David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Wallis put a large, firm hand on his arm. “Peroni,” he said. “I got your number, man. I know what happened a couple of months ago.”

“You do?”

Peroni thought about that and wished he’d had more time to go through the details back in the Questura. Nic had gone missing sometime before midnight. Vergil Wallis had picked up half a million euros less than eight hours later. What kind of “private banker” did Miranda Julius use? Who on earth had that kind of money lying around ready to be bundled up in a bag at a moment’s notice?

“I heard you got busted down from on high,” Wallis said. “Why’d you think I picked you for this job? It says two things to me. You’re a man who’s open to ideas. Plus you could use the cash.”

Peroni noted the growing gap in the traffic ahead and wondered how quickly he could make a U-turn. “You disappoint me, Vergil. You are a very, very bad judge of character. Best we turn around right now and go through this whole thing again with Inspector Falcone, only in a little more detail and leaving out the lying parts.”

There was enough room, if only the idiot in front would pull forward enough to let him make the turn.

“An honest cop,” Wallis said, nodding his imposing black head. “Who’d have thought it? I admire that, though. And it’s because I do I’m not gonna hit you as hard as I might otherwise.”

Peroni wasn’t sure he heard that last one right. He took his foot off the pedal, screwed up his face and said, “What?”

When he opened his eyes a big black fist was coming towards him, fast, so fast he could do nothing but watch and wait as it crashed straight into his right eye.

It got a little fuzzy after that. Huge hands moved around him. The belt got unbuckled. Vergil Wallis’s collar mike got torn off and thrown onto the floor. A big foot came across and kicked open the driver’s door. Then a pair of arms came beneath his body and hurled him out of the car.

He fell on the filthy road with a crack, took one breath of the stinking air and started to cough.

The unmarked police car was doing a U-turn into the tunnel, now facing a clear run back into the city, headed anywhere but San Giovanni. And—Gianni Peroni would remember this for a long time, he told himself—he’d be damned if the grinning black figure behind the wheel wasn’t waving goodbye.

SHE WHISPERS and, through the chemical fire that rages in his head, he sees.

The thyrsus sits in the same place, now green and vivid, coloured ribbons round its shaft, beneath the bulbous priapic head. The lights are brighter. Men, middle-aged, stiff in their movements, conspiratorial in their shared glances, move beneath them. There are glasses in their hands, brimming with purple wine. A couple smoke, long, hand-made roll-ups that send blue-grey smoke rolling up to the rocky ceiling. They talk among one another: Emilio Neri, the little accountant Vercillo, Randolph Kirk and Toni Martelli, others who are just faces half hidden in the shadows.

Mickey lurks behind them, miserable, uncomfortable, unsure of where he belongs.

They talk and talk and now Nic Costa understands why. These men, powerful men, influential men, are nervous. This is something new for them. An experiment, a break with convention. They look at Randolph Kirk and their eyes say everything: make this work or else .

Randolph Kirk knows this. He’s more nervous than the rest, almost twitching with anticipation. He speaks but his words are inaudible. He claps his hands and, though they make no sound, the men stop talking and look. A line of young figures gathers at the door. Girls in sackcloth shifts, flowers in their hair, young, young. Some giggle. Some smoke. Their eyes are bright yet hazy. They are, like Randolph Kirk, afraid.

The mood pivots on a breath, a gesture, anything that might break the spell.

One of the initiates, Barbara, young yet knowing, walks forward, expectant, animated. Her hand falls on the mask. Her fingers stroke its ugly features, caress the vile, bulbous nose.

Watch , the chemical screams, a god inside him, so strong it is impossible to fight.

The golden girl lifts the dead, ugly face, looks at each of them in turn and smiles.

THEY LEFT THE HOUSE on the Aventine Hill just after nine. Bruno Bucci drove. Neri huddled down in the rear with one man on either side. Then the Mercedes snaked down the back roads, taking the narrowest it could find, before it emerged in Cerchi, just where the call had dictated.

Not that Emilio Neri needed directions. He’d never forget this place. Too many memories lay behind the scarred earth.

The car pulled onto the pavement. They got out and stood in the shadow of the escarpment that ran into the Tarpeian Rock. The sun was coming up on another fine spring day. If there’d been a little less traffic Neri could have taken a deep breath and believed he would miss Rome.

Bucci looked at him, nodded at the black hole of the cave, behind the broken gate its ancient city archaeology department notice saying “Keep Out.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Neri said and ducked into the darkness. “I’ll handle this on my own. Just make sure he’s carrying nothing when he shows, huh?”

“What about Mickey?” Bucci said.

“Mickey?” Neri laughed. “What about him? He’s just a stupid kid. I can handle my own son.”

Neri thought about Bucci again and briefly wondered about his own judgement. “You think I’m being dumb, don’t you?”

Bucci didn’t say a thing.

“OK. Don’t answer. I got to say, Bruno. I’m being more than fair to you here.”

“Sure. I’d still like to come in with you.”

Was this sentiment? Or just some self-serving show of concern? Neri couldn’t decide. Maybe Bucci was right. He could handle Mickey, no problem. But if his son had others in tow…

“You heard of anyone going over to Mickey?” he asked.

Bucci laughed out straight. “Are you kidding? Who’d be fool enough for that?”

Neri nodded at the shadowy mouth of the cave. “So it’s just him in there. And maybe Adele. Do you honestly believe I cannot cope with my own son and a two-timing wife I can slap down with one hand?”

Bucci shuffled on his big feet, uncomfortable.

Neri took that as a yes. “Just make sure Wallis goes in on his own and he’s not carrying anything,” he said. “I don’t share out this pleasure with anyone. Besides. I’ve been thinking. There’s some questions I want to ask, and they’re all family. I don’t want anyone else listening.”

“Think of me as back-up.”

Neri tapped him on the chest with a single finger, quite hard. “I was putting men down before you were born, Bruno. Don’t get presumptuous. You got the rope and the tape like I asked?”

Bucci nodded and handed them over.

Emilio Neri patted his jacket, felt the butt of the gun there. Then he walked into the darkness, surprised how cold it was, surprised too by how little illumination the bulbs gave.

His memory must have been playing tricks. In the old days everything seemed much brighter.

LEO FALCONE WATCHED Peroni dabbing his head next to him in the back seat.

“That’s one big black eye on the way,” he said. “Do you have any idea where Wallis might have gone? Did he say anything?”

“Yeah. First he asked if Neri and his kid were safely in the net anyway, even without this. Then he tried to bribe me to look the other way so he could get a spare thirty minutes with the fat man. I was explaining the problems this posed for my fragile sense of public duty when he whacked me in the face. Said he wasn’t hitting me so hard because he admired me. I’m glad I wasn’t on the hate list. If he punched like that when he’s a fan—”

The radio barked at them. Wallis had dumped the police car in a side road near the Trevi Fountain and disappeared into the tourist masses. Falcone swore and then issued the standard call. Tall black men in flapping leather overcoats weren’t that common in Rome. Someone ought to see him.