David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Call the cops , he says. That’s what we’re here for .

She slides her slim, taut body onto his chest. Firm fingers grip him, force his eyes to look into hers. Then she turns his head and he looks once more at the shapes on the walls, writhing, laughing, chattering in some unknown language. He closes his eyes. From somewhere deep inside, somewhere he can’t discern, comes a voice, rough and cruel, rumbling up from the guts through a crazy mask’s bulbous lips.

It says, Look, you fucker, look. You got to in the end .

No . He knows the word never leaves his throat.

Sounds from beyond the wooden door. People. Events. Real, perhaps. Or memories, shadows of the past seeping into the present.

I think , she says, there was a girl here once. Years ago, but not so distant we ought to forget. A young girl. Others too. But this girl was special .

Everyone’s special, he murmurs. How?

She was beautiful . Everyone’s beautiful. After a fashion.

The rough voice laughs from behind the hidden mask, a sound filled with scorn.

Hot breath enters his ear, a torrent of words that transform into pictures inside his head. He sees them now, forced into his imagination by what he hears and the pulsing elements roaring through his veins. They both have a stiff schoolgirl stance, backs to him, arms behind, fists clenched. Long blonde hair falls over slim shoulders onto sackcloth robes. A garland of flowers hangs around each too-young neck, a smaller one crowns each shining head. Carnations for love, lilies for death. Their smell fills the room, bright and harsh and cloying, with something else beneath it, a narcotic perfume worming its way into every hidden corner of every head.

One figure turns and he sees Barbara Martelli, now sixteen years younger than the woman he never really knew, long locks down to her waist, smiling face full of warmth, pleased to see someone.

Barbara opens her mouth. No sound emerges. She is a gift. He understands that just by looking at her, the way she stands, the way she beckons, and something in Barbara’s face seems to say she’s aware of this too.

Her slim arms, tanned, still a little chubby from her youth, reach out, seeking a man’s touch and the gift it will bring.

Barbara knows, he thinks. Barbara wants.

Miranda’s lips, damp and scorching, move against his ear.

She whispers, Look .

A second figure turns and he feels his heart become stone, feels the air disappear from his lungs.

Eleanor Jamieson stands in front of him, alive and smiling, and Miranda is right. She is more beautiful than any of them, not because of how she looks, but from the simple light that shines from her eyes, the naÏve, unworldly light of innocence begging to be dimmed because it burns too brightly for the rest. This is her undoing. Men will see this flame, perhaps women too, and want to suck on its power, steal the life from within it, jealous of its intensity. And she understands none of this. She simply smiles, and beckons.

She doesn’t know, fuckhead , the old voice croons. She doesn’t have a clue .

Eleanor Jamieson opens her perfect mouth and smiles.

Her teeth are the colour of mahogany. Her wide, unseeing eyes are pools of black, as deep and as dead as the foetid Tiber.

In her throat something glitters, silver and gold. A coin to pay the ferryman.

Behind her back something moves in the shadows.

VERGIL WALLIS SAID NOTHING for a good five minutes after he read the lab report. At his boss’s suggestion, Peroni went out for some coffee and to find out if there was any news. The men who had been combing had found nothing. Mickey Neri seemed remarkably well organized.

He came back, discreetly shook his head behind Wallis’s hunched figure at the desk, and placed a cup in front of the American. Wallis had the makings of tears in his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“Sorry,” he said eventually. “You’ve got a lot of surprises around here right now.”

“Too many,” Falcone replied. “You had no idea? You never knew she and Mickey were messing around together?”

This was the moment, Peroni realized. Vergil Wallis could stick to his guns, pretend he had pretty much told them the truth all along and just try to brazen the whole thing out. And if that happened then Nic Costa would be dead, along with the Julius woman and her kid. Everything hung on this old crook’s decision.

“No,” Wallis answered dolefully. “I still can’t believe it. You’d never have guessed it from seeing them together. Eleanor was smart. A little naÏve. Maybe that was why I indulged her from time to time. But she could have walked into any college she liked. The Neri kid was just an oaf. Worse than his father, if that’s possible.”

“Maybe that’s what she liked,” Peroni suggested, trying to be reasonable with this man because he understood how essential he was to them. “I have kids. You get to understand these things. A little anyhow. Sometimes they do the opposite of what you want just because it is the opposite of what you want. It doesn’t mean you can go blaming yourself for what happens next. That’s how people are made.”

Wallis nodded. “True.”

“So,” Peroni continued. “Now you know this, how about we stop pretending, huh? We know she didn’t go missing just off the cuff. And I got to say, Mr. Wallis, you must have realized that all along. So let’s cut the crap. We got a little time before your appointment. You tell us. What really happened that day?”

“Really?” There was some bitter amusement in Wallis’s face. Peroni didn’t like what he was seeing. This man just might help them, but he’d never relinquish control and never fully divulge anything he didn’t think necessary. “I’ve no idea. That is the truth. I swear to it. If I’d known—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

“You’d have killed him?” Peroni suggested. “Just for screwing around?”

Wallis nodded. “The person I was then… I would have killed him.”

“And now?”

“Now I live in Rome and read my books,” Vergil Wallis said quietly.

He pulled the overcoat tighter around him. “A man can drown himself in a few illusions if he likes. Is there anything wrong in that?”

Falcone and Peroni exchanged glances. Then Falcone tried to get things back on track.

“Where did you think Eleanor was going that day?”

“To some kind of party. Neri knew what interested me. Knew what interested her too. They were the same things. When we went on vacation together it was just after Eleanor’s birthday. Neri said he wanted to give her a gift. A surprise. Something out of the past. I’d given her Kirk’s book as a birthday present. She loved the stupid thing, read it all in a couple of days. So I mentioned this to Neri and said, maybe—”

Wallis paused and sighed. “The next thing I know Neri’s fixed a meeting round at his house. Me and him and the Kirk guy, who’s all eyes at the idea he might get paid to throw the party of his dreams. If I’d thought about it maybe the alarm bells would have started ringing. I didn’t even know what a Dionysian ceremony was. Maybe that was why the Kirk guy kept looking at me, weird, all the time. I just didn’t… imagine.”

He hesitated over this last point. “Eleanor knew, of course. Neri’s kid must have set her up for the whole thing.”

“Where was this supposed to happen?” Peroni asked.

“I don’t know,” Wallis replied. “I never asked. I could have gone along if I’d wanted. I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Peroni wondered.

Wallis glowered at him. “Watching some young kids dance around in costume? That’s what I thought it was. I’d been in Rome long enough to recognize all the tourist shit they try to sell you. They say it’s culture. I thought it was just one more turn around the block. If Eleanor wanted it… fine. I’d better things to do with my time.”