26

SCAMARCIO HEADED OVER TO Parioli, feeling discouraged by the online brick wall he’d hit trying to find a link between Borghese’s previous companies and Zenox Pharmaceuticals. He wondered whether the person who’d made the tip-off was really trying to throw him off track. He hoped Sartori might make more progress in his house-to-house visits to the companies themselves. Not everything appeared online, and if the relationship was old, it might have been consigned to the paper files. Wishful thinking, but he needed hope.

Pombeni had named two people Jacobini could have been talking to on the phone when he’d boasted that he ‘owned’ Castelnuovo — Maura Valentini or Stefano Rosati. A quick scan through Jacobini’s phone records around the time Frog-boy had overheard the incriminating call revealed that he’d been talking to Rosati. Rosati lived on Via Carlo Allioni in western Parioli: a street lined with elegant baroque buildings. To Scamarcio, it still felt as if he was being distracted by a high-school melodrama when more serious clouds were gathering at the fringes of his investigation, but he knew he had to ‘work it hard’, as Garramone had advised.

When Scamarcio reached Rosati’s house, his mother explained that her son could be found at the skate-park five minutes away on Via Dorando Pietri.

The first thing Scamarcio noticed was a group of youths in ridiculously wide shorts with flat black piercings through their ears hanging about by the skate ramp. They didn’t look like goths — they seemed one branch up on the evolutionary tree.

‘Stefano Rosati?’

A boy with a mop of blond hair hanging across one eye looked up. The other side of his head was completely shaved. ‘Who’s asking?’

Scamarcio flipped open his badge, and a murmur rippled through the group.

The boy took a long drag on his fag, squinting at Scamarcio through the smoke, then said, ‘Follow me,’ in a manner which seemed to impress his friends.

They walked twenty metres away to a bench pocked by dried bird dung. The boy took a seat and pulled out a dented pack of Camels from an enormous pocket. He offered one to Scamarcio, who took it. Anything to make his own pack of Marlboros last longer.

‘So, you’re here about Castelnuovo,’ said the boy, drawing the smoke down deep and blinking into the sunlight. The first promise of spring was finally in the air, and Scamarcio removed his jacket.

‘I just wondered what Jacobini had told you on the phone. I believe he was bragging that he had some kind of hold over Castelnuovo.’

‘This is deep shit,’ said the boy, letting the smoke escape through the gap in his yellow teeth. ‘Deep, deep shit.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘No, I don’t think you are.’

‘Enlighten me, then.’

‘Castelnuovo killed Andrea Borghese.’ Just like that, no preamble, no notes of hesitancy.

‘You sure?’

‘He told Jacobini, and I’m not going to get myself in trouble with you guys by holding anything back.’ He took another long drag and stared into the middle distance while he seemed to organise the facts, as he knew them, in his head. ‘Castelnuovo had been to Andrea’s flat to talk to him about Graziella. Castelnuovo knew that she had a thing for Andrea, and he wanted Andrea to call it off. Castelnuovo was used to getting what he wanted. When Andrea told him to forget it, he saw red and killed him. Castelnuovo has a fierce temper, always has done.’

‘Killed him how?’

The boy waved a hand through the smoke as if the question were irrelevant. ‘I don’t know the details.’

‘And this is what he told Jacobini?’

‘Yes, he’d been drinking and confessed the whole thing. Jacobini now thinks he owns Castelnuovo and his famous family. Says he’s going to use it.’

‘What a nice friend.’

Rosati shrugged.

‘Is Castelnuovo scared?’

Rosati took a long suck on the fag while he followed the progress of a female jogger in skin-tight lycra. ‘Shit-scared. That’s a first.’ He smirked, as if the thought gave him pleasure.

Scamarcio wondered at the lack of remorse. Did these rich city kids not have souls? He’d encountered more morality down south.

‘Did you know Andrea?’ he asked, trying to make the Camel last a few drags longer.

‘I made small talk with him once or twice, but no, we didn’t hang out. He was too weird. You never knew if he was going to lose it.’

‘What, lose it like Castelnuovo?’ Scamarcio felt his anger rising.

The boy frowned through his smoke. ‘I guess.’ He stubbed out his cigarette on the ground, grinding it in hard with his pristine Converse boot. ‘What now, then?’

‘Well, if what you say is true, it looks like Castelnuovo will be heading up the road to Rebibbia.’

The boy shook his head sadly, as if some great injustice was about to be done. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered.

Scamarcio fixed him with a steely stare. ‘In the meantime, I don’t want you breathing a word of this conversation. I won’t have you fucking up my timing. If I find out you’ve spoken to anyone about our meeting, I will charge you with obstruction, that clear?’

The boy frowned again, then nodded lamely.

‘Give me that.’ Scamarcio pointed to his mobile phone.

‘What?’

‘Your phone, give it to me.’

The boy held it to his chest as if it were part of him — a limb he couldn’t lose. ‘No way.’

Scamarcio reached across and ripped it away. ‘I will be keeping this for twenty-four hours so you can’t set the grapevine alight. Show up at the station on Via San Vitale tomorrow, and you can have it back.’

‘I don’t know where that is.’

‘Buy a bloody map.’

Scamarcio rose quickly and stormed off. A cauldron of fury was seething in him. He wanted to punch the boy, teach him some respect for the dead.