“The name I was asked to check,” Furillo interjected, “was Judith Turnhouse, if that’s any help.”
“Thanks,” the pathologist spat at him. “Spoil all my surprises!”
Costa shook his head, baffled. “You’re saying that Judith Turnhouse took Alessio to the peace camp that evening?”
“I’m saying more than that. I looked her up in the phone book. She lives in some tiny studio apartment at the back of Termini. Cruddy place for a university academic, don’t you think?”
Costa remembered the clothes Turnhouse had worn the first time they interviewed her. Cheap clothes. Academics of her stature weren’t badly paid. The money had to be going somewhere.
“Via Tiziano, 117a,” Furillo said, pointing at the screen, and getting ignored all round.
“In one of those photos,” Teresa continued, “Judith Turnhouse seems to be passing the Giordanos money. What if she didn’t just take the boy there? What if all these years she was his fairy godmother or something? Paying for his keep out of her own salary?” She paused. “Elisabetta dead too?” she asked.
“Elisabetta was murdered in her bed,” Peroni replied. “Three nights ago. All the rest of this is… speculation.”
“Dammit, Gianni!” Teresa pulled out the prints she’d had made from Lorenzo’s machine. “Look at these. Tell me this isn’t her.”
Peroni and Costa leaned over and examined the photos.
“It’s her,” Peroni agreed instantly. “But what does that mean? She’s out with Messina now, trying to help him track down Bramante and Leo. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Signora Turnhouse…” Furillo began.
“She was protecting Alessio from his father!” Teresa Lupo waved her heavy arms in the air. “What else could it be?”
“From what exactly?” Peroni asked. “And why? And for all these years?”
“Enough! Enough!”
Emilio Furillo never shouted. A raised voice always seemed, to him, an admission of defeat. But there were times…
They stared at him.
“Emilio?” the pathologist asked.
“I told you there was no connection between this Signora Turnhouse and the Giordanos. None that I could see. That does not mean,” he continued, “that I found nothing.”
“Out with it,” Teresa ordered.
“Some years ago this woman was stopped for speeding outside Verona. I have the full report on the system….”
“Summarise it,” Peroni said.
“She received a spot fine. However, there was a man in the passenger seat. He was forced to show his papers. Normally this wouldn’t be a matter of record, of course….”
They waited.
“But on this occasion,” Furillo continued smugly, “it was. The man was a prisoner out on weekend leave.”
Teresa blinked at him, openmouthed, like a freshly landed tuna.
“It was Giorgio Bramante,” Furillo announced. “To save you some time, I checked these dates against the incidents on the list Falcone circulated. This was the very weekend the farmer, Andrea Guerino, disappeared. He was later found murdered. Not far from Verona. Make of it what you will.”
“Judith Turnhouse was helping Giorgio?” Peroni asked, amazed. “And supporting his son?”
Costa’s mind kept returning to that first meeting with the American academic, and how it had come about. Everything had seemed so easy.
“The reason we spoke to her was because she and Giorgio had a very loud, very public argument, with the Carabinieri within earshot outside,” he pointed out. “Those officers were always there. Bramante and Turnhouse must have known someone would have made the connection. Someone would come, and then she could take us to the body Giorgio had left down by the river. He wants his victims seen. Not hidden away forever.”
Peroni nodded, catching on instantly. “She told us she would have called if we hadn’t arrived,” he pointed out. “I’m sure that was the truth. So we’ve just been picking up the crumbs this pair have been dropping for us all along. Where does Alessio fit in?”
“Tiziano—” Furillo began.
“And now,” the young detective went on, “she’s leading Messina directly to Bramante.”
“Why?” Peroni demanded.
“Because it’s what Bramante wants,” Costa replied immediately. “She pointed us to the fact he was looking for those underground maps. That’s what Messina is using right now. This is…”
It was clear in his head. He just lacked the precise words.
“…a kind of performance. His last act. Leo is his finale. Giorgio Bramante wants to be found. The man needs an audience.”
He glanced at his partner.
“Giorgio Bramante never killed Elisabetta Giordano. He never even knew she existed. But if Judith Turnhouse has been playing both sides… Paying the woman for years. Perhaps even after Alessio left home. She had a reason to keep Elisabetta quiet. The best there was. It could have destroyed everything.”
Costa spoke with authority and a rapid, quick intelligence, Furillo thought. His demeanour reminded the older man of Falcone himself.
“We’ve got to let Messina know,” the young agente added, reaching for a phone. “Now…”
Furillo raised a finger. “Hostage situation. The commissario has called a radio silence for everyone except the control room. And I would seriously advise you three not to show your faces there at the moment. As I was saying, Tiziano—”
“Alessio would be an agente by now,” Teresa Lupo interrupted. “A fully formed one, newly emerged from the cocoon. So where is he?”
“Tiziano!” Furillo yelled. “Are you people listening to me or am I some kind of computer peripheral here?”
Teresa Lupo reached over and patted his right hand. “Emilio,” she said sweetly. “You’re never peripheral. Not to me. We’re just a little… stumped.”
“God, I wish I had that on camera,” Furillo sighed. “Judith Turnhouse lives at 117a Tiziano. If you look here—” he pointed at the screen — “you will see that one of the recruits from four years ago, Filippo Battista, gave the very same address in his recruitment forms. Perhaps he is a lodger. I don’t know. However, he is now attached to—”
“—the airport,” Peroni read from the screen.
Costa was already dialling the Fiumicino police office. They waited as he dashed off a rapid-fire set of questions, then put down the phone.
“Filippo Battista still lives in Tiziano,” Costa reported quietly. “The sovrintendente thinks he’s shacked up with some stuck-up American girlfriend almost twice his age. The woman’s a little domineering, or so the gossip goes.”
“Is he on duty?” Peroni asked.
Costa grimaced. “He was on rest day until Messina asked for volunteers. Somehow he talked his way onto the team. He’s in the armed response unit — looking for his own father.”
The three of them took this in for a moment. Then Furillo watched them flee the room.
“You’re welcome,” he muttered to himself, grateful, and a little guilty, that this was their problem, not his.
These caves were new to him. No comforting thread to run through his fingers. Just black damp walls that seemed to go on forever, twisting serpent-like through the hillside. Alessio led, the six of them followed, stumbling upwards on the rough-hewn rock floor, eyes fixed on the flashlight in the child’s hand, the circle of yellow light waning as the batteries wound down.
Then a sharp corner, one that took them all by surprise. Someone fell painfully and let loose a low, frightened curse. The flashlight flickered, became first the pale colour of dry straw, then the dark, fading ochre of the moon in a polluted Roman night sky.