The Canon’s screen was too small for them all to see, so Cesco ejected the memory card and plugged it into Messana’s computer. The most recent set of files dated from the night before Raff’s murder. Cesco opened the first of them. It showed the awning of Miranda Harcourt’s boutique hotel just off the Lungomare. Harcourt herself appeared in the second, alongside a formidably built and stylishly-dressed forty-something man with short-cropped grizzled hair, an open-collared white shirt, a suit of expensively baggy pale-blue silk, shiny black leather loafers and mirror shades.
‘Know them?’ asked Izzo at his shoulder.
‘Her, yes. Miranda Harcourt. Him, I can’t quite place.’ The third picture showed the two of them ambling by the pavement cafe where Raff had taken his beer. Now Cesco recognised the man: Harcourt’s driver Vernon, present in so many of her photographs, rendered anonymous by his chauffeur’s uniform. Yet the way they joked and jostled was at odds with his prior deference. Less employer and employee than friends or maybe even lovers. They strolled to a chic waterfront restaurant, ate dinner at a terrace table. Harcourt settled up while Vernon fetched their rental BMW cabriolet, allowing Raff time to reach his own Lamborghini, whose tinted windscreen and yellow bonnet appeared in the next few shots as he tailed them out of Naples to Posillipo, then up a familiar potholed lane before vanishing straight into Taddeo Santoro’s villa.
‘The gates were already open,’ murmured Messana.
Cesco nodded. ‘They were expected.’
That was the last photograph. But there was one more file. A video clip. Heart heavy with foreboding, Cesco set it playing.
The drawbridge slab was far too heavy for Lucia and Carmen to shift. Fortunately, there was no need. The way it had fallen across the passage had left it completely wedged, so that they only had to clear a channel beneath it. As for the rubble, it looked daunting but was actually made of compacted pumice and ash, lighter and more amenable than Carmen had expected. Yet the hammer and the crowbar both got good use, while the dust forced them into regular retreat despite their masks and goggles. Nevertheless, they made steady progress, clearing a pipe against the wall deep enough that they had to start taking it in shifts. Carmen clawed out more debris, then lit up the newly-created space. And yes, there was the hole Lucia had glimpsed, right at the base of the wall. She wriggled forwards and reached her torch through it, twisting her wrist this way and that, her cheek pressed to the rough stone floor as she craned to—
Shock made her fumble and drop her torch. It landed with a splash on the far side even as she scrambled backward, her pulse pounding.
‘What the hell?’ asked Lucia. ‘Did you see a ghost?’
Carmen took a deep breath and even managed a smile. ‘Kind of,’ she said.
‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘I know. But still. A woman. Reaching out to me.’ She gave her heart another moment, then wormed her way back in. It was easier to see this time, without her hand in the way, for her torch had landed in water on the other side and was bobbing up and down, throwing out rings of eerie yellow light. And yes, there was indeed a woman a little way below her, reaching out in desperation as she was swept off by a warrior on horseback. Except it wasn’t Carmen she was reaching out to, of course, but rather her family and friends. A Sabine, perhaps, being stolen from her home to make a wife for Romulus and his first Romans. Her face, hair and robe were painted in the Graeco-Roman manner, as were the head and shoulders of her abductor too. But everything from her chest on down was bare white marble, washed of pigments by the groundwater that reached up to the horse’s forequarters, as though it were fording a river.
Carmen’s window was barely bigger than her fist, but only because the hole was still mostly blocked by rubble. She worked away at it, either heaving it out behind her or forcing it through the hole to splash into the water beyond, until she’d created an opening some two feet across and eighteen inches high. She could see ancient brickwork on either side, suggesting that there’d been a door here once. Yes. A door, buttressed by the statue, that had held back the flood of gas and ash long enough for it to cool and set; after which the door had rotted away, leaving this small gap to the woman’s outstretched hand. Her eyes adjusted further. The space was actually a passage with rough-hewn walls. And there were at least two more statues in it. A huntsman on a rearing horse was stabbing some invisible quarry with his spear; and, bizarrely, she could see an Egyptian colossus too, with its iconic crown and chin beard.
A tug on her leg. ‘Well?’ asked Lucia. ‘What is it?’
‘A passage,’ Carmen told her, withdrawing to make room. ‘Some statues.’
‘Mother of God,’ muttered Lucia when she saw them for herself. ‘They’re beautiful. But what are they doing here?’
‘Imagine what it must have been like when Vesuvius erupted,’ said Carmen slowly, thinking it through out loud. ‘The first bombardment missed but the writing was on the wall. Not everyone can fit on your boats all at once, so you have to evacuate in shifts. That gives you time and a certain amount of manpower. You know there are going to be looters, because there always are. So you bring your greatest treasures here, to the safest place in the Villa, leaving the largest and most cumbersome pieces until last, both to buttress the door and to make it harder for anyone to get at whatever lies beyond.’
‘You’re saying we’ve found their vault?’
Carmen grinned. ‘I’m saying there’s only one way to find out.’
The video clip began in a blur of darkness and heavy breathing, barely audible until Cesco turned up the volume. The picture steadied on the rear of Taddeo Santoro’s house, the boot of the BMW cabriolet just visible, its lights off. Raff was clearly already inside the grounds. He must have vaulted the gate, as Cesco had done last night. Intruder lights suddenly sprang on. He dropped to the ground and froze. But no one came, so he rose again and scurried across the gravel to the house before they could go out again.
The house was mostly dark, but lights were blazing in one downstairs room. He edged along to its window. Miranda Harcourt and Vernon were seated on a cream sofa, across a low coffee table from Taddeo Santoro in a matching armchair. Harcourt was examining an alabaster vase that Santoro had seemingly just handed her from an archival box packed with tissue paper lying open on the table in front of him. There was a stack of other such boxes on the floor beside him too – perhaps two or even three dozen of them.
Harcourt turned the vase around in her hands with a look of mild disdain. Santoro, by contrast, enthusiastically pointed out its virtues and showed her old documents in transparent sleeves; presumably the provenance. They haggled good-naturedly for a while, then shook hands and made notes on their respective pads, while Vernon packed the vase and its accompanying documents back into their box, then sealed it with a tape gun and set it on the floor beside him. Then he picked up all their empty glasses and took them for a refill.
The next box now. An ebony statuette of a young woman with a pitcher on her shoulder. More rancour this time, more gesturing, as though the authenticity of the piece was itself in dispute. Harcourt looked indignant; Santoro aggrieved. He made to take it back but she held up a finger to ask for—
A loud thud. The camera fell to the ground and spilled away, still recording. Raff was lying face-down on the ground, a trickle of blood on his forehead. Vernon crouched beside him. He had a hammer in his hand that he set down. He felt for a pulse, then pressed fingers against Raff’s skull, pushing down hard to assess the damage. He wiped his fingers on a handkerchief, then stood again and stepped out of frame. ‘Out here!’ he called out calmly, with just a hint of Texan drawl. ‘Both of you, out here now.’
Twenty seconds passed. Footsteps crunched. Taddeo swore loudly and crouched beside Raffaele. ‘What the hell?’
‘He was spying on us. I saw his camera.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not yet?’ echoed Taddeo. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’
‘An ambulance?’ said Harcourt. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘He’s my friend.’
‘Some friend. He was spying on you.’
‘Not on me. On you two idiots. You must have brought him out here with you.’
Vernon grunted. ‘Does he drive a yellow sports car, by any chance?’
‘A Lamborghini, yes.’
‘Told you,’ said Vernon to Harcourt.
‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’ she scowled. ‘The question is, what do we do now?’
‘We call an ambulance,’ said Taddeo. ‘We have no choice. The police will trace him here from his GPS. It’ll all come out anyway. Best not make it worse.’
‘It’s already worse,’ said Vernon. ‘Your friend’s not going to make it. Feel his skull if you don’t believe me. And if you think I’m going to hold up my hand to murder just to save your ass…’
‘Jesus,’ muttered Taddeo. ‘This is a nightmare.’
‘Only if we lose our heads,’ said Vernon. ‘Do as I say, it’ll be fine. Trust me. Miranda didn’t recruit me for my expertise in classical art.’
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘Drive him back into Naples in his own car. Take him down to the docks or some other Camorra stronghold. Make it look like a jacking turned ugly. Anyone driving a car like that is asking for it, right?’
‘The police will still know he was here. They’ll want to know why.’
‘He’s your friend, isn’t he? So he came for a drink. To ask a favour. To suck your dick. You’ll think of something.’
‘I could say he wanted to discuss his new contract.’
‘That’s the spirit. You discussed it and he fucked off again. Not your fault if he went down to the docks.’
‘Not the docks. The police are all over them. The Mafia strongholds too.’
‘Then give me a better idea.’
‘Whatever it is,’ said Harcourt, ‘it needs to wait until I’m already in the air.’
‘So that I take the fall if it goes to shit, you mean?’
‘Like you said: I didn’t recruit you for your expertise in classical art.’
‘People jack cars late at night, not early morning,’ said Vernon angrily. ‘The longer we hold off, the more likely he is to wake.’
‘I thought you hit him too hard. I thought he was dead anyway.’
‘I’m not a doctor, am I? I’m just saying, the last thing we need is him waking.’
A short silence followed. It was Taddeo who broke it. ‘I have some Rohypnol upstairs,’ he muttered, his voice soft with shame.
Vernon laughed coarsely. ‘Do you now?’
‘Well? Would it help?’
‘Since when do carjackers use Rohypnol?’
‘What if it’s not a carjacking? What if it’s something else?’
‘Go on.’
Another pause as Taddeo wrestled with himself. ‘That letter I was telling you about earlier,’ he said finally. ‘The one pinned to the Villa of the Papyri gates. The police think it was Camorra. And the threats are pretty broad. Raffaele could easily be a target. And he’s due out at the Villa in the morning.’
‘It could work,’ said Vernon. He rolled Raff onto his back with his foot. ‘Does he live alone? Have a landline?’
‘Yes. And yes. Why?’
‘We’ll need to make it look like he went back there for the night, then set off again first thing. So one of you will have to call his landline from a payphone. I’ll answer it myself. That will place him back at home. I’ll leave a note making it look like he arranged an appointment for the morning. That will give the police a trail to follow. Then I’ll send a couple of texts to—’
‘Shit!’ said Harcourt. ‘Is that damned camera still on?’
‘I’ve got it,’ said Taddeo.
The footage went blurry again, then ended altogether. A moment or two of silence passed before Izzo broke it. ‘Sons of fucking bitches,’ he said.