The Seventh Sacrament nc-5

by David Hewson

  He looked at Rosa Prabakaran. “Make sure intelligence keeps looking. They’ve got to have more than this.”

  She nodded. “How do we find him?”

  It was such an obvious question. The kind you got from beginners. Falcone felt oddly pleased to hear it.

  “Probably we don’t. He finds us. Giorgio Bramante is looking for something or someone. That’s the only thing that will make him visible. When he’s not looking, he’s probably untouchable. He’s too clever to have left any obvious tracks. To stay with people he knows.”

  He thought about what she’d said earlier.

  “If he’s got all that equipment, I rather imagine he’s in a cave somewhere. Bramante knows subterranean Rome better than just about anyone in the city. He could be somewhere different every night and we wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “You mean there’s nothing we can do? Except wait?”

  “Not at all! We work harder to understand the information we have. We see what else we can find out there. We cover all the proper bases. But to be honest, I don’t see routine trapping a man like that. Routine works for ordinary criminals. Giorgio Bramante is anything but ordinary. The one consolation is that, as far as we know, there’s no one else in the city on his hit list.”

  “Except you,” she said, then remembered to add, “sir.”

  “So it would seem,” he agreed with a polite nod of the head.

  * * *

  Dino Abati was conscious again, leaning against the altarpiece, looking a little woozy. He pressed a handkerchief to his head. There wasn’t too much blood there, just a couple of trickles working down from his scalp, matting his red hair against the pale skin of his forehead. He’d survive. Maybe, Torchia thought, he’d learn. That’s what it was all about. The cult. The rituals that happened here. Men learned what it took to make them good in the eyes of their peers, to prepare them for the rigours of life. Obedience. Duty. Self-sacrifice. But obedience above all. That came easy to some people. No one else in the temple had dared challenge him when he attacked Abati. No one questioned anymore why they were here.

  Not after he had told them, quite simply, but with a firmness that couldn’t be misinterpreted, “We find the bird. We kill it. We swear on its blood we never tell anyone else about what happened. Then it’s done. We don’t mention this again to anyone. Ever. Understood?”

  Andrea Guerino and Raul Bellucci were still out there, somewhere in the warren of corridors, trying to do his bidding. Abati would cause no more trouble. Sandro Vignola was back on his knees peering at the inscriptions on the stonework, openmouthed, looking idiotic, still aghast at what they’d found: an underground shrine to a long-lost god, one despoiled by Constantine’s Christians at the moment of their victory.

  And then there was that other voice.

  “How are you going to kill the bird?” LaMarca asked.

  Torchia had researched that, just to make sure. This was a ritual, for him, even if the rest were just going along with what he wanted, out of fear, out of survival. Rituals had to be enacted correctly, with precision. Otherwise they could rebound on those who performed them. Make the god angry, not satisfied.

  “I hold it over the altar and cut its throat.” He pulled out the penknife from his pocket. “With this.”

  LaMarca’s eyes glistened under the light of the big lantern Abati had brought and placed on the ground, scattering its weak rays in all directions.

  “We visited this farm in Sicily once. Out in the middle of nowhere. And one day I see this kid in the farmyard. No more than six or seven. They sent him out to get a chicken. He just chases one, picks it up by the legs” — LaMarca was mimicking the actions now, stooping and waving his arm — “and he’s swinging it like this. Around and around. Like it’s a toy. And you know what happens in the end?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The fucking head comes clean off! I’m not kidding you…. He swung it so hard.”

  Toni LaMarca couldn’t handle drink or dope. He was utterly stoned, a fact Torchia registered in case it came in useful.

  “One moment the chicken’s going round and round, squawking like it’s furious or something. Next, the head flies straight off and there’s nothing there but a neck and it’s…” Something clouded over his face for a moment, some forgotten image that had been prodded out of its slumber by the drug. “…pumping blood. Like a little fountain. Pumping away. Not for long. We had it for supper. They had it. I didn’t feel so hungry.”

  Dino Abati took away the cloth from his head and said, “These caves are dangerous. We shouldn’t be here.”

  “When… the… chicken’s… dead…” Toni LaMarca said with the slow, difficult precision of the stoned, prodding Abati with his foot, then he began to giggle stupidly.

  “Don’t touch me, Toni,” Abati said calmly.

  LaMarca backed away.

  “We’ll go,” Torchia repeated, “when we’re done.”

  Abati shook his head and went back to dabbing it with the handkerchief. “If Giorgio hears of this…”

  “Leave Giorgio out of it,” Torchia snapped.

  He thought he could hear footsteps coming down the corridor outside now, approaching. Something about the nature of the sound made him uneasy. The others fell quiet too.

  “Ludo…” Abati was beginning to say.

  Then Bellucci marched in, grinning like a moron. He had the black cockerel in his arms, cuddling it like a pet. The bird turned its neck with a mechanical precision and let out a low, puzzled complaint.

  Andrea Guerino was behind Bellucci, pushing a small child, a young boy Ludo Torchia recognised, though it took him a moment to remember how. It was the party the previous Christmas, when students were invited to meet staff and their families, in a garishly decorated room — he didn’t believe Giorgio could be part of such crass Christian foolishness — in the building in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.

  The young Alessio Bramante had been there, staring at them all resentfully, as if there were something in their age he envied.

  “Jesus Christ,” Abati murmured, and clawed his way to his feet. “That’s it, Ludo. Time to go and meet the man.”

  “What are you doing here?” the boy yelled at them angrily, struggling to get out of the strong arms that held him tight. “This is a secret. When my father finds out—”

  Guerino seized his long hair and pulled it until he stopped yammering.

  “Where’s your father, Alessio?” Torchia asked the boy.

  “Here.” An odd expression crossed his face. Furtive. Some memory had stirred, some idea in the child’s head had brought the blood to his cheeks. “Somewhere. Don’t you know that?”

  He was angry and confused, uncertain of himself, disturbed at being lost in these caves. But he wasn’t frightened.

  “I know what this is,” he added. “It’s a… game.”

  Then he jerked his hands out of his pockets. An object fell to the floor. Ludo Torchia reached down and picked up a pair of toy glasses. The kid didn’t complain. Torchia looked through them for a moment, saw the room, the people in it, multiplied many times over. There was something unnerving about the sight. He stuffed the glasses into his pocket.

  “It’s just a game,” Torchia agreed. “But a very important one.”

  They were all quiet, even Dino Abati. The scent of opportunity was in the air, and even the most stupid of them surely understood that. Each knew what would happen if Bramante found them there. Suspension. Expulsion. Disgrace. The end of their time at university.

  “So what do we do now?” Dino Abati demanded.

  Torchia picked up one of the flashlights and walked to the door. To the left the corridor ran slightly downhill, working its way further into the rock, further beneath the earth. A labyrinth lay ahead of them, a spidery maze of possibilities among the narrow channels cut into the soft stone. Very few of them, it occurred to Torchia, explored.

  Alessio Bramante was by his side for some reason.

  “Now we
play,” Torchia answered.

  He grasped the boy’s hand and tugged him down the corridor, down towards the darkness.

  * * *

  Falcone told Rosa Prabakaran to find a driver.

  “I don’t know drivers,” she confessed.

  “See that big sovrintendente from uniform? The one looking as if he’s ready to sneak off for a cigarette?”

  “Taccone,” she said. “I think.”

  “Taccone. You’re right. I thought you didn’t know any drivers.”

  “Sometimes I seem to know more than I remember at first.”

  “I sympathise,” he said dryly.

  “Sorry. You’ve got more reason. They said you nearly died.”

  “They say all kinds of things about me. Tell Taccone to bring the car round. We’re paying someone a visit.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone you’ve met already. Someone I last met years ago. Beatrice Bramante.”

  He saw the expression of concern on Rosa’s face.

  “Don’t worry,” Falcone told her. “I’ll try to be gentle.”

  * * *

  Beatrice Bramante lived in one of the big tenement blocks in Mastro Giorgio, five minutes away. These apartments were part of the area’s history, built about a century before, tiny homes set around central courtyards joined by hanging walkways, several hundred little boxes in which the population of an urban hamlet lived cheek by jowl. In the old days, when Testaccio was one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Rome, the homes were so crowded some people slept permanently on the walkways. The area had come up in the world over the years, a little anyway. There were no bodies on makeshift mattresses anymore. Some of the properties were even in private ownership, and fetching rising prices on the extortionate Roman housing market. But most remained rented, home to a mixed population of locals, immigrants, and students, all looking for a cheap place to stay.

  Falcone tried to recall the Bramantes’ house on the Aventino. It was a substantial family villa, a little worn at the edges. But the property must have been worth a fortune even then, with its position on the hill, looking back towards the Circus Maximus, a sizable garden, and an isolated aspect, a good fifty metres away from adjoining houses on both sides.

  As his finger hovered over the bell on the door of the tiny apartment, he realised how much Beatrice Bramante had come down in the world. Her son’s disappearance — the logical, police inspector’s part of Falcone’s mind refused to use the label “death” without firm proof — was like every case involving a lost child he’d ever dealt with. The ripples, the effects, the subsidiary tragedies, took years to become wholly visible. Entire lifetimes, perhaps. Sometimes, Falcone thought, perhaps even years weren’t long enough to reveal the whole story, the full catalogue of pain and darkness.

  The door opened. For a moment, he didn’t recognise the face there. She’d aged considerably. Beatrice Bramante’s hair was as long as ever, but it was no longer dark and glossy. Entirely grey, it hung lank and loose around her shoulders. She wore a threadbare blue cardigan pulled tight around her skinny frame, with long sleeves clutched into her palms. The long, intelligent, attractive face he remembered was now lined. Bitterness had taken the place of the grief-stricken bewilderment he remembered from a decade ago.

  It took her a moment to realise who he was. Then an unmistakable flame of hatred sparked in her dark eyes.

  “What do you want?” she asked through gritted teeth. Her eyes flicked over Rosa and Taccone. “I have nothing to say to you, Falcone. Nothing at all.”

  “Your husband—”

  “My former husband!”

  He nodded. “Your former husband killed someone yesterday. We’re coming to believe he’s killed before. This morning I think he may have made an attempt to murder me.”

  “None of this is my business. None…”

  “Signora,” Rosa Prabakaran said suddenly, “I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I should never have come here on my own this morning. It was wrong of me. Please. You must say what you have to say in the presence of these officers. Then we will go, I promise you.”

  The woman didn’t move. She stood there, a stiff, furious figure. Leo Falcone glanced behind her. The little room seemed full of canvases, large and small, on the walls, parked against cupboards, everywhere.

  “You still paint?” he observed. “I should have expected that.”

  There was just one subject on every canvas he could see. A pretty young face with bright, shining eyes staring out from the painting, challenging everything he saw, asking some question the viewer could only guess at.

  “I have to find Giorgio before he can do more harm,” Falcone added. “I would like to put Alessio’s case to rest for good too. We couldn’t do that before. There was too much…” — he hunted for the word — “…noise. Much of it regrettable. Now I’d like to find out what happened to him, once and for all. With your permission…”

  She said something Falcone couldn’t catch, though perhaps it was simply a mumbled curse. Then she swung the door wide, with what seemed to him a marked unwillingness.

  “Thank you,” Falcone said, and beckoned Rosa Prabakaran to go in first.

  * * *

  Beatrice Bramante excused herself and went to the bathroom. Falcone, Rosa Prabakaran, and Taccone sat tightly together on the small, hard sofa next to a tiny dining table. They could see into the adjoining bedroom and the dark open courtyard beyond. The entire apartment was smaller than the living room Falcone recalled from the Bramante house on the Aventino.

  “You never mentioned the paintings, Agente,” he said quietly, trying to stifle the note of reproach in his voice.

  “They weren’t here,” Rosa replied, unable to take her eyes off the single face in front of them, multiplied over and over again, always with that same querulous expression.

  “No,” she corrected herself. “They were here. I saw some things piled up in the corner. But they weren’t out like this. I guess my visit brought back some memories.”

  Falcone sighed, exasperated at the way the young were so anxious to make up their minds. Then Beatrice Bramante returned. Carefully, with more tact than he would have possessed a decade before, he led her through all the points she’d covered that morning with the overzealous Rosa. The woman answered each question without hesitation, unemotionally, with the same kind of matter-of-fact attitude her husband had adopted after Alessio’s disappearance. Falcone reminded himself that at the time they had appeared to be a close couple.

  “What do you do these days?” he asked.

  “I work part-time at a kindergarten. I paint a little. Just for me. Not for anyone else.”

  He looked around the apartment. “I’m sorry. I have to ask. Why are you living here? Why not the Aventino?”

  “Lawyers cost,” she replied flatly.

  “But Giorgio pleaded guilty. There was no trial.”

  “That was his choice. I tried to persuade him to argue. I spent most of the money I had on lawyers who thought they could change his mind. We had a lot of debt on that place anyway. Besides, with him gone, with Alessio gone…” — the dark eyes shone accusingly at him from underneath the silver mess of hair — “it wasn’t a home for a single woman.”

  Falcone nodded. “And you divorced. Do you mind my asking… was that Giorgio’s idea or yours?”

  “I mind, but if it’ll get you out of here more quickly, you can have your answer. It was Giorgio’s. I used to visit him in prison, once a week, every Friday. It didn’t seem to make much difference to him. One day, after a year or so, he told me he wanted a divorce.”

  “And you agreed?” Rosa asked, leaning forward a little.

  “You don’t know Giorgio,” Beatrice answered, gripping the sleeves of her cardigan tightly. “When his mind’s made up…”

  Falcone’s eyes were fixed on the paintings that crowded the room. Some, it seemed to him, were recent. One, of the boy in his school uniform, seemed to be painted from life. Unlike the rest, it had n
o tragedy welling up beneath a sea of frozen, frenzied oils.

  “You have some more paintings of Alessio,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  Her face tightened with anxiety. “I do?”

  “Well, you seem to prefer the one subject. Do you mind…?”

  He walked into the tiny bedroom. It was a shambles. More canvases were propped beneath the window, face to the wall. He turned over the first three, then stopped. The first few were of Alessio. But as he would have been. When he was ten or twelve. But this one was different. In this painting, he was almost a man, with an expression on his face that was serious, almost cold. The same look Falcone had seen in his father.

  One curious point struck him. In all of the works, including the adult one, Alessio was wearing a T-shirt like the kind found in the Piccolo Museo, one bearing the same logo: a seven-pointed star.

  Falcone returned to the sofa. Beatrice hadn’t moved.

  “I never had children, never even thought about it, to be honest,” he admitted. “It’s only natural in the circumstances to want to imagine how they would grow up.”

  “Natural?” She echoed his words with a hard, sarcastic edge.

  “What’s that symbol? The one with the stars. It seems important to you.”

  She shrugged. “Not really. Giorgio had me design it for the school. The stars come from Mithraism. Giorgio was a little… obsessed with his work sometimes. It spilled over into the rest of our lives.”

  “Was he unfaithful?” Falcone asked abruptly, aware of the young policewoman’s sharp intake of breath next to him.

  Beatrice Bramante stared at her hands. Then she shook her head, saying nothing.

  “Were you?” Falcone pressed.

  Again, she was silent.

  “I’m sorry,” Falcone said, after a moment. “These are standard questions. We should have asked them years ago, but somehow the occasion never arose.”