The Garden of Evil by David Hewson

Author:David Hewson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780440337959
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

Two

THEIR DESTINATION WAS IN ANOTHER DARK, NARROW alley in a part of Rome that Gianni Peroni was beginning to dislike. He felt tired and worried. He was concerned, too, about this new commissario who seemed so friendly and had picked him out by name, even going so far as to pat him on the shoulder as they rode to the address that was registered for Giorgio Castagna.

Commissario Esposito took one look at the dingy street and the shiny door, that of a single house, not the apartments one would normally expect.

There were ten other men with them, one of them a sovrintendente, Alfieri, who was less than pleased to discover Esposito didn’t appear to regard him as his most senior officer around.

“Why are you an agente?” the commissario asked idly as they looked at the door from down the lane, thinking of their mode of entrance.

“Because the people in charge at the time got sentimental,” Peroni replied immediately. “I should have been fired. I was an inspector. They found me in a cathouse when it got raided. My life was a little . . . strange at the time.”

Esposito said nothing.

“Why are you asking this?” Peroni demanded. “Since you clearly know it already if you’ve read the papers.”

“Sometimes it’s better to hear things than read them. Don’t you agree?”

“Of course . . .”

“And also because . . .” Esposito shrugged. “I have to make a decision when the dust has settled. Do I throw the book at you all for running this little show outside the rules? Or . . .”

The commissario looked at Alfieri, who was shuffling on his big feet and standing in front of some muscular agente Peroni didn’t know, one who was passing a large, nasty-looking implement from hand to hand, somewhat impatiently.

“We are talking, Officer,” he pointed out. “A private conversation.”

“S-sir,” the man stuttered, “we have someone here who has done the new entry course.”

Esposito raised an eyebrow at the large metallic implement in the hulking agente’s grip.

“No more mallets, eh? Isn’t progress wonderful?” He turned to Peroni. “What would you advise?”

“Nic and Rosa had nothing to do with this. He’s still in mourning. She was just obeying orders.”

“I meant what would you do here?”

It was obvious. Anyone who’d worked Rome for a couple of decades would have known the answer from the outset. But the new generation, men like Alfieri, were formed by the courses they went on, not by what they saw about them on the street.

“The house is terraced,” Peroni pointed out. “I know this area well enough to understand there is no rear exit. It simply backs onto whatever lies behind. They didn’t build passageways out the back in those days.”

“So?” Esposito asked.

“If it was me, I’d ring the doorbell,” he answered.

Esposito nodded across the street and ordered, “Do it.”

Grumbling low curses, aware he was exhausted and his temper on a short fuse, Peroni wandered down the alley, stood in front of the house, and looked at the bell and the upright letter box built into the centre of the old wooden door.

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