The Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

  “Can you think of someone else we should be talking to?” Emily asked.

  The brown eyes blinked in disbelief. “Do I look like I have a death wish?”

  “Mr. Rajacic,” she persisted, “this girl’s so young. She might not even be in the loop you’re talking about now. We don’t know where she is, but we know what she saw. She’s got to be scared. And in danger too.”

  He glowered back at them. “What did she see?”

  The two cops looked at each other. They were running out of options.

  “A couple of murders,” Peroni said quietly. “Don’t go telling anyone, huh? The kid’s got problems enough as it is.”

  Rajacic finished the beer and clicked his fingers for another. “Two?”

  “It was on the TV,” Costa said. “A woman was killed in the Pantheon. An Italian photographer was shot too. We know this girl was there. Inside. Probably just looking for shelter or something. We know the guy who killed this woman realizes that too now. You see my point?”

  The old man thought about this, then got up, went to the bar and, without saying a word to the man behind the counter, picked up the phone by the till and began talking rapidly in his native language.

  “He acts like he owns the place,” Emily observed.

  “He does,” Peroni said. “Even a pimp needs an office. I don’t suppose you understand any of that lingo?”

  She shook her head. Rajacic was virtually yelling into the phone now.

  “He doesn’t act like a pimp,” she observed. “Not really.”

  Peroni watched Rajacic barking at the phone. “It’s not his chosen profession. He was a farmer in Bosnia. The Croats decided his land was theirs. He had the sense not to stay around and argue.”

  “Big leap from Bosnian farmer to pimping here,” Costa commented.

  “Yeah,” Peroni agreed. “Like the man said, ”A world in motion.“ I don’t get it either. But who’s asking? If every other pimp we had was like this guy—no drugs, no kids.”

  Emily’s blue eyes wandered over the pair of them, some bitter judgement there. “He’s still earning a living by selling women on the street.”

  “We’ve had people doing that here for the last couple of thousand years,” Peroni answered. “Doubtless will for the next couple too. Do you think we can stamp it out somehow? We’re cops. Not miracle workers.”

  She stirred the empty coffee cup. “Sure. I just want to make sure we remember what he is.”

  “What he is, Emily, is maybe the only chance we’ve got to find this kid. These people lead separate lives. They talk to us on their terms, when they feel like it. No amount of screaming at them, no amount of time in a cell, changes that. Trust me. I know. I’ve tried.” He nodded at Costa. “We both have.”

  “True,” Costa agreed, watching how Rajacic’s attitude had changed while he was on the phone. He looked a little happier. He was getting what he wanted.

  The Serb came back to the table and sat down. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he told them.

  Peroni slapped him on the big brown arm of his overcoat. “Because you’re a good guy, Stefan. Like I told my American friend here.”

  “Or maybe just a damn fool. Don’t go putting this around, Peroni. I don’t want anyone getting the idea I make a habit of helping the cops. And maybe I’m not helping at all.”

  A woman was coming out of the door at the back of the bar. She was about thirty, with long, black hair, a tanned gypsy face heavy with makeup and a tight red dress cut low at the neck. Boredom and resentment shone out from her tired eyes. She must have been upstairs, taking the call on an internal line.

  Rajacic pushed out a chair and beckoned her to sit. “This is Alexa,” he announced. “My niece.”

  Peroni looked her up and down. “You mean this is a family business?”

  “When he gets some business,” she snapped.

  The Serb pointed to the window. “Am I responsible for the weather now? Please. I’ve listened to enough shit for one evening. These people need your help, Alexa. You’re getting paid anyway. You can go with them. Or you can clean up in the kitchen. Which is it going to be?”

  “Some choice,” she grunted and took a seat. “What do you want?”

  Rajacic reached over and brushed his fingers against her fine black hair. “Hey, zingara. No tantrums. They just want a little advice.”

  He looked at Peroni, who pushed the photo across the table. She picked it up.

  “I don’t know who the hell this is,” she complained. “Why ask me?”

  Rajacic smiled. “A little gypsy blood crept into the family a while back,” he explained. “Don’t ask how. It’s thick blood, huh, Alexa? Like this kid’s maybe. My friends here are asking themselves, ”Where would a girl like this hide out if she were scared and living off the street?“ Can you tell them?”

  Her black eyes didn’t give away a thing. “On the street? In weather like this?”

  “Come on,” Rajacic wheedled. “They don’t all stay in hostels. They don’t all have pimps looking after them. What if she’s on her own? Where’d she go? What kind of choices have these kids got?”

  “Not many,” she murmured, thinking all the same. “What’s in this for me?”

  Rajacic leaned over, prodded her in the arm, hard. At that instant he looked the pimp he was.

  “You make an old man very happy,” he murmured. “Now get out of here. Before I think of something else.”

  THEY’D BORROWED A JEEP from traffic. Costa sat behind the wheel, feeling out of practice, unused to the four-wheel drive which was the only way the treacherous roads were manageable at speed. Most of the narrow through routes in the centro storico had been closed. What little movement there was now funnelled down the main thoroughfares and the broad avenues which ran either side of the river. Alexa knew where to go. They’d checked out a series of sites—a derelict building north of the Pantheon, a squat in Testaccio, a grimy, freezing hostel in San Giovanni—and got the same result in each one, trying to talk to a bunch of surly adolescents shivering in cheap black clothes that couldn’t keep out the cold. They’d look at the girl’s picture and shake their heads. Then Alexa would yell at them in their own language, and still they’d say nothing.

  Now the four of them were driving along the Lungotevere on the Trastevere side of the river, slowly checking the huddled bunches of people sheltering by the Tiber. The sluggish current was out of sight from the road here. The flat, broad shelf by its banks, reached by steps from street level, was a popular shelter for the homeless.

  Alexa was in the front passenger seat blowing cigarette smoke out of the crack she’d opened the window, not minding the freezing air it brought into the car, looking for where she wanted them to stop. The atmosphere in the car was bad. They all sensed failure.

  “These kids won’t talk to cops,” she said. “Why should they?”

  “Because this girl needs our help,” Emily muttered icily.

  Alexa shook her head. “They don’t know that. They don’t believe a word you say. They think cops spell trouble. With good reason.”

  “What do you suggest?” Costa asked.

  “Leave it to me. Stay out of the way. I’ll tell them you’re family, looking for her. You got any money?”

  Peroni reached over from the backseat and handed her some notes. She looked at them and whistled. “Wow. You could buy a couple of tricks for that. Supply and demand. Lots of the former, none of the latter.”

  “We need to find this kid,” Peroni insisted.

  She stuffed the cash into the pocket of her bright red nylon anorak and pointed across the river. “There. I know a couple of places. Besides, thinking about it, the wind’s coming from the wrong direction for this side. These kids are destitute. They’re not stupid. Not most of them anyway.”

  The jeep moved into the right-hand lane and waited at the traffic lights at the next bridge.

  “You’re not his niece,” Emily stated with some certainty.

&nb
sp; The woman turned and stared at her. “Says who?”

  “I just thought… It was a turn of speech.”

  “You mean like ”sex worker‘?“

  “N-n-o,” she stuttered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I’m his niece. My mother is Stefan’s sister. My old man was a gypsy who climbed in the window one night.” She paused for effect. “That was a turn of speech. They got married. Eventually. Then…”

  The jeep moved forward onto the bridge. Alexa looked down towards the river. “Then things fell apart. Not just personal things, you understand. Life. The country. Everything. Pull in somewhere. I can see lights down there.”

  Costa parked the vehicle on the deserted pavement. They got out of the car and stood in the snow, shivering. The night was bitterly cold, with a stiff wind whipping through the open channel cut through the city by the Tiber. They were close enough now to see the black, silky surface of the river and a silver moon reflecting back at them, a perfect shining circle. It was dark down there, but there were people around, huddled in the shelter beneath the bridge. Costa could see the tiny firefly embers of cigarettes and smell the bitter smoke of a makeshift brazier.

  “Stay here,” Alexa said, “until I call.”

  She hesitated before heading for the steps. “There’s something you ought to know. Stefan is my uncle. When we lost the farm—his farm, our farm, everyone’s—I just ran away here. I thought I could make everything right. I thought the streets were paved with gold. You know the funny thing?”

  She stared at them, with those black, gypsy eyes, and didn’t bother to hide her bitterness.

  “Compared to what it’s like back home now, they are. I sometimes have to remind myself of that when I’ve got some fat businessman wheezing into my face wondering if he’s ever going to get there. I came here… and did what was easy. Stefan used what little money he had to find me, to try to get me to go back. We argued. I won. Which is as it should be because, in the circumstances, I was right. If you’ve got to have a pimp, best it’s your uncle. Best it’s an honest man, and Stefan is. Ask any of his girls.”

  Emily looked her in the face and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

  The three of them waited while Alexa walked down the steps shuffling their feet in the snow in a vain effort to keep warm. The night had the crisp, biting smell of a hard winter, one that wanted to hang around. The snow would surely resume soon. Peroni glanced down at the sound of voices below.

  “What do we do when this doesn’t work?” he asked.

  “Keep looking,” Costa replied, “until she runs out of places.” He turned to Emily Deacon. “You don’t need to stick with us. We’re on night duty anyway. You’re not.”

  “I’m fine,” she answered.

  “You could—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Peroni caught Costa’s eye and shrugged. “How many people has Leapman got working for him here?” he asked.

  She scowled. “I don’t know.”

  “Two? Three? Fifty?” Peroni insisted.

  She hugged herself tight inside her jacket. “Listen, until a couple of months ago I was a lowly intelligence officer working nine to five in a systems office in Washington. Then I got plucked out to come here. Why? Maybe because I know Rome. Or I speak good Italian. Maybe Leapman thinks I’m owed it because of my dad. But believe me when I say this. I do not know. He doesn’t tell me. He doesn’t listen to a damn word I say. As far as he’s concerned we’re just chasing some lunatic serial killer with a lot of air miles.”

  “Maybe we are,” Peroni wondered.

  “No!” she insisted angrily. “There’s a logic here. A crazy, distorted logic but it’s rational somehow too. We just have to see it.”

  “I agree,” Costa said, and wondered how much that was worth. Leapman’s focus might be awry but the American had a point. They all knew the way these cases went. Intelligence, forensics, careful investigation… all of these things were important. But the final act of closure usually came by accident. A mistake, a chance encounter. The killer was active. With activity came risks. The point was to have people there, on the ground, when he slipped up. Falcone knew that as well as anyone. Both he and Leapman would surely have men on the street steadily building up a picture of the man from what little information they had, hoping that one day soon they would turn a corner and find him staring into their faces.

  The reason they were chasing the girl was to save her and not, in all honesty, because they thought she’d lead them to his lair.

  The voices from under the bridge began to grow in volume. They were heated, too, and it wasn’t just Alexa shouting. Costa cast Peroni a concerned glance. They’d let the woman walk straight into the unknown, assuming she could handle herself. Then, to Costa’s relief, they heard careful footsteps on the snow-covered stone steps. Alexa reappeared. She looked puzzled, a little scared maybe.

  “We were getting worried,” Peroni said. “They didn’t sound too friendly down there.”

  “They’re just doped up to hell, most of them. I’ve got a name for you. Laila. Kurdish. She was here tonight, apparently. They don’t know where she’s gone. Or so they say.”

  “And?” Costa pressed.

  “I don’t know,” she answered hesitantly. “They just took the money and came up with the story. It could be complete bullshit. Tell me, are you the only people looking for her?”

  “As far as we know.”

  “It’s just that someone else has been asking. He didn’t have a picture, but he knew what she looked like.”

  “What did he say?” Costa demanded.

  “He was a priest. He said she’d been staying at the hostel where he worked. There’d been an argument. He wanted to patch it up. Except…” She looked down at the faces by the river, from where some angry rumbles were coming. “This girl. Laila. They say she doesn’t stay in hostels much. She’s a street kid, likes to be on her own. Kind of weird. Not dope. Just funny in the head. If they’re telling the truth, this man’s lying.”

  “To hell with this,” Peroni grunted, heading for the steps. “We’ve got to talk to them.”

  Alexa put a hand on his jacket. “Be careful. There are some real assholes down there.”

  “Yeah, right,” Peroni grumbled, and brushed past her.

  He was there so quickly that Costa and the two women missed what he said. Then Costa found himself remembering why he stuck with Peroni as a partner, why he never even thought of moving somewhere else. Peroni was speaking to a huddle of kids, perhaps fifteen of them, peering out of the darkness, young faces full of fear and resentment lit by a stinking brazier burning cardboard and damp wood. They knew they were talking to cops. They were waiting for all the trouble that meant. And Gianni Peroni was speaking to them in exactly the opposite way to the manner they expected: carefully, with conviction, and a quiet, forceful respect.

  “You have to believe me,” he was saying. “We know you want to protect this girl. We understand why you don’t want to help the likes of us. But she’s in trouble. We have to find her.”

  Alexa barked something incomprehensible and pulled out some more of Peroni’s money. The gang of youths stood there, immobile, but restless too. Finally a skeletal kid as tall as Costa came out of the darkness and took the money.

  “I show you,” he said, pointing upriver, towards the Vatican. “You come with me. Over there. Now. You come. You come.”

  He was dragging Peroni’s sleeve. It was all a game, Costa thought. Just a runaround for a few euros. He watched Peroni start to shuffle off, wondering at what stage they had to admit defeat. Then a sound made him turn his head. The huddle of bodies in the shadow of the bridge had changed. They were moving, making space for someone. Emily Deacon was walking straight into the middle of them, talking, in an accent which through fear betrayed her origins, asking, asking.

  Seeing something too. A slim slight figure hiding at the back.

  “Laila,” she yelled. “Laila!”


  Somebody murmured, “Amerikane…”

  They were crowding round the FBI agent, pushing, hustling. Alexa was nowhere to be seen.

  “Gianni!” Costa yelled, then saw something metallic flash in the light of the brazier.

  Emily saw it too. She dodged the halfhearted lunge with the knife and kicked the youth behind it hard in the crotch. He went down, screaming, but there were a dozen more of them now, crowding round her, starting to yell.

  And the slight figure was moving too. Edging out at the back, seizing her opportunity.

  Costa swiftly thought about the options, came to the conclusion there was just one. He fired off two shots into the empty sky, watching carefully to see that they understood what the deadly racket meant for them.