“I haven’t got any more, Emily,” he said with resolution. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. Forget it. You want my advice? Go home. Get sick. Lay a complaint against Leapman or something. You won’t have a problem making them believe that. Get back to Washington, find yourself a comfy desk somewhere and get on with your life. Leave Rome and all this shit behind. There are graves around here you don’t want to start digging up.”
“That’s not possible.”
He looked into her face and there was no mistaking his expression. Thornton Fielding was begging her to be gone.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I met him last night, Thornton, and I can’t just walk away from this now. He could have killed me, but he didn’t. Why? I don’t know. I have to know. Because of who I am. Because… Shit. He’s smart. Maybe he thought that’s why I was here in the first place? To lure him out. And he just didn’t want to play someone else’s game.”
He put his hands together and asked very slowly, “You met who?”
“Bill Kaspar.”
Fielding’s handsome face drained of expression. “Jesus Christ, Em. Where the hell did you get a name like that?”
“From the guy last night,” she lied. He’d only given her a surname. Her early memories provided the rest. “He called me that, too. ”Little Em…“ ”
Bill Kaspar. What a guy.
They’d all said that of this man once upon a time. She didn’t know how she remembered that or why. Just that it was true. Her father thought that. Perhaps Thornton Fielding did once too.
“ ”Little Em…“ ” she repeated. “But I’m not little anymore, Thornton.”
“I can see that,” he murmured. “We’ve all grown up a lot over the last few years.”
“So tell me. What the hell’s going on around here?”
“Can’t,” he sighed, shaking his head. “I’m not even sure I know myself. I just know this: you steer clear of this shit. Otherwise it will eat you up, like it did…”
He fell silent and looked at the door. It was different now. He wanted someone to intervene.
“Like it did my father? And these other people too?”
“Emily…”
She was making Thornton Fielding squirm and it felt awful.
“You know what I think, Thornton? Leapman brought me here as bait of some kind. I’m my father in disguise just to remind this man of something, to throw him off his guard. Joel Leapman thinks I’ll bring out this… monster. Make him crawl out of the woodwork. Is that what Bill Kaspar was like all along? And if he was…”
He was staring at some papers on the desk, pretending she wasn’t there.
“Dammit, Thornton! You were my dad’s friend. Are you going to help me find out what happened to him or not?”
He didn’t say a thing. It was all a waste of time. Maybe he was so scared he’d report it all back to Leapman the moment she was gone.
“And you’re the guy who nearly resigned over a principle, huh? You expect me to believe that?”
It didn’t make her feel any better. Thornton Fielding was part of the good Rome she remembered, and here she was beating up on him for no real reason at all.
“I can’t help what you believe, Emily. But please. Listen to me. Drop this. For your own sake. Just leave the whole thing alone.”
She stormed through the door and slammed it behind her. Fielding watched her go, miserable. Then he turned round his desk and started typing, very slowly, very deliberately, into his PC.
Emily Deacon walked back to her seat in Leapman’s office. The place was empty. Leapman hadn’t even left a message.
You don’t leave messages for bait.
So what she was supposed to do? Where she was supposed to be? It was an act. Everything was, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do to change matters.
The icon on her e-mail in-box blinked. She opened the message.
I am sorry for the problems you have been experiencing with the embassy network. We are currently carrying out some urgent maintenance in order to rectify this. I have set up a temporary network identity which you can use in the meantime. This will expire permanently at 14.00.
Username: WillFK. Password: BabylonSisters.
Regards, TF
Breathless, she typed in the details, logged on. Then she looked at her watch. It was now 13.05. Fielding wasn’t being generous but maybe this was about as much as he could risk.
Emily Deacon entered keywords she’d tried before, the ones that brought down the security block.
Then she sat back in her seat and watched the screen begin to fill with text.
TWO UNIFORM MEN found Monica Sawyer. They’d taken a crowbar to the boot of the half-burnt-out Renault at the foot of the Spanish Steps, peered inside, wondered about the smell and the dark liquid leaking from the couple of suitcases in there, then popped the locks on them.
One was still in the emergency department of San Giovanni puking up diminishing returns from his breakfast. The second, a raw young recruit who looked no more than twenty, now sat between Costa and Peroni in the jeep, leaning back in the rear seat, eyes closed, face the colour of the grey, wan sky still dumping snowflakes down on the city.
Costa and Peroni had listened in silence to his story. They’d been called in by Falcone as they vainly combed the riverfront for Laila, Peroni complaining loudly that there had to be other cops in town who could handle the call.
Costa had pointed the car towards the Piazza di Spagna as soon as Falcone called. Peroni openly begged down the phone for more time to look for the girl. It didn’t cut any ice. Falcone wanted them there for some reason of his own, and both men had begun to guess what that was. The inspector was feeling cornered, outnumbered, scared even. Big players were gathering around him, people he refused to trust. Costa and Peroni seemed to be at the top of his very short list of confidants just now.
Peroni was right, though. There were plenty of other cops around, all of them on the job already. Plainclothes officers and SOCOs milled around the wrecked vehicle, a tide of white bunny suits and dark winter coats. There were men and women working the nearby shops and offices too. This was a big operation. Falcone wouldn’t commit this kind of resource without good reason. Either he felt that things were coming to a head. Or that they were falling apart.
“Best you go home,” Peroni said to the uniform. The man’s face was utterly bloodless. He’d be seeing the department shrink before long.
“I go off shift at five,” the young officer said curtly. “That’s when I go home.”
Peroni nodded. “What’s your name, son?”
“Sacco.”
“I’ll remember that. You look like a sound guy. This your first?”
Sacco closed his eyes. “The first time I found a body in a suitcase?”
“No,” Peroni replied patiently. “The first murder?”
“Yeah.”
“OK.” Peroni slapped his shoulder and started climbing out of the car. “Take care.”
The two of them walked towards the crime scene, Peroni shaking his head.
“Rookies,” he muttered. “What is it with this macho thing?”
“He’s just doing what he thinks is expected of him, Gianni.”
“Aren’t we all? And what about Laila?”
Peroni’s insistence on treating everyone under the age of twenty-five as somehow not quite fully formed never ceased to astonish Costa.
“Laila’s been living on the streets for months, Gianni. She’s as tough as they come. Didn’t you notice? Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of the situation, I don’t think there’s any doubt about her coping.”
Peroni favoured him with an icy stare. “Coping. That’s what life’s about, is it?”
“Sometimes,” Costa offered lamely. “It’s what you do in between figuring out what you really want to do with your time. I seem to recall getting this lecture from you once.”
“OK, smart guy,” Peroni conceded. “Throw my own bullshit back at me if you like.”
“Look. When we’ve got the opportunity I’ll help you find Laila.”