The man from the university shook his bald head and said, “Gentlemen. I am no expert in these matters. But this seems a little illogical to me.”
“What the hell is this freak doing here?” Peccia demanded, furious.
“Trying to tell you people something,” Di Capua shot back. “Listen to me and try to understand. You know nothing. We know nothing. But the nothing we know is smaller than the nothing you know, and I think we could make it smaller still. So small that, with a little help and a little luck, it just might, at some point, become something.”
“What do you want us to do?” Messina asked.
“Rosa knows where she was picked up. And then she was taken somewhere and raped. She must have some idea how long it took to get there. Ask that. It’s a start.”
The commissario paused for a moment, then turned to Bavetti and muttered, “Do it.”
“Sir. The idea is to allow the victim to tell her own story—”
“Do it!”
Messina used the ensuing five minutes to listen to a more detailed explanation of what Peroni had been working on the previous evening. As he did so he was aware of an increasingly uncomfortable realisation: he had rejected Peroni’s ideas because they were a part of Falcone’s investigation, the kind of long-shot, imaginative leap that he regarded as typical of the inspector. Messina was envious of Leo’s talent, and it had coloured his behaviour. This was bad police work. And worse — bad leadership.
Bavetti put down the phone and said, “Bramante drove her somewhere close by to begin with.”
“Close?” Di Capua echoed, incredulous. “Don’t give me words like ‘close.’ Minutes? Seconds?”
“A minute. Perhaps two.”
“So they were still in Testaccio? Near the market?” Di Capua asked, and unfolded a city map on the table.
“Yes. After that, much later, in the evening, they drove for no more than eight or ten minutes.”
“Quickly? Or was there traffic?” Di Capua demanded.
“Very quickly. Without stopping. Uphill, then downhill.”
The young pathologist smiled at that. “He went from Testaccio on to the Aventino.”
“And then?” Messina asked.
“Let’s assume he continued in a northerly direction.”
Di Capua took out a red felt-tip pen and drew a circle on the pristine map. It ran from the foot of the Aventino by the Circus Maximus stretching past the Colosseum to Cavour directly north, then to the Teatro Marcello in the east, and as far as San Giovanni to the west.
“Not good,” Cristiano grumbled. “There’s as much under the surface as there is on it.”
“How many on our list?” Di Capua demanded.
The university man hammered at the keyboard. “Twenty-seven. Sorry.”
Messina shook his head and murmured, “Impossible.”
“Do you have archaeological data in there too?” Di Capua asked.
Cristiano nodded vigorously.
“How many of that twenty-seven have a Mithraeum?”
The bony fingers flew. “Seven.”
Di Capua cast an eye over the computer screen. “One of those is San Clemente. I hardly think he’s going to be hiding in a busy church next to the Colosseum, not with all those Irish priests crawling around above him. That leaves six on the list.”
He scrawled crosses on the map and pushed it over to Messina.
“Unless you have a better idea,” Di Capua added.
Bavetti bristled, furious. “We’re not even a third of the way through door-to-door!”
“This is all I have, Commissario Messina,” Silvio Di Capua said softly. “And do you know something? It’s all you have, too.”
Messina hated Teresa Lupo and her minions. They were intrusive and irresponsible. They never knew when to shut up, either. Just one thing got them off the hook. They were correct more often than any forensic squad he’d ever known, more often, even, than the overpaid teams of the Carabinieri who had every computer and gadget the Italian state could afford.
“We need someone who’s familiar with these sites,” Messina pointed out.
Di Capua nodded. “We’ve been talking to Bramante’s replacement. Judith Turnhouse. She knows these digs, probably as well as he does. I can call.”
“I can call,” Messina replied. “Get me your best men, Peccia.” He stared at Bavetti. “Door-to-door. What was I thinking? I lead this myself. We start at San Giovanni.”
Silvio Di Capua perked up. “Are we invited?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” Messina declared, then pointed to the door.
Alessio Bramante stood at the centre of a photograph taken fourteen years before, holding the hand of an unidentified woman. When they compared this shot with the stock photo Peroni had lifted from the Questura, it was clear his long hair had been cut roughly, perhaps just minutes before this shot was taken. Someone was attempting to disguise Alessio’s true identity, with the boy’s compliance, or so it seemed. All the same, there was little to work with. Ordinarily, Costa would have called the Questura and passed everything to intelligence. The TV and the papers could be running the photo within hours. If this couple were Italian, someone had to know them. If they weren’t, the odds were they could still be traced through European and international links.
There were two problems: time and Bruno Messina. Running to the media with names always proved a lengthy business. Possible leads had to be sifted from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of incoming calls. Bruno Messina wouldn’t be interested. Not today, not when he had a policewoman who had been viciously assaulted and an inspector who had been abducted right under his nose. Messina wanted Giorgio Bramante’s hide, and the whereabouts of the man’s son seemed, on the surface, to offer nothing to assist that particular quest.
They talked through the options and got nowhere. Then they ran through the later frames in the film. The boy was in two of them, with the same couple, no one else. Alessio was no longer glowering hatefully at the photographer. They’d taken off the giveaway T-shirt and replaced it with a plain red one marked with a hammer and sickle. He still didn’t seem happy. To Costa he looked like a kid on the edge, one who’d do anything at that moment — however dangerous, however stupid — just to prove that he could.
Teresa muttered something and went off to fetch Lorenzo Lotto. The journalist returned with the girl, who now wore a new bright white cotton shirt and looked quite pleased with herself.
“Explain the problem,” Lotto demanded.
Costa pulled up the first photo. “We need to know who the two people with the child are.”
Lotto eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”
“The child’s been missing ever since,” Teresa replied, on the brink of exasperation. “We’d like to know what happened to him. This isn’t some capitalist conspiracy, Lorenzo.”
He harrumphed. “You have to expect me to ask. Katrina?”
Katrina spoke, finally. She had an accent. It sounded Scandinavian. “I can find out.”
She did something with the computer, drawing a rectangle on the fabric of the woman’s shift, then hit more buttons with flashing fingers, clicked on something that Costa recognised, in the brief instant it was on screen, as the word “Similarity.”
Scores of thumbnails filled the screen, most of them in situations they hadn’t yet reached, on different film stock, from different photographers. The woman was in all of them. Katrina had tracked her down through the unique colour and pattern of her clothing.
“What next?” Teresa shouted.
“I keep telling you!” Lotto complained. “It’s a machine. Ask the right question and you just might get an answer.”
“Who were they with?” Costa asked.