister . . .” Agata corrected her quietly. A surge of anger in Silvia Tentori’s eyes indicated she did not appreciate this.

“You say you can identify Count Malaspina as the man you saw in the studio last night?”

All eyes in the room were on her.

“I believe so.”

“You believe so?” the magistrate demanded. “What does that mean? We know you never saw his face. How is this possible?”

“I have known Franco for several years. I know his voice. I recognise the way he speaks to me.”

Silvia Tentori nodded, listening. “And were you helped in this identification?” she asked. “Did one of these police officers suggest to you this man whose face you never saw, whose voice you only heard in the course of a violent robbery, was Count Malaspina?”

She shook her head. “No. I mean . . . Nic and I . . . talked.”

“You talked. When? What was said? The details, please.”

Agata looked so exhausted. Nic felt like screaming at them all to get out of the room.

“Sister Graziano was the victim of a violent attack herself,” Costa pointed out. “You have to expect her to be hazy on some details.”

He knew it was a stupid thing to say the moment the words were out of his mouth.

“Quite,” the magistrate observed with visible pleasure, then openly, as if she didn’t mind, glanced at Malaspina, who was studying his nails, and added, “but this is a very serious accusation to base upon a few barely heard words from a man whose face she never saw.”

“I
know,
” she insisted. “Say something for me, Franco.”

Malaspina took his attention away from his fingers and stared at her.

“Say something?”

She didn’t flinch. “Say, ‘That bitch always had a sport in the blood.’ ”

He thought for a moment, then uttered the words in a precise, considered, aristocratic Roman accent, one both like and unlike the voice they had heard the previous night.

“Well?” Silvia Tentori asked. “Am I supposed to infer something from this?”

“It was him,” she insisted, “I know it. He knows it. We all do.”

Malaspina shook his head, then got up and walked to the window, with its view out onto a bleak grey winter’s day and a field of slumbering vines. He placed his hands easily on the sill, looking at home, as if he owned the place.

“This is ridiculous, Agata,” he said. “I know you have always resented me. You’re not alone. Envy is everywhere. But to manufacture an accusation like this. Here . . . Let us see how far you will go with this mindless vendetta.”

There was a bookshelf behind him. Half the titles in the bedroom were still Emily’s, English and American literature, old books, about history and travel and classic stories she must have read time and time again. The rest were Costa’s or the family’s, a collection of texts that hadn’t been looked at for years, Gramsci and
Pinocchio,
the hard-boiled 1940s thrillers his father loved, and more modern
gialli
by Italian writers.

One more book, too, its pages unopened for years.

Franco Malaspina pulled the ragged family Bible off the shelf. His father had insisted on having an edition in the house, in spite of his beliefs. He would refer to it from time to time, and not always to prove a point.

He threw the black, battered copy, with its dog-eared and torn pages, across the room. It landed on her lap. Reluctantly, she took hold of the thing to stop it falling to the floor.

“Look me in the eye, Agata, and swear on that precious object of yours that you know it was me last night.”

She had her eyes closed, unable to speak. The faintest outline of a tear, almost invisible, like that of the Magdalene in the Doria Pamphilj, began to roll slowly down one cheek.

It was all lost. Costa knew it.

Painfully, he dragged himself out of the bed and sat on the edge, looking first at her, silent, remorseful, then at Malaspina.