The Garden of Evil (16 page)

“You—”

“As long as this murder investigation stays current,” Costa interrupted, “that painting will remain in police custody, secure and out of sight of everyone. Once we can put someone in jail for these terrible crimes”—he smiled at Malaspina—“perhaps you can see it then.”

The man swore and with a sudden, strong flick of his wrist sent the contents of his glass flying into Costa’s face.

“You do not know with whom you are playing, little man,” he spat viciously.

Costa took out a handkerchief and, with no visible sign of anger, wiped the drink from his face. “I think I’m beginning to get an idea,” he observed calmly.

He looked into Malaspina’s eyes and wondered what he saw there. A kind of fury, surely. But an irrational desperation bordering on fear and despair, too. This man did not simply desire the painting they had under lock and key in the Barberini studio. He craved it, like an addict longing for his fix.

Three

O
H DEAR,” AGATA GROANED AFTER MALASPINA HAD
stormed off. “We’ve upset a sponsor. I must say, he’s more touchy than usual tonight. He didn’t like you being here, Nic.” She peered at him. “I think something upset him, don’t you?”

“Who knows? Is his behaviour always this erratic?”

She thought about the question. “Sometimes. Franco doesn’t much like anyone, I think. Himself most of all. There’s a sadness about him I don’t understand. You know, one time he actually made some reference to the colour of my skin. As if his is much different. All this wealth. What more could a man ask? And yet . . .” The smile disappeared. “You see the world of art from the outside and think it is nothing but beauty and intellectual rigour. Those things do exist. But so do ugliness and jealousy, obsession and some bitter rivalries. We’re living, breathing people, too, and while I try to avoid all that as much as I can, it is not entirely possible. In order to work, one must be strong enough to face down these problems. Véronique Gillet . . .” She hesitated.

“What about her?”

“She seemed a very strange, very sad woman. She frightened me a little. There was something
so
compulsive about her, about the way she needed to be with
them
all the time. She was very strong and determined about something, I don’t know what. And lost too.”

Her dark head of unruly hair had nodded in the direction of Malaspina and his acquaintances, then she gazed straight into Costa’s face.

“I’m not a worldly woman, but I must say this. Somehow, I would not be surprised had Véronique been part of Franco’s pathetic little band of hooligans.”

She stiffened inside her shapeless black dress and began to toy with the crucifix around her neck.

“Do you know what they do?” he asked.

Very quickly, with the acuity he was beginning to expect, she was suspicious.

“No. Why should I? I do hope you and Leo aren’t playing me for a fool. I promised to try to help you get to the bottom of that painting. Nothing more.”

“Nothing more,” Costa agreed.

She still didn’t look convinced. “Franco and those idiot friends of his are simply late-developing teenagers, playing a stupid game. Véronique was different. Darker, somehow. I promise you. I’ve known Franco for five years or more. He’s variously infuriating or charming, depending on his mood. He gives generously to the Barberini every year, and other charities, too, I believe. That’s the man. He is an aristocrat. He feels he can behave as he wishes. You live with it or . . .”

The strains of a string quartet began to drift through from an adjoining corridor. They were playing some kind of odd, atonal jazz. For Malaspina, Costa thought, nothing could be quite how one supposed.

Her glass was empty. He picked up a fresh one from a passing waitress. She took it from him, smiled, then exchanged the orange juice for
prosecco
from the tray.

“. . . or you will never enter his world.”

“What kind of game?”

“A secret one. I don’t know. Women. Drink. A bit of upper-class football hooliganism perhaps, since I believe this is fashionable among the aristocracy once more. When he comes into the studio, Franco always talks a little about what he’s been up to. I think it’s part of his pleasure. Seeing how far he can go with a humble little thing from the Church like me. It doesn’t work. I’m not ignorant.”

Her eyes were bright and intelligent. “How can I hope to do the work I do and be blind to human frailty? Or evil? I meant it about the Mora book. All these ridiculous notions of virtue through violence. This is nothing new. Men like Malaspina and the rest have been behaving this way in Rome for centuries. Millennia even. For some it’s almost a duty.”

The expression on his face must have betrayed him.

“You’ve never heard of Domenico Mora, have you?” she asked.

“Should I?”

She grinned. “If you want to know a certain kind of male, you should. Domenico Mora was a Bolognese soldier. He wrote a book called
Il Cavaliere.
It was a response to a treatise on courtesy,
Il Gentilhuomo,
by Girolamo Muzio. Mora, being a soldier, took a different view. His thesis was that the true gentleman was beholden to no one, and best served his position by letting that be known at every possible occasion. By confrontation, violence, rudeness, and arrogance.”

“Towards women too?”

“Women weren’t important in Mora’s world, except for the obvious purpose. What mattered was one’s status. Mora said that the source of the pleasure one acquires in insolence towards others is the feeling that, in the injury you inflict, you claim an exceptional superiority over them. For the likes of Caravaggio and all those other young blades, this was a way of life. Arguments, duels, death even.” She hesitated, thinking of something. “The remarkable thing about Michelangelo Merisi is that, when it was over, he went home and painted such exquisite scenes of beauty that I must forgive him his excesses, as did the Pope in the end, though too late. Some other, greater idea still nagged away at the man.
Disegno
. It was in him, he knew it, and I think that caused him pain. He would have been far happier without it. He would never have painted a worthwhile canvas either, of course.”

There was sudden, raucous laughter from the far side of the room: Malaspina swaggering through the crowd, glass held high, dark face contorted with some brief manic pleasure. Costa could just catch sight of Nino Tomassoni at the edge of the crowd. He was staring at the other man with an expression of fear mingled with hate.

“It doesn’t make them happy,” Costa said.

“Is unhappiness a rarity? Caravaggio must have been the most miserable man in Rome, yet he had glimpses of heaven too. Franco and his thuggish friends will see the light, Nic. Today they toy with those ridiculous ideas. In five years’ time they’ll have wives, be fathering children, and getting apoplectic about the wayward state of society. It’s a passing phase. That’s all.”

More laughter, this time from some of the women, in their bright, expensive evening dresses, listening to Malaspina tell a crude joke at the top of his voice, so that everyone might hear.

“I can’t imagine being married,” Agata continued quietly. “It seems such a . . . loss of identity. We spend so much time trying to find out who we are. Then we throw it away on a whim.”

Agata Graziano looked at Costa, something unfamiliar—indecision, perhaps even fear—in her face. “I need to be presumptuous, Nic. Before you turn red in the face and refuse to answer, you should know this: I am not asking out of idle curiosity. The question pertains directly to this strange painting you and Leo brought me. Well?”

He wondered if there was anything, any part of the human experience, this woman didn’t want to understand, even if she refused—through fear, reluctance, or some inner conviction—to be a part of it herself.

“Ask away,” Costa replied.

“Which came first when you met your wife? The spiritual side? Or the physical?”

The words were so unexpected he burst out laughing, freely, with a sudden, involuntary rush of emotion he hadn’t known since Emily died.

“I have no idea.”

“Then think about it. Please.”

“I can’t. It’s not a conscious decision, one before the other. Love is . . .” He was blushing, and he knew it. “. . . unplanned. Perhaps a little of both, I imagine.”

It was a good and interesting question and he wished, with all his heart, she hadn’t asked it, because the thought would, he now knew, nag him forever.

“The two seemed . . . inseparable. I don’t know how you’d divide one from the other.”

Her sharp eyes sparkled, watching him. “If it’s not conscious, where does it come from?”

“Atheists fall in love too,” he replied, understanding where she was going.

“Which proves nothing. A blind man cannot see you or me. Does that mean we don’t exist? So tell me. What comes first?”

He shook his head, exasperated. “You can’t ask that question. I can’t answer it. Nothing’s quite that straightforward.”

He tried to think of an explanation, one that might make sense to him and to this inquisitive, quick-witted woman from a different life.

“Something happens,” he told her. “You only see it afterwards, I think.”

“Something happens? Specifics.”

“A moment. A word. A look. A thought . . . a recollection. The memory of a gesture. The way someone picks up a cup of coffee or laughs at a terrible joke. A smile. A frown. It . . .” Nic Costa sighed and opened his hands, lost for something else to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked. “You gave me my answer.” Agata Graziano glanced nervously at her feet, then asked, “Does it also happen at that moment, Nic? The one depicted in the painting? Is that when you truly know?”

“No,” he said immediately.

“You’re blushing very profusely,” she pointed out.

“What do you expect? This is not a conversation . . . not the kind of thing you talk about. With anyone. Least of all . . .”

But the Ekstasists wanted to capture that intense, private instant for themselves. That was why they raped and murdered on the streets of Rome. They needed to understand something. So, though she was reluctant to admit it, did Agata Graziano.

“You mean least of all someone like me?” she replied. “I would have thought I’m the obvious person. Someone who’s utterly disinterested in the matter.”

“All I can tell you is the truth as I see it.”

She shook her head, cross suddenly, and with herself this time. Her dark hair glittered under the lights of the bright chandeliers.

“This infuriating painting is designed to drive me mad. It’s a game, a joke, a riddle, like Franco and his stupid gang. Why did he never paint anything like it again? Not because he couldn’t. And what on earth does it really mean? Caravaggio was not Annibale Carracci. He wouldn’t paint pornography for anyone who came along bearing a full purse.”

An abrupt flash of displeasure crossed her face, and it was directed at him.

“It would all have been so much easier if you could have answered yes to that last question.”

“Why?”

“Because then it would have had some personal dimension? The discovery of God in some small, intimate physical moment. But it’s not. It’s more than that. Or less. Oh . . .” A modest curse escaped her lips. “I blame this on you. And Leo Falcone. And now . . .” She took hold of his wrist again, turned it, and checked the watch there. “It’s late and I’m in trouble. That hasn’t happened in months. I’m none the wiser, too, which is worse. Men!”

He liked her anger. It made her more vulnerable somehow.

“I’m sorry if your carriage has turned back into a pumpkin.”

“Unlike Cinderella, I have no need of a carriage. Or fairy stories. Furthermore, my sisters adore me, which is why they are so indulgent. Therefore your analogy is quite poorly chosen.”

“I’m a lot wiser,” he replied. “I know we have a painting that appears to depict a woman, no ordinary woman, some kind of goddess, in the moment of ecstasy. That she is surrounded by men, one of whom is singing a refrain from an erotic poem, the Song of Songs. I knew none of that this morning. All I knew was”—it came out before he could halt the words—“that somehow, in some strange way, this has to do with Emily’s death. That perhaps, if I appreciated how, I would understand that better also.”

She folded her arms and gazed at him. “You will never give up, will you?”

“Not until I know,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation.

“Know what, exactly? A name? An identity?”

“More than that. I want to understand what caused this. I want to see the instant this darkness appeared, from nowhere”—this thought depressed him, even as he uttered it—“to infect us.”

“That is an interesting quest.” She said it quietly, nodding to herself, thinking.

Then she grasped his wrist and checked the watch again. “We have time for one more viewing,” she insisted. “There’s only so much trouble a sister can get herself into in a single night.”

“We’re going back to the studio?”

“Exactly.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a genius.”

“I am?” he asked, bewildered.

“I believe so. Let’s put this conundrum to bed once and for all, I hope. Are you with me?”

She knew there could only be one answer. Costa tried not to look back as they left, remembering Falcone’s words. It was important not to give these men any more excuses to run to their lawyers. Even so, he wondered whether they would be watching, Malaspina and Buccafusca, Castagna and the short, insignificant man he knew to be Tomassoni, a name that continued to stir some distant memory he could not yet place.

But they were nowhere to be seen and that was strange. This was Franco Malaspina’s home. In a sense, it was his party. Yet Costa had the distinct feeling that the man had left, with his fellow Ekstasists, venturing together out into the dark Roman night.