David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Neri waved an impatient hand at her. “Nah. Listen to me. We’ve got nothing to worry about from our own people. We know each other. We go back years. Do you think I’ve spent half my life crawling around those peasants for no good reason? We’re safe there, provided we let them suck a little blood now and then.”

“Who then?” she asked again, and Neri couldn’t take his eyes off Adele. She was holding a piece of pastry with her delicate, skinny hand and she couldn’t stop herself yawning, didn’t even try to stifle it or cover her face. This was all so distant from her life.

“We had,” Neri said calmly, “a little problem way back when the boy was just a teenager. With some Americans.”

Mickey took a deep breath. “That’s over and done with.”

Neri smiled unpleasantly at his son across the table. “Maybe someone thinks otherwise. Maybe someone thinks we’re responsible.”

“Are we?” Adele stared at him with those wide-open, guileless eyes. It was, Neri thought, perhaps the worst question anyone should ask in the circumstances.

“People have got short memories,” he said. “Do you remember what you were doing sixteen years ago?”

“Sure,” she answered. “Don’t you? I was learning how to fuck. It seemed a useful skill to acquire.”

“Yeah, well, not everything happens below the waist,” he snapped. Not always, Neri thought. “What matters is that we take care. This is our town. Until everyone realizes that, I want you two to stay here, where I can look after you.”

Adele shot Mickey a theatrical glance of pure distaste. “You want me stuck here with him? Like a prisoner?”

Neri watched the two of them, thinking. “Try to see it as therapy. A break from shopping.”

“Sometimes,” Adele murmured, “I just can’t stop laughing around this place.”

Mickey giggled. The kid looked odd. A touch red-faced. Maybe he was back on the dope again, Neri thought. That was all he needed.

“Me neither,” Neri grunted, then got up from the table and waddled downstairs to talk to the men. His family depressed him sometimes.

Adele watched him go. Mickey closed his eyes in delight. It was a beautiful morning. There were a couple of gulls screaming in the sky. A helicopter hovered somewhere overhead, maybe getting a good view of what was going on. Her fingers gripped him tightly, stroking, cajoling, running up and down with a certain, insistent rhythm, as they had throughout his father’s tedious lecture. His dick sat upright, begging, in her hand beneath the table.

A finger crept close to the rim. Some insistent flood was moving, racing north. She lifted the tablecloth. Adele’s head went down, dipping towards Mickey’s groin. He felt her soft red hair fall beneath his hand. Her lips closed on the heat rising from inside him, her tongue performed two perfect circles of pleasure.

Mickey yelped, couldn’t help it. When he opened his eyes she was back above the table, dabbing a napkin to one corner of her mouth, the tip of her scarlet tongue just visible.

“Did she do that for you, Mickey?” Adele asked, when she was done. “This slut of yours last night?”

“I told you,” he answered dreamily. “I was working.”

“I hope that’s true.” She was looking at him in an odd way. Adele had changed the last couple of days, he thought. There was something she wanted, something more than just the fucking.

“Did you listen to what he said?” she asked.

“Hard to pay attention to your old man when your stepmother’s jerking you off under the table.” It was too. He was making a genuine point there, though it all came out like a wisecrack.

“Maybe I shouldn’t do it anymore. Maybe I should give this up altogether before he finds out.”

He blinked, unable to countenance the thought.

“Or maybe,” she continued, “I should tell him you made me. You wouldn’t leave me alone. I could just throw myself at his feet and beg for mercy. He’d listen, you know.”

He twitched and with it came the occasional stammer he had from time to time, when he was stressed. “D-d-don’t joke about stuff like that, Adele.”

Her hand gripped his arm. Her slim fingers bit into his flesh. “We need to get serious, Mickey. You need to listen. He’s old. He’s out of his depth. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. And the Sicilians… You know these people?”

“They’re friends,” he explained, trying to give the words some conviction.

“They’re associates. If they think he’s weak or out of line they’ll just walk in and hand all this to someone else. And you’ll be dead in a car somewhere out in the stinking countryside, while I go back to doing tricks for any rich old jerk who can’t get it up anymore.”

“What are you saying?” She was starting to scare him. Mickey liked Adele. Maybe this was love even. Weird things happened in spring.

“I’m saying—” She hesitated, thinking. “We need to be prepared.”

There was a sound beyond the balcony: cars, sirens. They went to the edge and looked down to the narrow street. Mickey took a deep breath then stepped back. He never did like heights. He didn’t like what he saw down there either: a fleet of blue vehicles swarming across the cobblestones, blocking the narrow street completely. At their head, close to the church on the Tiber side of the road, a tall, distinguished-looking man had stepped out of an unmarked Alfa. With him was a woman: elegant, well-dressed, young.

“Shit,” he murmured, then pulled back from the edge, head swimming. On the floor below the bell rang repeatedly, insistent.

COSTA GOT INTO THE QUESTURA early and took the hair-band and the brush over to forensic. The surly-looking lab assistant in the white coat sniffed at the plastic envelopes.

“What case do I assign them to?”

“Excuse me?”

“We got some new cost management procedures sent down from above. You got to tell me the case so I can lay it against the right budget.”

Costa sighed. “The missing teenager. Suzi Julius. I need to know if the hair on both of them match. By this afternoon.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. He was about forty, short, skinny, with a long bloodless face. He held the plastic bag up to the light on the desk and took a good look at the contents.

“I can tell you right now, Detective. They don’t match.”

“What?”

“Take a look for yourself. The hair’s a different colour.”

Costa snatched the bag off the man and stared at the contents. Maybe the man was right. There was a subtle difference in the hair colour. The sample on the hair-band from the villa was darker. Perhaps it did come from someone else. Or maybe it had been stained by the ochre earth on the floor.

“Is a person’s hair colour the same everywhere on the head?” he asked.

“Not unless they’ve done a very, very good dye job.”

“Then do me a favour,” Costa begged. “Satisfy my curiosity. Check.”

The assistant grunted and made a note. “This is gonna look good on the weekly audit. We’re half down on manning right now ”cos of the stinking flu. I think I’m coming down with it myself. Don’t expect miracles.“

“So how long?”

“Three days minimum,” the man replied. “It’s the best I can do in the circumstances. Sorry.”

“Jesus…” Costa murmured and went back to the office to find Peroni slumped in a chair at his desk, eyes closed, face grey and downcast.

“Morning,” Costa said.

“You left out the word ”good.“ I approve. You got a visitor. The Englishwoman’s outside.”

Costa gave him a sharp look.

“Hey,” Peroni protested. “Don’t get grumpy with me. I offered to listen. Seems you’re her main man. No Nic Costa, no talkie talkie.”