The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 67

Sven could see the word now. He stared at it with his tiny, frightened eyes.

"P. R. I. G. I. O. N. E." Peroni spelled it out.

"Prison. Jail. Incarceration. That's the place you're headed. One murder's bad enough. But two."

He sighed, put away the paper, reached up and lifted the Finn's chin so he could look into his face.

"Two is so much worse. My advice is this. Tell the truth. Think about cooperation. Tell everyone how Eva put you up to it and led you by your beat-up nose. We'll find out anyway. You don't think you were the first one she made goo-goo eyes at, do you? We'll talk to all the other guys. But if you help us now you're talking years off the sentence. Otherwise ..."

He stood back and looked up and down at the shining, sweating man in front of him, quaking in his tight red satin shorts.

"Otherwise it's just more fisting time in jail, and really I do not recommend ..."

The Finn pushed him out of the way and raced across the gym towards the stairs.

They run oddly too, Peroni thought. Arms pumping, legs going up and down like mechanical dolls.

He walked over to the receptionist, watched by the line of wide-eyed, open-mouthed hulks who'd stayed behind and the fat customer now stationary on his exercise bike. There he picked up a couple of fistfuls of nougats from the bowl and stuffed them into his pockets before calling Vieri.

"There's good news and there's bad," he said when he got through to the inspector still in his office in the Questura. "The Spallone case and the Roma kid are done. Bad is ..." he popped a nougat in his mouth "... you're going to have to unplug yourself from your Blackberry and take a walk outside."

8.

When he got down the stairs he found Sven cuffed, hands behind his back, face pressed against a blue police wagon blocking the narrow street. Prinzivalli was there, seven men with him. Peroni handed out nougats from his jacket pockets.

"I only asked for five," he said. "You didn't need to come."

Prinzivalli watched the hulk make one last effort to struggle then give up. The Finn looked shocked and a little teary-eyed.

"It's on my way home. End of shift." He popped Peroni's nougat into his mouth. "I thought perhaps this was something I didn't want to miss."

"It's just an arrest," Peroni answered.

Eva Spallone was being marched down the street in the custody of two women officers leading her firmly but politely by the arm.

"Wife?" Prinzivalli guessed.

"The ice queen of the north," Peroni murmured.

Moments later a Lancia saloon drew up behind the van. Vieri got out, face like thunder, with three of his minions from Milan.

Peroni looked at the men holding Sven, nodded for them to let go a little. The hulk looked up, saw the Spallone woman and started to squawk in broken Italian, "Was her idea! Her idea! I tell you ..."

"Tell him," Peroni cut in, indicating the approaching Vieri.

"Her idea!" he yelled again, at Vieri this time. "Not mine!"

By now the Spallone woman was close enough to hear.

"Shut up, you moron!" she screamed at him. "Shut the ..."

She glanced at Peroni, looked as if she felt stupid for a moment. Then the abuse started again, this time in an incomprehensible stream of gibberish, a language so strange Peroni couldn't begin to guess a single word.

He took out his phone and hit the record b.u.t.ton. When she was done he stopped the phone, walked out in front of the van and said to the officers there, local and Vieri's crew from Milan, "Listen to me. I want these two taken into separate custody. No chance they get to talk to one another. No shared lawyers." He held up the phone. "I want a Finnish translator. Call Di Capua and ..."

Vieri broke stride and leapt in front of him, then roared, "I am the inspector here!"

Peroni put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Of course." Then he turned to the men again and said, "The inspector wants these two in custody. No contact. Finnish translator. Forensic are going to seal off the sauna in this place. The Roma kid was killed there, Spallone got beat up. Whatever this woman thinks there's got to be some trace left. Check bank records and the financials for this gym of hers. This place was bleeding old man Spallone dry. Talk to the maid. She's got the Roma kid's number and called him when Giorgio needed a ride. There's your link. And the car." He pulled out the business card Ion Dinicu's father had given him. "This is an old Mercedes. Dinicu used it as an illegal cab. Spallone was his customer. My guess is Sven here ferried them away in it after he hit them, then dumped the thing. Find this ..." he squinted at the picture and read out the licence plate "... and we're in court come Friday. My guess is start looking around Testaccio." He glanced at the Finn. "Sven here's not the brightest b.u.t.ton in the box."

The Finn squeaked.

"And you," Peroni added, glaring at the hulk in the red satin boxer shorts, "remember. Tell the truth. One word. Fisting."

They all stared at him in awed silence. Peroni eyed a minion from Milan. The man had his notepad in his hand. He hadn't written a word.

"I'll repeat the licence plate once more," he said. "After that ..." He touched Vieri on the shoulder again. "The inspector gets cross."

They all scribbled it down that time. Peroni looked at Vieri and asked, "Anything else?"

The man's hair didn't look as perfect as it had that morning. He was lost for words.

"I'm off shift in thirty minutes," Peroni added, glancing at his watch. "Take off the fact I never got a lunch break, in truth I'm done now." He eyed Prinzivalli. "Beer? The usual place?"

The uniform man stripped off his uniform jacket, turned it so the lining was on the outside, and said, "The usual place."

"Come ... with ... me ..." Vieri ordered, gripping Peroni by the arm.

9.

They walked round the corner, back towards the Campo, and Peroni filled him in on the details along the way.

To the man's credit, Vieri listened, furious as he was.

When the explanation was done, Vieri shook his head and said, "I could have your job."

"No, no." They stopped by the place Peroni had bought his porchetta panino that morning. "I've done much worse than this and I never got kicked out then. Besides I've only got a few years left. What's the point?"

He looked Vieri in the face.

"Anyway what are you going to say? Fire this man because he tracked down a couple of double murderers on evidence I wouldn't even walk upstairs to look at? Not when he pleaded with me? I was too busy on my Blackberry, see. Too tied up watching CCTV and waiting for the mobile phone records to land in my inbox." He scratched his head. "Is that how you get on the up escalator in Milan? If so, let me offer some advice. Don't try it here. Won't work."

Vieri stiffened.

"We would have found all this," he insisted. "When forensic reported, when we got round to the detail ..."

Peroni felt a little red light rise at the back of his head.

"You didn't need the detail. Two dead men, odd socks, same pairs. How many questions does that raise? How many possibilities? They didn't get up that way. All you have to do is work out how they got naked. Then ask yourself why whoever dressed them didn't spot the socks were wrong. Really. That's it."

The man from Milan was silent, a little down in the mouth.

"You use your eyes," Peroni added. "Watch what people do with theirs. You know the only person who's looked me straight in the face all day? That poor Roma kid's father. He didn't have anything to hide. He wasn't choking on some stupid obsession with systems and procedures and idiotic theoretical ..."

"OK, OK," Vieri interrupted. "Point taken."

"And yes," Peroni added. "You would have got there in the end. But this case maybe hangs on our golden boy Sven getting scared enough to cough it all up and put Eva beside him in the dock. Get his confession and before long she'll realize she can't wriggle out of it. You won't have to prove a d.a.m.ned thing. You could have spent months trying to do that, and I'd bet a politician's pension somewhere along the way Sven would have gone missing, by himself maybe or courtesy of some other hulk Eva was keeping sweet between the sheets."

Vieri nodded. He seemed to agree.

"It's Toni, isn't it?" Peroni asked. "I'm Gianni."

Vieri glanced behind him to make sure no one was watching. Then he took Peroni's hand.

"The trouble is, Toni, all that northern c.r.a.p doesn't really cut it here. Not sure it does anywhere frankly. Walk around staring at your Blackberry and your computers all day and you're as blind as that stupid Finn, to a few things, maybe ones that matter. At least he's got the excuse he was born that way."

"The paperwork ..." Vieri began.

"... is your problem. This is your case. You get the credit. Tell them you sent me out to see Dinicu's father on a hunch. It all fell into place from there. You've got someone itching to confess to two murders and cut a sentencing deal. No one's going to ask a lot of questions."

The inspector nodded.

"And if none of this had worked out? All your hunches came up empty?"

Peroni grinned.

"Then you'd never have been any the wiser. Here."

He gave him the minion's notepad, the phone with the recorded exchange in Finnish between Eva Spallone and Sven, and the keys to the unmarked police Fiat.

"I stole the notebook from your guy. A translator might find something useful on the phone. And me and Prinzivalli ... it may be more than one beer. You get someone to deal with the car."

"Fine," Vieri said and started to turn on his heels.

"Hey," Peroni called. The man stopped and looked at him. "You should come for a pizza with me and my friends. Falcone, Costa, Teresa. Well ..." He shrugged. "She's more than a friend. You'll like them."

Inspector Vieri laughed. It made him look human.

"Oh," Peroni added.

He reached into his pocket, took out a nougat, held out it for the man from Milan.

"Welcome to Rome."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

MEET ME AT THE CREMATORIUM by Peter James 2010. First appeared in The Sounds of Crime, an audio anthology edited by Maxim Jakubowski.

WRONG 'EM BOYO by Nick Quantrill 2010. First appeared in BYKERBOOKS.

WHERE ARE ALL THE NAUGHTY PEOPLE? by Reginald Hill 2010. First appeared in Original Sins, edited by Martin Edwards.

A BULLET FOR BAUSER by Jay Stringer 2010. First appeared in Crime Factory.

WHOLE LIFE by Liza Cody 2010. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

A FAIR DEAL by L. C. Tyler 2010. First appeared in the Sunday Express.

DEATH IN THE TIME MACHINE by Barbara Nadel 2010. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

SHOOTING FISH by Adrian Magson 2010. First appeared in Plots with Guns.

THE MINISTRY OF WHISKY by Val McDermid 2010. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

THE ART OF NEGOTIATION by Chris Ewan 2010. First appeared in Original Sins, edited by Martin Edwards.

JUNGLE BOOGIE by Kate Horsley 2010. First appeared in Pulp Ink, edited by Nigel Bird & Chris Rhatigan.

ROTTERDAM by Nicholas Royle 2010. First appeared in Black Wings, edited by S. T. Joshi.

SMALL PRINT by Ian Ayris 2010. First appeared in A Twist of Noir.

EAST OF SUEZ, WEST OF CHARING CROSS ROAD by John Lawton 2010. First appeared in Agents of Treachery, edited by Otto Pensler.

SISTERHOOD by Nigel Bird 2010. First appeared in A Twist of Noir.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT by Zoe Sharp 2010. First appeared in Original Sins, edited by Martin Edwards.

LOVELY REQUIEM, MR MOZART by Robert Barnard 2010. First appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.