LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

sorted through a set of photos then threw one on the table. It was a close-up of the girl’s shoulder. There was the dark black ink of a tattoo at the top of her arm, and the howling face.

      ‘You know what that is?’ he asked.

      ‘She told me. A theatre mask or something. If it was the Grateful Dead I might have understood. She wasn’t that pleased when I said I wanted a shot of it for the record.’

      She stared into his eyes with a sudden, determined frankness. ‘I wasn’t taking no for an answer. A tattoo. Jesus, if I’d done that when I was her age.’ She hesitated. ‘Mr Costa?’

      ‘Nic.’

      ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘I don’t know. I need to call some people. Give me a minute.’

      She was starting to look scared.

      ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said, and heard how lame the words sounded.

      Miranda Julius rented an apartment on the top floor of the Teatro di Marcello, the sprawling, fortress-like complex in the shadow of the Capitol Hill. She’d taken the place over the internet, she said, because the owner offered a good deal for the couple of months they needed, and it came with history. Though much changed over the centuries, the theatre was begun by Julius Caesar, finished by his adoptive son Augustus and used variously as a fortress and a private palace before it was converted into private accommodations. The apartment looked out towards the river and Tiber Island. The steady drone of traffic was audible through the thick, double-glazed windows. Nic Costa had walked past this building countless times and never seen inside. Now he was there he didn’t envy anyone who owned such a fancy address. It was too noisy, too detached from the city. It was in Rome, but not a part of it.

      He was worried, too, that he’d over-reacted. He’d called in Falcone without discussing the matter with Peroni, which was probably a mistake. His partner had turned up only to find events shaping around him. Costa had risked Falcone’s wrath even further by inviting Teresa Lupo along to join them. It seemed important. Teresa had read the book she kept quoting at them in the morgue. If he was right, she was the only one with immediate access to the research and insight they needed. Now the four of them sat listening to Miranda Julius, each wondering whether this could be coincidence.

      Miranda Julius and her daughter Suzi had arrived in Rome one week before from London. She was a news photographer based there but working on assignment anywhere the agency sent her. Suzi lived with her grandmother, and had for most of her life. She was studying art at a local college. Her mother had taken her out of class for two months on a kind of ‘get-to-know-you’ holiday in Rome. Suzi had enrolled at the language school in the Piazza della Cancelleria for Italian lessons – the same school that the dead Eleanor Jamieson had attended. The two of them had begun a round of the Rome galleries in their spare time. After a few days Suzi had made a friend. Not at the school, but somewhere nearby. A boy, she said, and one who was reluctant, at the time, to meet her mother, for reasons Miranda could only guess.

      ‘How old is she?’ Falcone asked.

      ‘She was sixteen in December.’

      ‘And you?’ Falcone persisted.

      Teresa risked glaring at him. Falcone was always direct with women, direct to the point of bullying.

      ‘I’m thirty-three, inspector,’ Miranda said immediately. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re doing your arithmetic already. I was at school when I got pregnant. The father was a jerk. He was gone before she was born.’ She had an upper-class English accent which sat uneasily with her crumpled, laid-back appearance. There was money somewhere. The apartment must have cost her plenty.

      ‘Is this relevant?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mind answering these questions but I would like to know why.’

      ‘When you have a missing teenager anything could be relevant,’ Costa said.

      She turned away from Falcone and stared out of the big windows, out at the traffic roar. ‘If she is missing. Perhaps I am overreacting. She could walk right in that door any moment and then how am I going to feel?’ She watched them. This was a show of false confidence, Costa thought. There was fear in her face although he couldn’t help wondering how responsible he was for placing it there. ‘Will you please tell me why you’re suddenly taking this so seriously?’

      Falcone ignored the question. ‘The tattoo. Tell us about that.’

      The point of the question was lost on her. ‘What’s there to tell? I noticed she’d been wearing long sleeves all the time. Then yesterday she just comes out and announces it. He told her to get one. He even suggested what it should be like, took her down some stupid tattoo parlour he knew. Paid for the thing, would you believe.’

      ‘Does he have a name?’ Costa wondered. ‘Did she say where he lived?’

      She shook her head. ‘Apparently she wasn’t ready for him to meet me. Not just yet.’

      ‘Why? Did she give a reason?’

      ‘She’s still a kid. Young even for her years. She’s still at the stage where a parent’s embarrassing. What was I supposed to do? It wasn’t as if she was spending the night with him or anything. And that’s what’s really strange. Look, I’m never going to win mother of the year contest. Most of the time Suzi’s been growing up I’ve been in some shit part of the world photographing dead people. But I know my daughter. We can talk to each other. She wasn’t sleeping with this boy. Not yet. It was as if they were waiting for something. In fact …’

      She hesitated, wondering whether this was going too far, ‘… she’s never slept with anyone. She’s a virgin. Her decision. Perhaps she looked at me and realized where it could get you.’

      ‘Waiting for what?’ Falcone asked.

      ‘If I knew that I’d tell you,’ she snapped. ‘But I’m sure of one thing. When. It happens in two days’ time. March the 17th. I heard her talking on the phone. Making arrangements to meet him. She sounded excited. Not that she’d talk to me about it, of course.’

      Costa thought about the date. There were too many coincidences. ‘Can we take a look in her room?’

      ‘Feel free. It’s the tidy one at the end.’

      Falcone nodded at Costa. Teresa got up and followed him without being asked. The two of them wandered down the corridor, listening to Falcone’s persistent drone continue to wear at Miranda Julius behind them. Costa couldn’t help glancing into what he assumed was Miranda Julius’s bedroom. It wasn’t the tidy one. There were clothes scattered everywhere, a couple of professional-looking cameras, and a notebook computer, open, ready for work.

      ‘Jesus,’ Teresa groaned, when they were out of earshot. ‘That man has the manners of a warthog. Can you believe he ever got married? What are we looking for, Nic? Why am I here for God’s sake? It’s a missing kid, isn’t it?’

      ‘I’m sorry. I thought you might like the opportunity to do a little cop work.’

      She came to a halt, giving him a filthy look. ‘I’ve got a corpse half finished back in the morgue. One that looks two thousand years old but only went in the ground sixteen years ago. I’ve got scientific problems with names you couldn’t even pronounce. And you think I might “like the opportunity”?’

      He opened the door to the girl’s room. ‘You want to look or don’t you?’

      ‘Lemme in.’ She barged through and stared at the contents. Then she carefully closed the door behind her, not wanting to hear Falcone’s voice, needing the privacy herself too. ‘This is a teenager’s room? Hell, my place is worse than this. Come to that …’ She was thinking on her feet. Costa always liked to watch this. ‘… how come the mother looks like that? Like the kid’s sister? She’s just a year younger than me, for God’s sake, and if you walked her through the Questura every last jack-ass in there would be clutching at his groin making those heavy breathing

Скачать книгу