The Garden of Evil (24 page)

“Get out of my home,” he said again, and, with a glance at the magistrate and the lawyers, added, “and take your creatures with you. When I come for you, Malaspina, you will know it.”

“That is a threat!” Silvia Tentori screeched. “A blatant, outright threat to a man against whom you have not the slightest evidence! I shall report this. I shall report
everything
here. We do not live in a police state where you people can go around terrorising any innocent citizen you choose.”

There was a steady, dull ache at the back of his head, but Costa knew somehow this signalled the return of his faculties, not the failure of them. Life, his father had said from time to time, often depended upon the ability to drag oneself off the floor and learn to return to the fray anew.

“No, signora,” he said quietly. “We live in a world where the law has become an instrument that protects the wicked, not the innocent.”

A memory rose from the previous day, a single useful fact, prompted by Rosa Prabakaran, one he had filed, wondering if it would ever be of use.

“ ‘Run quick, poor Simonetta!’ ” Costa recited. “ ‘A sport in the blood.’ You hate black women, Franco. Why is that? Would you care to tell us?”

It hit home, and that felt good. Malaspina’s swarthy face turned a shade darker.

“I would guess,” Costa pressed, “that it stems from something personal. Some experience. Some knowledge. Some grudge . . .”

Agata stirred with a sudden interest by his side. Smiling, she rose and walked towards Malaspina, placing her face close to his, examining his features with the same curious, microscopic interest she would normally reserve for a painting.

“Something personal? Why, Franco?” she asked. “The Malaspinas are cousins to the Medici, aren’t they? Is that the line? Oh!
Oh!
” She clapped her hands with glee. “I think I see it now. In Florence, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Giorgio Vasari has a wonderful full-length portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici. The first son. A dark-skinned man, Franco. With his helmet and his armour and his lance. And a black slave, Simonetta, for a mother.” She hesitated to emphasise what was coming. “Which gave him his hatred of anyone who reminded him of his bloodline. Is that you, too, Franco? Are you more a Medici at heart? Is the blood you hate most really your own?”

The effect was astonishing. Malaspina rose from his chair, livid, out of control, and began to bellow a stream of vicious threats and vile obscenities, so violent and extreme it was his own lawyers who raced to silence the man and drag him, still screaming from the room, down the stairs and out into the garden, where he stood for a good minute or more, yelling up at the window.

Every sentence seemed like a blow to her. Agata Graziano had surely never experienced words or threats like this, or expected that her idle taunt would generate such a response.

She listened, shocked, pale, glassy-eyed, until she could bear no more and placed her small, flawless hands over the wayward hair above her ears.

Two

F
IVE MINUTES LATER, AFTER SILVIA TENTORI HAD LEFT
the bedroom issuing warnings and threats in all directions, Peroni brought coffee for them all provided by Bea and said, “We could arrest him for that performance. Threatening words and behaviour.”

“For how long?” Costa asked. “You saw those lawyers.”

Agata still looked shocked, and a little ashamed, at the effect her words had had on the man. The hearing was over. They had lost everything, in conventional judicial terms. And yet . . .

“You touched something,” Falcone suggested. “But what?”

“I have no idea,” Agata answered. “I was simply being mean and horrible. Taunting Franco. The Malaspina clan was related to the Medici. Everyone knows that. They survived when the Medici died out. He makes the odd racist comment from time to time. It always struck me as odd. There had to be the possibility of some distant link with Alessandro, and that meant he had some black blood himself. All the same. The idea he would respond so violently . . .”

She shook her head, thinking. “I should stick to paintings,” she said. “This is all beyond me.”

“You should,” Costa agreed.

The idea raised a wan smile. “Good. Can I go home now, please? I’m tired and there are many duties I have missed. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

Leo Falcone looked at her frankly. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Commissario Esposito will be here shortly with Dr. Lupo. We will review the case. Perhaps you should join us, for part of the conversation at least.”

She laughed. “I’m a sister who agreed to help you identify a single painting, Leo. One you have lost, which means my work is done. I have more menial chores now. I do not belong here.”

Falcone frowned, looking uncomfortable. “Agata, you’re the only material witness in an investigation where every other one has been murdered. Those guards the commissario put in place last night were not temporary. They are outside now. They will remain there as long as I say. You cannot return to the convent until this is over. We cannot protect you there. You must be somewhere that is private, easily secured, and accessible.”

“Then”—she threw her small arms open wide—“where?”

The old inspector said nothing and simply glanced guiltily at the floor.

“
Where?
” she asked again.

Costa tried to catch Falcone’s eye. It proved impossible.

Three

N
O,” HE SAID AGAIN AS THEY SAT TOGETHER AT THE DINING
room table, after Bea had thrust more coffee and cakes at them, then taken Pepe out for a brief walk. “I won’t allow it. This is a private home. Known to Malaspina. Also . . .”

The reason was personal in a way that made it difficult to share with these people. Perhaps it was the presence of Commissario Esposito. Perhaps the problem lay inside himself. It felt awkward having Bea in the house at times. Another woman . . .

“Nic,” Falcone broke in, “in case you hadn’t got the message by now, Franco Malaspina has many allies, and bottomless pockets. He could find anywhere we chose to keep Agata if it came to that. This place has a long drive, it’s easily guarded, and we know it.” He hesitated. “We’ve done this before. It worked. Until you broke the rules.”

“Will you kindly stop talking about me as if I’m some kind of invalid?” Agata broke in. “What am I supposed to do here for however long this sentence is meant to be?”

“What do you do normally?” Teresa asked out of interest.

“Sleep, pray, think, eat, write . . .”

Teresa shrugged. “You can do those anywhere. There’s Nic’s housekeeper here, Bea. So you have a chaperone.”

“A chaperone?” Agata asked, outraged. “Why would I need a chaperone?”

“I just thought . . .” Teresa stuttered. “Perhaps it would make it easier with the mother superior or whoever it is you take orders from. I’m sorry. I’m not good around nuns.”

“She is not a nun,” Falcone interjected wearily. “Nor does she need a chaperone. But you do require somewhere safe and secure. And . . .” He took a swig of Bea’s strong coffee “. . . I hope this won’t be for long. We have . . . avenues.”

None of them, not Teresa, Esposito, nor Falcone, looked much convinced of that.

“Your painting’s gone, Leo,” Agata pointed out again. “You’ve just been sent away with a flea in your ear by the magistrate you hoped would give you carte blanche to enter the Palazzo Malaspina and take whatever you want. Unless I have misread the situation, you have no scientific evidence in this case.”

“We’re drowning in scientific evidence!” Teresa cried, aghast. “Unfortunately, it now applies simply to dead people. Buccafusca, Castagna, and Tomassoni, who did things in that dreadful house in the Vicolo del Divino Amore a woman like you couldn’t imagine.”

“I am a sister in a holy order, Doctor,” Agata said coldly, “not a child.”

“Well,
Sister,
” Teresa retorted, “let me tell you this. I have had hardened police officers throwing up in that hell house these last few weeks. Don’t play the heroine until you’ve been there. The plain fact is this. I have more than enough for what I would need in normal circumstances. But a fingerprint, a fibre, a DNA record . . . they don’t mean a damn thing unless I am allowed to match them with something else, in a way that will stand up in court.”

Agata folded her arms and looked at each of them in turn. “So I could be here for months.”

It was Commissario Esposito who intervened. “We have plenty more possibilities to look at now. There were seventeen canvases in Nino Tomassoni’s hovel in the Piazza di San Lorenzo in Lucina.”

She blinked and asked, seemingly amazed, “Where?”

“In the man’s house,” the commissario replied. “Seventeen canvases. Eleven we have identified from the stolen art register. These are works that have been taken from museums as far away as Stockholm and Edinburgh. Tomassoni—and, by implication, one assumes Malaspina—was seemingly part of some illicit art-smuggling ring working on a massive scale. Perhaps this explains why our interesting count finds it so easy to gain access to the criminal fraternity when he has call for their talents. He is simply dealing with his own.”

“Tomassoni’s house? I didn’t know where he lived. It was in the Piazza di San Lorenzo?”

She looked directly at Costa when she spoke. Once again, the name nagged at him.

“Yes,” Falcone agreed. “Is this important?”

“I’m nothing but a humble sister, Leo. What would a little woman like me know?”

“The name means something,” Costa said. “And I can’t remember what.”

They fell silent, all of them, and looked at Agata Graziano, waiting.

“You’re asking me?” she said. “I thought I was just supposed to be the silent houseguest.”

“Yes,” Costa prompted her. “We are asking you.”

“What a strange world you inhabit,” Agata Graziano observed. “With your procedures and your science, your computers and your rigid modes of thought. Does it never occur to you that if an answer does not manifest itself in the present, that is, perhaps, because it prefers to do so in the past?”

She looked at Costa. “What did I tell you, Nic? When we were walking through those streets last night? Those ghosts are with us, always. Only a fool wouldn’t listen to them.”

“We’re police officers,” Falcone grumbled. “Not hunters of ghosts.”

“Then perhaps I’ll be here forever. This is not acceptable to me, Leo. I shall allow you a week to bring Franco Malaspina to book. After that I return home, to some form of sanity. Or now, if you do not agree.”

Falcone’s thin, tanned face flared with shock. “No! That is impossible. You cannot set time limits on such things. Who do you think you are dealing with?”

“I’ve just watched Franco Malaspina tell me that. I’m a free woman. I may do as I wish. Best start working. Perhaps if you hammer those computers of yours a little harder. Or find some newer science for your games . . .”

“It’s an old name,” Costa interrupted, hoping to cool the temperature. “Tomassoni.”

“It is an old name,” she agreed. “Here is one more fact I doubt any of you know, for all your wonderful toys and resources. I would have told you, but it seemed irrelevant until today. Possibly it still is.”

Agata got up and walked to the line of bookshelves by the fireplace. Volume after volume from the days of Costa’s father sat in rows, gathering dust along the walls. She picked up two substantial editions, both bought years ago, books on art, then brought them back to the table, where she began to leaf through the pages as she spoke, looking, surely, for something she knew was there already.

“It is a known fact,” she said, “that Caravaggio lived in the Vicolo del Divino Amore for some time. Not during the happier part of his life either. This was after he left the hedonistic paradise of Del Monte’s Palazzo Madama. He had little money. He kept bad company. Very bad. This was Ortaccio, remember. The Garden of Evil.”

She found what she wanted in one of the books, placed it in front of them, and covered whatever lay there with a napkin from the table.

“I have walked every inch of Rome in that man’s footsteps,” Agata added. “I know where he lived and ate, where he whored and fought. No one can be sure of this precisely, but you must remember something, always. In Caravaggio’s days, men kept records. They noted down details of crimes and property transactions, small civil disturbances and matters of money and debt. Many of those papers are with us still.” She smiled at them. “Out of your reach, true, safe in archives in the Vatican, in a country where you people have no jurisdiction. But a small and curious sister of the Church, with a little interest in history . . .”

Costa found himself transfixed by her, and he wasn’t alone.

“You looked up the records for the street?” he asked.

“Of course I did! When Leo first told me the painting had been found there. Who wouldn’t?”

“Well . . . ?” Teresa demanded.

“The house where Caravaggio lived was either that same property or one of the two to either side. I cannot be more specific. The street had a different name then, different numbering. But there is a record in the church register which names Caravaggio as a resident in 1605, with a young boy—a servant, a student, a lover, who knows? He was reduced to poverty. He was constantly in fights and brawls and arguments.” She paused. “It was his home when he murdered the man whose death forced him to flee Rome.”

They were silent and, Costa apart, dubious.

It was Peroni who spoke first.

“Agata,” he pointed out, reasonably, “this was hundreds of years ago.”

“Caravaggio took that man’s life on May 28, 1606, while he was living in what we now know as the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Within days he was gone from Rome forever, travelling ceaselessly—Naples, Malta, Sicily—dependent on the help of allies and patrons to feed him and keep him from the executioner.”

“A long time ago,” Falcone repeated, staring at the book on the table, wondering, like the rest of them, what it contained.

“They fought in the street,” she went on, ignoring him, “over what we don’t know. When it was over, the man was dead. His name was Ranuccio Tomassoni. He died in the house where he and his family had lived for almost two centuries, and for all I know continued to live thereafter. It was in the Piazza di San Lorenzo di Lucina.”

Costa closed his eyes and laughed. “How on earth did I forget that?”

“You forgot it,” she said instantly, “because you regarded it as history and irrelevant to the present. As I may one day tire of telling you, it isn’t. These are not the stories of people turned to dust. They are our stories, and in some curious way they became the stories of Franco Malaspina, Nino Tomassoni, and the rest.” She shook her head. She looked exhausted, but immensely energised by her subject too. “Something has placed them alongside what happened then. Perhaps that painting that means so much. Perhaps . . . I don’t know. Look . . .”

It wasn’t the picture they were expecting, but another from the second book.

“Caravaggio painted this while he was in Malta.”

It was a dark study of an elderly man, half naked on his bed, writing. Saint Jerome. Another of the canvases in Valletta that Costa knew, one day, he had to see.

“At this time of his life, Caravaggio chose what he did for a reason,” she went on. “Money. Survival. The passing friendship of influential men. We know for a fact that this particular work was painted at the request of someone who helped him escape from mainland Italy and reach the temporary safety of the Knights Templar in Valletta. A few months later Michelangelo Merisi was fleeing once more after committing some other crime, which the Knights hid for fear it shamed them too. This patron continued to assist him. In Sicily. All the way to the end, when he returned to the mainland and sought to come back to Rome.”

She took a sip of water from a glass on the table. “That man’s name was Ippolito Malaspina. I have never raised this fact with Franco. But I know for sure that he must be a direct descendant.

The man had many children. The castle Franco continues to own in Tuscany, from which he has lent the Barberini works for display from time to time, was the property where his ancestor lived with his family before leaving for Malta with Caravaggio.”

Her dark eyes stared at them. “There was a connection between the Medici and the Malaspina clans. Perhaps Franco’s fury stems from that. What more do I have to show you? Are these subjects you will pass on to some young police officer and hope they can comprehend? Even I don’t understand them. Perhaps in time.” She glanced at Costa. “With help and insight. But . . .”

She sat back, closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them and glared at Commissario Esposito. “You will provide the books I need. A computer. An officer who can carry out external research and fetch and carry when I require. Tomorrow I shall see this house of Tomassoni’s. And the place in the Vicolo del Divino Amore . . .”

“It’s not pretty,” Teresa observed, shaking her head.

“As I keep telling you, I am not a child. You will do these things and I will help you. And if it’s no use, then what’s lost?”

They were silent, even Costa.

“Commissario,” Agata declared. “I will not stay here and learn to knit. The choice is yours.”

“Very well,” Vincenzo Esposito snapped. “Indulge Sister Agata as she requires. You will organise security, Falcone. Agente Prabakaran will act as go-between for anything the sister demands. The details of these visits outside will not leave this room. Franco Malaspina is a far more dangerous individual than any of us appreciated. If his talents run to taming magistrates and international art smuggling, then he will know men who are capable of anything. As is he.”

“Good,” Agata said, then removed the napkin from the page of the second book, an old biography of Caravaggio, one of Costa’s favourites, and held it up for them all to see.

They found themselves looking at the black-and-white photograph of a portrait of a gentleman, round-faced with a pale complexion, a double chin, and large, very bulbous eyes. He sat on a velvet-covered chair and wore rich, sumptuous clothes, as if he were of some importance.

Agata ran a finger over the man’s unattractive features. “You must excuse me in a moment. I’m tired. I need to rest. I expect some time on my own. This is by Caravaggio from his Malta period,” she said. “It was in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin from the early nineteenth century on. Unfortunately the work was destroyed when the city was retaken at the end of the Second World War. What you see is a portrait of Ippolito Malaspina painted by Caravaggio shortly before he fled Valletta.”

Costa stared at the portly, bloodless individual in his faintly ridiculous court clothes. He had the face of a weak and lascivious civil servant. It was tempting to see some sarcasm or ridicule of the subject in the face; such sly, slight jokes were not unknown to Caravaggio.

“This pasty-faced idiot doesn’t look anything like that pig we had here!” Teresa said, jabbing a finger at the portrait.

“Precisely,” Agata replied quietly, then snapped the book shut.