A Season for the Dead

by David Hewson

  There were footsteps across the big, bare office. Teresa Lupo was approaching, a folder in her hand. She looked dreadful, older than her years. He wondered if anyone would ever call her Crazy Teresa again.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

  ‘You caught me on the way out. Got some papers for Falcone. What do you want?’

  ‘Just to talk.’

  She took a good look at him, trying to judge his mental state. ‘I have to do the autopsy on Luca this afternoon. If you want to see him, it would be best now.’

  ‘Seen enough dead people for a while.’

  She sat down and put her folder on the desk. ‘Me too. And I never thought I’d say that.’ She was puzzled. ‘What are you doing here, Nic? Falcone’s throwing every man he’s got onto the street.’

  ‘I guess he doesn’t want me around. I’m supposed to deal with the loose ends over Luca. Contact the pension people. Do whatever you do when a cop gets killed.’

  She shook her head, baffled. ‘There are civilians who do that for a living. He doesn’t need the poor bastard’s partner to get involved.’

  ‘I don’t mind. He had a sister. Did you know that? She’s deaf and dumb. Luca took her out of the home and looked after her.’

  He took the photo out of his pocket and passed it across the desk.

  ‘What?’ She sighed. ‘He never mentioned a thing.’ She ran her hand across the photo, as if there was some of his presence still there.

  Then he threw across the book. ‘Luca kept notes too.’

  She opened it and stared at the contents. ‘Who’d have thought a big man would write like that? It looks like a girl’s hand or something. One screwed-up individual. And all these tiny doodles. Jesus. Poor fucked-up man.’

  There were scribbled headings with dates and times. It was a kind of diary, but one driven by Luca Rossi’s head more than actual events.

  ‘It’s what he was thinking,’ Costa said. ‘I just spent the best part of an hour inside his mind and I’m damned if I can get out again. It begins the day after that accident on the motorway, when he thought he was losing it. It’s …’ he hunted to get the right words, ‘a little insane, to begin with anyway. Some of it I just don’t understand at all. Rossi really thought he might be going mad. Then you come into it. Then Falcone.’ He stared at her. ‘Then me. It wasn’t meant for public consumption. You don’t have to take it personally.’

  She flicked through the pages. ‘He thought I was sweet? No one uses that word about me. Never.’ Then she turned the page and went quiet.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m not offended. Read it out. Maybe it will make more sense that way.’

  ‘“Kid Costa”.’ She spoke softly, even though the office was as good as empty. ‘“V. clever. V. naïve. Why the hell me?” What does that mean?’

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t end there.’

  A few pages later Rossi returned to the subject and didn’t mince words. She was surprised by the venom in the dead man’s words. She didn’t realize Rossi resented being Costa’s partner so much. He seemed offended by Nic’s innocence and, in particular, the way he had dealt with the Vatican.

  ‘I don’t want to look at this,’ she said, putting the diary down on the desk. ‘It doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s just Luca rambling. Doesn’t mean a damn thing.’

  ‘You think he was mad at me?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she admitted. ‘Or mad at himself. I don’t know.’

  ‘You haven’t read enough,’ he suggested. ‘He was mad with Falcone. He genuinely didn’t understand why the man was leaning on me like that. Luca thought I was taking too much on myself and not asking enough questions. Maybe he was right.’

  ‘Don’t resent a dead man, Nic. Luca liked you. He told me so himself and that means more than any crap in some stupid diary.’

  ‘No! I don’t resent him at all. I just kick myself for failing to see what he saw. He didn’t understand why Falcone kept putting me at the front of everything. Letting Sara stay at the farm so readily. Pushing me to pretend we were having some kind of relationship. As if …’

  It could be wrong to take this further. He was aware of her intense, concerned attention, aware too that he didn’t want to involve someone else in his own troubles.

  ‘I don’t like what I’m hearing, Nic.’

  ‘Then forget it once I’ve said it. But I have to ask, Teresa. Why me? Why not someone with more experience?’

  ‘You did your best.’

  ‘That’s not the point. I did what I was told. I always do, without question. And I should have been asking more questions. I should have made Luca want to say all this to me direct instead of putting it down on some piece of paper he thought no one else would ever see.’

  He took the diary and turned it to a page near the back. The tiny handwriting was even more extended here, as if Rossi was scribbling down his thoughts in a frantic rush. He stabbed his finger at the point in question. She took the diary and looked at the passage, trying to interpret the scribble.

  ‘“Rinaldi: dope in the bathroom. And they missed it! Message on the computer, appointment with the killer. And they missed it! Are we lucky or what? And this: someone from the Vatican phoned that morning to make the date. Fosse? No. He was in exile. Who?”’

  She looked at him and he wasn’t wrong now. Teresa Lupo was scared.

  ‘It was the obvious question and I can’t believe I never asked it. Gino Fosse couldn’t have made the arrangement to meet Rinaldi. He was banned from Denney’s office more than a week earlier. The way Rinaldi behaved in the library, looking for the video cameras, suggested there was some accomplice. This surely confirmed it, and makes it look like someone with access to Denney’s office. But we let our heads go somewhere else. We got taken up by events and never stopped to think about what was really happening.’

  ‘You had a serial killer on your hands. You knew who he was. Nic? What else do you expect?’

  ‘And something else,’ he said, ignoring the question. ‘I checked. Before Falcone sent us round to Rinaldi’s apartment the place had been searched by six experienced men who know scene of crime inside out. You see what Rossi’s asking himself here? How come they missed two such obvious and crucial pieces of evidence?’

  ‘People screw up. It happens all the time.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘Not like that. It’s too convenient. Rossi knew all along.’

  ‘So why didn’t he say anything to someone?’

  ‘Who to? Me? He tried to, I think. But I wouldn’t listen and look what he says in the diary. He didn’t think I could handle it directly. He thought that, if I suspected the truth, I’d take it too far, start screaming for justice instead of doing what he thought was right: keeping quiet, keeping my head down. He wanted to protect me as much as he could. Could he tell Falcone? Think about it. If Luca was right, the reason the search team found nothing in Rinaldi’s apartment was because there was nothing to find. Someone, Hanrahan maybe, put it there later. And then Falcone sent us round to find it. What interpretation do you think Luca put on that?’

  She was beginning to look around the room, making sure no one was eavesdropping. ‘Too much. You’ve got to look for simple answers. They always tell you that.’

  ‘You’ve got to look for answers that work. Do you believe Gino Fosse is doing all this on his own? Just ticking off a list of Sara Farnese’s lovers for the hell of it? Surviving in the city without any help?’

  She was silent. It was too much to accept. There had to be someone else.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no,’ he went on. ‘So let’s move on to the next point. Do you believe this is even about Sara Farnese at all? If he’s so pissed off with her, why didn’t he kill her when he had the chance? The two of them spoke, remember, when I was lying half conscious on the ground. She somehow persuaded this lunatic to let us both live. Have you worked out how?’

  ‘No.’ Her face said it all. It was ridiculous that they should both have surviv
ed.

  ‘There’s only one answer. Because I didn’t matter. Neither did she except as some kind of trigger for his actions. A trigger someone knew how to pull. How?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s psychotic, Nic. You saw those pictures. He’s sexually obsessed with her.’

  ‘That’s it? No. Someone made him like that. Deliberately. And then they set us on his tail knowing the direction we would take because it was a direction they had already laid out in advance.’

  It was the only explanation that made sense, but even so there were gaps. ‘And that destination was Michael Denney, all along,’ he continued, thinking about the man in the Vatican, with the Caravaggio copy on the wall of his poky little apartment, desperate for a life beyond those walls. ‘I picked up the fake appointment with his phone number attached to it. I brought him into this case just like I was supposed to. Luca was trying to tell me all along the whole thing stank. Now Falcone has the man wriggling on the line. He’s got the evidence that’s forced the Vatican to eject him.’

  His head was spinning, trying to comprehend the possibilities. ‘And it can’t just be Falcone.’

  She reached out and touched his hand. ‘You’re going too far, Nic. Take some advice. The world isn’t black and white. Sometimes you have to look the other way. Leave this alone.’

  He stared at her. ‘I don’t like “looking the other way”. It’s not why I came here. Think of the people who want Denney dead. A few politicians. A few mafiosi. A few people who worked alongside him in the Vatican. They know each other anyway. Luca understood that. I was too stupid to listen. Fosse is loose in the city, a crazy priest who’s never, as far as we know, had to fend for himself for one day of his life. Someone’s looking after him. Someone’s providing him with weapons and money presumably. Falcone couldn’t do that. The risk would be too great. I doubt it would come from inside the Vatican either. But there’s plenty of criminals who could help. We keep trying to fool ourselves this is just one lunatic working his way through a list. It’s not like that at all. This is a concerted, organized campaign. Three distinct sets of people, each with their own agenda, working together to get Michael Denney on the run because that will suit them all. I just walked right in and did what they wanted. Now Luca and some other poor cop are dead and Falcone’s walking round with something on his face you could just about mistake for guilt.’

  She glowered at him. ‘Don’t judge people without the facts. Not yourself. Not Falcone either. It was Gino Fosse who murdered these people. Whatever took him there. All of this is conjecture. Luca just had doubts, that’s all. There’s no evidence. Just a lot of inconsistencies.’

  ‘Inconsistencies,’ he repeated. ‘You’re right. Here’s the biggest. Why did Gino Fosse start in the first place? He was bad material, but there’s nothing to suggest he was a killer before. What was the trigger?’

  He recalled the picture on the TV: Sara Farnese with her arms around the old man. ‘They were lovers, I guess,’ he continued. ‘Sara and Denney. I know she denied it but they were anyway. Gino Fosse knew her through his work in the Vatican. He knew she was sleeping around somehow but not with Denney, not to begin with. When he found out …’

  He waited for her to interrupt, in vain. ‘He what? Went “crazy”? That’s all it ever comes down to and it isn’t enough. Gino Fosse is crazy, I don’t doubt it. Everything we know about these killings confirms that. But it still doesn’t tell us why it began.’

  He thought about Sara. She was an extraordinary woman. It was not just her beauty. There was some luminescent quality that made him need her, made him feel that her presence provided some form of completeness for his life. Gino Fosse could have felt this way. It would have been easy. Still, it wasn’t enough to kill for.

  ‘None of this makes sense,’ he said. ‘The way she slept with these people. Fosse’s reaction.’ He recalled the tiny tower on Tiber Island, with its smell of meat and blood. And the cryptic message that was still running round in his head.

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said. ‘Even Gino Fosse told us this wasn’t all it seemed. That’s why he wrote those lines on the wall. He was laughing at us all the time. He knew we’d look the wrong way. He was taunting us all along.’

  She looked into his eyes, not liking what she saw there. ‘You want some advice? Just go home. Pour yourself a drink. Read a book or something. Falcone’s put you out of this for a reason. There’s nothing more you can do.’

  He reached inside his jacket, pulled out the service pistol and put it on the table. It was a Beretta 92FS semi-automatic, the matt black police workhorse they all carried. The fifteen-round clip was full. He’d fitted the extra sight aid on the end of the barrel to make it more accurate. Not that it made much difference. Nic Costa was a lousy shot and knew it.

  ‘So you’re going to take on the world with that?’ she demanded.

  ‘I went into this job for a reason.’

  ‘They all do, Nic! Luca probably said the same thing when he joined. Falcone too. Then you see the world for what it is. You learn to bend, before you break.’

  He touched the black metal. ‘Bend enough to conspire in a judicial murder? Because, if I’m right, isn’t that what’s going on here? Falcone doesn’t plan to arrest Michael Denney. He just wants to step aside when some hood moves out of the shadows and does the deed. What’s the betting Fosse never makes it out alive either? What does that do for Falcone? One more feather in his cap. He gets to close all the options on the case, put a few corpses in the morgue he feels belong there, and probably pick up some money on the side. Is this the first time?Did Luca know that already? Am I the idiot around here?The only one who doesn’t know what’s going on?’

  She didn’t argue and that gave him his answer. Perhaps Luca Rossi had even spoken about it.

  ‘The gun won’t do you any good,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I was just going to hand it in. I quit. I threw my card at Falcone this morning. Enough’s enough.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she groaned. ‘I imagine that really made an impact. How many men do that to him in a week do you think? He adores that kind of thing. You can take it all back, Nic. Think of it as part of the initiation.’

  ‘Initiation?’ he asked, astonished. ‘Into what? A world of compromises? A world where you’re willing to cut deals with crooks, of all kinds, because that’s the easiest way to get what you want?’

  ‘There are people who’d say that’s just being pragmatic.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Falcone. Our man in the Vatican. The people it suits to think that way. Not me.’

  ‘So what do you think you can do?’

  ‘Something. Maybe.’ The words sounded lame as he said them. ‘Try to make sure this crap doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’

  ‘Then I look a fool. So what’s new?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Is there anything I can do to dissuade you from this madness?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ he shrugged.

  ‘You’re a stubborn kid.’

  ‘I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m not a kid. Not any more.’

  She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. The smoke curled out towards the open window, out into the smoggy heat of the morning. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘You’re not. You know what worried Luca most about you? He didn’t understand why you couldn’t let things go. Why you just hung on like a terrier when any rational person would just say enough’s enough. Luca knows what Falcone is. We all do. Listen to me well, Nic. That doesn’t make him a bad cop. This has all gone wrong for him now but you don’t think for a moment he would have countenanced any of this if he knew his own men would get killed, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I do,’ she said firmly. ‘And he doesn’t take money either. In his book, he’s as honest as they come. He just happens to think the ends justified the means. When you think that way, sometimes it all goes horribly wrong.’

  He thought about that. She was probably
on the ball. He could see the pain etched into the inspector’s bitter features. ‘So what if you’re right? Doesn’t bring Luca back. Doesn’t put me on his side either. Blame my old man. It must be in the genes.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Teresa Lupo looked at him then picked up the folder in front of her. ‘Hell, let’s live dangerously together. Here …’

  She took out two one-page reports and put them on the table, turned towards him.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘You wanted a reason why Fosse did what he did. You wanted a trigger. There it is and it isn’t anything any one of us could have guessed. Even Falcone I think, though someone else knows because they must surely have used it.’

  He looked at the pages. They were both DNA analysis reports from Fosse’s home in the Clivus Scauri. It took him a little while to understand. When the revelation came it was, somehow, a relief too, a final and welcome piece of the puzzle falling into place.

  He checked his watch. In ninety minutes Michael Denney would get into the car that would, surely, take him to his death. Then a memory entered his head: of the day he stood outside the church of San Clemente, with Jay Gallo’s drowned corpse inside, listening to Sara tell the tale of the fake Pope Joan and how she was torn to shreds by the mob once they understood her true nature.

  Teresa watched him, waiting for his response. ‘We just assumed what they wanted us to assume all along,’ he said. ‘That she was Denney’s mistress, sleeping with these people to try to help him. We never began to think there could be some other explanation.’

  ‘No,’ she said, with some regret. ‘Not that one.’

  He ran his fingers across the report. His head was fighting to get all this straight. There were so many answers here if he could put his finger on them. Explanations that tied up everything, and left Sara as much a victim as anyone. ‘This couldn’t be some mistake, Teresa?’