Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [7]
“I am Ispettore Capo Otello Roscani, Polizia di Stato. This is Ispettore Capo Pio.”
“How do you do…”
“Why have you come to Italy, Mr. Addison?”
Harry was puzzled. They knew why he was there or they wouldn’t have met him as they had.“—To bring my brother’s body home…. And to talk with you people.”
“When had you planned to come to Rome?”
“I hadn’t planned to come at all…”
“Answer the question, please.”
“Saturday night.”
“Not before?”
“Before? No, of course not.”
“You made the reservations yourself?” Pio spoke for the first time. His English had almost no accent at all, as if he were either American himself or had spent a lot of time in the U.S.
“Yes.”
“On Saturday.”
“Saturday night. I told you that.” Harry looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand your questions. You knew I was coming. I asked the U.S. Embassy to arrange for me to talk to you.”
Roscani slid Harry’s passport into his pocket. “We are going to ask you to accompany us into Rome, Mr. Addison.”
“Why?—We can talk right here. There’s not that much to tell.” Suddenly Harry could feel sweat on his palms. They were leaving something out. What was it?
“Perhaps you should let us decide, Mr. Addison.”
Again, Harry looked from one to the other. “What’s going on? What is it you’re not telling me?”
“We simply wish to talk further, Mr. Addison.”
“About what?”
“The assassination of the cardinal vicar of Rome.”
4
THEY PUT HARRY’S LUGGAGE IN THE TRUNK and then rode in silence for forty-five minutes, not a word or a glance between them, Pio at the wheel of the gray Alfa Romeo, Roscani in the back with Harry, taking the Autostrada in from the airport toward the ancient city, passing through the suburbs of Magliana and Portuense and then along the Tiber and across it, passing the Colosseum, and moving into Rome’s heart.
The Questura, police headquarters, was an archaic five-story brownstone-and-granite building on Via di San Vitale, a narrow cobblestone street off Via Genova, which was off Via Nazionale in the central city. Its main entrance was through an arched portal guarded by armed uniformed police and surveillance cameras. And that was the way they came in, with the uniforms saluting as Pio wheeled the Alfa under the portal and into the interior courtyard.
Pio got out first, leading them into the building and past a large glassed-in booth where two more uniformed officers watched not only the door but also a bank of video monitors. Then there was a walk down a brightly lit corridor to take an elevator up.
Harry looked at the men and then at the floor as the elevator rose. The ride in from the airport had been a blur, made worse by the silence of the policemen. But it had given him time to try and get some perspective on what was happening, why they were doing this.
He knew the cardinal vicar of Rome had been murdered eight days earlier by an assassin firing from an apartment window—a crime analogous in the U.S. to killing the President or other hugely celebrated person—but his knowledge was no more than that, limited to what he’d seen on TV or scanned in the newspaper, the same as several million others. That Danny had been killed in the bombing of a bus shortly afterward was an obvious, even logical, line to follow. Especially considering the tenor of his call to Harry. He’d been a Vatican priest, and the murdered cardinal a major figure within the Church. And the police were trying to see if there was some connection between whoever killed the cardinal and those responsible for bombing the bus. And maybe in some way there was. But what did they think he knew?
Obviously it was a bad time and the police were reeling anyway because so public and outrageous a crime had happened in their city, and on their watch and on television. It meant every detail of their investigation would be under the closest scrutiny of the media and therefore even more emotionally charged than it already would have been. The best