But Peroni had gone as far as he could. It was time to lean on Falcone’s tactics a little. Besides, all she was doing was telling Laila the truth, juiced up a little.
“Do you know what it means to get fired?” Teresa asked sotto voce, casting an eye into the living room, making sure Peroni was still asleep.
Some emotion flickered in Laila’s eyes. “I’m not stupid.”
“I know that. I just wanted to make sure you understood.”
“Understood what?”
Teresa hesitated, as if she’d overstepped the mark. “It’s nothing. It’s about Gianni. It doesn’t concern you.”
“I know what being fired means,” the girl repeated.
“When that other man came, the inspector,” Teresa continued, “he asked us to go outside. Remember?”
Laila took Falcone’s banknote out of her pocket, rolled it in her fingers and almost smiled.
“Quite,” Teresa said evenly. “You heard the inspector and Gianni arguing. Did Gianni tell you what he said?”
“No,” she replied, puzzled.
“Typical.” It would have been, too. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, Laila. I shouldn’t, but you two seem to get along so maybe you ought to know. Gianni’s in trouble. Things haven’t been going so well recently.”
She let that sink in, waited for the moment, hoped she wouldn’t come to hate herself too much along the way.
“The inspector came to tell Gianni that it’s make-or-break time. Either he gets you to tell him what you know or he’s fired. No job. No money, Laila. Nothing. He’s got kids too. One about your age.”
The girl shivered and stared at the table. “It’s not true.”
Teresa shrugged. “If that’s what you want to think. It doesn’t matter. Why should you worry about Gianni anyway? You don’t even know him.”
She reached forward, touched the kid’s lank hair and hoped to God Peroni never found out about this. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. It’s none of your business. I’ve got to go soon. I’ll be upstairs for a little while. Please don’t tell him I told you.”
Teresa went up the old stone steps and found a spare bedroom. There was nothing for her there. She just wanted them to be together, Peroni and the girl. She could imagine Peroni waking up, finding the kid staring at him, ready to talk. It could work. She’d seen that extraordinary bond grow between them that morning. It had to work. The kid wouldn’t talk to anyone else.
So she lay on the cover of the bed in the dusty, musky-smelling room, closed her eyes and dreamed a pleasant dream, a stupid, childlike fantasy set in a bright world of pastel colours where the sun always shone, where families, young and old, stayed together always, sharing the years, growing closer all the time. It was the kind of dream place you never wanted to leave, a warm, embracing neverland just beyond reach.
A noise intruded into this welcome reverie: the sound of the downstairs door.
Nic, she thought. He knew as much about family as Peroni in a way. It was all wrapped up in a tight bundle inside this old, cold farmhouse buried beneath the snow off the old Appian Way. Where you could just sleep forever with a musty, ancient coverlet keeping out the freezing cold.
Except…
The door opened and closed again after a while and that didn’t add up, that could only be part of this half dream.
Maybe.
Cursing herself, Teresa Lupo threw off the stupor, forced herself awake and, with growing trepidation, went downstairs.
Peroni still slumbered in front of the fire. Nic was going through the place, room by room.
“Where’s Laila?” he asked. “Upstairs with you?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered.
Teresa Lupo went to the front window. The snow was piling down again, a thick blanket of gigantic soft flakes. Through them she could just make out a couple of fresh tracks zigzagging towards the gate, fast disappearing in the blizzard.
“Shit,” she sighed to herself. “Shit, shit and double shit. The kid’s only thirteen for Christ’s sake. How the hell am I supposed to know she’s an escapologist? Didn’t you see someone on a bike when you came here?”
Nic stuck a hand towards the blizzard beyond the window. “In that weather?”
She went back to the living room. Her handbag was open, her purse, too, the money all gone.
A big, familiar figure came and stood by her. She could sense his puzzlement without even looking at him. Peroni had some silent, unseen way of communicating his emotions.
“Where is she?” Costa asked again.
“You’ve got a bike here?”
He nodded.
“Not anymore. She must have taken it. I’m sorry, I fell asleep.”
“For Christ’s sake…” Peroni muttered under his breath.
“Excuse me! You were sleeping too. And you were the cop here, remember?”
Costa was juggling the keys to the jeep already. He looked wiped out.
“I was trying to help!” Teresa yelled, watching the two men head for the door, not bothering to look back. “I was trying…”
Then they were gone.
“Shit,” she said to no one.
She didn’t even have time to tell them it was her fault. Or to wonder: Why?
A swirl of fatigue swam around her head. Then something made her jump: the phone trilling like a wild beast, the volume turned up to max the way a solitary man would in a big house like this.
“Yeah?” she yelled into the thing.
It was Silvio Di Capua, screaming hysterically from his mobile, wondering why she hadn’t answered hers, not understanding it was in another room, dead to the world while she slept elsewhere. She listened, ruefully grateful that some work had appeared to thrust aside the doubts and guilt lurking inside her head. Silvio had danced this frantic little dance in tantrum-land all too often, but this time round it sounded as if he had good reason to do so.
“It’s a body, Silvio,” she said, when she had a chance to interrupt the babbling sea of details and questions. “Just remember that and follow procedures.”
“Oh, wonderful!” he yelled. “Procedures, procedures. Tell me that when you get here. It’s a slaughterhouse and right near McDonald’s too.”
“Well, in that case it’s somewhat appropriate, don’t you think?”
“This is not a time for jokes, Teresa. Falcone’s livid you weren’t answering your phone.”
“What am I?” she screamed back at him. “Instant fucking pathologist? Just add water and I crawl out of the bottle?”
Besides, she thought, Falcone was going to have plenty more reasons to go berserk soon. His solitary witness had gone walkabout after that little lecture of hers and she didn’t need to wonder about who’d catch the blame on that one.
Think about work. It’s what they pay you for.
“One thing, Silvio. You say the woman’s been cut.”
“Oh yes.”
“Good. Now calm down and think about this because what I’m about to ask is important: are there any signs someone’s used a scalpel?”
The voice on the line paused for breath.
“That and the rest,” Di Capua panted. “You’ve got to get here, Teresa. It’s… scary.”
She grabbed her car keys out of the bag. At least the kid hadn’t stolen them, too.
“Twenty minutes,” she told Silvio. “And make mine a quarter pounder with cheese.”
EMILY DEACON SAT in her small embassy apartment eyeing the phone, wondering what she could say. It had been a month since she’d spoken to her mother, a week since they’d exchanged e-mails. The relationship was close but had boundaries. They’d never really had the right conversation about her father’s death. Even now, she was uncertain how her mother felt about what had happened. Saddened, obviously. But shocked? A part of Emily said that wasn’t the case. And there was only one way to find out.