A Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  Costa felt tired. His shoulder was aching. A vein was pumping through the bruise on his temple. ‘So what?’

  The big man leant down into his face. ‘So we take care, Nic. We watch what we say, what we do, who we trust. This is a complicated world.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Costa looked at his watch. ‘Right now I have an appointment. I’ll catch you tomorrow.’

  ‘I can come along,’ Rossi suddenly offered. ‘No problem. I don’t mind.’

  Costa couldn’t fathom it. ‘You heard what Falcone said? He wanted me there, alone.’

  ‘Yeah. I heard what Falcone said. I can still come. We’re supposed to be partners, aren’t we?’

  But they weren’t. Something had happened to open up a gulf of mistrust between them.

  ‘I appreciate the offer, Uncle Luca. Don’t get me wrong.’

  The big man snorted as if he was expecting the rejection. ‘Sure. Nice to be appreciated. Well, you just go do what Falcone wants, and make sure you do it to the letter. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Luca? What’s wrong?’

  The flabby, bloodless face fell. Luca Rossi looked lost. ‘Nothing. Everything. This stupid job. You. You more than anything, if you want the honest answer.’

  Costa was silent. He felt hurt and responsible too somehow.

  ‘When this is over, Nic, I want a change. Maybe they can give me a job pushing paper somewhere. I’m sorry. I lied. It’s not just you. It’s this line of work. It depresses me. It follows me everywhere. I want to sleep at night. I want to sit in a park and not notice the needles on the ground. I want to go for a walk and never wonder why some creep is standing by a car on the other side of the road, handing stuff out to kids who happen by. Most of all I want to meet women who talk about their clothes and where they shop, not about whom they dissected that morning and what they found in his gut.’

  ‘If you date a pathologist …’

  Luca Rossi sighed. ‘Yeah. Point taken. I’m stupid. Sorry. Sure you don’t want to reconsider my offer?’

  ‘And get ourselves into deeper shit with Falcone?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Rossi said, ‘you have to be your own man.’

  It sounded like the kind of thing his father would say.

  Rossi waited until he saw there was going to be no answer. Then he turned on his heels and shambled off towards the metro station and the long journey back to his apartment in the suburbs. Nic Costa watched him go, asking himself what he could do to repair this breach. He wasn’t ready to lose Luca Rossi just yet. He needed some pillars in his life. In the brief time they had known each other, he had become convinced this sad, big man could fit the bill somehow. Partly because they could, he thought, learn to lean on one another from time to time.

  Disconsolate, he looked at the gate into the Vatican. Hanrahan was there, in a dark suit, watching him from across the road. Nic Costa remembered why he was here, threaded his way through the pedestrians, sweating in their shorts and T-shirts, wandering down to the piazza, and, for the third time in three days, found himself in a foreign country.

  THIRTY-SIX

  They walked along a narrow road running parallel with the main public street to the south. The tall buildings on either side cast some welcome shadow on the pavement. The place was deserted. The crowds and the visitors were elsewhere, in St Peter’s and the grand piazza outside. These were the administrative quarters of the Vatican state, with a few blocks set aside for residences.

  Hanrahan looked him up and down. ‘You’ve been in the wars.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad too that you took my offer of last night seriously. You’ll find me a good friend, you know. I’ve a little influence beyond these walls. I know people that don’t cross your path ordinarily. You never know when I might be able to help.’

  Costa looked sceptical.

  ‘Now, now,’ Hanrahan continued. ‘A friendship has to be based on some kind of exchange. Otherwise it’s not friendship at all. It’s just one person using another. This is the oldest kind of relationship in the world, Nic. I give you something. You give me something back.’

  ‘Something you owe me by rights anyway, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Hanrahan opened the door to a grey block that could have been an office building. ‘But you are, Nic. I don’t have to give you anything. Please remember that. It’s most important.’

  He walked inside. The Irishman followed. They were in a dark, narrow stairwell with simple stone steps leading up. Costa’s surprise must have shown on his face.

  ‘Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, what’s a cardinal of the Catholic Church doing living in a dump like this? Do you know something? Our man here’s asking himself the same question too.’

  ‘And the answer?’

  Hanrahan held his arms open wide. ‘We all pay for our transgressions in the end. What more can I say?’

  They went up to the third floor. Hanrahan rang the bell. Costa watched an eye glint at the spy hole, heard two sets of chains rattle, then saw the heavy wooden door fall back to reveal the slim form of Cardinal Michael Denney. He looked more like an old matinee star than a churchman. Denney had a fine, chiselled face that was still handsome in spite of the lined cheeks and the wrinkles at the corner of a straight and humourless mouth. His lips were grey and thin, his teeth when he briefly smiled were white and perfect. He had a full head of straight, silver hair cut unfashionably long so that it hung over his ears and his collar. He was a tall man with the slight stoop that came from perpetually looking down to the people he was addressing.

  ‘Come in,’ he said in an educated American accent.

  Nic Costa walked through and found himself in a modest apartment, meagrely decorated save for a few expensive-looking paintings that were, he imagined, Denney’s own. Then he looked more closely and saw one that was familiar: a copy of Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, the same canvas that had caught Luca Rossi’s attention as they left San Luigi dei Francesi. There was a threadbare three-piece suite, a low table in front of the sofa, and a small desk covered in papers. The two main windows were too small. Even on this bright, dazzling day Denney needed the extra illumination of a standard lamp to be able to work at the desk. The place was minuscule, smaller even than his own home. Denney had surely come down in the world.

  ‘It’s all a single man needs,’ Denney said, watching the way Costa took in the room. ‘Can I get you something to drink? A beer maybe?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Denney picked up a bottle of Peroni and swigged from the neck. He was wearing a cheap grey sweatshirt and jeans. Costa found it hard to think of him as a churchman at all, least of all a cardinal. ‘You don’t mind if I do. Damned hot today. Don’t worry about Hanrahan here either. Never seen him touch the stuff. Worried your guard might drop, eh, Brendan?’

  The Irishman sat down in one of the chairs. He looked ready for business. ‘Drink and work don’t mix in my experience, Your Eminence. And I tasted enough of it when I was young, thank you very much.’

  ‘See?’ Denney said with a grin. ‘The perfect servant of the Vatican. Brendan here’s a true diplomat, son. Not a made-up priest like I was. He understands this place better than anyone.’

  Hanrahan shot him a savage glance. ‘May we get down to business now?’

  ‘Sure.’ Denney sat down heavily on the sofa, spreading his long legs wide in a way Costa associated with Americans. ‘So, Mr Costa, what have you got to give me?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Safe passage,’ Denney said instantly. ‘Just a car to the airport with a blue light on the top, not flashing, I’d like some privacy. And a nice convoy back and front to keep any unwelcome spectators away. My colleagues here would rather I was gone. I think there are plenty of others outside these walls who feel the same way. To be frank with you, it would make me happy too. I’ve a fancy to go back home. There’s some little places I knew back in B
oston when I was a kid. There are some people who’ll help me start anew if I ask them right. Thought I might change my name, get a life back. Not a lot to ask.’

  Hanrahan was watching him avidly, as if judging every word, and making notes on a pad.

  Costa wondered what there was to play with. ‘Cardinal, I can tell you there are three judicial warrants in preparation for your arrest right now. The moment you step onto Italian soil any number of people, not just me but the Finance Ministry and the tax people too, have a duty to arrest you. I don’t know how I can even begin to address that kind of demand.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ Hanrahan asked. ‘If you’ve got nothing to offer, what’s there to talk about?’

  He thought about the long briefing he’d had from Falcone. It was precise and definite in its terms. ‘What I’m authorized to say is this. If you cooperate with us on the Gino Fosse case, turning over every item of information you possess, I can guarantee that you will be placed somewhere secure, pre-trial and after, if there’s a custodial sentence. You’ve plenty of friends.’

  Denney snorted and looked out of the meagre windows, disgusted.

  ‘No one wants to see you in jail,’ Costa continued. ‘Not least because I don’t think we could guarantee your safety there. It would be somewhere comfortable. Somewhere you could have access to the people you want to see.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Denney snapped. ‘Do you think I don’t have that much here? I’d just be swapping one prison cell for another. Don’t you understand? I don’t want your protection. I don’t want to talk to the judiciary. There’s plenty of government people here wouldn’t like that either. I just want to disappear back where I came from.’

  Costa was unmoved. ‘This isn’t a parking ticket you’re asking us to tear up.’

  Hanrahan sighed and closed the notebook on his lap. ‘I apologize, Your Eminence. I’ve wasted your time. I thought these people were serious. Clearly I was wrong.’

  ‘No,’ Costa insisted. ‘We’re serious about treating you fairly. About keeping you alive too and that may not be so easy. From what I hear I don’t think you could just fade away into the back streets of Boston and lose these people. They’re persistent. They’re angry. They want your blood.’

  Denney stared at his long thin hands. He had the fingers of a pianist. For all his dignity he was beginning to look like a broken man.

  ‘Gino Fosse is dangerous, violent and unpredictable,’ Costa continued. ‘He’s killed four people that we know of and caused the death of one more. He could be out there right now working out how to kill someone else. I can’t bargain your freedom from justice against finding a man like this. You must understand that.’

  ‘Justice?’ Denney went over to the desk, opened a drawer and took out a file. It had Fosse’s name on it and an official Vatican stamp on the cover. Hanrahan watched him, worried.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Fosse was some junior employee who worked for me. I fired him when he got out of hand. Everything anyone knows about him is here in his personal record. From the moment he went to school till last week when, as far as anyone knew, he was doing a routine job in the hospital. It’s got the man in here. It’s got his problems too. I never knew about them at the time we took him on. I swear that. But I’ve checked since. He was never someone we could be proud of. Still, the Church looks after its own. As much as it can. Everything’s here. You’re telling me that’s not worth a bean?’

  Costa eyed the blue folder anxiously. ‘I didn’t say that. I offered you preferential treatment. I offered you security. You wouldn’t be getting that if you were some working-class hood from Testaccio. You still have to answer for what you’ve done. I can’t avoid that.’

  ‘“I can’t avoid that”?’ Denney repeated. ‘You’re sitting in judgement on me? Let me tell you something, son. I know what I’ve done. I know what others have done too. We all get judged sometime, and not by some bent and stupid judiciary either.’

  Nic remembered Falcone’s instructions. ‘Can I have that beer now?’

  Denney looked puzzled. He walked to the corner of the room, opened the fridge and came out with two fresh ones.

  ‘Salute,’ he said.

  Costa waved the bottle in his face. ‘Salute. Oh, and go to hell. This man’s killed. He’ll kill again and go on killing until we stop him. How can you ask for something in return? Is that what it means being a Catholic these days? Is that where your conscience lies? In your own self-interest?’

  It was worth a try. He was tired of Denney’s tricks. He was sick of Hanrahan’s silent, oppressive presence.

  Denney said nothing and stared at his hands.

  ‘See that picture,’ Costa said, nodding at the painting on the wall. ‘What’s that doing here?’

  Denney looked at the Caravaggio. It sparked some interest in his face, as if he had forgotten it existed and was grateful for the reminder. ‘Old times’ sake,’ he said eventually and left it at that.

  Costa wondered whether to take the risk. There was nothing to lose. It was a good copy, a third size or so. The figure of the murderer, sword in hand, half-naked, and bathed in the same light of Grace that fell on the dying Matthew, prone and bleeding on the ground, dominated the centre, raging at the martyr. Onlookers fled from the scene in terror. Only one face, half-hidden in the shadows, was still, and keenly curious, with that familiar, pained expression, one that Nic Costa had recognized and understood since his father first told him the story.

  ‘Let me tell you something.’ He stood up and beckoned for Denney to join him. ‘You know who this is?’

  He pointed to the bearded figure almost lost in the shadows.

  Denney let out a low murmur of pleasure. ‘Hey, I remember that now. What is this? A cop who knows art?’

  ‘I’m curious. That’s all. So who is it?’

  ‘Caravaggio. It’s his self-portrait, putting himself into the scene.’

  ‘Why?’ Costa asked.

  ‘As a witness. As a sympathizer.’

  ‘And as a participant too. Look at his face. Isn’t he asking himself why he has to paint this scene? Why he’s partaking of Matthew’s blood as if it were some sacrament? And, most of all, why he’s creating this drama out of his own head in the first place, since none of it has any historical authenticity. What he’s saying is: we’re all involved, we’re all part of the story, whether we recognize it or not.’

  ‘Nice sermon,’ Denney said, nodding. ‘You missed your calling.’

  Then he went back to his chair and picked up the bottle of beer. Costa followed him, wondering whether he had made his point.

  ‘I meant that,’ Denney observed. ‘You’re an unusual young man. Do you get many cops in church these days?’

  ‘I just go where the paintings are. There’s nothing religious in it.’

  ‘That may be true, I guess. Or at least you could think so. To be honest I haven’t looked at that picture in years. You forget what’s important sometimes. You take it for granted. I loved that place when I first came to Rome. It seemed to me to be what being a Catholic was all about, much more so than …’ He waved a hand in the direction of St Peter’s. ‘Hey. I’d better watch my mouth. That right, Brendan?’

  The Irishman shuffled uncomfortably on his seat.

  ‘To hell with it,’ Denney said suddenly. He threw the folder on the table. ‘Take the thing. No price. No deal. Just tell your man Falcone I expect him to think about what that’s worth. Think of the risks I’m running letting private Vatican files out of this place. Then, maybe, he should consider doing me a favour in return.’

  Hanrahan leapt from his chair and tried to grab the file. Denney’s slender fingers went down on the cover. ‘No, Brendan,’ he said firmly. ‘My mind’s made up.’

  ‘Jesus, Michael,’ Hanrahan pleaded. ‘Give him that and we’ve got nothing left to bargain with.’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience. Let them have it.’

  Hanrahan swore, then ret
urned to his chair. ‘Well, that concludes our business, I think. Quite what else there might be to discuss is beyond me now.’

  Costa looked Denney directly in the face. ‘Do you know Sara Farnese?’

  ‘Who?’ He didn’t even blink.

  ‘The university lecturer in the papers. The one who seems to have sparked this.’

  ‘Ah.’ Some recognition rose in Denney’s sallow face. ‘I did read about her.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

  ‘You’re an insistent little bastard, aren’t you?’ Denney observed dryly.

  ‘Like I said. Just curious.’

  He sniffed. ‘Well, you don’t need to be that curious to know I’ve had a taste for women in my time.’

  ‘I was asking a specific question,’ Costa insisted.

  ‘Do you have a picture of her? The ones in the papers didn’t jog my memory.’

  ‘No. I gave you her name. Sara Farnese.’

  ‘Names?’ He smiled at Hanrahan. ‘He thinks names are important, Brendan? What kind of people are the police recruiting these days? Liking art I can understand. But this naïveté …’

  Hanrahan stared miserably at the folder and said nothing.

  ‘Let me be honest with you, son. When a man like me wanted a woman, I got one sent. I can’t afford affairs. Long-term relationships. All those things are just too messy if they go wrong. So if the mood took me, I’d get someone to place the call. Understand?’

  ‘Does the mood still take you?’

  Denney’s head moved from side to side. ‘You’re getting personal. That’s out of bounds.’