David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

“Really?” Falcone gave him a familiar, cold look. “You know her well enough to say that?”

“I know she’s just as married to the job as you are. And when she does get conscious the first thing she’ll ask is what you’ve done to get the sons of bitches who did this. You offer a bunch of flowers and you’ll get it straight back into your face. Now am I right?”

Falcone glanced at him and Peroni wondered if he had read everything the wrong way. “You think that’s what this is about, Gianni? Me and her?”

“I dunno,” he mumbled, and Peroni realized that at that moment he really didn’t. There was more going on in Falcone’s head than he appreciated.

“She’s got another man,” Falcone said flatly. “She told me so.”

“Gimme a break,” Peroni answered immediately. “Does she look like a woman with a man in tow? She’s just playing with you, Leo. Women are like that.”

“Maybe.”

Falcone was focused on the meeting going on across the road. The men from the black cars were engaged in an impromptu conference near the sight of the blast. He knew, surely, he ought to go and join them. He ought to answer their questions, try to keep them happy.

Peroni looked at the shattered building and sighed. “For God’s sake, Leo. It’s times like this people look to you. If you’re riddled with self-doubt, how the hell do you expect them to go on? Here—”

He lit another cigarette and offered it. Falcone accepted reluctantly.

“Listen to your friend Gianni, please. Because he’s just got a stupid vice cop brain in his skull and this primitive organ doesn’t have a clue what’s going on here. All these crazy genes bouncing around tonight. Where’d they come from, Leo? What the hell for? Who flipped that switch and why?”

Falcone scratched his chin and said nothing.

“This is good,” Peroni said carefully. “This is indicative of cerebral activity. Come on. Reel off some options.”

Falcone shook his head miserably and threw the cigarette away.

“You are costing me big time, man,” Peroni groaned. “OK, let me change the subject. How about this? You can bawl me out. Sometime over the past half hour—don’t ask when exactly because I can’t tell you—Costa went off on his own, chasing this wild goose story about some blonde girl over in Cerchi. He didn’t want to. Or rather, he did but he didn’t want to let it show. So I told him to get his ass on the road anyway. Who knows? Anyway, it was me giving orders. So bust my ass.”

There was a flicker of interest in Falcone’s face. Peroni was glad even that much was there.

“It was just a report of a blonde girl?” Falcone asked. “Just that she looked like Suzi Julius?”

“Nothing more,” Peroni agreed. “You seemed to think—this was just before the big bang event took place—it was worthy of attention, I believe.”

“It was. Hell, it is .” Falcone wasn’t looking across the street now. His mind was getting back into gear. “Or maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

The old Falcone was lurking there somewhere. The one who didn’t let go. And the men in black across the road were starting to look around them, wondering why no one had seen fit to acknowledge their presence.

“I’m not messing with you now, Leo. Either you pull yourself together or someone at the Questura’s going to be sending you back on leave and finding some young smart-ass to warm your seat. Probably for good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Falcone conceded. “Maybe it’s what Rachele said all along. A war. And somehow the Julius girl—” He waved his hand at the mess across the street, “All these people, they’re just, what do they call it? Collateral damage. Bodies caught in the crossfire. It’s a war . Neri against Wallis. Or Neri against us, the world, everything. I don’t know.”

Peroni didn’t feel convinced. “Don’t wars need something to start them?”

“The girl. Wallis’s stepdaughter. Neri or maybe his son did something to her. Wallis wants payback. This is Neri getting his revenge in first. Against all of us.”

“You people do live in a complicated universe. How’d you get there?”

“It’s not ”there.“ It’s not even part way ”there.“ ”

“So what do we do? What are cops supposed to do in a war?”

Falcone gave him a withering look. “Do we have men outside Wallis’s place?”

“No. The DIA took that one, remember?”

“Yeah,” Falcone nodded, thinking. “You remember what Wallis said?”

“Every word. But remind me.”

“ ”War is the natural state of humanity.“ ”

“Bullshit,” Peroni protested. “Lethargy’s the natural state of humanity. Look at this mess! What’s natural about that?”

“Nothing,” Falcone said, looking at his watch. “Everything, if you’ve got the ”crazy gene.“ We’re seeing this all wrong, Gianni. We’re trying to rationalize something that’s not rational.”

Peroni patted his shoulder. “Hey! See! You can still sound like the old Leo when you want to. Can we go out and do cop stuff now, please? This isn’t a place for the likes of us. You can phone the hospital later. We got work to do. Furthermore—” he pointed to the men across the street, who were starting to look thoroughly pissed off. “—I believe your presence is required.”

Falcone nodded and walked over to talk to them. Peroni sat on the bonnet of the car and lit another cigarette, trying to think his way around what he had just heard. From across the road the inspector’s sombre voice rose in the darkness. He was yelling at these anonymous men, arguing his case, refusing to back down, and it was music to Peroni’s ears. Falcone really didn’t give a damn. It made him unique. It made him invaluable. It was the reason his men followed him everywhere, even though half the time they couldn’t stand him.

In the harsh artificial moon of the TV lights across the road a stretcher moved out from the rubble. Rachele D’Amato was headed for an ambulance, a team of men around her, one of them holding a drip. Peroni could just about make out her face. She was unconscious. If he was honest with himself, she looked dead. He thought again about what Falcone had said, and the distinct impression he’d had that it was curiosity, not jealousy, that lay behind his interest. She didn’t look like someone with a man in tow. She was, surely, just saying: back off, Leo . Nothing more than that. It was a measure of Falcone’s awkwardness in these matters that he just couldn’t see this.

And now he was watching the stretcher too, still talking to the men in dark suits, his face impassive. Then he murmured one quiet oath and stomped off, to stand by the doors to the ambulance.

Peroni walked over to his side. “Leo. She’s in good hands.”

“I know.”

Falcone’s mind was turning somewhere else. Peroni didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sorry. “So what’d they say?”

The cold grey eyes just stared at him.

“OK, OK,” Peroni conceded. “Stupid question. They said: ”go fix this shit.“ I get the message.”

Falcone scowled at the suits getting back into their cars. “Never mind what they said. I want the Julius girl. Have you heard from Costa?”

“Not yet.”

“Get him.”

So Peroni called. And called again, getting madder and madder because of so many things: the dead ring at the end of the line, Falcone’s cagy diffidence, his own confused state of mind. Then he phoned the control room asking if Nic Costa had checked in.

The woman handler couldn’t believe her ears. “Do you know what’s going down in this city tonight, Detective? I got bombs. I got people screaming blue murder about some shooting in San Giovanni. And you want me to find out which bar your partner fell into?”