Nic Costa watched her walk upstairs to the bathroom and wished he wasn’t so gauche with women. He’d no idea what the hell she expected of him next. To follow her into one of the big, airy bedrooms? To wait so they could talk some more, not that he felt there were many words left in him after this long, long day?
He hadn’t planned any of this. He hadn’t wanted it, not now, in the middle of a sprawling black case that involved her more than was safe. Sometimes life just refused to do what it was told. Sometimes…
“WHAT’S HIS NAME? This guy from the embassy who tells you nothing?”
Peroni’s thoughts were wandering. The nausea wouldn’t go away. Still, this wasn’t a time to lose focus. He glowered at the gun, not saying a word. There was a point to be made here, a kind of relationship to be established.
“Joel Leapman,” he said, once the guy got the message and lowered the barrel. “You know him?”
The American grimaced. “If he’s in the business, I think names don’t mean a lot. Besides, I’ve been away for a while. What does he say he is? CIA? FBI? Something else?”
“Why ask me?”
The barrel of the weapon touched Peroni’s cheek. “Because you’re here and because you’re not dumb either.”
“He says he’s FBI. He’s got people with him who are FBI. One, anyway. You met her. Last night.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Glad you didn’t hurt her, by the way. She’s a nice kid.”
He was thinking. Peroni judged it best to let him reach some decisions on his own.
“No accounting for breeding sometimes,” the American said in the end. “I need someone to deliver a message. That makes you a lucky man.”
Peroni tried to offer up an ironic smile. “You could have fooled me. Right now I feel something just drove over my head.”
“You’ll live. You”-he waved the gun at Laila-“and the thieving little kid. I’ll give you a couple of hours to figure a way out. Don’t make it sooner. I might still be around. You’ll find that idiot who was supposed to be in charge round the corner, peeing himself, I guess. Tell him he’s damn lucky. When you’re paid to look after a place like this…”
He cast his sharp eyes around the shadows of the Pantheon.
“… you’d best do it properly.”
“And the message?” Peroni mumbled.
The smart, deadpan face neared his. “I was coming to that. Tell this Leapman fellow I’m running out of patience. I’m bored looking. This time, he delivers. Or the rules change.”
“Delivers what?” Peroni wondered.
He got a grunt of impatience in return. “He knows.”
“You’re sure?”
That cold, dry laugh again. “Yeah. But just in case, you tell Leapman this. Tell him I talked to Dan Deacon before he died. He planted some doubts. I want to know if I’m done.”
It was the last thing Peroni was expecting to hear. “Listen to me,” he urged. “You’re done. Is that good enough?”
“Don’t fuck with me!” The American went from placid to furious instantly. The gun was waving around crazily again.
“OK,” Peroni agreed quietly.
“I want proof. Tell Leapman that.”
This was important. “Done.”
The gun caressed his cheek again. Peroni lifted his neck to get away from the cold, oily metal.
“I hope so,” the American murmured. “Because if Leapman’s not listening it all turns to shit around here. Tell him I’ll give him a little present real soon just as a reminder.”
“Turns to shit?” Peroni heard himself saying, without consciously forming the thought, watching the American walk away, out towards the night, not listening anymore, which was a shame.
Peroni believed him. Every single word. This man had rules. He could have killed them both. Maybe somewhere else, in different circumstances, when the pieces of the puzzle happened to fit, he would have done so, too. All he wanted were the right words, written on a piece of paper, all neat and geometrical, lined up in the magical order he sought.
That was all any of them had to do. Find the pattern, show him the runes, and then the city could quit waking up each morning wondering whether there’d be blood swimming around the floor somewhere, and that ancient tattoo cut into someone’s back.
Peroni waited till he heard the door close. Then he did his best to push back the feeling of nausea and the pain in his head, tried to concentrate, to think straight.
“Gianni?” the girl whispered, keeping close to him, shivering with the growing cold. “What do we do?”
“We wait, Laila,” he answered, with as much assurance and certainty as he could muster. “We wait a while. Just like the man said. Then we get out of these things and go somewhere nice and warm and comfortable. My friend’s place maybe. It’s not far away. Let’s sit down, huh?”
He found his way to the floor, the girl following him. Peroni closed his eyes and wondered how badly he was hurt, wondered too at the American’s closing words. Maybe the body in the car was just a taste of what was to come: random, shocking acts, designed to persuade Leapman to do the right thing. Maybe the killer had something nastier in store just to hammer home the message.
“Gianni,” the girl whispered.
“Just give it a minute,” he groaned. His head was spinning. His face hurt like hell.
Then something intervened, some semblance of sleep.
When he came to, jogged by a push from the kid, the place was different, noticeably colder and darker too. A stream of snow still circled down through the oculus. Laila had her head bent over their wrists, working at something.
“How long was I out?” he asked.
“Long time,” she said and looked up at him, half smiling. “Doesn’t matter now.”
Her mouth and her right wrist were covered in blood. Peroni saw in an instant what she’d done: spent all the time he was unconscious biting and wriggling at the plastic of her cuffs, working the flexible material over and over until she found a way through.
She stood there, half guilty, half wondering whether just to flee again. That was her natural instinct.
“That’s good,” Peroni said confidently, as if he hadn’t a clue what she was thinking. “If you reach into my jacket pocket,” he continued, “you should find a penknife there. It’s in a little compartment with a zip on it. You should be able to get at it now.”
There was a moment of hesitation, then her slim hand angled its way into his coat, an easy, familiar motion, and came out, so quickly, with the knife. And his wallet.
“Laila.”
The kid was crying. Real tears, streaming down her cheeks, more than he’d seen when the two of them faced the American, more than when they both knew they were so close to losing their lives.
“Not now,” he pleaded. “I need you to help me. I need you.”
Then she said something that made his blood run cold. Something straight from the American, said it with the same fervour, the same darting eyes looking everywhere.
“Busy, busy, busy, busy…”
A part of Peroni wanted to believe you could heal a damaged child with nothing but love and affection and honesty. But Teresa was surely right. It went deeper than that. Laila suffered from an illness, a malady as real as a fever, more damaging since it lurked inside her, unseen, unfathomable, misinterpreted by an icy, suspicious world.
Peroni turned and raised his painful wrists.
“Get busy with these, huh?” he murmured.
“Then?” she asked.
“Then we get you something to eat. And a comfortable bed. Your uncle Gianni’s got work to do. You’ve saved his skin tonight, you know.”
“I did?” she asked, only half believing him.
“You sure did. You’re not going to leave me here like this, are you?”
She thought about it, but not for long. Then she opened the knife and started to saw at the plastic.
Ten minutes later Peroni had freed the terrified caretaker, who was locked inside a portable office by the side of the building.
After that, he called Leo Falcone.