The Garden of Evil (3 page)

Four

V
ÉRONIQUE GILLET WAS STRETCHED OUT NAKED, A THIN
pale skeleton of a figure on a dark red velvet chaise longue drawn up beneath the painting, which itself seemed to feature some similar, though more bulky, nude form. Her head rested on the single raised arm of the sofa’s head, lolling, inanimate. Her legs were loosely entwined around the torso of a standing man who wore a creased and bloodied red shirt and was positioned in front of her waist, still moving forward at the hip with a dying, measured motion Caviglia now recognised as the cadence of her diminishing sighs.

The man’s expression was crazed, that of an animal fixed on its prey, mindless, intent on one thing only.

Her face was turned towards Caviglia and the door, not out of some deliberate intent, he thought, but simply because that was the way her head had fallen. The eyes of Véronique Gillet were no longer the vivid, attentive grey of an exotic feline. They were dead and glassy. Her bright red hair was matted with sweat, so much that it clung tightly to her skull. Her attacker’s hand held a knife tight to her throat, where it had drawn a dark red line, lazy and curving, out from her collarbone towards the base of her neck.

Caviglia ran forward, yelling, screaming, shouting as loudly as he could in the hope that someone in the street beyond would hear and come to his aid. Still, he was unable to concentrate on the point where his attention ought to lie—the man, the animal, the murderer—because his mind would not leave two incandescent burning points of visual focus in front of him.

He tripped on something, a can of paint perhaps, and stumbled to the hard floor, cracking the side of his skull hard on the ancient flagstones. The sweet stench of decay seemed to be everywhere, rising in his nostrils, filling his head with nonsense.

In these moments strange thoughts are born. He recalled what the woman in the cafe had said about the artists who had lived in this neighbourhood. Among them Caravaggio, who had painted so many vivid depictions of life and death in Rome: Saint Peter on the cross in Santa Maria del Popolo; David with the dangling head of Goliath in the Villa Borghese, where Caviglia would direct tourists looking for some peace in the city on a sweltering summer day. And the martyrdom of Saint Matthew, in his own church of San Luigi dei Francesi, no more than a few minutes’ walk from where he now scrabbled on a dusty, paint-strewn floor, trying to make sense of the nightmare that had risen from the dark Roman gutter to despoil this lustrous festival of the Immaculate Conception, when no one should have thoughts for anything but life and the world, children and the future, the coming shift of the season with its subtle, eternal metamorphosis from dark to light.

He blinked and when he opened his eyes again they were fixed, unfailingly, on the painting, unable to look anywhere else. What he saw made him catch his breath. This was, in some cryptic, unknowable way, the very scene he’d just witnessed. The woman there, naked, surrounded by figures who attended to her in ways which were both loving yet inimical, too, was gasping, through lips that were full and rosy and fleshy, brimming over with life.

The picture possessed a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that, once witnessed, it could never be unseen.

Something real intervened in his view. The figure—Véronique Gillet’s lover or murderer or both—had disentangled himself from her torso. He now stood above Aldo Caviglia. The bloody knife was in his hand, something the old disgraced baker understood fully, without needing to look.

There was no point in fleeing the inevitable. He set his gaze on the canvas, marvelling at the full figure there, painted with such care and beauty and exactitude, it was surely the work of a master. Her flesh seemed to pulse with warmth and blood, even on the razor’s edge of an ecstatic epiphany so real, so violent, it might take away the last, precious vestige of life itself.

“Be quick,” Aldo Caviglia murmured, and, against all instinct in the presence of such savage wonder, screwed his eyes tightly shut, waiting, one last taut breath held close inside.

One

G
IANNI PERONI DIDN’T FIT IN A BUNNY SUIT. HE WANDERED
round the overcrowded storeroom looking faintly obscene, the white plastic overall clinging tightly to his large frame, its colour almost the same shade as his face. He was angry, too, and willing to make this plain to anyone who came in proximity, from Inspector Leo Falcone on down.

It was now mid-afternoon, two hours since the Questura got the call about suspicious cries coming from the address in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. A routine visit by a uniformed officer had rapidly escalated into a full-blown murder inquiry, with Inspector Falcone deputed to lead the team. It was, Nic Costa felt, a little like old times. Teresa Lupo and her chief morgue monkey, Silvio Di Capua, were poring over two bodies, both the apparent victims of violent attacks. Scene-of-crime officers were starting to pick their way around a room that looked like a forensic team’s nightmare: spatters of wild colour, and blood and dirt and dust, were everywhere—on the floor, on the walls, on the grubby tables and chairs. It seemed much like an artist’s studio. There were easels and used pots of paint, some commercial household brands, some artistic. There was also what appeared to be a substantial canvas some way behind the two corpses on the floor, now outlined by white chalk and tended by Teresa and her team of acolytes. Costa knew that he would have to see that before he left, but for now he would leave it as it was, hidden under a green velvet coverlet so large it draped down both back and front, obscuring it from view entirely.

Some things had changed, though.

“Sovrintendente.”

Falcone’s voice echoed clear and commanding in the cold empty space. Costa daydreamed. He’d spoken to Emily on the journey over. She was in a class at the architectural school in the Piazza Borghese, no more than two minutes’ walk away. Costa had mentioned his destination, though not the purpose. From the warm, inquisitive tone of her voice, he knew what she’d do: walk down into the narrow, dark lane and try to take a look for herself. Emily still yearned to be in law enforcement, even though her architectural career seemed about to blossom, thanks to an internship with one of the city’s largest partnerships.

“
Sovrintendente,
” Falcone repeated, more loudly. The old inspector was now almost fully recovered from a recent gunshot wound. He had a slight limp, nothing more. Inside the Questura, Falcone was once more, if not the top dog, a substantial intellectual force, the officer to whom the awkward cases were assigned. He was also a man at peace with himself again, apparently happily alone after a short, odd romantic entanglement. And, like Peroni and Teresa, utterly delighted to have attended the brief civil marriage ceremony at which Costa and Emily Deacon had become man and wife three months ago to this day.

The senior officer leaned over and whispered into Costa’s ear, “Nic!”

“I’m sorry,” Costa found himself stuttering. It had been a remarkable year. The tragedy of a child lost in a miscarriage, a wedding, and then, returning to the Questura the previous Monday, discovering his promotion had come through while he and Emily were on a too-brief weekend break in Sicily. “Sir,” he added.

“And so you should be,” Falcone complained. “Your honeymoon is over, Officer. Pay attention, please.”

While he spoke, Falcone was watching Gianni Peroni fulminate by the side of the two bodies, spitting complaints in the direction of anyone within earshot. The inspector was wondering perhaps what the big man, once an inspector himself, thought of his partner’s rise through the ranks. It was certainly a subject that had occupied Costa’s thoughts since he returned to work, and one he had to discuss with Peroni, soon.

“What would you do in my shoes?” Falcone asked, eyes sparking with interest, hand on his trim silver beard.

“Seal the room and keep it sealed,” Costa answered instantly.

Falcone nodded. “Why?” he asked.

“It’s going to take days before forensic manage to sweep this place properly. It’s a mess. We’ll need to bring in experts, and if that’s to mean anything we must make sure there is no unnecessary disturbance. Also . . .”

He glanced at the manpower crammed into the cramped and jumbled space around them. There were thirteen people there, including two photographers and three civilians from the media department, two of them trainees, who were preparing what to say to the press and TV. Only seven people were serving police officers. This seemed to be the way of things lately. The investigative process was becoming muddied, mired in procedure, dictated more by lawyers than the need for the swift, clear discovery of facts and culpability.

“I think we need to keep the numbers down as much as possible. There’s a lot of material in here. I know everyone’s careful. But all the same . . .”

The inspector grimaced. “We do these things by rote these days, Sovrintendente. The first act, always, is to pick up the manual and read what it says. You’re right . . .”

Having little patience with politeness, the inspector brusquely ordered the media team to get out and watched them slink towards the door, casting mute and furious glances in their wake. Then he folded his long arms and glanced towards the two corpses in front of him, a thoughtful finger momentarily stroking his silver goatee, a familiar expression of wry amusement in his angular, tanned face.

“On the other hand,” he added with nonchalant ease, “it would appear to be a relatively straightforward matter.”

A man of late middle age, wearing a smart suit and an expression frozen halfway between horror and simple mute fury, lay curled on his side, clutching his stomach, gripping himself in the taut, terrified agony of a vicious death. The black wooden shaft of what Costa suspected would turn out to be a large kitchen knife protruded from beneath his rib cage, staining his white shirt with a ragged patch of dark, congealing blood. Next to him was the naked corpse of a much younger woman, so thin her rib cage was showing.

The contrast between the two was marked. The woman’s face, which had a still, bloodless beauty that transcended life, was almost peaceful. She lay on her back, legs slightly raised and akimbo, in a position that could, possibly, have been post-coital. She had short fiery red hair, which was disarrayed, as if by some kind of violence, and somewhat greasy, maybe from sweat. There was a wound in her throat, perhaps a hand’s span long and probably from a knife, logically the same one that killed the man. The cut ran down towards her breastbone, though it was not deep, it seemed to Costa, since there was much less blood than appeared on the shirt of the other victim. Her pale grey eyes, like those of her apparent attacker, were wide open, though much more distended, as if through some kind of medical condition. They stared fixedly at the ceiling in an unwavering gaze.

Her lips were a cold shade of blue, starting to resemble the same dull tone he could see in her dead eyes.

“He didn’t do it,” Peroni insisted.

“He?” Falcone asked.

“
He
,” the big man responded, stabbing a fat finger in the air. “Aldo Caviglia. I arrested him once for stealing on the buses. I’ve warned him twice too. He’s a petty thief. A sad, confused little guy. He steals . . .” Peroni looked pale. He was never happy around death. “He
stole
wallets for a living, for God’s sake. The last time I caught him he promised he’d stop.”

Costa noticed something about the dead man’s appearance: a bulge in his jacket. He knelt down beside Teresa Lupo, receiving a warning glance from the pathologist as he did so.

“Touch nothing without my permission,” the pathologist warned.

“The pocket?”

Teresa looked, saw what he was getting at, then reached into the man’s jacket and withdrew, in her gloved fingers, a woman’s expensive leather wallet.

Peroni swore.

“Sometimes people lie, Gianni,” Teresa told him. “It’s shocking, I know. But at least . . .”

She was sifting through the contents and dropping each item one by one into an evidence bag.

“. . . He’s given you some ID for her.”

Teresa straightened up and showed them the card. The three police officers read it.

“French,” she said. “Might have known.”

“Why?” Falcone asked immediately.

“You really don’t notice much about women, do you, Leo? Alive or dead. She’s wearing mascara, so beautifully applied I can’t quite believe it. She still has perfect makeup, despite all that’s happened here. The only other thing she has on are a couple of diamond earrings too beautiful for most of us to contemplate. Also . . .”

The pathologist nodded towards some large white bags beneath the paint-stained window.

“She was wearing a winter outfit that must have cost a fortune. And the shoes. In this weather. This was not someone out for a day’s sightseeing, I can tell you that. She was dressed up for something. A business meeting. A date.”

“Were the clothes torn?” Costa asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Teresa said. “They were folded up nice and neatly, the way you do before you go to bed.” She glanced again at the card. “Perhaps she was doing business on behalf of the Louvre.”

Falcone coughed into his fist.

“Sorry, sorry,” she added. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

“Very much so,” Falcone agreed. “Did they have sex?”

Teresa dropped the card in the evidence bag, passed it to Di Capua, and frowned down at the dead Caviglia on the floor.

“These two? No. I am guessing here. I’ll tell you more later, once we have them back in the morgue. But some sneaking feminine intuition tells me that couples who expire post-copulation rarely do so with one partner naked and the other fully dressed and looking like he’s going to an interview with his bank manager. Even his zip’s done up, Leo. Think it through for yourself.”

“She
is
naked,” Costa pointed out.

“I said ‘they’ didn’t do it. She did. And rough sex, too, though not necessarily rape. There’s minimal bruising. Unprotected, though. I’ll have your DNA sample ready first thing in the morning. A good dinner says it isn’t that of our light-fingered friend here. Nor,” she added quickly, “do I think she killed him. It’s just meant to look that way, and not well orchestrated either. Someone was in a hurry. Look at the details. She’s on the floor. And there’s a perfectly good chaise longue over there. Why would they get down to it here? We would also have to assume that she killed him first, then expired herself. Remarkable in itself, and even more so if she then managed to lie down flat, quite unclothed, on a cold stone floor, all ready for the grave. No—”

Falcone held up a lean, tanned hand, demanding silence. “Enough,” he said quietly. “Leave us something to do. Please. Clearly we are meant to believe something here.”

“Aldo Caviglia couldn’t hurt a fly,” Peroni insisted. “Why would someone pick on a poor old soul like him?”

“That’s what we’re supposed to find out,” Costa said automatically, and was shocked that it sounded like an admonition.

“Thank you,” Peroni said quietly. “Sir.”

“Blue lips,” Costa murmured, ignoring him.

Teresa was staring at the dead woman’s face, interested, but worried also, it seemed to Costa, by the distance there had to be between a
sovrintendente
and an
agente
who was more than twenty years his senior.

“Quite,” she said. “Do you notice the smell?”

“I thought this whole place smelled bad,” Costa said. “Drains.”

She grimaced, as if she’d missed something important. “It does stink, you’re right. But she has a particular smell. A little like sweaty socks, in case you’re too polite to say.”

“Is it unusual?” he asked.

“Not around any cops I know,” she answered. “But on a woman like this?”

Watched by Falcone, Costa knelt down and leaned over the corpse. The smell was obvious: direct and pungent.

“It takes an hour or so to degrade that much,” Teresa remarked.

“What does?” Falcone demanded.

“Amyl nitrate.”

“A sex drug?” Costa asked, astonished.

“Hold on there,” the pathologist cautioned. “Amyl nitrate is a very useful pharmaceutical in the right circumstances.” She was staring directly at Costa, challenging him to think. “It’s relief for angina. And emergency revival in heart cases.”

“Blue lips,” he said again.

“Quite.” She was grinning. “No wonder you promoted him, Leo.”

Falcone sighed. “So this woman died of a heart attack. During sex? And the drug was there either for stimulation or to revive her?”

“I am merely a pathologist,” Teresa replied. She held out a hand. Peroni took it and helped her to her feet. “If I’m to help you with the rest, I need to get these two out of here and safe and warm to my lair. We have everything we’re going to get
in situ
. Silvio can stay behind and supervise the rest. I’ll need her medical history from Paris. You don’t mind if we handle that?”

“No,” the inspector said, nodding. “Just the medical side. You agree?”

“Of course,” she concurred, smiling pleasantly.

“I told you Caviglia didn’t do it!” Peroni pointed out.

She smiled and patted his arm. “So you did. Good for you.”

“He stole her wallet, though,” Falcone added. “He came here for some reason. He saw something . . .”

The room had gone quiet. The other officers who’d been working alongside the forensic team waited, except for the pair who seemed to be lifting some loose masonry close to the rotting iron window.

“Perhaps he saw this,” Costa suggested. He walked over to the large easel behind the corpses and, very carefully, removed the green velvet drape, exposing the canvas.

Not a word was uttered for a good half a minute. Not a breath even, it seemed.

“Perhaps he did,” Tereasa whispered, breaking the silence.

NO ONE COULD TAKE THEIR EYES OFF THE PAINTING. EVEN THE
presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead through strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas at that moment.

Falcone walked over to join Costa, his gaze fixed on the shining naked form, three-quarters life-size, in front of them.