The Seventh Sacrament nc-5

by David Hewson

  They heard the pop of a bottle from the back of the house then the sound of laughter. Pietro marched back in, followed by Raffaella. He was bearing a bottle of prosecco; she had glasses and plates of supermarket crostini. They looked like a couple about to throw a dinner party, which was, Emily realised, quite close to the mark. She and Nic had never, it now occurred to her, been round to Falcone’s apartment in the evening. Leo and Raffaella weren’t that kind.

  “Not for me,” Emily said, turning away the glass with her hand. “I need a clear head.”

  “And I work best with a fuzzy one,” Arturo declared. “So serve, then back to the chopping board. Some of us have work to do.”

  “More fool you,” Raffaella murmured, on her way out.

  Arturo Messina’s face fell. “Perhaps she’s right,” he said with a sigh, after gulping at the brimming glass, an act Emily envied deeply. “What on earth can I do?”

  “What you said. Go and peel the potatoes.” She reached for the phone. “I, on the other hand, need to talk to the man who sent us all this in the first place.”

  “Not on your own,” he declared, dashing to plug in the conference phone. “Leo and I haven’t spoken for fourteen years. It’ll be a pleasure to hear his miserable voice again, just to hear the shock in it.”

  But she wasn’t listening. She found herself staring once more at the photos of Alessio Bramante. He was an unusual-looking boy. Beautiful, a little effeminate, perhaps, with his long hair and round, open eyes. It was easy to see how the papers would love a story featuring a kid like this: pretty, smart, middle-class, with a father who’d killed someone on his behalf. She knew from her time in the FBI that photogenic victims always got the best coverage.

  “Do you know what puzzles me most?”

  “No,” Arturo admitted. “What did they do to the kid? Was he still alive when Giorgio was trying to beat the truth out of that evil bastard? And why? Why were those students there in the first place? Why Giorgio and his son? There’s so much…”

  She agreed. There was. But the Bramante case had changed in nature once the father had been charged with murder. It had ceased to be a simple mystery about supposed child abduction. Instead, it had turned into a public debate about how far a parent should be allowed to go to protect his child. It had become as much the story of Giorgio Bramante as of his son. More, in a way, because Giorgio had been there on every front page, his picture on every news programme. He was an emblem for every last parent who’d ever looked down a dark street and wondered where a son or daughter had gone.

  “What puzzles me is simple,” she said. “You had teams and teams of men. You had mechanical diggers. It says here you virtually destroyed Bramante’s archaeological site looking for his son. And still you never found him. Not a single trace of him.”

  Arturo Messina licked his lips and, for a moment, looked his age. “He’s dead, Emily,” he said miserably. “Somewhere inside that hill. Somewhere we didn’t find or the cavers didn’t dare go.”

  In her heart, she knew she ought to believe that too. So why didn’t she?

  “What else,” Arturo Messina asked, “could possibly have happened?”

  * * *

  It felt like the old times. Ahead of them, past the long window of Falcone’s office, now vacated by the temporary inspector despatched elsewhere that afternoon by Bruno Messina, a team of fifteen men and women were working the phones and computers, sifting records, chasing leads, trying to find a simple answer to a complicated question: Where would a university professor turned murderer go to ground in his native city? They weren’t finding any easy answers. The scooter Bramante had used to flee the scene in Monti had been found abandoned in a back street near Termini station. From where he’d dumped the bike, he could catch the subway, the tram lines, the buses, the trains…

  Or, Costa thought, he could do what any Roman probably would in the circumstances. Walk. It wasn’t that large a city really. From Termini, Bramante — a fit and active man by all accounts — could be in any one of a number of suburbs on foot within the hour. And from there? Giorgio Bramante was no fool. He’d know, surely, that it was always simplest to be anonymous in a crowd. With time, the police could work the areas where the vagrant populations lived, shiftless, nameless people among whom any fugitive could easily disappear. Bramante may even have known such men in jail. He could be renewing an old friendship, or calling in favours from the past. For a man willing to sleep rough, able to find the thousands of underground caves hidden beneath the back streets and small parks throughout the city, Rome was an easy place in which to hide. Falcone had his officers running through the usual techniques. But the customary tools — video surveillance cameras most of all — were useless. The scope was too wide, the data too large to absorb. Bramante was a man playing by rules of his own making. That effectively made him invisible.

  The TV was running stock photos. The morning papers would repeat the exercise, all with pleas for help and a phone number set up to handle sightings. Costa had no good, clear recollection of Bramante’s appearance from their brief encounter that morning. He’d been too focused on Leo Falcone, too worried that the inspector was in grave danger, to think ahead that much.

  Still, the figure he remembered — dressed entirely in black, hat low, scarf around his mouth, scarcely anything visible of his face — provided enough for him to realise that the photos of Giorgio Bramante they had were hopelessly out of date. Fourteen years ago he’d been good-looking, clean-shaven, and sported long dark hair. Most of the photos taken before his arrest made him look like what he was: an intelligent, probably slightly arrogant academic. From what little Costa had glimpsed that morning, he now understood, very clearly, that Bramante didn’t fit that image anymore. Nothing could be taken for granted. They were locked inside a sequence of events Giorgio Bramante could have been planning for years. Unlike them, he was prepared, working on the basis of prior knowledge. It was possible, they all knew, that Bramante had managed to track down the elusive Dino Abati under whatever name he now bore. Abati would be thirty-three now. His parents hadn’t heard from him in years. But eighteen months before, he had been recorded reentering the country from Thailand. Since then there was no record of him departing through any international airport. Given the freedom of movement within Europe available to anyone with an Italian ID card, that could still put him anywhere from Great Britain to the Czech Republic. Costa wasn’t alone in wishing the man were anywhere else on the planet but Rome.

  There was a commotion on the far side of the office. Both he and Falcone turned their attention away from the pile of reports on the inspector’s desk and looked out into the pool of busy officers at their desks. Gianni Peroni and Teresa Lupo were marching through the aisles throwing out bags of panini and cans of soft drinks like a couple of Santas turning up at a child’s party.

  Leo Falcone laughed. It was an open, honest sound Costa hadn’t heard in a while. That of a man who was back in his element.

  “I don’t know why they’re feeding them,” Falcone complained cheerfully. “You’d think we were under siege. Being forced to stay here. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Not for you…”

  The grey eyebrows rose.

  “He could have killed you this morning,” Nic said.

  “He could have killed me this morning,” Falcone agreed evenly. “So why didn’t he?”

  “Perhaps he thinks this is some kind of a ritual, too. Everything has to be done in the proper way. None of the men he did kill went easily. A water jet through the chest…”

  “He hated them more than he hates me.” Falcone said it firmly. “Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do. In fact…” He shook his head, disappointed with his own abilities at that moment. “God. I wish I could think straight. Be honest. How am I doing, Nic? I may be a touch paranoid, but Bruno Messina could have more than one motive for giving me this job. Yes, you could say it’s my responsibility. But if I screw up the way his father screwed up, it won’t take m
uch to put my head on the block, too, will it?”

  “I think we’re doing everything we can. You have the manpower. We’ve followed practice. If someone’s seen Bramante…”

  “No one really knows what Bramante looks like anymore. Except whoever it is that’s helping him. We have to go through the motions, but I’m not holding out much hope. So how?”

  It was the old truism, one that most police officers tried to forget, because it tended to demean all the routine that went with a normal investigation.

  “Statistically I’d say… out in the street. When his mind’s on something else. His work. Or…” — he had to add this — “…on the way back.”

  Falcone nodded vigorously. His large bald head had lost its customary tan over the winter. He would turn fifty before the year was out, Costa remembered.

  “Quite right. But here’s another statistic for you, Nic. Although you’d rarely understand this from reading a newspaper today, a child is many times more likely to be at risk from his immediate family or friends than from a stranger. It’s not someone around the corner they need fear, usually. Or some Internet stalker. It’s those who are close to them.”

  Costa nodded. Of course he knew. The assumption, from the outset, was that the Bramantes were a perfect middle-class family, a photogenic one which, in the eyes of some, meant they felt the tragedy more than most.

  “There’s never been a suggestion that Bramante or his wife abused the child. Has there?”

  “No,” Falcone agreed with a shrug. “The middle classes don’t do that kind of thing, do they? At least, not so others get to know about it.”

  He motioned to some folders on his desk, blue ones, a colour the Questura didn’t use.

  “I called in the social service reports before you got here. Nothing, of course. We should still have looked more closely than we did. We allowed ourselves to be distracted by the media. The course of action we took was formed by public opinion, not what we should have been pursuing as police officers. Instead of justice, we sought vengeance, which is an ugly thing that respects no one, guilty or innocent. The curious part of all this is that I rather had the impression Giorgio Bramante didn’t mind. He already knew what he was going to do, even before we put him in court.”

  He peered out at the room full of officers, a few laughing with Peroni and Teresa, most head down over their computers.

  “And here we are almost fifteen years on, hoping that this time round we can pull some answers out of a machine. Progress… What do you think, Nic? How do we break this one?”

  Costa had formed firm opinions on that subject already.

  “Bramante isn’t an ordinary killer. He probably doesn’t expect to escape us in the end. Perhaps he thinks he’ll become the hero again. The wronged father who came back for justice on the louts who got away in the first place.”

  Falcone nodded. “And the police officer he holds responsible too. Don’t forget me.”

  “Perhaps,” Costa replied.

  “Perhaps?” Falcone asked.

  “You said it yourself. I don’t think this is about you. Or Toni LaMarca. Or Dino Abati, or whatever he calls himself these days. Not really. It’s about Giorgio Bramante and what happened to his son. If we could only understand that…”

  Leo Falcone laughed again and relaxed in his big black chair, putting his hands behind his head. “You’ve progressed under my tutelage, you know. Where’s that innocent young man I nearly fired a couple of years ago?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Costa replied without hesitation. “He probably went the same way as that cynical old bastard of an inspector who had this office before you turned up. Sir.”

  “A little less of that, Agente. I’ve got five more years in this job. I’d like to think that, when I go, you are on the way to filling my shoes.”

  Nic Costa found his cheeks going red. Promotion was the last thing on his mind. It was also the last thing an officer like Leo Falcone, who’d had more than a few troubled years of late, was in much of a position to offer.

  “Commissario Messina has reminded you the sovrintendente exams come up in the summer. You should be studying now. That way you could be getting a pay rise in time for the wedding.”

  “Sir…”

  Costa was grateful that Peroni and Teresa bustled in at that moment. The big man had the remains of what looked like a gigantic cheese and tomato sandwich in one hand and a bag full of canned drinks in the other.

  “Rations for the duration,” he declared. “Teresa and I have checked out the accommodation. The Gulag suite is ours. You two can take the Abu Ghraib wing. We have installed fresh soap and towels because the ones that were in there were quite…”

  When he stopped, lost for words, Teresa filled the gap.

  “Let’s put it this way, gentlemen. I wouldn’t have touched them. Not even with gloves on.”

  “Ugh.” Peroni shuddered. “Quite why we can’t just go home beats me—”

  “Gianni!” she yelled. “There’s a man out there who swished someone’s heart out with a high-pressure hose last night. He has our photographs.”

  “We joined up for this nonsense to be popular?” Peroni asked.

  Falcone harrumphed. “If Commissario Messina says we’re confined to barracks outside of normal working hours, then that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t want anyone going walkabout.”

  Peroni heaved his big shoulders in a noncommittal hug.

  “I’m serious about that, Gianni,” Falcone said severely. “He took those pictures for a reason.”

  “I know, I know. So what news?”

  Falcone and Costa were silent.

  “Oh,” Teresa said with a sigh. “This isn’t going to be a protracted stay, is it? I mean, I still don’t understand why I couldn’t go to Orvieto with the other ‘ladies.’”

  Falcone raised a long index finger, a man remembering something he should never have forgotten. Teresa responded straightaway.

  “Orvieto,” she said with a quick and somewhat condescending smile. “He wants to call the girlfriend, Gianni. Isn’t that sweet? I don’t remember Leo being so sweet before. In fact I don’t remember him being sweet at all. Nic and Emily getting engaged — and expecting a baby too. Leo being sweet. You giving up meat. The fact that there’s some lunatic out there with our pictures and a penchant for swishing hearts out. The world’s a lovely place now, don’t you think?”

  Costa didn’t like the way Falcone’s eye caught his. The expression there wasn’t sweet. It was distinctly guilty.

  “Actually,” the inspector said quietly, “it’s Emily I need to talk to. A little advice.”

  He reached for the phone, then pushed the conference voice box forward on the desk.

  “Of course,” he added, “you’re all welcome to listen.”

  * * *

  Four hours later, at just after midnight, the office was empty except for Nic Costa and a lone cleaner, faceless in the shadows, working away with duster and broom at the far end of the long line of desks. Costa sat by the window, taking breaks from hunting idly through yet more files on the computer to stare out at the bright, handsome moon, high over the rooftops of the centro storico, shining down on empty streets and the dead eyelids of closed shops and bars. It was a good time for a man who couldn’t sleep to try to think. In February the city didn’t stay up late. Come June there’d be people still walking the alleyways outside, happy after dinner, munching on ice creams from the places that stayed open into the small hours, part of the restless summer life of the metropolis. Come summer, too, there’d be a wedding. And a child. Just the thought of those two events dashed Giorgio Bramante from Nic’s mind entirely.

  What mattered in the end was family, that undefined and indefinable bond that required no explanation because, to those it embraced, it was as natural as taking a breath, as easy as going to sleep next to the person you loved. As simple as the sense of duty you felt to any child who grew out of that loving relationship.

  That, he
knew, was what had changed between him and Emily over the previous year. Without Leo Falcone’s influence, and the way the crafty old inspector had opened his eyes, Nic would never have been able to commit to their relationship in the way it deserved. Leo had taught him to relax, to live with his emotions, to take a break from trying to solve the problems of the world for a while. And then to get back into the fray. It was a gift he’d never forget.

  They’d all spent an hour and a half on the conference call that evening, sharing ideas, Falcone and Arturo Messina talking together as if nothing had happened all those years before, Teresa trying to make the most of the scant forensic she’d assembled from Toni LaMarca’s corpse and from Calvi’s slaughterhouse. Costa and Peroni had kept quiet mostly, thinking, listening, exchanging that glance they both knew well, a kind of invisible shrug that said Maybe it gets better tomorrow.

  Costa looked at his watch, felt guilty for an instant, then picked up the phone. Emily answered, sounding very, very sleepy.

  “If you’re too tired,” he insisted quickly, “just say so and I’ll ring off. I never got the chance to ask how you were on the conference call. It didn’t seem right.”

  She sighed. There was the impatient rustling of sheets. “It’s nearly one o’clock!”

  “I know. I’m wide awake. There’s a bright moon. I can’t stop thinking about you. What more is a man supposed to say?”

  There was the distant sound of her laughter. He wished he could reach out and touch her, just for a moment.

  “Flowers would be in order when you have the time. And champagne when I’m allowed to drink it.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Up and down, to be honest. Don’t sound so worried. The doctor said it would be like this. It’s not unusual, Nic. Men always seem to think their first child is the only one there’s ever been in the entire history of the planet. Women know better.”

  “Don’t shatter my illusions. Please.”