David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

“Thanks for the advice,” she said icily.

“Look.”

This was a new set of pictures, ones they’d brought in from a photographer covering a social evening at the opera. Neri was there in his other guise, as an art-loving businessman, his wife at his side. They were both dressed to the nines, Neri in a dinner suit, Adele wearing a long, tight-fitting silk gown.

“He does look different,” she conceded. She stared at the picture. “Is that his wife?”

Costa nodded.

“She looks very young for him. He’s that kind of man?” Costa didn’t answer.

“Nic? The kind who likes young girls?”

“She’s not as young as she looks. Not Suzi’s age anyway. He likes lots of things. Maybe he was involved in Kirk’s games. Maybe it’s more complicated than that.”

She peered at the picture again. “She doesn’t look happy. She looks like a possession or something. Someone he owns.

“You read a lot into pictures.”

She nodded in agreement. “You forget. I take pictures for a living. It’s like trying to tell a story. You want people to see it and get some sense of what’s happening. What the people there are like. Otherwise it’s just a snapshot. There’s no meaning. No drama. No humanity. Just shapes on a sheet of paper. It’s the back story that makes it work.”

She flicked through the set of photos from the opera. “These are quite good. Whoever he is, whoever his wife is, they make interesting subjects. There’s a lot going on there between them and I don’t think it’s nice. I could imagine photographing them myself. I could—”

Miranda Julius stopped at one picture. She separated the photo from the rest and stared at it in silence, thinking.

“You remember something about him?” Costa asked when he couldn’t wait any longer.

“No. I don’t know him from Adam. But him —”

She turned the photo round and stabbed at a figure at the edge of the photo. Younger, dressed in an evening suit, looking bored.

“I have seen him somewhere.” She stopped, trying to order her thoughts. “It was just after we arrived. We were in the Campo, having coffee outside. He was at the next table. I went to the loo. When I came back he’d been pestering Suzi. Asking for her phone number. Trying to chat her up.”

Costa looked at the photo and felt a sharp stab of excitement.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I think. He wasn’t… very nice. He was so persistent. His English wasn’t that great either. I didn’t like him, Nic. I really didn’t like him now I come to think of it. He was creepy. Just the kind of pushy young jerk I thought we’d be dealing with in Rome all the time.”

“But he could have given Suzi his number?”

“I’m trying to think—”

There was something here. Costa could feel it.

Miranda Julius looked into his face, her eyes wide open, worried. “Oh my God. I do remember. Suzi was odd afterwards for a while. Almost shifty. We nearly had an argument. It wasn’t like her.”

“So he could have passed her something? A phone number? She might have taken it.”

“Possibly. I don’t know, Nic. I don’t… It was days ago.”

“And she wouldn’t have told you?”

He didn’t like seeing the pain when she answered. “I suppose not. Kids of that age do stupid things and don’t want to admit it. I know I did. She was shifty about something. I should have known—”

Her eyes became misty.

“… Jesus, what an idiot I am. Thinking a girl of her age would be happy spending an entire holiday with her mother, never seeing anyone else. As if I’m good enough company for her. For Christ’s sake. I haven’t even been around for most of her life. Why should she want to be with me? How arrogant can you get?”

Then firmly, with absolute conviction, she said, “I remember I told her what an utter creep I thought he was. Exactly the sort of Italian man you get warned about. And she looked at me as if I was talking crap. As if I was old . Then we just didn’t talk about anything for a while. We just let it blow over.”

He was anxiously gathering up the pictures, keen to end this.

“Except it didn’t, did it?” she asked.

“This could really help us.”

“How? You know who this man is?”

Costa wondered how much to reveal. He reached over the table and took her arm. “Miranda,” he said. “We have rules about how much we can say in the middle of an investigation.”

“To hell with the rules. I’m her mother. I’m the reason she’s in this mess.”

His voice rose. “You’re not the reason. Suzi’s sixteen years old. She’s not a child you can care for twenty-four hours a day.”

She was shaking her head. “You don’t know her. You don’t know me. Don’t make these judgements.”

It wasn’t self-pity, he thought. More self-hate. “I know enough. You’re doing everything anyone could in the circumstances. Don’t start blaming yourself before—”

The word just slipped out. She stared at the bright dusty window, blinking back sudden tears. “Before what? Before there’s a reason?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that.”

She paused, trying to let the temperature fall a little.

“Who is he?” she asked. “You can at least tell me that.”

“He’s the old man’s son. His name is Neri. Mickey Neri.”

Nic Costa got up, thinking about the possibilities, what Falcone could do when he got the news. Outside the afternoon was dying. It would soon be dark. These operations were never easy at night. They had to move. There was so little time.

She was by his side, a shadow of hope in her face. “What kind of man is he? Mickey?”

“The best kind,” Costa said, smiling. “For us anyway. Not a university professor. Not some anonymous figure in a suit. Mickey Neri’s a crook, from a family of crooks, not a smart one either. We know him. We know where he lives. We know how to get what we want from him. Miranda—”

They just needed the warrants, and her ID of Mickey in the photo would surely put that straight in Falcone’s hands. Then they could storm the big house in the Via Giulia, take Mickey in for questioning, and start to tear apart the whole Neri empire along the way.

Costa rested his hand on her shoulders and wished he could make her feel the same rising sense of anticipation he was beginning to recognize within himself. “We’ll find her. I promise.”

She stepped back from him, doubt still in her eyes.

“Promises,” she said.

THE DAY WAS DYING. Emilio Neri stood on the terrace, leaning on the handrail, looking down into the street, breathing in the smog from the Lungotevere. When he was a kid Rome was cleaner. More whole somehow. It had gone wrong, like most of the world, over the years. Back when he was young, people would walk around the centro storico on a night like this, arm in arm, just looking in the shops, stopping for a drink before supper. Now they rushed everywhere, or tried to if the traffic would let them. They stood around whispering into mobile phones instead of talking to people directly. Rome wasn’t the worst place either. When he went to Milan or London it seemed they spent their entire lives locked in solitary conversations with lumps of plastic. At least his native city maintained a stubborn streak of humanity at its heart. He could still walk across the Ponte Sisto and feel a kick of sentiment.

Except there wasn’t time. There never would be time. That part of his life was past. Now he had to consolidate the future, and the reputation he’d leave behind.

He turned to see Mickey clamber up the stairs. The kid stood by the pots of anaemic palms that were still suffering from the winter. He was now wearing a different set of stupid clothes, too young for him as usual: flared jeans, a thin black sweater one size too small. He was thirty-two. He ought to stop trying to look like a teenager. He was shivering too.