“What?”
“Remember what Leo was chasing before all this happened. He had a lead. Today we were going to narrow down all those possible places Bramante could have been staying before. There’s a whole map of them downstairs. Inspector Falcone planned to visit them. One by one…”
Just then a nearby phone began to ring. Costa walked over to pick it up, dragging Peroni in his wake.
The conference went on behind them, a ragged, monotonous drone of confused voices. But at least Bavetti seemed to be talking about investigating Falcone’s list of possible sites.
Costa said, wearily, “Pronto.”
It was a uniform man calling from a car in the field. He was struggling to maintain his composure. Costa listened and felt a cold stab of dread run down his spine. He asked several questions and made some notes of the answers. Peroni watched him in silence, knowing, in that shared, unspoken way they both recognised now, that this was important.
After a minute, he put down the phone and interrupted Messina’s rambling attempt to sum up the case so far.
“I’m talking,” Messina snapped.
“I noticed,” Costa replied. “I think we’ve found Agente Prabakaran. She’s in Testaccio,” Costa continued, as Messina struggled for words and Peroni walked over to their desks and picked up the car keys and their phones. “The horse butcher opened his shop late because Uccello never turned up for work. In the refrigerator…” He shrugged.
“Is the woman alive?” Messina asked.
“Just about,” Costa replied. “There’s a man’s body too. She was tied to him. It doesn’t sound… pretty.”
The local officer he’d spoken to had become almost hysterical when Costa had pushed him on the finer points.
“More,” Bavetti demanded, suddenly finding his voice. “Details.”
“Details?” Costa asked, amazed.
“What? Where exactly? How…?”
Peroni came back. Costa looked at him and nodded.
“I believe, Commissario,” the big man replied, dangling the car keys, “you said we’re off-duty.”
Messina’s florid face became a livid red. “Don’t play games with me, Peroni! Damn you!”
Costa turned round and slapped the notebook firmly into the commissario’s fleshy hands, with a sudden, vehement force.
“Someone’s found a dead man. And a half-dead woman who appears to have been raped. Beyond that…”
He didn’t say another word. Peroni was already heading for the door, with the speed of a man half his age.
“I know the way,” Alessio repeated, making sure he didn’t stutter.
Ludo stopped for a moment. The knife glittered, motionless.
“Little boys shouldn’t tell lies,” he said menacingly.
“Little boys don’t.”
Alessio pulled the end of the string from the spent loop on his belt, the short section, which had broken when he’d first tried to attach it. The main ball had run for several minutes, tugging on his trousers. None of them had noticed back then, in the temple room, as he’d paused for a moment, untied this second loop, and allowed the string to fall on the floor, floating against his legs, tickling like some dead, falling insect.
He held the piece of string in front of him, staring up into those crazy, scared eyes, thinking of chess and how he’d played with his father, hour after hour, in the bright sunny garden room in a house no more than a few minutes’ walk from here, out in the light of day. This, too, depended upon the endgame.
Alessio had fought to memorise each turn they’d taken since that moment: left and right, up and down. He could, he felt sure, retrace their steps, find a way back to the fallen string and the corridor to the surface, one of seven, one that Giorgio Bramante had surely not taken when he disappeared.
He could lead them out of the caves, unseen. Or…
Games always involved a victory. Winners and losers. Perhaps he had a gift, a sacrament, to make, too: six stupid students, trespassing where they weren’t wanted.
“A piece of string,” Torchia said, taunting him. “Is that supposed to make a difference?”
“Listen to him,” Dino Abati cautioned. “We don’t have many options left, Ludo. Sooner or later we’ll stumble into a hole. Or into Giorgio. Which would you prefer?”
“Ludo…” Toni LaMarca whined.
“I know the way out,” Alessio said again, and wanted to laugh. “I can take you past my father. He won’t even see you. He won’t even know you were here. I won’t tell.” He smiled, and held up his left hand, still sticky with the cockerel’s blood. “I promise.”
Torchia stared at his bloodied fingers, thinking.
He lowered the knife.
“If we do this,” Torchia threatened, “you don’t say a word. Not to him. Not to anyone. We don’t talk about you. You don’t talk about us. That’s the arrangement. Understood, little rich boy?”
“I’m not rich,” Alessio objected.
“Understood?”
Alessio looked at the knife, reached forward, and pushed it gently out of his face.
“I won’t tell a soul,” Alessio said. “I swear.”
For once, the traffic was light. they made it to Testaccio in little more than seven minutes. Four blue marked cars stood outside the market, lights flashing. Peroni knew the most senior uniform on duty. The man nodded them through into a corner of the building that was now deserted except for police. Word had gone round. The stalls were closing for the day.
Rosa Prabakaran sat huddled next to a bread stall, two female officers on either side, a blanket over her hunched frame, clutching a mug of coffee, which steamed in the chill morning air.
Peroni walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder.
She shrieked. The big cop shrank back, muttering curses about his own stupidity, taking the stream of abuse from the women as he did so.
Costa had been in these situations before. At some point Rosa Prabakaran would disclose what had happened, quietly, at her own pace, to some trained officers, all of them female, who knew how to listen. He didn’t need to do more than look at her to understand what, in part at least, she had been through.
“Agente,” Costa said quietly. “Commissario Messina will be here shortly. I suggest, very strongly, you insist on being taken back to the Questura, and talk in your own good time.”
The blanket had slipped. He’d caught sight of something unexpected: a flimsy, provocative slip of a dress underneath. Torn and muddy. She’d seen him notice. After that, her eyes didn’t move from the floor.
Costa walked around the back of the horse butcher’s stall, the shelves white and empty, and waited for the pale-faced uniformed man at the door of the refrigerator to get out of the way.
Then he went inside, aware immediately of the stench of meat and blood.
Peroni followed him. The two of them looked at the shape on a hook in the corner.
“That’s not Leo,” Costa said eventually.
“Thank God for that.”
“Too short. My guess is Enzo Uccello.”
Peroni, a squeamish man at the best of times, made himself stare at the cadaver.
“You’ve a better imagination than me, Nic,” he admitted. “I don’t envy you that.”
He turned and walked outside. Costa joined him almost immediately. Messina and Bavetti were there now, officious voices in a sea of uniforms. Teresa Lupo and her team had arrived too. The pathologist was seated next to Rosa Prabakaran, talking softly to her.