The Garden of Evil (29 page)

“Take a look.”

She did and shook her head. “Who on earth is this? What does it mean?”

“Finally,” he said, “you’re asking me a question.”

“Yes.”

“Then, as a police officer, I would guess this is a murder victim.”

“I know that . . .”

“Given the identification, one who was once known as Ippolito Malaspina.”

“That’s impossible! How could you know?” She put her fingers to her mouth with shock, then stopped, thinking, eyes glittering.

Everything connects in Rome,
he reminded himself. Past and present. And in this case the crimes of four centuries before.

“I can’t. But I can guess,” he said emphatically. “You showed us the portrait that was supposed to be Ippolito in Malta, several years after he left Rome. You said yourself, it was nothing like the description of the man in all the reference books you found . . .”

“That doesn’t mean . . .”

“He had a family,” Costa interrupted. “Was that before he left the city with Caravaggio or after?”

“Before. Afterwards he travelled constantly and never . . .” She stopped and stared at him. “He never returned home. Never went anywhere he had been before as far as I recall. They inherited everything when he died. And . . .”

He watched her turn this over in her bright, constantly active mind.

“Is it possible,” he asked, “that they inherited everything without ever seeing him again? That Franco Malaspina is descended from the real Malaspina, but the man who went to Malta with Caravaggio was an impostor?”

“Yes,” she answered in a low, firm voice. “From what I’ve read . . .”

“Good,” Costa said, then took out the plastic envelope and stared at the grey, dusty skull in front of him.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Find the evidence to put Franco in jail.”

“From a corpse that’s four hundred years old?”

“Why not? We can’t go near him. But he is an aristocrat. His lineage is there, set down in the state archives. If the DNA of this corpse is related to that we have from the Vicolo del Divino Amore, all we have to prove is that this gentleman”—he prodded the velvet jacket with his forefinger—“is Ippolito Malaspina. It won’t put his descendant in the dock. But it would make it damned hard for a court to refuse a few tests to prove the truth one way or another, and that’s all we need.”

She didn’t look scared anymore. She looked fascinated.

“You can do that?” she asked. “Take a sample from a skeleton that’s nothing but . . . bone?”

“No!”

The loud female voice made them both jump. Costa couldn’t work out how Teresa Lupo had found her way down the stepladder without their noticing. She barged her way in front of him and stared at the skeleton. Then she snatched the envelope out of his hands.

“But I can,” she said with a grin that was wide and friendly in the yellow light of the flashlight.

The pathologist leaned forward. In her gloved hand was an implement very like a small set of pliers. She gazed at the skull’s open mouth. The left-hand front tooth was missing already. Teresa fastened the pliers to the remaining one, then, in a swift, twisting movement, snapped it free and dropped the object into the bag.

“You’re coming home with Mummy,” she added, greatly pleased with herself. “Right now.”

She stared at the pair of them. “And you two should go home as well. You’ve done enough for one day.”

Teresa held up the bag. “There is a time for happy conjecture and a time for science, children. Tomorrow is Christmas. Come back and see what La Befana and her little elves have for you.”

One

L
A VIGILIA WAS ALREADY STEALING OVER ROME: CHRISTMAS
Eve, a pause from the rush and chaos of everyday life. The convoy drove back to the farmhouse through streets that were dark and deserted. There was no need for the fairy lights anymore, no cause to be anywhere but home, in the company of family and friends. Teresa and her team might relish the idea of spending the night poring over the contents of Nino Tomassoni’s secret lair, trying to decode the genetic fingerprint hidden inside the tooth of a skull of an unknown man who just might—Costa knew this was a stretch—turn out to be Ippolito Malaspina. But for the rest of the city, this was a time for reflection and enjoyment.

And food:
seven fishes.
No real Roman ate meat at La Vigilia. It was always fish, by tradition seven types, one, his father used to say, for every Catholic sacrament. Even in the Costa household, which, during his childhood, was more solidly communist, and atheist, than any he knew in Lazio, it was impossible to separate La Vigilia from the custom of the seven fishes.

The godless needed rituals, too, from time to time.

As they reached the drive and the two guard cars peeled off to block the entrance behind them, Costa wondered why this memory had returned at such a time. Then, dog-tired and ready for bed, just as Agata clearly was, too, he opened the door for her to enter, and a succession of aromas and fragrances wafted out from the kitchen beyond, ones that took him back twenty years in an instant and sent a strong sense of urgent hunger rumbling through his stomach.

Bea stood there in her best evening dress, wearing a huge white, perfectly ironed apron. By her side, Pepe the terrier sat upright, a red ribbon round his neck.

“Happy Christmas,” Bea said, welcoming them with a bow, then making to take their coats.

Agata’s face lit up. She sniffed at the rich and exotic aromas drifting from the kitchen.

“What
is
this?” she asked.

“And you a Christian,” Bea scolded her. “It’s La Vigilia. Christmas Eve. And I am a spinster with much time on my hands and a fondness for the old ways. So you will sit down and dine with me. Do not try to play the vegetarian here, young man. I’ve seen you eat fish.”

“Seven?” he asked.

“Of course,” she replied, as if it were an idiotic question. “Now go upstairs and change. This is a special occasion. If the dog can dress for it, so can you.”

Agata ran her slim fingers over the black hand-me-down coat. “I am fine like this, Bea. I have nothing . . .”

Bea wiped her hands on her apron, then helped Agata out of the coat, holding it away from her, as if it were a thing of no value.

“Sometimes La Befana comes early. Even for those who come home late. Now go upstairs! Shoo! Shoo!”

The dog barked.

“La Befana?” Agata gasped, eyes glittering.

Bea watched her ascend the stairs quickly, like a child.

“See,” she said quietly, “she is only human after all.”

*                           *                           *

THEY SAT AROUND THE LONG TABLE IN THE DINING ROOM,
Bea at the head, guiding them through the spread of food, which seemed to grow with every passing minute: cold seafood salad, salt cod, mussels, clams, shrimps, a small lobster, then, finally, the delicacy his father always insisted on, however much it cost,
capitone,
a large female eel, split into pieces and roasted in the oven, wreathed in bay leaves.

Agata sat there, astonished, eating greedily. Somehow, during the shopping, Bea had found time to buy her a new white shirt and plain blue trousers. She wore them with the customary battered crucifix around her neck, and within minutes had sauce and debris spattered everywhere, on her clothes and on the table. Bea gave up staring in the end. It was of no consequence.

“This is obscene,” Agata cried when the eel finally appeared.

“Compared with what we’ve seen . . .” Costa observed quietly.

“No work,” Bea snapped. “I didn’t sweat in that kitchen for hours to listen to you two moan about your day. That is the rule. La Vigilia! Eat! And then . . .”

She went to the kitchen and came back with a plate of sweet cakes and a bowl full of small presents wrapped in gold paper.

“Then what?” Agata asked.

“Then we choose from the bowl,” Bea responded. “What do you normally do at Christmas, for pity’s sake?”

Agata shrugged, then picked up a large piece of eel, stuffed it in her mouth, and said, while chewing, “Pray. Sing. Think. Read.”

“And?” Bea asked, ignoring the warning glance Costa hoped he was sending her way.

“And . . . take a little wine before midnight mass.” She cocked her head towards the window. Her hair was now so different. She was different. Costa wondered whether he ought to feel guilty for that change.

“Can you hear the cannon from the Castel Sant’Angelo when they fire it?” she asked brightly.

“No,” he answered. “Sorry. We could find it on the television perhaps.”

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

Bea carefully refilled their glasses with
prosecco
.

“Is a cannon important?” she asked.

“It means midnight mass is not far away,” Agata responded immediately. “I love midnight mass. More than anything. I love the little shows the churches have, with their manger and their infant, Mary and the shepherds. I love the way people look at one another. Another year navigated. Another year to come.”

She put down her knife and fork, then wiped her hands with her napkin.

“There are churches nearby,” Agata said hopefully. “Beautiful ones in the Appian Way. Do you think I could go? How many people would be there in a desert like this? You could come with me.” She glanced at Bea. “Both of you, I mean, naturally. I would not hope to evangelize. You’ve shown me your world. Can I not show you a little of mine?”

Bea coughed into her fist and stared at her plate.

“Do you think Leo Falcone would allow that?” Costa asked. “A church is . . . a very open place.”

“It’s supposed to be,” she said quietly.

There was silence. Then, after a while, she added, somewhat downcast, “I’ve never missed midnight mass. Not in my whole life. Or the sound of that cannon for as long as I can remember.”

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him. “But you would do it if you could.”

“Certainly.”

Agata was watching him in a way he found vaguely unsettling.

“What would you have done?” she asked. “Before. With Emily.”

He had to think. “Last year we had a meal with Leo and his friend, and Teresa and Gianni,” he said, when he finally managed to recover the memories. “In the city.” He nodded at Bea over the table. “It wasn’t a patch on this food.”

But this Christmas it would have been different, more private, spent at home, just the two of them. Emily was his wife, finally. Had they not lost the child she was carrying in the spring . . .

This thought—another of those painful, hypothetical leaps of a cruel imagination—assaulted him. Had Emily kept the child, she would have given up college by now. There would have been no reason for her to have been lurking near the Mausoleum of Augustus on a dull December day, no energy left to be wasted following a fleeing fugitive the way her old skills from the FBI had taught her.

There would have been two new lives in the old farmhouse at that moment.
If . . .

Costa blinked back something in his eyes. The two women were watching him. He wondered whether to make an excuse and leave the table.

“I’m sorry,” Agata murmured. “I should never have asked that.”

“No,” he replied emphatically. “You can’t undo the past by ignoring it. What has happened has happened. I don’t want anyone”—he glanced at Bea—“to let me pretend it can be undone somehow.”

The two women exchanged a brief look. He could see they hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“It’s the silence,” Agata said, changing the subject rapidly. “To me it shouts. Is that strange? That I miss the noise of the traffic? The buses? The people outside my window who’ve had a little too much to drink and sing so loudly, so badly, I have to laugh beneath my sheets?”

“Of course not,” he answered. “You miss what you’re familiar with. It’s only natural. You miss the background of the world you know. You miss what you love.”

“Just like you,” she said quickly, without thinking, glass in hand, her eyes bright with life and interest now. “I’m sorry. Just like . . .”

Her fingers flew to her face. She had drunk the wine too quickly, too freely. Something in her firm reserve, which had been so resolute ever since he first met her in the Barberini’s studio at the back of the Palazzo Malaspina, was now crumbling visibly.

“I didn’t mean that,” she stuttered. “It’s the food, the drink. It’s me. Oh . . .
Oh . . .
”

Agata ran from the room, tears welling in her eyes, and raced into the corridor beyond.

Costa blinked. “What did I say?”

Bea sighed and declared, “Nothing.”

“Then . . . what?”

“Oh, try to think, Nic. The poor child’s not seen anything like this. She’s not used to family. Or the idea two people can talk honestly with each other. Damn the Church for doing that to someone. I doubt she’s had that much decent food and
prosecco
in her entire life. That and God knows what you’ve shown her. It’s my fault. I’m sorry. This meal was an idiotic idea.”

“You cannot judge her like that,” he said, with a sudden brief burst of anger.

Bea put out her hand and touched his cheek. “I don’t. Believe me. I was trying to help. To show her what it’s like outside that prison of hers.”

“She doesn’t see it that way. It’s none of your business. Or mine either.”

“Isn’t it?”

The day had been too long. There was a surfeit of ideas and images and possibilities running round his exhausted head. His shoulder hurt. His mind felt bruised from overactivity.

“You really don’t have the faintest idea, do you?” she asked tartly.

“No . . .” he answered softly, a vague, disturbing thought rising from somewhere he wished it had remained.

Bea held out the bowl with the tiny presents in it. “You might as well take one anyway.”

He did. It was what had always happened, even when he was a child. The rules, the laws that governed this game, demanded one small box be empty, and as usual it was his.

“This is not your day,” Bea declared. “Go to bed now, and leave everything—including our young friend Agata—to me.”