The Seventh Sacrament

by David Hewson

  Then a sharp corner, one that took them all by surprise. Someone fell painfully and let loose a low, frightened curse. The flashlight flickered, became first the pale colour of dry straw, then the dark, fading ochre of the moon in a polluted Roman night sky.

  After that, nothing. The dark engulfed them. Ludo Torchia started swearing, started going crazy again, yelling for something to cut through the shadows ahead.

  There was nothing left. No batteries that worked. Just two matches, which Toni LaMarca lit in swift succession, only to see them extinguished by some unseen draught of air, swirling at them from a direction he couldn’t discern.

  Torchia was getting violent now. Alessio recognised the tone in his voice: fear and fury in equal quantities. They were arguing with each other, the fragile bond of mutual preservation that had kept them together shattering in this all-consuming darkness.

  He was scared, too. What confidence the beam from the flashlight had imprinted on his mind was gone. Alessio Bramante couldn’t hide from the knowledge that he was lost deep in the stone maw of some ancient hill, with men he didn’t like, at least one of whom wished to harm him.

  But the worst lay in his imagination. At that moment he could feel the tons and tons of rock and dead red earth weighing down over his head, pressing in on him from all sides, racing down his small, constricted throat to steal the air from his lungs.

  The grave was like this, he thought. And this was a grave, too, for many before him.

  When he tried to shout—Daddy! Daddy!—he could scarcely hear his own voice. Just the mocking sound of Ludo Torchia somewhere behind him, a malevolent, hateful presence, rising from the rocky intestines of the Aventino, intent on harm.

  “Daddy Daddy!” Ludo yelled mockingly. “Where is Daddy now, little boy? Where are we…?”

  Lost, Alessio wanted to say. Lost and adrift in the lair of the beast, stalked by the Minotaur, which was never a real monster—Alessio Bramante had finally come to understand this—but a malformation that lay inside a man waiting for the catalyst for its birth to emerge.

  All hope of victory, of delivering all six of them like a prize, had vanished. In his small, trembling frame, bravado had given way to terror. He wanted to see his father. He needed to feel that strong hand grip his, to be led out into the light and safety, the way only a father could.

  How long had he been abandoned?

  They could have been in the caves ten minutes or an hour. It was impossible to say. All he knew was that he’d never heard his father’s voice. Not once. He’d never once heard him call, trying to bring this game to a close.

  You don’t care, Alessio Bramante accused his father, whispering under his breath. You never cared. Not about anything except yourself.

  An image came into his head. Giorgio and his mother arguing, sending him out of the room when the fighting grew too loud. And, after that, crouching by the door, an illicit spy, wondering what would come next.

  The noises rose in his head. He’d known they would, all along. This was what violence sounded like. Now he heard it twice over: in his memory, and in the mêlée growing behind him, an angry swell of fists and feet, struggling to follow, to find him and exact some kind of brutal, unthinking revenge, because that is what frightened men did when they could think of nothing else; that was the natural solution.

  The sounds came from somewhere else too. In the darkness ahead.

  A hand clutched his shoulder. He shook in abject fear.

  “Alessio…”

  The voice was taut but not unfriendly. Alessio recognised it. Dino: the weak one.

  “There’s air coming into this tunnel,” Dino said. “It’s a way out. Just run towards it. Quickly!”

  Alessio didn’t wait. He knew the sounds they were making too well: the animal grunts of brute survival, of human beings in terror for their lives.

  Alessio Bramante breathed in the dank draught scarcely discernible in the blackness, tried to imagine the direction from which it came, then ran, ran wildly, not fearing the rocks or the sharp corners in this hidden labyrinth, knowing that there was only a single hope of safety, and that hope lay outside, in the light, under the bright, forgiving sun, and the familiar streets that could take him home, to his mother, cowering as she imagined the fury of Giorgio Bramante’s return.

  Pater.

  The word slipped from his hidden memory and entered his head. This was what Giorgio had hoped to be, and failed. A real Pater guarded his children. A Pater tested his children, watching from the shadows, always ready to intervene when needed.

  You left me, the child thought, with bitterness, and stumbled ahead, feeling the current of stale air grow stronger, smelling a hint of freshness inside it. Even something sweet, like orange blossom, the fresh, fragrant scent of life, began to drift from the living world into this bleak, cold tomb.

  Then those sounds that had raged in his head became real, formed in front of him.

  He stopped. Someone bumped into him. Dino’s low, urgent undertone returned.

  “Move!”

  He let Dino’s arm propel him forward, stopped again, checking himself. There were two voices ahead, though the noises they made weren’t familiar, words he could understand and interpret, just an incomprehensible babble of heat and emotion and some hard, animal savagery he’d never understood.

  Pushed again, he lurched forward, seeing light now, the pale, weak illumination of real electricity. It took no more than three steps to enter the chamber. The six followed, stumbling into one another, stumbling into him, a sea of discordant, confused voices, falling into silence. Seeing, like him.

  Seeing.

  No one spoke. No one dared.

  Alessio Bramante stared wide-eyed at the sight that lay in front of him, looking like some crazed living painting, two bodies tight against the wall, moving in a strange, inhuman fashion. He held his breath, refusing to allow his lungs to move, wondering whether, if he tried hard enough, he could freeze this scene out of his life altogether, wind back time to the point that morning where he was peering through the keyhole of the mansion of the Knights of Malta, seeing, through the stupid fly-eye glasses, myriad worlds, none of which contained the comfort of the dome of St. Peter’s, great and grand on its throne across the Tiber.

  It didn’t work and he knew why. That was a child’s game. And from now on he would not be—could not be—a child.

  Sometimes, he realised, the Minotaur didn’t need to hunt its prey at all. Its victims came willingly, like gifts, like sacraments, delivering themselves into the lair of the beast.

  TALK TO ME, NIC,” TERESA LUPO ORDERED. “PLAY LEO. I’M struggling here.”

  Costa had done his best to race the unmarked red Fiat, siren screaming, a pulsing police light hastily attached to the roof, from the Questura, through the Forum, past the Colosseum, to the site at the Circus Maximus. The traffic was as bad as he’d ever seen it: gridlocked in every direction, angry, unmoving. For most of the way, Costa had been driving on the broad sidewalks, sending pedestrians scattering. At the Colosseum, he’d abandoned the road completely.

  Then the options ran out. There was only road from this stretch on, and it was an intemperate line of stationary metal, pumping foul fumes into the heavy, damp spring air. Costa’s head felt ready to burst. There was too much information in there for one man to absorb, and a nagging, subterranean sensation of guilt, too: Emily had gone to hospital. Costa was aware, soon after his conversation with her ended, that it had been entirely one-sided. He’d scarcely asked about her at all. The hunt for Leo Falcone had caught fire. For him, there seemed nothing else in the world at that moment. And this, he understood all along, was an illusion. Whatever happened to Leo—or had happened already—there would be a tomorrow, a future for Emily and him to share. He didn’t understand how that could have slipped to the back of his consciousness so easily, as if this cruel and stupid amnesia came naturally, a gift of the genes.

  He stared at the sea of vehicles ahead of him and cut the
engine. Then he thought about Teresa Lupo’s question.

  “They couldn’t both know,” Costa said. “If Giorgio realised his son was still alive, none of this would have happened.”

  Peroni glowered angrily at the traffic. They were still the best part of a kilometre from the broad sweep of green behind the Palatino.

  “Agreed,” he said. “So who’s pushing the buttons here? That Turnhouse woman. She helped Giorgio kill those students over the years. Why? And why take the boy, for God’s sake? What did the boy ever do?”

  Costa had been a police officer long enough to understand that the simplest reasons were always the best ones. They were the same reasons that had existed for millennia: love, hate, revenge, or a combination of all three.

  “He gave her the means,” Costa answered, and threw open the driver’s door.

  There was a motorcycle courier a few metres away, smoking a cigarette, seated on his machine. The man was truly slacking off; his sleek, fast Honda could have cut through the traffic easily if he rode the way most Romans did.

  Costa flashed his ID card.

  “I’m requisitioning the bike,” he said, then seized the lapels of the rider’s leather jacket and propelled him off the seat. “Gianni? Can you ride pillion?”

  Teresa was out after them. “What about me?”

  “Sorry,” Costa apologised.

  The courier drew himself up to his full height, tapped his chest, and demanded, “What about me?”

  Then he took a good look at Peroni and backed off.

  “No scratches,” the man said, gesturing meekly toward his bike.

  Costa turned the key, felt the motorcycle dip as Peroni’s bulk hit the seat behind him, tried to remember how to ride one of these things, then crunched his way through the gears, ignoring the pained gasps of its owner.

  He eased it onto the broad pedestrian dirt path that ran from the Colosseum to the Circus Maximus, the route of the Number 3 tram, a quiet, leafy thoroughfare, a place for pleasant evening promenades before dinner.

  There was a photographer ahead. A woman in a wedding dress was posing next to her new husband, the Colosseum in the background. Costa steered gently round, making sure not to splash mud, then opened the throttle.

  The bike tore along the dirt track, beneath the bare trees on this quiet side of the Palatino.

  It took only minutes. There was scarcely a soul along the way, just a few tourists, a handful of curious spectators, and, as they approached the open ground, a swelling number of police vehicles, officers, and the media, penned into a surly crowd.

  Without being asked, Peroni took out his ID card, leaned sideways from the seat, letting everyone see his large, distinct face, one known throughout the city force.

  No one stopped them, not until they reached the yellow tape that barred everything from going further. They were at the edge of the Circus Maximus. Costa could just make out the racetrack shape on the grassy field, the knot of blue police vans in front of it, and the small sea of bodies, some uniform, some plainclothes.

  Again, Peroni’s presence got them through without a word. Costa came to a halt, let Peroni dismount, struggled to put the heavy bike on its stand, then scanned the crowd of officers, pinned down Messina, in his smart dark suit, and walked up to face him. The man had the nervous energy senior officers possessed when awaiting the results of an operation they’d ordered.

  “Where’s Judith Turnhouse?” Costa wanted to know.

  Messina glowered at him. “You’re off duty, sonny. Don’t try my patience. I’ve enough to throw in your direction later.”

  The commissario didn’t look as confident as he was trying to sound. Peroni pushed back Peccia, who was hoping to elbow them out of the way, then Costa took a deep breath and began to explain to Messina, as concisely and accurately as he could summarise it, what they now knew.

  The blood drained from the commissario’s swarthy features as he spoke. Peccia turned quite pale too.

  “Where is Filippo Battista?” Costa demanded.

  Peccia’s eyes turned to the entrance to the subterranean workings beyond the sea of uniforms.

  “Let me guess,” Peroni interjected. “He was a volunteer. Nic? That’s enough talking.”

  Peccia started barking orders: more guns, more bodies.

  “No!” Costa yelled. “Don’t you understand anything about what’s really going on?”

  “Educate me, Agente.” Messina said it quietly.

  “We’re here because Giorgio Bramante—and Judith Turnhouse—summoned us. Maybe for Leo, in Giorgio’s case. As for the woman…I don’t know.” He paused. “But I do know this. The more men and weapons you pour into that place, the more chance there is they’ll get used. You’ll look bad enough with a dead inspector on your hands. Do you want Alessio Bramante dead too?”

  Peccia’s backup team looked ready. They had metal-stocked machine pistols and black hoods pulled tight over their heads. Peccia himself had a weapon in his own hands too. He looked at Messina with ill-disguised contempt and said, “We will take care of this.”

  “You’ve got four men down there already, one of whom is the man’s son!” Messina barked. “And that woman…”

  “I told you we didn’t need the woman. Battista is one of ours. We will take care of this—”

  “Leo Falcone is my friend,” Costa interrupted with an abrupt vehemence that silenced the pair of them. “I am not waiting any longer.”

  “No…” Messina replied quietly. He closed his eyes, looking like a man who was about to break. “Listen…” he began.

  “I don’t have time. We don’t have time…” Costa answered.

  “Listen, damn you!” Messina snarled.

  He had a black, lost look in his eyes. Costa glanced at his watch and thought, Maybe a few seconds.

  “I’m sorry,” the commissario went on. “My father wrecked this case fourteen years ago through his instinct. I hoped to rectify that by being detached, whatever that means. I didn’t…”

  He shook his head and stared at the distant golden walls of the broken palaces on the green hill, as if he wished he were anywhere else at that moment.

  “How the hell do you and Falcone cope with all this? It’s not…natural.”

  “We cope,” Costa answered instantly. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  Peccia moved to their side as they started forward.

  “Stay here,” Messina ordered. “This is my responsibility. No one else’s.”

  One of the men in black stopped in his tracks. Then he held out the ugly, lethal-looking weapon: a gift.

  Messina shooed the gun away with his hand.

  “There are three armed men down there I ought to be able to rely on. I think that’s enough weapons for one day. Agente?”

  Costa was already heading for the entrance. He paused.

  “Allow me the privilege, please,” the commissario insisted, and took the lead.

  GIORGIO BRAMANTE’S KNIFE GLITTERED IN A SHAFT of dying sunlight from a crack in the earth above. Falcone watched it, unmoved, thinking. Bramante had tied his hands behind his back, pushed him around, into the position he wanted. This was not, Leo thought, the way a man who was about to die would be treated. Bramante’s attention lay elsewhere. Falcone’s presence in this underground chamber, next to the altar, was of importance to this event. But he was a prop, not the central actor, much as he’d been in Monti when Bramante had seemed to want to snatch him. And in the Questura, too, the night before last.

  There was a faint sound down the corridor, the route by which he assumed they’d approached. The gap in the rock was barely wide enough for two men. What little Falcone knew about tactical training told him this was an impossible position to attack. Anyone entering the room would be fatally exposed to Bramante’s view the moment they arrived. And given a broad, uninterrupted view of the scene ahead of them, two men at an altar, one apparently about to die.

  He thought about Bramante’s last words.

  This i
sn’t about you.

  Then there was a single, distinct sound: the voice of a woman, her Italian still bearing the faint imprint of an American accent. Judith Turnhouse. Falcone recognised her hard monotone from their brief conversation by the banks of the Tiber the day before. He couldn’t begin to imagine what reason she had to be there or why a police team that was surely attempting to operate with some secrecy and surprise would allow her to break silence in this way.

  He and Bramante stood upright before the altar in anticipation, like figures on a stage. The woman’s voice drifted to them sporadically, approaching. As the police team grew closer, Bramante gripped Falcone’s coat, held the knife to his throat, eyes on the entrance, both bodies exposed to the line of fire.

  Falcone didn’t struggle. Instead, he said, quite calmly, “You’re a poor thespian, Giorgio. I’m pleased to find something at which you don’t excel. It makes you more human.”

  “Be silent,” Bramante murmured, not taking his gaze from the dark cave mouth ahead. A lone flashlight beam danced there, like a distant firefly, one more sign to betray their approach.

  Falcone had been unable to shake from his brain the words of Teresa Lupo when he’d believed, for a few brief moments, they might have solved the riddle of what had happened to Alessio Bramante. And of what Giorgio himself had said to him in Monti, when he was almost snatched. When, if Falcone was honest with himself, he could have been taken, too, had Bramante pushed his luck.

  “The seventh sacrament,” Falcone said, peering into Bramante’s face, which now betrayed some trace of fear, and that, too, made him more human. “It’s not me at all, is it, Giorgio? This is about you. It was about you all along. Is suicide not enough? Is that dead child trapped in your imagination so hungry that he needs his father’s blood, too, along with all the others’?”