by David Hewson
There was some light in his eyes. Some kind of doubt. There was room for her to work. ‘I can help you,’ she said. ‘I have friends. I can tell the police you’ve been kind. That you didn’t mean it. We all make mistakes.’
‘We all burn in Hell.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s an old story. Even the Church doesn’t believe that any more.’
‘Then they’re stupid.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry.’
She breathed deeply for the first time in hours, finding a flicker of hope in his apology.
‘It’s all right,’ Alicia Vaccarini said. ‘Everything will be all right.’
His face was so odd. In some light he would be handsome. In another, not hideous but exaggerated somehow, like a figure from a medieval painting.
‘You don’t understand, Alicia. I’m sorry because I can’t do you justice. The church in Trastevere. The means of your death, a holy means. Something which could help wash away your sins. Save you perhaps. All of this is impossible now. They’re coming to take away my home. They think they can trap me. They’re very, very stupid.’
‘It can work out. I can help.’
‘Perhaps.’ He was thinking. He was as rational now as he had appeared in the restaurant. Something occupied him. He went over to the pile of jazz CDs strewn on the floor, sifted quickly through them until he found what he wanted, then put it on the hi-fi. The sound of a high, sweeping electric violin filled the room. Then he came back to her.
‘Have you ever watched a man smash a brick with his hand, Alicia? The martial arts place I go to. They show you how to do that. They teach you the secret.’
‘No,’ she answered quietly, not wishing to excite him.
‘The secret is you don’t try to hit the brick. What you aim at is something imaginary a little way behind it. That is what you’re trying to destroy. You get the result you want by focusing on that hidden place, by making that your target. And in doing so you smash the brick. Do you understand?’
‘I think so. Could you untie me, please? I’m very stiff. I need to go to the bathroom.’
He shook his head, annoyed she appeared to miss his point. ‘This is important, Alicia. Our true goal’s beyond. It’s not something that we see. What we do along the way, what we touch, what we destroy, is irrelevant. It’s the end point that matters. Being able to see it with your inner eye. To know you’ll get there.’
She looked at him, not liking what she saw. ‘They’ll be here soon. It would look best if they didn’t find me like this. You can understand that, can’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he said and walked behind her. The earth began to shift. The chair moved through ninety degrees as Fosse tilted it forward until Alicia Vaccarini was on her knees, head hanging down, eyes fixed on the worn, stained carpet.
She waited for his touch, waited to feel him working on the rope. It never happened. Gino Fosse came back to stand in front of her again. This time he was holding the sword, the bright, glittering sword that had cut her once already.
‘Jesus Christ.’ She looked at the blade and felt the breath disappearing from her lungs. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered.
But Fosse wasn’t even noticing. His eyes were on the chair to which she was tied and the space that lay beyond her neck.
He walked to one side of her. Only his ankles were visible: white socks in black trainers. She heard the sound of the sword cutting through the hot, dank air of the room and a strange memory came to her from a history course long ago: Anne Boleyn going to her death at the hands of the Calais swordsman, a bitter kindness on Henry VIII’s part, to save her from the conventional executioner’s axe. The man had been brought in for the occasion because of his reputation. The sword had a clean, deadly efficiency impossible with the axe. He’d hidden the blade beneath the straw, stood behind her, listened to her last words, then decapitated the disgraced queen with a single blow.
She could hear it: unseen, the silver blade dashing at her back as her executioner made his practice strokes. Then there was silence. She could picture him drawing it to his shoulders, turning in a deadly forceful arc.
Without thinking, she lifted her chin and forced her eyes shut. She didn’t wish to see a thing. She didn’t want to think of the blade missing her neck, smashing into the back of her skull.
In the curious practicality of the moment she recalled something further of the history lesson: Anne’s last words, ‘To Jesus Christ I commend my soul’.
It was impossible to say them. It would be an insult, she thought.
The music ended, then looped back on itself. The wailing violin began to dance again.
THIRTY-ONE
San Giovanni, once a refuge for fourth-century pilgrims, was now a modern hospital that sprawled through countless buildings covering a vast parcel of the Caelian Hill. The complex stretched from the old narrow road that led to the church of San Clemente across to the traffic-choked modern highway that fed streams of cars, buses and trucks into the piazza from the south. Only minutes away too was the Clivus Scauri, where Falcone and his men were engaged in the discovery of a further victim and the disappearance of the priest who once, albeit briefly, worked the corridors of the place where Nic Costa now lay on a table in a small cubicle, his head hurting like hell.
Luca Rossi and Sara Farnese had only just argued their way into the room. They sat on the bench seat watching the nurse bandage him, watching the way he listened to the doctor talk about concussion and how, all things being equal, he ought to spend the day in a ward just to make sure there were no lingering after-effects. The knife wound was minor. The knock to his head when he fell and hit the rock had left a livid but compact blood-filled bruise on his right temple. Still, Nic Costa was alive and maddeningly ignorant of the reason for it. He waited for the doctor to go away, then turned to the big man.
‘I don’t like the look on your face, Uncle Luca. You took him?’
‘We wish,’ Rossi replied miserably.
Costa was wide-eyed with amazement. ‘Christ. What more do you need?’
Sara Farnese looked at her feet. Rossi glowered at him from across the room. ‘Hey, kid. Don’t get precious with me.’
‘There were how many men there?’
‘Enough!’ The big man’s flabby white face turned an odd shade of half-angry pink. ‘Eight. Maybe ten. Think about it. They were there to protect the farm. Which was where you were supposed to be. None of them knew you were running around doing this crazy stuff somewhere else. Falcone is going to tear the skin off my back for letting you go out there. Except, of course, it wasn’t even where I thought you were going to be. Remember the deal? You stay in the drive? Where we could be close by?’
His head was painful, confused. He did remember now, and Luca Rossi was right. He’d no one to blame but himself. He remembered, too, the sight of Sara at the window and the terror on her face.
‘I’m sorry, Luca. I was an idiot.’
‘Yeah, well …’ The big man cast a glance at Sara next to him. ‘You survived. No thanks to us. And we’ve got a name. And another body. Enough there for Falcone to get happy about or crucify us with, depending on his mood.’
‘I’ll check myself out. I have to go there.’
‘Nic, the doctors …’ Sara began to say.
‘This one’s even less pretty than the others,’ Rossi grumbled, taking it as read that Costa would leave hospital. ‘What can you do?’
He moved his shoulder and was pleased by the small amount of pain that resulted. ‘It’s not bad. Besides, Luca, you need me. I saw this man, remember?’
Rossi looked at the woman again. Costa couldn’t work it out. There was something he disliked about Sara Farnese. It was so powerful he seemed to hate even sitting next to her in the hospital cubicle.
‘Doesn’t matter that you saw him, Nic. Weren’t you listening? We’ve got his name. Miss Farnese here provided it once we’d got you into the ambulance. Seems she had it all along.’
His head hurt
even more after that. She was staring at the white wall, intent on nothing. Her hair was tousled. It made her look different. Maybe there hadn’t been time for her to do anything else. She’d just left the house with him, unable to put on the mask she normally wore to keep the world from touching her.
‘I’ve got some calls to make,’ Rossi said. ‘Your father decided to stay at home once the ambulance people said you’d be fine. I’ll let him know things are OK all the same. I’m outside when you want me. It’s two minutes away, max. They can take her some place else. Falcone says the protective custody thing is still on. I guess you won’t want her back at the farm so they’re making other arrangements.’
He patted the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. ‘Smoking time too.’ Then he was gone from the room, out into the long corridor illuminated by cold fluorescent lights.
Nic Costa pushed himself upright off the hospital table. The cut in his shoulder was minor. His head would get better. It was all a matter of time.
She still wouldn’t look at him.
‘Thanks,’ he said finally.
Sara turned. Her eyes were scared, astonished too. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know what happened out there, Sara. But you stopped him. Thanks.’
Her head moved from side to side, her long, unkempt hair shifting slowly around with the motion. ‘I just saw him from the window, Nic. I knew something was wrong. When I got there he ran away. I imagine he was scared everyone else was turning up. He didn’t want witnesses.’
That was a lie. He knew it for sure. He’d heard them talking.
‘You spoke to him.’
‘Of course I did! I screamed at him to stop. What do you expect?’
‘No.’ His memory was hazy yet there was something fixed there: he recalled the tenor of their conversation. ‘You spoke to him. He answered back. It was more than that. You knew who he was.’
‘Enough to know his name. He used to hang around the Vatican Library when I was there. We’d talk sometimes.’
‘You didn’t …’ There was no easy way of asking.
‘What?’ she answered, furious. ‘Sleep with him? No. There are men in Rome who’ve been denied that privilege. I hope that doesn’t come as too much of a shock.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, God.’ She shook her head, eyes closed, miserable. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. You don’t know what you’re saying. I saw him. I yelled at him until he went. Then as soon as he was gone I yelled until the police came. For you and that photographer. He’s worse than you, they say. He’ll be in here for some time.’
It was possible she was right. He could have imagined the entire exchange.
‘Someone else is dead?’
‘So they say.’
‘You know him?’
She picked up her bag and put it on her knee. ‘I think I should leave. They want me to stay somewhere else. They say they’re sending another police team to pick me up.’
Costa got up off the table and walked, a little shakily, across the room. He sat next to her on the bench, very close. He wanted to make a point: that she couldn’t chase him away so easily.
‘Do you know him?’ he asked again.
The old Sara looked frankly at him, unafraid. ‘It was a woman.’
He thought about the bold, unabashed way in which she said it.
‘So did you know her?’
‘I think I slept with her once. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘You think?’
‘No. I did. They showed me a picture. She was a politician apparently. I slept with her a few months ago. I can’t be certain. I don’t keep that kind of diary. I apologize. It happened once. It was her idea. Not my kind of thing really.’
He sighed. She could still shake him, even though he knew this was what she intended.
‘I don’t understand any of this, Sara. I don’t understand why you do it. I don’t understand why you never gave us her name.’
She laughed, a dry, deliberate laugh, one that was supposed to make him hate her. ‘You’re so old-fashioned, Nic. You and your father. I love him. Really. I could talk to him for hours because it’s like talking to someone from another time. But the world’s not the way you two imagine it. Maybe it never was. You ask me why I never gave you her name? What makes you think I knew her name in the first place? This was just one night. That’s all.’
It made no sense. It couldn’t be the whole story. ‘But why?’
‘Because …’ She had to hunt for the answer. ‘You’ve your kind of love. I’ve mine. We’re different. What happened satisfied me. Then it’s gone, with nothing lingering, nothing to go stale. No awkward attachments. No bitterness, no pain.’
‘So it’s not a kind of love at all?’ he said without thinking. ‘And it isn’t gone. Something stays behind. Something that may go wrong. Then people get screwed up. Sometimes horribly.’
Her eyes grew wide. ‘So this is my fault?’ she demanded angrily. ‘You think I’m to blame for what’s happened?’
It was a stupid thing to say in a way but she had misread his point. ‘Not for a minute.’
He stood up, trying to convince himself he didn’t feel too bad. His head was clearing rapidly.
‘I knew you wouldn’t stay here,’ she said. ‘Why can’t you just leave it alone?’
He watched her get up and collect her bag, organize herself for whatever lay ahead.
‘It’s what they pay me for.’
‘No they don’t. No one pays you to risk your life.’
‘Next time I’ll be more careful.’
Sara Farnese stared into his face. Then she touched his cheek gently with two slender fingers. It was a deliberate act, one he could not mistake.
‘Nic,’ she said carefully. ‘If you asked, would they take you off this case?’
The question threw him. ‘I guess so. But why would I want to do that?’
‘Because I want you to? This is about me. There may be things you’ll find out that I don’t want you to know. Things that will make you loathe me.’
‘I’m a cop. They give you drugs to make you unshockable.’
‘It’s not a joke.’
‘I know. Don’t worry about it.’
She glanced at him, uneasy. ‘Then you’ll ask for something else?’
‘Are you kidding? This is shaping up to be the biggest thing of my career. What would I look like if I backed out now? I don’t give up on things. Not just because they might be hard or awkward or make me face decisions I’d rather avoid. That doesn’t get you anywhere.’
‘It makes life easy,’ she said.
‘It makes life dull and boring and … perhaps pointless even.’
She nodded. ‘I thought you’d say that.’
‘Thank you. Now, you face a decision. I have to go back to the team. You can stay in this safe house of Falcone’s. Or I can make the case for you to go back to the farm. Not for my sake, you understand. It’s my father. He enjoys your company. You seem to enjoy his.’
She didn’t recoil from the idea. He was glad. ‘Will he agree? This awful boss of yours? I don’t like him. He’s too … hard.’
‘Falcone thinks that’s what’s required of him. If I ask him to let you stay I can’t see why he’d object. Let’s face it, your security can’t be much at risk. You met this man. He didn’t harm you. Did he?’
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘And your safety?’
He’d thought about that already. ‘I’ll be more careful. Besides, I don’t think he’ll come back somehow. It’s as if he has an agenda. I wasn’t really on it. Also I told him the truth. That we just set this up for him, the idea that something was going on between us. I told him it was all a lie.’
Was that the way a psychopath behaved, he wondered? Being so picky about who he killed? A chill, dark thought ran around Nic Costa’s head. What if this lunatic had seen him there on the ground, spared his life, then wondered afterwards: what was the point? Would he make the same choice aga
in? Or did you just let the innocent off the hook once and then, the next time, think … to hell with it?
There was a sound outside in the corridor. Luca Rossi poked his big white face around the door and looked pointedly at his watch. Costa waved at him for one minute more. She waited until the big man was gone, then said, ‘You’ll find him, won’t you? He’s sick. He needs help.’
‘We’ll find him.’ He hesitated, wondering whether he dared ask. ‘Sara?’
She didn’t like the tone of his voice. She knew, he guessed, what was coming.
‘Yes?’
‘Are there more names we ought to know? Are there more people like this woman? People who aren’t names, just faces?’
‘A few. Not recently. I don’t know who they are. I don’t know how you could reach them.’ She said it with such conviction. He wanted to believe her.
‘There’s a man in the Vatican. Cardinal Denney …’
‘Nic!’ She was the real Sara again. He could see the tears starting in her eyes. ‘Is this you talking? Or the policeman? How am I supposed to know who I’m dealing with when you do this to me?’
‘You mean the answer would be different depending on who I was?’
‘Not at all,’ she replied immediately. ‘I mean that I want to understand what your interest is. Whether you’re asking as a friend. Or because you think it’s your job.’
‘As a friend.’
‘I don’t know him,’ she insisted. ‘Whoever you are.’
THIRTY-TWO
The apartment they gave him was on the third floor of a poky residential building adjoining the Vatican Library. It was unfit for a junior clerk, let alone a cardinal. That it was available at all was significant. Accommodation did not just materialize out of thin air in the Vatican. This was a pre-ordained punishment by the state, one that must have been planned weeks, if not months, before. The perfidy of Neri and Aitcheson was just part of the act. Perhaps Neri had worked in concert with someone on the political side. There was no way of knowing. Only one plain fact consoled Michael Denney: they could never abandon him altogether. If he was handed over to the Italian police or anyone else he could incriminate any number of men in Europe and America. Three present Italian cabinet ministers were deeply in his debt alone. The European Commission was full of his placements. He numbered Lloyd’s names and syndicate members of the New York Stock Exchange among those who had, in the good times, been the grateful recipients of any number of generous gestures, from the provision of company for the night to a well-placed inside tip. These were all items he would willingly have traded over the past few months as he attempted to buy safe passage out of the Vatican by any number of different means. It was a disappointment that he had failed, but the power of these weapons remained undiminished. He was grateful, too, that he had declined Neri’s whispered hints that the mob could find a way out for him. With hindsight, placing himself in the hands of Neri’s friends could have proved the most dangerous option of all.