Sacred Cut

by David Hewson

He didn’t answer that.

  “Oh,” Teresa said with a heavy sigh which indicated, Costa thought, that she perceived some personal interest on his part. “In that case let me simply say this: Emily Deacon strikes me as a very intelligent, very honest woman. Which, given the situation she’s in, may be part of her problem.” She paused, surprised, perhaps, by the thought that followed, and what prompted it. “Honesty’s a risky trait in this business, don’t you think?”

  That was about Gianni Peroni. He couldn’t miss it.

  “No,” he said with some conviction. “Honesty’s all we’ve got. And Gianni’s OK, if that’s what you mean. He saved that kid’s life last night.”

  “I know. He was brave as hell. What else do you expect? But is that what saved them? I’m not so sure. Gianni said something about a message. Busy, busy, busy. Not one he understood, though.”

  “All the same—”

  She interrupted him. “All the same he’s doing fine because he’s kind of adopted that Kurdish kid. I know what’s in his head. He thinks some cousin of his will take her on full-time or something. Then she can get regular visits from Uncle Gianni. But he needs to break that habit, Nic. This is a tough world. You can’t hope to cure it with just love and honesty and putting away bad guys from time to time.”

  “Why the hell not?” This was the kind of sentiment he got too often from Falcone.

  “Because it breaks you in the end. It weakens you. I can see that happening with Gianni already. He’s guilty over his family. He’s … vulnerable. More than you think. He’s got to learn to bury some of this deep down inside, otherwise it’s just going to mess him up. I know. I love the man.”

  From the sudden blush on her face it was obvious this had just slipped out. “By which I mean,” she corrected herself, “I think he’s a wonderful human being. All that caring. All that compassion. I wonder what the hell he’s doing in a job like this. Whether he can keep it up.”

  She frowned. “I used to wonder that about you once upon a time. Now … You’ll make it. That’s good.”

  “And Emily Deacon?” Costa asked. “What about her?”

  “A part of me says she’d love to walk straight out of that job and sit in the corner of an old building somewhere, sketching away. Have you talked painting with her yet?”

  “No,” he replied, a little offended.

  “You will. A part of me says Emily is deeply, deeply pissed off about what happened to her father. So hung up over what happened, maybe, that she’d do anything to put it straight. Regardless of the consequences. Regardless of the pain it might cause her or anyone who gets in the way. Do you understand what I mean?”

  Costa did. He’d known it all along. He just needed her to confirm it.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Get a coffee. Wait for Falcone to call.”

  She looked at her watch. “To hell with budgets. I hate numbers. Also I’m supposed to be off duty. Let’s make that two coffees.”

  They walked out of the gloomy morgue building, then round the corner to the little cafe Teresa Lupo used. It wasn’t popular with cops. That was one reason why she liked the place. The ponytailed teenager behind the counter looked a little scared when she walked in. He usually did. That meant the coffee came quickly and was, as usual, wonderful.

  As good as the Tazza d’Oro. Nic recalled Emily Deacon talking about her favourite cafe, then glanced at his cup and wondered whether he wouldn’t be better off going round there and checking it out.

  Teresa Lupo’s hand fell on his arm. “Relax for a moment, Nic. You and Gianni aren’t the only cops in Rome.”

  But it felt that way just then. Falcone had pulled them aside for some reason of his own, one he had yet to explain.

  “Talk to me about Christmas,” Teresa said. “Tell me what it was like in a pagan household.”

  Was that really what the house on the Appian Way was? Nic Costa knew he suffered from the same misapprehension as every kid. The childhood you got was the normal one. It was everyone else’s that was weird.

  And a few memories did come back. Of food and laughter and singing. Of his father drinking too much wine and behaving, for once, as if there was no tomorrow, no great battle to be fought, nothing to do in the world except enjoy the company of the people around you, people who loved you and were loved in return.

  “It was happy,” he answered.

  She was already ordering her second macchiato. Teresa drank coffee as if it were water. “What more can anyone ask?” she wondered.

  “Nothing,” he muttered.

  His phone was ringing. Falcone had promised to call.

  “Nic,” Emily Deacon said. She sounded distant, tired and scared.

  “Emily. I’ve been looking—”

  She interrupted him briskly. “Not now. I don’t have the time. You must listen really carefully. It’s important. You have to trust me.

  Please.”

  “Of course.”

  There was a pause on the line. He wondered how convinced she was.

  “I’m with Kaspar,” she said finally. “I can bring him in, Nic. No more killings. No more bloodshed. But you’ve got to do what I say, however crazy it sounds. Otherwise—”

  There was a noise at the other end of the line. Something physical, something like a scuffle.

  “Otherwise, Nic,” barked a cold American voice, “you and Little Em don’t ever get to have fun.”

  Costa listened. When the call was over, he found Teresa Lupo staring at him with that familiar look of tough, deliberate concern he’d come to recognize and appreciate.

  She pushed back the empty coffee cup, looked around the empty cafe. “Like I said, Nic, I’m off duty. If there’s anything …”

  PERONI LOOKED AT the men behind the desk, ran through the short yet precise brief Falcone had given him in the lift and wondered what a new career would be like. Maybe he could go back home and see if there was an opening for a pig farmer near Siena. Or ask the girl in Trastevere for a job doling out ice-cream cones. Anything would be better than facing more time with these three: Filippo Viale, smug as hell, with an expression on his face that said you could sit there forever and still not get the time of day; Joel Leapman, sullen and resentful; and Commissario Moretti, neat in his immaculate uniform, pen poised over a notepad, like a secretary hanging on someone else’s orders.

  “You sure had a good argument there,” Leapman observed. “Don’t you think it’s time you worked on your personal skills?”

  Peroni glanced at Falcone, thought what the hell, and said quite calmly, “I am tired. My head hurts. I’d rather be anywhere else in the world than this place right now. Can I just announce that if I hear one more smart-ass piece of bullshit the perpetrator goes straight”—he nodded at the grimy office window—“out there.”

  Moretti sighed and glowered at Falcone.

  “Sir?” the inspector asked cheerily.

  “Keep your ape on a leash, Leo.” Moretti sighed again. “You asked for this meeting. Would you care to tell us why?”

  “To clear the air.”

  “And Emily Deacon,” Peroni said. “We’d like to know some more about her.”

  The American grimaced. “I’ve already told you. I have no idea where she is.”

  “Do you think Kaspar’s got her?” Peroni asked.

  The three men opposite looked at each other.

  “Who?” Leapman asked eventually.

  “William F. Kaspar,” Falcone answered.

  Peroni watched the expressions on their faces. Viale looked impassive. Moretti was baffled. Leapman looked as if that rare creature, someone he loved, had just died.

  “Who?” the American asked again.

  Falcone glanced at Peroni. The big man reached over the desk, grabbed Leapman by the throat, jerked him hard across the metal top, sending pens and a couple of phones scattering. Peroni held Leapman there, close enough to his face to give him a good view of his stitches and bruises. The FBI agent looke
d scared and shocked in equal measure. Viale still sat in his seat, smirking. Moretti was out of his chair, back against the wall, watching the scene playing out in front of him in horror, lost for what to do.

  “Clearly that burger I shoved in your face didn’t make the point,” Peroni said quietly to Joel Leapman, who sweated and squirmed now in front of him. “We’ve had enough, my American friend. I’ve been beaten up because of your lies. I’ve watched a little child terrified for her life. We’ve got people putting themselves in harm’s way. Good people, Leapman. So it’s time now to cut the crap. Either we start to hear something resembling the truth from you or this little charade comes to an end this minute. We’re done playing dumb cops. Understand?”

  Moretti finally found his voice. “You!” he yelled, pointing at Peroni. “Back off now! Falcone?”

  “What?” the inspector snarled back. “Look at the state of the guy. Look at your own man, Moretti. It’s the least he’s owed.”

  Then he patted Peroni on the shoulder and said quietly, “You can let him go, Gianni. Let’s listen to what he’s got to say.”

  Peroni released his huge paw from Leapman’s throat and propelled the American back across the table.

  “Viale?” Leapman’s snarl was full of threat. “Do something.”

  The SISDE man opened his hands and smiled. “Tut, tut. This is my office, Leo. I don’t want anything untoward happening here. Let’s have a little calm. What’s the problem? This is just police work. Take orders. Do as you’re told.” He paused and glared at Peroni. “Get yourself some new minions too. That way you can keep your job.”

  Falcone looked him up and down. “No, it isn’t.”

  Viale looked puzzled. “Isn’t what?”

  “Police work. And I’m not worried about my job, Filippo. Are you?”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Viale murmured.

  “I’m not. I’m just putting things straight. You see this …”

  He pulled the orders from the Chigi Palace from his jacket pocket and dropped them on the table. “These have your name on them and Moretti’s too. That ought to worry both of you. A lot.”

  Viale made a conciliatory gesture. “Leo …”

  “Shut up and listen,” Falcone barked. “Although you people seem to have forgotten the fact, there is such a thing as a legal system in this country.”

  “There’s also such a thing as protocol—” Viale began to say.

  “Crap,” Falcone interrupted. “There’s right and there’s wrong. And this is very, very wrong. I checked. You can’t just write out a couple of blanket protection orders like parking tickets. There are rules. They need a judge’s signature, for one thing.”

  Falcone pushed the papers over towards the SISDE man. “You don’t have that, Filippo. You’re just trying to fool me with some fancy letterhead and bluster, and hope I’d never notice.”

  Moretti bristled inside his black uniform and stared at Viale. “Is that true?” he demanded.

  “Paperwork,” the SISDE man said to Falcone, ignoring the commissario. “Bureaucracy. People don’t work that way these days, Leo. I don’t. I don’t have to. Surely you know that?”

  “It’s the law,” Falcone said quietly. “You can’t pick and choose the parts you want. None of us can. Not even you. You know that too. That’s why you just put a few SISDE signatures on there, badgered Moretti to do the same, and never bothered with the judiciary at all. You couldn’t handle this case yourself. It’s just too damn public. You had to get us on your side and you had to break the rules to get there.”

  Viale’s phoney friendliness finally failed him. The dead grey eyes surveyed the two cops on the other side of the desk. “Is that so?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” Falcone continued. “The only circumstance when an order like this gets judicial approval is if it’s a matter of national security. Our national security. Not that of another country. Though I don’t believe even that’s the case here. You’ve deliberately railroaded a genuine investigation into a case which involved the murder of an Italian citizen. You’ve jerked around the police, you’ve given a carte blanche to a foreign security service to work here unimpeded, all outside Italian law. And for what? So Leapman can pursue some kind of personal vendetta against an individual we have every right to arrest on our own account. I could throw you in a cell right now. I could pick up the phone and have you in front of a magistrate by lunchtime.”

  Viale sniffed and considered this. “You’re a judge of what is and isn’t national security, are you?”

  Falcone smiled. “Until someone proves me wrong I am. So, gentlemen, are you going to do that? Do we get to hear who William F. Kaspar actually is? Or …”

  He left it there.

  “Or what?” Moretti asked.

  “Or do we arrest all three of you and haul you up in front of a public court for …” Falcone turned to Peroni. “How many did we have the last time we added them up?”

  “Oh.” Peroni frowned, counting them off on his fingers, staring at the ceiling like a simpleton, pretending it was hard to remember. “Conspiracy. Wasting police time. Forgery of official documents. Illegal possession of weapons. Use of the electronic media to issue criminal threats. Breach of the death registration rules. Withholding information—”

  “You dare threaten me, Falcone!” Viale raged. “Here! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

  “I think so,” Falcone answered quietly. “And also we have these.”

  He took the sheets of paper out of the envelope and threw them on the table. Leapman snatched them up and stared at them, aghast. They were copies Costa had made that morning of the material Emily Deacon found the day before: the Net conversations and, most damning of all, the memo from 1990. The one labelled “Babylon Sisters.”

  “Where the hell did you get this?” Leapman murmured.

  “From Emily Deacon,” Falcone replied. “And now she’s missing.”

  “That little bitch sure knows a lot of things she’s not supposed to. I thought—”

  “What?” Peroni snapped. “That she was just a dummy? Like the rest of us?”

  “Yeah,” Leapman agreed with a sour face.

  Peroni pointed a hefty finger in his direction. “Wrong again, smart-ass. And here’s another thought. What if she’s dead too? You don’t honestly think you can keep that under wraps, do you?”

  It was remarkable. Leapman was thinking then, exchanging glances with Viale. Something was going on. Peroni risked just the briefest of glances with the man at his side. The twinkle in Falcone’s eyes told him he wasn’t wrong. The ruse had worked. They were through.

  Leapman shook his head and muttered, “This is a mess. Such a mess.”

  Moretti had put down his pen and turned a sickly shade of white. “You told me none of this would happen, Viale,” the commissario complained. “You said—”

  Peroni took immense pleasure in breaking in. “Must be a hell of a pension you’ve built up over the years, Moretti. I was in that position once. Hurts like hell when they take it away from you. Mind you, jail too …”

  Moretti closed his eyes briefly, then shot Peroni a look of pure hatred. “You ugly, sanctimonious bastard,” he hissed. “You don’t have to deal with these people, day in, day out. You don’t have to listen to them pushing and pushing, threatening, cajoling: ‘Do this, do that.’ ”

  “I thought that was what you got paid for,” Peroni replied, then added a final, “sir.”

  “We don’t have time for this, gentlemen,” Falcone reminded them, glancing at his watch. “Where’s it going to be? Here, or in the Questura?”

  COSTA WAS GETTING DESPERATE. The picture of the heartless ultimatum Kaspar had set was starting to damage his concentration. Teresa was doing what she loved: cruising the Questura for any titbits of information she could glean by badgering people who, by rights, shouldn’t even be talking to her. Nic had taken on the task of working the street. No one answered the bell at the address Emily had mentioned. He�
��d peered through the window, looking at the sparse furniture, the kind you got in a rented apartment, not a real home, and thought about breaking in. It was difficult to see what it could tell him about what had happened there thirteen years before. Then he’d hammered on six doors to no avail. Struggling to decide what to do next, he watched one of the Jewish bakers lugging flour through the doorway of his tiny store, smelled the fragrance of fresh bread on the cold December air and, against his own wishes, felt his stomach rumble. He needed to approach this with the same cold, deliberate dedication that Kaspar was showing he possessed. Either that or he could panic them all into another bloody disaster.

  At the heart of the Piazza Mattei stood the little fountain of the tortoises. It was a modest creation by Roman standards, and possessed a comic touch that had amused Costa when he was a boy. Four naked youths, their feet on dolphins, were struggling to push four small tortoises into the basin at the summit of the fountain. It was ludicrous, almost surreal somehow. And today, he noted, the water was flowing.

  He walked to the fountain and climbed over the low iron rail protecting the structure from the carelessness of motorists negotiating the narrow alleys of the ghetto. Then he dipped a finger into the snow at its foot, in the central basin. The ice was melting. He looked at the sky. The bitter cold still blanketed the city, but a change in the weather was imminent.

  It had to be. Something in the human psyche lost sight of facts like these from time to time. When extraordinary events occurred, one adapted, almost came to regard them as normal, forgetting to allot them the perspective they merited. Rome would return to the way it was supposed to be in December. Planes would fly again, buses and trains would run almost on time. One way or another, the killings would cease. Chaos, by its very nature, was impermanent.

  What mattered was bringing events to a close quietly, with as little damage as possible. Nic didn’t know if he could do that. Falcone was in his meeting, but once he emerged he’d be on the phone, asking questions. Would Costa have any answers? If he did, would he be inclined to share them with his boss?

  And …

  He had to ask himself. How much of the truth was Emily telling him? Ever since the previous night when he’d forced her to confront the idea that her father was the man behind Kaspar’s miserable fate in Iraq, he’d felt there was something she was concealing.