really are the same as these people?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied, and made sure they heard every word. ‘I’m a civilian. It’s complicated. Even for us sometimes.’
She dropped the envelope into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Then I’ll take that coffee.’
‘Nice job,’ Costa said and patted the senior uniform on his serge arm. ‘I love to see the carabinieri do public relations. Makes our life so much easier.’
Then, ignoring the torrent of curses directed at his back, he took her arm and led her away from them. She was pleased to go. When her face lost its taut anxiety she looked different. She’d dressed down, in jeans and an old, bleached denim jacket. But it didn’t fit somehow. It was almost a disguise. There was something alluring, almost elegant underneath, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Costa led her round the corner, to a tiny café in an alcove behind the square. There were pots of creamed coffee on the counter, with people ladling spoonfuls into their cups to beef up the caffeine. She leaned on the counter, looking as if she came into the place every day.
‘My name’s Miranda Julius,’ she said. ‘And this is crazy. Maybe I’m crazy. You’ll regret ever asking me here.’
Costa listened as she told her story, slowly, methodically, with the kind of care and attention he wished he heard more often.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked when the story was finished.
‘Nothing.’
She stared into his face with a frank curiosity. ‘I don’t think so.’
He thought about what she’d said. Maybe the girl really had just run away with a boyfriend her mother had never even met. Maybe it was all as innocent as that. Her misgivings were based on intuition, not fact. She just felt something was wrong. He could understand why the assholes from the carabinieri just wanted to send her on her way.
‘You said she came back yesterday with a tattoo.’
‘Stupid, stupid. Just another reason for an argument. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t why we came to Italy.’ She shook her head and it annoyed him he couldn’t stop watching her. Close up she was older than he first thought. There were stress lines at the corner of her bright, intelligent blue eyes. But they just added character to a face that, when she was young, must have been too perfectly pretty for its own good. She looked like a model who’d later taken up manual labour or something just to make life more interesting, just to get a few scars.
‘What was it like?’
‘The tattoo? Ridiculous. What do you expect from a sixteen-year-old? She had it done a couple of days ago apparently. It was only yesterday she plucked up the courage to tell me, when the scars had healed. She said it was his idea. Whoever he is. But she liked it, naturally. Do you want to see?’
‘What?’
She reached into her bag and withdrew the folder of photos. ‘I took a picture, just for the record. I had the film developed this morning which is why I have all this stuff with me. Taking pictures is what I do, by the way. Call it an obsession.’
She sorted through a set of photos then threw one on the table. It was a close-up of the girl’s shoulder. There was the dark black ink of a tattoo at the top of her arm, and the howling face.
‘You know what that is?’ he asked.
‘She told me. A theatre mask or something. If it was the Grateful Dead I might have understood. She wasn’t that pleased when I said I wanted a shot of it for the record.’
She stared into his eyes with a sudden, determined frankness. ‘I wasn’t taking no for an answer. A tattoo. Jesus, if I’d done that when I was her age.’ She hesitated. ‘Mr Costa?’
‘Nic.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know. I need to call some people. Give me a minute.’
She was starting to look scared.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said, and heard how lame the words sounded.
Miranda Julius rented an apartment on the top floor of the Teatro di Marcello, the sprawling, fortress-like complex in the shadow of the Capitol Hill. She’d taken the place over the internet, she said, because the owner offered a good deal for the couple of months they needed, and it came with history. Though much changed over the centuries, the theatre was begun by Julius Caesar, finished by his adoptive son Augustus and used variously as a fortress and a private palace before it was converted into private accommodations. The apartment looked out towards the river and Tiber Island. The steady drone of traffic was audible through the thick, double-glazed windows. Nic Costa had walked past this building countless times and never seen inside. Now he was there he didn’t envy anyone who owned such a fancy address. It was too noisy, too detached from the city. It was in Rome, but not a part of it.
He was worried, too, that he’d over-reacted. He’d called in Falcone without discussing the matter with Peroni, which was probably a mistake. His partner had turned up only to find events shaping around him. Costa had risked Falcone’s wrath even further by inviting Teresa Lupo along to join them. It seemed important. Teresa had read the book she kept quoting at them in the morgue. If he was right, she was the only one with immediate access to the research and insight they needed. Now the four of them sat listening to Miranda Julius, each wondering whether this could be coincidence.
Miranda Julius and her daughter Suzi had arrived in Rome one week before from London. She was a news photographer based there but working on assignment anywhere the agency sent her. Suzi lived with her grandmother, and had for most of her life. She was studying art at a local college. Her mother had taken her out of class for two months on a kind of ‘get-to-know-you’ holiday in Rome. Suzi had enrolled at the language school in the Piazza della Cancelleria for Italian lessons – the same school that the dead Eleanor Jamieson had attended. The two of them had begun a round of the Rome galleries in their spare time. After a few days Suzi had made a friend. Not at the school, but somewhere nearby. A boy, she said, and one who was reluctant, at the time, to meet her mother, for reasons Miranda could only guess.
‘How old is she?’ Falcone asked.
‘She was sixteen in December.’
‘And you?’ Falcone persisted.
Teresa risked glaring at him. Falcone was always direct with women, direct to the point of bullying.
‘I’m thirty-three, inspector,’ Miranda said immediately. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re doing your arithmetic already. I was at school when I got pregnant. The father was a jerk. He was gone before she was born.’ She had an upper-class English accent which sat uneasily with her crumpled, laid-back appearance. There was money somewhere. The apartment must have cost her plenty.
‘Is this relevant?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mind answering these questions but I would like to know why.’
‘When you have a missing teenager anything could be relevant,’ Costa said.
She turned away from Falcone and stared out of the big windows, out at the traffic roar. ‘If she is missing.
