The Villa of Mysteries (32 page)

The kid’s head went from side to side.

“Say something,” Neri ordered.

“It’s a lie.
It’s a lie
.”

Neri gazed into his son’s terrified face, thinking. Then heaved him back over the railing. Mickey sent a couple of plant pots tumbling down to the street as he scrambled back to safety. Neri watched them shatter on the cobblestones. Down the road a man in a dark suit jumped at the noise and looked up at the rooftops.

“You should be more careful,” Neri said and offered his son a handkerchief. “People could get hurt that way.”

Tears were streaming down Mickey’s face. His breath was coming in short sobs. He looked at his father and asked, “Why? Why’d you do that?”

Neri shrugged. “A father deserves the truth. If you’d told me different you’d be down there now. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he whispered, and Emilio Neri had to fight to stop himself laughing. The kid really did think he’d got away with it.

“I’ve been a bad father,” he said. “I tried to protect you instead of letting you get tough from all the shit that people like us have to deal with. I hear you want in on the action.”

“Yeah,” Mickey mumbled uncertainly. Even through the tears he still had the teenage pout. Got that straight from his mother, Neri thought.

“Good. It’s time.” Neri opened his jacket and took out a gun. It was a small, black Beretta. Mickey just looked at it, wide-eyed, speechless. Neri pushed it into his hands.

“Take it. The thing won’t bite. It’s one of mine. I know it works.”

“W-w-what—?” Mickey asked.

“You know the rules. You only go so far in these circles without whacking someone. You never did that, son. You just beat up a few people from time to time. It’s not the same, is it? Be honest with me.”

“No,” Mickey moaned.

Neri patted him on the back. “So look happy. It’s whacking time. Nothing complicated. All nice and simple. You walk in, you don’t say nothing, you put the gun to his head and you pull the trigger. You can manage that?”

“On my own?”

“That a problem?”

“No,” he stuttered. “Who?”

Neri looked at his watch. His mind was already elsewhere. “Just some cop. Sorry. That’s the best I can do right now. Next time round I’ll try to find you a real human being.”

VERGIL WALLIS WORE a black suit with a crisp white shirt and black tie. He looked ready for a funeral.

“I’d like to see Eleanor’s body.”

“You’re in mourning,” Falcone replied. “Who for? Yesterday you seemed to think there wasn’t much point.”

D’Amato glowered at him. Maybe it was rude to talk to retired mobsters like this. Falcone wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

“You took me by surprise yesterday. I wasn’t thinking straight. I hope you never know what it’s like, Inspector. You spend all those years praying you’ll discover the truth. Then, when you do, you wish you’d never wanted it so badly. You wonder if you somehow brought it down on your own head.”

“We don’t know the truth,” Falcone observed. “We’re not even halfway there. There aren’t many people helping us either.”

Wallis nodded, conceding the point, and said nothing.

“If we agree to let you see the body, we get to talk afterwards,” D’Amato demanded. “
Both of us
.” The impassive black head nodded. “Not that I think you’re in much of a position to bargain. Do you want me to call a lawyer?”

“You don’t need a lawyer,” Falcone said. “Not yet.”

He led the way downstairs, out to the morgue in the adjoining building. There was one assistant on duty, a short, dark man with a ponytail. Falcone had never seen him before and didn’t feel too impressed. Silvio Di Capua and the rest of the path crew were still at Vercillo’s, trying to pick up the pieces without Teresa Lupo. It wasn’t going to be easy. Too few people, too little talent.

The morgue official nodded when he heard the name. “We’ve got a place for that one. Teresa says it needs special treatment. She’s gone loopy or something? Is that true?”

“Just show us,” Falcone snapped.

The ponytail headed for a corridor, moaning constantly. “Jesus, are we in trouble now. They’re not going to let Monkboy loose on the shop, are they? Don’t get me wrong. He’s a nice guy. Knows his stuff. But managerially . . . You should see his locker.”

They entered a side room. Eleanor Jamieson’s mahogany corpse lay on a surgical table surrounded by a panoply of technical equipment that looked like a life support system arriving too late. Silver tripods sprouted from the floor, transparent plastic tubing wound around them feeding a network of tiny pipes and nozzles. These sprayed a fine mist directly onto the body, giving it a bright, leathery sheen in the harsh light of the room. The place had a chemical stink from whatever solution was being used to preserve the body. It made Falcone’s throat ache.

“Don’t ask me what to do when the stuff runs out,” the assistant said. “Teresa fixed all this up. Says some academic in England e-mailed her the recipe. Told her it was the best way to stop the thing shrivelling up like a pair of old shoes.”

“Out,” Falcone barked, and the ponytail disappeared back into the morgue.

Wallis had taken a seat in the corner of the room. His eyes were fixed on the body. Eleanor still wore most of the sackcloth shift. The autopsy proper hadn’t even begun. Falcone understood too that she would remain untouched for the foreseeable future. This strange, half-mummified corpse was beyond Silvio Di Capua. They would surely have to call in help from outside or persuade Teresa Lupo to come back to work. He wasn’t sure which was preferable. The woman was a loose cannon. Only her considerable skill had kept her in the job in the first place. But it would be faster if they were spared more interruptions.

D’Amato took a seat on one side of Wallis. Falcone fell into a chair on the other. The room overlooked the street. The sounds of everyday Roman life drifted in through the tiny window: cars and human voices, stray music and the angry honking of horns. In spite of countless murder inquiries, Falcone never felt entirely comfortable in the morgue. It wasn’t the grim presence of the cadaver that bothered him. It was the way death sat so easily, so effortlessly in the midst of life, just behind the curtain, unnoticed except by the few people it immediately affected.

He looked at Rachele D’Amato, nodding at her to start, wishing he could find more answers to all the questions that were bothering him. She’d brought the DIA into the case with a consummate skill. It was made easier by the fact that she and her colleagues seemed to know so much more than the police did. Someone was leaking, too, and she assumed, all along, it was the police. Maybe she was right. Everyone knew the Questura had its share of compromised cops. But it bothered Falcone that no one ever asked any hard questions of the DIA. Did she ever wonder whether the tip-offs could be coming from within her own ranks? If she did, would she let on to a mere cop? This was a one-way relationship. Just like the personal one they’d enjoyed for a while. He was, once again, at a disadvantage, and it bothered him deeply.

“Mr. Wallis,” she said. “We’re in the dark on almost everything here. A motive. A precise time. Perhaps even a place. What do you think happened?”

Wallis shook his head. “Why ask me? You said yourself I was not under suspicion.”

“You must have some idea.”

“Really?” Wallis asked. “Why does that necessarily follow?”

“Was Emilio Neri involved?” D’Amato asked. “How well did he know Eleanor?”

“Neri?” He hesitated. “The name rings a bell. You should put that question to him, surely.”

“You went on vacation together,” she said. “To Sicily. Please don’t play games with us. Neri was there, and his son. Who else?”

Wallis nodded, conceding the point. “Hell. It was a long time ago. I don’t remember.”

Falcone sighed. “I was hoping you could help us somehow. I told you yesterday. There’s another girl missing now, in very similar circumstances. We’re certain she’s in danger.”

Wallis thought for a moment then said, “What you say doesn’t make sense. You told me at the outset you didn’t know the circumstances of Eleanor’s death. Now you say this other girl is in the same position. I don’t understand. Which is it?”

“This isn’t a time for playing games,” Falcone snapped. “We need your help.”

Wallis’s gaze was fixed on the corpse, bright and glossy beneath the artificial shower of stinking fluid. “I don’t know anything about this other girl.”

Very carefully, watching his reaction, D’Amato said, “What about Eleanor’s mother?” He flinched, just a little. “Your wife. Wouldn’t you want some justice for her?”

“Her mother took her own life,” he replied. “No one did that for her.”

“You feel no sense of regret?” she asked. “No . . . responsibility?”

“She died because she wanted to.” The words came out with difficulty. D’Amato was touching a nerve here.

“My question wasn’t about her. I wondered what you felt.”

The man looked at his watch, his eyes glassy. “This isn’t something I want to discuss.”

Falcone watched Rachele D’Amato’s face harden. There was such resolve there. It was good for the job. It was what they needed. Surely she’d changed over the years, though. The woman he remembered, the woman he had, perhaps, once loved, was not this detached from her feelings. “Did you love them?” she asked. “Eleanor wasn’t yours. Your wife had left you already. Did you love them at that point? When the marriage appeared over?”

Wallis bridled at the question. “You’re a very persistent woman. Let me say this once and for all. They changed me. Before, I was what I was. They saw something in me that I didn’t see myself. In return I learned to love them, and resent them too. A man like me isn’t made to change. It’s not good business. It makes for an uneasy relationship with one’s masters.”

Falcone glanced at the body. “Could your masters have done this?”

There was a sudden burst of anger on his face. “What kind of people do you think I mix with? She was a child, for heaven’s sake. What possible reason—?” He stopped, his voice breaking. “This is a personal matter. I’m not talking about it anymore. It’s no business of yours.
I have nothing to tell you
.”

“Where were you this morning?” Falcone asked directly.

“At home,” he said immediately. “With my housekeeper.”

“And your associates?” D’Amato demanded.

“Associates?”

She pulled out her notepad and read off some names. “We have a list of them. Men you know. Men with the same kind of background. They arrived in Rome yesterday.”

“Sure!”

They waited.

“Golf!” Wallis declared. “Do you think everything’s bad news around here? We meet once a year in spring. I’ve booked a round at Castelgandolfo for Sunday, then dinner. Phone them if you like, and check. They can tell you. We’ve done this for years. Since I first came to Rome. It’s an annual event for old men. Old soldiers if you like. Retired soldiers. Do you play golf, Inspector?”

“No.”

“A shame.” He paused to give his words some weight. “I thought the cops were fond of clubs. You get to meet people that way.”

“Not all of us,” Falcone replied. “You didn’t ask.”

“Ask what?”

“Why I wanted to know where you were this morning.”

Wallis shifted on his chair. He didn’t like being caught out. It was, Falcone thought, the most promising sign he’d seen of an opening in the man’s guard.

“I assumed you’d tell me,” Wallis said lamely.

“Neri’s bookkeeper, a man named Vercillo, was murdered.”

He didn’t even blink. The sombre, expressionless face stared at him and Falcone appreciated, for the first time, how Wallis must once have been a powerful, imposing presence. “Inspector, do I look like the kind of person who goes around killing bookkeepers? If I engaged in that kind of behaviour, do you honestly think that is where I’d start?”

“No wars,” Falcone warned. “You hear me. I don’t want any of that crap on our streets. If you people want to fight it out for some reason, you do it somewhere else and make sure no one else suffers.”

“War?” Wallis answered, amused. “Who’s talking about war?”

“I’m just saying,” Falcone said and heard how lame he sounded.

“Saying what?” The American took his arm. Falcone could smell something sweet on his breath. “Nothing but the obvious. You’ve got to know, Inspector, you of all people. War’s the natural state of humanity. It’s peace and harmony that are foreign to us, which is why it’s so damned hard to create them out of all this shit. Wars aren’t part of my world, not any longer. Not here. Not anywhere. Others . . .” he opened his hands in a gesture of regret, “. . . they may feel differently. That’s none of my business.”

“And if they start to make war on you?” D’Amato asked.

He smiled. “Then I’ll expect the police to earn their keep.”

There was, Falcone thought, only one way to tackle the next question. Directly. “I’ve already spoken to Emilio Neri. He suggested we ask you about what happened to Eleanor. He seems to think your relationship was . . . not simply that of a stepfather and daughter.”

Wallis closed his eyes briefly and uttered a low, unintelligible sound.

“He suggests you had a sexual relationship with her. I have to ask, Mr. Wallis. Did you?”

“You’re going to believe scum like him?” Wallis asked quietly. “You think a man like that would tell you the truth, even if he knew how?”

“I think he knows more than he’s telling me. I think the same about you.”

“I can’t help what you think about me.”

Falcone took a photograph out of the folder he’d brought with him: Eleanor and Barbara Martelli, with their little coterie of admirers. They were dressed, Eleanor apparently unaware of what was to happen next.

Wallis stared at it. “What’s this?”

“We think it was taken shortly before Eleanor was killed.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I can’t discuss that,” Falcone said. “This is evidence. Do you know these men? Do you know what kind of . . . event this is?”

“No,” he replied immediately.

“The other woman. Do you know her?”

“No.”

Falcone glanced at Rachele D’Amato. There was too much hard work here. Wallis’s response was all wrong. He should have been asking questions.