David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

“He don’t drink!” Peroni barked down the phone.

Except maybe he did now. Maybe they all ought to. Maybe something made sense if you saw it through a musky mist of red wine.

“Yeah, right,” the handler snarled. “Maybe he’s gone to choir practice.”

Then the line went dead and Gianni Peroni still didn’t know what to do. He thought about what the handler had said and felt his mind starting to turn again.

“Shit,” Peroni murmured.

“Where the hell is he?” Falcone wondered, taking his eyes off the ambulance screaming away down the narrow road, lights flashing, Klaxon screaming.

“I dunno,” he replied. “But there’s trouble in San Giovanni now too. That address ring a bell?”

CERCHI RAN beneath the overhanging escarpment of the Palatine Hill, all the way from the Tarpean cliff behind the Capitol to the busy modern street of San Gregorio that led to the Colosseum. Nic Costa had parked next to the open space that was once the Circus Maximus, wishing the tip-off had led him somewhere else. At night this was a seedy part of town, a haunt of down-and-outs and drug dealers who lurked in unlit corners, out of sight of the authorities.

He’d been to all five sites which Regina Morrison’s records suggested were linked to Randolph Kirk. They were complex places, with multiple entrances, not all of them obvious. It took time but every last one seemed boarded up, abandoned long ago. He’d shown Suzi’s photo to some of the stragglers in the area. Most were too scared or too doped up to talk any sense, and the few that had their wits about them were unwilling to help a lone cop. Peroni was right: Cerchi was a big street.

He thought about his partner and the rest of the team who’d been close to the blast outside Neri’s house. Costa felt guilty about leaving them, but Peroni was insistent. One more pair of hands would make no difference, and they had a duty to Suzi Julius too. They had, in all truth, neglected her. Miranda knew that just as well as they did. The knowledge lay in her intelligent, all-seeing eyes. And it was a neglect that could be hard to rectify.

So what do you do ? Costa wondered.

Go home, a weary inner voice said. Sleep .

He walked back towards his car, realizing how dog-tired he was, and how welcoming it would be to fall into the big, empty double bed in the old house off the Appian Way and listen to the comforting rustle of ghostly voices down the corridor. At that moment he remembered how important family, that tight, near-perfect bulwark against the cruelties of the world, was to him.

Even a family torn apart by tragedy.

The thought pricked his conscience. His father’s premature death still haunted him. Nic Costa wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. It was now nearly midnight. If they were right, sixteen years before Eleanor Jamieson had been butchered, victim of some obscure ceremony involving… who? The family of a Rome hood? A bunch of sleazy hangers-on out for fun and unaware that Neri’s cameras were filming their tricks? Suzi Julius could face a similar fate at any time over the next twenty-four hours, for no reason but bad luck, the misfortune of her looks, of turning the wrong corner at the wrong moment. And no one had the slightest idea of where she might be. Neri and his son had disappeared leaving a bloody trail of destruction behind them. Vergil Wallis, this time round anyway, seemed to be out of the loop. They had no real lead, just chaos and anarchy and violence.

He took one last look around him and narrowed his eyes at a pool of half shade along the street. Twenty metres or more away something had moved, dashing into the shadow of the great Palatine cliff. A head of bright blonde hair disappearing into the darkness, with another shape, that of a man moving close behind. It could just be a pair of lovers. It could just be the break they’d been praying for.

Costa patted his jacket, feeling the Beretta safe in its holster, and walked towards the shadows, listening to the sounds of the night: the chatter of sleepy pigeons, the low rumble of traffic speeding past the grassy stadium, the scuttering of rats among the crumbling rock face that sat beneath the remains of the imperial palaces.

A DISTANT VOICE, just recognizable as female, pleading, echoed out from the cavern mouth, now more visible in the leaking radiance of a bright yellow light within.

Nic Costa took out his phone and knew what he’d see. He was directly under the lee of the Palatine’s rock face. The signal was blocked by the stone. The sensible thing to do would be to walk back out into the street, make contact with Falcone, call in help. But he had to keep the girl within his reach. Besides, this could just be a couple of secretive lovers. He didn’t like heroics, but this time, there seemed no alternative. So he crept into the shadows, letting his back fall against the dusty rock wall, edging his way forward towards the light, towards the sound which was the voice of a man now, talking so low Costa couldn’t make out the words.

He aimed for the sound and it wasn’t easy. The place was a complex of dimly lit chambers, interlinked, set in a chain from the entrance, which was, Costa suspected, just one of many, eaten into the hill like giant rat holes. The site should have been on Randolph Kirk’s list. Maybe it was and Regina Morrison just hadn’t got to hear of it. Or perhaps, if it was Kirk’s most private sanctum, his holy of holies, he kept it private for his own good reasons.

Costa passed through four small chambers, each barely lit by a single bulb dangling from a wire in the centre, just like at Ostia. In the shadows he could make out more rooms and corridors, stretching into the gloom. The place was a subterranean labyrinth, an ancient maze cut into the rock. He wished now he’d waited for back-up. He wished he could hear what the man in the darkness was saying.

He tried to picture what lay ahead of him but it was impossible. When he thought he was heading for the sound, he would turn a corner and find himself floundering in an impenetrable darkness. After a while he couldn’t work out which way was forward, which back. His legs dragged across the rough stone floor. His head hurt. More than once he tripped, and was aware of the noise he made. The distant voices rolled incomprehensibly around him from every direction.

Then he ducked to stumble through a low opening and found himself dazzled by the intensity of what lay beyond.

Three bulbs dangled from this ceiling, burning like miniature yellow suns. On the rock walls around him, plastered everywhere, covering each other like an overlapping skin of living images, were colour photographs, all of the same two faces in the same two poses: Suzi Julius, happy and smiling, bright blonde hair waving around her face, and Eleanor Jamieson, this photo slightly faded from the years, still shocking in its similarity. They could have been sisters, he thought, not for the first time. No wonder Kirk saw her and began to remember.

He turned around, feeling giddy, wondering where to look next, where to go, clutching for the gun instinctively, feeling his hand wander to the wrong places.

“Oh, Jesus,” said a frightened female voice floating out of the darkness. Then the breathy words faded, were replaced by the sound of something sweeping through the air.

Nic Costa felt an agonizing pain crash into the back of his skull. He was aware of falling, still dazzled by the bright intensity of the room. Then darkness.

Liberalia

SOMETHING STIRRED AT THE BACK OF TERESA LUPO’S MIND, rumbling around the darker corners of her sleep, buzzing, shifting position, now near, now far. She swore, felt her heavy eyelids start to stir, then rolled awake at her desk in the morgue, just in time to see an equally sleepy honeybee lurch through the air then head off back to the open window.