It was barely five kilometres from the Villa to Torre Del Greco Hospital, but the roads were narrow, busy and so winding that Lucia found herself rolling this way and that on the bolted-down trolley, even as the handsome young paramedic set about her treatment, putting her on fluids and morphine before cutting away her sleeve to better inspect the flesh beneath. The grimace that he gave when he saw her left forearm prompted her to take another look. Her skin was bubbled, mottled and flaky, and already turning such lurid colours that it filled her with a perverse pride. He touched her chin to steer her eyes to his, to gauge her state of mind.
‘Name?’ he asked.
He was absurdly handsome, with light stubble, a strong chin and eyes of intense clear blue. She found herself faltering a little. ‘Lucia Conte.’
‘Age?’
Another microsecond of hesitation. ‘Forty-four.’
‘Do you know what just happened?’
‘Do I look like an idiot?’
He nodded, pleased. The morphine began to work, reducing the pain from hellish screech to manageable wail. It worked in another way, too, for when she closed her eyes it was only to see again her brother’s car as the fire started, the fawn blanket across its front seats, with the same crude yet evocative shape as those plaster casts of victims from Pompeii. The shock when he’d sat up, his hair matted, his mouth crudely sealed with tape and his wrists cuffed to the steering wheel by bracelets of steel wire. His eyes had still been blessedly groggy, but the flames had seared him awake to knowledge of his fate. And now she heard again his gagged screams of pain and rage as he’d squirmed this way and that in an effort to get free, twisting the blanket round himself as he did so, revealing the five-litre containers on the floor, their plastic melting even as she attacked the driver’s window with a rock, erupting into an inferno so fierce it had driven her backward despite knowing she was his one hope, watching helplessly as her beloved brother burned like the wick of a grotesque lamp.
Another sharp right turn almost hurled her from the trolley. Her medic grabbed her by her shoulder. They sped up a short hill and screeched to a halt. The siren stopped. The rear doors flew open. Two more nurses unloaded her trolley and hustled her beneath the maroon portico of A&E and inside, past everyone in reception, clutching their numbered tickets like customers at a deli counter. A woman in a white coat appeared from nowhere to walk alongside, examining her arms, throat and face. She’d be her doctor, she explained. Dear God, but she was young. They were all so young. What had happened to her life? And pretty, too, despite the slight upwards curl of her chin, like a Persian slipper. Despite her youth, she spoke with reassuring authority, explaining that Lucia’s chest, right arm and her face appeared to have taken shallow first-degree burns that would hurt for a few days but which should heal without significant scarring. Her left arm, unfortunately, was another matter. It required prompt attention. Did she have any diseases, allergies or other conditions she needed to know about? Lucia looked at her blankly, the question taking her by surprise. The doctor repeated it. Lucia concentrated hard. She was pre-diabetic, she told her, and on the pill. She thought she might be allergic to nuts; but she’d stopped eating them rather than being tested. The doctor nodded. She’d need IV, supervised pain medication and regular dressing changes for the necrotic tissue to be debrided, and antibiotics and silver sulfadiazine to be applied. She should expect to stay in the hospital at least one day, probably two, perhaps three. It was possible she’d need a graft or cosmetic surgery at some stage, though they wouldn’t know that for a while yet. But mostly she needed to keep hydrated and to sleep. Did she understand? Did she have any questions?
‘No more morphine,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
‘You’ll find the pain is—’
‘I don’t care. I need to talk to the police first.’
‘You need to rest. You need to manage your pain. The police can wait until—’
‘My brother was just murdered. I need to tell them what I know. And I can’t possibly stay here two days, let alone three. I have too much work to do. Important work.’
‘There’s no work more important than your health.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Lucia told her, with absolute certainty. ‘This is.’
They emerged from a large lift she hadn’t even realised they’d gone into, then hurried along a wide corridor. Its left-hand wall was almost entirely made of glass, through which she could see the hospital’s psychiatric wing a short walk away up the hillside. All the white-robed patients were out on the balconies, summoned by her own siren. It brought back painful memories. Her mother had spent her last few weeks up there before hanging herself with a sheet. She and Raffaele had come to visit her after school. He’d been just twelve years old then, locked in gruelling combat with dyslexia until their Sicilian uncle had given him a cast-off camera for his birthday and transformed his life.
The patients at the psychiatric unit had fascinated Raff. Their ruined faces, their empty or overly expressive gazes. After their visits were over, he’d made Lucia miss bus after bus home to wait for a siren ambulance while the light was just so in order to capture those ghostly figures as they came out onto their balconies. How she’d moaned at him! How relieved she’d been when he’d finally got his shot. He’d printed up copies himself in the school darkroom, back when they’d had such a thing. She could still remember the envious lurch of her heart on first seeing them and realising that he wasn’t some weakling pet for her to nurse, but rather – and despite her own accomplishments – the one with true talent.
For a moment, she almost managed a proud smile. Then she recalled that the person she loved most in the world, the one who gave her joy, was lost to her for ever, and the howl of anguish she let out echoed through and through the building.
More police arrived at the Villa, both uniformed and plainclothed, to seal off the site, take statements, gather evidence. Cesco moved his Harley out of their way. Carmen came to join him. She looked distraught. Without a word, he took her in his arms and hugged her long and tight, their own recent strife rendered trivial by the morning’s tragedy.
‘Truce,’ she murmured.
‘Truce,’ he agreed.
A plainclothes woman officer with spiky dyed red hair and humourless green eyes waited with strained patience for them to disengage. She introduced herself as Detective Valentina Messana and asked them for their statements. Her Biro refused to work properly. She kept scribbling it upon her pad to get the ink flowing again. Then she’d ask them to repeat whatever they’d just told her. A portly man in stained blue overalls approached. He had a tablet in his left hand and an expression that suggested he had something important to contribute. Messana invited him to speak. He owned the property next door, he told her, gesturing at the roofs of the grey polythene greenhouses visible over the site’s perimeter wall. He’d had trouble with vandals last year, so he’d put in CCTV. After learning of this morning’s tragedy, he’d checked his footage of the lane. He turned his tablet round, set it playing. Three seconds passed. A sports car drove by. The light was poor, the resolution modest, the footage black and white; but it was Raff’s Lamborghini for sure. You couldn’t see the driver, thanks to the angle and tinted glass, but you could make out its plate. The time stamp put it at 7:44.
Messana had him fast-forward, pausing to note down the licence number of every car that passed until Taddeo Santoro arrived in his Discovery some thirty-five minutes later, followed by Cesco on his Harley. She thanked him, gave him a card, asked him to email the footage through. Then she turned to Cesco. ‘That text Conte sent you this morning. What time?’
Cesco held up his phone for her to see. ‘Seven thirteen,’ he said.
‘Where does he live?’
‘Central Naples. Rione Sanità.’
She did the calculation in her head, as they all did. Twenty kilometres, give or take. The roads were good, and he’d been going against the weight of traffic; but thirty-one minutes was still fast. ‘He must have set out right after,’ she murmured.
‘Or was already on his way.’
‘Yes.’ She made another note, looked up again. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday evening. Leaving work.’
‘What time?’
‘Not late. A bit before six, I’d guess. Though I can find out exactly, if you’d like. The studio’s alarm system logs being turned on and off.’
‘Thank you, yes.’ Another scribble on her pad to get the ink flowing. ‘Do you know where he went?’
Cesco shook his head. ‘Only that he had a meeting. He didn’t say who with.’
‘Any reason anyone might have wished him harm?’
‘There’ve been threats. I’m sure you’ve heard.’
‘Against the excavations, yes. But that includes many people. Yet they picked your friend. Why?’
Cesco frowned. A shrewd question, and one he hadn’t even considered. ‘He was a photographer,’ he said.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘He took his camera everywhere. Because you never knew. When he was bored, he’d listen to the emergency services radio for incidents he could get to. He hung out in seedy parts of town. And whenever he heard gunfire, he’d run towards it, not away. His pictures had figured in numerous trials.’
‘Mafia trials?’
‘Come on, Detective. This is Naples. Everything’s Mafia, if you look hard enough.’
‘Anything else?’
‘He liked women,’ volunteered Carmen. ‘And they liked him.’
Messana looked up sharply. ‘Married women?’
‘All kinds.’
‘Any names?’
Cesco gave her a couple, though neither were married. ‘But there was someone else,’ he told her. ‘She’d call him at the studio. On our landline, I mean, not on his mobile. Which was odd. He’d always take it outside for privacy too. So I kind of assumed she was married, though he never said so. Maybe Lucia would know.’
‘Lucia?’
‘His sister. The one they took off in that ambulance.’
Messana made a final note, then gave her pad an emphatic double tap. She handed them each a card should they think of anything else.
‘What now?’ asked Cesco.
‘The hospital?’ suggested Carmen. ‘I expect Lucia could use a friend.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Cesco. ‘Let’s do it.’