Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  Peroni groaned. “Oh, sweet Jesus … enjoy?”

  Falcone was smiling again. A big, warm smile.

  “So what are you going to do, sir?” Costa asked. “Is there anything the two of us ought to know about in advance?”

  Leo Falcone grinned. He felt good for a change. He felt he was about to let something go, kick off the shackles more firmly than ever, straight in their faces, in a way they wouldn’t ever forget.

  “I thought I might see how far a man can go before he gets himself fired,” he said brightly.

  COLD, COLD, COLD.

  … the old black voice said: Git off that fat ass, boy, and sort yourself out.

  Bill Kaspar did as he was bidden. At nine a.m. he let himself out of the empty office that sat on the roof of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, walked past the sheets and scaffolding of the restoration work that had closed the place, then sauntered down the spiral stairs and out through a side door beyond the closed ticket office. The castle had shut up shop for the holidays. The builders had abandoned work because of the weather. There would be a trickle of dumb tourists who didn’t know this. They’d turn up puzzled at the front gate of Hadrian’s mausoleum, seated majestically on the banks of the Tiber, a position so regal the place had later become a papal palace and refuge joined to the Vatican by a narrow, elevated corridor down which the pope could flee to safety in extremis.

  And, Kaspar knew, because he’d checked, those rubberneckers would never see a thing. Inside, the mausoleum was a vast, prolix tangle of chambers, tunnels and hallways, largely invisible from the street, where passersby saw little but the gaunt exterior walls and the statue of the archangel Michael triumphant at the summit, sword raised towards the Tiber. Tombs had little use for windows. What mattered, what ran through the building like a central, muscular nerve, was the spiral ramp that rose past the original crypt, where the emperor’s ashes once lay, up through grand halls and collections, empty staff quarters, kitchens and galleries, out to the roof.

  It was a five-minute walk across the river to a hunting and fishing shop on the Lungotevere. There Kaspar spent most of his remaining money on two of the biggest, thickest winter coats he could find: khaki parkas with furred hoods you could pull tight round your face so no one could see a thing except your eyes. He kept his old black woollen jacket and carried his acquisitions back in a bag, working to marshal his thoughts in the way a man of his nature always did before a battle.

  It had been a painful night. Talking to Emily Deacon, trying to work out what to do with her, how much faith he could place in what she told him, how easy it was to fill in the gaps. That had gone on for hours. Then, when he couldn’t take any more, he’d shut her away and finally fallen asleep, only for the mother of all nightmares to come roaring up from deep inside his psyche, tormenting him with all those sounds and memories he knew only too well.

  Just the recollection of it now made him sit down on one of the granite stanchions stuck deep into the snow outside the Castel, sweating feverishly inside his black coat. The human mind was a cruel, relentless mechanism. Nothing could expunge those images—the raging squall of gunfire, the screams, the blood. The slaughter as they fought on the geometrical floor of the temple deep in the heart of the ziggurat, surrounded by that magical pattern, the same one he had held in his hands as he’d dragged the webbing around him, stupidly, as if it were some kind of disguise that could fool the vengeful wall of hate and pain closing in on all of them.

  Kaspar looked at his watch and checked the date—23 December. Thirteen years ago to the day. Thirteen long, long years, during which he’d prayed for release constantly to any god he could remember. Time lost itself in that place. Between the beatings and the torture, between the endless, pointless interrogations, he’d fought to contain the memories deep inside himself because they, more than anything, could keep him alive. The baleful, accusing faces of those men and women who had died because he failed spoke to him, demanding justice. Bill Kaspar had little affection for life, even when he got out of the Baghdad jail and learned the harsh reality of what it meant to be “free.” This was about justice. That was all. Of silencing those angry interior voices that rose up to taunt him anytime, anywhere.

  He thought again about the day ahead, tried to go through all the possibilities, all the ways in which he might fail again. Then he walked around the perimeter of the squat mausoleum, beached like a whale on a winter plain, found the side entrance, went inside and climbed the ramp all the long winding way up to the roof.

  Emily Deacon was locked inside the women’s toilet belonging to the closed cafe. Kaspar liked to think of himself as a gentleman, in spite of appearances. He opened the door, stood back, gun in hand. It was damn cold up there and windy too. She came out, teeth chattering, skinny arms wrapped around herself, blinking at the brittle sunlight, staring up at the gleaming bronze statue of Michael, sword in hand, poised to strike, a fearsome, vengeful figure that dominated the skyline of this quarter of Rome.

  Kaspar nodded at the winged giant. “Scary bastard, huh?”

  She put a hand up to her eyes to shield out the sun, long blonde hair blowing around her face.

  “Depends how you look at it,” she said. “He’s supposed to be sheathing his sword. It’s a symbol. The end of the plague or something. I forget.”

  She was a smart kid. Not a bad kid at all. He used to be able to see that in people. Maybe a gift like that could come back.

  “You listened a lot when you lived here. Was it your dad who did all the talking?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  He took hold of her arm, propelled her forcefully to the edge of the parapet, with its dizzying view down to the footbridge crossing the Tiber to the centro storico and beyond. The wind was more blustery here, so cold it hurt.

  “Did your father teach you opera, Little Em?”

  She was struggling. Her attempts to free herself were futile against his strength. “Don’t call me that.”

  “O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!” he yelled, half sang, over the parapet in a loud, theatrical voice.

  “Opera’s not my thing,” she said quietly.

  “Really?” He felt he had the demeanour of a college professor just then. Maybe it was Steely Dan Deacon himself, those WASP New England genes bouncing up and down. “Informative, Emily. Do you mean to tell me you’ve never wanted to leap off the edge like that yourself? Never wanted to know what happens?”

  “Not for one second. I’ve got too much to do.”

  Kaspar shook Steely Dan’s voice out of his head. He didn’t believe Emily Deacon. There was something in her eyes—he’d seen it two nights before in the Campo. She hadn’t really given a damn then whether she lived or died. She was much more interested in seeing the thieving little kid, the light-fingered bitch who’d walked off with what memories he still possessed, get away scot-free. Emily Deacon didn’t get that from her dad.

  “Like see me in hell?”

  “That, among other things. Besides, it wasn’t about curiosity. Tosca knew what happened, didn’t she?” Emily Deacon asked. “I thought that was the point.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, relaxing his grip a little. “I guess that’s true. I used to like opera myself. A lot. But if you don’t hear it for years and years it kind of loses its touch.”

  “It’s easy to lose touch, Kaspar.” She spoke with a quiet, blunt certainty. “Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day? I can do it for you. We could go straight to the Italians. You don’t need to say a word to the FBI at all. There’s enough for the Italians to hold you here for years, whatever Washington tries in the courts.”

  She wasn’t going to back down, act timid, play the little kid. In a way he was pleased. She was Steely Dan’s daughter, with a twist.

  “We’ve talked this through. No going back now.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” she pressed. “What if you’ve screwed this up, too? And it really was just my dad and those other people all along?”

  “The
n they need to give me a little proof.”

  Emily Deacon peered into his face. “Tell me, Kaspar. Was it something my dad told you? What do these people say?”

  “Nothing,” he grunted. “How do you talk to a ghost?”

  “I don’t believe it’s nothing.”

  He didn’t like remembering. Dan Deacon had uttered those few words at the end, after Kaspar had tried so hard, with such vicious, constant brutality, to squeeze it out of him some other way. Yet sharing the words diminished their power somehow. So he told her instead about the Piazza Mattei, how Steely Dan Deacon had mentioned it twice, how he nearly thought the answer might lie there after all, but when he’d gone round there, tried to pound some truth out of the man who was living in the house, it turned out to be just an illusion.

  This was important. Emily Deacon understood that too.

  “What if it’s all an illusion?” she insisted. “Just some crazy voices in your head?”

  The line between what was real and what was imaginary was tough to decipher sometimes. Kaspar could hang on to some truths, though. An ugly black Marine with half his face shot away. A brutal Ba’ath party torturer reaching for his sticks, taunting Kaspar for his stupidity. They were real. Too real.

  The dark side of him, the part that had killed Monica Sawyer, wondered about throwing Emily Deacon over the wall there and then. The girl had Steely Dan in her veins all right. The incisive part that could look right through you.

  “You thought the voices would go away when you killed that woman in the Pantheon. What did they call her? Laura Lee? She was the last, wasn’t she?”

  “Names,” he murmured. “Don’t mean a damn thing in this business.”

  “But then you murdered that other woman. You never meant to. And still you’re hearing the voices. What do they say, Kaspar? Shake it? Are they ever going to stop?”

  “Kids,” he said quietly and looked out over the river, nailing the pattern inside his head again, because in those lines existed order, sanity, a kind of peace. Trinità dei Monti hung high in the distance, the Piazza del Popolo lay to the left and somewhere behind the bulk of the Palatine hill was the Colosseum, perfect in its place, a monument to martyrs everywhere. Something else too. When Kaspar stared ahead, squinted, remembered, he could see a tiny cabin set on the roof of a block across the river. A part of him changed there. He’d taken a life for no good reason. The journey had veered down a turning he’d never expected.

  He grabbed Emily’s arm firmly again, pushed her down the stairs, over to the office, and kicked the door open.

  The gear was on the floor. What lay in front of them was all he had left now, proof of his diminishing options.

  “Did you listen to what I said to you last night?” he barked. “Or was that dope I gave you still messing with your head?”

  “I listened,” she answered quietly. “Did you listen to me?”

  “Every last word.” He hesitated. “So, Agent Deacon, do you want to stay alive or not?”

  She laughed right in his face. “They won’t play, Kaspar. Joel Leapman doesn’t give a damn about me. Any more than he gave a damn about Laura Lee and the others. All he wants is you. He isn’t going to hand over anything in return for my hide.”

  “You’re wrong.” He looked at her. She seemed very young all of a sudden. And a part of her was really scared, he was certain of it.

  He took one of the parkas out of the bag and threw it at her. “This is as warm as I could find. You’re going to need it. And those …”

  He pointed to the two waistcoats, green military vests bought the week before when the idea first came to him, now all prepared, a couple of lines of little yellow canisters running up and down the front.

  “I made them myself, Little Em. And I am, as always, a master of these dark arts.”

  The Lizard King, the Holy Owl, Grand Master of the Universe … All the names came back to mock him.

  He smiled. She was the right about the voices. That insidious WASP intuition of hers made it easier. He didn’t give a fuck how she felt now.

  “You think they’re gonna fit?” he asked.

  COSTA LOOKED EVERYWHERE. The block in the Via Veneto. The places they’d visited when they were searching for Laila. He even managed to track down the Deacon family’s old address, a spacious apartment in Aventino now occupied by a polite Egyptian surgeon who’d no idea what had happened to his predecessors and had seen nothing at all of a young, blonde American woman.

  Traffic found the car. The vehicle had been parked illegally on the Lungotevere near the Castel Sant’ Angelo, something that rang alarm bells straightaway. Emily wouldn’t have left it there willingly: it was partly blocking one of the busiest thoroughfares in Rome. The towaway squad had pounced on it at seven that morning and it was still unclaimed. They’d also found a stolen yellow Punto in the Via Punto in the Via Appia Antica. It was beginning to look like Emily had been abducted.

  Costa wanted to talk this through with someone. Peroni preferably. Or even Falcone. Perhaps he would later that morning, but he wanted to talk to someone now. And it was obvious who. So he swung the jeep back to the Questura, parked awkwardly in the last slushy place outside the morgue building and walked inside.

  The police headquarters was never still, never without activity, Costa thought. This was a kind of temple to death, a constantly manned staging post on the final journey for hundreds of unfortunates each year. His own late partner, Luca Rossi, had once lain on a slab here, tended to by Teresa Lupo. Someone else could have done the job. Luca was shot. Nothing special. No autopsy needed. They knew all along who’d killed him. They got him too. Costa had made sure of that himself, in his own way.

  Luca’s death hadn’t deterred Teresa for a moment. That was what she did.

  Nic glanced around the room. Silvio Di Capua was supervising one of the morgue monkeys cleaning up a dissection table. Teresa was nowhere to be seen.

  Costa walked over to her assistant. “Silvio?”

  They got on pretty well, considering Di Capua was scared witless of most cops he met. Costa made a point of treating him with respect and, in particular, never using the nickname “Monkboy.” In return Di Capua could, on occasion, be almost helpful.

  “No,” Di Capua countered instantly.

  “No what?”

  “No to whatever it is you want me to do. I’m not breaking the rules again. I’m not doing this instead of doing that. There’s an order to the way we work here, Nic, and I’m determined we stick to it.”

  Costa couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Silvio Di Capua really did sound as if he felt in charge.

  “I was just looking for Teresa.”

  “What do you want? Ask me.”

  “It’s personal.”

  The little man scowled. “Personal? Don’t you think we have rather too much of the personal around here? We’ve got work to do. We always have.”

  Costa gave him the look he’d been learning from Gianni Peroni. He’d perfected it just enough for it to work on a minor pathologist with ideas above his station.

  “She’s off duty actually,” Di Capua said, blushing. “Which means she’s in here, of course, getting through some paperwork. Try the clerk’s office. She’s kicked him out for the day.”

  This was something new. Teresa was famous for her aversion to paperwork. Costa walked round to the tiny cubicle and found her tapping away at the computer. He got a wary glance the moment he walked in.

  “Don’t tell me there’s more on the way, Nic. I have to catch up on a few things once in a while.”

  He opened out his hands, slapped the pockets of his coat. “Search me. No new customers. Honest.”

  “Is it important? I’ve got people screaming for budget figures. Now I’ve summoned the courage to try to put some together I’d really like to get this done.”

  “It’s important.”

  She pointed to the chair and said, “In that case, sit.”

  “Thanks. So what do you think about
Emily Deacon?”

  The sudden question surprised her. “In what way?”

  “What’s driving her?”

  She pulled a face that said: Isn’t it obvious? “Family. The fact that it was her dad that died. What else? Does she look like an FBI agent to you?”

  “Looks can be deceptive. Lots of people think I don’t look like a cop.”

  She pushed the keyboard away from her. “That’s easy. You’re … a little shorter than most. You like art, don’t eat meat and rarely lose your temper. You could pass for a sane, intelligent human being most of the time. Is it any wonder you stick out like a sore thumb around this zoo?”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “I know. So why the questions about Emily Deacon?”

  “She’s missing. Or, to put it another way, I don’t know where she is.”

  “Are you supposed to?” she asked. “I mean, she’s a grown woman. What about that pig of a colleague of hers? Does he know?”

  “No. It’s just …” He didn’t want to go into the details about the previous night. He wasn’t sure what to make of them himself. “She was at my place yesterday. This morning she was gone. No note. Nothing. Then her car’s found double-parked in town, which I don’t think is like her.”

  “Ooh. ‘Yesterday. This morning.’ Interesting.” Teresa Lupo was rubbing her hands with glee.

  “I could be wrong,” he said, ignoring the invitation to go further. “After all, she went off on her own yesterday and had a pretty interesting time.”

  “Sightseeing?”

  “Digging up a few facts we weren’t supposed to know.”

  A rueful thought said: Perhaps more than she told you.

  “She’s a smart woman, Nic. Maybe she’s just out there looking for some more.”

  “So why doesn’t she answer her phone? Why did she leave her computer at my place?”

  “Ah. The arrogance of men. Could it be because she doesn’t want to hear from you? After all, the Leapman guy isn’t interested. And if you’re being honest, do you really want some rookie FBI agent hanging around all day long?”