“Names,” he murmured. “Don’t mean a damn thing in this business.”
“But then you murdered that other woman. You never meant to. And still you’re hearing the voices. What do they say, Kaspar? Shake it? Are they ever going to stop?”
“Kids,” he said quietly and looked out over the river, nailing the pattern inside his head again, because in those lines existed order, sanity, a kind of peace. Trinità dei Monti hung high in the distance, the Piazza del Popolo lay to the left and somewhere behind the bulk of the Palatine hill was the Colosseum, perfect in its place, a monument to martyrs everywhere. Something else too. When Kaspar stared ahead, squinted, remembered, he could see a tiny cabin set on the roof of a block across the river. A part of him changed there. He’d taken a life for no good reason. The journey had veered down a turning he’d never expected.
He grabbed Emily’s arm firmly again, pushed her down the stairs, over to the office, and kicked the door open.
The gear was on the floor. What lay in front of them was all he had left now, proof of his diminishing options.
“Did you listen to what I said to you last night?” he barked. “Or was that dope I gave you still messing with your head?”
“I listened,” she answered quietly. “Did you listen to me?”
“Every last word.” He hesitated. “So, Agent Deacon, do you want to stay alive or not?”
She laughed right in his face. “They won’t play, Kaspar. Joel Leapman doesn’t give a damn about me. Any more than he gave a damn about Laura Lee and the others. All he wants is you. He isn’t going to hand over anything in return for my hide.”
“You’re wrong.” He looked at her. She seemed very young all of a sudden. And a part of her was really scared, he was certain of it.
He took one of the parkas out of the bag and threw it at her. “This is as warm as I could find. You’re going to need it. And those…”
He pointed to the two waistcoats, green military vests bought the week before when the idea first came to him, now all prepared, a couple of lines of little yellow canisters running up and down the front.
“I made them myself, Little Em. And I am, as always, a master of these dark arts.”
The Lizard King, the Holy Owl, Grand Master of the Universe… All the names came back to mock him.
He smiled. She was the right about the voices. That insidious WASP intuition of hers made it easier. He didn’t give a fuck how she felt now.
“You think they’re gonna fit?” he asked.
COSTA LOOKED EVERYWHERE. The block in the Via Veneto. The places they’d visited when they were searching for Laila. He even managed to track down the Deacon family’s old address, a spacious apartment in Aventino now occupied by a polite Egyptian surgeon who’d no idea what had happened to his predecessors and had seen nothing at all of a young, blonde American woman.
Traffic found the car. The vehicle had been parked illegally on the Lungotevere near the Castel Sant“ Angelo, something that rang alarm bells straightaway. Emily wouldn’t have left it there willingly: it was partly blocking one of the busiest thoroughfares in Rome. The towaway squad had pounced on it at seven that morning and it was still unclaimed. They’d also found a stolen yellow Punto in the Via Punto in the Via Appia Antica. It was beginning to look like Emily had been abducted.
Costa wanted to talk this through with someone. Peroni preferably. Or even Falcone. Perhaps he would later that morning, but he wanted to talk to someone now. And it was obvious who. So he swung the jeep back to the Questura, parked awkwardly in the last slushy place outside the morgue building and walked inside.
The police headquarters was never still, never without activity, Costa thought. This was a kind of temple to death, a constantly manned staging post on the final journey for hundreds of unfortunates each year. His own late partner, Luca Rossi, had once lain on a slab here, tended to by Teresa Lupo. Someone else could have done the job. Luca was shot. Nothing special. No autopsy needed. They knew all along who’d killed him. They got him too. Costa had made sure of that himself, in his own way.
Luca’s death hadn’t deterred Teresa for a moment. That was what she did.
Nic glanced around the room. Silvio Di Capua was supervising one of the morgue monkeys cleaning up a dissection table. Teresa was nowhere to be seen.
Costa walked over to her assistant. “Silvio?”
They got on pretty well, considering Di Capua was scared witless of most cops he met. Costa made a point of treating him with respect and, in particular, never using the nickname “Monkboy.” In return Di Capua could, on occasion, be almost helpful.
“No,” Di Capua countered instantly.
“No what?”
“No to whatever it is you want me to do. I’m not breaking the rules again. I’m not doing this instead of doing that. There’s an order to the way we work here, Nic, and I’m determined we stick to it.”
Costa couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Silvio Di Capua really did sound as if he felt in charge.
“I was just looking for Teresa.”
“What do you want? Ask me.”
“It’s personal.”
The little man scowled. “Personal? Don’t you think we have rather too much of the personal around here? We’ve got work to do. We always have.”
Costa gave him the look he’d been learning from Gianni Peroni. He’d perfected it just enough for it to work on a minor pathologist with ideas above his station.
“She’s off duty actually,” Di Capua said, blushing. “Which means she’s in here, of course, getting through some paperwork. Try the clerk’s office. She’s kicked him out for the day.”
This was something new. Teresa was famous for her aversion to paperwork. Costa walked round to the tiny cubicle and found her tapping away at the computer. He got a wary glance the moment he walked in.
“Don’t tell me there’s more on the way, Nic. I have to catch up on a few things once in a while.”
He opened out his hands, slapped the pockets of his coat. “Search me. No new customers. Honest.”
“Is it important? I’ve got people screaming for budget figures. Now I’ve summoned the courage to try to put some together I’d really like to get this done.”
“It’s important.”
She pointed to the chair and said, “In that case, sit.”
“Thanks. So what do you think about Emily Deacon?”
The sudden question surprised her. “In what way?”
“What’s driving her?”
She pulled a face that said: Isn’t it obvious? “Family. The fact that it was her dad that died. What else? Does she look like an FBI agent to you?”
“Looks can be deceptive. Lots of people think I don’t look like a cop.”
She pushed the keyboard away from her. “That’s easy. You’re… a little shorter than most. You like art, don’t eat meat and rarely lose your temper. You could pass for a sane, intelligent human being most of the time. Is it any wonder you stick out like a sore thumb around this zoo?”
“You’re too kind.”
“I know. So why the questions about Emily Deacon?”
“She’s missing. Or, to put it another way, I don’t know where she is.”
“Are you supposed to?” she asked. “I mean, she’s a grown woman. What about that pig of a colleague of hers? Does he know?”
“No. It’s just…” He didn’t want to go into the details about the previous night. He wasn’t sure what to make of them himself. “She was at my place yesterday. This morning she was gone. No note. Nothing. Then her car’s found double-parked in town, which I don’t think is like her.”
“Ooh. ”Yesterday. This morning.“ Interesting.” Teresa Lupo was rubbing her hands with glee.
“I could be wrong,” he said, ignoring the invitation to go further. “After all, she went off on her own yesterday and had a pretty interesting time.”
“Sightseeing?”
“Digging up a few facts we weren’t supposed to know.”
A rueful thought said: Perhaps more than she told you.