David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

No one was really listening. Peroni bristled. “Hey. Stupid old cop is sharing information here. Are you taking notes or am I speaking for my own benefit?”

“Shit,” Teresa Lupo whispered, glaring at the coin. “ Shit .”

“You mean the body’s been in the peat for not much more than twenty years?” Costa asked.

“Not even that,” Falcone said.

They all turned to look at him. The inspector had returned to his briefcase and now had a folder in his hands. He opened it and took out a photograph. It was a portrait of a girl in her teens. She had long fair hair down to her shoulders. She was smiling for the camera.

He placed the photograph on the cadaver’s chest, over the X-ray of the skull. The features were identical.

“You knew?” She couldn’t believe this, couldn’t contain her amazement and anger. Peroni was chuckling, his shoulders rising and falling as if they were plugged into the mains.

Falcone was bent over, examining something on the girl’s left shoulder. A mark. A tattoo maybe.

“Just guessing to begin with. You have to remember, doctor. I didn’t get back from holiday till yesterday. I hardly had the time to dig this…” he waved the case folder, “… out of the vaults.”

“You knew ?” she repeated.

He bent down and looked at the mark on the girl’s skin. Costa did the same. It was a tattoo, circular, about the size of the coin: a howling, insane face with huge lips and long dreadlocks.

“It’s supposed to be a mask from an imperial Roman comedy,” Falcone said. “Dionysus was the god of theatre too. This was used by the Dionysian cults. You deserve that dinner, doctor. I’ll honour the bet. You were almost there. Just a couple of millennia out.”

Teresa Lupo pointed a stubby index finger at the inspector’s chest. “You knew ? Eat your fucking dinner on your own.”

“So be it,” he answered. They watched him. Falcone couldn’t take his eyes off the tattoo. There was something going on inside the inspector’s head, something he didn’t seem much inclined to share.

“You’ll cancel the press conference,” he said.

“You bet,” she grumbled mutely. “But what should I say?”

“Make an excuse. Say you’ve got a headache. Tell them we don’t have the people, what with this flu thing and all. It’s the truth anyway.” He picked up the photograph from the dead girl’s chest and put it back in the envelope. Costa couldn’t help but notice Falcone hadn’t even let them see a name.

“Sir?” Costa asked, puzzled.

“Mr. Costa?” Falcone’s sparkling eyes gave nothing away. “It’s so nice to have you back with us.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Catch a few crooks I imagine. Go help out down at the Campo. There’s a lot of pickpockets there at the moment.”

“I meant about this.”

Falcone took a final look at the corpse. “About this… nothing. The poor kid’s been lying in the mud for sixteen years. A day or two won’t make much difference.”

He rounded on all three of them. “And let me make one thing clear. I don’t want you breathing a word of what we have here to anyone. Not in this building. Not outside. I’ll call you when I need you.”

They watched him walk purposefully out of the room. Teresa Lupo stared at the body, her big, pale face a picture of misery and disappointment.

“I had it all worked out,” she moaned. “I knew exactly what happened. I talked to these academics and people. Jesus…”

“You heard him,” Costa said. “You did well. He meant it.”

Teresa was running her fingers over the dead girl’s mahogany skin. She didn’t need Nic Costa’s sympathy. She was over her disappointment already. It had been displaced by something new, something potentially more interesting.

The cadaver on her dissecting table was no longer a historical artefact. It was a murder victim. It required her attention.

Costa looked at the silver scalpel in her hand then looked at Peroni.

“The Campo it is,” he said and the older man nodded back in agreement.

“I GUESS there really is no rush,” Peroni said in the car. “I just wish Leo would talk to us some more. I hate getting left in the dark.”

Costa shrugged. He knew Falcone well enough not to let this bug him. “In his own time. It’s always like that.”

“I know. He’d be a disaster in vice. You got to take people with you all the way there.” Peroni must have watched Falcone work his way up the ranks. Their relationship was hard to fathom, half amiable, half suspicious. That was hardly unusual. Falcone was a smart, sound cop, one who trod a fine line sometimes when he felt a case merited it. He’d won plenty of respect for his talents. He was straight, unbending on occasion. But he didn’t give a damn about popularity. Sometimes, Costa thought, Falcone actually liked the antipathy and near-hatred he generated. It made tough decisions easier to take.

Peroni lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. “You asked Barbara Martelli out yet?”

Where did that one come from? Costa wondered. “Haven’t found the right occasion.”

Peroni stared at him with a face that said: are you kidding me ?

“I’m not ready. OK?”

“At least that’s honest. How long’s it been since you went with a woman? You don’t mind my asking. We have these conversations in vice all the time.”

“I guess in vice you measure it in hours,” Costa answered without thinking and immediately wished he could bite back his words. Peroni’s face fell. He looked hurt.

“I’m sorry, Gianni. I didn’t mean that. It just slipped out.”

“At least we’re on first-name terms now. I guess that means we can say what we want to each other.”

“I didn’t—”

“It’s OK,” Peroni interrupted. “Don’t apologize. You have every right to tell me when I’m acting like a jerk.”

Peroni was more complicated than he liked to appear. That much Costa had come to understand. Some part of him wanted to talk about what had happened too, even if he felt he ought to make a play of avoiding the subject.

“Why did you do it, Gianni? I mean, you got a family. Then you go with a hooker.”

“Oh come on! It happens every day. You think it’s just single men get horny from time to time.”

“No. I just wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

Peroni let out a deep sigh. “Remember what I told you once? Everyone’s got that dark spot.”

“Not everyone lets it out.”

The big, ugly head shook slowly. “Wrong. One way or another they do. Whether they know it or not. Why did I do it? Won’t a simple answer do? The girl was damn beautiful. Slim and young and blonde. And young. Or did I mention that? Maybe she made me feel alive again. When you’ve been married twenty years you forget what that’s like. Yeah, before you say it, so does your wife. Blame me twice over.”

Costa said nothing, worried he might cross the line and destroy the delicate bonds the two of them had managed to build over the last few weeks.

Peroni’s damaged face wrinkled some more in puzzlement at his silence. “Oh. I get it. You’re thinking, ”Who does this hideous bastard think he is? Casanova?“ ”

“You don’t look like the great Latin Lover. That’s all. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Costa knew what was going on here. He wondered if he dared ask.

“Are you calling me ugly? That happens from time to time, Nic. I have to tell you I don’t like it.”

“No…” Costa stuttered. He took a good look at that battered face. “I was just wondering.”

“What?”

“What the hell happened?”

Gianni Peroni burst out laughing. “You kill me. You really do. In all the time I’ve worked here you are the first person who’s come out and asked that question direct. Can you believe that?”