“Is there something wrong?”
The old man smiled and then that bony hand came out and patted him on the back again. “I’m tired, that’s all. Giorgio Bramante is a master of timing, but I imagine you’ve already noticed that. Now…”
He cast his beady eyes around the room, a look designed to stiffen the spine of anyone even contemplating slacking.
“I shall have a quick word with the troops, then I’m done for tonight. We can talk in the morning.”
“Good night,” Costa murmured, then went back to the job.
Beautiful lies. Ugly truths.
In Ludo Torchia’s dying words lay a universe of possibilities, a million ways to uncover what made Giorgio Bramante the man he had become, and exhume the fate of his son from the red Aventino earth beneath which, if logic meant anything, his remains still surely lay.
But these, Falcone reflected as he reached the staircase, were matters of conjecture. What stared him in the face now was plain fact. Rosa Prabakaran was in Bramante’s hands. He’d heard her screams on the phone line when he’d asked for proof. That sound had sent a chill, of fear and fury and shame, down Falcone’s spine. Afterwards, he was aware he’d heard something else, too: a tone in Bramante’s voice that hadn’t been there fourteen years before. Prison had coarsened this man, made something that was bad to begin with worse. Before, there had been some humanity in the man. His concern for his child had, Falcone was convinced, always been genuine. Now even that was gone, had been torn from him, gone for good.
When Bramante said he would kill the young policewoman if Falcone didn’t take her place, he was merely stating a fact. When he spelled out the conditions — the place, the time, one in the morning, less than an hour away, the absolute absence of any other officers on pain of Prabakaran’s death — Bramante’s voice had the firm, un-shakable assurance of a university professor handing out an assignment. None of this was to be the subject of argument. Falcone would do as he was told, or the woman would die. It was as simple as that, and what Falcone found a little disconcerting was how easily he was able to agree to the man’s demands.
There was no alternative. No time to put together a team. No need to risk Costa and Peroni, two men he’d leaned on too much of late, yet again.
This time was his and his alone.
He glanced back at the office to make sure no one was looking. Then, gingerly, ignoring the pain from his limbs, he walked slowly down the stairs to the ground floor and headed directly to the front counter.
Prinzivalli, the sovrintendente from Milan, a man he’d worked alongside for three decades, stood there alone, sifting papers. Falcone’s spirits fell. He didn’t have the heart or the talent to push this man around. They had known each other far too long for that.
“Can I help, sir?” The sovrintendente raised a puzzled grey eyebrow. He played rugby in his spare time and had once managed the same team in which a young, very different Nic Costa had played. Prinzivalli was as solid and trustworthy a police officer as Falcone had ever worked with.
“You’re under orders not to let me out, aren’t you?”
The sovrintendente nodded.
At that moment the bells of the old church around the corner intervened: twelve chimes. Falcone listened to the sonorous chorus of metallic sound, a collision of dissonant notes that had, he now realised, followed his life in the Questura for more than thirty years, from raw cadet to old, tired inspector. It was now past midnight in the centro storico, a time he had always loved, an hour when the modernity of Rome vanished and the streets seemed made for people, not machines. In his younger, more fanciful years, he could almost imagine the old gods rising from their distant graves, making the city alive with their presence, a magical place, where everything was possible.
Prinzivalli coughed, interrupting his reverie.
“Commissario Messina made it very clear that he does not want you to leave the premises, sir. You wouldn’t want to argue with him, would you?”
“He’s not his father, is he?”
“No.” The man in the uniform gave this some thought. “But he is commissario.”
Falcone cast an eye at the surveillance camera. It had a blind spot. If you stood between the counter and the back desk, no one saw you. It was common knowledge, useful sometimes.
He beckoned Prinzivalli there. Then he said, “Have I ever asked you to disobey orders before, Michele?”
“Yes,” the man replied dryly.
“Then we have precedent. The situation is this. I will explain it once, then you shall open the door for me. Understood?”
Prinzivalli said nothing.
“Bramante has taken that young agente, Rosa Prabakaran. Unless I meet him…” — he glanced at his watch with a small theatrical flourish — “…alone and in just under thirty-five minutes, he will kill her.”
“Good God, Leo!”
“Please. I have very little time. We know the kind of man Bramante is. We know he will do exactly as he says. I cannot for the life of me put together a team to accompany me in the time available, not one that I can trust to stay unnoticed. I have to do this on my own—”
“He wants to murder you, man!”
Falcone nodded. “So he says. But that is irrelevant. If I go, Prabakaran may live. If I don’t, she will most certainly die. The girl is young, a little naive, and my officer. My responsibility.”
Prinzivalli stayed silent.
“What I would like you to do is this: wait until one. If no one’s noticed I’m gone by then, notice for them. Raise hell. Do whatever you see fit.”
“Where are you meeting him?”
Falcone eyed him. “I’m not saying.”
“Leo…?”
“I told you. This happens on his terms or she’s dead. Now will you open that door or not?”
“You are a bad-tempered, stubborn old bastard. There are people who can help—”
“Yes,” he interrupted emphatically. “You.”
The sovrintendente looked at Falcone in his office suit, then snatched an overcoat, his own no doubt, from the stand by the door and threw it at him.
“It’s freezing out there,” he said, and stabbed at the button on the counter. The security gate flipped open.
“Thank you,” Falcone said, and, without looking back, walked outside.
The night was cold, the kind of bone-numbing cold Rome could deliver at times, one that seemed at odds with the burning airless heat of summer, just a few months away. He shuffled on the gigantic overcoat, hobbled down the street towards the cab stand, and waited, thinking.
There was always time for beautiful lies and ugly truths.
Falcone didn’t want to wake her. Besides, he knew she listened to the messages on her mobile phone religiously, never wishing to miss any human contact. Raffaella Arcangelo had experienced so little in her life. They were, in that sense, very alike.
So he called the number, waited until the robotic voice asked for his message, and then spoke, aware that he would say things — true or false? He wasn’t sure which — that he could never have broached in person.
“Raffaella,” he began, self-conscious, even in the dark, deserted Roman street, on a cold spring night, a little ashamed that, freed from the very real human rapport he enjoyed with her, it was so easy to say what he wanted. “There is something I must tell you. I apologise you must hear it like this. Unfortunately, I have no choice.”
There was a light sweeping the cobblestones. A cab, coming from the Piazza Venezia perhaps.
“This cannot go on, Raffaella. The game we’re both playing, neither of us wishing to say what we really feel. I’m grateful for what you have done for me, but that is all. I don’t love you, and I don’t wish either of our lives to be damaged by some sad pretence that I do. This isn’t your fault. If I were capable of loving, then, perhaps, it would be you. I have no idea.”