David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Falcone stroked his angular silver beard and looked as if he were asking himself the same question. “For luck I guess. Maybe I’m getting superstitious in my old age. We could use some luck.”

“No sign of Nic or Wallis? I heard when I was leaving.”

He shook his head. “What made you come to this room first? Do you think there’s something we should be looking for?”

“No. Nic and I did look, didn’t we? It’s just—” The conviction had grown in the speeding police car on the way. “I should have said something when we were here before. This room doesn’t feel lived in. Not at all. People leave their mark. If you go into the mother’s room you can still feel her presence. There’s mess. Chaos. This—”

She took another look to make sure. “This is for our benefit. Do we really know for sure that Suzi Julius exists?”

Falcone’s eyes didn’t leave her. “We’ve got video of someone getting on that bike. We’ve got the photos the mother gave us.”

“I know. But apart from that?”

“No.” Falcone sat down on a small cheap chair and looked around the bedroom. “Maybe that was all for our benefit too. Let’s face it. If you wanted to stage something for the police there’s no better place than the Campo. We’re always around. She’d know she wouldn’t have to scream for long. You don’t need to be a genius to see there’s CCTV there either. It’s hanging from the lamp posts.”

Teresa could see he was right. “But why ?”

Falcone walked silently back into the big living room. She followed, becoming aware of the roar of traffic from outside.

“Look,” he said, and pointed to a pile of old maps. They were detailed drawings of archaeological digs, all over the city out into the suburbs and beyond. She sifted through the top of the pile. There wasn’t one she’d heard of. “The Julius woman was interested in these places too,” he said. “How many reasons can there be for that?”

Peroni was bent double over the woman’s notebook computer, thrashing at the keyboard. Teresa crouched next to him, unthinkingly put her hand on his shoulder and watched, in amazement, as he hammered the keys, working through the machine.

“How the hell do you know about computers?” she asked.

He stopped for a moment and stared at her, bemused. His right eye was a puffy red mass, almost closed. He looked awful. “I got kids, Teresa. Who else is supposed to fix their problems?”

It had never occurred to her how family shaped a man in such small, unpredictable ways. All her preconceptions about Peroni seemed false.

“Gianni,” she said softly. “What the hell happened to you? Have you seen a doctor about that?”

He laughed. “It’s a punch in the face, for Christ’s sake. Ask me something important. Ask me about her reasons.”

“Which are?” she asked and wondered whether she really wanted to know.

“Good ones,” Peroni replied and pulled up some photos on the computer.

Teresa Lupo watched as he flicked through shot after shot and wished she’d stayed where she belonged, safe in the morgue.

Peroni pointed to one of a contemporary Randolph Kirk standing at the dig in Ostia, clearly unaware someone was furtively taking his picture. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement and perhaps a little fear. “We’ve still no idea who she is really. According to the British the only woman of that name with a current passport is sixty-seven years old. Also we found these—”

There was a pile of passports on the table. “Another British one. American. Canadian. New Zealand. She looks different on every one. Different hair colour. Different style. If you’d given me this back when I was on narcotics and asked me her true profession, I’d have said she was a mule. But we just don’t know. She’s into photography though. This…” he picked up the picture of Kirk, “… was the inspiration for the photo she gave us to establish a link between Kirk and Suzi. It never existed. She just took his head from that picture and pasted it into the background of one she had of Suzi at the fountain. Kirk was never there. Kirk never threatened anyone .”

“Perhaps,” Falcone said, “it was the other way round. She was blackmailing Kirk.”

Teresa tried hard to think about Miranda Julius. If it was an act, it was a very good one.

Peroni pulled out an envelope, extracted two prints and she believed there was a glimmer of light in the darkness. These were, it seemed, from the series she had been handed by Regina Morrison. They had the same seamy quality, the same backdrop. The time was sixteen years earlier. In one the young Miranda Julius—or whatever she was really called—stood next to Emilio Neri, a big, innocent smile on her face, a glass of something in her hand. Flowers in her younger, brighter blonde hair, the petals falling down onto that stupid ceremonial shift. Teresa Lupo wanted to pick the thing up and tear it into shreds, unwind the years.

He took out the second print and placed it over the first. Miranda was naked now, pale body lolling back drunkenly on what looked like a cheap, fake Roman couch. Her legs were wound round the large, cloaked body of a man who was pumping away for all he was worth and not getting very far either. It was Beniamino Vercillo, already looking old and past it. Teresa stared into the blank eyes of that young face and tried to imagine what it would be like to be in that room. Maybe they thought Miranda was so out of it she didn’t understand what was happening. That if they poured enough booze and dope down these dumb kids they’d forget half of what went on and think the rest was as much their fault as anyone’s. You could work that trick on someone like Barbara Martelli, particularly if you threw in a nice job in the police as a reward. It wasn’t like that for Miranda. There was physical pain there. There was resentment, hatred too at having this animal steal her innocence on some cheap couch in a stinking damp cave.

“There are more,” Peroni said, reaching for the prints.

Falcone abruptly put his hand on the envelope. “Not now.” He looked at her a little slyly. “So what do you think?”

It didn’t require a genius. She smoothed back her dark hair, wondering how bad she looked just then. The work clothes were back on. Her mind was in order. But she still felt out of sorts. “Miranda, or whoever she was, came back for vengeance. But why wait so long?”

“Because this wasn’t just about getting raped by these creeps,” Peroni said. “One of those girls died and Neri told everyone it was a drug overdose. He told Wallis that too. From what we’ve seen it must have been a pretty plausible story. Until we fished that body out of the bog.”

There was some logic there, she thought. Just not enough. “So why doesn’t she just kill the bastard? Why go to this trouble?”

Peroni took out a handkerchief and dabbed his damaged eye, which was surely leaking something and must have hurt like hell. “Which bastard would that be?” he wondered. “Mickey? Maybe. Maybe she’s not sure. Maybe she knew all along and was just too scared to say. Until she realizes she can finally prove it and, bingo, it’s the first plane to Rome. So one day Barbara picks up the phone and it’s Miranda saying, ”Hi, guess who’s in town and you’ll never guess what I heard. Our old initiation girlfriend from the fuck club didn’t OD. Some bastard cut her throat and got away with it.“ Can you imagine Barbara, even the somewhat crooked Barbara we now know existed, enjoying that?”

Teresa Lupo continued to be amazed by the respect they gave their murderous former colleague. She bent down, removed the handkerchief from him, dabbed gently at the wound. Peroni was right. Nothing was cut. It was just swelling, and some weeping from the bruised eye. She touched the corner of his cheek lightly to remove some of the liquid.