From a place Quattrocchi couldn’t initially pinpoint came the deep, loud, disembodied rattle of a man’s laughter, cruel, uncaring, determined, too. Someone gasped in shock and, perhaps, terror.
A lilting, laughing voice, male, probably American, issued from the computer, and spoke in English.
“Say cheese. Say …”
There was a sound like water rushing through air, then a scream that was strangled before it could grow into a full-throated cry.
Quattrocchi turned his back on the apparatus, not wishing to witness what was happening to Allan Prime. On the floor of the Salone delle Prospettive, in a sixteenth-century nobleman’s version of an illusory paradise, he saw instead an elderly caretaker who was on his knees, crossing himself, turning his eyes to heaven and starting to pray.
Something had been written on the dusty tiles in multicoloured aerosol paint, letters a metre high, the way teenagers sprayed graffiti on the subway. Maresciallo Gianluca Quattrocchi gazed at the message and remembered his lessons on Dante from college some thirty years earlier. The letters were ragged and rushed, but the words were unmistakable.
The Second Circle. The Wanton.
“What next?” Morello asked, unseen by his side.
“The third circle, of course,” Quattrocchi answered numbly.
11
Costa awoke with a start. He’d slept in Leo Falcone’s Lancia, which, after much argument, had been allowed to enter the secure area created by the Carabinieri in the Via della Lungara and the streets beyond and park close to the Farnesina. The Lungotevere was closed to traffic, which explained the strange silence. There would be media everywhere, cameras and reporters, crews from around the world, switched from the year’s grandest movie premiere to a terrible death, and eager for a story that would surely occupy the headlines for weeks to come. But none of the morning hurly-burly of commuters fighting to get to work.
Beyond the window, he could see Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo talking to Catherine Bianchi near the villa’s entrance. Maggie Flavier was joining them, a seemingly uncomfortable Carabinieri officer by her side. He couldn’t help but notice the young actress glanced in the direction of the car after she spoke to them. He looked at his watch. It was nearly seven in the morning. Costa turned on the car radio and listened to the news. There was only one story, and one law enforcement agency to tell it. Not the Polizia di Stato.
No one had been apprehended. The idea that Inferno would receive its world premiere in Rome had been abandoned. Instead, the entire cast and security operation would bring forward their planned move to California. The exhibition created for the Casa del Cinema would be rebuilt instead at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Once that was complete, Inferno would be launched there, leaving Roman filmgoers to wait weeks for a domestic public release, a decision that was already creating fury among local fans.
The name of the place rang a bell. Costa closed his eyes and recalled Emily, then unknown to him, in a room in the American Embassy displaying a picture of a beautiful, half-ruined classical building by a lake as part of the investigation that had brought them together.
Then he was brought to earth by the gruff Roman voice of Gianluca Quattrocchi giving the news his somewhat overdramatised version of events. Allan Prime, he claimed, was beyond rescue from the very beginning. The videos of the actor on the web — and his savage demise, which was now on many millions of computers and phones around the world — were all part of a sadistic murder plot played out with heartless deliberation over the Internet. Why? Quattrocchi had the answer. The clues were there throughout. In the message scribbled on the dummy’s head—Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. In the words written on the floor in front of the trapped actor, which had been shared instantly with the world as the webcam panned the scene. In the constant stream of hate mail and dark threats sent to the production for months and now released to the Carabinieri by the movie’s publicist, Simon Harvey, who had — unwisely, Quattrocchi suggested — kept them quiet out of a mistaken belief they came from a crank.
“Cranks they may be,” the maresciallo went on, playing for the cameras, “but they are also killers.” He lowered his voice to make sure there could be no mistaking the seriousness of his message. “Killers obsessed with the works of Dante. They wish to punish those who made this movie for what they see as some kind of blasphemy. The star is dead already. We are redoubling security for everyone else involved — cast, crew, all of them. We will cooperate with the American authorities in this, and, since Italian citizens are under threat, participate in the operation in California as well.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” Costa muttered. Quattrocchi had never mentioned that the unfortunate Peter Jamieson had been carrying a gun loaded with blanks. He wondered how that awkward fact could possibly fit in with such strangely histrionic theories.
Feeling stiff and hungry, he got out of the car. Two more state police vehicles were set close to the far side of Falcone’s Lancia like a wagon train surrounded by a sea of dark blue Indians. He ambled over to the discussion Falcone was conducting. Maggie Flavier looked pale and pink-eyed as if she’d been crying. When she saw him, she turned to the Carabiniere and ordered him to fetch coffee and cornetti. The man slunk off with a mutinous grunt.
“Be kind. He’s only doing his job,” Costa suggested.
“If I want protection, I choose who does it,” she retorted. “And I choose …” Her slender finger ranged over the four of them, before adding Catherine Bianchi, too. “… you.”
“Oh no,” the American policewoman responded, half amused. “I’m just the captain of a little San Francisco precinct, and one that won’t be there much longer either. If the Palace of Fine Arts didn’t happen to be around the corner, I wouldn’t be here at all. All the important stuff gets assigned to the people downtown at Bryant Street. Frankly, they’re welcome to it. Guarding celebrities is out of my league.”
“There are protocols here, Miss Flavier,” Falcone added. “You must do as the maresciallo says. He seems very sure of himself.”
“People don’t murder for poetry,” Costa reminded him. “You said it yourself.”
“Allan Prime’s death is none of my business. Our business. That …” Falcone’s bright eyes shone with some inner knowledge. “… has been made very clear to me indeed by people with whom I am not minded to argue. Besides, Quattrocchi has created for himself a very certain picture of what is happening, one that seems to fit well with his own theatrical ambitions. Far be it from us to disturb his reveries.”
“Leo …” Teresa interrupted. “We have some interesting material from that place in the Via Giulia. Get us a little time. Perhaps we could get something useful.”
The inspector shook his head. “You must hand it over. It’s theirs now. All of it. Everything pertaining to Allan Prime and that American actor they shot dead in the park. Besides, whoever is responsible is surely gone from Rome already. That circus trick they performed with Prime … It could have been run from anywhere. America even. If Quattrocchi is correct and this is connected with the film — and I do believe this to be true — their attentions will surely follow that, too, across the Atlantic, far from Rome.”
Costa waited. He recognised that glint in Falcone’s eye.
“All we have,” the inspector went on, “is a missing death mask. A priceless historical object. And several other similar exhibits that will shortly be crated up and air-freighted to America.” He scratched his chin. “Is it possible they might also be at risk? If so, would it be fair to add to the Carabinieri’s burden by asking they take responsibility for that role, too …?”