The Garden of Evil Read Free Page B

veterinary clinics, or private clubs for visiting foreigners seeking female company. This was, he reminded himself, Ortaccio. But Rome’s whores were no longer confined to a specific quarter on the orders of the Pope. Like all criminals, like Aldo Caviglia himself, the prostitutes roamed freely, on the streets, in apartments and houses scattered throughout the city.
    He strode along the dark, narrow alley, avoiding the badly parked scooters, scanning for a pencil-thin Titian-haired figure in a white gabardine coat. There was no one in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Just dead grey buildings and the small church he half knew, locked, without a light inside, and, opposite, a long wall of plastic sheeting and scaffolding. A vague memory pricked Caviglia’s imagination. The construction men were probably labouring to repair some distant part of the great Palazzo Malaspina, which sprawled through this part of the city, a vast monstrosity of Renaissance brick that was one of the last private palaces still in original hands in Rome.
    This told him nothing. Without concern for the consequences, Caviglia dashed the length of the
vicolo,
then, when he reached the Piazza Borghese without seeing a thing, entered the nearest cafe, ordered a single
macchiato
out of politeness, and commandeered the house phone. He fed a couple of coins into the machine and dialled the number she had given on the card, waiting as it ran through some invisible ethereal network he could not begin to imagine, from Rome to Paris and back again, finally delivering a ring tone after a good half-minute. All the while he fought to perfect his story, how he would explain what he had “found” in the street and had immediately decided to follow her in order to return it.
    But it was pointless. The ring tone went on and on. Nothing more. No message. No voice at the other end. He glanced out the window, hoping her business was done and she might have gone on to the bright open space of the square behind the palace of the family that had once been known as the Borgias. She could be anywhere. If the pills were so important, she should surely have left some answering service on her phone.
    Except, Caviglia reminded himself, she was ill. Sick people, as he knew only too well, lacked logic sometimes. Towards the end they lacked any concept of care for themselves at all.
    “Signora . . .” he said to the woman behind the counter, then described the Frenchwoman in detail, thinking, as he did, of the way she was dressed, which was not casual, but careful, the kind of clothes a woman would wear for a business appointment. Or a date.
    Nothing happens quickly in Roman cafes. The formidable middle-aged figure behind the counter discussed the possibilities with her husband, who was making panini for the lunchtime rush, with an elderly pensioner loitering over a cappuccino, then a workman in grubby blue overalls at the end of the bar, and finally three women gossiping over cakes. Caviglia listened, feeling miserable.
    No one had seen a flame-haired pencil-slim woman in a pale coat and scarlet skirt.
    “Why was your friend here?” the woman asked. “We don’t see many tourists. . . .”
    He thought of the identity card. “She’s in the art business. I think she had an appointment perhaps. Is there a dealer nearby? Or a painter?”
    The woman laughed. “You’ve missed the painters by four hundred years. They all lived here once, you know. Caravaggio had a place . . .”
    “Where?” he asked immediately, for no good reason.
    “It was a long time ago. Who knows?”
    The old man at the end of the bar raised a skinny finger. “There
is
a studio, though,” he said.
    “What are you talking about, Enzo?” she barked at him. “
We
can barely afford to live here anymore. How could some painter manage the rent?”
    “I don’t know. But he does. Opposite the church. The green door before all that damned . . .” He stopped and stared at the workman at this point. “. . .