“Nowhere to go…” Costa began saying, then found his voice drowned out by a familiar sound.
The high-pitched screech of a small, overworked scooter engine, a mechanical, too-loud bee buzz, rose up from the main street, getting more vocal, more angry, as it approached.
To his astonishment, the bike had crossed the stone barriers, worked its way through the officers and marked cars, and was now accelerating up the hill. The middle-aged man at the controls gunned the little engine and dropped another gear to get some speed, turning to shake his fist at the cops, a little unsteadily, and maybe not through mere gravity either.
Costa recognised the model. It was a scarlet Piaggio Vespa ET4, a retro machine clothed in 1960s styling to give it the look of the original from some old black-and-white movie in the old Rome of Fellini and Rossellini.
This unexpected sight silenced them alclass="underline" Falcone and his captor; Costa; the baffled and tardily irate uniforms who let it slip past them.
The figure in black watched the Vespa approach, then picked up Falcone by the scruff of his overcoat and saw something, an opportunity perhaps.
Costa assessed the situation around him. A dozen officers, at least six vehicles, all with four wheels. A perfect closedown for a man on foot or in a car. But with some fake sixties Vespa…
He took one step forward and found himself facing the gun.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Costa said quietly.
Falcone found his voice. He turned his head as best he could, looked his captor straight in the face, and told Nic, “This is Giorgio Bramante. He only ever did one stupid thing in his entire life, as far as I’m aware. I thought he was still paying for it.”
“You thought right,” the man said, and pressed the barrel of the gun tight against Falcone’s temple.
Raffaella was screaming again. The rattle of the bike got louder. Costa weighed his chances: next to nothing. It didn’t make a difference. He had to try.
Then something extraordinary occurred. Bramante leaned close to Leo Falcone’s ear and whispered something, his eyes never leaving Costa, always ready for the attack. The weapon flashed hard against Leo’s head. Bramante released his grip. The inspector went down, clutching his skull.
The fake Vespa reached them at that moment, lurching over the cobbles, the curious drunk at the handlebars mouthing something faintly obscene. Bramante timed what came next perfectly, before Costa could intervene. He jumped out in front of the scooter, waving the gun at the rider until he braked, punching the bewildered idiot out of the saddle, then picking the machine off the ground, revving that high-pitched engine up into the red, and leaping up the hill, front wheel rising.
The two officers from the Fiat across the junction had their weapons out. The man on the motorcycle was jinking to the right, trying to head past them, into the skein of alleyways that got narrower and narrower into the heart of Monti, an area where no car stood a chance against a man on a fast, agile bike.
“No guns!” Falcone yelled, clawing himself to his feet on unsteady, wavering legs. “There are civilians here, dammit!”
No one argued with the old inspector when he sounded like that. The uniforms let their weapons drop.
Costa walked over and offered Falcone his arm. The older man took it, furious, then hobbled, in obvious pain, to the crossroads, staring at the fumes of the departing scooter as it disappeared down a turning ahead.
“You’re bleeding,” Costa said, and held out a clean white handkerchief. It wasn’t necessary. Raffaella Arcangelo was already at Falcone’s side, distraught, wiping his face, checking the damage, which was minor. A cut lip. A bruise starting to stain his temple where Bramante’s weapon had struck.
Falcone let her fuss over him, scowling all the while in the direction of the vanished bike.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, Raffaella,” he told her curtly. “Please. This is too much fuss.”
Another police van had navigated the gaping bystanders in the Via degli Zingari. It was now stationary behind Peroni, Emily, and Teresa Lupo, none of whom knew quite what to do next.
A stout, powerful-looking man got out. He was in his thirties, wearing a black woollen overcoat and the disdain that went with rank. Nic Costa had already decided, for no good reason, he didn’t much like Commissario Bruno Messina.
Falcone watched the newcomer approach.
“You know, Leo,” the commissario said, shaking his head, as if dealing with amateurs, “it would be nice if, just this once, you were where you were supposed to be. Home.”
Falcone said nothing, just nodded with that brief smile that was too professional to be classed as insolence.
“Did he say much?” Messina asked. “An explanation? Anything?”
Costa thought of that last whispered message. Bramante meant it to have some private significance, he thought.
“He said,” Falcone replied, looking a little bewildered, a little baffled, “that he was sorry, but I’d have to be the last now. Number seven.”
Commissario Messina listened and then, to Costa’s disgust, burst out laughing.
“I want everyone in the van,” Messina ordered when his private amusement had receded. He pointed to Falcone, Costa, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo. “You four are back on duty, as of this moment.”
Raffaella was squawking a protest already, about Falcone’s sick leave, his injuries, his physical difficulties.
“You…” Messina interrupted her. “…and Agente Costa’s girlfriend here are in protective custody. One of the cars will take you to the Questura. You can wait there.”
“And where,” Teresa Lupo interjected, just loud enough to override the shrieks of protest from Emily and Raffaella, “are we going, might I ask?”
Bruno Messina smiled.
“To see number five.”
Book 3
Flesh and Bone
Giorgio Bramante had been a model prisoner. Commissario Messina had removed the man’s full prison records from his large black briefcase that morning, reading carefully through them as the control van navigated the traffic from Monti to the Aventino. Bramante had spent fourteen unremarkable years in jail after being found guilty of murder in a trial that had triggered many conflicting emotions at the time. No one liked unfinished stories about missing children. No one was happy when an investigation went bad because the police fouled up, and on this occasion in the most unexpected of ways, one in which the wronged party — Bramante — went to prison while the guilty — the students who had apparently kidnapped his son and refused to disclose his fate — went free.
Five of them, anyway.
As Costa listened to Bruno Messina, watching Falcone’s attentive face as he did so, he began to realise the Bramante case was still alive, for both of these men. At the time, Falcone had been on the brink of promotion to inspector, a promising sovrintendente underneath Messina’s commissario father, who had retired from the force in disgrace not long after the case against Bramante’s students had collapsed. Messina senior had seen his career torn apart by what happened in the wake of seven-year-old Alessio Bramante’s disappearance. That fact clearly caused his son pain to this day. The Messinas were, as the entire Questura knew, a police family going back several generations. The uniform ran in the blood. There were professional reasons for Messina, and his father, to be dissatisfied, too, ones Falcone surely shared. Cases that involved missing children demanded resolution more than most. For both parents. Beatrice Bramante, although she had divorced her husband while he was in jail, was still alive and living in Rome. And for the officers involved.