Costa 08 - City of Fear (8 page)

“Faithful, loyal servants of the state, every one of them,” the president observed, glancing at the officers. “I don’t imagine anyone can hear us. Inside those walls …” His long features fell into a frown, his voice to a growl. “Every damned word in that place gets picked up by someone. I assume we may talk freely here. I have to.” His gray eyes stared at Costa. “As you may have gathered, Ugo Campagnolo is not pleased that I have intervened in this way. Were it practical, he would be in the courts right now trying to fight me to the last.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“He’s an actor at heart, and actors always have a good sense of timing. It would take days to mount a challenge, and by then the summit would be over, his guests long gone, his moment on the world stage ruined by petulance. Campagnolo would risk everything if he went public with his displeasure, and he knows it. The man’s no fool. Now he has money, friends in the media, so many politicians in his grasp.…”

Costa remained silent.

“I’m sorry,” Sordi apologized. “I should not say such things to a police officer, for whom politics have no interest. But understand this …” He nodded back toward the palace. “You and your colleagues are the only ones with any sense of independence to pass through that room today. The rest, the foreigners, Palombo—they’re Campagnolo’s. It’s only understandable. I can take control for the duration of this emergency, no longer. They will have to deal with him when he has his hands on the reins of state once more. I don’t blame them for taking sides, any more than I would you, if you felt the same way.”

“I detest the man,” Costa said without thinking. “He’s made Italy a laughing stock.”

Sordi glanced at the Quirinale again and raised his eyebrows. “Careful, Nic. Even gardens may have ears. I take tea here, you know. Every evening. A habit I learned from a friend in London. Earl Grey tea, made with good Calabrian bergamot, and a very special kind of English cookie of which I’m fond. First sip when
Il Torrino
chimes six-thirty, at which point I pinch myself and continue to try to understand why the son of a laborer from Testaccio is sitting here, at the summit of the
caput mundi
. Old men live by habits, you know. It’s all we have left. You should indulge me with a visit sometime.”

Costa looked around at the manicured gardens, empty save for a workman tending to some shrubs near the northern wall. The Quirinale was a showcase for the state. The real work of government took place elsewhere, leaving the palace to Sordi and his guards.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why couldn’t you work with him, instead of seizing control?”

“I was within my rights.…”

“I don’t doubt that, sir. But why?”

“For pity’s sake, call me Dario. I spent the first third of my life a communist and the remainder a socialist. These formalities are enough to send a man insane. Not from you, of all people, please, Nic.”

“I don’t understand.”

The president couldn’t take his eyes off the palace. Palombo had come out onto the steps, with the American and the Englishman. Some other men too. Then Campagnolo joined them, staring out into the garden, in their direction.

“Nor do I,” Sordi answered softly. “Or anyone outside the circle of Andrea Petrakis, perhaps. You still live in that beautiful house near the Via Appia Antica. I know. I had someone check. Are you there tonight? Alone?”

“Whenever I finish …”

“Be home by ten. Whatever happens. This would be a good time to be a criminal in Rome, don’t you think? Every law enforcement officer in the city seems to be chasing ghosts.”

Sordi turned so that his back was toward the palace, then spoke directly and rapidly, in a low, calm voice.

“The captain of the Corazzieri here is called Fabio Ranieri. Remember that name. He’s a fine officer and a decent human being. I know the regiment are technically Carabinieri, but you can trust them. Their loyalties, at least, I do not doubt. If you need to come to me for anything, you do it through Ranieri and him alone.”

He stood up, looked around the grounds, smiled very visibly, the way that politicians did when they knew they were being watched, and shook Costa firmly by the hand.

“Your father was a great friend of mine and an honest and frank colleague in the shameful world of politics,” the president said in a firm, loud voice. Then, turning again, in a whisper he added, “Ranieri and I shall visit you, with two men he trusts. Ten o’clock. Be there, Nic. I need friends about me now.”

“Of course …”

He stopped. Sordi’s pallid face had lost what little blood it seemed to possess. A noise was rising from somewhere beyond the walls, down the hill, past the narrow streets clinging to the lee of the Quirinale, tumbling toward the Trevi Fountain.

It was the distant clockwork rattle of a machine gun, and Nic could tell from Dario Sordi’s face that it was a sound the man had heard before.

“DANNY, DANNY, DANNY …”

The golden boy had skipped forward into the sunlight, like some long-lost god newly sprung to life.

With that, a thunderous noise filled the room, and Peroni found himself screaming over it, bellowing at the two cops with him to get down on the floor, out of reach of the deadly, shattering eye of the window.

A deafening racket shook the building. Peroni watched a line of dust devils burst out of the ancient walls behind them as the tracer line of bullets bit into the brickwork.

Rosa was on the bare timber boards already. Mirko Oliva had begun messing with his gun, looking ready to race to the front of the room. Peroni grabbed him as the young officer began to move, punched him hard in the shoulder, then shoved him facedown to the floor, letting momentum do the rest.

He was still grappling with Mirko when they hit the ground so hard it made his old bones jar with the pain.

“I don’t want a dead hero on my hands,” the old cop grunted, pointing a fat finger in the trainee’s face.

The gunfire had halted. Rosa, sensibly, was sliding backwards to the door, phone in hand, chanting a quiet demand to whoever was on the other end.

“Boss …”

“Quiet, Mirko,” Peroni told him, trying to think.

The figure above them was talking in his strange foreign voice, and Peroni couldn’t dispel the thought:
This is not a man; it is a child
, weak, defenseless, scared, baffled, exposed in the bright shaft of golden sun.

A child covered in blue paint and stained with the blood of the man he’d just slaughtered.

“Peroni …”

There was a note in Rosa’s low cry.

He jerked his finger back toward the door and made sure Oliva saw too. Then he looked up.

The boy was wavering in the beam of light, arms outstretched, face a picture of tortured agony, standing in front of the table where Giovanni Batisti’s body lay torn and bloody against the old, bare wood, something outside of him that was meant to be in.

Peroni couldn’t see through the window. Maybe the gunman had gone. Maybe not. The golden boy belonged to him, to them. He had to. Was that why the man on the other side of the street relaxed his finger on the trigger, ceased spitting hot shells across the brief width of the Via Rasella in their direction?

“Get down,” Peroni called to the strange, upright creature in the sunlight, gesturing to the floor with his hands, hoping that would be enough.

He felt confused trying to weigh up the options. One thing, above all, seemed clear and significant.

They had left the golden boy behind
. That said everything.

Those lost eyes, straying behind the sweaty, grimy blond curls, stayed on the window. Still, he kept murmuring, “Danny … Danny …”

Not moving a centimeter, arms stretched out like some cheap Jesus from an Easter street procession.

“I don’t have the words anymore,” Peroni murmured, and knew he had to finish this.

He shuffled up to a half crouch and wondered how strong the youth was, how easy it might be to drag him out of the target zone, back behind the relative safety of the antiquated building’s crumbling brickwork.

“Don’t you even dare, Peroni!” the young policewoman shrieked, with such force and vehemence he had to turn and look.

Rosa was in the doorway in front of Mirko Oliva, her foot almost in his face, as if she was ready to kick him back into place if necessary.

“Stay there,” Peroni ordered, wondering why he was taking instructions from some twenty-something female cop.

He was half on his feet when she fell on him, at a moment when his bulk was teetering off balance.

It was this, he thought later, that saved them both.

They fell, tumbling, back to the ground, and the roar of the gun was on them before they even touched the floor. Peroni grabbed her slender body and tugged and pushed the two of them across the bare, splintering boards to the far side of the room, close to the front wall, seeking the dark corner, a place that offered some kind of respite because it was clear, once they got there, where the slew of bullets raking the room was aimed: through the window, directly at the only thing that was in the light.

“Danny … Danny …”

It sounded like a plea, sounded shocked and scared and angry.

His tall, tanned body was caught in the ripple of fire, jerking like a puppet on a string. Livid wounds opened up in his bare, stained flesh.

“Danny … Danny …”

Mirko Oliva couldn’t take it anymore. He scrambled to the window, holding his gun high above his head, pointing into the street, and fired off every round he had, shooting blind out into the gap.

Peroni closed his eyes, praying no one in the adjoining buildings had walked into that.

Then he waited, keeping Rosa in place with an arm, not that she needed it. He found himself looking into her deep brown eyes, perhaps because he didn’t want to see what lay in the heart of the room at that moment. She was, he decided, a very smart, very private woman, one he was glad to have around, even if sometimes her presence made life deeply awkward and uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” he said, with the slightest of nods.

She didn’t say anything, just scowled, but not at him this time; at Oliva, who was trying to reload his weapon beneath the window, but was shaking so much the new shells were scattering over the floor.

“Mirko,” Peroni called to him.
“Mirko?”

“Boss?” The young officer’s eyes were bright with shock and fear.

“It’s gone quiet, son. You should notice these things.”

Dead quiet, until that nearby bell tolled again, and Peroni remembered what they called the campanile on the Quirinale Palace.
Il Torrino
.

“S-s-sorry …” Oliva stuttered.

“It’s OK,” Peroni assured him. “Just stay still. There’s nothing …”

Outside he heard the sound of shouting followed by the revving of motorbike engines.

He glanced at Rosa and said, “You too.”

Before she could object, he’d scrambled across the floor to the window ledge and managed to peek out over it.

“Gianni!” she yelled at him.

Mirko Oliva was beneath the frame, staring back into the room, shaking, face pale, looking ready to throw up again.

“No problem,” Peroni told her. “We’re too high up, and the street’s too narrow.”

He clambered to his feet, got to the window, and leaned out as far as he dared.

The roar of two powerful motorbikes echoed off the walls, heading down toward the Trevi Fountain and the tunnel beneath the hill. He still couldn’t see the street, but at least there was something to pass on to Traffic and the CCTV people.

“Mirko …?”

The young officer got up, leaned over the open window frame, and threw up again, into the hot, bright day.

“Fortunately,” Peroni observed, “I doubt there’ll be anyone below just now.”

He sighed, then turned away. It was important to look, even though he knew what he was going to see.

Batisti’s corpse remained slumped over the table. His killer was in front of him, flat on the floor, eyes wide open, glassy, the inert body shredded by gunfire, the blue paint barely visible for blood.

A thought came to Peroni:
He is the one they wanted to kill, more than anyone else, after he’d served his purpose
.

It made no sense, but then, nothing did at that moment.

Something glittered at the dead man-child’s neck. Peroni bent down
and, setting aside his squeamishness, reached for the object nestled in the grimy, bloodstained skin. It was a silver locket in the shape of a heart, worn and scratched, on an old and stained chain. When Peroni gently prised open the lid with fumbling, shaky fingers, he saw there a fading photograph of a beautiful young woman with long golden hair, curly tresses of it, much like those of the corpse that lay in front of him.

Memories were flooding back, distressing ones, of another case, one that was briefly in all the papers, on every police notice board until one final outburst of violence had brought it to a close.

Gianni Peroni stared at the features of the wild-eyed blue creature plastered to the wall and felt his heart grow cold.

Then he closed the locket and turned it over. On the back, barely visible after so many years in a wilderness he could only guess at, was the inscription, part English, part Italian.