Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  The hearing lasted ninety minutes. He walked out with a reprimand. They had been persuaded by his argument that a conspiracy, if it existed, and he felt sure this was impossible, could only have begun over his head. They were moved by his genuine grief for his lost men. They were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. This time, anyway.

  At the end, after announcing a verdict which had clearly been decided before he entered the room, the commissioner led him to the door, taking his arm. “None of us is untouchable these days, Leo,” he said. “We live in changed times. Take care. I can’t save you again.”

  Falcone didn’t want to look into his eyes. Maybe the man would see the bitter amusement lurking there. Had Falcone fallen, the commissioner would have followed not long after, and they both knew it.

  “I understand, sir,” he replied, and walked down the corridor, thinking of what lay ahead.

  For the sake of form—to let them know he was still in harness, his power undiminished—he spent an hour in his office, taking reports concerning the stabbing of a tourist who made the mistake of hustling for dope at the station. At midday he put on his coat and left the station. He could not, in all conscience, avoid what came next.

  The crematorium was off the Via Appia Nuova, not more than a mile and a quarter from the Costa family home. He watched from his car. There were perhaps twenty mourners, mainly men, in dark suits. A tall woman in overelegant mourning clothes was pushing the figure in the wheelchair. Falcone sat listening to the radio for thirty minutes, thinking about the ceremony inside. It was a myth, a ritual. As a young cop he’d been called to a fatal accident at a crematorium once and come to understand the way they worked. This was a mechanical process. Messy, imperfect. It could be anyone’s ashes you walked away with. No one would know. No one, if they were honest enough to admit it, really cared about detail. This was a dumb show to ease the grief of those still alive. Details hardly mattered.

  The distant doors opened and they came out again, leaving in a slow procession of black cars. He followed them back to the farmhouse, parking opposite the drive, just out of sight. It was three hours before the last had left. Falcone got out of his car and looked down the drive. There was just the woman now. And the figure in the wheelchair.

  He swallowed hard and wished he didn’t have to go through with this. Then he walked up the drive, where he was met halfway by the woman.

  “He doesn’t want to see you.” She was attractive in an old-fashioned way. Her eyes were bright and intelligent. She’d been crying.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” Falcone said, and kept on walking.

  There was a table by the wheelchair. On it sat a bottle of old Barolo, almost empty, and a couple of glasses. And a white alabaster urn, a small thing, so bright and shiny it could have been plastic.

  Falcone poured himself some wine, looked at the man in the wheelchair and said, “You’re cultivating expensive tastes for an invalid, Nic. That meager pension we’re giving you won’t buy many cases of this stuff.”

  Costa looked terrible. He’d put on weight while confined to the wheelchair. His face had puffed out. There was a distinct red tinge to his cheeks. Falcone knew what men looked like when they sat on the edge of a pool of booze, wondering whether to dive in. It had happened to so many cops. It was part of the job for some. He’d never expected Nic Costa to be among them.

  “Why are you here?” Costa asked. His eyes were bleary, his voice rusty with disuse.

  Falcone pulled the envelope out of his pocket. “I brought your mail. They’ve been intercepting it, in case you hadn’t guessed. Nothing to do with me. I’ve been lying low in Sardinia for the last couple of weeks. Enforced vacation. You probably heard.”

  Costa gazed at the long white airmail envelope. It had the farm’s address on the front, written in a long, sloping feminine hand. The letter had been scissored open at the top.

  He said: “You know where they are?”

  Falcone glanced at the postmark. “Says here this was posted in Key Biscayne. Guess they’re long gone from there now. Somewhere in the States, I imagine. Not a clue in the letter. The way Denney and the woman got out of here in the first place is still beyond me. He’d plenty of money with him but that doesn’t explain everything. Maybe he had more friends than we knew. The Americans say they’re looking for him, on our behalf, you understand. Lying bastards. They’re holed up somewhere with new names, a new house, new lives, promising to keep their mouths shut. We won’t see those two again. That’s my take on things anyway. I could be wrong. It happens.”

  Costa looked at the letter. It couldn’t contain anything important. They would never have passed it on if it did.

  “Take it,” Falcone said, pushing the envelope across the table. “It’s for you. Personal. Like I said, this wasn’t my decision. They had to do it, though.”

  It contained a single page. On it, in the same elegant hand, just five words: “I thought you were dead.”

  Falcone watched him, assessing his reaction. “Can’t blame her,” he said. “We all thought that at the time. We forgot you were such a stubborn little bastard.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Hey,” Falcone snapped. “A word of advice. A man in a wheelchair should avoid self-pity. It’s not becoming.”

  Costa reached for the Barolo and refilled his glass.

  Falcone calmed down a touch and took a seat at the table. “A lot of people were pleased to see you pull through, Nic. And then . . . this. It’s like you’re dead again somehow.”

  “Is this you talking? Or your friends? Or Hanrahan? Tell me that.”

  “Just me,” Falcone said. “No one knows I’m here. Hanrahan’s skulking somewhere back in Ireland, keeping his head down. Won’t last forever, of course. He’s too damn useful to them. Just for the record, he’s not my friend. Never was. Never will be.”

  Costa’s eyes were fixed on the neatly tended garden with its rows and rows of tidy plants. Falcone wondered if he was still listening. “I heard it on the radio,” Costa said. “You got off with a reprimand. So no one pays for this. No one except Gino Fosse.”

  “You could look at it that way, I guess.”

  “There’s some other way to see things?”

  Falcone shrugged. He was getting tired of this.

  “Why are you here?” Costa asked again.

  “I don’t want any more victims. I got enough on my conscience as it is. Nic . . .” He was staring down into the wineglass as if all the answers lay beneath its thick meniscus. “I’m sorry your father’s dead. I never knew him. People who did say he was a good and honest man. We could use more like that. But don’t think you can take his place. You don’t belong in that wheelchair. You haven’t earned that yet.”

  Costa said nothing; he gulped at the booze.

  Falcone pulled his chair closer. “I talked to the doctors. They said this isn’t a permanent disability. You could be out of that chair in three months, maybe less. You could be back to your old self in six. If you turned up for the physio sessions. If you wanted to.”

  “Get out of here,” Costa snarled.

  The woman had returned. She’d been eavesdropping. She was carrying a bottle of mineral water and a couple of glasses. She put them on the table and removed the wine. Costa avoided her eyes.

  “Listen to him, Nic,” she said. “Please.”

  “Bea, you don’t know who this man is.”

  She gave Falcone a cold stare. “I know. I read the papers. I still think you should listen to him.”

  He scowled and took the glass of water all the same. Falcone looked at the woman. He was grateful. Then he nodded and she retreated once more.

  “Here.” He reached into his jacket, took out something and placed it next to Costa’s hand. It was his old ID card, the one he’d thrown into Falcone’s face a lifetime before.

  “I’m back at work on Monday. I’ve got a desk with your name on it. I’ve got work for you.”

  “Work?”<
br />
  “Yes! Work! Let’s face it. What else are you going to do? Drink yourself stupid day in and day out and call on the housemaid every time you want to take a piss?”

  “I’m a damned cripple!” Costa yelled at him.

  “Then learn to walk!” Falcone bawled back. “Jesus . . .”

  The older man stood up. “Look. I say this once. I need you, Nic. You’re a smart cop. We can’t afford to lose you. There’s something else too.” He eyed the horizon sourly. “You remind me of what happened. How I screwed up. Maybe it’ll make me think twice in the future.” Costa’s interest was stirring. Falcone could feel it. “Don’t think for one moment this is sympathy. I’ll ride you as hard as I always did. All the more so once you climb out of that damn chair.”

  “Go to hell,” Costa spat out.

  Falcone smiled. “Thank you. By the way, I’ve been there these last few weeks. They said I showed up too early. Sent me back to do a little more time.”

  There was something different in Falcone’s eyes. Self-doubt maybe. An empty, dead loneliness. Or just the mask of a clever actor.

  “Monday,” Falcone repeated. “I’m not asking you to like me. Just to keep me company. Stay off the drink this weekend. You need to sweat some of that shit out of your system. And if you’ve got any questions . . .”—he nodded at the urn on the table—“. . . ask him, not me.”

  Then he set off down the drive, a tall man, beautifully dressed in a dark suit, but stiff, uncomfortable with himself in some way Costa hadn’t noticed before.

  A light breeze was coming in from the north. The wind was gently tearing the last few leaves from the old almond tree in the drive. They scuttered around the departing Falcone’s feet. Through the bare branches Costa could now see the distant roof of the austere old church on the Appian Way. “Domine Quo Vadis?” Lord, where are you going? His father’s reason for rebuilding the old farmhouse, for making this place the Costa family’s home.

  He shivered in his thin jacket. The wine wasn’t enough to keep him warm. He looked around for her. Bea had moved into the house in the weeks before his father died, caring for them both. He took her for granted, he knew. There seemed no other way.

  “Bea!” he yelled. “Bea!”

  She didn’t come. Maybe she was watching him from the house, thinking about what Falcone had said. Maybe she was wondering why a woman in her mid-fifties should be looking after a man almost thirty years younger, a cripple who refused his own chance of redemption. Maybe she was thinking Falcone was right.

  “Bea,” he cried, one last time. There was no reply.

  It was cold now. The light was fading. If he had one more drink he knew what would happen, where his mind would go. To the bedroom upstairs and the night, the single night, he would spend with Sara Farnese.

  This was important. He hoped she was watching.

  He grasped the alabaster urn with his right hand then, with his left, took hold of the gnarled grapevine that wormed its way up the patio pillar. Struggling, short of breath, feeling a distant sensation run down his injured spine and press a little movement into his half-dead legs, he dragged himself upright and looked at the field.

  It was immaculate. Bea had called in men to help her. The green heads of cavolo nero were rising in spite of the season, forcing themselves upright, working toward the sky.

  His fingers shook as he fumbled at the lid. Then, with a fierce determined movement, he tipped the urn upside down. Gray ash and dust spilled out onto the rising wind, gathered in a fleeting gray cloud then vanished, scattering across the land a lifetime of memories, an abundance of love and shared grief, gone in the blink of a disbelieving eye.

  He clung tightly to the vine, watching this mortal smoke disperse. It was nothing. It was everything. It was gone. It would never leave him.

  Then the breeze stiffened. The page on the table, with its five words written in a firm, elegant hand, fluttered in the wind, rose and began to tumble through the air, flitting across the arid ground, turning and turning before it disappeared into the scrub by the road.

  He watched it vanish, wishing he could run again.

  Nic Costa felt no wiser. Just a little stronger, perhaps, and that, in the circumstances, was as much as he could bear.

  About the Author

  DAVID HEWSON has written five novels as well as several travel books. A weekly columnist for the Sunday Times, he lives in Kent, England, where he is currently working on his next novel featuring Nic Costa, The Villa of Mysteries. Look for his stand-alone novel of suspense Lucifer’s Shadow, coming from Dell in summer 2004.

  A SEASON FOR THE DEAD

  A Delacorte Book / April 2004

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2004 by David Hewson

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  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Hewson, David.

  A season for the dead / David Hewson.

  p. cm.

  I. College teachers—Crimes against—Fiction. II. Police—Italy—

  Rome—Fiction. III. Women teachers—Fiction. IV. Serial murders—

  Fiction. V. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. VI. Vatican City—Fiction.

  PR6058.E96 S43 2004

  823′.913 22—2003062522

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33484-2

  v3.0