The Garden of Evil (37 page)

Three

T
EN MINUTES LATER THEY WERE IN THE NEAREST CAFE
that was open, a place famed for both the quality of its coffee and cakes and its foul-mouthed owner, Totti, a middle-aged bachelor now stiff with outrage behind his counter, like a cock whose territory had been invaded by an alien species.

“It’s not right,” he confided to Peroni behind his hand as they stood at the end of the bar, a little way away from the gaggle of black-clad women sipping at their cups of cappuccino and tasting cornetti and other cakes as if this everyday event were entirely new to them, as it probably was. “It’s bad enough when there are more women here than men. But these women.”

“They are just women,” Peroni grumbled.

He didn’t like Totti. The man was a misanthrope. If there had been anywhere else within walking distance that was open . . . But the coffee was good. From the expressions on the women’s faces, it was a revelation.

“A waste of a life,” Totti replied. “What good does that do any of them? A couple would look decent scrubbed up and in a dress too.”

Peroni gave him the stare, a good one. There were, he reflected, decided advantages to being an ugly brute at times. Totti’s tooth brush moustache bristled, and without a word, the man walked off to polish, halfheartedly, some beer glasses by the sink.

Each of the sisters now possessed a half-brown, half-white cappuccino moustache above her top lip. Oblivious to something they seemed not to notice even on one another, they were gossiping, the way all Roman women did, but quietly.

He walked over, trying to make sense of the thought that kept bugging him.

“Ladies!” he said cheerily, picking up one of the empty coffee cups. “So, how was it?”

“Very rich,” the senior one said immediately, for all of them, that was clear. “Enjoyable but a luxury. Perhaps once a year. No more.”

“Once a year is better than once a lifetime, Sister,” Peroni observed.

“Before Rome, I worked in Africa,” she answered tartly. “They would have been happy with once a lifetime there.”

“Happy?” Peroni echoed. “I doubt it, don’t you?”

“I never realised a police officer would be so precise about words. Sister Agata said you were remarkable. The three of you. So what now?”

He beamed at them. “Now you clear your debts. You tell me something.”

“Falcone paid,” she said. “He’s not here.”

“It’s a small thing and, being sisters, you believe in charity. It is this.” He had checked with Prinzivalli while Falcone was berating them in the Questura. It had seemed, to him if not to Leo Falcone, an obvious question to ask. “You’ve performed Sister Agata’s bidding on most of the prominent buildings in the
centro storico
. It’s an impressive feat. You must have been very busy.”

“Thank you,” she said, bowing her head gracefully.

“Yet there is not a scrap of paper on the walls of the Palazzo Malaspina, even though it would be an obvious place for your attention, with or without the connection you suppose.”

They became very still and stared at him.

“I believe Count Malaspina will know what has happened,” the vocal one said eventually. “It’s everywhere. One would have to be blind, surely . . .”

“One would,” Peroni agreed. “All the same, I don’t see why you should leave that building untouched, almost alone of any of some importance.” He paused. “Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless that is precisely where you do not wish us to be.”

She fell silent. Peroni leaned forward.

“Sister,” he said quietly, “I don’t know how much you comprehend of the game you are playing. But understand this. If your colleague and my friend are in that place, there is nothing we can do to help them. Nothing. Without cause. Without evidence. Without a reason so compelling we feel able to drag away a magistrate from his lunch to beg for the right papers. The Palazzo Malaspina is inviolate in Rome, beyond our powers, outside our jurisdiction. We can’t go there under any circumstances at the moment. It might as well be the Vatican for all we can do.”

“I can go to the Vatican anytime I like,” she said, and laughed. It occurred to Gianni Peroni that he might not, in everyday life, like this woman very much at all.

Four

I
T WAS A BRIEF PHONE CALL. FALCONE LISTENED TO HIS REQUEST
. Then he said no.

“You didn’t hear me correctly, Leo,” Peroni insisted. “I know we can’t go inside. I am simply telling you. These witches in wimples are up to something and it involves Malaspina’s place. They think they can handle this on their own. We know differently. I want five good men and an unmarked van. No one will see us. No one will know.”

Falcone’s voice went up a couple of notes. He was furious; he was flustered.

“I don’t have five good men to spare, sitting in some van, waiting for God knows what. Everyone we have is out there, looking for Agata Graziano and Costa. What else do you expect me to do?”

“Something that isn’t obvious,” Peroni replied. “Something that’s you, not an order handed down from upstairs.”

The line went silent. Peroni could imagine the flush of rage racing up Falcone’s tanned cheeks at that moment.

“Listen to me,” he went on hastily. “You know you won’t find them. They don’t want to be found. That’s the point.”

“What is?”

“The boss sister you just met told us. We’ve failed. The law’s failed. All the ways we have of dealing with situations like this . . . they’re done with, busted, and Agata knows it. The best we can hope to come out with at the moment is a green light from Grimaldi to start using Teresa and her magic DNA machine again on anyone except Malaspina. That’s the payoff . . . and your cunning little sister thinks she has another way.”

He didn’t hear an instant explosion. That was good.

“Five good men,” he added hopefully. “An unmarked van. An hour or two. No more. I don’t think we’ll need it.”

“I don’t have—”

“If she’s in there, she will surely need our help before long. Whether she—or they—know it or not. Do you want to leave that to a phone call and the off chance we might have a spare car to send round from the Questura? Would that make you happy?”

Falcone uttered a quiet, bitter curse, then added, “For a mere agente you have a lot to say.”

“Nic’s there. I rather like Agata too. What do you expect?”

“Wait outside,” he ordered. “And don’t let anyone know what you’re doing.”

Five

S
HE HAD SPECIFIED THE PLACE, AND THE LOCATION
filled him with dread. It was the area behind the studio in the Vicolo del Divino Amore, the dank cobbled yard full of junk and stray weeds where he had first encountered Malaspina, hooded, armed, and deadly, before chasing him out into the open streets, towards the Mausoleum of Augustus.

Towards Emily.

Costa stopped for a moment as he entered the narrow brick corridor from the street, the place where Malaspina had turned and made that perfect O shape behind the fabric, murmured “boom,” and then dodged his fire in return. After that . . .

He didn’t want to think about it. There wasn’t time. He retraced his steps down the alley, wondering where she might be, whether he was too late already. The place seemed different. Smaller. Even more squalid. Looking everywhere, half running, close to the wall, trying to move with as little noise and visiblity as possible, he went on until he got to the small enclosed yard at the end.

The sight of the junk, and the vicious, clear memory of Malaspina hidden behind it, brought back such bitter recollections. For one fleeting moment he could see Emily’s face rising in his imagination, staring at him, angry, determined, the way she always was when danger threatened.

Then a sound, thankfully, sent her ghost scattering from his head.

Agata emerged in the far corner of the yard, creeping out from behind some discarded mattresses leaning against the blackened stones of the grimy terrace that had once been the home of Caravaggio. She was trying to smile. There was something in her hand he couldn’t see.

Her clothes were ordinary: a simple black nylon anorak and plain jeans. The kind the convent probably gave out to the poor, he thought. She looked like many a young woman in Rome at that moment, except for the expression on her face, which was excited, with a fixed resolve that worried him.

He walked over and stood in front of her.

“You will come with me now,” Costa said forcefully. “You will leave this place and go to the Questura. Even if I have to carry you.”

“Do that, Nic, and you lose forever. Franco Malaspina will walk free. He will negotiate with that lawyer of yours. His guilt will be forgotten in return for allowing you to establish that of others. Do you wish to bargain with the devil? Is that who you are?”

“Agata—”

“Is it?” she demanded, her dark eyes shining.

“I lost my wife to that man,” he said quietly, hearing the crack in his own voice. “I don’t wish to see another life wasted.”

“Don’t fear on my account. That’s my responsibility. How did he come here for those women?” she asked. “Did you think about that? He’s a well-known man. He wouldn’t walk in the front door. It was too obvious. Nor . . .” She turned her head briefly to the brick corridor. “. . . would he have risked that. It opens out into the Piazza Borghese. He would have been seen there too. People notice. You hardly ever meet Franco out in the open, in the street. It’s beneath him.”

“This is all too late.”

She leaned forward, smiling, her pert, smart face animated as always. “He owns everything. Every square metre. Every last brick and stone. He came through his own house.” She glanced towards a shadowy alcove half hidden behind some discarded chests. “You never looked. It never seemed important. After all, you couldn’t enter his palace anyway.”

Costa struggled to find the words to make her understand.

“Malaspina wants you dead.”

“No.” She shook her head. Her dark curly hair flew wildly around her with the violence of the gesture. “That’s only a part of it. What he wants is to forget what he is, where he came from. All those black women. Women like me. ‘The sport in the blood.’ He’s ashamed of his lineage, as were Ippolito Malaspina and Alessandro de’ Medici before him. There is your resolution, if only you knew it. Franco Malaspina is at war with himself and flails at everything in order to hide that simple fact.”

He sighed. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“So what, then?”

Something still didn’t ring true, however hard she tried.

“This is all conjecture,” he answered. “Useless and dangerous.”

“No,” she insisted. “It’s not.”

“Did you ever stop to think for a moment how we all felt when you ran away?”

“Nic,” she whispered, black eyes sparkling, her mouth taut with emotion and something close to fear, “this is not about me.”

“I lost my wife . . .”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never meant that.”

“You don’t know what hurt is. You’re too afraid to feel it. You’re terrified something real might penetrate the cocoon you have built for yourself.”

“That’s not fair . . .”

“I don’t care about fair anymore. I just want you to live. Please. Let me take you out of here.”

He held out his hand for her. She looked up at him, scared, resolute too.

“You really think I can go back into my shell now?” she asked, amazed, perhaps resentful too. “As easily as that?”

“I think—” he began.

“It’s impossible,” she cut in, shaking her head. “You made it so. You and Falcone.” She hesitated. “You more than any.”

He took a step forward. She shrank back against the wall, put a hand out in front of her. He saw now what she’d brought. Another large plastic bag with the name of an economy supermarket on the front lay at her feet. An object he couldn’t quite make out protruded from the top.

“Wait . . .” Costa ordered.

Before he could go on, she had ducked away from his grasping arms and was running behind the discarded chests into the shadowy alcove.

He followed. When he got there, she had the crowbar in the bottom half of a small, battered wooden door, black with soot and grime. The top had been splintered already. Agata had found a way into the Palazzo Malaspina earlier, before his arrival. She was, as always, prepared.

“This is madness,” he muttered. “I should call the Questura now. Why take such risks when you have your sisters all over Rome putting up that poster about the man?”

She leaned hard on the crossbar. The lower half of the door refused to budge.

“Because of what Falcone says,” she answered. “You pile on the pressure, you see what happens. Franco will not walk out of this place for you, will he? But with a little force here . . . a little force there . . .”

She had known Leo Falcone longer than he had. It was, he thought, only natural that she should pick up his ways.

“The question is,” she went on, “will you come with me? Or do I go into his palace on my own? There are”—she leaned hard on the crowbar again, to no effect—“no other alternatives. Can’t you see that? Your law won’t help you. Nor your grief.”

Agata gave up on the door and looked at him. Her face shone in a stray shaft of winter sun. “All we need is the painting,” she insisted. “Where else can it be?”

He muttered a quiet curse, walked over, and took the metal bar from her. It was a strong door, in spite of appearances. But after the third attempt the old wood cracked and they could see beyond, into the interior of this distant wing of the Palazzo Malaspina. There was darkness there, nothing else. It was prescient of her to bring along the flashlight in the plastic bag. It now sat in her hand, extending a long beam of yellow light into the gloom.

“I go first,” Costa said. “What are you doing?”

She was pressing the keys of the mobile phone Rosa had given her, dispatching a text message with the speed and enthusiasm of someone who did this every single day.

“Talking to my sisters,” Agata replied cryptically, then pushed past him, flashlight blazing, into the black maw behind the door.

Costa followed quickly. Ahead, high on the wall to their left, a red light blinked persistently. He reached forward, took her hand to guide the beam towards it. There was a security camera there, a single glass eye, blinking. There had to be hundreds in a place like this. He turned round and looked back at the door. There was no entry detection device that he could see. Costa knew how difficult such large and sprawling buildings were to monitor. There was no way of knowing whether they had been seen or not; the probability was that no one had yet been alerted to their presence.

All the same he picked up the crowbar off the floor and dashed the forked end hard into the lens of the camera, stabbing at it until the glass broke and he was able to lever the unit off the wall.

She watched in silence. In the half-light she looked afraid.

He took the flashlight from her hand. There was no protest.

“Stay behind me,” he ordered, and strode forward into the gloom.