A Season for the Dead (14 page)

23

Falcone glowered at the three names on the desk, names Nic Costa had provided in his report. He had assembled a team of sixteen for the investigation: all men. They sat in the briefing room smoking, drinking coffee, feeling uncomfortable. The air-conditioning was struggling to keep ahead of the heat. The atmosphere in the station was tense, unpleasant and desperate. They knew when they were grasping at straws.

“Is this all?” Falcone asked Costa.

“How many are there supposed to be?” Falcone had to learn that pressure wasn’t the only option. There were other ways of getting what you wanted, Costa thought. Perhaps more efficient ones.

“I don’t know,” Falcone admitted. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

Costa thought about this. “I don’t think she’s lying.” Sara had dictated the names very carefully over coffee, spelling out the addresses, giving a short summary of the details of each relationship. Two of them were married. All were people she had met in some kind of professional capacity, as if she had no private life of her own at all. No relationship appeared to have lasted more than a few weeks. Most puzzling of all for Costa, she seemed to feel it was normal to lead such an empty, two-dimensional existence.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” Falcone complained.

“I know. What I was trying to say was that these people check out. We’ve spoken to each of them. They acknowledge what went on, even the married ones. They all have alibis for the period we can fix absolutely—those hours when he must have been in the church on Tiber Island. I’m not saying none of them is a suspect but they look more like possible victims to me. The way they leapt at the idea of protection certainly seems to suggest so.”

Falcone raised a heavy eyebrow at Rossi. “Are you going along with that? He’s doing a lot of the talking these days.”

“He’s not saying anything I wouldn’t,” the big man replied. “I go along with it all.”

Falcone looked at the list again. “A judge. Some bureaucrat from the Finance Ministry. And this last one? It doesn’t even say what he does.”

“Toni Ferrari,” Rossi said, reading from his own notes. “Creepy little stockbroker. Skinny string of piss. Believe me, he isn’t up for this. Almost wet himself when I said he could be next in line.”

Falcone grimaced. “What connects them? Why these men?”

“They asked her out,” Costa answered. “She said yes.”

“Denney? Any connection there? These are just the kind of people he used to mix with.”

“Nothing that we can see or they admit to,” Costa replied. “There’s nothing like the link Rinaldi had. They’ve been near no judicial commission. As far as we can see, they don’t have any connection with the Banca Lombardia.”

“So that’s it? She just meets these people, sleeps with them for a while and then it ends?”

Luca Rossi stabbed the air with his finger. “At their insistence,” he said. “Every one of them I talked to said that. It just got too freaky for them. She’d turn up on dates. She’d smile and talk all the way through. She’d sleep with them, and I get the impression that was no bad thing either. But it was as if there was something missing. Here. One of them said this . . .” He searched through the notes. “The Finance Ministry guy. He said, after a while it was like taking out some woman from an escort agency. Impersonal. Even a man gets to tire of that eventually.”

“Guess he must have known what it was like, though,” Falcone mused. “Could that be what she is? Some college professor who’s a high-class hooker on the side?”

Costa groaned. “Please. Why would she do that? The apartment’s hers, bought with her own money, no mortgage, from the inheritance she got from her parents when she turned twenty-one. If she doesn’t need the cash, what’s the point? Because she likes it?”

“I’ve heard stranger things,” Luca Rossi said. “Do you understand what’s going on in her head?”

Costa said nothing.

“Check it out anyway,” Falcone said. “There are people out there who would know. What about one-night stands? Did she say anything about that?”

Costa hadn’t pressed the point. Sara didn’t want to go there; he didn’t want to hear the answers. “Nothing. I don’t think they happened.”

“So what do we have?” Falcone wondered. “A woman who sleeps around casually. Nothing unusual there. A good-looking woman, someone people want to be seen with for a while. And then they get bored, or they get scared, and just fade into the background. Except one of them remains obsessed, one of them doesn’t want this to end, or if he does he wants to make sure she remembers him. He’ll do anything to make his point to her. Kill people. Do it in a way designed to make her sit up and take notice because it ties in with what she does. But . . .”

“She didn’t finish with people,” Rossi said. “They finished with her. All of them. Isn’t that what she said?”

“Yes,” Costa admitted.

Falcone threw the sheaf of notes onto the far side of his desk. “Then she’s lying. She has to be. All of these men, the ones we know about, don’t want to go near her. There has to be more. She’s got to know why. What about the apartment?”

Costa was lost. “The apartment . . . ?”

Furillo, one of the men Falcone had brought in that morning at San Clemente, said, “Nothing to go whoopee about.”

“You’ve searched her apartment? You did that while I was with her? That was the point?”

Falcone stared at Costa. “This is turning into a serial-murder investigation, kid. We don’t have time for the niceties.”

“If you’d asked her—”

“She might have said no. And then we’d have got permission anyway. What makes you think we have time to wait around like that? Three days, four people dead. He could be back at work somewhere out there right now.”

Costa was silent.

“One thing,” Furillo added. “We found a mobile hidden in a drawer in the bedroom. Not her normal phone. We called the number we had and checked. This thing didn’t ring and it’s locked by a code. Technical said they couldn’t crack it. Doesn’t store numbers either so we don’t know who she’s called or who’s called her. Neat, if you want to make sure no one knows who you’re talking to.”

Rossi was unimpressed. “A phone in a drawer? Maybe it’s just an old one she put away.”

“It’s fully charged,” Furillo said. “It’s still got the sticker on the back saying it came from Monaco. Why would you have a phone from Monaco in your bedroom drawer?”

Falcone grimaced. “That’s it? Nothing else?”

“Nothing.”

Falcone watched them for a while and they knew what he wanted: suggestions. No one was willing to play the game. If Sara Farnese was keeping something from them, there was precious little they could use to sweat it out of her.

“I’m taking her into protective custody,” Falcone announced eventually. “Get some safe house somewhere. Not a nice one either. I don’t want her comfortable.”

“It won’t work,” Costa objected.

“Why?”

“Because . . .” He knew the answer. It was obvious. Falcone knew it too. “Because she will only tell us when she wants to tell us. She won’t break just because we pile on the pressure. She’s not like that.”

“He’s right,” Luca Rossi agreed. “I’ve been watching that woman since we first saw her in the library. She holds it all inside and she’s going to keep it there until she chooses to let it out. The tougher we make life for her, the harder it gets for us.”

“Then what?” Falcone demanded peevishly. “She can’t go back to that apartment. The media’s camped out in the street. And she is, like it or not, potentially under threat.”

Costa thought of his father, how the old man’s calm was perhaps what was needed. The house on the Appian Way had the room. There was privacy. It could be perfect.

“You’re trying to drive this man to me, right?” he asked.

“The TV pictures I saw weren’t wonderful,” Falcone groused. “Maybe they’ll have something better on a different station. You could have got in a bit closer. You could have made it look more obvious.”

“Whatever. We can kill two birds with one stone. Let her stay at my father’s place for a while. I can be there. If this guy’s coming for her, he’ll find out where we are. If you want to whet his appetite, what better way could there be? He could take his pick.”

“Your father’s Red Marco, right?” Falcone said sourly. “The Commie with the big farm out in the country?”

“Most of which he rebuilt with his own hands if you want to know. Sir . . .” Costa knew the real story behind the farm and it was nothing like the scurrilous gossip that the papers had made up.

Falcone smiled. It didn’t make anyone in the room feel any happier. “Oh, that could work. We can pump up the press with it. We can put you right in this whacko’s sights. There’s still time for the evening news. Is this place easy to cover? My guess is we’ll get one chance with this lunatic and I don’t want it thrown away.”

Costa thought of the untidy sprawl of farmland, enclosed by rickety fences. It wasn’t ideal but it was manageable. “We’ll need plenty of people on the ground.”

“My, my,” Falcone said. “I hope it’s worth the expense.”

They waited.

“Do it,” the inspector said. “And you go break the news that she’s going to be your houseguest. If you’re right, maybe she really will talk to one person and one person alone when she feels like it. Make sure it’s you. And Furillo?”

The detective nodded.

“Use this time productively. Go through that apartment of hers again. Go through it until you find something else. On with it!”

The team rose. Falcone looked at Costa and Rossi. “You two. We’ll drop in to my office on the way. There’s one more thing.”

They walked down the corridor into the small, neat room where Falcone worked, Nic Costa wondering as they did so how he would manage to sell this idea to her. Falcone closed the door and went to his desk. There he opened a drawer and took out a videocassette.

“This came in marked for your attention this morning, Costa. I took the liberty of opening it. Save you the trouble.”

Costa looked at the video. There was no label on it, nothing to indicate where it came from. Falcone handed it to him and nodded at the VCR in the corner. Then they watched the tape: three minutes of it, every second so gripping Costa couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. When it was done he looked at Luca Rossi. The big man’s face was deathly white. These were images none of them wanted to recall.

The tape was a composite of several scenes, culled from at least four different cameras, covering Stefano Rinaldi’s time in the Vatican Library from the moment he walked through the main doors to the time of his bloody death, with the skin of Hugh Fairchild spread out on the desk before him. Sara had been correct. Rinaldi hadn’t intended to kill her. The gun he held was going toward his own head. Rinaldi was trying to commit suicide on someone else’s orders, someone he believed could see him through the security system and might, perhaps, let his own wife live in return. His eyes—dark, haunted eyes—caught the lens in every scene; in one, as he entered the Reading Room, he even nodded at the camera.

“So?” Falcone demanded. “What does that tell us?”

“That it was the video system he was trying to convince,” Costa said immediately. “Not the people in the room. He checked the position of the video all the time. When he whispered to Sara, he turned his back to the camera. That was deliberate.”

“Exactly. So, rightly or wrongly, he believed someone who had access to that system would know whether he was doing the right thing or not. And?”

Costa’s head was a blur. He couldn’t think this through and Rossi wasn’t helping. The big man was looking at him, horrified.

“Tell him,” Falcone barked at Rossi.

“Jesus, kid,” the big man moaned. “Think about it. You’ve been stirring things in places we never want to go. Someone in the Vatican knows something. Furthermore, someone in the Vatican likes you. Likes you enough to send you this tape. Are they the same person? Or is it two different people working in opposite directions? What did you do after I left you yesterday?”

“I went and talked to Hanrahan,” Costa admitted. “Why not? He knows stuff.”

“You leave this alone,” Falcone insisted. “I talk to Mr. Hanrahan. In my time. On my conditions. I don’t want any more secret visits, you hear?”

Costa nodded and wondered how Falcone seemed to know, with such certainty, that he had returned to see Hanrahan even before he admitted it.

Falcone walked to him and patted his arm. It was an oddly familiar gesture. “One step at a time, Nic,” he said. “You’ve got enough on your plate with that woman. Talk to her. Make her feel at home. Make her feel you’re her best friend. She knows someone inside that place. Understand?”

“Yes,” Nic Costa murmured. But Falcone wasn’t listening. He had turned the TV onto a news channel. It was coverage of Costa and Sara Farnese leaving the church that morning, with a voice-over story that was grossly lurid even for one of the Rome channels. The camera lingered on Sara, trying to catch her face as she ducked and turned from the pack. Then the picture turned shakily to him. He had his arm around Sara, affectionately, it seemed. She was clinging to his body. They looked like lovers.