He was holding the hand of an untidy, overweight woman of middle age, a woman with a blank, rather puzzled expression on her flat, featureless face. She wore a long pink cotton shift and large, open-toed sandals. Next to her was a skeletal, sickly-looking man, perhaps fifty, perhaps older, with a pinched, tanned face and a skimpy grey beard that matched the meagre hanks of hair clinging to his skull.
Neither of them looked remotely familiar from any of the photos of witnesses or related individuals Costa had seen, and tried to commit to memory, in the case.
But that wasn’t the worst thing. Peroni put it into words.
“Good grief,” the big man said with a sigh. “We got it wrong all along, didn’t we?”
They stared at the screen, grateful he was the one who had the guts to say it.
“I thought we were looking for a nice kid,” Peroni said, finishing their train of thought.
“It’s just one photo,” Teresa reminded him.
It was, too. One photo of a child, no more than seven, turning to stare towards the camera, his features tautened into an expression of pure hatred, of unimaginable, unspoken violence directed straight into the lens.
“He was Giorgio’s son,” Peroni pointed out.
“Perhaps he still is,” Costa added grimly.
Back in the Questura, Bruno Messina was beginning to feel a touch more in control. Now he sat at the head of the table in his own conference room, a smaller, more private place than the sprawling quarters Falcone preferred when talking to his staff. Messina believed in delegation, in keeping his immediate officers under full scrutiny while they — in the current jargon — “cascaded” down his desires, and pressure, to those below.
Bavetti was there with two men of his choosing, along with Peccia, head of the specialist armed squad and Messina’s deputy. Forensic had, to Messina’s displeasure, decided they wished to be represented by Silvio Di Capua from the path lab, in place of the absent Teresa Lupo. He would, the commissario thought, deal with her later. There was a mutinous atmosphere in that part of the Questura, and Teresa Lupo surely bore much of the blame. Technically, though, they were separate departments, answerable to civilian officers. It would take a little while and some persuasion for him to work a result there.
Di Capua had brought to the meeting a lanky, bald, odd-looking individual from the university who introduced himself as “Dr. Cristiano.” This odd pair had turned up with a laptop computer, a set of maps of the city, and a report produced principally by Peroni the previous evening.
“Let me make it abundantly clear,” Messina said, opening the meeting, “that my first priority in this investigation is the safe and early release of Inspector Falcone. Nothing is to be spared to that end. No expense, no resource. Is that understood?”
The police officers nodded gravely.
Silvio Di Capua, who had clearly learnt at the knee of his mistress, rolled his eyes and declared, “Well… yes! Did you drag me away from my work to tell me that?”
“I want our priorities clear,” Messina insisted.
“The living — if indeed Leo is still living — come before the dead. I must try to remember that in future.”
“What do we have, Bavetti?” Messina demanded, ignoring Silvio.
The inspector cleared his throat. “Prabakaran is being debriefed by two specialist female officers. This is a slow and patient process, as the procedures allow—”
“I don’t want it too slow and patient,” Messina interrupted.
“Of course.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She’s saying a lot, sir. The officer is being extremely helpful, in the circumstances. Prabakaran is a brave and conscientious policewoman—”
“I hate to interrupt the hagiography here,” Di Capua broke in, “but does she by any chance have a clue where she was held?”
“We haven’t got that far,” Bavetti said, taken aback at being interrogated by forensic.
“Well, what the hell are you asking her about?” Di Capua demanded.
“The woman was raped. She’s with two specialist officers who are trained in dealing with cases like this. They’re going through what happened very carefully—”
“Fine,” the pathologist cut in. “Let me point out three things. First, we know she’s been raped. Second, we know who did it. Third, Falcone’s missing. Asking this poor woman about her getting raped doesn’t help us find him. We need locations. We need facts.”
Bavetti shrugged. “There are procedures…”
“Screw the procedures!”
Di Capua looked at Bruno Messina, pleading. “How,” he went on, “do you think she’s going to feel if Leo turns up dead at the end of all this? Particularly if there’s something lurking in her head that could have saved him?”
“He has a point,” the commissario said, nodding. “Made with forensics’ customary grace, I must say, but he has a point.”
“Thank you.” Di Capua nodded at the uniformed Peccia and his colleague. “Now to the gun people, please? Explain.”
“We are here,” Peccia replied coldly, “at Commissario Messina’s request.”
“What for? Target practice? We don’t have a clue where Giorgio Bramante is! Why the hell are you playing cowboys and Indians at a time like this?”
Messina’s face reddened. “If Leo Falcone is alive, I want him kept that way. Whatever it takes. When we track him down, I’m not dealing with this animal. If they get a clean shot, he goes.”
Peccia nodded, and looked satisfied with that idea.
“Aren’t there ‘procedures’ when it comes to shooting people?” Di Capua wanted to know.
“Screw the…” Messina began to say, then checked himself. “You’re here to offer forensic input. Nothing else. Is there something you have to say?”
Di Capua seized the papers in front of him and slapped them on the desk. “Peroni’s report—”
“Peroni’s report tells us nothing,” Bavetti interjected. “It’s a list of possible underground sites which Bramante may or may not have visited at some stage in the last week. It’s a shot in the dark.”
“Most things are,” Di Capua replied. “Tell them, Cristiano.”
The lanky bald individual tapped the computer keyboard idly and said, “We know from the planarian samples we have that the site used to store the body from Ca’ d’Ossi was somewhere the university has never looked for genetic material. Last night your officer and I worked to try to narrow down the scope of listed archaeological locations which could fit this description. Numerically it amounts to—”
“Days of work,” Bavetti interrupted. “Weeks. For what?”
“To chase down one of the few facts you have,” Di Capua replied. “The body from Ca’ d’Ossi was stored somewhere known to Bramante, near water, with a planarian population that has not been logged by La Sapienza. So what are you doing instead?”
It was Bavetti who rose to defend the investigation.
“House to house. Throughout Testaccio and the Aventino. Someone must have seen him. All we need is one lead.”
“What?” Di Capua almost leapt out of his seat. “All you need’s a miracle? Do you think Bramante’s waiting for you in some Testaccio tenement? Think about what we know about this man. Everything he does is underground. Living. Killing. Planning, too, I’d guess. Those places are his. Out of sight in some subterranean city we don’t even know. And you’re going door to door showing people photos? I don’t believe it!”