Free The Garden of Evil by David Hewson

a crime, best commit it against the underclass. These women’s families are too scared to complain. Or . . .” He didn’t wish to go on.
    “Someone has to be able to ID them, Leo.”
    “You’d think . . .” the inspector replied with a sour, pinched smile. “Fake names. Fake identities. These are illegal immigrants desperate to stay out of our way. Even when we do find them . . .” He shrugged.
    “There must be—” Costa insisted.
    “Nic. Please. Enough. I have two officers in Nigeria at this very moment, following up the only real lead we have. It could take months of work, even if people there are willing to speak to us, and they won’t be. Do not equate your absence in all this with a lack of effort on our part. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
    Costa shook his head. “I never meant it that way,” he murmured. “I just don’t understand—”
    “None of us understands. Perhaps Teresa will shed a little light on matters when we meet. But there’s something else you must do first. That painting we found in the studio. You must either tell me it’s important or let me forget about it altogether. An art expert attached to the Barberini is due to start looking at it shortly. I will make some calls, arrange an appointment for you. I happen to have made this expert’s acquaintance before. She comes highly recommended. The woman’s name is Agata Graziano. The gallery has a laboratory close to the Piazza Borghese. She’s the best apparently. And there’s one more thing . . .”
    He elaborated no more and simply gazed at the still-smouldering cigar on the cold winter earth. Then he said: “I want whoever did this, Nic. Just as much as you.”



One
    I
T WAS RAINING WHEN HE DROVE OUT OF THE FARMHOUSE
three days later, leaving Bea performing some unnecessary cleaning, and issuing persistent queries about where he was going and why. Costa had no sensible answers. He had a suitcase full enough for a week away, as Falcone had demanded. He felt glad to be out of the place, too, to be moving. Inactivity didn’t suit him, and perhaps the inspector understood that only too well. The previous night he’d barely slept for thinking about the case, and Falcone’s strangely gloomy assessment of what had been achieved so far. It was highly unusual for the old inspector to be so pessimistic at such a relatively early point in an investigation.
    The city was choked with holiday traffic. The narrow lanes, now full of specialist shops selling antiques and furniture and clothes, were cloaked in skeins of Christmas lights twinkling over the crowds. It took ten minutes to find somewhere to park near the Piazza Borghese, even with police ID on the vehicle.
    Costa’s opinion of the painting at the crime scene had not altered since the black day of December 8. In truth, for him, little had changed since the moment Emily had been snatched from life. It was as if his world had ceased to move, and in this sense of stasis the only certainty that remained was what he’d realised about the canvas he had first seen in the studio in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Either it really was an unknown Caravaggio or somehow they had come across an extraordinary fake. There had been plenty of copyists over the years, both genuine artists working in Caravaggio’s style by way of tribute and con men trying to hoodwink naive buyers into thinking they had discovered some new masterpiece. At home, alone, desperate to think of something other than those last moments by the mausoleum, Costa had taken out his old art books, delved deep into the images and the histories there, welcoming the respite he could take from the thoughts that haunted him. The dark, violent genius who was Caravaggio had lived in Rome for just fourteen years, from 1592 until 1606, when he fled under sentence of death for murder. Every genuine homage that Costa could find had made it plain through some reference, stylistic or by way of subject, that it came from the