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

advertising the new Ara Pacis building and found himself facing the southern side of the mausoleum, with its locked entrance and steps leading down to the interior. It looked more dismal and decrepit than he remembered: a rotting circle of once golden stone falling into stumps at the summit, crowned by grass and weeds and ragged shrubbery. A couple of tourists hovered near the padlocked gate, wondering whether to take photos. Beyond the railing, Costa could see a bunch of itinerants huddled around the familiar objects that went with homeless life in the city: bottles of wine, mounds of old clothing, and a vast collection of supermarket bags bulging with belongings.
    Then, as he was about to dial in for assistance, his eyes came upon something worryingly familiar: a blonde woman in a long black winter coat. Emily was beyond the railings, just inside the mausoleum grounds. Costa briefly closed his eyes and murmured, “Wonderful.”
    His wife was sitting on the wall of a weed-riddled flower bed just the other side of the tourists, trying to look like a visitor who’d plucked up the courage to vault the fence. And, to his eyes, doing a very bad job of it. She was too animated, too interested, to be genuinely absorbed by the miserable sight in front of her. As he was realising this, she turned, caught sight of him, nodded down towards the green ditch in front of her, and mouthed a single word:
Here
.
    At that moment a vast lorry bearing construction equipment roared in front of him and stopped with a sudden deliberation that meant, Costa knew instantly, it wasn’t moving any farther. He dashed round the rear, a long way, heart thudding, found the temporary barrier for the works by the very side of the Ara Pacis, taking out his gun again, reminding himself there were now just two shots in the magazine, and probably no time to hope to reload as he ran.
    When he rounded the timber hoardings, the tourists were still there. Emily was gone. His breathing halted for a moment. The police phone shook in his pocket. He took it out with trembling hands. It was Falcone.
    “Where
are
you?” demanded the inspector.
    “Augustus’s mausoleum. He’s inside. There are people around. We need to approach this carefully.”
    “That goes without saying,” Falcone answered abruptly, and the line went dead.
    “Indeed it does . . .” Costa murmured to himself.
    He walked over to the tourists and told them to go somewhere else. They gaped at his face and his weapon, then fled. After that he climbed over the railings and scanned the area. The tramps were getting interested. One of them wandered over and demanded money. Costa brushed him aside. He came back.
    “There’s a woman here. And a man in brown. Where?” Costa asked.
    One of the seated figures, huddled in an ancient black overcoat, nodded round the corner, past some green and dingy buttress that looked ready to collapse.
    “Thanks,” Costa said, nodding, and walked on, knowing, somehow, exactly what he’d see.
    All the same, his heart froze the moment he found them.
    They were no more than twenty metres away. The figure in khaki had met her—lured her?—into some dark dead end up against the deepest part of the moat, a place with no easy exit. He had his arm round Emily’s neck. She was struggling as he dragged her backwards. The gun dangled over her chest, its dull barrel pressing against the black fabric of her coat. He was dragging on the hood as he fought to restrain her.
    Costa let his weapon fall to his side, walked forward, and tried to count his options. A thought occurred to him.
    Emily knows you now.

    THE KHAKI FIGURE DRAGGED EMILY ALL THE WAY TO THE MAUSOLEUM’S
stone wall. There was nowhere else to go. Costa walked forward until he was no more than five paces from them. His wife’s face was livid with rage. She never responded lightly to violence. The shotgun had been hard at her throat for at least part of their journey into this dark, shadowy alcove in the