“That’s why you feel alive,” Ludo replied, and Alessio realised he approved of that answer.
Ludo’s eyes hunted each of them, seeking a target. Finally, they fell on Alessio.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Little boy.”
Alessio said nothing. Somewhere inside himself, he felt some small beast rise on red wings.
“Spoilt little brat…” Ludo went on, bending down, in a way that spoke condescension in every crook and bend of his lanky body. “What does some rich little kid, whose daddy thinks he knows everything, have to say for himself, huh?”
Alessio flew at him then, nails scratching, fingers scrabbling, letting out some furious, pent-up rage that had been waiting so long to surface.
He made a discovery at that point, too. When he felt this way, when the world was nothing but some bleeding scarlet wall of flesh and pain at which he could claw with his strong, lithe fingers, nothing felt wrong. Nothing existed that could be labelled “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.” In the wild and screaming place that his anger took him lay some kind of clear, hard comfort he’d never quite found before.
It elated him. Ludo was right. It made him feel alive.
His fingers tore at the hands of his foe. His nails scratched and found purchase on skin. Ludo was yelling, words of fear and pain and frenzy.
“Shit!” Ludo screeched. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Get the little bastard off me. Get—”
Alessio stopped, then smiled up at him. The marks of his own fingers ran in parallel scrawled lines down the back of Ludo’s hands.
It didn’t prevent him getting the knife out. Alessio stared at the blade. It was still stained with the blood of the cockerel, the bird that had choked out its life, drop by drop, somewhere in these caves. In a place his own father might well have passed by now, if he’d started looking.
“Ludo…” Dino murmured.
Alessio glanced at him. Dino was weak. Weakness was part of his character. He wouldn’t stand in Ludo’s way. Nor would any of them. They were, Alessio saw, lesser creatures, on a lower part of the hierarchy.
He raised his small hand, still painful from clawing at Torchia the moment before, a calm, unhurried gesture, one that said: Quiet.
He watched the knife rise in front of him.
“This would be so easy…” Ludo muttered.
The rest of them stood around like scared idiots. Alessio wondered what his father would have said in a situation like this. And whether this was all part of the test.
Alessio Bramante looked into Ludo Torchia’s eyes, recognised something there, and waited until Ludo saw this, too.
Then, and only then, he smiled and said, “I know the way.”
They’d searched all night, more than a hundred officers in all. Every last part of the Aventino. Every car park. Every blind alley. They’d made a cursory run past all the sites that appeared on Falcone’s lists, not that there was much to see in the dark, much to do beyond a check for recent tire marks.
Now they were engaged in a muddled, directionless conference of team leaders in the large, crowded room next to Falcone’s empty office, Costa and Peroni tagging along because it was unclear to whom, exactly, they were answering at that moment. Precious little was apparent at all, even after nine hours of solid, sometimes frantic, labour.
The one firm lead Messina and his new inspector Bavetti had to show was something Costa thought Falcone would have picked up in minutes. Early the previous afternoon, Calvi, the horse butcher, had reported one of his three vans stolen. The vehicle possessed a cargo compartment that was, for obvious reasons, impossible to see into from outside, and highly secure. The van was still unaccounted for, though every police car in the city, marked and unmarked, now had its number. Gone, too, was Enzo Uccello, Bramante’s cellmate and fellow worker at the horse abattoir, who had failed to return to work at four p.m. as expected. Maybe they’d been right to think that Uccello was helping Bramante on the outside. Bavetti certainly considered that a strong possibility. It occurred to Costa that, if true, this told only part of the story. Enzo Uccello had been sent to jail three years after Bramante. He’d been inside, without parole, of no practical use whatsoever, when the earlier killings had taken place. What help he had to offer Bramante was surely limited to the last few months.
Details like these didn’t seem to bother Bavetti, a man who was a little younger than Bruno Messina, tall, nondescript, and apt to speak little, and then only in clipped sentences upon which he seemed unwilling to expand. Both men appeared uncertain of themselves, racked with caution, because they feared the consequences of failure. There was a severe lack of experience in the Questura at that moment, and it would make the search for Leo Falcone and Rosa Prabakaran doubly difficult.
Not that Costa expected himself or Peroni to be engaged in it for much longer. Messina’s patience with them was wearing thin. He’d barely spoken to them all night. And now, in front of several other senior officers, he had virtually accused them of being party to Leo’s disappearance.
Costa had laughed, had been unable to do anything else. The charge was ludicrous. Why would they aid Leo in doing such a thing? And why would they wait for Prinzivalli to raise the alarm? It was ridiculous and he told Messina so to his face.
Peroni took the accusation more personally. He still stood, big, scarred face close into Messina’s florid features, and demanded an apology and a retraction, something the rest of the men in the room would have loved to hear from this green commissario’s lips, which was one good reason why it would never happen.
The big man tried for the third time. “I want that withdrawn. Sir.”
Peroni was drawing nods from the older men in the room, which did little to help their cause. There would be a reckoning when this was done, Costa knew, and he found himself caring little about which way the blame would fall. Leo was missing, along with Rosa Prabakaran, who had, he assumed, been taken as the price of Falcone’s surrender, in the same way Bramante had done with his earlier victims. They had no idea what had become of either of them. The game, once again, was entirely in Bramante’s hands. Messina and Bavetti lacked both the foresight and talent to second-guess the man. Perhaps Leo Falcone did, too, though things had seemed a little more equal when he was around.
“Do you want us on this case or not?” Costa asked, when Messina avoided Peroni’s demands again.
The commissario leapt to the bait, just as Costa had expected.
“No,” he spat back, as much out of instinct as anything. “Get the hell out of here. Both of you. When this is over and done with, then I’ll make some decisions about your future.”
“We know Leo!” Peroni bellowed. “You can’t kick us out just because it makes your life easier.”
Messina looked at his watch. “Your shift’s over. Both of you. Don’t come back till I call.”
Costa took Peroni’s elbow and squeezed. For the life of him he didn’t understand what Messina would have left to talk about once they were gone. He and Bavetti looked lost for what to do next.
“Worms,” Costa said simply.
Bavetti screwed up his pinched face. The man hadn’t even taken a good look at Falcone’s paperwork before taking over the case. He’d simply sent officers out into the Rome night, looking everywhere, flinging manpower at shadows.