The Seventh Sacrament nc-5

by David Hewson

  Plain screws fastened the glass to the case on the wall. They would be easy to remove. What eluded Costa was the reason to do so: it was a public act with a private meaning.

  Bramante blamed Ludo Torchia and the other students for Alessio’s fate. That much was clear. But an intelligent man couldn’t fool himself either. He was the father. He carried the responsibility for his young son. He had brought the boy to that place. He bore his share of the blame, too, blame that had somehow transmuted, in his wife’s head, into an act of self-mutilation: cutting her own flesh to stain a garment belonging to her missing son, placing it on the wall of this dusty place that reeked of emptiness and cold damp stone. Was this act — Bramante placing a mark of each of his victims on the missing child’s shirt — some way in which he hoped to make amends?

  “Perhaps you’re right, Nic. I tried to disregard what you said because it seemed so you.”

  “Right about what?”

  The memory of Santo Cuore bothered him for some reason that remained out of reach.

  “That Alessio didn’t die in that hill. If he had, someone, surely, would have found something.”

  But that idea, which he’d come to dismiss himself, now raised so many unanswerable questions.

  “Someone would have known, Emily. And he would have come forward.”

  “There was the peace camp at the Circus Maximus. You found out about that.”

  “True… but that was fourteen years ago. I’ve no idea how we could investigate that today.”

  “Quite…” He heard a deep breath on the line. “Have you talked to Teresa about this?”

  “No,” he replied, baffled. “Why should I?”

  “Women have conversations with each other that men avoid. All you see is the present. Teresa has an interesting past, too.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning she was a student firebrand back when she was young. Does that surprise you?”

  Not for a moment, he realised. And it would never have occurred to him, either. Emily was right: all he saw was the woman he’d come to know and admire over the last few years. He’d no idea of the journey that had brought her there.

  “I can imagine that. You think she’d know about this demonstration?”

  “Look at the newspaper cuttings. If you were young, radical, and living in Rome back then, it’s difficult to see how she could have avoided that camp. She would have been around the same age as the one who died. Torchia, wasn’t that his name?”

  “She would,” he agreed, although the very idea seemed alien and improbable.

  “Another thing struck me. It’s absolutely clear these students were doing something weird down there. You found that rooster. They’d sacrificed that, right?”

  “There was a dead bird. They’d been messing around. I’m just guessing about what happened to that cockerel. Because of what happened to Torchia, none of them gave a statement.”

  “They weren’t there for a class assignment, that’s for sure. So let’s say it was some kind of ritual…”

  “Let’s say.”

  “Where do you think they got the idea?” she asked. “Everything those kids knew about Mithraism they learned from Giorgio Bramante.”

  This conversation was beginning to depress him. He could hear tension, excitement, in her voice, the same emotion he’d heard when they’d worked together officially, just once, on the same case.

  “What idea?”

  “Nic, no one understands much about Mithraism, but what we do know suggests it was an organised, highly ritualistic cult that demanded a gift from its followers if they wanted to rise through the ranks.”

  “Seven orders, seven sacraments,” he said, recalling what Teresa had told them.

  “Precisely. And it’s not unreasonable to think that the higher you rose, the more you had to offer. It’s like the hierarchical structure in the Masons or some modern cults. Or the FBI, for that matter.”

  “No.” He wasn’t even going to countenance this. “We’ve been here before and I still won’t accept it. I can’t believe any father would put his child through pain — or worse — just because of some ancient ritual. A stupid student, maybe. Torchia, maybe. Not a man like Bramante.”

  “I told you!” Her voice rose. It worried him. “Maybe something went wrong. He probably never thought for a moment that Alessio would be harmed. He just wanted to initiate his son into the mysteries or something. Or to take part in his own sacrament. Who’s to say Torchia wasn’t part of that game, unwittingly, maybe? Who’s to say that’s why Giorgio Bramante beat him to death? Out of revenge. And to make sure none of us ever got to know what really happened down there?”

  He was silent. It was a good point, even if he felt, in his bones, it needed to be challenged.

  “Perhaps the reason you never found Alessio,” she persisted, “is because he just didn’t want to face his father after whatever happened. Because he couldn’t bear the sight of him for one more minute.”

  “So a seven-year-old child walks out into the streets of Rome and just disappears?”

  “It’s happened before. You know that as well as I do. He could be alive. He could have fallen prey to some genuine maniac out there, somewhere else, say in that peace camp. Nic…” That pained intake of breath again, as she steeled herself to say something he didn’t want to hear. “…At some stage of your life you’re just going to have to face up to the fact that there are some mad, bad people out there and it doesn’t actually matter why they’re like that. What matters is stopping them from harming the rest of us.”

  Others said that kind of thing to Falcone all the time. Costa could imagine the very same words coming from Bruno Messina.

  “We all want it stopped, Emily,” he replied, trying not to sound censorious. “Understanding them makes it easier.”

  “Not always. When it’s all this close, understanding makes you start to put yourself in his shoes. Trying to think like a father who’s lost a son. And I don’t think it’s that simple, do you?”

  “No,” he admitted. Something about the entire case continued to elude them all, he thought, and it wasn’t straightforward, simply a question of motive or action or opportunity. It was in the grey area that existed between people who knew each other, people who once upon a time loved each other. “We shouldn’t be talking like this. Get some rest. Just give me a day or two. And then we’ll get back to normal.”

  “If I wanted ‘normal,’ I wouldn’t be about to get married to a police officer. I just don’t want you hurt, Nic. And I want to go home.”

  Home.

  It was astonishing how such a short, simple word could carry so much warmth and hope and trepidation inside it. Home was the place everyone was seeking in the end. Even the lost souls who’d supposedly touched all those ageing exhibits that wound up on the walls of that odd little museum in Prati. Perhaps that was what Giorgio Bramante ultimately wanted too: to help the child who lived in his head find some kind of peace through the elimination of those Bramante held responsible for his fate. All of whom were dead now, except for a single police officer whose only crime had been to intervene in a vicious beating deep in the heart of his own Questura, to do his duty.

  Something didn’t add up.

  Costa looked at his watch and, without quite thinking, or knowing why, asked one last question.

  “Why would a woman, a mother and wife, someone with an apparently idyllic family life, cut herself? Deliberately, regularly? Because it wasn’t idyllic, obviously. But, beyond that, why? And why still today?”

  He waited and when she spoke she was calm again.

  “Mrs. Bramante did that?” Emily asked.

  “The blood on the T-shirt in that church. The first blood, when she took it there. It’s hers. She admitted it to Leo. And he said there were fresh scars on her wrists when he saw her.”

  “Oh…”

  Emily was considering his question, in that measured, rational way which was one of the last parts of her personality
that hadn’t turned Italian.

  “Self-harm is complicated, Nic. It’s usually a form of self-loathing. The woman places no value on her own existence for some reason. Perhaps she is clinically depressed, or perhaps she’s expressing guilt. Perhaps other reasons. A husband who’s having an affair… I don’t know. Aren’t there psychologists on the force who can tell you this?”

  “Of course,” he confessed. “It’s just so much easier talking it through with you. For one thing, I understand what you say.”

  “I will,” she said severely, “start charging for these services soon.”

  Something caught Costa’s attention. Leo Falcone was crossing the half-empty office in his direction, with that serious, engaged expression on his face, the one that meant something was happening.

  “You’re out of our league,” he told Emily hastily. “We could never afford you. Now promise me you’ll see a doctor tomorrow. Then on Thursday I’ll be around. Whether it’s here, Orvieto, or the moon. I don’t care. I will be there.”

  “It’s a promise,” she answered.

  Falcone watched as Costa put down the phone. The old inspector looked as if something was wrong.

  “Sir?”

  “I want you to find Peroni. I want you two to look up everything you can find on Giorgio Bramante that’s been back-filed. Anything and everything, however apparently trivial.”

  “Isn’t that all in the reports from the original case?” Costa was puzzled.

  “No!” Falcone replied, exasperated. “Bramante was already in custody, ready to plead guilty. It was regarded as wasted effort.”

  “I see… I’ll do it straightaway.”

  “Tomorrow morning, first thing, talk to the mother again. Find out exactly what her relations with him were. Don’t pull any punches. Perhaps I was a little restrained.” He looked worried.

  “Agente Prabakaran…”

  “Never mind Agente Prabakaran!” Falcone snapped. “Just do it, Nic!”

  Costa already had the following day mapped out. It would consist of ticking off potential lairs for Bramante until they found him. Or at least some evidence that they were on his trail. But there was something in Falcone’s tone, a tense, distanced note, that reminded him of the old Leo, the one no one ever liked. There was no colour in the inspector’s cheeks, no blood in Leo Falcone’s face at all.

  Then something happened Costa had never witnessed before. Falcone leaned forward, just a little, and patted him gently on the back, a gesture that was familiar, almost paternal.

  “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “It’s been a long day. I find it hard sometimes. The truth is…” Falcone’s eyes focused on something across the office, or perhaps on nothing at all. “…I’ve always found it hard, if I’m being honest with you. I simply made a point of never showing it.”

  He seemed embarrassed by this sudden show of emotion.

  “I’ve put you down for that sovrintendente exam,” he went on briskly. “I want you to take it. This summer. Before you get married. You’ll breeze through it, you know. It’s time you started making progress around here.”

  Costa nodded, lost for words, unable to protest.

  “And… Gianni,” Falcone asked. “Where is he?”

  “With the maps and the worm people.”

  “Tell him I’m grateful for all the work he’s put in these past couple of days. It wasn’t needed. Not from either of you—”

  “Leo—”

  “This is work, Agente,” Falcone interrupted him. “Don’t ever forget that. It’s friendship, too. But this profession comes first. Always. The work. The duty. They never go away.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  The old man smiled and then that bony hand came out and patted him on the back again. “I’m tired, that’s all. Giorgio Bramante is a master of timing, but I imagine you’ve already noticed that. Now…”

  He cast his beady eyes around the room, a look designed to stiffen the spine of anyone even contemplating slacking.

  “I shall have a quick word with the troops, then I’m done for tonight. We can talk in the morning.”

  “Good night,” Costa murmured, then went back to the job.

  * * *

  Beautiful lies. Ugly truths.

  In Ludo Torchia’s dying words lay a universe of possibilities, a million ways to uncover what made Giorgio Bramante the man he had become, and exhume the fate of his son from the red Aventino earth beneath which, if logic meant anything, his remains still surely lay.

  But these, Falcone reflected as he reached the staircase, were matters of conjecture. What stared him in the face now was plain fact. Rosa Prabakaran was in Bramante’s hands. He’d heard her screams on the phone line when he’d asked for proof. That sound had sent a chill, of fear and fury and shame, down Falcone’s spine. Afterwards, he was aware he’d heard something else, too: a tone in Bramante’s voice that hadn’t been there fourteen years before. Prison had coarsened this man, made something that was bad to begin with worse. Before, there had been some humanity in the man. His concern for his child had, Falcone was convinced, always been genuine. Now even that was gone, had been torn from him, gone for good.

  When Bramante said he would kill the young policewoman if Falcone didn’t take her place, he was merely stating a fact. When he spelled out the conditions — the place, the time, one in the morning, less than an hour away, the absolute absence of any other officers on pain of Prabakaran’s death — Bramante’s voice had the firm, un-shakable assurance of a university professor handing out an assignment. None of this was to be the subject of argument. Falcone would do as he was told, or the woman would die. It was as simple as that, and what Falcone found a little disconcerting was how easily he was able to agree to the man’s demands.

  There was no alternative. No time to put together a team. No need to risk Costa and Peroni, two men he’d leaned on too much of late, yet again.

  This time was his and his alone.

  He glanced back at the office to make sure no one was looking. Then, gingerly, ignoring the pain from his limbs, he walked slowly down the stairs to the ground floor and headed directly to the front counter.

  Prinzivalli, the sovrintendente from Milan, a man he’d worked alongside for three decades, stood there alone, sifting papers. Falcone’s spirits fell. He didn’t have the heart or the talent to push this man around. They had known each other far too long for that.

  “Can I help, sir?” The sovrintendente raised a puzzled grey eyebrow. He played rugby in his spare time and had once managed the same team in which a young, very different Nic Costa had played. Prinzivalli was as solid and trustworthy a police officer as Falcone had ever worked with.

  “You’re under orders not to let me out, aren’t you?”

  The sovrintendente nodded.

  At that moment the bells of the old church around the corner intervened: twelve chimes. Falcone listened to the sonorous chorus of metallic sound, a collision of dissonant notes that had, he now realised, followed his life in the Questura for more than thirty years, from raw cadet to old, tired inspector. It was now past midnight in the centro storico, a time he had always loved, an hour when the modernity of Rome vanished and the streets seemed made for people, not machines. In his younger, more fanciful years, he could almost imagine the old gods rising from their distant graves, making the city alive with their presence, a magical place, where everything was possible.

  Prinzivalli coughed, interrupting his reverie.

  “Commissario Messina made it very clear that he does not want you to leave the premises, sir. You wouldn’t want to argue with him, would you?”

  “He’s not his father, is he?”

  “No.” The man in the uniform gave this some thought. “But he is commissario.”

  Falcone cast an eye at the surveillance camera. It had a blind spot. If you stood between the counter and the back desk, no one saw you. It was common knowledge, useful sometimes.

  He beckoned Prinzivalli th
ere. Then he said, “Have I ever asked you to disobey orders before, Michele?”

  “Yes,” the man replied dryly.

  “Then we have precedent. The situation is this. I will explain it once, then you shall open the door for me. Understood?”

  Prinzivalli said nothing.

  “Bramante has taken that young agente, Rosa Prabakaran. Unless I meet him…” — he glanced at his watch with a small theatrical flourish — “…alone and in just under thirty-five minutes, he will kill her.”

  “Good God, Leo!”

  “Please. I have very little time. We know the kind of man Bramante is. We know he will do exactly as he says. I cannot for the life of me put together a team to accompany me in the time available, not one that I can trust to stay unnoticed. I have to do this on my own—”

  “He wants to murder you, man!”

  Falcone nodded. “So he says. But that is irrelevant. If I go, Prabakaran may live. If I don’t, she will most certainly die. The girl is young, a little naive, and my officer. My responsibility.”

  Prinzivalli stayed silent.

  “What I would like you to do is this: wait until one. If no one’s noticed I’m gone by then, notice for them. Raise hell. Do whatever you see fit.”

  “Where are you meeting him?”

  Falcone eyed him. “I’m not saying.”

  “Leo…?”

  “I told you. This happens on his terms or she’s dead. Now will you open that door or not?”

  “You are a bad-tempered, stubborn old bastard. There are people who can help—”

  “Yes,” he interrupted emphatically. “You.”

  The sovrintendente looked at Falcone in his office suit, then snatched an overcoat, his own no doubt, from the stand by the door and threw it at him.

  “It’s freezing out there,” he said, and stabbed at the button on the counter. The security gate flipped open.

  “Thank you,” Falcone said, and, without looking back, walked outside.

  * * *

  The night was cold, the kind of bone-numbing cold Rome could deliver at times, one that seemed at odds with the burning airless heat of summer, just a few months away. He shuffled on the gigantic overcoat, hobbled down the street towards the cab stand, and waited, thinking.