“I told you! I was a father too. Like Bramante. Leo wasn’t. He and I were two human beings looking at the same facts from very different parts of the universe. All I could think of was Alessio Bramante, somewhere inside that blasted hill. Hurt perhaps. Unconscious. Capable of being rescued, and that is what any father would hope to do in those circumstances. It’s something genetic that leaps out from under your skin. Save the child. Always save the child, and ask questions later. Everything else was just a side issue. Leo has this insufferable ability to detach himself from the emotional side of a case. I resented that.”
He dashed back the last of his coffee.
“And I envied it, to be honest,” he added. “Leo was right. I was wrong. I knew that back then but I was too stubborn to admit it. We should have been asking a lot more while we were trying to find Alessio. But Giorgio Bramante was a good man, a well-connected, middle-class university professor. And they were a bunch of grubby, dope-smoking students. It all seemed so obvious. I was a fool.”
Emily reached over and touched his hand. Something seemed to stir inside her at that moment. A warm feeling below the pit of her stomach. It was impossible to tell whether the sensation was good or bad, pleasure or pain.
“Arturo, we don’t know what happened. Perhaps those students did kill Alessio. Accidentally, maybe. Those caves were dangerous. Perhaps the child simply escaped them and fell down some hole. And they were too frightened to admit their part in it all. Or…”
Nic’s idea wouldn’t leave her, and it wasn’t just because its very substance was so typical of his character, such a telling reminder of why she loved him.
“…or perhaps he’s still alive.”
He glanced at her, then his eyes meandered to the window, but not before she detected the sadness in them.
“He’s not alive, Emily. Don’t fool yourself.”
“We don’t know,” she insisted. “We’re in the dark about so many things. Why the boy was there in the first place. Why Bramante left him. The truth is we don’t understand much of anything about that man.”
“That’s true.” Arturo admitted it miserably.
“Even now,” she went on. “Where the hell is he? He must have access to equipment. To money. To the news. But I can’t believe he’s holed up in some apartment somewhere. It would be too dangerous, and Giorgio Bramante isn’t a man who’ll take unnecessary risks. Not when he thinks he’s got unfinished business.”
He brightened immediately.
“Come, come. It’s obvious where Giorgio is.”
“It is?”
“Of course! He spent most of his life in the Rome the rest of us never see. Underground. Have you never been there?”
“Only once. I went to Nero’s Golden House. It made me claustrophobic.”
“Ha! Let an old policeman tell you something. The Domus Aurea is just one tiny fraction of what’s left. There’s an entire underground city down there, almost as big as it was in Caesar’s day. There are houses and temples, entire streets. Some of them have been excavated. Some of them were just never fully filled with earth for some reason. I talked to a couple of the cavers Leo called in. They hero-worshipped Giorgio. The man had been to places the rest of them could only dream about. Half of them unmapped. That’s where he is, Emily. Not that it does us any good now, does it? If we wanted to find Giorgio today, the best person to ask would be… Giorgio! Wonderful.”
She thought about this, and the stirring in her stomach ceased. She asked, “I imagine you never put much store in forensic evidence, did you?”
“Not unless I was really desperate,” he admitted. “That’s all they think of these days, isn’t it? Sitting around waiting for some civilian in a white coat to stare at a test tube, then point at a suspect lineup and say, ‘That one.’ Use science if you have to. But crimes are committed by people. If you want answers, ask a human being. Not a computer.”
“I have a pathologist friend you should meet. She half agrees with you.”
“She does?”
“I said ‘half.’ Now may I make a call?”
Arturo Messina passed over the handset, then, out of idle curiosity, plugged in the conference phone too.
He listened to the brief, lucid, and highly pointed conversation that followed. Then he observed, “I would like to meet this Dr. Lupo sometime, Emily. You should rest now. We men here must think about lunch.”
The prevailing wind had changed direction overnight. Now it was a strong, blustery westerly drawing moisture and a bone-chilling cold from the grey, flat waters of the Mediterranean before rolling over the airport and the flat lands of the estuarial Tiber to form a heavy black blanket of cloud which killed the light, casting the city in a monotone shade of grey.
They were standing in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, shivering, wondering where to begin. Get nosy, Falcone had said. It was, for him, an exceptionally vague command.
Peroni was crouching down, peering through the keyhole.
“I can’t see a thing,” he complained. “Are you sure about this? It’s not just one of your tricks?”
“What tricks?” Costa demanded, pushing him out of the way to look for himself.
The avenue of cypresses was there as he remembered, and the gravel path, now shiny with rain. His own father had showed him this small secret when Costa was no more than a boy. That day, the sun had been shining. He could still recall St. Peter’s standing proud and grand across the river, set perfectly at the centre of the frame made by the trees and the path under a sky the blue of a thrush’s egg. But today all he saw after the dark green lines of foliage was a shapeless mass of cloud, deep swirls of grey obscuring everything they consumed. From the corner behind them, which led off in the direction of the Circus Maximus, came a sound that reminded him of why they were there. The noise of happy young voices rose above the high wall keeping the school from the public, a vibrant clamour of life protected from the harshness of the world by Piranesi’s tall, white defences, like the ramparts of some small, fairy-tale castle.
“I’m sure,” Costa told Peroni, and took his head away from the door. The two Carabinieri who were always stationed here, for some bizarre reason deputed to guard the mansion of the Knights of Malta, were watching them, interested.
“Childhood memories are rarely reliable, Nic,” Peroni declared with a sage nod. “I spent years convinced I had an Aunt Alicia. Right up to the age of… oh, twelve or so. The poor woman was completely fictitious. Which was a shame, because she was a sight nicer than most of my family.”
One of the blue uniforms came over and gave them an evil look.
“What do you want?” the Carabiniere asked. He was about Costa’s age, taller, good-looking, but with a pinched, arrogant face.
“A little comradely help wouldn’t go amiss,” Peroni replied, pulling out his ID card and the most recent photo they had of Giorgio Bramante. “Please tell me this charming individual is fast asleep on a bench round the corner somewhere. We can deal with him after that. No problem.”
Leo Falcone knew it had to be said. Out of necessity. And to bring Arturo Messina back down to earth.
“He could be somewhere else altogether,” Falcone insisted. “Perhaps they argued. The child ran away…”
Messina’s scowl returned. “They didn’t argue. The father would have mentioned it. I do wish you’d concentrate on what’s important here, Leo. A missing boy.”
“I am,” Falcone replied sharply. “There’s very little left for us to do other than the obvious. The Army have sent in two more specialists to see how far they can get. Those caves are unmapped. From what I’ve been told, some probably run as far down as ground level, then to springs or waterways. The channels could be just large enough for a child, but too small for anyone else.”