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The Villa of Mysteries. David Hewson
Читать онлайн.Название The Villa of Mysteries
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781838850678
Автор произведения David Hewson
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия Nic Costa thriller
Издательство Ingram
Bruno Bucci pushed himself up and came off the wall, counting the notes.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
Neri watched his broad back disappear down the street. ‘Humility,’ he said to himself. ‘That is what the world is lacking today.’
Then he walked round the corner into the square, wondering how long it was since he sat on a bus, trying to remember what it felt like to be young, trying to separate several conflicting strands of thought in his head.
The benign mood didn’t last. There was a queue. There were foreigners, pushing and shoving and asking stupid questions. It took ten minutes for him to work his way inside the doors. By the time Emilio Neri was on the 64 his mind was back where he had left it an hour before, stuck inside a foul mood, thinking about his stupid family.
There were no seats either. Not until a man not far short of his own age, smartly dressed, constantly smiling, stood up and offered his own.
Neri looked into the stranger’s face, wondering why he’d been stupid enough to refuse Bucci’s offer of a cab and climb on board this thing in the first place. ‘Because you’re an old fool,’ he thought to himself. ‘And maybe they’re starting to know it.’
The man couldn’t stop smiling. It was beyond Neri why anyone would smile on a stinking, overcrowded bus. He couldn’t wait for the thing to lurch across the bridge and into the Via Arenula so he could waddle home along the Via Giulia.
‘Use the seat yourself,’ Neri growled. ‘I don’t need it. What makes you think I do?’
‘Nothing,’ the man said, still smiling. He looked like a confidence trickster or some two-bit actor in the Fellini films ‘I just thought—’
‘You thought wrong,’ Neri snarled.
And so he clung to the strap, wishing all the way that he’d fallen into the seat and taken the weight off his sweating feet. There was some black teenager in it now, headphones clamped to his skull, a hissing noise emerging from them.
He got off at the Via Arenula, in a big jostling crowd. He had to wait almost five minutes to cross the busy road. When he got home he was out of breath and stank of sweat, Mickey and Adele’s fighting still in his head, jostling for attention with the call from inside the Questura.
The house was empty. He wanted them there. When the phone rang he knew an ancient corpse really was rising, in a way he’d have to anticipate, couldn’t hope to avoid.
Twenty minutes after leaving the Teatro di Marcello Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni followed Falcone’s car into a narrow private lane off the Janiculum hill, the sprawling piece of parkland that rose up from behind Trastevere and overlooked the river.
Peroni downed the remains of his second porchetta panino of the day, brushed the crumbs off his jacket into the floorpan of the Fiat and said, ‘You know, I like the way you drive, Nic. It’s careful without being overcautious, sensitive to circumstances and a little rash if required. When I’m restored to my true position I will offer you a job, my boy. You can drive me anywhere. Most of the guys I have spend their time bouncing off other vehicles which is a little unsettling for a sensitive man like me.’
Then he unwrapped a chocolate bar and took a single bite before sticking it in his pocket, half-eaten.
‘You’re going to put on weight eating like that,’ Costa observed. ‘It’s not natural.’
‘Been the same weight for fifteen years. I burn it up inside, what with my nervous tension and all. You just see the exterior me. Calm, unflustered, ever-vigilant, ugly as a horse’s ass, just what I want you to see. But inside I’m a tortured cauldron of torn emotions. I’ve got traumas that can burn off any amount of carbohydrate and cholesterol I throw at it. You watch. You seen so much as an extra gram on me since we started this relationship?’
‘No.’
‘Also, you should be aware that meat – even the shit they sell under that name in Rome – and bread, they’re the best antidote there is against this flu thing. Forget all that crap about fruit and vegetables. You ever seen a chimpanzee? Fucking things never stop sneezing. Or doing the other thing. Sometimes simultaneously.’
Costa thought about this. ‘I’ve never seen a chimpanzee sneeze.’
‘You need to develop your powers of observation. Now do you want me to come in and hold hands with you for this or can I just stay in the car and nap awhile? What with mummified bodies and Roman history lessons this has been a tiring day for a nocturnal animal like me.’
Peroni took the cigarette packet out, saw Costa’s face and thought better of it. ‘OK. OK. One concession a day is all you get. About the English kid, Nic. Falcone’s doing all he can in the circumstances. Putting the picture around. Getting the CCTV. I mean, I’m no detective but what this mother says seems so vague.’
‘Things often are. Isn’t it that way in vice?’
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