The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (203 page)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Rome

‘Where are we going?’ Buitoni asked as Darcey led him down to the police car pool. She was clutching the keys to one of the unmarked Carabinieri pursuit Alfa Romeo GTs.

‘To the airport,’ she said, glancing at her watch. It was 2.47 p.m.

He gave her a blank look.

‘Because Ben Hope called his business partner from there just over an hour before the Tassoni shooting,’ she explained. ‘The question is, what was he doing there?’

Buitoni thought about it as they approached the car. ‘He could have been going there to meet someone. The weapon might have been in a luggage locker there.’

‘Hope called from the departure lounge. He was waiting for a flight.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I checked it out. The 16:03 to Heathrow. Take-off was delayed for nearly an hour. Hope was on the passenger list. Business class. You want to know the seat number?’

Buitoni looked baffled. ‘He was heading for London?’

‘Certainly looks that way.’

‘But he didn’t get on the plane.’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Buitoni said. ‘Was he just going through the motions to throw us off?’

‘You think he’d be that stupid? Nobody walks in and out of an airport without being filmed on a million cameras. That’s why I want to go there. The security footage might tell us something.’ Darcey tossed the Alfa keys in the air, and Buitoni caught them. ‘You drive,’ she said.

After a stuttering journey through the snarled Rome traffic, they blasted the 30 kilometres of open road to Fiumicino. At the airport security section, a couple of surly guys in uniform led them into a control room where banks of screens fed back constant live footage from the hundreds of cameras throughout the complex. Everything was backed up on a massive hard drive that was hooked up to yet more screens, so that live and recorded footage could be viewed simultaneously. Darcey had Buitoni request to view playback from the previous afternoon, from around the time Ben Hope might have turned up in the departure lounge.

Things did not move fast. By the time the technicians had eventually dug out the right section of recordings, Darcey had paced miles up and down the corridor outside the control room. She and Buitoni sat on plastic chairs to view the screens while a technician worked the computer.

Actually spotting Hope among the thousands of tiny figures that came and went, moving comically in speeded-up motion, was a painfully slow task. After an eternity of staring hard at the screens and sipping a Coke, Darcey’s eyes felt as raw as steaks. But then, finally, her searching gaze found its mark. The blond hair, the leather jacket, the easy way he moved. He was carrying a green canvas bag with a lot of miles on it.

‘Got you,’ she said with a smile.

‘You see him?’

Darcey pointed. ‘There.’

She and Buitoni watched as Hope walked calmly over to a seat on the far side of the lounge and sat quietly. He had that capacity she’d only ever seen in Special Forces soldiers, to sit completely immobile for long periods. In a sea of fast-moving bodies he was the only one frozen still. Unnoticed by the crowds that came and went – but watching everything around him.

Then, at a certain point, something seemed to catch his eye and his position shifted.

‘What’s he looking at?’ Buitoni said.

‘Those.’ She pointed at another screen, which showed a different angle on the departure lounge and a boutique window filled with televisions. ‘Can we get a close up?’ she asked, and Buitoni relayed the request to the technician. The image swelled on the screen, pixellated momentarily and then sharpened.

‘I know what that is,’ Buitoni said. ‘It’s the report on the arrest of Tito Palazzo, the guy who assaulted Tassoni.’

‘Keep watching.’

The screens displayed the time 16:51 as Hope suddenly rose from his seat and headed out of the lounge with a crowd of other passengers.

‘Nine minutes to five, his flight was called,’ Darcey said.

‘He really looks like he means to get on that plane,’ Buitoni mumbled, looking more baffled than ever.

They followed his progress on another screen. But something was wrong. As their man approached the walkway to the plane, he began to slow down. His body language was strange, his head carriage low. People jostled him from behind as he finally ground to a halt and just stood there.

‘What the hell is he thinking?’ Darcey said.

Buitoni shook his head, staring in fascination as the figure on the screen turned around and started heading back in the opposite direction. ‘I think this is it. The moment where something snaps in his mind. A switch was triggered.’

Darcey glanced at him. ‘Maybe.’

‘For sure. He’d just been watching Tassoni on TV. He decides not to take the flight. He turns around and heads for the villa. It all makes sense again.’

‘He’s just gone through airport security. Where’s the .357?’

‘Stashed somewhere else. To pick up en route, maybe.’

‘Hold on. He’s already stashed a weapon
before
“something snaps”?’

‘Does it really matter? We know he did it.’

Darcey bit her lip and went on watching as the cameras followed the fugitive through the airport. Now the un certainty in his body language had evaporated and there was purpose in his stride.

‘There,’ Buitoni said as they watched Hope going to the lockers and opening one up. ‘Just like I said. The whole thing was a feint. He’s only come here to pick up the gun. It’s in the locker.’

Darcey stared closely. ‘You’re wrong, Paolo. He’s not picking up anything. He’s leaving his bag there.’

The time readout was just seconds after 17:17 as Ben climbed into the taxi and it pulled away.

‘There he goes,’ Buitoni said with conviction. ‘Straight to Tassoni’s and bang, bang, bang.’

Darcey didn’t answer. She stood up. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’ Back in the airport parking lot, Buitoni was walking around to the driver’s side when she plucked the key from his fingers and jumped in behind the wheel. The inside of the Alfa felt like a pizza oven after a couple of hours standing in the sun. Darcey checked her watch again. It was 4.42 p.m. She fired up the engine and wound down the windows. ‘You navigate.’

‘Where to?’

‘Casa Tassoni,’ she replied.

Buitoni was thrown back in his seat as she took off and went skidding out of the car park. She used the siren to carve a path through the traffic as she headed back towards the city with the speedometer nudging the hundred and seventy kilometres an hour mark.

‘Mind telling me what this is about?’ Buitoni asked her.

‘Call it an experiment,’ she said as she zipped past a speeding BMW so fast it looked like it was standing still.

She barely slowed for the city. By then, Buitoni was rigid and pale, holding his door handle in a death grip. ‘Three guys are sitting in a bar,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘One of them is telling a Carabinieri joke. The second guy thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, but the third one’s all serious. First guy asks him, “What’s wrong?” He replies, “I’m a Carabinieri.” First guy says, “Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to you later.”’

Darcey laughed as she took the racing line through a busy junction at over ninety, ignoring the chorus of horns from swerving drivers. She dived through a gap that was maybe an inch wider than the Alfa, changed down and put her foot to the floor.

‘See, you do appreciate humour,’ Buitoni said. ‘I’m laughing at
you
, Paolo. Look at you. White as a sheet. Practically chattering your teeth. I thought Italian drivers liked to go fast.’

‘We also like to reach our destination in one piece. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer that I drove?’

‘And you call yourself a red-blooded male.’

He muttered something in Italian, and she grinned. ‘Just navigate, all right?’

‘You’re enjoying this too much.’

Buitoni was soaked in sweat by the time Darcey screeched the Alfa to a halt outside Tassoni’s villa. She killed the engine, did another time check. 5.36 p.m. She sighed loudly.

‘What?’

‘Do you think I could have gone any faster?’

He stared at her. ‘Are you the one making jokes now?’

‘Maybe I was wasting my time on all those high-speed pursuit driving courses I took. Maybe the taxi driver that brought Ben Hope here from the airport was just completely, insanely, reckless. Or maybe Hope’s discovered the secret of teleportation. I don’t know. All I know is that he only had between 5.18 and 5.57 to get here in time to shoot Tassoni and it’s just taken me fifty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds to cover the same distance.’

‘Perhaps the taxi driver knew a short cut.’

‘You told me you knew this city.’

‘I do,’ Buitoni said. ‘Then it’s possible we have the wrong time of death. Tassoni’s clock could have been inaccurate.’

‘Those kinds of clock mechanisms don’t go wrong, Paolo. NASA wouldn’t use them otherwise.’

‘Then Hope must have been working with someone else.’

‘Not if we apparently have video of him walking out of here with the smoking gun.’

‘Which we haven’t seen,’ Buitoni admitted. ‘Which we haven’t seen,’ she repeated.

Buitoni was about to reply, then gave up and flopped in his seat. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I. But don’t tell anyone about this, Paolo. That’s an order.’

At that moment, Darcey’s mobile went off in her pocket. It was her personal phone again.

‘I need a cigarette,’ Buitoni said, and stepped out of the car as she answered the call.

The heavy breather had called back. ‘How did you get this number?’ she said angrily. Silence on the line. Just the quick, agitated rasp of his breathing.

‘Fine. Play your little games. But hear this. You ever call me again, I’ll find out who you are and come and kick you so hard your balls’ll pop out through your nose. That’s a promise. Get it?’

She was about to flip the phone shut when the man spoke. ‘Don’t . . . don’t hang up. Please. Listen to me.’

A young-sounding voice. Maybe late twenties at the oldest. Educated accent, maybe Cambridge. This was no habituated phone pervert. The slur in his speech told her he’d needed a couple of drinks too many to pluck up the courage to make the call, but it nonetheless couldn’t hide the nervousness. He was almost breathless with it.

‘There are things you need to know,’ he said. He paused. ‘Are you still there?’

Darcey could see Buitoni pacing the pavement a few metres from Tassoni’s gates, anxiously puffing on his cigarette. There were still a few police vehicles parked up in the background, outside the house.

‘I’m still here,’ she said to her mystery caller. ‘But I won’t be for long.’

‘My name’s Borg.’

‘Borg,’ she repeated dubiously.

She heard him swallow hard on the other end. ‘Look. Christ. I don’t know where to begin . . . Operation Jericho isn’t what you think it is.’

She frowned. Operation Jericho. If he knew about that, he definitely was not a prank caller.

Alarms were whooping and red warning lights popping like flashguns in her mind. She needed to back off. Right now. Report this to Applewood. Do the right thing, before she opened up a hornet’s nest and got herself stung to pieces for it.

But it was stronger than her. She wanted to know more.

‘I don’t like this anonymous bullshit. You need to tell me who you really are or I’m hanging up.’

A long, nervous pause. She could sense he was thinking about it. Weighing up the pros and cons. He knew he needed to gain her trust. But his hesitation smelled of fear. This was a lot more dangerous for him than it was for her.

Or maybe it wasn’t. But she still had to know.

‘All right. Let’s stay with Borg for now,’ she said, talking in a low, soft, reassuring voice. Her negotiator’s voice. ‘Tell me what you know.’

He took a long, quavering breath. ‘It’s best we meet.’

‘That would be fine,’ she said. ‘Where?’

‘You need to come alone.’

‘I’ll do that, Borg. Tell me the place and the time. I’ll be there. Just me. That’s a promise.’

Another hesitant silence. Buitoni was still pacing up and down near the car, drawing on his cigarette like a dying man sucking oxygen.

‘OK, listen,’ Borg said. His voice lowered to a whisper, sounding muffled as if he was cupping his hand over his mouth. ‘I – oh, fuck. Someone’s co—’

There was a scuffling sound, and then the call cut off. Darcey was left staring at a dead phone.

Outside in the street, Buitoni flicked away his cigarette as his radio came to life. Darcey saw his eyes open wide at what he heard. He came running over to the car and she whirred down her window.

‘What’s happening, Paolo?’

‘Remember De Crescenzo, the gallery owner? His wife just phoned the police to say she had a gentleman caller this morning.’

‘Don’t tell me. Hope?’

Buitoni nodded. ‘Made her coffee, apparently.’

Darcey couldn’t believe the audacity of the man. ‘We need to go and talk to her right away. You drive.’ She shifted across to the passenger seat as Buitoni got in gratefully behind the wheel.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ he asked as he started the car.

‘Wrong number,’ Darcey told him.

It took another forty-five minutes to butcher their way back across the city to the De Crescenzo place. The contessa took her time answering the door, and when she did, Darcey could smell the booze on her breath. She rolled her eyes at Buitoni. He shrugged and gave a look that said ‘let me do the talking.’

Ornella De Crescenzo wobbled her way to an airy sitting room, where they all sat on soft armchairs and Buitoni had her run through the events of that morning.

‘He told me his name was Rupert,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t until later, when I saw the TV . . . ’ She bit her lip. ‘I was so shocked. To think I was alone here with a brutal killer. Here, in my own home. What if he had murdered me, too?’

‘You say he left here around ten, ten-thirty? Yet you didn’t call us until late afternoon.’

‘I was resting,’ she said defensively.

Darcey glanced at the half-empty bottle and single glass on the sideboard across the room. Resting.

‘What did he want?’ Buitoni asked Ornella. ‘To see my husband. But Pietro went off to Spain early this morning.’