Then the old voice sounds, deeper, impossible to ignore, chanting, Look, you fucker, look and learn.
The shape in the shadows is pumping from behind at a girl who straddles the back of a big armchair, face upturned towards them. His arms hold her legs and the memory of a childhood game—wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow, an act so innocent the memory hurts—races into his head.
There are tears in Eleanor Jamieson’s eyes. The girl looks at them from across the years, pleading. Two voices burn in Nic Costa’s head, one young and innocent, one old and knowledgeable.
The man cranks up his grinding a gear, forcing himself into her with a brutal, punishing force. She screams from the agony. She begs for his intervention.
This is just a dream, kid, no one gets to change the past, grunts the old voice.
Then he hears her screaming… I’ll tell I’ll tell I’ll tell.
Nothing changes, not even a break in the rhythm of the panting man behind.
The figure forces himself harder into her. The chair leaps forward propelled by his momentum. A face emerges into the light, distorted, ugly. It wears the mask, grunting, grunting.
He tries not to watch but the mask is staring at him, something alive behind those dead black eyes, the old voice rising, laughing, Look, you fucker, look.
And in the corner, in the darkness, something else. Another pair of bright young eyes, hidden, terrified.
ADELE NERI WALKED out into Cerchi the way she had come, through the main entrance, straight to where Neri had left his men. She blinked at the sunlight then brushed down the cobwebs and crap from her black cashmere coat. Bruno Bucci and his men were standing in the shadows next to a “Keep Out” sign that lay half askew behind some barbed wire marking the site.
She smiled and walked over to him. Bucci nodded.
“Mrs. Neri,” he said carefully. The other men watched him like a hawk. “Is your husband OK in there? I’m a little concerned, if you want to know the truth.”
She put a slim hand on his arm. “Of course he’s OK, Bruno. You know him.” She stared at the men, not letting go until they dropped their eyes to the ground. “You all know him.”
Bucci was trying to make some private contact with his eyes. She didn’t play ball. She just lit a cigarette and stared down the big, busy road, watching the traffic.
“He told you what to do, didn’t he?” she asked without looking at him. “Mickey couldn’t hurt his old man.”
A taxi drew up a little way along from them. They watched a tall, dark figure get out. He was carrying a leather bag.
“It’s not Mickey I’m worried about,” Bucci grumbled.
They watched Vergil Wallis walk slowly towards them, swinging the bag, whistling some old tune, face expressionless, eyes never leaving the mouth of the cave. He came to stand between them, raised his arms high up in the air and said to Bucci, “Well—?”
A couple of strong hands undid the leather overcoat and went up and down Wallis’s chest, then down to his belt, down his trousers. Bucci swore, put a hand around the man’s left ankle and came up with a gleaming silver hunting knife. He held the blade up in front of Wallis’s face.
“Forget something?” Bucci asked.
“Guess so,” Wallis replied nonchalantly. “It’s these early mornings. I’m getting too old for them.”
Bucci looked at the knife then passed it to one of his minions. “This has gone far enough, Mr. Wallis. Why don’t you just walk away? We can pass on the money. We can pass on any messages too. You can count on me to get what you’re buying. This… disagreement needs to stop now.”
Wallis laughed in his face. “Wow. I knew Neri was losing it. But so soon? Are you making the decisions already, Bruno?”
The big Italian hood fought to control his temper. “I’m just trying to draw a line under all this shit.”
Wallis patted him hard on the shoulder. “Don’t bother. You’re still new to all this, man.” He nodded towards the rock. “You don’t want to step out of line now, not with him still around. Mr. Neri wants to see me. I want to see him. That’s all there is to it.”
Bucci shook his head and reached for the leather bag.
Adele got there first and said, “I can do this.”
She lifted it up to her chest, ran open the big bronze zip and rummaged thoroughly through the contents with her right hand. It took a good minute or more. Then she smiled at Vergil Wallis.
“You got a lot of money there,” she said. “I hope you think it’s worth it.”
“I hope so too,” he murmured and caught the bag as she flung it at him.
Vergil Wallis walked into the darkness. They listened to him whistling and then the sound died altogether.
Adele leaned close to Bruno Bucci, looked up into his big, impassive face and ran a finger down his arm.
“Bruno?” she asked. “Do you boys really want to hang around here all day?”
BY THE TIME Teresa Lupo arrived, the door to Miranda Julius’s apartment was down, torn from its hinges by the entry team. Men were swarming everywhere, opening drawers, scattering their contents on the floor, looking for anything.
She walked straight into Suzi’s room. They hadn’t reached there yet. She was glad. It gave her time to think.
There was a sound from the corridor, a gentle cough. She turned to face it and Falcone stood in the doorway looking as grateful as he could manage.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Why am I here?”
Falcone stroked his angular silver beard and looked as if he were asking himself the same question. “For luck I guess. Maybe I’m getting superstitious in my old age. We could use some luck.”
“No sign of Nic or Wallis? I heard when I was leaving.”
He shook his head. “What made you come to this room first? Do you think there’s something we should be looking for?”
“No. Nic and I did look, didn’t we? It’s just—” The conviction had grown in the speeding police car on the way. “I should have said something when we were here before. This room doesn’t feel lived in. Not at all. People leave their mark. If you go into the mother’s room you can still feel her presence. There’s mess. Chaos. This—”
She took another look to make sure. “This is for our benefit. Do we really know for sure that Suzi Julius exists?”
Falcone’s eyes didn’t leave her. “We’ve got video of someone getting on that bike. We’ve got the photos the mother gave us.”
“I know. But apart from that?”
“No.” Falcone sat down on a small cheap chair and looked around the bedroom. “Maybe that was all for our benefit too. Let’s face it. If you wanted to stage something for the police there’s no better place than the Campo. We’re always around. She’d know she wouldn’t have to scream for long. You don’t need to be a genius to see there’s CCTV there either. It’s hanging from the lamp posts.”
Teresa could see he was right. “But why?”
Falcone walked silently back into the big living room. She followed, becoming aware of the roar of traffic from outside.
“Look,” he said, and pointed to a pile of old maps. They were detailed drawings of archaeological digs, all over the city out into the suburbs and beyond. She sifted through the top of the pile. There wasn’t one she’d heard of. “The Julius woman was interested in these places too,” he said. “How many reasons can there be for that?”
Peroni was bent double over the woman’s notebook computer, thrashing at the keyboard. Teresa crouched next to him, unthinkingly put her hand on his shoulder and watched, in amazement, as he hammered the keys, working through the machine.
“How the hell do you know about computers?” she asked.