Hadrian had been rash sometimes, too, and arrogant. The mind that could imagine a building like the Pantheon had also seen fit to slaughter those who stood in his way. Kaspar had murdered Monica Sawyer brutally, his head full of screaming voices, feeling his power enter her body, and still he couldn’t quite work out why, still he knew that the patterns he’d painted with her blood, the holy frieze of interlocking shapes, was powder over a stupid misdeed, a disguise that failed to hide the enormity of the crime. Monica wasn’t a part of the endgame now playing out on the streets of Rome. She hadn’t-there was no avoiding the thought-merited that particular death.
He was Bill Kaspar. He could have prevented that, locked her in the bedroom with a gag round her overactive mouth, and stayed safe and warm in her apartment knowing not a soul could see there was anything wrong. He could have tried to explain to her that he was in his own frame of reference, an honourable man set upon an honourable mission. A man who had been abandoned, cheated, robbed, even here in Rome.
Bill Kaspar didn’t kill people because he wanted to. Only because he had to. Hadn’t he let Emily Deacon live that night? The bug was a long shot. He was lucky it provided anything. Or was his reluctance to kill a symptom of a greater problem? Had some unconscious part of his head now started to operate on its own, demanding a victim, any victim, just because it hated the idea of being cheated?
Hadrian, the brightest emperor of them all, the man who set limits to the empire, who said this far, no further, was crazy by the end and Bill Kaspar knew he couldn’t even hope to stand in the shadow of that colossus.
He wasn’t sure about any of this. He wasn’t sure it was worth worrying about either. What mattered was finishing the job. For the life of him he couldn’t think of any way he could do that without involving Emily Deacon. It was possible she was the key to the whole damn thing anyway, and that Steely Dan Deacon, in spite of appearances, in spite of the way Deacon had protested his innocence just before he died, had been in charge all along. Kaspar knew he was running out of alternatives. He didn’t dare hang around Net cafes anymore in case they were being watched. Steely Dan’s girl had to provide the answers. Somehow.
The headphone came alive just after dawn, the sound of the thin traffic working its way just far enough up the hill to break through over the embassy’s electronic fog. Then a car engine, something like the notching of gears.
She was in a vehicle. Kaspar pulled the Fiat forward until its yellow nose edged out into the Via Veneto and watched the big iron gates. A red Ford was coming through them, Emily Deacon behind the wheel.
“Little Em,” he said to himself.
Kids didn’t get to pick their parents. It wasn’t her fault Steely Dan turned out the way he was. From what he’d seen, what little he’d heard on the hidden mike, she wasn’t even part of the current plan. They’d just brought her in for old time’s sake, maybe. Or to tease him, to say: Look, the Deacons just go on and on.
In that case, he thought, they ought to look after their precious belongings more carefully.
There was scarcely any traffic. A good agent-and he knew Emily didn’t fit into that category just from watching her the night before-should have been alert, should have seen that a little yellow Fiat was dogging her all the way.
Little Em drove and drove, all the way out to the Via Appia Antica, where she took a turn into what looked like a farm drive, barely passable in the drifts. He drove on for a few hundred yards before pulling into a deserted bus stop. He loved this place. In happier times he’d walked miles and miles along the Appian Way, thinking about the tombs, wondering about the dead feet that had trudged this way over the centuries.
He popped in the earphone and turned up the volume on the radio. Two voices: Little Em and the young Italian he now recognized.
Bill Kaspar listened intently, wondering all the time about his options.
Then he realized he couldn’t stay here. He heard something he should have figured out long, long before.
You’re getting old and careless, white boy, the ghost of the black sergeant whispered in the back of his head. Git out there and find what belongs to you.
He reached into his bag and pulled out the digital music player he’d stolen from a backpacker in the Corso a couple of weeks before. It had all his favourite music on there: the Dan, the Doobies, Todd Rundgren and a couple of hundred others, all good hippie listening for a sixties child turned spook.
It had stacks of spare space for more recording too and a full battery charge, enough to store another ten hours of conversation right alongside the holy grooves.
There was a spare mini-jack in the bag. He connected the radio to the player and hit the record button. Then he placed the kit carefully in a dry patch behind the bus shelter, where it was hidden, not that anyone was going to walk along this deserted piece of imperial Roman highway on such a bitter, hostile night.
It was a good twenty or thirty minutes to the centro storico and the more he thought about the journey, the more William F. Kaspar realized he was in danger of losing the gift. The voices inside him were getting louder all the time. It was a question of killing them before they killed him.
NIC COSTA WAS nodding off on the sofa when the doorbell rang. Emily Deacon walked straight in, grinning, looking bright and rosy, as if she could go without sleep forever.
She had a briefcase in her hand and a notebook computer bag slung over her shoulder. “Where is everyone? Gianni? Laila?”
“Short version: she ran away. Gianni’s looking for her now.”
“Oh no,” she murmured, genuinely shocked.
“Don’t worry. Gianni will find her. He won’t stop till he does. I got a call from him half an hour ago. He wanted to check out a theory Laila stole something from our friend, then dumped it in the Pantheon. Maybe she’s going back to retrieve it.”
She considered the idea. “I think possessions are important to the killer. Perhaps that’s why he wanted to find Laila. But the idea she could leave something in the Pantheon… Wouldn’t you have found it?”
“Not if it was hidden. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that anything’s possible right now. Besides, if you knew my partner better, you’d understand there’s not much point in arguing.”
He looked at her, trying to remember what he’d promised to do.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” she asked with a smile.
He was trying to drag that morning’s conversation back from the depths of his memory. So much had intervened in the meantime.
“I promised I’d check a couple of names for you.”
She held up the laptop case. “It’s OK. I came prepared. I’ve been following the logs. I know what’s been happening. A busy day.”
Costa doubted she knew half of what had really gone on. He led the way to the living room and watched her set up her gear on the coffee table in front of the low sofa.
“You can say that again. Coffee?”
“I’d rather have a real drink,” she said, throwing the black jacket over the back of the sofa, getting straight down to work. “You do have wine here?”
“Wine,” he sighed and wondered how much longer he could keep his eyes open. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a cold bottle of Alto Adige Sauvignon and brought back a couple of glasses. The hard mountain grape had a kick in it. He ought to be able to stay alert for a little while before crashing completely.
Emily looked animated, a little too much for his liking. The more Leapman froze her out of the case, the more she seemed determined to find herself. It was an attractive transformation to witness and the distraction was beginning to worry him.