Read Online Costa 08 - City of Fear by David Hewson - Free Book Online Page B

them across the bare, splintering boards to the far side of the room, close to the front wall, seeking the dark corner, a place that offered some kind of respite because it was clear, once they got there, where the slew of bullets raking the room was aimed: through the window, directly at the only thing that was in the light.
    “Danny … Danny …”
    It sounded like a plea, sounded shocked and scared and angry.
    His tall, tanned body was caught in the ripple of fire, jerking like a puppet on a string. Livid wounds opened up in his bare, stained flesh.
    “Danny … Danny …”
    Mirko Oliva couldn’t take it anymore. He scrambled to the window, holding his gun high above his head, pointing into the street, and fired off every round he had, shooting blind out into the gap.
    Peroni closed his eyes, praying no one in the adjoining buildings had walked into that.
    Then he waited, keeping Rosa in place with an arm, not that she needed it. He found himself looking into her deep brown eyes, perhaps because he didn’t want to see what lay in the heart of the room at that moment. She was, he decided, a very smart, very private woman, one he was glad to have around, even if sometimes her presence made life deeply awkward and uncomfortable.
    “Thanks,” he said, with the slightest of nods.
    She didn’t say anything, just scowled, but not at him this time; at Oliva, who was trying to reload his weapon beneath the window, but was shaking so much the new shells were scattering over the floor.
    “Mirko,” Peroni called to him.
“Mirko?”
    “Boss?” The young officer’s eyes were bright with shock and fear.
    “It’s gone quiet, son. You should notice these things.”
    Dead quiet, until that nearby bell tolled again, and Peroni remembered what they called the campanile on the Quirinale Palace.
Il Torrino
.
    “S-s-sorry …” Oliva stuttered.
    “It’s OK,” Peroni assured him. “Just stay still. There’s nothing …”
    Outside he heard the sound of shouting followed by the revving of motorbike engines.
    He glanced at Rosa and said, “You too.”
    Before she could object, he’d scrambled across the floor to the window ledge and managed to peek out over it.
    “Gianni!” she yelled at him.
    Mirko Oliva was beneath the frame, staring back into the room, shaking, face pale, looking ready to throw up again.
    “No problem,” Peroni told her. “We’re too high up, and the street’s too narrow.”
    He clambered to his feet, got to the window, and leaned out as far as he dared.
    The roar of two powerful motorbikes echoed off the walls, heading down toward the Trevi Fountain and the tunnel beneath the hill. He still couldn’t see the street, but at least there was something to pass on to Traffic and the CCTV people.
    “Mirko …?”
    The young officer got up, leaned over the open window frame, and threw up again, into the hot, bright day.
    “Fortunately,” Peroni observed, “I doubt there’ll be anyone below just now.”
    He sighed, then turned away. It was important to look, even though he knew what he was going to see.
    Batisti’s corpse remained slumped over the table. His killer was in front of him, flat on the floor, eyes wide open, glassy, the inert body shredded by gunfire, the blue paint barely visible for blood.
    A thought came to Peroni:
He is the one they wanted to kill, more than anyone else, after he’d served his purpose
.
    It made no sense, but then, nothing did at that moment.
    Something glittered at the dead man-child’s neck. Peroni bent downand, setting aside his squeamishness, reached for the object nestled in the grimy, bloodstained skin. It was a silver locket in the shape of a heart, worn and scratched, on an old and stained chain. When Peroni gently prised open the lid with fumbling, shaky fingers, he saw there a fading photograph of a beautiful young woman with long golden hair, curly tresses of it, much like those of the corpse that lay in front of him.
    Memories were flooding back,