“This may sound stupid but I don’t think this is quite right,” she said, so quietly it seemed she didn’t like to hear the sound of her own self-doubt.
Costa glanced down. There was a narrow, slippery path that led to the alley of the Clivo di Rocco Savella. Then a short walk across the busy Lungotevere to some steps that ran close to the weir.
The waters looked cold and grey and angry.
“I may need your suit,” Costa told her, and heard nothing, no complaint, no objection, in return.
He was twenty-one but didn’t look like an adult to Falcone. Ludo Torchia had the shifty, stupid grin of a teenager, one who’d done something bad, and was now challenging them to find out exactly what.
Messina sat opposite. Falcone took a chair in the corner and pulled out a notepad.
“We don’t need that,” the commissario said immediately.
Falcone put the pad away and closed his eyes for a moment. From what he’d observed of Torchia already, confrontation was exactly what this strange young man wanted.
“Do us all a favour, son,” Messina began. “You know Professor Bramante. You know his boy. Tell us where Alessio is. Don’t make things worse.”
Torchia sniggered and stared back at them. He had the smell of cheap stale wine about him.
He began to pick at his fingernails.
“I don’t talk to scum like you. Why should I?”
Messina blinked furiously, then managed to calm himself. “This is a police matter,” he said through clenched teeth. “When I ask you a question, I want an answer.”
Torchia leaned over the table, looked the commissario in the eye, and laughed. “I didn’t hear a question, moron.”
“Where’s the boy?” Messina yelled.
“Dunno,” Torchia said, then went back to picking his fingernails.
“Tell us why you were in that place,” Falcone intervened, and ignored the caustic glance he got from Messina.
“I am Giorgio Bramante’s student,” he replied, as if talking to a child. “I have the right to visit any academic site he’s working on.”
Falcone struggled to interpret Torchia’s attitude. It was resentful, aggressive, unhelpful. But the student was at ease, too, and that seemed odd.
“You mean Bramante invited you there?” he asked.
“No!” An angry flush finally rose in Torchia’s cheeks. “I had to find it for myself. You ask him why that was. We were supposed to be a family. Students. Faculty. All together. The only secrets were supposed to be the ones we shared.”
“This isn’t about the site. It’s about the boy!” Messina barked back at him, leaning over the table, spittle flying from his mouth.
Torchia didn’t even flinch. Falcone had seen this type before. Even if Torchia did get a beating, he probably wouldn’t mind that much. It simply validated what he believed: that he was in the company of the enemy.
“I was there to see what was mine by rights,” he said slowly. “Something Giorgio should have shown us a long time ago.”
Falcone pulled his chair nearer the table and looked Torchia in the eye.
“A child is missing, Ludo,” he said. “Somewhere in a place that’s extremely treacherous. You were seen leaving it. You ran away—”
“Nobody likes the police,” Torchia said, hastily. “Why should I help you?”
“Because it can help Alessio?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You ran away,” Falcone repeated. “All of you. There was a reason for that. We need to know what that reason was. If something bad has happened to Alessio, you can see, surely, that you will get the blame. Unless you tell us—”
“I didn’t see him.”
He was lying. As if this were all some game. Ludo Torchia was toying with them, it seemed to Falcone, merely because he felt like it.
“Who else was there?” Messina asked. “Give me the names.”
“I don’t betray my comrades,” he said, then went back to staring at his fingernails.
Messina looked to be at the end of his tether. Torchia appeared immovable. What emotion the student possessed was suppressed tightly inside his own skinny frame.
None of the standard procedures had been followed either, all thanks to Messina’s direct instructions: Put Torchia in a room and let him stew. The formalities, the words that were supposed to be read… all the prerequisites of interviewing a suspect. A good lawyer could have a field day with the holes they’d already left open. Messina had allowed himself to become obsessed with the boy, not with any possible charges that might follow. This was, in Falcone’s eyes, not only foolish, but dangerous. The Questura had lost two high-profile cases of late, cases where guilty parties had walked free simply through breaches of procedure. It could so easily occur again.
One practical job had never taken place either. A physical search.
“Turn out your pockets,” Falcone said.
A glimmer of fear flashed in his eyes. Ludo Torchia had remembered something.
“Turn out your pockets, Ludo,” Falcone repeated. “I want to see everything. Put it slowly in front of you, item by item. Don’t leave out anything.”
Torchia swore. Then he reached into his trousers and withdrew a few crumbled tissues, some lire. A set of keys. A lighter and some cigarettes.
The backs of his hands were covered in scratches. Nail marks, Falcone thought, and reflected, miserably, that, had proper procedures been followed, this would already have been noted, would already be the subject of forensic investigation.
“You’re hurt,” he observed.
Torchia looked at his hands and shrugged. “The girlfriend got a little fresh last night. You know what they’re like.”
“I didn’t think you had a girlfriend.”
Torchia laughed.
“The jacket, too,” Falcone ordered.
“Nothing in there.”
Messina was round the table and on him, big fists grabbing at the cheap cloth. Torchia squawked, a little scared, but defiant still.
“I said…” the student screeched, trying to fight off Messina’s blows.
The commissario pulled something from Ludo’s right-hand jacket pocket and tossed it on the table. Falcone stared at the object. It was a cheap pair of toy spectacles, the kind you saw at fun fairs. The lenses were semi-opaque, divided into glittering sections.
“Alessio had a pair like that when he went missing,” Falcone said quietly. “His father told us. They were a birthday present. He turned seven yesterday.”
No one spoke. Then Torchia reached forward, picked up the spectacles, put them on, pushing them back onto the bridge of his nose when they fell forward.
“Found them somewhere. That’s all. Christ. Now I can see a million of you ugly fuckers. What kind of a crappy toy is that to give a kid for his birthday?”
He was taking them off when Messina threw the first punch. It caught Torchia on the back of the neck, sent his face flying down hard into the metal table. Blood spattered from his nose.
Messina had got in five or six more blows by the time Falcone reached them. Ludo Torchia was on the floor, cowering, arms around his face. Falcone couldn’t help but notice he was laughing.
“Sir,” Falcone said quietly, to no avail. “Sir.”
Messina dashed in a last kick, then allowed himself to be pushed back towards the cold, damp brick wall of the cell.
“This is pointless,” Falcone insisted. “If Alessio’s alive, he won’t tell. If the boy’s dead and you beat it out of him, we won’t be able to take him to court. This…” — he said the words slowly — “…won’t… work.”
Torchia was still laughing. He wiped the blood away from his mouth. It looked as if a couple of teeth had been shattered by Messina’s boot.