Mauro had wound up the zoom to go in close. It was probably the last real photo he ever took. The girl was almost as tall as Nic Costa, but slightly built, and wore a dark windcheater and jeans. She was slipping past the portico, just beginning to run. The shot was taken at an angle. Maybe Mauro was falling already, struck by the bullets, as he pressed the shutter button, spinning on his heels as he tried to avoid the deadly fire.
Physically she looked no more than thirteen or fourteen, with a waif’s haircut rough cropped short into the head. But there was an adult, haunted look in her pretty, dark face. A chilly mix of terror and determination stared out from her wide-open eyes, beyond Mauro, straight at the man standing on the steps by the frozen dolphins, trying to end her life.
Peroni peered at the photo. “An immigrant kid. Turkish maybe. She won’t have a home. She won’t even have a real identity. She isn’t going to come running to us.”
Costa looked at his watch. They had fifteen minutes till the appointment in the Via Veneto.
“Someone’s got to know her,” he said.
Gianni Peroni sucked through his teeth, still transfixed by the photo and the vulnerable face gazing back at them. He’d worked vice for years and understood the inevitable path these kids took from petty street crime to drugs and prostitution.
“I can call in some favours, Nic,” he said, sounding reluctant. “But maybe we’ve got to go places Leo had best not hear about. That OK with you?”
Costa glanced at the photo again and the kid’s dark, desperate eyes.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “You bet it’s OK.”
THE AMERICAN EMBASSY stood on a steep bend on the Via Veneto, a stiff climb up from the Piazza Barberini. Here, behind well-guarded iron gates, a small army of diplomats, paper-pushers, military officers, immigration officials and, for all Costa knew, professional spooks populated the elegant nineteenth-century labyrinth of corridors of what had once been the Palazzo Margherita.
Leo Falcone met them in the waiting room, silent and serious in a grey business suit. To Costa’s surprise, Teresa Lupo was with him, twiddling her nascent ponytail, a touch scruffy in an old winter jacket and jeans, and not happy either.
“How are you, Gianni?” she asked Peroni as they all sat together, waiting.
“I’m doing just fine,” Peroni replied. “No offence, but what the hell are you doing here?”
“Working,” she answered gruffly. “If I’m allowed. Do you have a problem with that?”
He grunted something that sounded like an apology.
“She’s here because I wanted her here,” Falcone interposed. “Whatever papers these people have, that body still has to be accounted for.”
“Told you,” Teresa added. “Just the fucking typist.”
“If that’s the way you see it,” Falcone murmured, watching a tall man walk towards them, some papers in his hand. “But let’s keep these arguments to ourselves, please.”
The embassy official introduced himself as Thornton Fielding. He didn’t look like a natural colleague for Agent Leapman. Fielding was diplomatic and articulate. He wanted their signatures on some nondisclosure papers too.
Falcone stared at the paperwork. “This is Italy, Mr. Fielding. I’m not in the habit of signing forms about what I will or won’t do in my own country.”
Fielding didn’t even blink. “Technically, Inspector, this is the sovereign territory of the United States of America. Either you sign these forms or you don’t get to see Agent Leapman.” He hesitated. “Personally I’d find that a damn good reason for not signing, but the choice is yours.”
“You like him too, huh?” Peroni asked.
“He’s just the most fun guy you’re ever going to meet,” Fielding said quietly. “Now are you putting your name to these or not?”
When they were done he made a call from the desk. They watched as Emily Deacon walked down the corridor towards them.
“Nice woman,” Fielding said. “Don’t judge her by the company she keeps.”
Then he disappeared down the corridor, leaving them to Emily Deacon. They followed her and watched as she swiped an ID card on the security door to what turned out to be a large, high-ceilinged office.
Agent Leapman was seated in a leather executive chair behind a polished walnut desk, squeezed into a tight white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to display beefy, powerful arms. Emily Deacon, surely the junior partner in this relationship, motioned them to a leather sofa, then perched on a chair next to him, demure in plain brown slacks and a cream shirt. She held a notepad on her lap and could, Costa thought, have passed as a secretary, were it not for the intent way she kept shuffling through a pile of papers on the desk, looking as if she knew every last sheet.
“I appreciate you coming here.” Leapman spoke with no visible emotion as he played with a remote switch in his hand. The blinds on the window slanted to block out the security lights outside. A small screen came down from the ceiling.
“We had a choice?” Teresa asked.
“Not really,” Leapman replied. “I know I said I wasn’t dictating who could come to this meeting, Falcone, but I rather expected it would be police only.”
Falcone took a deep breath before answering. “A piece of paper from the Palazzo Chigi doesn’t change Italian law. Miss Lupo has to sign a death certificate for the woman. She’s every right to be here. You can make a phone call to check if you want.”
Leapman allowed himself a brief glance towards Emily Deacon, one that said, See, I told you what they’re like.
“OK,” he grumbled. “Just remember what the deal is here. This is for you people only. I don’t want to read it in Il Messaggero tomorrow morning. Deacon…”
He passed over the remote and she hit the button. A photo came on the screen. It was a building Costa recognized from somewhere, then a series of shots of the same place, taken from different angles: a rose-coloured temple of some kind, shot in bright sun, near fountains and water, with a large rotunda dome supported by open columns.
“It looks like the Pantheon,” Peroni said immediately.
“It should,” she said. “It’s the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Built for the 1915 International Exhibition. The architect, Maybeck, was trying to re-create something classically Roman, like an engraving by Piranesi of some half-ruined temple.”
“Nice,” Peroni answered. “You got a corpse there too?”
She nodded, surprised perhaps that he got the point so quickly. “Last May. It was the first, as far as we know.”
“Who?” Falcone asked immediately.
“A man,” she said. “Just a tourist from D.C. In spite of what we saw today we don’t think this is sexual. We could be wrong…”
Leapman rocked his chair to and fro in disapproval.
“We just don’t know,” she continued. “The building is near the Marina. Pretty safe most of the time, but San Francisco ’s a city with some rough parts nearby. The cops wrote it off as street crime. Just one thing, though.”
She pressed the button and ran through a new series of photos. They were of the victim, facedown on the rose-coloured stone floor. He was naked from the waist up. The cord that had been used to strangle him still dug deep into the flesh at the back of his neck. A rough pattern was cut into his lower back in an approximation of the shape they’d seen in the Pantheon that morning.
Leapman cleared his throat, lit a cigarette and said, “He was still practising then. It took a little while before he got it right. Next.”
More photos, this time of a stumpy circular tower with two galleries at the summit, pointing up into a clear blue sky.
“ Coit Tower, also San Francisco,” Deacon continued. “Three weeks later they found this when they were opening up for the day. On the floor of the tower too. Our guy’s good with locks.”
It was another corpse. Totally naked this time. A man, facedown, with grey hair. He was running to fat. Perhaps fifty. The cuts on his back were a little less ragged. The pattern was larger, running out to the folds of flesh at his waist, and more distinct: a geometric dance of angles and curves that made a recognizable image.