Romeo Izzo took a slow circuit of the burned-out Lamborghini, looking around as he did so. Their witnesses had been unanimous that the firebomb had been triggered after the Discovery had pulled up alongside it but before any of them had touched it. If so, the killer had surely been watching, timing it for maximum effect.
But from where?
The vast open pit dug down through the lava bedrock to the Villa made this whole site perilous for curious children and drunken teens, so it was surrounded on three sides by high concrete walls. Someone could have looked over one or other of them, atop a van or ladder, say, but they’d have been mightily conspicuous. And pointless too, considering the fine view afforded by the fourth side, particularly from the upper floors of the houses directly across the pit from where he was standing, owned by local Camorra boss Giovanni Bruno.
Izzo trudged up Via Mare to reach the winding alley of tall, thin houses. Clothes were hanging up to dry on several of the balconies. Hard to believe that anyone would choose to trigger a firebomb from any of those. But three had been badly enough damaged by the quakes to need scaffolding and keep-out signs. The first front door was locked. But not the second. Dust fell in gentle cascades as he closed it behind him. The wooden stairs creaked beneath his weight. The rear windows of the master bedroom did indeed offer a perfect view of the burned-out Lamborghini. Yet his were the only prints in its dusty floor.
Another creak upon the stairs. A second and then a third. Izzo turned towards the door. A Camorra tough named Fabio Longo appeared, a crowbar in his left hand. Two more now arrived, one holding a length of scaffolding, the other a chisel. His heart sank. He should have known one or other of the tenants would tip the Brunos off. They spread out between him and the door, then turned towards it. Giuseppe Battaglia now came in, still wearing his pearl-grey silk suit from that morning, swinging a sledgehammer like the clapper of some enormous bell. ‘How did the speech go?’ he mocked. ‘Up on YouTube yet?’
Izzo ignored him. He ignored him because of the fifth man who now entered, instantly dominating the room with a charisma and force that Giuseppe Battaglia would never possess. Giovanni Bruno himself, boss of Herculaneum’s most powerful crime family, and far and away the man most likely behind that morning’s murder.
Naples’ Archaeological Museum lay only a short walk from the Cappella Sansevero, home of the Veiled Christ, that glory of sculpture so delicately and ingeniously wrought that for many years admirers had thought it possible only through the use of alchemy. Taddeo Santoro was good friends with the people there, and so had visited the chapel out of hours many dozens of times, sitting in quiet contemplation of that extraordinary masterpiece, the way it used the folds of marble to both hide and reveal the face and body of Christ, giving a glimpse of something utterly transcendent. Yet never, in all those visits, had he imagined he would be involved in something so similar himself. Never had he imagined it would fall to him to give the world a glimpse of the face of Christ.
Yet here they were.
‘The project must go on,’ he said, pulling his Discovery in alongside Zeno D’Agostino’s white Mercedes sedan in the museum’s underground car park. ‘My heart breaks for Raffaele and Lucia, but we have to keep at it. We have a duty.’
‘You don’t have to convince me,’ said D’Agostino drily. ‘And I doubt Alberts will take much persuasion either. But we need someone in the chair. Otherwise we’ll get nowhere.’
‘Lucia’s tougher than you think,’ Taddeo told him. ‘But I’ll sit in if she can’t make it.’
‘Good. Tomorrow, then.’
‘Tomorrow.’ He saw D’Agostino into his car, then waved him off. He watched him until he was out of sight before summoning the staff lift. It had a large tinted mirror against its rear wall. He looked a mess. He dried his eyes, wiped his face and straightened his tie. It didn’t much help. The doors opened. Flavia and Maria were talking in urgent low voices. They fell silent when they saw him, faces filling with sympathy and concern.
‘We just heard,’ said Maria. ‘How horrible.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. He was about to say more, only to be so overwhelmed by emotion that he had to press his handkerchief to his eyes.
Flavia waited until he’d composed himself. ‘Do they know who did it?’
‘They have good people. Strong leads. That’s all I can say.’
‘And…? In the meantime…?’
‘In the meantime?’
‘Are we all at risk ourselves?’
‘Oh.’ He bit his lip. Maria was curator of their Villa mosaics. Flavia was an administrator with responsibility for the Villa’s affairs. Only human to fear for themselves and their families too. Weariness made his shoulders slump. He wasn’t up to this. Yet a man’s mettle was proven in adversity. He lifted his chin and met their eyes. ‘I’ll double security,’ he promised. ‘But we’ll all still need to play our part.’
‘How?’
‘Simple steps. Sensible steps. Watch out for anything unusual. Think twice before going out alone. Make sure your locks work. Don’t open your door until you know who’s there. That kind of thing.’ They looked perturbed rather than reassured, however, his message undermined by his own clear distress. He excused himself in order to smarten himself up properly in the loos before returning to his office. Then he composed a tribute to Raffaele, a recap of the morning’s events and a repeat of his call to vigilance. He rewrote it again and again until he’d captured the right mix of sorrow, seriousness and reassurance, then he put it in an all-staff email and sent it on its way.
Raffaele had apparently made it from Central Naples to Herculaneum in thirty-one minutes in his Lamborghini. Breaking pretty much every traffic law, and on his Harley, Cesco made it back in just twenty-three. He parked in the cobbled piazza below Raffaele’s apartment, let himself in through its main door and hurried upstairs, taking out Lucia’s keys as he went. The latch-lock proved a curse. He had to push it in all the way, then draw it back a fraction and jiggle it till it turned.
He slipped inside. He had perhaps ten minutes before Messana arrived, so he needed to be quick. She hadn’t struck him as corrupt, but then you never knew. His father and grandfather had both been senior figures in the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia. Every policeman he’d known as a boy had been on the take. They’d turn up in the morning for their envelopes of cash, then they’d appear on TV later that night talking piously about the Mafia scourge. His grandfather had finally sickened of the life. He’d turned pentito. But they’d kidnapped Cesco and his twin sister to force him to kill himself before he could testify. Then, when his family had gathered at a restaurant for his wake, they’d sent gunmen in to massacre every last one of them too, even the children, though they’d supposedly been under police protection at the time. While he himself had survived, his faith in the police most certainly had not. Besides, corruption wasn’t the only danger here. There was always intense pressure to solve high-profile murders fast. Leaking unsavoury details about the victim was a common tactic to make it seem they’d got what they’d deserved and so take that pressure off.
Not this time. Not to Raffaele. Not if Cesco could help it.
Raff’s main room was a bachelor cliché, remodelled by him in a midlife spasm after Rosanna had taken their kids with her to Milan. The furniture was all chrome and white leather. The walls were decorated with his own photographs of gorgeous women in revealing clothes and atmospheric shots of his beloved Naples. And smoked-glass doors opened out onto a private roof terrace full of colourful blooms.
Cesco briskly checked through all the drawers for drugs and other embarrassments. His friend had liked to party. He found a hand mirror speckled with traces of white powder. He ran it beneath a tap, then dried it thoroughly with loo paper that he flushed away. The fridge was full from a recent shop, the bin with pizza boxes and empty wine bottles. The second bedroom had a wooden bunk with touchingly small mattresses, and a barely-used exercise bike. A thin summer duvet was half off the king-sized bed, as if Raff had left in a hurry. Yesterday’s black Armani T-shirt sat atop the clothes basket. The home office next. Its small window offered an oblique view of the piazza beneath. No sign yet of Messana, but he still needed to hurry. If she found out he’d been inside, she might even suspect him of scrubbing the place of evidence against himself.
A monitor, mouse and keyboard on the desk awaited Raff’s laptop, no doubt burned in the Lamborghini. A used espresso cup and saucer sat between a silver-framed photo of his two kids and a plastic bowl of memory cards. He checked the drawers. The upper one was empty save for an old mouse, a notepad and some pens. But the lower one was so crammed with papers that it was hard to open. He flipped through them in dismay. Bank statements, final demands, legal letters. Raff had always spent so freely, he’d taken his prosperity for granted. But if this was anything to go by…
He checked his watch. Messana would be here any moment. He needed to get out. He put everything back, then hurried down to the piazza, where he sat side-saddle on his Harley for a few minutes until she appeared and pulled alongside. ‘Enough time?’ she asked wryly.
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s not your friend we’re after. It’s his bastard killer.’
He shrugged as if he didn’t understand, then led her upstairs. He unlocked the front door and stood aside. She stopped for perhaps ten seconds to film it on her mobile. She checked the call log on Raff’s landline. He’d received a call at 11:23 last night. She tried the number on her own phone. It rang and rang until finally a man answered, sounding doubtful and with an announcer’s voice audible in the background. She asked him where he was. Napoli Centrale train station, he told her. He’d been passing the bank of phones when he’d heard this one ring.
There was a message pad beside the phone, and a ceramic pot of pens and pencils. Valentina ran a soft nib over the top page to reveal the impression of the last message.
2G PMT 6.30
‘Mean anything to you?’ asked Messana.
‘A meeting?’ hazarded Cesco.
‘Maybe.’ She took a picture of it, then moved on. They visited the rooms in the same order as he had, though they lingered in his bedroom to finger his designer shirts and jackets.
‘Nice,’ she said.
‘He liked to look good.’
‘But not to feed his kids?’
‘I thought it was his bastard killer you were after.’
In his home office, she too checked the drawers. She raised an eyebrow at all the bills, photographed a few with her phone. ‘Did you know?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He paused, then added: ‘I thought he was holding back on Rosanna out of animosity. She’s not as hard up as she makes out. She’s living with an accountant. Raff was convinced the only reason they hadn’t married yet was to keep milking him for alimony.’
‘Milking him? That’s nice.’
‘They were angry at each other. It happens with divorces.’
‘And you? He paid you okay? Your suppliers?’
He nodded. ‘Raff was dyslexic. He found accounting hard. So all of that was handled by his bookkeeper.’
‘Contact details?’
‘In the studio.’
She took a memory card from the bowl. ‘What are these for?’
‘He had his bag snatched a couple of times. Cameras can be replaced. Photographs can’t. He learned to zip copies away as he went.’
‘So these will have photos on them? Recent photos?’
‘If he hasn’t wiped them.’
‘May I take them?’
Cesco hesitated. But any wrongdoing on them was likely other people’s. Besides, to his surprise, he found he’d come to trust Messana a little. Her stolidity was reassuring. ‘I’ll need a receipt. And your word you won’t use them against him.’
‘Who do you think we are?’
‘I know who you are. That’s why I’m asking.’
She wrote out a receipt, then bagged the cards. ‘His studio?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ said Cesco. ‘Let’s go there now.’