The Garden of Evil by David Hewson Read Free Book Online Page A

only a couple of rounds left in it now, against a furious, murderous individual with a repeating shotgun who was surely about to try to bury himself inside the heart of Rome on a busy holiday afternoon.
    There was no time to radio for assistance. He wasn’t sure he had the voice to make the call anyway. All Costa could do was run, and, with the old skills he still retained from his marathon days, he found that rhythm almost instantly.
    When he emerged from the cold black overhang of the building at the end of the passageway, he blinked at the sunlight, and the location. He was now just round the corner from the Piazza Borghese. As he squinted his stinging eyes against the sudden sun, he saw a khaki figure limping towards the square.
    Inside his jacket his phone was ringing. He recognised the special tone. It was Emily calling. She’d have to wait.

Three
    T
HE RAIN HAD LEFT THE COBBLESTONES OF THE PIAZZA
Borghese greasy and black. This was one of the few open spaces between the Corso and the river. Every day hundreds came here to park, strewing vehicles everywhere: cars and vans, motorbikes and scooters. Students from the nearby colleges were gathered in one corner, arms full of books and work folders, laughing, getting ready for lunch. Costa couldn’t see anyone of interest, no athletic, brownclad figure with a shotgun anywhere. Just a few shoppers and office workers walking the damp pavement.
    Costa scanned the square, wondering where a fugitive might run in this part of Rome. There were so many places. South towards the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona was a labyrinth of alleys that could hide a hundred fleeing killers. West lay the bridge over the river, the Ponte Cavour, and escape into the plain business streets beyond the Palace of Justice. And both north and east . . . street after street of shops, apartment blocks, and anonymous offices. He didn’t know where to begin.
    Backup would arrive soon. The officers from the studio, Gianni Peroni, a furious Falcone.
    Costa took one last good look around him and sighed. Then the phone rang again. That familiar tone again. This time he answered it.
    “May I take it you’re hunting for a gentleman wearing a Rambo outfit, a very suspicious-looking expression, and trying, rather poorly, to hide the fact he’s got a rifle or something on his person?” she asked.
    Once an FBI agent, always an FBI agent.
    “Just tell me where,” Costa ordered his wife quietly, grimly.
    “I’ve followed him to the Mausoleum of Augustus. I could be wrong but I think he may be headed down into it. Good place to hide, among all those bums.”
    Costa knew the monument, though not well. Roman emperors got mixed deals when it came to their heritage. Hadrian’s mausoleum turned into the Castel Sant’Angelo. Augustus, one of the most powerful emperors Rome had ever known, came off much worse. Over the centuries, his burial site had been everything from a pleasure garden to an opera house. Now, after Mussolini laid waste to it in preparation for his own tomb, one he never came to occupy, it was a sad wreck of stone set in its own rough green moat of grass, half hidden between the 1930s Fascist offices set behind the Corso and the high embankment by the Tiber. The scrubby city grass was a favourite sleeping place for local tramps. The interior was a warren of dank, crumbling tunnels. It was so unsafe the public had been barred years ago.
    “Thanks,” he told Emily. “Now go get a coffee. Somewhere a long way from here.”
    He didn’t wait for an answer. He started running north, towards the river. There was construction work everywhere. The authorities were creating a new home for the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, one of the great legacies of Augustus, and a sight that had been withheld from Rome and the world for too long. But for now the area was a mess of cranes and closed roads, angry traffic and baffled pedestrians wondering where the pavement had gone.
    He rounded a vast hoarding