Teresa put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and smiled. “Just tell me the truth, Laila. Then we’ll leave it. You really didn’t see anything, did you? It was just too… bad. Too scary to look. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’d all have done the same.”
“I told you,” the girl said with a pout.
No, you didn’t, she wanted to say. Even Gianni Peroni had missed that, maybe because it needed a woman to understand how a teenage girl would react to that particular fear. Men had a curiosity they couldn’t quell. They had to watch. It was compulsive. A woman had somewhere else to go, somewhere inside herself where she could believe the world was still warm and kind and ultimately good.
She wished to God Peroni had been awake and standing there then. Because Teresa Lupo knew this kid was telling the truth, and knew, too, she was hiding something. No amount of street life, no big, shadowy pre-history, could explain the shifty expression in her eyes. There was a secret there. Maybe it was too personal-thirteen-year-olds could do things for a man too. Maybe…
You haven’t a clue, Teresa told herself. Quit guessing. Either she tells or she doesn’t.
Teresa thought about Falcone and how he would have handled an interview like this. He and Peroni were so different, used such dissimilar tactics to reach the same end. Temperamentally she was closer to Falcone. She didn’t like fishing, didn’t care for walking around a problem, looking for its weaknesses. You plunged in, asked the right questions, then stood there, arms crossed, tapping your feet loudly on the floor until the answers came. It was one reason she liked Peroni so much. Loved him even, though she wasn’t quite sure exactly what that meant. Gianni added some charity into the day-to-day routine of investigation. He got what he wanted by exploiting some innate belief that in just about everyone there existed some small spark of humanity, if only you could find it. She was in no doubt this was a weird way for a cop to proceed. Even Costa, who was once a pushover, had started to toughen up his act of late. The job did that to most of them. Why twenty years of dealing with vice made Gianni Peroni the man he was, more sensitive, not less, was beyond her.
But Peroni had gone as far as he could. It was time to lean on Falcone’s tactics a little. Besides, all she was doing was telling Laila the truth, juiced up a little.
“Do you know what it means to get fired?” Teresa asked sotto voce, casting an eye into the living room, making sure Peroni was still asleep.
Some emotion flickered in Laila’s eyes. “I’m not stupid.”
“I know that. I just wanted to make sure you understood.”
“Understood what?”
Teresa hesitated, as if she’d overstepped the mark. “It’s nothing. It’s about Gianni. It doesn’t concern you.”
“I know what being fired means,” the girl repeated.
“When that other man came, the inspector,” Teresa continued, “he asked us to go outside. Remember?”
Laila took Falcone’s banknote out of her pocket, rolled it in her fingers and almost smiled.
“Quite,” Teresa said evenly. “You heard the inspector and Gianni arguing. Did Gianni tell you what he said?”
“No,” she replied, puzzled.
“Typical.” It would have been, too. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, Laila. I shouldn’t, but you two seem to get along so maybe you ought to know. Gianni’s in trouble. Things haven’t been going so well recently.”
She let that sink in, waited for the moment, hoped she wouldn’t come to hate herself too much along the way.
“The inspector came to tell Gianni that it’s make-or-break time. Either he gets you to tell him what you know or he’s fired. No job. No money, Laila. Nothing. He’s got kids too. One about your age.”
The girl shivered and stared at the table. “It’s not true.”
Teresa shrugged. “If that’s what you want to think. It doesn’t matter. Why should you worry about Gianni anyway? You don’t even know him.”
She reached forward, touched the kid’s lank hair and hoped to God Peroni never found out about this. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. It’s none of your business. I’ve got to go soon. I’ll be upstairs for a little while. Please don’t tell him I told you.”
Teresa went up the old stone steps and found a spare bedroom. There was nothing for her there. She just wanted them to be together, Peroni and the girl. She could imagine Peroni waking up, finding the kid staring at him, ready to talk. It could work. She’d seen that extraordinary bond grow between them that morning. It had to work. The kid wouldn’t talk to anyone else.
So she lay on the cover of the bed in the dusty, musky-smelling room, closed her eyes and dreamed a pleasant dream, a stupid, childlike fantasy set in a bright world of pastel colours where the sun always shone, where families, young and old, stayed together always, sharing the years, growing closer all the time. It was the kind of dream place you never wanted to leave, a warm, embracing neverland just beyond reach.
A noise intruded into this welcome reverie: the sound of the downstairs door.
Nic, she thought. He knew as much about family as Peroni in a way. It was all wrapped up in a tight bundle inside this old, cold farmhouse buried beneath the snow off the old Appian Way. Where you could just sleep forever with a musty, ancient coverlet keeping out the freezing cold.
Except…
The door opened and closed again after a while and that didn’t add up, that could only be part of this half dream.
Maybe.
Cursing herself, Teresa Lupo threw off the stupor, forced herself awake and, with growing trepidation, went downstairs.
Peroni still slumbered in front of the fire. Nic was going through the place, room by room.
“Where’s Laila?” he asked. “Upstairs with you?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered.
Teresa Lupo went to the front window. The snow was piling down again, a thick blanket of gigantic soft flakes. Through them she could just make out a couple of fresh tracks zigzagging towards the gate, fast disappearing in the blizzard.
“Shit,” she sighed to herself. “Shit, shit and double shit. The kid’s only thirteen for Christ’s sake. How the hell am I supposed to know she’s an escapologist? Didn’t you see someone on a bike when you came here?”
Nic stuck a hand towards the blizzard beyond the window. “In that weather?”
She went back to the living room. Her handbag was open, her purse, too, the money all gone.
A big, familiar figure came and stood by her. She could sense his puzzlement without even looking at him. Peroni had some silent, unseen way of communicating his emotions.
“Where is she?” Costa asked again.
“You’ve got a bike here?”
He nodded.
“Not anymore. She must have taken it. I’m sorry, I fell asleep.”
“For Christ’s sake…” Peroni muttered under his breath.
“Excuse me! You were sleeping too. And you were the cop here, remember?”
Costa was juggling the keys to the jeep already. He looked wiped out.
“I was trying to help!” Teresa yelled, watching the two men head for the door, not bothering to look back. “I was trying…”
Then they were gone.
“Shit,” she said to no one.
She didn’t even have time to tell them it was her fault. Or to wonder: Why?