A Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Costa wondered. Was he being prurient? And if so, why? ‘Maybe not. There was that thing about blood and martyrs written on the wall. You saw that I guess. And that other stuff. Who’s this St Ives? Is he another martyr or something?’

  ‘No. It’s a place in England.’

  ‘And seven wives?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he had one,’ she answered with some bitterness.

  ‘So what do you think happened?’

  Sara Farnese glowered at him, her green eyes full of resentment. ‘You’re the policeman. You tell me.’

  He hated being rushed but this woman seemed to demand it. ‘Anyone who looks at this will say one thing,’ Costa said with a shrug. ‘Your old boyfriend found out about your new one and decided it was time to bring things to a close. For all of them, him and his wife included. Maybe you too.’

  ‘I told you. Stefano didn’t want to kill me. And they weren’t “boyfriends”. They were people I slept with from time to time. In Stefano’s case months ago.’

  Costa didn’t get it. Even now, pale and shocked, with grey bags growing under her eyes, Sara Farnese was a beautiful woman. He couldn’t understand why someone like her would want to lead such an empty life.

  ‘People go crazy for all sorts of reasons,’ he said. ‘Not always the obvious ones.’ Men walked up a set of stairs and found someone’s blood dripping down their face. People you loved walked out in the morning and came home at night with a death sentence hanging around their necks.

  ‘Perhaps.’ She didn’t look convinced.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to ask these questions. You understand why?’

  She didn’t say anything. She was transfixed by the painting behind the altar: Bartholomew about to lose his skin.

  ‘It’s apocryphal,’ she remarked in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The story of the skinning. He was martyred, certainly. But probably something more mundane. Beheading was the usual method. The early Church embroidered these stories to encourage the waverers. To make sure the movement didn’t falter.’

  ‘Hence “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”?’

  She peered at him, surprised, he thought, that he had seen the point.

  ‘Is there some family I can call?’ he asked.

  ‘No one, thanks.’

  ‘No one? Parents?’

  ‘My parents died a long time ago.’

  ‘There are people we can get to help in situations like this. Counselling.’

  ‘If I need it I’ll let you know.’

  He thought again of what Rossi had said. There was much more to this woman than met the eye.

  ‘Don’t you ever pray?’ she asked unexpectedly.

  Costa shrugged. ‘Not a family habit. And I never knew what to ask.’

  ‘You just ask the same old questions. Such as, if there’s a God, why does he let bad things happen to good people?’

  ‘They were good people? This Englishman? The one who killed him?’

  She considered this, Costa noticed. ‘They weren’t bad people if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Hey,’ he added without thinking. ‘You should think yourself lucky you’re not a cop. We get to wonder that and the other one too: why do good things happen to bad people? Why are the rich so rich and the poor so poor? Why did Stalin die in his bed? My old man’s a communist. I used to ask that one a lot when I was a kid and boy did I get whacked around the ear plenty.’

  Nic Costa was amazed. There was the slightest flicker of a smile on her face and it made Sara Farnese look like a different person, someone younger, someone with a fragile, interior beauty nothing like the cold, icy elegance that was her normal face for the world. Against his own instincts he suddenly found himself understanding that a man could become obsessed by this woman.

  ‘Families matter,’ Costa said. ‘They make you a team against the world. I don’t envy anyone who has to stand up against all this crap alone.’

  ‘I’d like to go now,’ Sara Farnese said. She got up and walked towards the door where the sun was finally starting to lose some of its power and the day was starting to die.

  Nic Costa followed her all the way.

  FIVE

  The following morning Costa and Rossi found themselves summoned into Falcone’s office at eight. The inspector looked grumpier than ever and uncannily alert, his sharp-featured face set in a constant frown. No one liked his temper. No one credited him with any great management skills. But Falcone was a man of talent, and there were insufficient of those in the higher levels of the force. He’d solved some difficult cases, ones that had made big space in the newspapers. He had influence, beyond the police station. There was plenty of respect for him in the Questura, and little in the way of affection.

  He had the papers from the Rinaldi case on his desk, complete with a set of grisly photographs.

  Falcone waved the reports he had in their faces. ‘Skimpy,’ was all he said.

  ‘Sir,’ Costa answered, ‘we’re working on something fuller now. You’ll have it by ten.’

  Rossi shifted uncomfortably on his seat. Falcone was staring at him and both men knew what his look was saying: so the kid speaks for you now, does he?

  ‘You have anything on this Farnese woman?’ Falcone asked.

  Costa shook his head. ‘Like what? You mean records or something?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘She’s clean,’ Rossi said. ‘I ran a name check last night. There’s not so much as a speeding ticket.’

  Falcone leaned forward and made sure Costa was looking at him. ‘You have to check these things.’

  ‘I know,’ Costa agreed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So that’s the story?’ Falcone asked. ‘The old boyfriend killed the new boyfriend and took his own wife along for the ride?’

  ‘Looks like that,’ Costa agreed.

  Falcone shrugged. ‘No arguing there. It does look like that. I talked to forensics this morning. They couldn’t find a single trace of anyone else in that tower, ground floor or first. Clean as a whistle except for Rinaldi and the two dead people in there.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Costa wondered.

  ‘The problem?’ Falcone nodded at Rossi. ‘Ask him.’

  Costa looked at his partner. They still hadn’t made up since the near-quarrel the day before. That had to happen, he knew. He respected the big man. He didn’t want this coldness between them.

  ‘Luca?’ he asked.

  Rossi frowned. ‘The problem is: why? Rinaldi stopped seeing the Farnese woman, what, three, four months ago? Why now?’

  ‘Maybe he only just found out about the Englishman,’ Costa suggested. ‘He heard her talking about how much she liked him and just went crazy.’

  Falcone stabbed a finger at him. ‘Do we know that? It’s not in your report.’

  Costa thought back to his conversations with her. ‘No.’

  ‘We’re going to have to go back to that woman,’ Falcone ordered. ‘Get some detail in all this. Dates. Names. Reasons.’

  ‘Fine,’ Costa nodded. Rossi was looking out of the window now, reaching for a cigarette. They had had some conversation beforehand, Costa thought. There could be no other explanation.

  ‘Why did he go to these lengths?’ Falcone demanded. ‘Why skin a man? Why go through this routine of putting his own wife on a chair as if he wanted the Farnese woman to find her alive? And this stuff he wrote on the wall …’

  ‘He was crazy,’ Costa said firmly. ‘You’d have to be crazy to kill someone like that.’

  Falcone snorted. ‘Too easy. Besides, even if it’s true, do you think there’s no rationality behind craziness? It all just spews out for no reason? This man was a university professor. He was intelligent, organized. He was convincing enough for the Englishman to come to him from the airport thinking he was meeting the woman. He managed to get his wif
e into that tower and string her up. Then he killed the boyfriend, skinned him, went off to the library … Or maybe he did her first, in which case how come the Englishman let himself be strung up after seeing her? Can one person handle all those things? I guess so. But how? In what order? You tell me that. And this Fairchild. He was a big man. He didn’t just hold up his hands and let Rinaldi tie him. What went on there?’

  ‘I know that,’ Rossi said. ‘I talked to Crazy Teresa in the path lab just now. They think there’s traces of some drug, some sedative maybe.’

  ‘What sedative?’ Falcone asked. ‘How’d a university professor come to be walking around with medication to hand just when he feels like skinning someone? If it comes to that, how the hell does a man like that know how to skin someone? And – this is the biggest one for me, the one I keep coming back to – why? Why like this?’

  ‘She’s a professor in the same department,’ Costa suggested. ‘The quotation on the walls is from some early Christian theologian. Maybe it sounded appropriate.’

  ‘Appropriate?’ Falcone repeated, as if it was the most stupid thing he’d ever heard in his life. ‘You mean he’s saying to her, “We’re all martyrs to you, bitch. And here’s the proof”? I don’t get it. What was he hoping to achieve? If he was going to kill her it would make more sense. But you claim that’s not the case. He just wanted to get her to go, as quickly as possible, to the place he’d left his own wife, still alive. What’s the point?’

  Costa looked at Rossi for help. His partner was still staring out of the window, working on the cigarette. It was another hot, cloudless day out there. Nic Costa wondered exactly what it was that Falcone expected of him.

  ‘And you’re wrong,’ Falcone continued. ‘I checked. Rinaldi was in the same department but he didn’t share the same speciality. His field was Roman law, the Curia, all that ancient stuff the Vatican still thinks we should be listening to today.’

  ‘Is that relevant?’ Rossi wondered.

  ‘You tell me. I ran through the records. Four months ago Rinaldi was called as an expert witness for some government tribunal looking at the issue of diplomatic immunity for Vatican officials. They want more. We want less. Rinaldi came up with an expert opinion that said they were right, in law, very old law anyway. Where the hell do martyrs come into that?’

  ‘Are you saying, sir, that you think my conclusion’s wrong? That Rinaldi isn’t responsible somehow?’

  ‘Hell no,’ Falcone answered immediately. ‘It’s difficult to see how it could have happened any other way.’

  ‘Well, then what? Isn’t it enough to know Rinaldi did these things? Sometimes we never know why. We just have to accept that.’

  Falcone glowered at him. ‘Not yet we don’t. I’m an inquisitive bastard. It’s what makes me tick. It’s what makes every good cop tick. If you’re not, you never get to know a thing. I want you to answer some of these questions that keep bugging me. I don’t want detectives who think they’re elves in Santa’s workshop going out there, wrapping things up all nicely with all the right ribbons, all the right answers, dropping them on my desk, getting a pat on the head, then looking for some more toys to play with. This job isn’t like that.’

  ‘I know,’ Costa replied. ‘At least, I never felt the pat on the head.’

  Rossi groaned, stabbed out the cigarette and immediately lit another.

  Falcone was smiling again. He’d won a response and Costa cursed himself for being so stupid. ‘You kids.’ The inspector laughed. ‘You’re so sensitive. Listen. I think you’ve got the right answers. I just don’t like the way you got there. Cutting too many corners.’

  ‘Sir.’ Costa scowled.

  ‘And one more thing,’ Falcone added. ‘I’d like you to listen more. I know we’re into this youth culture thing that says everyone over the age of thirty is a moron—’

  ‘I’m twenty-seven, sir.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I wish you looked it sometimes. The point I want to make to you, Costa, is the only way any of us really learns is by watching our elders and betters. Forget all that crap in the police college. All we do for a living is deal with human beings. Human beings who, for the most part, are trying to lie to us, trying to screw us around. This is a people business. You should talk less and listen more, son.’

  Costa grimaced. ‘Sir, I—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Falcone ordered. ‘And here’s another thing. That other stuff he wrote on the wall? St Ives?’

  ‘Crazy,’ Rossi said, starting to become interested.

  ‘Maybe,’ Falcone agreed. ‘But I can tell you what it is. I got someone to look it up.’

  He stared at a laser printout on the desk and read the words.

  As I was going to St Ives

  I met a man with seven wives.

  Every wife had seven sacks,

  Every sack had seven cats,

  Every cat had seven kits.

  Kits, cats, sacks and wives,

  How many were going to St Ives?

  The two detectives stared at each other, dumbfounded. Costa grabbed the calculator on the desk and started punching.

  Falcone grinned. ‘It’s a riddle. What’s the answer?’

  Costa scribbled some figures on his notepad. ‘Seven wives. Forty-nine sacks. Three hundred and forty-three cats. Two thousand four hundred and one kittens. That adds up to two thousand eight hundred.’ He thought of the tiny enclosed room in the tower and the remembered stink of meat. ‘But what the hell does that mean?’

  The inspector scowled. ‘It means you don’t understand riddles. And you just wasted a lot of effort not answering the question you were asked. “I met a man with seven wives …” They were all going in the opposite direction. There was just one person going to St Ives. The narrator. You were looking in the wrong place all along. The obvious isn’t always the right answer.’

  Nic Costa shook his head. ‘That’s the kind of game a crazy person would play.’

  ‘And not finish the line?’ Falcone asked. ‘Why would a dead man set an incomplete riddle? Can you tell me that?’

  There was no ready answer.

  ‘I want you to go round to Rinaldi’s home,’ Falcone ordered. ‘There’s been some people there already but maybe they missed something. Try to work out what kind of man he was, whether there’s anything to explain this. And try not to piss off Hanrahan again. He’s been on the phone twice to me already. You certainly made an impression there.’

  Costa failed to understand the relevance. ‘Hanrahan? You know him?’

  ‘Oh, we’re just the best of friends.’ Falcone was, Costa hoped, being sarcastic. Sometimes it was hard to tell. ‘Now …’

  He was out of his seat, standing in front of the window with his back to them, watching the traffic in the street, thinking, or so he wanted them to believe. Another Falcone ritual. The two detectives knew when their time was through.

  Rossi led the way out of the room.

  SIX

  The Rinaldis owned a large restored apartment in a late-nineteenth-century block on the Via Mecenate, a residential street by the park which led from the Via Merulana towards the Colosseum. The neighbourhood was on the cusp of acceptability. It was only a few minutes’ walk to the smarter, older quarters of the Caelian Hill. Nero’s Golden House lay beneath the parched summer grass a hundred metres from the entrance to the block. The apartment was well decorated in a lean, modern style, generously proportioned and quiet, since it gave out onto the vast internal courtyard of the building, not the street in front. Still, Nic Costa was unable to dispel the idea that the Rinaldis were not exactly rolling in money. The Via Merulana was not a place to wander with pleasure at night. It was only a little distance from the squalor of Termini Station. If he looked closely outside he would see the signs: needles in the gutter, used condoms in doorways. At night the park became a haunt for rent boys. A university professor would prefer to live somewhere else, Costa felt. It was one of those neighbourhoods that was always up and coming but never quite got there.<
br />
  The apartment had been thoroughly searched already. Costa and Rossi studied the preliminary report: a small amount of cannabis, no messages on the answering machine, no incriminating letters, nothing on the cheap desktop computer that sat in the tiny study next to the bedroom. He wondered how Falcone expected them to come up with something new.

  Rossi found the Rinaldis’ bank statements tucked into a drawer of the computer desk. Costa’s suspicions were correct. They maintained separate accounts and both were in the red, Stefano Rinaldi’s to the tune of a quarter of a million euros. There were threatening letters from the bank too. Unless the Rinaldis cleared some of their debt, even the modest apartment in the Via Mecenate was in jeopardy of disappearing from beneath them.

  Was this enough to turn someone like Stefano Rinaldi into a multiple killer? Falcone would never accept such a flimsy idea. Where was the evidence? Costa made a note to re-interview the neighbours. The preliminary report came up with so little. All the usual comments they got in domestic incidents, stories that painted the victims as a quiet, solitary couple, with few friends. No one had ever seen Mary Rinaldi with a bruised face. No one had heard her complain about the behaviour of her husband. They were, it seemed, a bland, childless everyday pair struggling to make ends meet. Falcone was right: there had to be more. The bank statements and the threats from the bank were symptoms, surely, of some larger malaise in the Rinaldis’ life.

  Something else bothered him. Mary Rinaldi didn’t work, the report said. Even so, Rinaldi must have earned a decent package at the university. They should have been able to survive. Yet here they were with a sizeable debt outstanding on a mediocre home, fighting to keep their heads above water. Where was the money going? They went back to the bank statements and found the answer: cash. Stefano Rinaldi’s salary from the university amounted to almost €6,000 a month after deductions. Even with a tidy mortgage that should have been enough to live on. The statements told a different story. Rinaldi immediately transferred a quarter into his wife’s bank account, standing payments accounted for a further half, and the rest disappeared in credit card bills and some huge cash withdrawals, sometimes as much as €1,000 a week.