A Season for the Dead nc-1

by David Hewson

  Nic Costa lay back on the crumpled bedclothes, 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. He felt a fool.

  He’d let Marco’s magic, and Sara’s 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 the jumble of some half-waking nightmare.

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

  The livid stain of a new dawn was breaking over Rome as Nic Costa drove along the deserted road, toward 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 Via 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,” Costa said, wondering how much Falcone could hear inside his voice. “I got 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 was my friend,” Costa said. “He…” The words wouldn’t come out. Falcone seemed more offended by the personal affront than the loss of Rossi and Cattaneo. Costa had to fight to stop himself from pulling onto 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 judgment. 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.”

  Nic thought about that, recalling the evening the three of them had 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?”

  “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 anymore. 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. Somehow, and this made him feel ashamed, it even obscured the image of Luca Rossi, the big man, now dead on some slab in the morgue.

  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. Who could 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 staked out 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 him. “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 up 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. “Greta Ricci,” she said, extending a hand. He shook it.

  “I’m sorry,” she went on, “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. “No problem. I wasn’t after anything. It’s all running away from me anyway. One of those TV bastards has got something up his sleeve. I can tell from the smug look on his face. One more fuckup and they’ll have me off crime altogether and writing makeup 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 clustered around a low metallic object upturned on the floor, next to a pile of ashes. A thin wisp of gray smoke still worked its way upward from the embers in the middle of the nave. The corpse was gon
e. 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 sat on a bench not far from the metal grill, 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 grief. “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. Killing 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 pummeled 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.”

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

  “What?” She looked surprised. “Nic, this is my job. In any case, what’s on that slab isn’t him. Not anymore. I’ve dealt with enough bodies over the years to know that. When they’re gone they live 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.”

  “Oh, I think you do. You tell yourself you’re like this because of what you do. But is it just faintly possible there’s another reason? That you picked this stupid profession because it allows you to be what you are and never have to take the blame?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, thinking that she could have been talking of herself. Teresa was a quasicop. That much had become obvious over the past few days. What turned them on, turned her on too. “That’s right. You see through us all.”

  Her hand touched his knee. The tears stood big in her eyes now. “I’m sorry, Nic. I’m so sorry. I’m just lashing out because it feels good, except it doesn’t. I didn’t mean it.”

  He folded his arms around her, felt her overlarge body press against his. “Don’t apologize,” he said. “Anyway, you’re right.”

  She wiped her streaming nose with her sleeve. “Maybe for Luca. You… I don’t know. You want to do something, don’t you?”

  “Do I?” he asked mournfully, not wanting an answer. He nodded at the activity across the nave. “What happened here?”

  “Someone had a barbecue. Let the dogs in to clean up afterward.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It was that TV creep, Valena. Falcone’s livid, which I guess ought to impress me, except that it’s weird. You’d almost think this was about him, not two dead cops and God knows who else. Seems to think he knows all the answers too. When this is over, Nic, I’m taking a break. Maybe I’ll go back to the university, teach for a while. I don’t mind the work. Truth is, it’s the best there is. It’s just the people. Falcone in particular. He’s… I don’t know. Luca loathed the man and I trust his judgment. Let’s leave it at that.”

  He said nothing. It was unwise to respond.

  “How’s she doing?” Teresa asked.

  “Who?”

  “Sara Farnese. She’s still staying with you, isn’t she?”

  “She’s fine,” he said automatically.

  “Fine?”

  He wilted under the ferocity of her gaze.

  “Nic. Whatever she is, and I sometimes wonder if you’re even mildly qualified to judge, she is not ”fine.“Look at what’s happening here. Look at what someone’s doing because of her.”

  “You sound like Falcone. It doesn’t mean it’s her fault.”

  She sighed, exasperated. “I didn’t mean it was, not for an instant. I meant that she knows this is to do with her. She feels responsible to some extent, however much she may try to hide it. She’s not ”fine.“And one other thing. She apparently slept with Valena. She never told us about that.”

  “She said there were some others. She just didn’t know the names.”

  The look on her face was just inches short of contempt. “She didn’t know the name of Arturo Valena? The moron was on the box every night. In the papers too. Where does she live, this woman of yours? In a convent? Except when she’s out screwing?”

  She waited for an answer. Nothing came. Then she watched the team working on the iron grill, watched the men examining the dogs for traces of Arturo Valena’s flesh. It was all pointless. Everyone knew what had happened. A lunatic had stepped out of the dark and death followed in his shadow.

  “I’ve got work to do,” she muttered, and joined the team with the dogs.

  Nic Costa felt as if his head would burst. He was exhausted. He was confused. Then he heard a commotion at the door. Falcone walked in, flanked by some cops Costa recognized only by sight. Costa knew the investigation was moving away from him. Now that the big man was gone, now that he was reduced to little more than a bodyguard for Sara, Falcone had brought in a larger, more experienced team. Costa wondered what could be left for him to do.

  Falcone waved him over. He was carrying a briefcase and Teresa Lupo had been right. His eyes refused to meet Nic Costa’s at first. He looked lost, distraught, furious.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked. “Crazy Teresa. I heard they were an item.”

  “She’s pretty cut up.”

  “Join the club. Jesus. How dare this asshole touch my men? Does he think there’s some kind of equivalence between them and dirtbags like Valena? I’ll put the fucker down myself if I get the chance.”

  “Wouldn’t help.”

  Falcone glowered at him and there was a little of his old self in the expression, asking: Is that so? He took Costa to one side. “You watch TV?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “You should. It’s good sometimes. Going to get better too now that that fat jerk’s not preaching at us every night.”

  Falcone barked at the team to start questioning forensics and anyone they could find living in the vicinity. Then they walked outside, into the fast-rising heat and Falcone opened the door of the police Mercedes, ushering him into the passenger side and sitting next to him.

  “Where are we going?” Costa asked. “Do you know where Fosse is?”

  “No idea. Be patient.”

  Costa nodded at the church. “No time for patience.”

  Falcone shrugged. “Show a little trust, kid, we’re almost there. Remember what I asked you? About Gino Fosse’s family?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yeah.” Falcone looked at his watch. It was just coming up to six.

  Then he flipped open the cover of the little LCD screen in the dashboard, switched off the navigation system and tuned in to the TV channel. “Well, watch. After that you can go and see
Rossi’s sister. Act sympathetic. We don’t want to get sued.”

  “His sister?” Costa asked, furious with himself that he didn’t even know Rossi had a relative in the city.

  “He didn’t tell you? They lived together in some apartment out near Fiumicino. Go talk her down from whatever state she’s in. Tell her I personally guarantee the bastard who did this is going down for good. After that… take the day off. Go spend some time with that father of yours. Go fishing. I don’t care. You’re not going to be around when Denney runs. I want people with some real time under their belt.”

  Costa said nothing, hating himself for the way he took this. Then the news came on. Valena’s dreadful death led the newscast. Costa listened to the details they gave.

  “Is that right?” he asked Falcone.

  “Should be. I gave them the briefing myself.”

  “You didn’t hold anything back?”

  “What’s the point? We know who we want. I could put him in the dock today without a scrap more evidence.”

  “But we don’t know why.”

  Falcone put a finger to his lips, gave him that cold smile, then pointed to the screen. There was a stock picture of Michael Denney on it, and a recent photo of Gino Fosse too. Costa listened to the newscaster, amazed. Then he turned to Falcone.

  “The DNA? That’s why you wanted something from his apartment? To prove this?”

  “The DNA report doesn’t come back until this morning. That was the idea but I didn’t need it anyway. A little bird behind the Vatican walls started to sing for me. I’ve got documents. I’ve got pieces of paper that are proof, just as much as some stupid lab test.”

  Falcone smiled. “Gino Fosse is Denney’s son. We still don’t know who the real mother was. But he was taken from her at birth, given to that couple in Sicily. Denney’s managed to hush it up for years.”

  Costa found it impossible to think. Nothing made sense. “Why leak it to the media? What does it mean anyway?”

  “I want that crooked bastard. I want him out of that place where he’s sitting pretty, looking out of his window, thinking nothing can touch him. If we let him run from there, anything can happen. If we cut a deal, I’ll stick to it. As long as the rules stay the same. But if the son comes in, that’s different. We get him too and take the father in for protection. Because that’s what this is all about. That’s what Gino Fosse is trying to say. That he keeps on killing until he gets the one he wants. His old man.”