David Hewson (28 page)

"Like
it did my father? And these other people too?"

"Emily..."

She
was making Thornton Fielding squirm and it felt awful.

"You
know what I think, Thornton? Leapman brought me here as bait of some kind. I'm
my father in disguise just to remind this man of something, to throw him off
his guard. Joel Leapman thinks I'll bring out this... monster. Make
him crawl out of the woodwork. Is that what Bill Kaspar was like all along? And
if he was..."

He
was staring at some papers on the desk, pretending she wasn't there.

"Dammit,
Thornton! You were my dad's friend. Are you going to help me find out
what happened to him or not?"

He
didn't say a thing. It was all a waste of time. Maybe he was so scared
he'd report it all back to Leapman the moment she was gone.

"And
you're the guy who nearly resigned over a principle, huh? You expect me
to believe that?"

It
didn't make her feel any better. Thornton Fielding was part of the good
Rome she remembered, and here she was beating up on him for no real reason at
all.

"I
can't help what you believe, Emily. But please. Listen to me. Drop this.
For your own sake. Just leave the whole thing alone."

She
stormed through the door and slammed it behind her. Fielding watched her go,
miserable. Then he turned round his desk and started typing, very slowly, very
deliberately, into his PC.

Emily
Deacon walked back to her seat in Leapman's office. The place was empty.
Leapman hadn't even left a message.

You don't leave messages for bait
.

So
what she was supposed to do? Where she was supposed to be? It was an act.
Everything was, and there wasn't a single thing she could do to change
matters.

The
icon on her e-mail in-box blinked. She opened the message.

I
am sorry for the problems you have been experiencing with the embassy network. We
are currently carrying out some urgent maintenance in order to rectify this. I
have set up a temporary network identity which you can use in the meantime. This
will expire permanently at 14.00.

Username:
WillFK. Password: BabylonSisters.

Regards,
TF

Breathless,
she typed in the details, logged on. Then she looked at her watch. It was now
13.05. Fielding wasn't being generous but maybe this was about as much as
he could risk.

Emily
Deacon entered keywords she'd tried before, the ones that brought down
the security block.

Then
she sat back in her seat and watched the screen begin to fill with text.

TWO
UNIFORM MEN found Monica Sawyer. They'd taken a crowbar to the boot of
the half-burnt-out Renault at the foot of the Spanish Steps, peered inside,
wondered about the smell and the dark liquid leaking from the couple of
suitcases in there, then popped the locks on them.

One
was still in the emergency department of San Giovanni puking up diminishing
returns from his breakfast. The second, a raw young recruit who looked no more
than twenty, now sat between Costa and Peroni in the jeep, leaning back in the
rear seat, eyes closed, face the colour of the grey, wan sky still dumping
snowflakes down on the city.

Costa
and Peroni had listened in silence to his story. They'd been called in by
Falcone as they vainly combed the riverfront for Laila, Peroni complaining
loudly that there had to be other cops in town who could handle the call.

Costa
had pointed the car towards the Piazza di Spagna as soon as Falcone called. Peroni
openly begged down the phone for more time to look for the girl. It didn't
cut any ice. Falcone wanted them there for some reason of his own, and both men
had begun to guess what that was. The inspector was feeling cornered,
outnumbered, scared even. Big players were gathering around him, people he
refused to trust. Costa and Peroni seemed to be at the top of his very short
list of confidants just now.

Peroni
was right, though. There were plenty of other cops around, all of them on the
job already. Plainclothes officers and SOCOs milled around the wrecked vehicle,
a tide of white bunny suits and dark winter coats. There were men and women
working the nearby shops and offices too. This was a big operation. Falcone
wouldn't commit this kind of resource without good reason. Either he felt
that things were coming to a head. Or that they were falling apart.

"Best
you go home," Peroni said to the uniform. The man's face was
utterly bloodless. He'd be seeing the department shrink before long.

"I
go off shift at five," the young officer said curtly. "That's
when I go home."

Peroni
nodded. "What's your name, son?"

"Sacco."

"I'll
remember that. You look like a sound guy. This your first?"

Sacco
closed his eyes. "The first time I found a body in a suitcase?"

"No,"
Peroni replied patiently. "The first murder?"

"Yeah."

"OK."
Peroni slapped his shoulder and started climbing out of the car. "Take
care."

The
two of them walked towards the crime scene, Peroni shaking his head.

"Rookies,"
he muttered. "What is it with this macho thing?"

"He's
just doing what he thinks is expected of him, Gianni."

"Aren't
we all? And what about Laila?"

Peroni's
insistence on treating everyone under the age of twenty-five as somehow not
quite fully formed never ceased to astonish Costa.

"Laila's
been living on the streets for months, Gianni. She's as tough as they
come. Didn't you notice? Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of
the situation, I don't think there's any doubt about her
coping."

Peroni
favoured him with an icy stare. "Coping. That's what life's
about, is it?"

"Sometimes,"
Costa offered lamely. "It's what you do in between figuring out
what you really want to do with your time. I seem to recall getting this
lecture from you once."

"OK,
smart guy," Peroni conceded. "Throw my own bullshit back at me if
you like."

"Look.
When we've got the opportunity I'll help you find Laila."

His
partner nodded at the wrecked Renault. "If he doesn't get there
first."

That
sparked something in Costa's head. "He's got bigger things on
his plate, don't you think? Besides..." He wished there was
more time to mull over what they knew and less spent chasing phantoms. "He
could have killed her last night if he'd wanted, surely? Emily
Deacon's not that great a deterrent. But he didn't. Have you worked
that one out yet?"

"No,"
Peroni confessed. "Unless the Deacon woman broke his stride somehow. Not
that
that
makes much sense. What the hell. Let's put it to one
side for now."

He
walked towards the back of the car. A lone idiot in a Santa Claus uniform stood
on the corner forlornly shaking a bell. The city never had this particular American
import until recently. This Christmas they seemed to be springing up
everywhere.

The
fake Santa shook his bell, held out a candy stick, looked Peroni in the eye and
nodded at the bucket that stood between them on the snow.

"Have
you been a good boy, Officer?" the man asked.

"Define
"good," " Peroni snapped and brushed past him.

Nic
Costa looked at the sign round the man's neck: a charity for foreign
kids. He threw a couple of notes in the bucket, then shook his head at the
candy stick.

"Give
it to your friend," Santa suggested. "Might sweeten him up a
bit."

"I
doubt that somehow," Costa murmured and joined the team by the car.

Falcone
was off to one side, just outside the deserted McDonald's, talking
solemnly with a couple of plainclothes cops, watched by the bored-looking Joel
Leapman. Teresa Lupo and Silvio Di Capua were working steadily on something in
the boot of the car, half-concealed by badly placed screens, one of which
Peroni was moving to get access to the vehicle.

Peroni
took one glance at the mess in the boot, one at Teresa Lupo, then turned away
and asked sharply, "Anything we should know?"

The
pathologist moved her head out from under the shadow of the car, nodded at Di
Capua to keep going, then walked over to them. "Did you find her?"

"Not
yet," Costa said quickly. "We got called here instead. She
didn't say anything... ?"

"No,"
Teresa began. "I'm sorry, Gianni..."

"Me
too," Peroni mumbled. "It's just so... inadequate."

There
were tears starting to work their way into Teresa Lupo's eyes, something
Nic Costa realized he'd never witnessed before.

Peroni
spotted them, put his hand on her arm, briefly kissed her cheek and mouthed,
"It's OK." He cast a vicious glance at the buzzards leering
at them from behind the crime scene tape: photographers, reporters and a whole
bunch of spectators with nothing better to do.

"I
guess you've been asked this a million times," Peroni said when
she'd got her act together again, "but how'd this one
die?"

Teresa
shrugged, regaining her old self. "This is all preliminary, understood? I'm
just telling you what I told your boss, with the same reservations. I
don't want to leap to conclusions, not out here. Also, unless someone
tells me otherwise, I get to take this lady home. That American bastard
isn't playing body snatchers this time around. Even if she is one of his,
there's no way of knowing yet."

"How?"
Peroni asked again.

"Still
working on the method. Let me put this delicately. She's not exactly
complete
."

There
was something she didn't want to say, probably for Peroni's sake. "She's
naked. Not a scrap of clothing on her. The tags have been taken off the
suitcases. I'll hand them over to forensic once we're done here. They
don't look like a common make to me. Expensive too. Maybe..."

They
looked at each other and knew what each of them was thinking. Work of that
nature took a long, long time.

"You
haven't asked me yet," she said. "
That
question."

"He'd
marked the skin?" Costa asked.

"Kind
of." She shrugged again. "It's the same man. But it's
not like the others, though. If you want to look, I can..."

Both
men had their hands up before she'd finished the sentence.

"Understood,"
she continued. "The honest answer is I don't know if the cuts were
made by the same instrument. Ask me when I've cleaned her up a little
back in the morgue. There are a lot of cuts on this woman. But there are marks
on her back that aren't just... practical, if I can put it that way. They
could be made by a scalpel. Maybe."

Costa
thought of Emily Deacon drawing the pattern, so easily, so naturally, in the
American embassy the previous day. "And the shape?"

"I'm
sorry. But if you want something concrete, look at this."

She
reached round into the depths of the boot and came back with a hank of
bloodstained material encased inside an evidence bag like a dead insect.

"It's
the cord," she told them. "He'd removed it from the neck this
time. It was in one of the suitcases. This is the same material that he used on
the woman in the Pantheon. Not a scintilla of doubt."

Costa
didn't know what to make of the thing. "But it's not a
cord."

Teresa
frowned. "Leo didn't tell you, huh? I guess he's had other
things on his mind. No, it isn't a cord. It's a piece of very tough
fabric cut in that exact same shape we all know so well, then wrapped tightly
to make a cord. At first I thought he must have done it himself, though it
would have taken a hell of a long time. Still, he's a gentleman with an
obsession, no?"

Peroni
was getting interested. "But?"

She
handed the bag to Costa, then picked up her briefcase and shuffled through the
mess of papers in it until she found what she wanted.

"Silvio
had this report waiting for me from forensic when I got here. Fastest piece of
work those people have ever done."

Costa
took the single page. Peroni joined him and read it simultaneously.

"Has
Falcone seen this?" Nic asked.

"Oh
yes," Teresa continued. "I didn't dare hold back on that one,
not that he seems to know what to do with it right now. Your American friend
over there doesn't have a clue, though. Or an inkling that I still have
the original cord from that poor cow in the Pantheon. In fact, from what
I've heard of his bullshit already, if you were to talk to him you would
find he doesn't think this is part of the same game at all. Not directly,
anyway. He's got a theory."

Peroni
blinked, bewildered. "A
theory
?"

"Oh
yes," Teresa added. "And guess what? It's one that lays all
the crap at our door."

"
"Our door"?" Costa repeated.