Dante's Numbers by David Hewson Page B

thing.”
    “You seem to know about the movie business.”
    “I've made my contribution. Shits like Bonetti know how to screw you. ‘It's only a million. Think of the tax write-off. If the worst comes to the worst, you get your money back anyway.' Then…” She clapped her skeletal hands. The loud noise rang round the room like a gunshot. “It's gone, and Bonetti or one of his creatures is phoning from L.A., full of apologies, promising that maybe a little of it will come back one day. After everyone else has taken their cut.” Adele Neri leaned forward and her sharp eyes held them. “Allan moves in dangerous circles and he doesn't even know it. I told him, but he isn't the kind of man who listens to anyone else. A woman least of all. That's the truth. You don't honestly think I'd be sitting here waiting for the doorbell to ring if I'd done something, do you?”
    “Do you read Dante, Signora Neri?” Falcone asked.
    The unexpected question amused her. Adele Neri looked human, warm and attractive and perhaps even a pleasure to know at that moment.
    “Dante?” she asked, amazed. “I'll go see the movie sometime. Preferably when Allan gets me some free tickets. But reading?” She finished what remained of the spremuta. “I'm the merry widow now, Falcone. I shop, I spend, I travel, and when I feel like it, when I see something that interests me, I take a little pleasure. Life's too enjoyable for books. Why leave this world for someone else's? Reading…” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “…is for people without lives. No. I know no more of Dante than you.”
    “Actually, I know quite a lot,” Falcone replied almost apologetically. “Not that it matters.”
    “It doesn't?” she asked. “Why?”
    “Because I find it hard to believe that anyone would commit much of a crime over poetry. However much they might wish us to think otherwise.”
    “You really think something's happened to Allan?”
    “He's missing. We have some very strange evidence. One man is dead. Perhaps there's no connection. Perhaps…”
    She cut the air with her hand and said, “This does not involve me. If you want to talk any more, we need to do this with a lawyer around.”
    Taccone, the old soverintendente Falcone liked to use, had returned from looking around the apartment and stood waiting for the inspector to fall silent.
    “You need to see this,” he told them.
    The two men got up and followed him into what appeared to be the master bedroom. Adele Neri came in behind them. Somewhere along the way she'd picked up a packet of cigarettes and was quickly lighting one.
    “What is it?” Falcone asked Taccone.
    Costa walked forward to stand a short distance from the bed. He looked at Adele Neri and asked, “Didn't you come in here?”
    “Why would I want to sneak around his bedroom?”
    “Call in forensic,” Falcone ordered. “Let's not touch anything. Did you find any signs of violence?”
    Taccone shook his head. “We didn't find anything. Except this.”
    The bed was covered with a green plastic ground sheet of the kind used by campers. The shape of a man's body was still visible on it, set deep enough to imprint itself on the mattress below. Around the outline of the upper torso there was a faint sprinkling of pale grey powder which grew heavier around the head.
    Taccone reached down and, using a handkerchief, picked up the handle of a brown bucket that had been hidden on the far side of the bed.
    “It looks like clay or something,” he said.
    Costa's phone was ringing. The doorman who had been on duty that morning had gone home at lunchtime. It had taken a while to trace him. Costa listened to what the officer who'd finally found the man, in a Campo dei Fiori café, had to say. Then he asked to be passed to the agente who had handled the second inquiry.
    “Seal off this room,” Falcone ordered. “Assume we have a murder scene.”
    “We don't,” Costa said simply. “There's no CCTV in this building, but we've