A Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Meet one of Falcone’s colleagues. A junior one, who thinks very highly of himself, with only a little reason. Talk to him. Offer the files on Fosse. Then leave the rest to me. I will try to negotiate a price that gets you out of here. Then keep your head down and pray.’

  He nodded. ‘If that’s what you want. I suppose I have no choice.’

  ‘None,’ Hanrahan agreed.

  ‘Tell me, Brendan. How many more names are on his list?’

  The question surprised Hanrahan. ‘A few, or so I’ve heard. Sara Farnese seems to have been an active woman, if that’s the right word. You won’t see her again, will you? That would make my life too difficult. I can’t protect you against yourself.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed softly. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Good. This is an opportunity. We mustn’t waste it. I don’t know if another will arise.’

  Denney looked up at him, desperate. ‘The police have these names from her? They’ll warn them. The others. I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience.’

  Hanrahan glowered at him from the chair opposite. He made no effort to disguise his contempt.

  ‘I’ve warned the ones who want to listen myself. For what it’s worth.’

  Denney felt like shrieking. ‘It has to be worth something, Brendan. For pity’s sake.’

  Hanrahan got up, stretched lazily and cast him one last, backward glance. ‘Spare me your concern, please. We both know this is about you. If you run, Michael, it all comes to an end in any case. Can’t you see that’s what he’s doing? He’s sending you a message. He’s saying he’ll go on killing until you flee and give him a chance to kill you. If he finds you on the way, then that’s OK with him. If you manage to escape then it’s finished anyway. He has no more reason to do what he’s doing. Either the police catch him or he saves up for a fare to Boston or wherever you plan to run and hide. End of story. And no more corpses in Rome.’

  Denney closed his eyes wishing he couldn’t hear any of this.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about your conscience. Don’t even dare.’ Hanrahan’s voice rang off the walls of the meagre apartment. There was a kind of judgement there, and one which Denney found hard to bear. ‘This is not about conscience. It’s about courage. It could be ended so easily. So would you care to take a walk with me now, Your Eminence? It’s a fair day, a hot one, true, but I wouldn’t be anywhere else except Rome on an August morning like this. There’s not so many tourists. There’s a breeze coming down the Tiber. We could get out from behind these walls. We could stand in the shadow of the castle. We could sit on the street and take coffee. I could buy you lunch in that old restaurant in Trastevere, the one where we used to sit in the garden, the one where the lamb’s so good you just pick it up and eat it with your fingers. Then we could walk, anywhere we felt like and wait to see what happens.’

  Denney heard the Irishman cross the room, felt his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Well, Michael.’ Hanrahan demanded. ‘Will you be coming out with me or won’t you?’

  ‘Get the hell out of here,’ Denney hissed.

  ‘I’ll arrange for this kid to come at four.’ He patted Denney hard on the head. ‘I take it you have no conflicting appointments?’

  Denney said nothing.

  ‘Good. And I’ll call beforehand. You’ll say what I tell you to. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m putting in a lot of work on your behalf, Your Eminence. I’d hate to see it fucked up just because you can’t remember your lines.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Nic Costa didn’t know where to begin. Teresa Lupo was on her hands and knees carefully examining the sprawling blood stain which marked a good metre or more of the grubby carpet. Falcone and some detectives he only half recognized were on the far side of the octagonal chamber carefully going through the drawers of a small desk, scrutinizing every piece of paper it contained.

  On the ceiling and upper walls were scores of black and white photographs, badly developed, roughly cut and taped to the crumbling plasterwork. Whatever other talents Gino Fosse possessed, he was a dedicated and skilful peeping Tom. The pictures were taken through half-open curtains, with a long, telephoto lens. They were grainy, squalid, intrusive. Most of the people in them were unknown to him. But Rinaldi was there, in three sets of shots, each with a different, unidentifiable woman. The other cast members were only half-seen: a woman, bent over the spread-eagled legs of a bored-looking hooker with blowsy hair, a fat, whale-like man whose mountain of white flesh tumbled onto the skin of the figure slumped beneath him. The pictures could have come from some porn magazine touted in the sex shops around Termini Station. The missionary position was largely absent. Several photos showed women gagged, hands bound behind their back, eyes staring blankly at the white shape heaving over them. Fosse had taken his time, photographing from every angle he could find.

  Then he moved along the wall and saw what he knew, with some dread, was bound to be there. She was naked, on her back, legs wide open, waiting for a man who was only just visible, sliding towards her across the floor. It could have been the fat man in the other picture. He found it hard to judge. The location looked like an expensive apartment. A hotel maybe, since the bed had that clinical, just-made look that spoke of housemaids and room service. It was the first in a series. In others she was made to crouch in a vulgar sexual position, looking over her shoulder as if inviting the unseen viewer. There were grainy close-ups of her breasts and her abdomen: gross, intrusive pictures, almost clinical in their detail.

  It was important, he thought, to scrutinize these images closely in order to understand what they had to say. There was no question of prurience. He found it impossible to look at them without feeling he was living on the edge of some waking nightmare, a world in which all the normal rules of human behaviour counted for nothing. He examined those in which her face was visible. She seemed detached, somehow, perhaps even drugged. Sara may have come here willingly but she did not wish to be a party to these games. Or was he being naïve? Her life was alien to him. Perhaps he really was, like his father, simply out of date. Perhaps it was not so unusual to meet a stranger, decide casually to have sex, and then play these bizarre, dark games in front of the prying camera. Terror and ecstasy sometimes walked hand in hand. Nic Costa was lost for answers.

  He was still staring at the photographs when a hand touched his arm. It was Teresa Lupo, who looked a little less crazy each time he saw her. She was taking off her gloves. She seemed concerned.

  ‘What do you say, Nic?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s beyond me. Rinaldi I recognize. The rest …’

  She nodded at the body bag. ‘The woman’s over there. Most of her anyway. You know what I find most interesting? These aren’t pictures of the protagonists. He’s not trying to capture them at all. What he wants is the partner. The hooker. Or whatever they were.’

  Teresa threw the gloves into a plastic bag, sniffed and let down her black hair which was tied in a rough, childlike pigtail. The act made Luca Rossi glance covetously at her from across the room.

  ‘He kept plenty of souvenirs too.’ She pointed at a couple of the photographs which showed Sara’s clothes on the floor beside her naked body: flowered pants, a bra, and a loose, flowing dress. ‘Look.’

  She pointed to what was an untidy pile of underwear thrown into the corner of the room, so much it must have come from several different sources. ‘He’s a collector, I think. I just took a brief look but you can match some of those things with the photographs. This is a very tactile man. He needs some physical evidence to remind him of what he’s been up to. Maybe he creeps in and steals them. Maybe he’s best friends with some creep at the laundry.’

  He couldn’t stop looking at the photographs. ‘He’s crazy.’

  ‘Never mind him. Think of the women. At least the one woman we know. Look at the facts,’ she said, pointing at a series of overlapping prints. They showed Sara lying on the floor, neck uncomfortably upright,
face to the distant camera, staring towards the lens. The man was scarcely in the frame. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘A naked woman in an uncomfortable position. I don’t get it. I don’t understand what motivates Fosse.’

  ‘It turns him on, I imagine. But look at the woman. Some answers are there. What message is she sending out?’

  ‘She just seems … passive. As if it’s happening to someone else.’

  Crazy Teresa groaned. ‘Call yourself a detective. Are there any signs of arousal? Are her nipples erect? Is she opening her legs for whoever she’s about to screw?’

  He pulled down the clearest of the prints and peered at it. ‘No. Like I said, she looks passive.’

  ‘You’ve got to extract as much as you can from this. You get erect nipples for a variety of reasons. Arousal’s just one of them. Cold. Fear. Think about it. This woman isn’t feeling any of those. What does that mean?’ She waited. He said nothing. ‘It means she’s naked, possibly with a stranger, and she’s not that bothered. She’s not even half afraid. If I were a detective what would that make me think? Why would a woman behave like that? She knows this game. Maybe she’s played it before. She’s practised.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Look at it, Nic. Dispassionately.’ She stared at the pictures again. ‘I could almost convince myself she knows the camera’s there. But I guess that’s going too far.’

  It was. It had to be. He was unconvinced by what she said and that was not simply because he didn’t want to believe it.

  Teresa Lupo’s big hand patted his good shoulder, hard. ‘Alternatively, dear boy, she is very comfortable with strangers. I give up. Now excuse me. I need to write up some notes.’

  Luca Rossi wandered over, discreetly touched her backside, then went to stand by Costa. ‘How are you feeling, kid?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I heard the woman’s still going to stay with you. Is that wise?’

  ‘Why should it be unwise?’ Costa snapped.

  ‘Hey. Will you stop biting my head off? Someone tried to kill you this morning because of her. In case you forgot.’

  Costa cursed himself. It was unlike him to take out his unhappiness on others. ‘Apologies again. But why shouldn’t Sara stay with me? You people know how to guard the place now. I promise I won’t play hooky any more. Besides, I think she’s still got things to tell us. In her own time. When she feels she can trust someone.’

  The big man grunted. ‘I’ll take your word on that.’

  He nodded at the body bag. ‘You hear who this is?’

  Costa shook his head.

  ‘Semi-famous lady. Alicia Vaccarini. Parliamentary deputy for Bologna. She hit the press when she turned out to be a dyke and the party bosses disowned her. Remember?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ he lied. Reading the papers was never one of his strong points.

  Rossi eyed Falcone who was sifting through a pile of new photographs found under the desk. ‘And he thinks he’s got an idea why she was on the list too. Come on. Let’s join the fun.’

  Falcone shuffled through the set of prints someone had found in a tiny darkroom downstairs, built into an alcove. These weren’t peeping Tom shots. They were taken in the tower, of women who’d received personal attention from Gino Fosse. In the pictures they were bound, exposed for the lens in a variety of sexual positions. Most looked scared, and two of them showed signs of violence: bruised eyes, cuts on the mouth and nose. None of them, however, was deemed worthy of display in the small octagonal room in the tower, which seemed odd. As if Fosse drew more inspiration from the snatched photos than the ones in which he was directly involved.

  ‘He raped them,’ Rossi observed.

  ‘Really?’ Falcone wondered. ‘So why didn’t any of them complain? We don’t have anything on this man.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Costa asked.

  One of the detectives he didn’t know said, ‘Gino Fosse. Priest at the hospital up the road for the last month. Before that he worked in the Vatican. This place is a Church property. They leased it to him at a peppercorn rent. That’s as far as it goes. We’re talking to the Diocese but they say they just got handed him by someone from on high. Got told to put him in here, look after him, get him a nice quiet job, keep him out of trouble.’

  Falcone looked at the pictures. ‘He had bad habits. Perhaps they were trying to hide him away for some reason. Perhaps he’d done this before.’

  The detective shrugged. ‘If he did I doubt we’re going to find out about it. I’ve put in the calls. No one’s ringing back. I’ll tell you one thing though, he liked jazz. The place is full of CDs. He had one track on loop when we turned up. Sense of humour, huh? It must have been on when he did it.’

  The man held out the case: a picture of a dapper violinist sitting in a gorilla’s open palm, and the title, King Kong, Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa.

  ‘The track in particular,’ he said, ‘is called “How Would You Like to Have a Head Like That?”’

  The morgue team heaved the body bag onto a gurney and lugged it to the narrow stairs. ‘Alicia Vaccarini,’ Falcone said. ‘I met her once. She was on a couple of police committees. Cold bitch.’ He glanced at Costa. ‘Why her do you think?’

  It couldn’t be avoided. ‘Sara Farnese slept with her. A one-night stand just like this Fosse character. Which is why she never mentioned either of them.’

  Luca Rossi whistled. ‘Jesus. How many other things has that woman got hidden inside her?’

  ‘She says there were others like that. No names. She never knew them.’

  Falcone put a hand to his silver beard and stared out of the slitted window. ‘At least we know where Fosse is getting some of his information from. Peeping through windows, following her around.’

  ‘Not just her,’ Costa objected. ‘There must be ten, twelve different women in these pictures.’

  ‘Right. Let’s show their pictures around. Specially to vice. See if anyone knows them. Let’s see if we can identify any of the men too. They might appreciate the warning. Look for some link between Fosse and Denney too. It has to be there. Vaccarini certainly had one.’

  She was, Falcone said, a player in political circles, with no small amount of influence. Earlier in the year she was on the committee that looked at changing some of the diplomatic immunity rules for the Vatican. The same one that Rinaldi gave evidence to. Interesting or what? If that vote had gone the right way, Denney could have walked onto the first plane home unimpeded by the authorities, ready to disappear. Was this coincidence? Or was this the fundamental reason behind the deaths? In which case, how was Sara Farnese involved?

  The men looked at each other. They knew when a case was slipping away from them. There were too many loose ends, too many roads to nowhere.

  ‘This is turning bad,’ Falcone said, glowering at Rossi. ‘We missed our chance this morning. You …’ He looked at Costa. ‘You’re fit to be here?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Go back and see your friend Hanrahan. He’s been on the phone hinting that maybe Denney will let you into his apartment for a talk. Could be they have something else to bargain with. And Sara Farnese. You still think she should stay at your father’s house?’

  ‘If that’s what she wants.’

  ‘To hell with what she wants,’ Falcone snarled. ‘Get something out of that woman. She’s running rings around us, you in particular. Find out what the hell she’s been dabbling in because this is more than just some nasty by-product of casual sex. She’s been screwing the wrong people. Maybe someone with a cardinal’s cap for all I know—’

  ‘She denies knowing Denney,’ Costa interjected, feeling weary with the man’s relentless badgering.

  Rossi wrinkled his fleshy nose in distaste. ‘She denied having any other lovers until one turned up without a head.’

  ‘Just talk to her,’ Falcone said. ‘Don’t stop until she says something. And here’s a question for all of you. Just where does a runaway priest hid
e in Rome, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Somewhere we can’t touch him,’ Rossi said. ‘That place.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Falcone sneered. ‘This Fosse character is just like Denney now. They gave him some kind of chance. He threw it away. They won’t want him near them. He’s here. In the city. Someone knows. Someone can tell us. Get the papers onto it. Is there a photograph of him here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ someone said. ‘We’ve got fingerprints. That’s all.’

  ‘Find some. Costa can give you a description for a photo-fit.’

  Rossi scribbled out a note and gave it to one of the junior cops.

  Teresa Lupo bumped into the gathering, gave them all a schoolgirl smile, fluttered her copious eyelids and said sweetly, ‘I’ve got DNA. If anyone’s interested.’

  Falcone took one step back from her and said, ‘What?’

  There was one final package that hadn’t gone on the gurney, a black plastic bag like a heavyweight supermarket carrier. She had it in her grasp and, with gloved hands, opened the sealed top for a second look. The men watched as she withdrew the head of Alicia Vaccarini tenderly, held it by the severed neck and turned the dead politician’s features around to face them. Luca Rossi breathed deeply and went to the window to stare out at the Clivus Scauri. A couple of the others joined him.

  ‘Sorry, boys,’ Teresa said with a grin. ‘This is all for your benefit, you know.’

  She held the short hair, allowing the head to dangle freely, then opened the mouth with a plastic prong, looking inside, peering into the throat. Even Costa, not the most squeamish of men, felt something churn in his stomach. Then she put the head back in the bag, called one of the team over and passed it to him.

  ‘Well?’ She beamed at the cops. ‘Just making sure I don’t say anything premature. Does anyone here want to know exactly how she died? Or am I just along for the ride and your charming company?’

  Falcone lit a cigarette. The men were grateful, even Nic Costa. The head stank of meat and blood and the smell seemed amplified in the cramped, overheated room. ‘We’re listening,’ he said.