A Season for the Dead (12 page)

19

The phone rang just after he had served the old man breakfast: fresh fruit, orange juice straight from the squeezer, a cocktail of pills. His father watched him as he took the call.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said the moment Nic Costa put down the phone. “Bea will be here soon. I’m not helpless. I’ll survive.”

“Thanks.”

“What is it?”

The old man never asked about his work. This was a pact between them. Nic was surprised that was now changing.

“There’s been another death.”

“So what? Are you the only cop they’ve got?”

“It’s not that.” He was trying to clarify matters in his own head. “It’s connected somehow by the sound of it. Maybe we’ve jumped to conclusions about what happened in the Vatican. Maybe . . .” The old man’s tired eyes wouldn’t leave him. Marco Costa knew when something was badly wrong. “. . . it’s all a lot worse than we thought.”

“Tell me about it,” the old man ordered. “If you want. When you get back. Now . . .” He picked up a bread roll from the table. “You eat that in the car. No one can live off fruit alone. Not even you.”

Fifteen minutes later Nic Costa was parked outside the old, low church near the Colosseum, by the narrow road that led to the Lateran palace, the first St. Peter’s. This was a part of Rome he never really understood. The Colosseum was two minutes’ stroll away. The busy modern thoroughfare of Labicana set up a constant traffic roar to the north. A short walk would take him to the Rinaldis’ lonely apartment in the Via Mecenate. There were high, late nineteenth-century blocks towering over the narrow cobbled streets of the neighborhood. A few stalls made up the tiny street market that had probably worked here for ten centuries or more. It was a quiet, residential area, one that the tourists rarely visited. And within it lay such odd, unexpected sights: churches and squares that seemed to go back to a different city.

Sara Farnese would, he felt sure, know this area well, would be able to point out a wall here, a crypt there, and know its place in the Roman story. He felt lost, all the more so when he walked into the large, elegant courtyard that now bustled with people. The center was occupied by rows of simple seats, perhaps three hundred of them, pointed toward a low wooden stage. The floor was still littered with cheaply printed programs: Vivaldi and Corelli performed by a local semiprofessional orchestra. An open-air concert had taken place here the night before. That made the morning’s discovery even more odd. At eight-fifteen an Irish Dominican named Bernard Cromarty, a senior member of the order that had administered San Clemente for almost three hundred and fifty years, had opened the doors to the chapel to prepare for the morning service. What he found there led him to run, terrified, from the dark, enclosed interior, out into the hardening morning light, screaming for help.

Costa studied the courtyard, noting how much had been left behind after the concert, took a deep breath and went inside. This was a grander, older church than the place on Tiber Island. It had a solemn, distinguished interior, with a quiet richness of decoration. The murmur of men’s voices sounded like the whispering of monks rebounding off the walls. In the center of the nave, flanked by two high, imposing pulpits, was an ancient choir leading up to a dimly lit altar, raised slightly above ground level. A group of recognizable figures was bent low around the far edge of the structure, studying something out of sight. Falcone stood upright, in expensive jeans, their neat crease visible even from this distance, and a too-white shirt. It was Sunday. Perhaps the inspector had been called away from a social engagement. He’d been married once but that had ended in divorce years ago. Now, the gossips had it, he played the field, in fancy company too.

The cold, bearded face was creased in concentration. Costa joined Luca Rossi by Falcone’s side. The focal point of this part of the church was supposed to be the small casket which lay at the base of the altar, beneath a canopy supported by delicate columns. Now another object stole their attention. In front of the coffin, surrounded by flickering candles which were almost spent, was the figure of a naked man. He lay on his side. His knees were drawn up as if crouching, his arms were extended and bent upward, with the hands placed together in an obvious position of prayer. His eyes were open, as was his mouth, giving him an expression of mute surprise, as if he had chanced upon something in the night, something that had stolen the life out of him.

His fair hair was wet and plastered to his skull. His face showed signs of a severe beating: livid dark bruises, a swollen eye and several open wounds. Around his neck was a thick nautical rope which was attached to a small, rusty anchor, of a size suitable for a pleasure dinghy, and now lying flat on the mosaic floor behind his back.

Teresa Lupo busied herself around the corpse. With minute care she placed a gloved finger in the mouth, leaned forward and sniffed. She wrinkled her nose and, very gingerly, took a slender arm and tried to move it.

“Well?” Falcone asked. Standing next to him was a priest, a severe-faced man of seventy or more with a wild shock of white hair and sad gray eyes. He watched them guardedly, as if the church and everything inside it was his personal property.

“Brackish water,” the pathologist said. “The salt’s pretty strong. He wouldn’t smell like this if he’d been in the Tiber. Must be somewhere else. Somewhere estuarial. I’ll be able to tell you more once I’ve got him back to the office.”

Falcone stared down at the dead man’s face. “How long?”

“Several hours,” she replied. “There’s obvious rigor. He must have been placed here in the evening or early this morning.”

Rossi stared gloomily at the corpse. “How was that possible, Father? I thought there was a concert here last night. How could a dead man be brought into this place?”

“There was a concert,” the priest answered, warming to the unexpected politeness in Rossi’s question. “Every last seat was sold. I was here myself until one in the morning, helping to clear up.”

“Then how?” Falcone demanded.

The priest shook his head and stared at the stone floor. Costa nodded toward the sunlight behind them in the open courtyard. Something large, shiny and black leaned against the far wall. “What’s that doing there?” he asked. “Why would a musician leave an instrument behind?”

Rossi walked out into the daylight, heaved the double bass case carefully under his arm, not touching the handle. From the way he carried it the thing weighed very little. He returned to the nave and placed it on the stone floor. Falcone bent down, took a nail file out from a leather case and gingerly worked his way around the perimeter, flipping up the clasps. When he was done he threw open the lid. The case was empty. The cheap red velvet lining was soaked with water. It had a sour, salty smell.

“I still don’t see,” Falcone exclaimed. “He couldn’t have moved a naked body when you people were clearing up. And afterward the church would be locked surely.”

“Of course,” the old priest agreed. “There are many valuable items in here.”

“Cameras?” Costa asked hopefully. The priest shook his head.

Teresa Lupo waved to her men at the door to come and retrieve the body. The interior echoed to the squealing of the gurney’s wheels. She came and stood next to Rossi, staring at the empty well for the double bass.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well what?” Falcone demanded testily.

“Is no one going to ask me how he died?”

The detectives looked at each other. It had seemed so obvious.

“Poor bastard was beaten up, wasn’t he?” Rossi asked.

“Sure,” she said. “I don’t think that killed him, though. I could be wrong. Ask me again after the autopsy.” She took off the plastic gloves and smiled at Rossi and Costa. “You guys are quite something, you know. I just don’t get this quality of material from anyone else.”

“Meaning?” Falcone thundered.

“He was drowned,” Teresa Lupo said. “Forcibly, in shallow water, maybe less than a yard, which would explain the amount of muddy material in his mouth. I’ll be able to be quite precise with that, I think. The combination of salt water and mud . . . It can’t be hard to track down where it came from. He was drowned and then, for some reason, the anchor was placed around his neck after he was put on the floor there, after the candles were lit. It couldn’t have been any other way because that thing isn’t heavy enough to hold down a man and the length of rope is too great to have been of any use in the sort of depth I’m talking about. That’s just symbolic somehow. Part of the picture we’re supposed to be appreciating.”

Costa couldn’t take his eyes off the priest. The old man’s eyes were closed. He had crossed himself and was now quietly saying a prayer.

“Father?” he asked, when the man was done.

“What is it?” the priest replied grumpily.

Costa waved at the interior of the church. “There are anchors here already. Carved into the columns. In the paintings on the walls. What does it mean?”

“And none of you can even begin to guess at that?” the old priest asked sourly. “Is that what it’s come to?”

Falcone eyed him unpleasantly. “If you have some information that could help us, Father . . .”

The old man tut-tutted. “So many professional people. So little knowledge. This is the church of San Clemente. The fourth pope of Rome.” He pointed to the tomb beneath the altar, beyond the naked body surrounded by the guttering candles. “His remains lie there, as they have done for almost two millennia. Do you know nothing? San Clemente was martyred by drowning. He was found with an anchor around his neck.”

The man waved at the corpse on the mosaic floor, a controlled fury in his face. “This . . . abomination is a deliberate, a direct insult to his memory. The work of a madman.”

Nic Costa wondered at that. If it were a madman, it was one with a very precise theological knowledge. And, more, there was something almost akin to reverence in the violence too.

“Have you any idea who the dead man is?” Falcone asked.

“None,” the priest grunted. Luca Rossi shrugged his broad, stooped shoulders. The others in the police team looked just as blank.

Falcone’s fierce gaze turned on Costa. “We’re not moving a damned thing. Call her. Bring her down here. Do it yourself if necessary.”

“What?”

“The Farnese woman. I want her to see this. Before anything is moved. I want to know if she recognizes him. I want to know what she . . .
thinks.
”

“Sir . . .” Nic objected and hunted in vain for the words. What Falcone said made sense. She would have to be shown a picture of the dead man. There were too many coincidences here. Still, there were easier, less painful ways of achieving these ends. There was, it seemed to him, no practical reason to drag Sara Farnese into this grim scene.

“Why don’t I just bring her to the morgue? What difference does it make?”

“You heard,” Falcone said tersely, walking out to the courtyard, reaching for his phone.

Then he was gone and there was just Luca Rossi staring into Costa’s eyes, looking shifty.

“We fouled up, didn’t we?” he asked. ‘We just leapt right in and thought what somebody wanted us to think.”

It was all there, Costa thought. Just waiting for them in that stinking death-filled room on Tiber Island.
I met a man with seven wives . . .

“I guess so.” He found it hard to shake off the thought that Rossi had been expecting this all along.

“You know what?” the big man said. “We keep thinking we’re looking for facts. And that’s only half the job. The other half is looking for lies, seeing them for what they are.”

“I’ll do this on my own,” Costa said. “Tell Falcone to give me thirty minutes.”

Then he was out of the door, feeling the August heat starting to fall from the sky, wondering what he was going to tell her.

20

Why did you do that?”

Sara Farnese was wearing black: casual trousers and a cotton T-shirt. She looked younger and on her guard. The press mob had yet to arrive at San Clemente but the beggars, Kosovans and Africans, were always there. Without thinking, Costa had handed out some money to a young black boy with wide, haunted eyes, choosing him, as always, at random. Sara had seemed surprised they had not simply barged through the small crowd, ignoring them.

“Family habit,” Costa said. “Twice a day, every day. Just in case.”

“In case what?” she wondered.

“In case . . . it makes a difference, I guess.” He’d never thought about it much. They were modest sums of money. The idea had been ingrained into them at such an early age. For his father this was, he thought, an act of faith, one more proof, if Nic Costa needed it, that the old man’s communism was a kind of religion in disguise.

He took her by the arm. They halted outside the gateway to the church. “Let me say something. You don’t have to go through with this, Sara. Not here. We could arrange an appointment at the morgue. It may be a waste of time anyway.”

Her green eyes watched him carefully. “Then why was I asked to come here?”

“My boss,” he said instantly, not wanting to lie since he felt sure she would know. “It was his idea. He thinks this is more complex. He thinks we don’t know everything we ought to know.”

She understood Costa’s point immediately. Sara Farnese acknowledged it in silence, then peered inside at the courtyard of San Clemente.

“I’ve been here for concerts. Have you?”

“I’m not one for music.”

“What are you for?”

“Looking at paintings. Running. Making sense of things. How many times have you been here before?”

“Three. Four.”

Costa nodded, taking in the information.

She sighed, exasperated. “Is that supposed to be significant too? Are you listening to every word I say and wondering what it’s worth?”

“Not at all. I don’t think anyone understands what’s going on here. Except that it’s obvious there seems to be some link that leads back to you. Who did you come here with, Sara? We may need to know.”

“Really,” she murmured, then pointed up the narrow street of San Giovanni in Laterano. A small electric bus was navigating the cobblestones up the hill, toward the sprawling hospital at the summit. “Have you heard of Pope Joan? The female pope?”

“I thought that was a myth.”

“Probably. The myth says she gave birth outside a house there, on her way to take the papal crown in the Lateran. The mob killed her and the infant too when it realized what she was. Still, myth or no myth, there was an image on a house nearby, until the sixteenth century, of a woman with her breast bared and a child in her arms. Until it was torn down by the Vatican, along with a portrait of her in Siena.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Perhaps because I thought you’d understand. Pope Joan isn’t real. She never existed. Her story is as apocryphal as that of some of the early martyrs but it doesn’t matter. It’s about faith. It’s about how something can be fiction and true too, after a fashion. In Joan’s case it’s a truth about the place women are supposed to have in the world. How we’re meant to be either harlots or heroines. Virgins or whores. It doesn’t occur to you that there might be other permutations. Some middle way in which, perhaps, we’re both, or neither. Or something else altogether.”

“You sound like my father. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to judge you. I just feel jumpy about everything. About what’s in there and why this is all happening.”

“Show me,” she said, and then they walked into the dark church interior, toward the group that stood around the body, now covered with a sheet.

Falcone watched her arrive. He looked hungry for information. The smell of tobacco hung around him. There was ash on his white shirt now. It was the gray, flecked color of his beard. Luca Rossi shuffled awkwardly on his giant feet, accompanied by some detectives Costa didn’t recognize. Teresa Lupo stood at the edge watching them all, taking in everything. Costa was beginning to appreciate her presence more and more. She was honest. She had some insight too that was lacking in the men.

“Ms. Farnese,” Falcone said, coming toward her, extending a hand. “I’m grateful you came. This won’t take long.” He looked at the pathologist. “Please . . .”

Teresa bent down and carefully pulled back the sheet, exposing the dead man’s face. Sara Farnese’s slim hand went to her mouth. She closed her eyes and exhaled a quiet, anguished gasp, then sat down heavily on one of the bench seats. Costa was unable to prevent himself from glaring at Falcone. The inspector was relishing this spectacle, as if her grief contained within it some precious intelligence only he could see. And yet Costa was intrigued by some small element of theatricality in her reaction; he found himself wondering whether she was not expecting to see some other body beneath the sheet. Whether he was, in fact, witnessing her relief.

He walked to the small office that led off the nave and came back with some water, sat next to her and gave her the cup. She accepted it gratefully. Falcone and the other cops watched, curious.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She opened her eyes and stared at him. It was impossible to know whether there was some personal bitterness in her gaze.

“Why are you apologizing? I know who he is. Wasn’t that the point of bringing me here?”

Falcone took a step forward. “Of course. His name, please?”

“Jay Gallo. He was an American tour guide.”

“Address?” Falcone asked, indicating to Costa to take a note.

“In the Via Trastevere. I don’t know the number. It was a cheap little apartment above the supermarket.”

Falcone paused. “And you knew him . . . how exactly?”

She sighed and looked at Costa, as if this proved some point. “We were both at Harvard together for a while. When he moved to Rome we renewed our friendship.”

Falcone waited, in vain, for her to go further. Finally, he asked, “Meaning what exactly?”

“Meaning,” Sara replied icily, “that for a while, a few weeks perhaps four months ago, we slept together. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“I want to know what’s relevant,” Falcone said brusquely. “There are four people dead now. Three of them were your lovers. Where did this Gallo character fit in? Would the others have known him?”

She considered this, appearing to regard it as a reasonable question. “No. He’d no connection with the university. Stefano never met him. Hugh came a long time after.”

“But you would have mentioned him to other people?”

“Why?” she asked, puzzled. “What was the point? I was with Jay for a couple of weeks and then we agreed to be friends, nothing more. I haven’t seen him in months. He was an entertaining man but there was something lost about him. He drank too much. He was far too intelligent to be engaged in the work he did. He was failing himself and he knew it. However amusing he could be, that kind of thing wears off pretty quickly.”

Falcone gave Costa a significant glance as if to say:
See the bitch, see what she’s like. The moment she’s bored, the moment she has doubts, she dumps them. And now one of the names on that list of rejections, maybe a long, long list, is fighting back.

“So what do you think is happening here, Ms. Farnese?” Falcone asked.

“I’ve no idea. What do you mean?”

“Why are your former lovers being killed like this? As if they were martyrs somehow?”

“I can’t begin to guess,” she insisted. “This is as inexplicable to me as it is to you.”

“And yet,” Falcone continued, “you must know the person responsible. This is someone who is familiar with the intimate details of your private life. You see my point?”

“Everybody sees your point.” It was Teresa Lupo who intervened, risking Falcone’s wrath. “It’s the way you ask. May I suggest you get some women detectives in here? You need to strike a balance between duty and prurience.”

“Thanks,” Falcone hissed. “You can take the body out of here now, Doctor. I want an autopsy report by this afternoon.”

The pathologist sighed and called for her team. The wheels squealed across the old stone floor. Sara Farnese watched the covered corpse being lifted gently onto the gurney, watched in silence as it was pushed out into the sun-filled courtyard. They had removed the anchor and the rope, which now lay on the ancient mosaic floor.

“San Clemente,” Sara said. “Why didn’t I realize? He had that anchor around his neck when they found him?”

“As if he were another martyr,” Costa said, watching her like a hawk.

“I told you,” she snapped. “Mostly these stories are apocryphal. In the case of Clemente it certainly is. If the person who did this knows Tertullian—which I assume he does—he knows that too. Tertullian wrote about Clemente and not once mentioned any kind of martyrdom. It’s a fairy tale that was never even told until the fourth century.”

Costa tried to understand the significance. “Why would it matter? What difference does it make whether he knows this is a sham or not?”

Falcone interrupted, smiling. “Because it’s a question of belief. We look at these acts and think they must be the work of a man with some misplaced sense of religion. In fact . . .”

Teresa Lupo, now returned to the nave and glowering openly at Falcone, interrupted. “In fact, you don’t have a clue. Spare us cops practicing fake psychology, please. All any of us knows is this: A man who can skin another human being is not a suitable subject for some kind of cheap Freudian analysis, however hard you try. He can surely hold two entirely conflicting rationales in his head simultaneously and never hear them rub up against each other. I told you boys last night. I tell you now. This is a man who is strong, determined and powerful. A man who has some kind of medical knowledge, or has worked in a slaughterhouse. Forget what’s in his head because it’s got some impenetrable logic all of its own and you’d need to be as crazy as he is to understand it. Look for the physical facts.”

“Do you know anyone like that?” Costa asked Sara Farnese.

“No,” she replied, looking at the long-haired woman in the white coat, grateful for her support. “But whoever he is knows Tertullian too. You forgot that.”

“Quite,” the pathologist agreed. “Seems like I’ve got the easy job around here.” She walked away, grabbing for the cigarettes beneath the enclosed suit.

“What else do you want?” Sara asked as Lupo’s team left through the outside gate.

Falcone shuffled on his feet, thinking. “The name and address of everyone you’ve had a relationship with since coming to Rome.”

She shook her head. “That’s not possible. You can’t ask for someone’s entire private life.”

Falcone leaned toward her, so close that their faces almost touched. “Ms. Farnese,” he said softly. “Everyone you have slept with is a suspect. Everyone you have slept with is a potential victim. We need their names. For their sakes as much as ours. Surely you can see that?”

“Some of them are married men. This is ridiculous. How would you feel if it were you?”

Falcone gave her a disagreeable frown. “Maybe I’d feel glad to be alive.”

She had no answer. Costa touched her arm gently, wondering again about this strange chasm there seemed to be in her life. “Sara. It’s important. We can get some women detectives you can talk to. Everything will remain confidential.”

“You honestly believe that? Please . . .”

He couldn’t argue. They all knew that everything leaked from the department in the end. He couldn’t begin to guess what names existed inside Sara Farnese’s head but it would be impossible to promise them privacy once they entered the files in the Questura Centrale. There was too much media interest already and too much money riding on any scraps of information that could be secretly gleaned from the files.

“We require this for your sake too,” Falcone said forcefully. “Whoever this man is knows everything about you. Perhaps he’s trying to impress you with these acts. Perhaps they are warnings. But one thing I’m sure of. At some stage he will realize they’re not having the desired effect and he will hold you to blame. At that point his next victim will surely be you, the source of his sorrows.”

She stared at him. “Whoever this is, I am not the source of his sorrows. This is not my doing.”

“As he sees it . . . I should have put it that way,” Falcone said, in the closest to an apology his pride would allow. “Who do you know in the Vatican?” He threw the question at her idly, as if it were unimportant. Costa cursed himself. He had told Falcone of his concerns about what had happened in the library that morning. He had no idea his vague doubts would translate into direct questions so quickly.

“What?”

“There were phone calls, between Rinaldi and someone in the Vatican. There were indications that Rinaldi believed he was under some kind of surveillance when he entered the Reading Room, either electronically or from some person in the room. In your line of work you must know many people. It’s important we have their names.”

“I’ve no special relationship with anyone in the Vatican.” Her face was pale and hard, a mask.