The Seventh Sacrament

by David Hewson

  There was a light sweeping the cobblestones. A cab, coming from the Piazza Venezia perhaps.

  “This cannot go on, Raffaella. The game we’re both playing, neither of us wishing to say what we really feel. I’m grateful for what you have done for me, but that is all. I don’t love you, and I don’t wish either of our lives to be damaged by some sad pretence that I do. This isn’t your fault. If I were capable of loving, then, perhaps, it would be you. I have no idea.”

  The car approached. It was looking for trade. Falcone waved.

  “I am unsure precisely why you chose me. Perhaps out of pity. Or guilt. Or curiosity. It’s unimportant. What you should understand is that a man reaches a point in his life at which he realises he is looking at the remainder, the diminishing part of his existence. What lies ahead…”

  It was a shiny, old black Mercedes. Still talking, Falcone climbed in and gestured to the driver to wait for a moment.

  “What remains does not—cannot—include you. I’m sorry. I wish—”

  Something interrupted him. The harsh, inhuman beep of a machine echoed in his ear. Then a message. The phone would listen no more. These sentiments, like everything else, were finite. Falcone wondered, for a moment, what he’d left unsaid. Nothing. Everything. There was a door to be closed, and no point in wondering what lay behind it once the deed was done.

  The cab driver turned round to stare at him. A man about his own age, he guessed, with a tired, lined face and a drooping moustache.

  “Are we going somewhere?” he asked.

  “The Aventino. The Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.”

  The man laughed. “You won’t see anything through that keyhole at this time of night, friend. Are you sure?”

  “Just drive,” Falcone said sourly, then looked at the phone again before thrusting it deep into the pockets of Prinzivalli’s capacious overcoat.

  THEY HAD BEEN STUMBLING, LOST, THROUGH THE labyrinth for what seemed to Alessio Bramante to be the best part of twenty minutes, not once seeing a hint of daylight, not for a moment hearing anything but the echo of their own voices and a distant trickle of water. How long would his father wait before coming back to reclaim him? When was this game meant to end?

  He tried to remember what had happened in Livia’s house on the Palatino. That time, Giorgio had been gone for longer than this, so long that Alessio had amused himself by closing his eyes and imagining he could hear the voice of the long-dead empress, her hard Latin phrases demanding instant obedience, the way that powerful grown-ups liked.

  A test was not meant to be easy, otherwise it was no test at all. But this ritual involved obedience, too, and there Alessio Bramante was lost, uncertain how to act. Perhaps soon there would come a roar from behind them, Giorgio Bramante, like the Minotaur bellowing for its prey in the caves in Crete, stalking them, slowly, methodically, through the subterranean veins of the Aventino.

  Alessio had no idea, nor did they. Holding the hand of the tall figure in the red suit, with the wild, curly hair, Alessio Bramante moved ever deeper into the warren beneath the Aventino, aware that all seven of them were equally trapped, equally tied to one another, in hierarchies of dependence and control, all beneath the power and will of his father.

  Dino—the younger man had revealed his name in a quiet moment, as they stumbled through the dark—hoped to play the part of saviour. The one who rescued the initiate who would become Corax. Some minutes after the argument, Dino had dragged Alessio ahead, then led the boy into a Stygian corner.

  “Alessio,” he had said, very earnestly, “I won’t let him harm you. Don’t worry. Stay close to me. Do what I say, please. Ludo’s just…a little crazy.”

  Dino didn’t understand. The boy almost laughed.

  “He’s frightened of my father,” he replied, and knew this to be true. “What can he do to me?”

  “We’re all a little frightened of your father,” Dino answered ruefully. “Aren’t you?”

  “I’m not frightened of anything. Not you. Not…”—he nodded back towards the footsteps of the others, fast catching up—“…him.”

  “Well, good for you,” Dino said, and tousled his long hair, an act that made Alessio shrink away from his grip, disgusted by the expectation of weakness.

  Alessio really wasn’t scared. There was no need to be, not even as they travelled further and further into the network of tunnels that ran ahead of them in all directions, driven, it seemed, by Ludo’s terror at the unseen wraith that lay between them and escape. This was an adventure, a physical, human set of moves on a gigantic, three-dimensional chessboard, manoeuvres with an end in mind. One that only Alessio seemed to recognise fully.

  Death was a part of the ritual too. Every old book, every story his father had recounted to him, said that, unmistakably. That—not simple, greedy curiosity—was why Alessio had watched every instant of the bird’s end at the knife of Ludo Torchia. He’d been determined to be a witness, a participant. And he was curious, too, to see what the grey ghost looked like when it finally emerged from the shadows.

  He wanted to talk to each of them about it, to pose questions, gauge their varying reactions: crazy Ludo, the short, studious one called Sandro, big, stupid Andrea, and quiet, frightened Raul, who never spoke. Even Toni LaMarca, who had a crooked, evil set to his eyes, one that gave Alessio pause for thought. And Dino, too, who regarded himself as Alessio’s friend. He wanted to ask them what that bird would have felt. How long the creature would have remained conscious. Whether they felt different afterwards (as he did, surreptitiously reaching down, when no one was looking, to dip the fingers of his left hand, the one no adult would ever seek to hold, deeper into the pool of damp, sticky blood on the ground, determined to have more than the rest).

  There was no opportunity for talk, except with Dino, who was—Alessio understood instinctively—unlike the rest of them, a virtuous person, someone whose imagination was limited by his innate goodness. Dino didn’t want to be here, deep in this game. He didn’t believe in gods and rituals and the power they might exercise over ordinary men.

  The others fell through the doorway into the new, narrower, low cavern where Dino and he had come to a halt. They looked breathless, tired, all five of them. And scared.

  It was Toni, perhaps the only one among them Alessio thought it was wise to fear, who spoke first.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. “Is this really a way out?”

  “Shut up,” Ludo said, halfheartedly.

  The flashlights were failing. Their illumination had taken on that dying hue Alessio knew from those times at home when he’d creep beneath the sheets and play with the toy lantern he owned, seeing how long it could stay alive in the dark.

  “We can’t keep stumbling around like this,” Dino said. “We’ve been going down. I don’t know this hill very well. I don’t have any way of judging in which direction we’ve been headed.”

  He aimed the faint beam of his own light into the thick, velvet blackness ahead. It revealed nothing but rock and a continuing line of empty tunnel.

  “We’ll hit a dead end here,” he said. “Or worse. And if these flashlights are dead…”

  Ludo didn’t say anything. Alessio watched his face. It was interesting. Intrigued. The face of a man who didn’t recognise the boundaries that constrained the way someone like Dino would think.

  “If we’re caught down here without light,” Dino went on, “we’re in real trouble. This isn’t about getting thrown out of university. This place is dangerous.”

  “That’s why you feel alive,” Ludo replied, and Alessio realised he approved of that answer.

  Ludo’s eyes hunted each of them, seeking a target. Finally, they fell on Alessio.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Little boy.”

  Alessio said nothing. Somewhere inside himself, he felt some small beast rise on red wings.

  “Spoilt little brat…” Ludo went on, bending down, in a way that spoke condescension in every crook and bend of his la
nky body. “What does some rich little kid, whose daddy thinks he knows everything, have to say for himself, huh?”

  Alessio flew at him then, nails scratching, fingers scrabbling, letting out some furious, pent-up rage that had been waiting so long to surface.

  He made a discovery at that point, too. When he felt this way, when the world was nothing but some bleeding scarlet wall of flesh and pain at which he could claw with his strong, lithe fingers, nothing felt wrong. Nothing existed that could be labelled “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong.” In the wild and screaming place that his anger took him lay some kind of clear, hard comfort he’d never quite found before.

  It elated him. Ludo was right. It made him feel alive.

  His fingers tore at the hands of his foe. His nails scratched and found purchase on skin. Ludo was yelling, words of fear and pain and frenzy.

  “Shit!” Ludo screeched. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Get the little bastard off me. Get—”

  Alessio stopped, then smiled up at him. The marks of his own fingers ran in parallel scrawled lines down the back of Ludo’s hands.

  It didn’t prevent him getting the knife out. Alessio stared at the blade. It was still stained with the blood of the cockerel, the bird that had choked out its life, drop by drop, somewhere in these caves. In a place his own father might well have passed by now, if he’d started looking.

  “Ludo…” Dino murmured.

  Alessio glanced at him. Dino was weak. Weakness was part of his character. He wouldn’t stand in Ludo’s way. Nor would any of them. They were, Alessio saw, lesser creatures, on a lower part of the hierarchy.

  He raised his small hand, still painful from clawing at Torchia the moment before, a calm, unhurried gesture, one that said: Quiet.

  He watched the knife rise in front of him.

  “This would be so easy…” Ludo muttered.

  The rest of them stood around like scared idiots. Alessio wondered what his father would have said in a situation like this. And whether this was all part of the test.

  Alessio Bramante looked into Ludo Torchia’s eyes, recognised something there, and waited until Ludo saw this, too.

  Then, and only then, he smiled and said, “I know the way.”

  THEY’D SEARCHED ALL NIGHT, MORE THAN A HUNDRED officers in all. Every last part of the Aventino. Every car park. Every blind alley. They’d made a cursory run past all the sites that appeared on Falcone’s lists, not that there was much to see in the dark, much to do beyond a check for recent tire marks.

  Now they were engaged in a muddled, directionless conference of team leaders in the large, crowded room next to Falcone’s empty office, Costa and Peroni tagging along because it was unclear to whom, exactly, they were answering at that moment. Precious little was apparent at all, even after nine hours of solid, sometimes frantic, labour.

  The one firm lead Messina and his new inspector Bavetti had to show was something Costa thought Falcone would have picked up in minutes. Early the previous afternoon, Calvi, the horse butcher, had reported one of his three vans stolen. The vehicle possessed a cargo compartment that was, for obvious reasons, impossible to see into from outside, and highly secure. The van was still unaccounted for, though every police car in the city, marked and unmarked, now had its number. Gone, too, was Enzo Uccello, Bramante’s cellmate and fellow worker at the horse abattoir, who had failed to return to work at four p.m. as expected. Maybe they’d been right to think that Uccello was helping Bramante on the outside. Bavetti certainly considered that a strong possibility. It occurred to Costa that, if true, this told only part of the story. Enzo Uccello had been sent to jail three years after Bramante. He’d been inside, without parole, of no practical use whatsoever, when the earlier killings had taken place. What help he had to offer Bramante was surely limited to the last few months.

  Details like these didn’t seem to bother Bavetti, a man who was a little younger than Bruno Messina, tall, nondescript, and apt to speak little, and then only in clipped sentences upon which he seemed unwilling to expand. Both men appeared uncertain of themselves, racked with caution, because they feared the consequences of failure. There was a severe lack of experience in the Questura at that moment, and it would make the search for Leo Falcone and Rosa Prabakaran doubly difficult.

  Not that Costa expected himself or Peroni to be engaged in it for much longer. Messina’s patience with them was wearing thin. He’d barely spoken to them all night. And now, in front of several other senior officers, he had virtually accused them of being party to Leo’s disappearance.

  Costa had laughed, had been unable to do anything else. The charge was ludicrous. Why would they aid Leo in doing such a thing? And why would they wait for Prinzivalli to raise the alarm? It was ridiculous and he told Messina so to his face.

  Peroni took the accusation more personally. He still stood, big, scarred face close into Messina’s florid features, and demanded an apology and a retraction, something the rest of the men in the room would have loved to hear from this green commissario’s lips, which was one good reason why it would never happen.

  The big man tried for the third time. “I want that withdrawn. Sir.”

  Peroni was drawing nods from the older men in the room, which did little to help their cause. There would be a reckoning when this was done, Costa knew, and he found himself caring little about which way the blame would fall. Leo was missing, along with Rosa Prabakaran, who had, he assumed, been taken as the price of Falcone’s surrender, in the same way Bramante had done with his earlier victims. They had no idea what had become of either of them. The game, once again, was entirely in Bramante’s hands. Messina and Bavetti lacked both the foresight and talent to second-guess the man. Perhaps Leo Falcone did, too, though things had seemed a little more equal when he was around.

  “Do you want us on this case or not?” Costa asked, when Messina avoided Peroni’s demands again.

  The commissario leapt to the bait, just as Costa had expected.

  “No,” he spat back, as much out of instinct as anything. “Get the hell out of here. Both of you. When this is over and done with, then I’ll make some decisions about your future.”

  “We know Leo!” Peroni bellowed. “You can’t kick us out just because it makes your life easier.”

  Messina looked at his watch. “Your shift’s over. Both of you. Don’t come back till I call.”

  Costa took Peroni’s elbow and squeezed. For the life of him he didn’t understand what Messina would have left to talk about once they were gone. He and Bavetti looked lost for what to do next.

  “Worms,” Costa said simply.

  Bavetti screwed up his pinched face. The man hadn’t even taken a good look at Falcone’s paperwork before taking over the case. He’d simply sent officers out into the Rome night, looking everywhere, flinging manpower at shadows.

  “What?”

  “Remember what Leo was chasing before all this happened. He had a lead. Today we were going to narrow down all those possible places Bramante could have been staying before. There’s a whole map of them downstairs. Inspector Falcone planned to visit them. One by one…”

  Just then a nearby phone began to ring. Costa walked over to pick it up, dragging Peroni in his wake.

  The conference went on behind them, a ragged, monotonous drone of confused voices. But at least Bavetti seemed to be talking about investigating Falcone’s list of possible sites.

  Costa said, wearily, “Pronto.”

  It was a uniform man calling from a car in the field. He was struggling to maintain his composure. Costa listened and felt a cold stab of dread run down his spine. He asked several questions and made some notes of the answers. Peroni watched him in silence, knowing, in that shared, unspoken way they both recognised now, that this was important.

  After a minute, he put down the phone and interrupted Messina’s rambling attempt to sum up the case so far.

  “I’m talking,” Messina snapped.

  “I noticed,” Costa replied. �
��I think we’ve found Agente Prabakaran. She’s in Testaccio,” Costa continued, as Messina struggled for words and Peroni walked over to their desks and picked up the car keys and their phones. “The horse butcher opened his shop late because Uccello never turned up for work. In the refrigerator…” He shrugged.

  “Is the woman alive?” Messina asked.

  “Just about,” Costa replied. “There’s a man’s body too. She was tied to him. It doesn’t sound…pretty.”

  The local officer he’d spoken to had become almost hysterical when Costa had pushed him on the finer points.

  “More,” Bavetti demanded, suddenly finding his voice. “Details.”

  “Details?” Costa asked, amazed.

  “What? Where exactly? How…?”

  Peroni came back. Costa looked at him and nodded.

  “I believe, Commissario,” the big man replied, dangling the car keys, “you said we’re off-duty.”

  Messina’s florid face became a livid red. “Don’t play games with me, Peroni! Damn you!”

  Costa turned round and slapped the notebook firmly into the commissario’s fleshy hands, with a sudden, vehement force.

  “Someone’s found a dead man. And a half-dead woman who appears to have been raped. Beyond that…”

  He didn’t say another word. Peroni was already heading for the door, with the speed of a man half his age.

  I KNOW THE WAY,” ALESSIO REPEATED, MAKING SURE HE didn’t stutter.

  Ludo stopped for a moment. The knife glittered, motionless.

  “Little boys shouldn’t tell lies,” he said menacingly.

  “Little boys don’t.”

  Alessio pulled the end of the string from the spent loop on his belt, the short section, which had broken when he’d first tried to attach it. The main ball had run for several minutes, tugging on his trousers. None of them had noticed back then, in the temple room, as he’d paused for a moment, untied this second loop, and allowed the string to fall on the floor, floating against his legs, tickling like some dead, falling insect.