A Season for the Dead nc-1

by David Hewson

  “Are you sure?” The inspector’s sudden amiable mood took Costa by surprise. He was dog tired. All the same, there was so much happening. He hated being anywhere else.

  Falcone looked him up and down, something not far from sympathy on his face. “You’re no use to me here. And I don’t want to be bawling you out for anything else today. It may just make me feel guilty. It was your own damn fault Fosse nearly killed you this morning. That doesn’t stop me feeling bad about it. So no solitary running, mind. That partner of yours is pissed off enough as it is. As am I. On your way. You earned a break.”

  Costa looked outside the office door. Beyond the glass Luca Rossi was bent over the computer, stabbing awkwardly at the keyboard with a big index finger.

  “Rossi wants out,” he said without thinking, then cursed himself. It was the big man’s prerogative to break this news.

  Falcone seemed unmoved by the idea. “I know. He told me. People get like this in the middle of a bad case. Don’t think anything of it. Don’t take it personally.”

  “But it is personal. There’s something about me that bugs him.”

  “Age. You’re getting older. You’re starting to want to be on top. Rossi’s just feeling everything winding down. His life’s a pile of shit. He’s got no future. He’s just looking for someone else to blame.”

  Costa was incensed. “That’s unfair. Luca’s a good cop. An honest cop. He’d do anything, for you, for me, anyone on the force.”

  “Yeah. But he’s spent, kid. Just a burnt-out case and I’ve got no room here for people like that. When this is done he can ship out and lick envelopes or something. Or take his pension and go drink himself to death in Rimini. Who’s to care?”

  “Me.”

  Falcone’s face turned sour again and creased with disgust. “Then you’re an idiot. One of these days you’ve got to decide whose side you’re on. The winners’ or the losers’.”

  “You’re going to say that when some young buck comes in and thinks you’re a loser, sir?”

  “Not going to happen,” Falcone replied emphatically. “I go when I choose to go. Look at him. Four years older than me. That’s all. Do you think anyone would believe that? He’s run to seed. No use to anyone. He has no power over himself. A man has to possess that. If he doesn’t, somebody else will take it from him or, worse, he just gives up on everything and blows with the wind. That’s what your friend’s doing and he doesn’t even care much where it takes him.”

  Costa stood up and walked out of the room, not wishing to hear another word. He passed the big man at the desk and patted his huge shoulder gently. “Good night, Uncle Luca.”

  Two puzzled watery eyes looked up at him. “What’s wrong with you, junior?”

  “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

  Rossi snorted. The sound was like a walrus choking on something. Costa was pleased. It was good to see he could still raise a laugh in the man. Then Luca Rossi’s face turned serious. “Don’t let her tuck you in, Nic. Not just yet, eh?”

  Costa walked down two flights of steps, out into the open air. The night was humid and oppressive. There was scarcely anyone on the street. The usual bum was occupying his usual position by the café the cops liked around the corner next to the station car park. He was hunched on the street, head between his legs. He stank to high heaven.

  The familiar bearded face looked up as he walked by. Costa stopped and reached into his pocket. “Why do you do this?” the bum snapped, half drunk already. “Why the hell’s it always you?”

  “Does it matter?” he replied, surprised. “It’s just money.”

  The vagrant had an ageless face. He could have been thirty or twice that age. He was, Costa understood this, lost already. His money made no difference. It went on drink straightaway, only hastening the inevitable. “Not for you, it isn’t,” the bum said. “For everyone else it’s just small change. They don’t notice me. I like that. Not you. With you I have to earn it. I have to talk. I have to act grateful. You know what I think?”

  Costa felt dog tired. His head hurt. “Tell me.”

  “This is for you. Not me at all. This is just a little ointment for your conscience, huh? A little something to help you sleep at night.”

  Costa looked at the miserable figure on the ground. He held out a hundred-euro note: ten times the usual amount. The bum’s eyes glinted in the gloom. “Want it?”

  The tramp held out his hand.

  “Fuck you,” Nic Costa said, then dropped the money in his pocket and walked into the car park, only half hearing the slurred stream of curses directed at his back.

  It was the first time in years he hadn’t given that second gift.

  Falcone had made his point.

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty minutes after an exhausted Nic Costa left the station, Falcone looked up from the desk in his office to see the familiar figure of Arturo Valena waddling toward him. This was only the second time he had seen Valena in the flesh. The first was when the television presenter had been paid to MC a police awards ceremony, a job Valena had undertaken with a swift, efficient professionalism that almost merited the huge fee he pocketed with little grace afterward.

  Falcone had found the appearance of the man fascinating. He was one of the most familiar figures on Italian television. He interviewed everyone: politicians, film stars, entertainers. He had a big, handsome face and a gruff, booming voice that had a perpetual question mark on it, as if asking perpetually, “Really?” Officially he was forty-nine, though rumors suggested this was one of many myths surrounding the man. Valena had been born into dire poverty in Naples, working his way up through minor jobs in government and public relations until he was given his chance to try his hand at broadcasting. It was, Falcone now thought, the same kind of relentless progress Gino Fosse had made from his peasant farm in Sicily, aided perhaps by the same kind of friends. Once he had established his position as the leading commentator for one of the most successful networks, Valena never hesitated to criticize government policy and, on occasion, question whether the fight against “crime” did not infringe on the rights of the individual.

  He had dabbled with politics himself, sitting on a variety of committees. He made no secret of his right-wing views. The one-time Naples gutter kid had become a mover and shaker in the higher echelons of social life in Rome, and married a minor countess too, a severe-faced woman rolling in money who preferred to spend most of her time on the family estate in Perugia.

  And it was all an act, one which could only be sustained on TV. The camera flattered Valena’s exaggerated features, the clever lighting hid his fast-expanding belly. The rigorous preparation for each interview, the ever-ready autocue and his cultured on-screen sensibility, which was more that of the actor than the journalist, all served to hide the real man from the public. Falcone had seen this at the awards ceremony, when Valena made the mistake of hanging around long enough afterward for people to talk to him and come away disappointed by what they found.

  Valena lived behind a mask and fought to keep everyone from peering around the sides. Close up, in unrehearsed conversation, he was exposed for the fraud he truly was: inarticulate, snappy, unconfident. And physically repellent. The man was a famous gourmand who had sponged his way around the city’s finest dining rooms for years. Now he was paying the price. His waistline had expanded enormously, enough for the magazines to notice.

  In the last few months they had nicknamed him “Arturo Balena”—“Arthur Whale”—and started running a series of pictures to hammer home the point. There were snatched shots showing him at the table, with foie gras and worse on his plate, alone, eating like a pig.

  There was a series too of him around the swimming pool of a hotel in Capri, with an unidentified blonde. He lounged on a sun bed slowly cooking under the sun, his overample flesh turning an unattractive lobster color. The spectacle had sold many, many magazines. Valena, unwisely, had complained to the authorities and pleaded for the editor of the rag to be p
rosecuted under the privacy laws. The result was predictable. He was now on the paparazzi’s A-list of people to be photographed at every possible opportunity. They stalked him on scooters. They invaded the restaurants where he ate alone, at a single darkened table at the back. Arturo Valena had become fair game for a media sensing a figure on the brink of some spectacular, public downfall. The ratings for his nightly chat show were in decline.

  There were rumors that he might soon be dragged into an endless and messy civil court case about the misuse of state funds by officials who had bribed the media for favorable coverage. He was on the cusp of a cruel descent from the starry heights.

  Falcone beckoned Valena to sit in the chair opposite his, then opened his desk drawer and took out a set of copies of the photos found in Fosse’s room. There was a big, pale fat man in some of those. You never saw his face but it could be the same man. Valena collapsed sweating into a chair. The TV man looked terrified. His dull brown eyes were bleary and liquid. His chest heaved with labored panting.

  “I want protection,” Arturo Valena said between gasps. “You hear me? I only just got back from doing a show in Geneva. I read on the plane what this crazy bastard did to that poor bitch Vaccarini. He’s after me next. You hear me?”

  Falcone gave him a glass of water and smiled, hoping to calm him down. “Please,” he said. “From the beginning.”

  “To hell with the beginning,” Valena spat back at him. “I’ve got to be at the Brazilian Embassy in forty-five minutes. Can’t avoid it. There’s an exhibition opening and I need to be there. I want protection, you hear me? Or do I have to ring upstairs and get someone else to make you listen?”

  Falcone pushed the phone across the desk. Valena glowered at him. “What?”

  “Call. Whoever you like. They’ll just ask me to decide anyway. In case you hadn’t heard, Mr. Valena, we have every officer we’ve got on this case. Most of them are looking after people who have given us good reason to spend some time with them. You’ll have to convince me you fit that category.”

  “Idiot!” Valena yelled. He was sweating profusely. A bad smell, of perspiration and fear, was starting to permeate the little office.

  He picked up the phone and started to make the calls. Falcone watched him, knowing what would happen. Arturo Valena understood he was on the slow drift downward but had yet to appreciate how far he had already progressed. There would be no coming back. The future held only obscurity and perhaps some disgrace to fill it.

  He tried six people, five of them senior men within the police department, the last, in desperation, a government minister. Every one of them was “busy.”

  After the final rejection he slammed the receiver back on the hook and buried his head in his hands. Falcone wondered if he was going to start to sob. Valena spared him that. The man was simply drained, left helpless by some inward terror.

  “Mr. Valena,” Falcone said calmly, in a pleasant, comforting voice. “All you have to do is talk to me. I’m not saying we can’t help. I’m just saying I need a reason why.”

  The big, exaggerated face looked up at him. “What do you want to know?”

  “The Farnese woman? You’re saying you had a relationship with her?”

  “No,” Valena replied grimly. “I wouldn’t say that. I screwed her. That’s all. And it wasn’t a lot of fun either. At least when you got a real hooker they try to fake things a little. She didn’t even make that effort. Lousy bitch. I don’t know why she bothered.”

  Falcone nodded. This was progress. “You hired her? From an escort agency or something?”

  “Are you serious? Did I come in here to be insulted? I’m Arturo Valena. I don’t hire hookers. I don’t have to.”

  “I’m not hearing anything that helps me here,” Falcone said icily. “Why don’t you just go home, Mr. Valena? You’ve got a big house here. You’ve got money. Hire yourself a bodyguard if you’re feeling scared.”

  The man’s face went white. “A bodyguard? With that lunatic on the loose out there?”

  “I need more. How did you meet Sara Farnese? What happened?”

  Valena closed his eyes. “She was a gift. She was a reward. She was a prize. Call it anything you like. Someone wanted something. Sara was a few coins they left on the plate afterward to try to tip my hand.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Huh?” Valena grunted. “I’ve got one man out there wanting to kill me already. You honestly think I should make it two?”

  Falcone shrugged. “It only takes one, though, doesn’t it? I mean, what does it matter? If you tell me, I can put a couple of cops by your side. If you don’t, you can walk out there right now on your own.” He paused, watching the man, noticing for the first time that there was something dead in his eyes. “It’s nothing to me either way, Valena. I hate your fucking program. It stinks. You stink. And you’re stupid enough to think you still carry some weight around here. The only weight’s that spare tire around your belly. Don’t you get it?”

  “Bastard,” Valena murmured. His head hung down once more. “Bastard.”

  “There,” Falcone said, smiling. “Now that’s out of the way. May we get down to business? Please?”

  Thirty-Four

  The police car had delivered her to the house late in the afternoon where she was greeted by Bea who left almost immediately, saying little, unwilling to look her in the eye. Something had changed at the farm, something between Marco and Bea. It was not simply the story on the news and her own direct involvement in it. Bea seemed nervous, somehow, as if anticipating the slow, ordered life of the place was about to change.

  Sara showered, slept for a while, then changed into casual clothes to watch television with the old man. When the latest bulletin came on, he immediately switched channels. She insisted he go back to the newscast. He sat in his wheelchair, squirming, as the macabre details of Alicia Vaccarini’s death were disclosed alongside stock footage of the politician, smiling, looking happy at some public function. When it was over, Marco Costa said nothing.

  Sara walked into the kitchen. Out back, close to where Gino Fosse had almost murdered Nic, a crow danced across the yellow scrub that led down to the Appian Way. She watched its black wings flapping over the dusty ground. There was a handful of police at the gate. Marco Costa joined her and they sat around the table, sipping coffee. The city and its terrors seemed to exist in another world.

  “Did you know her?” she asked eventually, desperate to break the silence that had come upon them.

  “Who?”

  “Alicia Vaccarini.”

  “Ah.” It was an act. His mind never roamed, she knew, even when he was tired.

  “We met once or twice. She seemed a pleasant woman. Vaccarini was after my time, you understand. One tries not to get personal in politics. I’d like to think I had friends across the spectrum, regardless of party. But the Northern Alliance… they never were my type. Those petty-minded bastards treated Alicia very badly. So she liked the company of women? So what? Does anyone care these days?”

  It was a pointed remark, designed to make her feel comfortable. “You don’t need to say that for my sake, Marco. It was a stupid thing to do. I didn’t enjoy it. I never want to do it again.”

  His lined, gray face peered at her. “You mean that was all it was? Curiosity?”

  “Yes,” she replied, knowing that he thought she was lying.

  He shook his head. “I never understood that idea. That you should try everything once. Where do you draw the line? Isn’t there always something else untried along the way?”

  “I said it was a mistake.”

  “I was making a general point, not a personal one. You should never assume everything pertains to you, Sara. That’s what children think. It’s always seemed to me that life is about focus and depth. Something like your academic world perhaps. You presumably think it’s better to know a lot about a little than the reverse?”

  The university felt as distant as the city. So did the work which seemed
a part of another person, someone she no longer understood or even, perhaps, liked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then that’s how I feel about most things,” Marco continued. “I’d rather just make a good job of a few and leave the rest to someone else. It makes sense, to me anyway.”

  She looked around the kitchen, wondering if she should fill the silence by preparing a meal. There was good olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the dressing. Marco pushed his wheelchair forward and put his hand on hers, bidding her to stop.

  “But that’s easy for me,” he told her. “I was brought up that way. It was natural. For you… I’m sorry, Sara. It’s not my business. But I have to say it. I don’t understand. Nic doesn’t either. That doesn’t make it wrong. It just makes it hard. No one’s judging you. No one’s thinking the worse of you for what happened. They’re just… puzzled. That’s all.”

  “And you think you deserve an explanation?” she said coldly.

  He retreated, no doubt feeling he had come too far. “You don’t owe anybody anything. It’s your life. To do with as you wish.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just that I find it hard to believe this makes you happy. You’re so smart. You’re good to be around.”

  Her green eyes widened. She was, he saw, surprised.

  “And you don’t know that about yourself, do you?”

  She went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi from the Marches. Marco watched her taste it. “It’s easy for you,” she said finally. “It comes naturally. I can’t just learn.”

  “And why not?” he demanded. “Are you the only person who ever grew up an orphan? I can’t begin to understand how difficult that is. No one would wish it on another. But none of us is some fixed, unchanging point in the universe. Not me. Not Nic. We’re always changing, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. The person you were when these things happened is not the person you are now, surely?”