A Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  Gino Fosse fetched the kindling, the charcoal and the petrol and decided, at this point, that he must cease deluding himself. He’d learned enough in the hospital to understand how long the shot would keep Valena unconscious. It was fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, no more. Arturo Valena would not sleep his way to judgement.

  FIFTY

  A noise woke her: the sound of a dog barking from some distant farm. He stood at the window, with his back to her, staring out into the blackness of the night, silhouetted against the moon. She looked at the clock on the stand. It was nearly two.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked softly.

  He didn’t even turn round.

  ‘Nic? Look at me.’

  He sighed and returned to sit on the bed. In the cold light that fell through the window his face wore the same hard expression she had seen when they first met. This was serious Nic, tough Nic, a man who preferred duty over passion. A man who feared anything that might disrupt an ordered, logical world.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was too soon. I should have stopped myself.’

  He stared down at the sheets and said nothing.

  She took his chin with her hand, made him look at her. ‘Don’t sit in judgement on me.’

  He scowled. It wasn’t a pleasant look. ‘I’m not. It’s me. I didn’t want this to happen. I promised myself I wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘And I made you? Is that it?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ He meant what he said, though there was no comfort in his sincerity. ‘But that doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘It felt right to me,’ she replied icily.

  That touched him. He reached out and held her hand. ‘It felt right to me too. But Sara …’

  The words ran dry. His reticence annoyed her. ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know you. Not really. Just a side of you. There’s still something missing, something important in your life you don’t want me to see.’

  She withdrew from his grasp. ‘Haven’t you seen enough?’

  ‘No. Because what I know doesn’t add up and that just makes everything worse. I don’t believe it’s the real you. Maybe not even a real part of you either. There’s something else. Something you won’t disclose. Something you’re keeping from me, still, and I can’t bear the thought because without that piece of knowledge I feel I don’t really know you at all. It just … tortures me.’

  ‘Listen to the cop inside you talking. Am I supposed to be more frank after you’ve screwed me?’

  ‘No!’ His voice almost broke. She recognized the truth in what he said and despised herself for doubting him. Nic was honest, too honest perhaps.

  She came closer to him, put her hand to his face, stared into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. That was just the fear in me talking. This is hard for me too, you know.’

  There was doubt in his eyes. ‘Is it? You’ve a capacity for keeping things inside. I never learnt that.’

  ‘I asked if you’d come off this case for me. I begged. You still can.’

  ‘It’s impossible. This is my job. It’s what I do.’

  ‘Then maybe this is what I do too. Maybe this is who I am. Just someone who sleeps around and then goes on somewhere else, not remembering, not caring. What’s wrong with that? Is it a sin just because you don’t think that way?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s a sin because you don’t. This person you’re trying to paint for me is someone you created and I need to know why.’

  ‘Trust me. You don’t need that.’

  He put his arms around her shoulders. He kissed her lightly on the mouth then stroked her soft hair. ‘I woke up with the taste of you. I can smell you in my head. Don’t take this lightly. It doesn’t happen to me.’

  The first sign of dampness appeared at the corner of her eye. He wiped it away with a finger and placed the tip in his own mouth, tasting the salt of her, as if it were some precious fluid.

  She closed her eyes. The tears ran freely down her cheeks. He knew himself to be on the verge of some new discovery and felt disquiet at his own insistent curiosity.

  ‘Tell me,’ he murmured.

  She wiped her face with her arm then gathered up the sheet around her, ready to leave the room.

  ‘Tell you, Nic? I’ll tell you. I promise. When Michael Denney is out of the Vatican and gone from Italy. There. Is that what you want to hear?’

  It was the last response he was expecting. No words formed in his head, only thoughts and images of Sara with the old, grey man trapped behind those distant walls in the city.

  ‘No,’ he said finally, with a bitterness which surprised him.

  She got up from the bed, clutching the sheet to her body. ‘Then I’m sorry, but it’s true. And you’ll hear nothing more from me, not a word, until that’s happened.’

  He gripped her arm, refusing to let her go. She forced his fingers from her wrist. His head was working overtime, a whirl of ideas, connections.

  ‘Is that all I am?’ he spat, shocked at his own unfamiliar fury. ‘Just another random fuck in the night like the rest?’

  There was the coldness in those green eyes again. Nic Costa knew he’d broken the spell with his own stupidity.

  ‘You sound like you’re back on duty,’ she whispered.

  He was furious. He wanted to strike her. ‘Maybe I am. Maybe I should have stayed there all along.’ The cop in him was waking. He took her by the arms and forced her into the bedside chair. ‘Let’s talk then. Like we’re supposed to. Did you sleep with Rinaldi to get that expert opinion to go Denney’s way? Did Denney ask you to do that?’

  Her eyes were fixed on the dead, dull tiles.

  ‘OK. Don’t answer. Either way it doesn’t matter. It explains something. And the American, Gallo. He never knew Denney at all. We found nothing to link them. What happened there?’

  His mind raced in the silence. ‘You used him. Denney needed something. A messenger perhaps. Someone to take a package some place, pay someone off maybe. You slept with Gallo to get him to do favours. Denney didn’t even specify him by name. He just asked you to find the right person. Was that what happened with the Englishman too? He was something big with the EU. Did that make him useful to Denney as well?’

  ‘Hugh Fairchild was my lover,’ she hissed. ‘He came to me for what I am. Don’t judge me with your guesswork.’

  ‘He was a married man looking for a warm bed in a strange town. I’m not guessing. I’m just working my way towards something that makes sense. I believe …’

  ‘Believe what the hell you like.’

  She got up, pushed brusquely past him. He watched her slim figure disappear through the doorway, into the corridor, towards the room at the end of the house, torn by his own warring emotions. He wanted to know; he didn’t. She was right. This was all guesswork. It still left so many questions unanswered.

  Nic Costa lay back on the crumpled bed clothes, still damp from their bodies, and closed his eyes, wondering if he could sleep. His head filled with such possibilities. His mind ran with images he never wished to imagine. Beyond the window, in the hot darkness, owls called through the night. He could hear, far off, the chatter of the men on the gate, their radios crackling in the darkness, alive with some news from beyond this small, cherished haven, safe from the depredation of the city. He felt a fool. He’d let Marco’s magic, and her sudden gift of a startling, physical ecstasy, steal away his concentration. Gino Fosse would surely not be sleeping. There was a cycle in motion beyond this fleeting sanctuary his father had tried to create. It would not be broken yet.

  He thought of Michael Denney again, pushing aside the insidious vile images that wanted to rise inside his imagination.

  Then, after a fashion, he slept until the phone woke him with a start. He looked at the clock. It was now nearly six. Almost three hours had disappeared in some jumble of a half-waking nightmare.

  He listened to the voice on the phone, Falcone’s familiar cold monotone, and was immediately dragged from his anguished rever
ie, back to reality.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The livid stain of a new dawn was breaking over Rome as Nic Costa drove along the deserted road, towards the looming, illuminated shape of the gate of San Sebastiano. There was scarcely a soul on the streets. The city seemed to have died in the dry August heat. It was hard to imagine life ever returning.

  Then he pulled onto the main road that led through to the Lateran and on to the police station. As he did so the phone rang.

  ‘Where are you?’ Falcone barked.

  ‘On my way to the Piazza Navona.’

  ‘Don’t bother. He’s been busy again. Meet me in the Corso, the church on the little piazza, halfway along. You know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Falcone paused for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Did you get anything out of her? Anything we can use?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The woman. That was the idea. Remember?’

  ‘No,’ he said, wondering how much Falcone could hear inside his voice. ‘Nothing.’

  He heard the familiar bitter sigh.

  ‘Oh well,’ said the voice on the line. ‘And me with two men dead. The bastard’s going to pay for that. Nobody kills cops in this town. Not my men.’

  He couldn’t find the words. Falcone seemed more offended by the personal affront than the loss of Rossi and Cattaneo.

  ‘He was my friend,’ Costa said. ‘He …’ The words wouldn’t come out. He had to fight to stop himself pulling into the side of the road and falling apart.

  ‘I know,’ Falcone acknowledged. ‘He was a good guy underneath it all.’

  Even at that point Falcone had to make some judgement. Costa wondered why he worked with the man, why he did as he was told.

  ‘One more thing,’ Falcone ordered. ‘Don’t eat breakfast. Even Crazy Teresa couldn’t smile through this one.’

  He thought about that, recalling the evening the three of them spent together in the restaurant in Testaccio, in what seemed like another lifetime. There were other reasons, ones Falcone couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Hey. A question,’ Falcone added. ‘You come from farming stock. How many brothers and sisters you got?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You ever meet another peasant family smaller than that?’

  Costa was baffled by the question. ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘Think about it. Farmers breed kids like they breed livestock. They need them to make the whole thing work.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So where’s Gino Fosse’s siblings, huh?’

  He recalled the file. ‘Fosse didn’t have any. He was an only child. Maybe the mother had a medical problem or something?’

  Falcone’s dry laugh echoed in his ear. ‘We got someone to talk to the local doctor about that. You’re right. According to him she was barren. So what happened there? A miracle?’

  He was headed for the big junction in the Lateran square. Here the traffic was starting to get heavy: trucks and buses hustled each other for position at the lights. He felt his concentration fading.

  ‘No such thing,’ he said, then turned off the phone. He didn’t want to hear Falcone any more. He didn’t want to think about Gino Fosse’s family background. There was a picture in his head: of Sara beneath him, naked, a half-musical sigh emerging from her lips. The taste of her returned, a physical entity in his mouth. Somehow, and this made him feel ashamed, it even obscured the image of Luca Rossi, the big man, who was now dead on some slab in the morgue.

  FIFTY-TWO

  He stopped a little way off from the church and watched the circus growing in the piazza. The media pack was out in force beyond the railings. He couldn’t blame them. Valena was a celebrity, a fading one too, which, in some strange way, made the story even better. He was beginning to recognize the reporters now. These were some of the people who’d doorstepped the farm until the hunt had moved on. One, a woman with one of the seedier dailies, caught sight of him and walked over. She was about thirty, pretty, with fiercely hennaed hair and a determined face.

  ‘How’s the back?’ she asked. ‘I heard he cut you up pretty badly.’

  ‘You heard wrong,’ he snapped.

  ‘Look,’ she said, unmoved by his aggression. ‘It’s just a job. You’re doing yours. I’m doing mine.’

  ‘They don’t match.’

  ‘Really? How many hacks have you seen on corruption charges recently? Nothing personal but we’re just looking for some socially acceptable reasons to justify felling a few trees. We tend to hunt as a pack and it’s not a pretty sight, I know. To be honest it’s a little like attending a meeting of gargoyles anonymous most days. We’re not crooked. Neither are you from what I hear but you’re not exactly standard issue.’

  To her surprise he didn’t take it badly.

  ‘Greta Ricci,’ she said, extending a hand. He shook it quickly. ‘I’m sorry. Mornings are not my time. This is the big one, isn’t it? Arturo Valena. What a way to go. And those two poor cops last night.’

  ‘There’s no point in asking me. You probably know more anyway.’

  She lit a cigarette. He waved away the smoke. ‘No problem. I wasn’t after anything. It’s all running away from me anyway. One of the TV bastards has got something up his sleeve. I can tell from the smug look on his face. One more fuck-up and they’ll have me off crime altogether and writing make-up advice or some such shit. I have this anarchical idea that somehow reporting’s all about digging stuff up. Whereas what you’re really supposed to do is suck up to the big people, your people, the politicians, then take down notes when they feel like leaking something. If I’d wanted to be someone’s secretary I’d have worn a shorter skirt and learned how to type properly.’

  Costa was interested. ‘What do you think he might have?’

  ‘Search me. The way this story’s been running it could be anything. Craziest job I’ve ever worked on. But I’ll tell you this. There’s something up with the Vatican. I heard him calling the media people there, all quietly so he thought none of us could hear. He’s asking for something from them. God knows what. I mean, this Fosse guy was a priest, sure. All the same, you can’t blame them for what he’s done, can you?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine the connection.’

  She sucked on the cigarette, stared at him, knowing he was lying, then handed over a card. ‘Listen. If you ever feel like leaking something …’

  He put it in his pocket. ‘I thought you were against that.’

  The woman looked him up and down. ‘From you I think it would be different.’

  He nodded and said, ‘I have to go. Ciao.’

  Then he crossed the piazza, pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring their questions, showed his ID to the uniformed men on the gate and walked into the church.

  There was a stink there, an odd mixture of burnt wood and meat. The forensic team was gathered around a low metallic object upturned on the floor, next to a pile of ashes. A thin wisp of grey smoke still worked its way upwards from the embers in the middle of the nave. The body was gone. He was glad of that, after Falcone’s warning. In the far corner of the church, penned in by two uniformed cops, stood a straggle of dogs undergoing slow and careful examination by another of the forensic team.

  Teresa Lupo was on a bench not far from the metal grille, her back to him, hunched, miserable. Nic Costa walked over and sat by her side. She’d been weeping.

  He took her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Teresa. I should have been there.’

  Her damp eyes turned on him, full of sorrow. ‘Why? So you could die too? What’s the point of that?’

  ‘Maybe … I don’t know.’

  Her mood changed from grief to fury in a second. ‘Maybe it would have been different? Is that what you mean? Don’t fool yourself. I talked to people who were there. This … monster just popped them, as if he were putting down an animal. He’d have killed you. He’d have killed anyone who stood in his way. That’s what he’s like. It doesn’t mean anything to him. None of this does. It’s as if
it’s all a game. Or as if he’s in hell already and thinks this is the way he’s supposed to behave, like he’s handing out punishment to anyone who deserves it.’

  ‘Luca didn’t deserve it. He was a good man. He was …’ His own eyes began to sting. ‘I could have learned a lot from him.’

  She pummelled at her nose with a handkerchief then squeezed his hand. ‘He’s in the morgue right now. I’ve got to go back for the autopsy after this.’

  This sudden practical turn shocked him. ‘You don’t have to do that. Get someone else.’

  ‘What?’ She looked surprised. ‘Nic, this is my job. In any case what’s on that slab isn’t him. Not any more. I’ve dealt with enough bodies over the years to know that. When they’re gone they live in just one place. Here …’ She tapped her lank, dark hair with a strong finger. ‘He’ll be there a long time. I liked the stubborn old bastard.’

  ‘He felt the same about you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, with the hint of a smile. ‘I think he did too. He didn’t call me Crazy Teresa, did he? Not behind my back.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He grimaced. It was hard to shrink from the truth when she turned on the heat.

  ‘It was just that you scared him sometimes. Not because of who you are but because of him. Because he didn’t like …’

  He fell silent.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He didn’t like having those feelings. They disturbed him.’

  ‘Seems to go with the job,’ she replied, staring at him. ‘Tell me. Is that why you all do this? To get the excuse you want?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’