David Hewson: The Villa of Mysteries

Costa nodded.

“And let me tell you something else. I hate the drink thing. I have watched too many men turn into boozed-up pieces of shit in my time. You do that to me and I will feel very cross indeed. You wouldn’t like me when I’m cross. No one does.”

“I’ll try to remember that. Do I get something in return? A promise you’ll stay away from hookers?”

Peroni glared at him and Costa, in spite of himself, couldn’t help feeling a little scared. “Don’t push it now. I know Leo’s looking out for you. The stupid bastard feels guilty for what happened when you got shot. God knows why. From what I hear you got yourself into that mess.”

Costa refused to rise to the bait. “No, I mean it. I’m curious. Everyone thought they knew you. This stand-up, working-class guy with the perfect family, the perfect life. And now they think they got it wrong all along. And they wonder: was it them, or was it you? Who was doing the lying?”

“Me,” Peroni said immediately. “But let me tell you. Everyone’s got that little dark spot inside them. Everyone wonders what it would be like to take it out for a walk once in a while. Even you. If you know what’s good for you.”

“I thought that’s what you didn’t want to happen.”

“I was talking about the drink. People who go that way do it for one purpose. To kill something. Maybe it’d be better if they did let the dark side out instead. Just now and again.”

It was a kind of philosophy, Costa thought. Not one he expected from a cop, or the kind of cop Gianni Peroni was supposed to be.

“And you tell me something, kid. I saw you walking into the building today with Barbara Martelli. Isn’t she the loveliest thing in the world? What if she just turned round one day, just when you were happily married and thought everything was stretching out neatly in front of you, just when you’re feeling a little old too. What if she said: Nic, I just wished I knew what it was like. Just the once. Where’s the harm? Who’s to know ?”

“I’m not married.”

“I know . I said, what if?” Peroni waited for an answer and realized it wasn’t coming. “You should ask that girl out. She’s got something in her eyes when she looks at you. I notice these things.”

Costa laughed. “Really?”

“Really. And let me tell you one more thing. I knew her old man. He was in vice too until a couple of years ago. One of the meanest, most miserable bastards you ever saw. How he ever spawned a woman like that is beyond me. There. You got a good reason not to date her. You’d have to meet that old sonofabitch.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You look like the sort of person who appreciates reasons for not doing things. Which is fine by me, until I talk myself out of this seat. Do we understand each other?”

Costa didn’t get mad. In a way he felt relieved. At least he knew where he stood.

“Is that out of the way now?” he wondered. “Can we just settle down to being old cop, young cop, cleaning up the streets of Rome?”

But the big man in the passenger seat was waving at him to be quiet. The radio was squealing their number. Peroni picked up the mike and answered. They listened to the call. Nic Costa gunned the car and headed straight for Piramide and the autostrada out to the coast and the airport, casually flicking on the blue light and the siren to get the cars out of the way.

“What a day,” Peroni groaned. “First I get baby-sitting duties. Now we’re the fire brigade. Hard to know which is worse.”

BOBBY DEXTER’S DETERMINED EXPRESSION was one Lianne recognized. It usually meant they were headed for trouble.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to take back a head for Tom Jorgensen to look at. One that’s a million times better than that piece of Greek shit of his.”

She gaped at him, outraged. “What?”

Bobby raised the shovel to shoulder height, holding it like an axe, a little breathless already from the anticipation. “Watch. Watch and learn.”

He brought the metal down hard where the statue’s neck ought to be. Nothing much happened. Some dirt moved. But Lianne was yelling, louder than she’d ever done before.

“Bobby Dexter,” she screeched. “What the hell are you doing? This thing’s like a piece of art or something. It’s history. You’re just going to smash it to pieces so you can make out your dick’s bigger than Tom Jorgensen’s?”

He held the shovel high, swaying slightly. “What do you know about the size of Jorgensen’s dick?”

“It was a figure of speech, moron.”

Bobby Dexter blinked at her. He looked downright ugly. The light was failing now and the world was getting weird. He took one more swipe at the statue’s neck and missed, sending up a shower of stinking earth that bounced straight back into his face. A few grains fell into his mouth. He spat out the dirt as if it were poison.

“If you break that statue, we’re over, Bobby,” she said, dead serious. “I mean it. I don’t go talking to my father. I get a lawyer. The moment we get back to Seattle.”

He hesitated, staring at her as if wondering whether she really did mean it. “You tell me that when we’re back home with the best fucking piece of coffee table statuary in private ownership anywhere in Washington State. You’d be amazed what a nice piece of household ornamentation can do for dinner parties.”

“Bobby—” she yelled.

“Bullshit.” He took a final swing.

This one connected. The sharp side of the spade went deep into the neck. There should have been a sharp, cracking sound that indicated a good clean break, one that went right across the stone in a level line with just enough randomness in it to look convincing. She knew Bobby well enough to understand what he was thinking. There were probably ideas in his head already.

But everything just went straight out of their heads a moment after the blade hit. Lianne Dexter realized right then that they’d been wrong, terribly wrong, both of them. They saw what they wanted to see. Not what was . Maybe there was a reason behind that. Because what was turned out to be the last thing they wanted to encounter anywhere on this planet, least of all on their own down a little lane, next to a stinking grey river in a country where their language skills extended only to ordering pizza, beer and wine.

The blade didn’t strike hard stone. It met flesh, a kind of flesh anyway. Something that looked like leather, tanned, tough, but supple. The side of the spade cut straight through just where the neck met the shoulders, severing something that resembled a real human tendon, spattering both of them with a mixture of foul-smelling wet mud that seemed to have something distinctly organic, almost alive, inside it.

Lianne’s face was covered with the peat gore that had spat back at them when he attacked the thing. She was spitting bits of it out of her mouth, sobbing, dry-retching as she did so.

She stopped for a moment and watched Bobby bend down to look closely at the thing, just a hint of reverence in his face.

On the ground in front of them, partly severed from the body by the spade, was the head of a young girl, sixteen, seventeen, no more, dressed in a classical gown, holding some large, ceremonial wand in her left hand. The force of the blow had removed most of the solid cake of peat that had sat on her features. What they saw now was her face which, beneath the crud, seemed beautiful. She had a high forehead and prominent cheekbones. There wasn’t a wrinkle in sight on her flawless leather skin. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were partly open as if she were uttering a final, dying sigh. She had perfect teeth which were just closed together with a hint of pearly whiteness showing through the brown stain of the earth. Her long hair was tied back behind her neck and matted into solid strands. Her expression was one of utmost peace. She looked, Lianne Dexter thought, happy, which was, she knew, ridiculous in the circumstances.