“And I’ll have yours,” Falcone added.
“This is evidence, gentlemen,” Teresa replied. “But not of the kind you think.” She looked at each of them and smiled. “We’re in the movie business now, remember? Do the words ‘special effects’ mean anything at all?”
The short baton slammed into the top of the glass cabinet. Teresa raked it round and round. When she had enough room to manoeuvre, she reached in and, to the curses of both Falcone and his Carabinieri counterparts, carefully lifted out the head and held it in her hands, turning the thing round, making approving noises.
Teresa ran one large pale finger along the ragged line of blood and tissue at the base and then, to Peroni’s horror, put the gory tip to her mouth and licked it.
“Food colouring,” she said. “Fake blood. It’s the wrong shade. Didn’t you notice? Movie blood always is. Flesh and skin … it’s all a joke.” The tissue at the ragged torn neckline came away in her fingers: cotton wool stained a livid red, stuck weakly to the base of the head with glue.
Her fingers picked at the blue latex cladding around the base of the neck and revealed perfect skin beneath, the colour and complexion of that of a store window dummy. Peroni laughed. He’d known something was wrong.
“But why?” she asked, puzzled, talking entirely to herself.
She turned the head again in her hands, looked into the bulbous eyes staring out of the slits made in the blue plastic. They were clearly artificial, not human at all. It was all legerdemain, and obvious once you learned how to look.
Then Teresa Lupo gazed more closely into the face and her dark, full eyebrows creased in bafflement. She pulled back the blue plastic around the lips to reveal a mouth set in an expression of pain and bewilderment. More plastic came away as she tore at the tight, enclosing film to show the face. There was a mask there. It had been crudely fastened to a store dummy’s head to give it form. She removed sufficient film to allow her to lift the object beneath from the base. Then she held it up and rotated the thing in her fingers.
“Hair,” she said, nodding at the underside. “Whiskers.” Her fingers indicated a small stain on the interior, near the chin. “And that’s real blood.”
She glanced at Falcone. “This is from a man, Leo,” Teresa Lupo insisted. “Allan Prime.”
The inspector stood there, a finger to his lips, thinking. The Carabinieri couple said nothing. More of their officers were pushing back the crowd now. Peroni could hear the whine of an ambulance siren working its way to the park.
Teresa placed the mask on the podium table and rotated the pale dummy’s head in her hands, ripping back the remaining covering.
“There’s something else,” she murmured.
The words emerged as she tore off the blue film. They were written in a flowing, artistic script across the top of the skull. It reminded Peroni of the huckster’s props they found when they raided fake clairvoyants taking the gullible to the cleaners. They had objects like this, with each portion of the head marked out for its metaphysical leanings. In this case the message covered everything, from ear to ear, as if there were only a single lesson to be absorbed.
“ ‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate,’ ” Teresa said, as if reciting from memory. “ ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.’ ” She shook her head. “Damnation in the mind of a poet. That’s what was written on the Gate of Hell when Dante entered.”
A noise made Peroni glance back at the crowd. Costa was striding toward them, looking pale but determined, a gun hanging loose in his hand. By his side was the actress from the movie, her eyes downcast and glassy.
Costa nodded at the dummy’s head in Teresa Lupo’s hands, and asked, “What happened?”
The pathologist told him before Falcone could object.
“And you?” Falcone demanded.
Maggie Flavier was staring at the mask, shocked, silent, her cheeks smeared with smudged mascara.
Costa glanced at her before he answered. Then he said, “It seemed as if someone was trying to attack Miss Flavier. Then …”
The senior Carabinieri man found his voice.
“This is our case. Our evidence. I have made a phone call to maresciallo Quattrocchi, Falcone. He was called away briefly. Now he returns. You learn. This cannot—”
He fell abruptly silent as Costa lifted the handgun, pointed it at the fake head, and fired. The sound silenced them all. Maggie stifled a choking sob. There was nothing new there when the smoke and the racket had cleared. No damage. Not another fresh shard of shattered glass.
“Blanks,” Costa told the man. “This was his gun. I took it from his corpse while your men danced around it like schoolgirls. They’ve just shot dead a defenceless man who was taking part in some kind of a sick prank. Why not go investigate that?”
“Th-this …” the officer stuttered.
“Enough,” Falcone interjected, and glanced at Costa. “Assemble a team, Soverintendente. Subito.”
Teresa was already on the phone, and standing guard over the objects on the podium table.
“Where does Allan Prime live?” Falcone asked.
The officer said nothing.
“I know,” Maggie Flavier said. “Do you think …?”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
“You can tell us on the way,” Falcone said, then called for a car.
PART 2
1
They sat in the back of the Lancia, with a plainclothes female driver at the wheel.
“Sir,” Costa said, as they slowly negotiated the bickering snarl of vehicles arguing for space in the Piazza Venezia. “Miss Flavier … I don’t understand why she should be here.”
The woman by his side gave him a puzzled look but for once remained silent.
Falcone sighed, then turned round from the passenger seat and extended his long tanned hand. Maggie Flavier took it. She was more composed now and had wiped away the stray makeup from her face. She looked younger, more ordinary. Prettier, Costa realized.
“My name is Leo Falcone. I’m an inspector. His inspector.”
“Nice to meet you. Why am I here?”
The inspector gave her his most gracious and charming of smiles. “For reasons that are both practical and political. You were the victim of some strange kind of attack. Perhaps a joke. But a very poor one, it seems to me. Allan Prime … Maybe it was a joke in his case, too. I don’t know and I would like to. One man is dead. Prime is missing. The Carabinieri, meanwhile, are wandering around preening themselves while trying to work out which day it is. We have no need of further complications. Would you rather they were in charge of your safety? Or us? The choice is yours, naturally.”
“My safety?”
“Just in case.”
“What’s going on here?” she demanded. “I was supposed to be at a movie premiere tonight. People shooting blanks. Fake death masks.” Her bright, animated face fell. “Someone getting killed.” She looked at Costa. “Why would they shoot him? The uniformed man on the horse?”
“Because they thought he was dangerous. They didn’t know any better. Whoever he was …”
“Not Carabinieri, that’s for sure,” Falcone intervened.
“Whoever he was,” Costa continued, “this is now a real case and it’s not ours.” He caught the dismay in the inspector’s eye. “I’m sorry. That’s a fact, sir. The Carabinieri were given the job of security tonight. Also, there’s the question of jurisdiction. Allan Prime is an American citizen. If he’s missing, someone has to inform the U.S. Embassy and allow them a role in the investigation. We all know the rules when a foreign citizen’s involved. We can’t just drive away with a key witness and hope it’s all ours. I should never have left the scene in the first place, or taken that weapon.”