by David Hewson
It would have been worth it, Michael Denney thought. Just for those few short years. Even so, a part of him said that what had happened was for the best. In this place, his route of his life forked in two possible directions, and bitterness lay down both. At least there was a part of her still in his life now, though she was not undamaged, for which he was entirely to blame.
“I’m still a fool,” he said. He put the suitcase on a chair and opened it. Then he took off his jacket, removed the long priest’s surplice and pulled it over his head, letting the black gown fall down toward his ankles. He went into the case again, came out with the hair coloring and dabbed it carefully on his silver head, rubbing in the dark dye, running it through his locks with his fingers, wiping his hand with a cloth when the job was done. He looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had an unnatural sheen to it. Apart from that and a few extra lines, he could have been the priest he was more than thirty years before, ministering to the poor, deprived Irish areas of Boston. An anonymous man. One who hardly merited a second glance.
He smiled at this image of himself. Then he looked up at the boxes on the wall which had, as he hoped, not changed in three decades. Methodically, working quickly, knowing there could be no delay, he began to turn off the lights in the church, one by one, leaving the switch covering the vestibule till last. Finally he threw that too and San Luigi dei Francesi fell into darkness. From beyond the door he heard noises: cries of surprise in the interior, fear perhaps, and a loud report, like a bulb bursting. Or perhaps a gun. A few people made for the door immediately. The storm had shut down the city by now, he guessed. There would be little light. Caravaggio would have recognized the scene.
When he walked out into the nave it was illuminated only by the spare, warm candlelight of the offerings in the chapels. Something was happening. There was fear in the darkness. Then it occurred to Denney he had forgotten one thing. The switch for the meters on the paintings was separate from the rest. He had left it turned on. Sure enough, there was a round, rich sea of light on one of the canvases: The Vocation of Matthew. It reflected on the image and threw back a waxy yellow tint onto the confused faces of the visitors who had gathered to admire the work.
Then the ancient mechanism of the light meter worked its way through the coin. The switch was thrown. Night consumed the belly of the church, partly rent only in places by the guttering flames of the votive candles.
From somewhere came a scream. He began to move, praying she would remember his brief and precise instructions.
65
Gino Fosse had listened to Cannonball Adderley twice, all the while watching the people come in and out of the church. There were more than there should be. It wasn’t that much of a tourist attraction. They had men there. Men pretending to look at the paintings on the walls, men pretending to pray. Michael Denney was nowhere to be seen. Gino knew him so well. He could recognize that distinguished silver head anywhere. It lived in his imagination twenty-four hours a day. He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past midday. Torrential rain sounded like drumbeats on the roof. The light beyond the windows was now a dull, threatening gray. He let the music come to a stop and knew he couldn’t listen to one more note. With a muttered curse he tore the earphones off and stuffed them back into the pocket of the white tunic along with the CD. Then he thought about the act, almost laughed, took the things out and put them on the pew beside him. There was no more need for them.
He removed the gun from his waistband and held it under the cover of the bench ahead. The metal was soon hot and clammy in his grip. “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” The melody ran through his head, sparking pictures in his mind: of Michael Denney dead. Of Sara, naked, staring mutely back at him as he thrashed over her, limbs spread-eagled in the shape of St. Andrew’s cross, one simple question in those sharp green eyes: Why?
“Because I thought you were like the rest,” he whispered, seeing her now, on the floor of the tower room in the Clivus Scauri, recalling the way she hardly fought, the shock in her expression. “I didn’t know.”
Not until Hanrahan whispered the truth in the darkness of San Lorenzo in Lucina, with the rats’ eyes glittering from behind the iron rack. From that point on, everything seemed a swirling, unreal dream.
He thought of his own end: a crouched, huddled figure, the white alb stained with red, the gun still pointed at his own temple. This was one final deliverance. He wasn’t waiting for them to get around to it.
“Where are you?” he murmured in a voice racked with tension.
The rain was bringing in too many people. They struggled through the door, most unaware of where they were, what they might see. The church was merely a refuge for them. He thought about that idea: It was what he’d always wanted it to be. He’d been cheated of that experience, by his father, by his own nature too.
“Where are you?”
Gino Fosse looked at the door and caught his breath. She was walking through the entrance, leading the young cop, the one he’d nearly killed a couple of days before. They were striding into the nave with no fear, no caution on their faces. It was impossible. He blinked to make certain this could be true. They were heading for the paintings now, over to where the small crowds had gathered. Were they looking for him? Or were they looking for Michael Denney? He racked his mind to try to find answers.
One small certainty made sense. He rose from the bench, the gun tight in his hand. “Sara!” His voice rose to a roar.
Her eyes met his across the nave. The cop watched him intently. He didn’t even move a hand to his jacket. They shouldn’t have been there, either of them.
Then the lights failed altogether. The electric bulbs died. He’d been staring straight at them, into the pool of light around the painting: the image of the naked madman murdering the prone Matthew on the ground, sword raised, ready to deliver the final blow.
“Run!” he bellowed, and raised the gun, firing a single shot into the black air.
There was still some light. A few bulbs remained lit in an adjoining alcove. People huddled there, whimpering, terrified, waiting. He staggered toward them but before he could get there even that was snatched from him. The wan lights failed with a clatter as the meter swung the switch. The image of Matthew, in his medieval costume, staring at the biblical Christ, asking “Who, me?,” faded to black.
Fosse loosed off two more shots into the air. A woman began screaming hysterically. As his eyes adjusted to the velvet gloom and the random sea of tiny candle flames that now shed the last illumination on the scene, something brushed past him, something black and fast-moving, a man who never spoke a word.
He swore and lunged to catch the fleeing figure. There was nothing there. Everything eluded his grasp. Everything was denied him. He stumbled forward, colliding with terrified bodies in the darkness, yelling every obscenity he could think of, screaming his father’s name, begging the black maw of the nave to give up his body for vengeance.
He stumbled against a pillar, slammed his face hard against the stone. A warm, sticky stream began to flow from his nose. He tasted blood on his tongue.
“Bastard!” he screamed, and let off another shot.
Something else collided with him, taking away his breath, almost bringing him to his knees. He recognized what it was: the iron railing that ran in front of the altar, the same kind of worked metal on which Arturo Valena had died screaming. He groped his way along it, toward the tiny sea of candles. The dark, glittering eyes, human this time, looked back at him in their reflection, scared, scattering as he approached.
“Bastard!”
A hand gripped his shoulder, turning him. Gino Fosse lashed out with the butt of the gun, missing, and found his arm thrust briskly aside.
The pool of light from a few guttering candles revealed the man’s face. It was the little cop. He held Fosse’s gun hand high above them. It wouldn’t be hard to overcome him, Gino thought. He didn’t look right for the part he was trying to play. But then perhaps none of them did.
“I didn’t come for you,” Gino murmured. “Get away. Take her with you.”
A face came out of the darkness. She looked at him, serene, controlled, unafraid, which was, he thought, stupid.
“You have to run,” he said. “They’ll kill you too.”
“Gino,” she answered, and a slim hand touched his face. He shrank back, unable to comprehend what was happening. “Come with us,” she said. “Don’t do this.”
He needed her gone. He didn’t want to face her. Her fingers moved against his skin.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know who I was. I should have told you.”
“Too late for that.” Gino shook his head, wishing he could get the pictures out of his mind. “Too late!”
“I forgive you,” she said. She seemed so calm. He wanted to believe her.
The little cop’s grip was relaxing. There were people moving nearby. He wanted to see their faces. He needed to see that silver head running away in the darkness.
“It’s what they want,” the cop said. “They’ve been using you, Gino. Who gave you the names? Who told you where to go and when?”
He thought of Hanrahan, smiling in the darkness of San Lorenzo in Lucina. “What does it matter?”
“Because they’re just playing with you, Gino,” the cop insisted.
He laughed. “You think I don’t know that?”
Sara’s face, compassionate, loving, stared at him. “Then why do it?”
He waved the gun in front of her. “Because this is what he deserves.”
“He’s our father,” she said. “He deserves our pity. Not our hate. If I can forgive you . . .”
The little cop seemed puzzled. Gino watched her face in the half-light. It could have been an image from a painting. She seemed so placid, so sure of herself. “Please,” she said. “We can belong to each other. We can heal ourselves if we want. Don’t let them use your fury for their own ends. Don’t give them that pleasure. Or they win.”
He listened hard in the dark space beyond them. They had to be there. The rats chattering away in the darkness, shredding what little was left of his soul. But all he could hear, deep inside his head, was the refrain of the music: Cannonball Adderley’s alto chanting Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy with an insistent lilting sadness, like a gospel singer praying for absolution.
“If you talk to people I know, Gino,” the little cop said, “there can be justice for them all. Your father. For these people who led you to do these things.” The cop hesitated. “Isn’t that what you want?”
Fosse thought again of the Irishman, his hot breath in his ear, saying those hated words in his ear in San Lorenzo in Lucina. How it would be so easy to make things right if only Michael Denney could be persuaded to flee from behind the Vatican’s high walls. He would like to see Hanrahan face justice, he thought. There was, when he considered it, so much he could tell them.
The cop’s hand went up and grasped the gun. Fosse let go, let him take it.
Nic Costa’s eyes flashed at Sara. “Try to find your father. He must be hiding somewhere. Keep him safe until I say so. I don’t know if the right people are here or not.”
In another situation, Costa knew, she would have kissed him quickly on the cheek. But her brother was still on a knife edge. Neither of them wanted to push their luck. Her hand reached out and squeezed his, then she was gone, a fleeting figure vanishing into the maw of the church.
Fosse stared after her, a wild animal look in his eyes, part fear, part rage. Nic Costa felt, for a moment, afraid. “Where is she?” Fosse asked. “Will she come back?”
“Sure, she’ll come back,” Nic said, trying to sound confident.
“I didn’t know,” Fosse said. “I did it to the others because they were whores. That’s what they were for. I didn’t know . . .”
Fosse’s black eyes stared into his. “It haunts me. I don’t want it in my head any longer.”
A part of him wasn’t mad at all, Costa realized, and then he let his mind go blank, unable to countenance the possibilities that lay within what he’d just heard. There was no time. People were moving through the shadows, big, dark bodies, men in jackets, men with a purpose. Costa wondered who would get there first, who might be in the church already. He’d tried to cover as many options as possible.
Someone brushed past him. An arm reached down toward the altar rail, some coins fell in the box there and, in a sudden, aching flash, the lights of the canvas burst into life.
Costa blinked at the image on the wall. It looked alive. If he tried, he thought, he would hear the assassin’s breathing, feel the strength of the light pouring out from the canvas, trying to shed its redeeming Grace on them all.
Then a familiar face, half lit by the yellow electric lamps, pushed between them.
“Where the hell is he?” Falcone demanded, snatching the gun away from him. “Denney? What have you done with the bastard?”
The people he called should have been here now. He could hear someone else moving through the darkness. They needed more light than this single wan pool of yellow in one corner of the nave.
“I never saw him,” he replied honestly.
“One way in, one way out,” Falcone said. “For Christ’s sake. Denney knew this place like the back of his hand. He’s gone. He must be gone.”
Costa said nothing, trying to think. One minute, she said. Just a little time to talk and to keep him safe. Although they must, he now realized, have spoken already that day. Was there really anything else left to say?
“And you . . .” Falcone’s finger jabbed into his shoulder. “You just can’t stay away, can you?”
“I think, sir,” he replied, “you should consider your position.” He looked into Falcone’s cold, bleak face. “You can’t carry on with this now. It’s bound to come out.”
Falcone shook his head. “What do I care about my position? To hell with it . . .”
Without warning he snatched a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, slammed one end on Gino Fosse’s wrist and locked the other to the iron railing. Costa looked into Fosse’s eyes. He was scared.
Falcone took Costa by the arm, peered closely into his face. “This bastard killed your partner. We’re walking away, kid. We’re done with this mess.”
The painting shone at him from the wall. Nic was unable to take his eyes off the figure in the background: Caravaggio himself, watching the murder which came from his own imagination, pitying the victim bleeding on the ground, pitying too the assassin led by fate to be the instrument of his death.
Falcone was dragging him now, by the arm, away from the scene. He struggled.
“Jesus!” Falcone threw Costa against a pillar, and snarled into his face, “I want you out of harm’s way, Nic. I don’t want any more dead men sitting around in my head.”
“No,” Nic Costa said softly. “I can’t let this happen.”
There were more bodies moving. Maybe they were the people Falcone expected. Maybe someone else. Nic thought he heard Teresa Lupo’s voice rising in the clamor. From somewhere a camera flashed. People were shouting. On the far side of the church a set of lights suddenly came on. Banks of bulbs followed them, marching around the ceiling as someone found the switches.
Costa looked at Falcone. The inspector’s bright eyes were darting around the church, trying to make sense of it all.
“This has got to stop,” Costa said, pushing himself out of Falcone’s grip. He fought free with a sudden jab, then raced the few yards to Gino Fosse. They were there. Two men. He pushed in front as they closed in on Fosse, raising their hands, guns gleaming in the wan light. He fought to take his eyes off the figures on the wall: the stricken man, his white tunic red with blood, the furious, naked attacker.
There was a noise that could have been the angry, leaden sky outside, a burning flash of bright light so intense it seared a raw, sharp pain somewhere behind his eyes. Nic Costa stared at the image on the wall: a bearded young man, watching in agony and amazement the bloody, vivi
d scene he had created. Then the face faded and with it the bright, life-giving light.
66
Leo Falcone had two appointments in his diary that chill October day. One was mandatory. For the second he would be an uninvited, unwelcome guest.
Disciplinary proceedings always left him cold. This was his third appearance before the tribunal in twenty-five years with the force. He knew what was required: an admission of some limited form of guilt, a display of penitence, the silent acceptance of a formal token of reproof. Perhaps they would dock his pay or make him attend some course of “retraining.” It was possible that he would be demoted, though he believed that unlikely. The Questura was scarcely overflowing with experienced officers to take his place.
Falcone’s position was plain. Whatever else had gone wrong, Gino Fosse was dead and the city rid of a vicious, psychotic killer. He had lost officers to this madman. His team had worked day and night trying to bring him to justice. Denney may have escaped, along with his daughter. There was more bloodshed than anyone wanted, even, he privately believed, those who initiated Fosse’s game and made its existence known to official quarters when it suited them.
But none of this could be easily laid at his door. The investigation they had ordered found no evidence of collusion among himself, the Vatican and the criminal parties who had gathered at San Luigi dei Francesi to kill the fleeing cardinal and his wayward son. There was talk in the wilder parts of the papers about a cover-up. The last, snatched pictures of the shooting in the church, taken by the woman journalist Nic Costa had sent there, continued to do the rounds. The two gunmen had escaped. They would, Falcone knew, never be found. So be it. This wasn’t the first time the authorities had acquiesced in order to forestall a greater furor. Given the nature of Roman politics, he doubted it would be the last. And the media had short memories. There would soon be another scandal to occupy them, another face to sell more papers.
