David Hewson (13 page)

"And
the rest of it?" Peroni asked.

"Point
taken."

The
two men looked at each other. Peroni kicked over a seat and beckoned to her to
take it. Then he went off for some coffees.

She
looked at the screen. "What's this?"

"It's
the database we keep on Balkan criminals," Costa replied. "It just
gets bigger by the day."

"Our
guy isn't Balkan, whatever that means these days."

"You
know that?"

"I
know that. I saw the profiling reports. They had some data on where the man had
stayed in the US. All phoney names, phoney credit cards. He did it well. We've
interviewed people who spoke to him. They all gave different descriptions. He's
good at disguise. He's good with accents. Sometimes American English. Sometimes
UK. Australian. South African. He could handle them all."

"You
have a photo-fit?"

It
was the obvious question. Her face said as much. "How many do you want? Leapman
has included them in the files he's sent to your boss. We've got
them coming out of our ears. Every one different. I mean
completely
different. I told you. He's good."

Peroni
returned with the drinks. She looked at the stewed brew in the plastic cups and
said, "Do you call that coffee? There's a place near the Pantheon.
Tazza d'Oro. If we have time we could go there. That's coffee."

Peroni
bristled and in very rapid, very colloquial Italian, the kind a couple of
street cops would throw at each other in the heat of the moment, protested. "Hey,
kid. Don't throw your toys out of the pram. You're dealing with a
couple of guys who live here. We know Tazza d'Oro. Since when did they
start letting Yankees in?"

She
didn't miss a syllable. "Since they found out we tip properly. Where
are you from in Tuscany?"

"Near
Siena."

"I
can hear it." She nodded at Costa. "He's Roman. Middle class.
Doesn't swear enough to be anything else." Emily Deacon paused.
"Am I earning any trust here?"

"Kind
of," Costa conceded. "You didn't learn that at language
college."

She
nodded. "Didn't need to. I lived here in Rome when I was a kid. Nice
house on the Aventino. For almost a decade. My dad was based at the embassy for
most of that time. Then I did an architecture degree in Florence. And you know
what's funny?"

They
didn't say a word. From her face they could tell this wasn't funny
at all.

"Maybe
it's from the last few years I spent in Washington, but sometimes I must
still sound American. It just slips out. You can always tell. You always get
someone on a bus or somewhere who gives you a nasty look. Or a little lecture
about colonialism and how, being Roman, they just know this subject inside or
out. Or maybe they just spit in your face. That happens from time to time
too."

"
"Always"?" Peroni wondered, taking the argument back an
important step.

She
sipped at the coffee and pulled a sour face. "No. That's an exaggeration.
Just a lot more than when I was a kid. In fact..." She took her
attention off them at that moment, began to conduct some inner conversation
with herself. "This was a happy place then. I never wanted to
leave."

"The
world's not so happy anymore," Costa said. "For all of
us."

"Agreed."
She fidgeted on the hard office chair, uncomfortable at having revealed as much
as she had. "I'm still waiting for an answer, though. This guy
isn't Serb or Kosovan or anything. So why are you going through all these
records?"

Costa
explained about the girl who'd escaped from them inside the Pantheon, and
how some Balkan connection was probably the best way to find her, since they
controlled the street people as much as anyone did. Then he pushed over the
photo Mauro had taken. Emily studied the young, frightened face.

"Poor
kid," she said quietly. "Trying to pick your pocket when she must
have been scared out of her mind. Are they really that desperate?"

"Sometimes."
Costa hated simplistic explanations. "It's what they do.
There's plenty of people out there on the streets who'll scream
"Zingari!" every time some petty crime happens. We've plenty
of other crooks too. But the honest answer is: yes, they're that
desperate. And it's an organized business. With its own structure. Its
own rules."

"Good,"
she said. "That should mean you can find her."

"Maybe
we can," Peroni conceded.

"Will
she have family here? Can you track her down like that?"

"Most
of them don't have family," the big man explained. "Not what
we'd regard as family anyway."

She
couldn't take her eyes off the photo. It seemed a good time to ask.

"When
Leapman called you in for this assignment," Costa began, "you could
have refused, surely. The fact this man murdered your father means you want him
caught. But it also means you're involved, beyond anything the likes of
us would expect. You have... something personal invested here. That could
worry me."

Emily
Deacon took one last look at the photo, then placed it on the desk. "I
could have said no when my dad laid a job with the Bureau straight in my lap. I'd
got a good architecture degree. I could have gone on and done a master's.
Here, probably."

She
looked at him, trying to work out the right answer for herself too. "You
won't understand. We're Deacons. We grow up with a sense of duty. There
have been Deacons working for the government for the best part of a hundred
years. In the Treasury. The military. The State Department. It's what we
do. We don't ask why."

He
wondered how much of that she really believed. "And when we find this
man. What do you want then?"

"Justice,"
she said with plain, flat certainty.

"Is
that what Agent Leapman wants too?"

"Joel
Leapman is a primitive organism driven by primitive desires." She spoke
with cold, aloof disdain. "It's thanks to people like him that
people like me get spat at on buses. Ask him what he's after. Not
me." She thought for a moment, then fixed them with her keen, intelligent
eyes. "I know exactly what I want. I want to see this man standing up in
court, getting convicted for every human being he's killed. Every life
he's ruined. I want to see him go to jail forever and have those ghosts
haunt him each and every day. I want to sleep better knowing that he
can't, because of all the nightmares coming his way. Will that do?"

Peroni
cast Costa a sideways glance. The one that said:
why do we always get them
?

Nic
Costa knew what he meant. He was coming to understand a little about this woman
and it didn't fill him with joy. She wasn't at the hard end of
investigations with the FBI. Of that he was sure. Perhaps Leapman had called
her into the Rome inquiry because of her specialist architectural knowledge. Or
her perfect Italian. Perhaps it was even simpler than that. Her presence was
down to who she was: the daughter of the last victim. The Deacons seemed to be
an important family. Maybe Leapman had no choice. Maybe Leo Falcone was in the
same position. It would explain the uncharacteristic way the normally abrasive
and individualist inspector had rolled over and allowed the Americans to walk
straight into the case.

"You
think this guy knows Rome?" Peroni asked.

"Like
the back of his hand," she said straightaway. "I'm certain of
it."

"Nah,
he doesn't," Peroni told her with some certainty. "He thinks
he knows it. He's like you. He goes to Tazza d'Oro and likes it
because he feels it makes him Roman, not like some cheapskate tourist throwing
coins into the Trevi fountain. Don't get me wrong. That's good,
because it means he's trying. You too. But it's not the real thing.
Me and Nic are. This is our town. We drink coffee in places a million times
better than Tazza d'Oro. Want some?"

Her
delicate eyebrows rose in amusement. "Now?"

Peroni
scowled at the plastic cup. "Yeah. Why not? This stuff is piss."

"And
you think it's going to be easy to find this kid?"

"Absolutely."
He nodded at the computer. "But not sitting in front of the one-eyed
monster there. This is a people business, Emily. Night people, if you get my
meaning. I got a whole list of them in my head right now. You're going
places in Rome you didn't even know existed."

"Really.
So if it's that easy, Officer Peroni--"

"Hey,
hey! Gianni. Nic. Please..."

Emily
Deacon smiled. "If it's that easy, don't you think he might
be doing it too? This girl must have seen what happened. She must know things
we'd dearly love to hear. Why else would he want to kill her?"

Costa
gave his partner a hard look. They should have thought of this themselves. They'd
been distracted by the meeting at the embassy, and having an outsider attached
to the investigation.

"I'll
drive," Costa said.

BY
THE TIME PERONI was renewing his acquaintance with the first name on his long
list of East European hoods, Teresa Lupo was dictating the preliminary autopsy
results on Mauro Sandri, running through all the familiar terms she'd
come to learn over the years when dealing with firearms deaths, still unable to
push what she'd heard in the American embassy out of her head.

Silvio
Di Capua was busy cleaning the stainless-steel table, watching her out of the
corner of his beady eyes with the same guarded awe she'd come to expect,
wondering, perhaps, what she saw in the big old Tuscan cop who was now sharing
her home. It was none of his business, even if it was a good question. Gianni
Peroni was a good human being: honest, decent and kind, in spite of his tough
outward appearance. She liked his company.

At
least Silvio Di Capua's crush on her had waned a little since her
assistant realized she was no longer available. He was by the door now, washing
his hands and looking ready to grab his too-short black leather bomber jacket
and head home for the night when Leo Falcone walked in. She watched with some
dismay the way Silvio flinched at the sight of the inspector, like a mouse
catching sight of a bird of prey. It occurred to her, not for the first time,
that the analogy was appropriate. Falcone, as his surname suggested, had the
beady eyes of a raptor and a bare, birdlike skull too. The sharp jut of his
goatee only enhanced further the impression of a hunter. He was the kind of
person someone like Silvio Di Capua feared the most. Not just for his acerbic
tongue or the sudden, direct habit he had of tackling every issue head-on. Worse,
much worse sometimes, was the way he never let anything go. This irked Di Capua
more than anyone because, when it came to morgue matters, he was the one
Falcone chose as the weak point, the place to start poking at with a long,
suspicious forefinger.

Teresa
Lupo was apt not to play things by the book, if a few unorthodox methods suited
her better, but she made a point of keeping those habits under her hat, most of
the time, anyway. It was always Di Capua whom Falcone squeezed for proof,
turning those bleak, suspicious eyes on him and asking all the questions the
little man never wanted to hear. Then there'd be the recriminations and,
worst of all, in the end Teresa would have to hear out Silvio's
grovelling apology for blabbing, accompanied, as always, by an invitation to
dinner.

She
looked up from her notes, feigned a smile and said, "Inspector. Good
evening. And you've come alone too. Not with those nice new American
friends of yours. How pleasant."

"It
wasn't my idea," Falcone objected. "You heard, didn't
you?"

"Actually,
no. I was trying to work out a few things in my head. Such as why a very odd
corpse was stretched out on the floor of the Pantheon like that. Listening to
cops bitch at one another is a secondary diversion at such times and I'm
happy for it to stay that way." She switched off the tape recorder.
"So what can I do for you?"

As
usual, Falcone came straight to the point. "You can tell me what you two
found out when you had the woman to yourself. And don't tell me
it's nothing because I won't believe you."

She
beamed at him. "This is because of your great faith in our
abilities?"

"If
you like," he conceded grudgingly. "Or maybe I just know when
you're not telling us something. There's an air of smugness around
this place right now and I'd very much like to puncture it."

"You
don't want the report on that poor photographer?"

"I
know what happened to the photographer. I was there. Remember?"

She
looked into his miserable face and felt a twinge of guilt. Falcone wasn't
happy about any of this. It wasn't fair to bitch. All the same, she did
have something to bitch about.

"So
you want me to offer some insights into a corpse which, with your full
agreement, was snatched away from me right in front of my eyes, quite without
reason, and completely contrary to Italian law, too, I might add?"

"Don't
start," Falcone said. "I've just been upstairs listening to
Bruno Moretti, among others, telling me how we need to keep the FBI sweat at
every turn."