He stopped for a moment and stared at her, bemused. His right eye was a puffy red mass, almost closed. He looked awful. “I got kids, Teresa. Who else is supposed to fix their problems?”
It had never occurred to her how family shaped a man in such small, unpredictable ways. All her preconceptions about Peroni seemed false.
“Gianni,” she said softly. “What the hell happened to you? Have you seen a doctor about that?”
He laughed. “It’s a punch in the face, for Christ’s sake. Ask me something important. Ask me about her reasons.”
“Which are?” she asked and wondered whether she really wanted to know.
“Good ones,” Peroni replied and pulled up some photos on the computer.
Teresa Lupo watched as he flicked through shot after shot and wished she’d stayed where she belonged, safe in the morgue.
Peroni pointed to one of a contemporary Randolph Kirk standing at the dig in Ostia, clearly unaware someone was furtively taking his picture. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement and perhaps a little fear. “We’ve still no idea who she is really. According to the British the only woman of that name with a current passport is sixty-seven years old. Also we found these—”
There was a pile of passports on the table. “Another British one. American. Canadian. New Zealand. She looks different on every one. Different hair colour. Different style. If you’d given me this back when I was on narcotics and asked me her true profession, I’d have said she was a mule. But we just don’t know. She’s into photography though. This…” he picked up the picture of Kirk, “… was the inspiration for the photo she gave us to establish a link between Kirk and Suzi. It never existed. She just took his head from that picture and pasted it into the background of one she had of Suzi at the fountain. Kirk was never there. Kirk never threatened anyone.”
“Perhaps,” Falcone said, “it was the other way round. She was blackmailing Kirk.”
Teresa tried hard to think about Miranda Julius. If it was an act, it was a very good one.
Peroni pulled out an envelope, extracted two prints and she believed there was a glimmer of light in the darkness. These were, it seemed, from the series she had been handed by Regina Morrison. They had the same seamy quality, the same backdrop. The time was sixteen years earlier. In one the young Miranda Julius—or whatever she was really called—stood next to Emilio Neri, a big, innocent smile on her face, a glass of something in her hand. Flowers in her younger, brighter blonde hair, the petals falling down onto that stupid ceremonial shift. Teresa Lupo wanted to pick the thing up and tear it into shreds, unwind the years.
He took out the second print and placed it over the first. Miranda was naked now, pale body lolling back drunkenly on what looked like a cheap, fake Roman couch. Her legs were wound round the large, cloaked body of a man who was pumping away for all he was worth and not getting very far either. It was Beniamino Vercillo, already looking old and past it. Teresa stared into the blank eyes of that young face and tried to imagine what it would be like to be in that room. Maybe they thought Miranda was so out of it she didn’t understand what was happening. That if they poured enough booze and dope down these dumb kids they’d forget half of what went on and think the rest was as much their fault as anyone’s. You could work that trick on someone like Barbara Martelli, particularly if you threw in a nice job in the police as a reward. It wasn’t like that for Miranda. There was physical pain there. There was resentment, hatred too at having this animal steal her innocence on some cheap couch in a stinking damp cave.
“There are more,” Peroni said, reaching for the prints.
Falcone abruptly put his hand on the envelope. “Not now.” He looked at her a little slyly. “So what do you think?”
It didn’t require a genius. She smoothed back her dark hair, wondering how bad she looked just then. The work clothes were back on. Her mind was in order. But she still felt out of sorts. “Miranda, or whoever she was, came back for vengeance. But why wait so long?”
“Because this wasn’t just about getting raped by these creeps,” Peroni said. “One of those girls died and Neri told everyone it was a drug overdose. He told Wallis that too. From what we’ve seen it must have been a pretty plausible story. Until we fished that body out of the bog.”
There was some logic there, she thought. Just not enough. “So why doesn’t she just kill the bastard? Why go to this trouble?”
Peroni took out a handkerchief and dabbed his damaged eye, which was surely leaking something and must have hurt like hell. “Which bastard would that be?” he wondered. “Mickey? Maybe. Maybe she’s not sure. Maybe she knew all along and was just too scared to say. Until she realizes she can finally prove it and, bingo, it’s the first plane to Rome. So one day Barbara picks up the phone and it’s Miranda saying, ”Hi, guess who’s in town and you’ll never guess what I heard. Our old initiation girlfriend from the fuck club didn’t OD. Some bastard cut her throat and got away with it.“ Can you imagine Barbara, even the somewhat crooked Barbara we now know existed, enjoying that?”
Teresa Lupo continued to be amazed by the respect they gave their murderous former colleague. She bent down, removed the handkerchief from him, dabbed gently at the wound. Peroni was right. Nothing was cut. It was just swelling, and some weeping from the bruised eye. She touched the corner of his cheek lightly to remove some of the liquid.
“This would explain why the lovely Barbara wanted to put a bullet in my head too, presumably. You can dab away anything wet here, Gianni, but if you touch anyplace else I’m confiscating the hankie and sending you to hospital. Understood?”
Peroni wriggled in his tight grey suit, took back the hankie and touched it gingerly on the precise spot. “Thanks. Be honest with yourself, Teresa. In her shoes, in those circumstances, what did you expect her to do? Explain? These were women with a mission. God help anyone who got in their way.”
Falcone bent down and peered into Peroni’s damaged face. “Miranda did kill someone. Beniamino Vercillo. We’ve got the mask. It was dumped in a bin nearby. It’s got blonde hairs on it. I’d put money on them being hers. She had the personal motive. We’ve got the proof here. But she also wanted to expose those papers and bring Neri down for good. It wasn’t enough, all this stuff about the missing girl. We’d got distracted then by Barbara killing Kirk.”
“And me… nearly,” she interjected.
“And you,” he agreed. “All the same, she had to keep the pressure up. She identified that hair-band from Ostia which could have belonged to anyone. She identified Mickey when I doubt he’s even been near whoever ”Suzi“ really is. The rest, I don’t know. Maybe it would be hard for her to get to Neri and Mickey. Maybe… He’ll be OK, won’t he?”
Falcone was grasping for ideas in the dark and struggling to find them.
“He’ll be fine if he can stop poking it,” she replied. Teresa recalled what Regina Morrison had said about the ritual and the roles each participant would play. “She’s what they made her, Neri and the rest. A Maenad. A woman who’s all sweetness and light, a warm bed and anything else you want when times are good. And the banshee from hell when she feels she, or one of the sisterhood, has been wronged. Think of it from Miranda’s point of view.” She pointed at the picture, with the figure in the mask humping and grunting away. “Who would you want to kill? Just this sad bastard?”
“The whole damn lot of them,” Peroni said softly. “As nastily as possible. I’d want to watch them tear each other apart and dance on their graves afterwards.”
They looked at each other, lost for words. Then a woman officer walked through, smiled briefly at Teresa Lupo, and said, “We’ve picked up Neri’s lieutenant and a couple of sidekicks. In Cerchi. They’re not talking.”