David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

Don’t fail me, Nic , she says. Remember what you are. Don’t make me the silent witness twice .

Her hand grips his and passes something over. Its shape slips beneath his fingers, cold metal, the old, familiar dumb machine.

THE POWERFUL BLACK ARM ROSE… rises .

A figure strides out of the darkness. Vergil Wallis watches and pauses, surprised. A name slips from his lips, hangs in the air between them. He lowers his gaze, nods at the table.

You got your money , the American says, staring at her too-blonde hair, eyes glittering covetously, remembering. You know the deal. Get gone .

Her face is more radiant than anything in the room, shining with a living brightness leeched from the vibrant photos pasted everywhere. She shivers, she shakes, rooted to the spot, afraid but not afraid.

Wallis waves the blade at her. Take it .

No movement. Fear and resolution.

I know , she says.

He halts, confused. Her golden head shakes. There are tears in her eyes as, stuttering, she says…

I saw, I know, I never had the guts to tell .

He looks at the dead mask on the table and laughs, wondering whether to try it on again for size.

So what’s one more ? he wonders, then laughs, staring avidly at the shining hair. Afterwards …

The blade rises, then falls. A red line starts on the white, shining skin.

You got a talent for watching, girl …—he tries to say into the dark air, but finds himself struggling for the words. Wallis looks beyond her, into the shadows, where fire and thunder are shredding the darkness.

He stares at this black shape there and tries to roar, to find the god inside him. Blood rises in his throat. He falls and, in the smoke and powder stink, Nic Costa finds his consciousness fading too. His head spins, his legs become feeble.

On the ground, sight fading. One last memory.

She bends over the fallen man, opening his bloody lips, still mouthing, still trying to say some single word. A coin glitters briefly between her fingers then is gone.

ANOTHER ROOM. Smaller. A pool of grubby light pierces the darkness. Her older voice now talks to him and it is calm, unmoved.

Sweet Nic, sweet Nic. You save yourself. You save me .

No , he says, and hears his own voice rumbling around the inside of this curling, twisting intestine cut into the rock.

He sits on a chair. She crouches above him, holding his cheeks. Her face fills his vision, becomes all there is to the world.

You have to feed the savage sometimes. It’s the only way to keep him in his cage .

Fighting to control his hands, his fingers reach her shoulder, push the fabric of her tee-shirt down.

And hears the old voice, laughing, you should have looked earlier, kid, call yourself a cop .

Deep in the flesh, dark blue and old, the dreadlocked face grins at him, victorious. His mouth closes on the stained skin, swallows its guttural voice. His teeth bite into her, chewing, licking, sucking the vile blue poison from her pores, takes it into himself, feeling the rush.

Voices down the corridor, voices in his head. He snatches a breath and knows: this is only the beginning . The dope is moving higher up the ladder, seizing more territory inside his limitless imagination.

Then, like a lifeline from sanity, a familiar voice rings through the guts of the labyrinth, echoing, distant.

Nic! Nic !

A sound from the old world. The real world.

One pill makes you small , Miranda Julius sings.

Nic!

She bends down to kiss him, tongue darting briefly into the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t look for me,” she whispers, then vanishes into the shadows, leaving just the aftertouch of her skin, her presence, glowing in his head.

The light dies. It is dark and cold. He shivers alone.

Aprile

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON ON THE FIRST DAY OF APRIL. They sat in the old courtyard garden of the hospital of San Giovanni enjoying the last of the sun. Peroni bolted down the remains of a panino, balled up the bag and despatched it into a nearby rose bed.

“Nice to have you back, Nic,” he said. “I never had a partner with acid flashbacks before. What’s it like?”

Costa gave him a wry look. “I’ll let you know when it happens.”

“Not yet, huh? Did they ever find out what shit that woman pumped into you?”

His partner’s eye had mended but still had a rosy bloom above the eyelid. Given the state of the rest of Peroni’s face, it didn’t look particularly out of place. Peroni was unchanged by events. Nic Costa had stared at himself in the mirror that morning and wondered if anyone would say the same about him. He looked older, more marked by the world. He’d even found a couple of grey hairs above one ear. This went with the odd new territory he seemed to have carved out for himself within the Questura. He wasn’t a hero, quite. But when he’d walked down the corridors that afternoon, for the first time since the incident, he realized he was now the kind of man who turned heads.

“If they did,” he said, “they haven’t told me.”

“Drop off a bottle of pee with Teresa,” Peroni declared. “She’ll know. I’m serious. That woman’s a genius.”

Costa thought of the role the pathologist had played in the Julius case. Maybe she was too. “So you never found out who Miranda really was?”

Peroni shook his head. “We got the ”daughter“ though. Not that it did us much good. She was a teenage model from Prague. Wanted to break into acting. Seems she was picked out of a portfolio for her looks, paid to come here and ”audition.“ Which meant getting her hair dyed a touch more blonde and her picture taken in a few places. You can guess by who. Oh, and doing that stunt on the motorbike for the benefit of the cameras and any cops who happened to be lurking in the Campo at the time.”

Costa thought about this. “She didn’t know anything about Miranda? She was just picked at random because of how she looked?”

“Sure. Miranda claimed to be a big talent scout from America. How many questions do you think would-be actresses ask in those situations? She got her plane ticket. She got put up in a nice hotel. Then, after performing the ”action audition“ with the bike, she took a taxi for Fiumicino and flew home. You got to admit it, Miranda did a great job. While we were thinking her daughter was lying drugged in a cave somewhere, making out with Mr. Beastie and about to get killed, she was actually back at school strutting around in front of her classmates boasting about her new career in Hollywood. She can’t give us a clue who Miranda really is. And you want to know something? I doubt we’re ever going to find out.”

Costa wondered how he really felt about that. “Falcone’s letting it drop?”

Peroni hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “I wouldn’t put it quite so crudely. You got to remember, Nic. People like him answer to lots of different bosses. Some of them hold the purse strings and ask about the money. Is it really worth it? Ask yourself. Is it?”

“Six people dead. I would have thought so.”

Peroni took a deep breath. “That’s seven actually if you include Eleanor Jamieson. Not counting those poor bastards outside Neri’s.”

Costa shook his head. The death toll there had risen to five in the end, some DIA, some cops. It could so easily have been higher. “We can’t just let this drop.”

His partner sighed. “Nic. Let’s have this conversation once and then leave it to one side forever. Most of this is wrapped up already. We got hard evidence that Mickey Neri accounted for that bastard Toni Martelli, for which he will stand trial once we can get him out of the hospital and into a jacket with sleeves. Barbara Martelli, meanwhile, popped Randolph Kirk to stop him talking to us before disappearing down a hole outside Fiumicino. Thanks to you we know most of the rest too. Wallis killed his own stepdaughter and got to Emilio Neri too, before you had the chance to stop him. This…” Peroni patted his knee to emphasize the point, “… is all good news for the statistics, and the people who live above Leo survive on statistics. Do you think it possible Crazy Teresa has the hots for me by the way? I’ve been getting some funny looks from that woman lately.”