She wrote:He has information to help find Claire’s killer. If you know where he is, tell the police.
Sally didn’t answer, but she didn’t block Nikki either—a good sign.
—
The phone on her desk rang. It was the guard at the front gate.
“There’s someone here asking for you: Orlanda Alfieri.”
—
Nikki had met Valerio’s younger sister a few times: twice for drinks with Valerio, and she’d once come sailing onCalypso. Nikki didn’t know much about her, except that she’d recently ended a bad marriage.
Nikki spotted her as she exited the base. Orlanda looked a lot like her brother—the same bright eyes and playful mouth. But these were contorted with anxiety.
Orlanda apologized. “Sorry to come in person, but I didn’t have your number, and I didn’t know how else to reach you. Have you heard from Valerio today?”
Nikki checked her phone. Valerio still hadn’t responded to her texts about the white-haired Yasen Lazarov.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“Oh!” Orlanda gestured forcefully. “My brother’s an idiot. He came by last night and—I don’t know…I had a really bad feeling about it. I just knew he was going to do something stupid and dangerous. I can’t stop worrying about him, and he won’t answer his phone. I called his ex-wife, Giorgia. She says he gave her money and told her to get away with the kids. He didn’t tell her why.”
“Have you reached out to his partner, Maurizio?” Nikki suggested.
“I called the station. They wouldn’t put me through.”
Nikki thought about the bruise on Valerio’s head, and what he’d told her yesterday about Luca Errichiello and Paride Silvestri.I fucked up, he’d said.
“I’ll get my bike,” she told Orlanda. “We’ll go to the station together.”
—
It had been months since Nikki had visited the public reporting entrance of the police station. The last time she was here, she’d come to report the attack carried out by the thug Enzo had hired. Then, the place had been chaotic, crowded after the riots. Today, the room was subdued and orderly. A handful of uniformed cops filling out forms or taking statements.
Orlanda didn’t seem able to stand still as they waited for Maurizio. She fidgeted, picking at the skin on her arms, and rocking backwards on her heels. Her anxiety seemed to seep into Nikki, whose own body tensed and thoughts raced, an ill-formed worry latching onto her mind.
“Where are Giorgia and the kids now?” Nikki asked.
“She wouldn’t tell me.” Orlanda shrugged. “Good for her. Giorgia may be a bitch, but she knows how to survive.”
—
When Maurizio arrived, he listened attentively to Orlanda’s concerns.
“Valerio called me this morning,” he said in a low voice when she was finished. “It was zero six thirty, and my ringer was off—so it went to voicemail.”
He played the recording. Nikki and Orlanda leaned in to listen to the confused and noisy exchange—somebody shouting, a dog barking, scuffling, then a clatter before the recording stopped.
“What’s he saying?” Orlanda asked.
“I can’t make it out,” said Maurizio. “His phone’s been switched off ever since. I had the techs work out where he was—that call came from Sorrento.”
Nikki couldn’t get the image out of her mind: Valerio’s face as he told her,I’m really fucked.
Her mind replayed everything he’d said—the favor he’d agreed to with Errichiello, the death of the boy Gaetano, and Paride Silvestri’s abuse of underage girls.
“Paride Silvestri has a home in Sorrento,” she told him. “Valerio surveilled him before. He might have gone there again.”
