The Seventh Sacrament nc-5

by David Hewson

  She laughed again. He could almost imagine himself lying next to her on the bed, such were the tight, unspoken ties between them now.

  “Something’s bothering you,” she said, becoming serious. “And it’s not the bright moon. Tell me, Nic.”

  He’d worked just one cold case in his entire career. It too had been a murder, though less complex. A man of almost seventy beaten to death in his home in a quiet suburban street out in the suburb of EUR. They’d gone back to the investigation eight years later and discovered that, by then, the neighbours were ready to admit what they’d kept secret before. The victim’s son had been involved in low-level drug running. He’d gone missing two years after his father died and was never seen again. It took three months, but eventually they were able to charge a gang enforcer with the old man’s murder and that of his son. All over a measly three thousand euros owed for cocaine. Time did change the perspective with which one approached a crime. But time hadn’t done them any favours in the Bramante case.

  “You said you didn’t understand why no one ever found Alessio’s body,” he answered. “Is it that unusual?”

  He thought he heard a yawn getting stifled at the other end of the line.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It just makes me uneasy. They brought in all that heavy equipment. Even thermal-imaging gear. All the reports say those caves go deep. That they get too narrow and dangerous to be explored…. I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t find his body. But if he’s not there, where is he?”

  Costa glanced at the computer screen.

  “Anywhere,” he answered. “If he’s still alive.”

  * * *

  The labyrinth enveloped them, held them captive in the stone belly of the hill. Ludo Torchia led the way, tugging Alessio’s slender arm. The others followed, stumbling, getting more and more confused and scared with each lurching step.

  After a few minutes Guerino had tripped and fallen, cutting his hands, letting the cockerel loose into the gloom, where it flew, screeching, taunting them. Abati was glad of that, though it made Ludo Torchia furious. There were bigger issues to worry about than sacrificing some bird. They were lost, deep underground. And the one man who might save them, Giorgio Bramante, would surely be as furious as Ludo Torchia if he discovered what had happened.

  Alessio. Alessio. Where are you?

  By Alessio’s own account, it was now perhaps thirty minutes since his father had left him alone in the main vestibule at the entrance to the caves. What was Giorgio doing all this time? And why did it need to involve Alessio?

  These weren’t questions Dino Abati had time to consider. He didn’t feel good. His head was throbbing where Torchia had struck him with the rock. There were lights, coloured lights, chafing at the edge of his vision. The seven of them were now fleeing into a deep, Stygian chasm, trying to illuminate it with their flashlights, hoping that somewhere, in this unknown skein of corridors, there lay some other way out to the world above, one that would help them all — perhaps Alessio too — escape Giorgio Bramante’s inevitable wrath.

  They turned another blind corner, ran, half fell forwards, tumbling down a steep incline. A sudden rock face loomed up to greet them. Near the Mithraeum they’d been in relatively well managed territory, tunnels and small chambers carefully hewn out of the tufa. Here they were back in the original workings, so deep inside the hill Abati didn’t even want to think about it. The rough walls, the rocks strewn on the floor, the cramped, winding tunnels barely high enough for a man to stand upright… everything spoke of a crude, ancient mining operation, not the fabric of a subterranean temple for some cult that liked a little privacy. They were, surely, at the very periphery of the incisions that men had made into the heart of the Aventino. What lay around them was as uncertain, as unknown now, as it must have been to the slaves who had laboured here two millennia before, wondering whether the next tunnel would hold or collapse on them in a sudden, deadly torrent of stone. Or if a natural fault — there was water hereabouts, and that meant the hill itself was far from solid, even before the miners arrived with their pickaxes and shovels — lay in deadly wait around the corner.

  The boy stumbled. A falsetto cry — young, uncomprehending — rang through the narrow corridors, fading, disappearing, rising, Abati hoped, to break into the open light of day and tell someone out there to look beyond that old, rusted gate by the Orange Garden and try to find what was happening within.

  “You’re not hurt,” Torchia spat at the child, dragging him to his feet, scrabbling for the flashlight.

  Alessio Bramante hung his head and swore, using the kind of word most of his age scarcely knew. Giorgio was an unusual father, Abati guessed.

  “It’s a game, a game, a game, you miserable spoilt little bastard!” Torchia snarled.

  The boy stood still and was silent, just stared at them all with his wide, round, intelligent eyes, the kind of stare that said I know you, I’ll remember you, there’ll be a price to pay for this.

  “Ludo,” Abati said quietly, as calmly as he could. “This is not a good idea. We don’t know where we are. We don’t know how safe these caves might be. I understand places like this better than you, and I don’t feel safe down here, not without the proper equipment.” The flashing lights, the pounding in his head, were getting worse.

  There was an exit to the left. They’d come past it in their rush. Another black hole to dive down. Another vain hope of avoiding discovery.

  “No,” Torchia said bluntly.

  “Giorgio is going to find out we’re here! Please!” Vignola objected. His fat face was wreathed in sweat. He didn’t look well at all.

  “Let’s just go back now,” Abati said firmly. “If we meet Giorgio, at least we’re bringing him the kid. Let’s not make this any worse than it is.”

  Torchia lunged at him, hands scrabbling at his throat, face in his, scary in the way that lunatics were scary, because they didn’t care what happened to them, or to anyone. Abati remembered the rock thudding into his head. That blow could have killed him. Just the memory of it made him dizzy.

  “I got you ungrateful shits in here,” Torchia hissed. “I’ll get you out. That’s who I am.”

  “Who you are?” Abati asked, lurching away from him, realising with some relief that he didn’t much care what happened to Ludo Torchia, or any of them, himself included, anymore. It had all gone too far for that. “Pater? Are you so screwed up that you believe all that nonsense? That all you need to do is get seven people down here, kill some stupid bird, and everything gets made right somehow?”

  “You agreed!”

  “I agreed to make sure you idiots didn’t come to any harm,” Abati retorted quietly, turning to go. “Now I want to see daylight again.”

  Vignola’s hand touched his sleeve.

  “Dino,” he pleaded softly. “Don’t leave us here.”

  “Don’t leave us here, don’t leave us here…” Torchia was out of control, spittle flying from his mouth as he mocked Vignola’s words. “Of course he’s not leaving, are you, Dino? A soldier never leaves his battalion. You don’t let your comrades down.”

  Abati shook his head. “You’re crazy,” he murmured. “This is real, Ludo. Not some playground adventure. We’re in trouble enough as it is.”

  “Wrong. Even if Giorgio’s guessed someone’s here,” Torchia insisted, “how could he know it’s us? Answer me that.”

  The flaw in his argument was so obvious. Dino Abati knew straightaway he wasn’t going to mention it, because that could only make things so much worse.

  Then Vignola piped up again and Dino Abati wished he’d had the time to grab him by the scruff of his neck and force him to keep his overactive mouth shut.

  “Even if he doesn’t know, the kid’s going to tell him, Ludo. Isn’t he?”

  * * *

  Costa had taken a good look at what else was going on in Rome the week Alessio Bramante vanished. It had not been an ordinary time.

  “It all happened when NATO was in anoth
er terrible mess in Serbia, remember? That was one reason why the authorities told Bramante he couldn’t go public. There were enough contemporary ethnic massacres to deal with without bringing in the TV cameras to see some grisly Christian episode from the past.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Emily said. “Would people really get that touchy about something that happened almost two thousand years ago?”

  “What we like to call ‘the former Yugoslavia’ is one hour by plane from Italy. There were boatloads of refugees crossing the Adriatic, turning up on our beaches. This was local for us, not distant pictures from a distant land. There was a peace camp on the Circus Maximus at the time. Three, four thousand people from all over Europe. All kinds of people. Hippies. Protesters. The far left. Just ordinary people, too. And quite a few refugees who’d got nowhere else to go.”

  “So what are you saying, Nic? That Alessio was kidnapped by one of them?”

  “I’m just raising possibilities. What if Alessio escaped the caves? Some of them exit not far from where the camp was. Imagine he ran in among the tents there, distraught, frightened for some reason. He didn’t want to go home. Maybe he didn’t know what he wanted.”

  “They’d have called the police, Nic. It’s what you do with lost kids. And what could have scared him so much he wouldn’t want his own parents?”

  “I don’t know. But you can’t assume the people there would have gone to us in those circumstances. Some would. Some of them wouldn’t speak to the police about anything. We’re the fascists, remember? Maybe they didn’t have access to the news. They wouldn’t know a child was missing, being hunted by hundreds of people.”

  The silence down the line told him she wasn’t convinced.

  “If I’m right, Alessio Bramante could be anywhere now, living under an entirely different name,” he persisted.

  “He’d be twenty-one or so,” she objected. “You’re telling me he wouldn’t have remembered who he was? That he would have stayed hidden all these years, with his father in jail?”

  “His father would have stayed in jail whether Alessio turned out to be alive or not. Besides, that’s your instinct talking, not fact. It’s not uncommon for kids taken at that age to become absorbed by the unnatural family they enter. Children try to adapt to the situation around them. Look at your own country. White children who were abducted by Native Americans in the nineteenth century became Native Americans. They weren’t looking to go back home. They often rebelled if someone tried to force white society on them. They didn’t think the situation they found themselves in was primitive, they thought it was how the world was supposed to be. If Alessio was somewhere else altogether… Out of Rome. Out of Italy perhaps…”

  The pause on the line told him she still didn’t think much of this at all.

  “You always look for the bright side, don’t you?” she asked gently.

  “You were the one who said it was odd there wasn’t a body.”

  “And it is. And I’d love to believe Alessio Bramante’s alive and well out there somewhere. I just don’t think it’s possible. Sorry.”

  “Fine. Your turn for a stab in the dark,” he challenged, stung.

  There was a quick intake of breath on the line. “How about this? Giorgio Bramante made the discovery of a lifetime in that excavation of his. Yet, because of the awkward politics at the time, no one would give him the money to make the most of it. No one would even let him tell the world what was down there. Which, for the arrogant bastard I suspect he is, must have been even worse.”

  “Go on.”

  “What if he tried to lose Alessio in those caves deliberately? So that he could run out into the street, yelling for help? The rescue service would turn up. The media too. His big secret would be out in the open and there’d be nothing anyone could do about it.”

  “You really think a father would sacrifice his son just for professional pride?” It was an extraordinary idea, one none of them had even come near when they’d been throwing the case around that evening.

  “No! Because this isn’t professional. From what I’ve read about Giorgio, it was personal. His work was his life. And he figured Alessio would be safe, in the end. There’d be a big tearful reunion. No one would ever ask how the kid got lost down there in the first place, because no one ever does. We’re just grateful they come out alive.”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Nic. I know you’re big on family, and so am I. But there are some tough truths you have to face up to. We’ve all seen what happens. When things like this happen, the focus of all that public sympathy turns on the parents as much as it does on the kid. That’s the way it works. The parents are the ones on TV. If they’re lucky enough to find the kid, no one asks any hard questions. How the hell did they get there in the first place? We’re just glad it ended cleanly, keep our doubts to ourselves, and hope someone goes round and quietly tells those people never to get themselves in a mess like that again.”

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  “Think it through,” she went on. “Follow the logic. Chase down the flaws. Please.”

  “There aren’t any. But it’s still more far-fetched than my theory.”

  “Really?” He was starting to recognise that tone in her voice. It demanded attention. “There were six stupid students down there, trying to raise the Devil or something. Like it or not, something extremely weird did go on. You know that. So does Leo. He wouldn’t be asking me to cold-case these files if he wasn’t desperate, would he?”

  No, Costa knew. Falcone wouldn’t. The old Leo would never have released a single page of a criminal investigation outside the Questura. But the old Leo was gone.

  “Giorgio Bramante beat one of them to death,” Costa murmured. “What the hell was that about?”

  “It was about his son,” she answered. “Wouldn’t you feel the same way?”

  “I’d feel the same way. That doesn’t mean I’d do what he did.”

  He heard a long pause on the line, then she asked, “How do you know, Nic? How would anyone know the way they’d respond in a situation like that? Can you be so sure?”

  He struggled for an answer.

  “I think so,” he said. “I hope so. Look, it’s late. Let me pass all this on to Leo in the morning and see where we get. If you need access to any files…”

  “Um…” she said cautiously, “I think we’re fine on that, thanks.” Then she hesitated. “Is Leo all right?” she asked, a little nervously. “He’s still convalescent. He could have said no.”

  “Leo’s looking better than I’ve seen him in months,” he answered honestly. “He needed to get back to work.”

  “Tell him to call Raffaella from time to time. She hasn’t been out much since Venice.”

  “I’m sure with you around she’ll get over the shyness….”

  Emily laughed again, and the sound brought out in him the same physical pang he’d experienced ever since they’d met. There was a note of concern in her voice all the same.

  “Raffaella’s over it now. She and Arturo are still downstairs with his best friend, working their way through the household grappa cellar. If Leo cares…”

  Costa thought of Falcone’s hungry, intense look as he eased his injured body back behind that familiar desk. It was a big if…

  “I’ll tell him. But… Bear with me.”

  The light was flashing on the handset: an internal call. He put Emily on hold and hit the answer button.

  It was the duty officer. Costa listened, then cut the line and went back to her.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked. “You sound worried.”

  “Front desk says someone claiming to be Dino Abati has turned up looking like a street bum, asking to talk to Leo. No one else would do.”

  “That sounds like good news.”

  “Maybe…”

  He looked around the office. The cleaner was gone. The place was empty. This was an operational floor, s
taffed only during daytime and outright emergencies. As far as he knew, no one else was there apart from him and the three individuals asleep in the rudimentary quarters along the corridor.

  “That was half an hour ago,” he continued. “The desk’s heard nothing since they sent him up here with some rookie agente—”

  “Nic?”

  The light in the corridor outside failed, followed by those in the office, throwing most of the floor ahead of him into the dark. Only the bright silver rays of the moon, visible through scudding rain clouds, remained. He turned to face what should have been the doorway, blinked, trying to adapt to the sudden gloom. It could just be coincidence. Not that he believed in them much.

  “Call the switchboard back,” he told Emily quietly. “Tell them we may have an intruder. Old wing. Third floor.”

  She broke the connection without saying a word.

  He could just see the extensions printed in the list by the phone. Costa called the first one. A sleepy Teresa answered.

  “Don’t ask questions,” he ordered. “Just lock the door and keep it locked until someone arrives. Yell at Leo through the wall and tell him to do the same.”

  Then, just to make sure, he dialled the room he’d been sharing with Falcone.

  No one answered.

  He swore quietly. At least he’d seen fit to check out a handgun from the armoury that afternoon. It sat in its regulation holster on the desk in front of him. Costa hated wearing the thing. He picked it up, checked the safety was on, then, grasping it low in his right hand, walked towards the pool of inky black spreading out ahead of him.

  He could picture the corridor in his head, with its glaring white paint and bare bulbs. The emergency quarters were just ten metres or so on from the doorway.

  Costa tried to hurry. Desks bumped into him, from all the wrong places. He blinked, trying to force his eyes to adapt, opened them and thought he could just make out the shape of the area ahead.

  A car swept past outside. The bright stray flash of its headlights shot through the office, briefly illuminating the area like a flash of lightning. Then it was gone, leaving its visual imprint in his brain. Ahead, Nic Costa saw the single outstretched silhouette of a figure in a familiar pose, one he’d learned to loathe over the years: arm outstretched, weapon ready, moving purposefully, with intent. As the car moved on, he could see the pencil-thin beam of a caver’s helmet lamp running in a distinct yellow line from the figure’s head, slicing through the gloom, aiming towards the rooms where Falcone, Peroni, and Teresa Lupo had been sleeping.