Professor D’Agostino invited the two detectives to take the sofa, then sat in his favourite armchair across the coffee table from them. ‘Well,’ he said, checking his watch to remind them of his purported engagement. ‘You have questions.’
It was Izzo he addressed, but the senior detective concentrated on settling in, wriggling his backside into the cushions until he was comfortable, while Messana sat forward and spoke for him. ‘You told us yesterday that you barely knew Raffaele Conte.’
‘That’s not quite what I said,’ he replied carefully. ‘I said I didn’t know him well. But of course I’d met him a few times. Apart from anything else, he did a lot of photography for the Archaeological Museum, on whose board I sit.’
‘Yes. And you were unhappy about that.’
‘Unhappy is too strong. I thought there were better alternatives.’
‘You lobbied against him.’
‘I had a different opinion to the others. I was outvoted. It happens all the time.’ He felt strangely unsettled, directing his answers to Messana while knowing it was Izzo he needed to convince.
‘Did Conte know?’
‘That I can’t tell you. I never told him myself, certainly. But I made no secret of my position.’
‘So he may have held a grudge against you?’
D’Agostino frowned. ‘It would be the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘And you? Did you hold a grudge against him?’
‘What kind of grudge?’
‘The kind of grudge to make you lobby against him, even though he was the best candidate. We hear, for example, that he did an impersonation of you.’
‘Really, Detective! I’m not a child.’
‘Were you aware he knew your wife?’
‘I wouldn’t be remotely surprised. We move… excuse me, we moved in the same circles.’
‘I’m not asking if they knew each other,’ said Messana. ‘We already know that. I’m asking if you knew about it.’
‘No. I can’t say that I did.’
Messana set her shoulder bag on the coffee table, drew out a slim laptop. She opened it up and waited patiently for it to come to life. She tapped a key, then turned it around for him to see its screen. A slide show began playing. He and Emanuela taking breakfast at a Vomero cafe. Her being stalked by the photographer, whose identity was obvious. An improvised shoot that moved swiftly to Raffaele Conte’s studio and then his balcony. Then finally her lying naked on his bed. The slide show ended with that final picture. He kept staring at it, he couldn’t help himself. Not for its infidelity or evidence of his guilt, but rather because Emanuela was glowing with the same happiness he remembered so vividly from their own first few months together. All that love. All that joy. Where the hell had it gone? But he knew where it had gone. He’d grown cold to her and pushed her away, out of shame and resentment that he wasn’t the husband he’d hoped to be. How could he have failed her so badly? He looked up finally, lost for what to say.
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ observed Messana. ‘Did you know they were lovers?’
D’Agostino didn’t answer at once. Prudence demanded he ask for his lawyer. But that would effectively admit his guilt. They might not be able to prove it yet, but they’d know. They’d leak it to the media so that his family and friends would all know too. People would never look at him the same way again.
‘Did I know?’ he said carefully. ‘Not exactly, no. But I must admit I did suspect. I saw them together several weeks ago. Eating ice creams on Via Toledo. It was the way they talked. The way they touched. I was shocked, yes. Shocked and angry and offended. I vowed to tackle Emanuela that very night. Issue ultimatums. Demand undertakings. But when she finally came home, she wasn’t just happy, she was radiant. She insisted we go out to dinner together, then she talked enthusiastically about a winter break in La Gomera we’d discussed. And no, it wasn’t guilt or shame. It was happiness. Not just with him, but with me too. With our life together. She’d found a way to make it work.’
‘And you? Were you happy? That the only way to make it work was by her sleeping with another man?’
D’Agostino found a small, sad smile. ‘I was glad for her. I love her, you see.’ Even as he said it, a great weight seemed to fall off him; for he realised, to his own surprise, that this much was still true. ‘Besides, after the first sting, it hurts less than you might think. My wife is young and beautiful and full of life. I love her fully in almost every way you can imagine. But she deserves to be loved fully in every way there is. And the unhappy truth is that I’m neither so young nor as vigorous as once I was.’
Izzo sat forward abruptly. He’d been quiet so long that D’Agostino had forgotten he was there. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘So you knew Signor Conte was fucking your wife. Now please tell us where you were at ten thirty this morning.’
Cesco returned slowly to his senses, unsure exactly how long he’d been out. Long enough for the security lights to have turned themselves off again, at least. A minute, maybe two. He felt groggy and disoriented. His arm and throat both throbbed painfully from the stun gun, while his crotch was cold and sodden, so that for a panicked moment he feared he’d been stabbed in the gut after all, only to discover that in fact he’d pissed himself a little from the electric shock.
He sat up gingerly, triggering the lights again. He looked around. No sign of his assailant. They must have fled. It made no sense to him that they’d left him alive with one murder already notched that night, when he might have seen their face; but his mind was still too fuzzy to worry much about it. He tried standing up, but his balance had gone. He staggered a couple of steps sideways then fell back down to his knees, scraping his palm painfully on the gravel. He needed to call the police. He patted his pocket for his phone, but couldn’t find it. He feared for a moment that his attacker had taken it until he saw it lying on the gravel a few feet away, where he must have dropped it.
He crawled over to it on hands and knees, picked it up. He was halfway through calling the emergency services when he hesitated. Speed couldn’t help Taddeo now. On the other hand, if he were to be found on the scene of a second murder inside three days, he’d likely be in for a long and difficult night. Maybe worse. It was notoriously hard to change an Italian policeman’s mind once they’d settled on their culprit. Far better, then, to have them arrive already on his side. So he called Valentina Messana instead, to tell her what had happened.
Professor D’Agostino gazed blankly at Romeo Izzo. ‘This morning?’
‘Yes. At ten thirty this morning.’
‘I… that is, of course.’ He could feel the blood draining from his face. They knew about his false alibi. But of course they did. That was why they were here. ‘You’re talking about the statement I gave to your colleagues in Secondigliano, I presume.’
‘That’s correct, yes.’
‘That has nothing to do with this.’
‘We’ll be the judges of that.’
‘As you wish.’ He spread his hands. He was startled and rather impressed by how steady they looked. ‘If you’ve already spoken with your colleague, I don’t know how much more I can add. My cousin Claudio gave a dinner a couple of weeks back. A friend of his was there, a man called Carlo. I forget his surname. Frankly I don’t know him that well, though he has a very distinctive scar by his right eye. We both have family in Sicily, so we talked about good places to eat in Palermo. I couldn’t possibly have been mistaken about him being there, so—’
Valentina’s phone rang. She checked who it was, raised an eyebrow at Izzo, asking his permission to take it. Izzo nodded. D’Agostino watched her leave the room, half suspecting it was some kind of ruse to let her search the apartment while he talked. If so, let her search. There was nothing for her to find, he was sure of it. He was almost sure of it.
‘You were saying?’
‘Yes.’ He scratched his throat. It was clearly time to call his lawyer, yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask. ‘Like I say, I’d met Carlo before, so there’s no question of a misidentification. And it seems he was arrested for some horrible crime that had been committed on the other side of the city at the very moment we’d been talking.’ Messana was making shocked exclamations on the other side of the door. It made it hard to concentrate. ‘Obviously he couldn’t have committed the crime himself. So when my cousin told me about it, I felt it was my duty as a citizen to let the investigating officer know.’
‘This cousin Claudio of yours. He’s Camorra, yes.’
‘So I’ve heard, though I’ve never seen any sign of it. And even if he is, so what? Am I supposed to keep silent when I could save an innocent man from—’
The door opened again. Messana hurried in, consternation on her face. She went straight to Izzo, stooped to whisper in his ear, yet still loud enough for D’Agostino to overhear. ‘That was Cesco Rossi,’ she murmured. ‘He’s out at Taddeo Santoro’s place. He’s saying he found him dead.’
The news was a punch to D’Agostino’s gut. ‘Dead?’ he muttered, half rising to his feet. ‘Taddeo dead? Oh Christ!’
Both detectives turned to stare at him, their eyes identically sharp and focused. ‘What?’ asked Izzo. ‘What do you know?’
He stood there with his mouth hanging open, unable to produce the words his mind yelled at him to speak. All he could think of was how he’d told Claudio that same morning that Taddeo could scupper his alibi, and how Claudio had assured him that he’d never even hear of it. It hadn’t occurred to him for a moment that he’d meant this. His friend. His best friend in the world. His remaining defiance drained instantly away. His sense of worth. He slumped back into his chair like a sack of coal dropped into a cellar. ‘It was me,’ he told them dully. ‘Me and Claudio.’ Then he added: ‘I’m ready to tell you everything.’