David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Teresa was beginning to get exasperated. “I was hoping, because you knew so much about all these rituals, you could maybe help me. You see, there’s another girl. She went missing today and somehow…” she struggled for the right words to describe this odd situation, “… it all looks similar. It all looks as if something could happen the day after tomorrow, 17 March.”

“17 March?” He had another habit, too, when he wasn’t poking at his adenoids. He kept moving his glasses up and down his red, pockmarked nose with the forefinger of his right hand. Thinking, she guessed.

“You’re a police officer?”

“No,” she corrected him. “I’m a pathologist working with the police.”

“You didn’t tell them you were coming here. Why?”

“Because—” It was an odd question. The alarm bell that was beginning to sound somewhere at the back of her head was just plain stupid. It had to be. “Can you help me, Professor?”

The glasses were going up and down his nose. He didn’t look the physical type. He didn’t look anything much at all.

“You must excuse me,” Professor Randolph Kirk said, suddenly getting out of his chair. “I have a digestive problem. I really have to go.”

He paused at the door and looked back at her. “One moment, please. I may be a little while.”

Thirty minutes later, feeling more and more stupid, she got up and tried the handle. Randolph Kirk had locked it. She walked quickly to the window and took a good look at the frame. The ancient clasp for the latch had rusted long ago. It must have been years since anyone opened the thing.

“Shit,” she groaned. “Shit, shit, shit and double shit.”

There was just the trace of a signal on her mobile phone. She wondered who to call, what to say. Falcone was going to go ballistic. As if that were the biggest of her worries.

“Don’t sweat, girl. He’s an academic. He’s got a nose like a pineapple and flu bugs doing the Macarena in his veins. Unless he comes through that door wielding a pickaxe I’ve got no problem at all.”

All the same she looked around the room for something to use as a weapon. There was a small, short hammer on a filing cabinet, nothing more.

“Nic,” she murmured, starting to dial. “Come save me, Nic. Oh crap—”

The number rang once and then went dead. There was a sound outside. It was a motorbike. A powerful one, judging by the low rumble of the engine.

She stopped dialling and listened hard. This could be important.

After a couple of seconds, Teresa Lupo couldn’t hear a thing. Some unseen force, the pumping of her own blood in her ears maybe, was drowning out the sounds beyond the door and she felt she ought to be grateful. She was familiar with death, not with dying. Just then she was an outsider, overhearing some important dumb show happening in the shadows. Even when she was a real medical doctor and people died in hospital it was, somehow, appropriate. Nothing ever really came out of the blue, violently, as it did for so many of the customers on her shining silver table. But she knew nothing of what it was like to witness such an act.

And here it was, happening unseen just a few metres away, beyond the flimsy door of Professor Randolph Kirk’s office. Over the beating of her heart, she could hear the drama being enacted, like a scene from a radio play leaking out from a neighbouring window. The voices, two, both high, one rising, one falling in grim fear.

Then the scream and the report of a gun, so loud it blocked out everything.

Her breathing stopped for a moment. Something had happened then. A void had opened in her head, a blank page of expectation, and into it walked some dark, shrouded certainty that a human being, Professor Randolph Kirk to be precise, had, at that instant, ceased to be. A living person was gone from the earth and the scariest thing of all was that Teresa Lupo, in her imagination, felt as if something, his spirit perhaps, his departing shade, had stepped through her own body leaving a single word imprinted in her mind: run .

She couldn’t think straight. She could hardly catch her breath. There were footsteps and she found herself frozen, looking at the door, hearing someone rattle a set of unfamiliar keys at the lock, searching for the right one.

“TURN THAT DAMNED THING OFF,” Falcone barked. “I want to think.”

They were in Falcone’s office watching the clips of CCTV from the Campo when Costa’s phone rang. It sounded once before he hit the power button. The mood wasn’t good. Rachele D’Amato was nursing a tender ego and uninterested in pursuing any link with Suzi Julius. Falcone had scowled at a skimpy preliminary report on the Jamieson girl from Teresa Lupo. The video seemed predictable at first but it bothered Costa all the same.

The bike rider wore a shiny helmet with an opaque visor and a full-length black leather suit, just like a street punk out to do some bag-snatching. The girl had “tourist” written all over her. Here she was, dashing through the dwindling crowd in the Campo, dressed in tee-shirt and black jeans, a small canvas bag over her shoulder, right in front of the two uniformed carabinieri men who stood by their car yawning, uninterested. Costa couldn’t believe their lack of attention. Suzi seemed to be running from something, or so it seemed to him. It should have rung an alarm bell somewhere.

The rider’s wrist flicked on the throttle. There was something odd going on with the girl. He couldn’t work out whether she was laughing or crying. Then another figure came into view, sprinting: Miranda Julius fighting her way through the tangle of shoppers, yelling at her departing daughter’s back.

Costa wondered whether he was reading this all the wrong way. Sometimes cops took too much upon themselves. They walked into domestic situations that were best left alone. They interpreted events mistakenly and wound up with egg on their faces. Suzi reached the big, powerful bike, kissed the side of the helmet quickly, then hopped on the back, wrapping her arms around the rider’s waist. The machine bucked once as it went into gear. Then the two of them were off, bobbing and weaving through the crowds.

As the bike negotiated the corner of the square the girl turned round, one hand still clinging to the rider’s waist, looking for someone. Miranda halted then looked back at the carabinieri. She was panting, out of breath. Suzi brought her fingers to her lips and blew a farewell kiss across the Campo before the bike disappeared, out into the Corso.

Just a teenager running away with her boyfriend? Maybe, Costa thought. This was meant to look like some simple, domestic drama, almost enacted deliberately for public consumption. Maybe for the girl it was. But there was something wrong here. The bike didn’t have a number plate. Even street hoods didn’t favour black like that, with opaque visors. Nor did they like such big, powerful bikes. Little scooters were cheaper, more manoeuvrable. It was all too much of a giveaway.

“I don’t like it,” he said when the clip came to an end. “Why does the bike have no plate?”

Rachele D’Amato wriggled on her seat. “Can we focus on the task at hand, please? I’m not here to chase runaway teenagers.”

“It could be linked,” Falcone said. “Costa’s right. There’s something strange going on there.”

He got up and threw open the door of the office. The staff room was horribly depleted, no more than ten men at the desks, close to half the normal manning level thanks to the flu. Falcone looked at the officer nearest to the door.

“Bianchi. Who’s hottest on this CCTV stuff around here?”

The man thought about this for a moment. “You mean of the people who’re in? Me. Ricci’s the real expert but he’s home sneezing his eyeballs out. I can call him, though. Get some tips. What do you want?”