The Seventh Sacrament (23 page)

L
IKE FATHER, LIKE SON,” FALCONE MURMURED AS THE
three of them shuffled into Bruno Messina’s office. They were in the quarters on the sixth floor. From Messina’s corner room, there should have been a good view of the cobbled piazza below. All they saw now was a smear of brown stone. The rain was coming down in vertical stripes. The forecast was for a period of unsettled weather lasting days: sudden storms and heavy downpours broken by outbreaks of brief bright sun. Spring was arriving in Rome, and it was a time of extremes.

Messina sat in a leather chair behind his large, well-polished desk trying to look like a man in control. It was an act he needed. The Questura was teeming with officers. Local, pulled in from leave. Strangers, too, since Messina had demanded an external inquiry into the security lapses that had allowed the attack on Falcone, wisely choosing to endure the pain of outside scrutiny before it was forced upon him. No one yet seemed much minded to blame Leo Falcone or those close to him. How could they? But the low, idle chatter had begun. Scapegoats would be sought for the disaster of the night before.

The commissario had suspended the civilian security officer who had failed to spot that the ID used by Bramante to pose as a cleaner actually belonged to a woman, one whose handbag had been stolen while shopping in San Giovanni a week before and was now on vacation in Capri, a fact that would have been obvious from the personal diary that had disappeared along with the rest of her belongings. The rookie agente ambushed by Bramante when he abducted Dino Abati was now at home recovering from a bad beating, and scared witless, Costa suspected, about what would happen when the inquiry came round to him. Messina was acting with a swift, ruthless ferocity because he understood that his own position, as a commissario only nine months into the job, was damaged. That had led him to put some distance between himself and Falcone as head of the investigation, hoping perhaps to shift the blame onto his subordinate should the sky begin to fall.

The effect was not as Messina had planned. The word that was on everyone’s lips that morning was “sloppy.” The media were enjoying a field day about a murder that had happened in the heart of the
centro storico
’s principal Questura. Politicians, never slow to seize an opportunity to deflect criticism from their own lapses, were getting in on the act. What had occurred, rumors inside and out of the force were beginning to say, had taken place because the juniors, Messina in particular, were now in charge. They had lax standards when it came to matters of general routine. They put paperwork and procedural issues ahead of the mundane considerations of old-style policing. No one, it was whispered, had ever accused Falcone of such lapses of attention. Nor would they now throw that accusation in the direction of the fast-recovering individual who was marching around his old haunt like a man who’d rediscovered the fire in his belly.

Messina looked as if he couldn’t wait to stamp that fire into ashes. The commissario watched the three of them—Falcone, Costa, and Peroni—take their seats, then stated, “I’ve brought in someone else to run this case, Falcone. Don’t argue. We can’t have a man heading an inquiry into his own attempted murder. The same goes for you two. There’s a young inspector I want to try out. Bavetti. You’ll give him every assistance—”

“You’re making a mistake,” Falcone said without emotion.

“I’m not sure I want to hear that from you.”

“You will, nevertheless,” the inspector went on. “I kept quiet for too long when a Messina was screwing up once before. I’m not doing it twice.”

“Dammit, Falcone! I won’t be spoken to like that. You listen to me.”

“No!” the inspector yelled. “
You
listen. I’m the one Giorgio Bramante came looking for last night, aren’t I? These two and their women got their photos taken by that man. Doesn’t that give us some rights?”

Messina folded his arms and scowled. “No.”

“Then listen out of your own self-interest. If your old man had heard me out fourteen years ago, he’d never have left the force in disgrace. Do you want to go the same way?”

Messina closed his eyes, furious. Falcone had hit his target.

Without waiting, Falcone launched into retelling the information he’d managed to assemble overnight, speaking rapidly, fluently, without the slightest sign that he was affected by the previous year’s injuries or Giorgio Bramante’s more recent attentions. If anyone doubted whether the shooting in Venice had diminished the man’s mental faculties, Costa thought, they were unlikely to harbour those misconceptions for long in the face of the precise, logical way Falcone now painted, in a few short minutes, a picture of recent events and how he had reacted to them.

Two officers had spent the night checking with contacts in the social agencies and the hostels dealing with itinerants. It was clear Dino Abati was far from a stranger to them. He had made a polite street bum, one who never asked for much more than simple charity. Those who dealt with him regarded him as educated, honest, and more than a little lost. Abati stood out, too, with that head of red hair. Given the facts—Abati was in Italy, outside the normal system of ID checks, social security records, and tax payments—the street was an obvious place for the authorities to look for him. Bramante just happened to have been several steps ahead of them.

ABATI HAD BEEN DUE
to spend the previous night in a hostel run by an order of monks near Termini. At eleven in the evening, after his free meal and an evening spent watching TV, a staff member had found an anonymous letter addressed to him, left in the hostel entrance, at the front desk, by an unseen visitor. Abati read the letter. Then, without saying a word, he’d walked out of the building.

They had recovered the document from a trash can in the communal living room. It said, simply:

Dino:

I was talking to Leo Falcone earlier today. You remember him? He thought it was time the two of you met up. I tend to agree. The sooner the better. Or should we discuss this face to face?

Giorgio.

“Wonderful,” Messina groaned after Falcone filled him in. “This man is three steps ahead of us all the way. What is he? Psychic or something?”

“Tell him,” Falcone told Costa icily.

Costa kept it short. That morning, he’d made this call himself, to Dino Abati’s mother, after the local force had broken the bad news. Three months before, she’d received a letter, supposedly from the missing Sandro Vignola, asking urgently for her son’s whereabouts. The letter had contained personal details that made her believe the message was genuine. They were, when Costa checked, the kind of information Bramante, as Abati’s professor, would have known: birth date, home address, student haunts.

“So…” Messina acknowledged with little grace, “you have got something.”

“More than that,” Costa went on. “We’re checking with the other families too. The Belluccis say they got a similar letter several months before their son died. It’s a reasonable bet we’ll find out the same method was used with the others. That was how Bramante tracked them down.”

“And we never found out?” the commissario asked, incredulous.

“You said it yourself,” Falcone replied. “They were different cases, handled by different forces. No one made the link. Why should they? There’s more. Early this morning we sent men round to each of the obvious hostels you’d expect a well-mannered itinerant to use.”

Costa smiled. It was a typical Falcone shot in the dark. Nine out of ten times such efforts never paid off. But…

“Four hostels close to the Questura, ones that knew Abati, received an identical letter last night,” Costa said. “Each was delivered sometime in the early evening. The one in the Campo has CCTV of the person responsible. He was wearing a cleaner’s uniform, with the insignia of the same private company we use for housekeeping. Their office reported a break-in two nights ago. Clothing and money were taken. Bramante deliberately planned to drive Abati
towards
the Questura. Where else would he go? And if he didn’t turn up, Bramante had Leo…Inspector Falcone. It’s called covering your options.”

Messina swore under his breath. “Good work, Agente,” he muttered unhappily.

“I just go where I’m told, sir.”

That was true too. What had occurred bore Giorgio Bramante’s style, something Leo Falcone had recognised from the outset. Everything had been planned, down to the last detail, with alternatives should the original scheme go awry.

Even so, Costa felt uneasy. Bramante could have killed both Abati and Leo at that last moment, finished his list for good. And many reading their newspapers the next day would have felt some sympathy with him.

Instead, Bramante let Leo live, and that seemed to enrage—indeed, to infuriate—the inspector more than ever. Costa had seen this steely glint in Falcone’s eye before. This case had become the entire focus of Falcone’s world. Nothing now mattered until every last unresolved detail—and that included the fate of Alessio Bramante—was brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

“Look, Leo.” Messina sounded a little conciliatory. “Put yourself in my position. You’re personally involved in this case. All three of you.”

“We were involved yesterday,” Falcone pointed out. “It didn’t seem to worry you then.”

Messina looked dejected. He wasn’t entirely his own man, Costa thought. There would be pressure from above. A young commissario’s career could hang on how he handled difficult cases like this.

“Yesterday I thought this was going to be simple. Either you brought in Bramante quickly and covered yourself in a little glory. Or you fouled up and—let’s be honest with one another—that would be an end to it. You could retire. Like my father.”

Falcone was unmoved. “I still don’t see what’s changed.”

“What’s changed? I’ll tell you! This bloodthirsty animal isn’t
running
from us. He’s got the damn nerve to bring his murderous habits right to our own
doorstep
! That’s an entirely different game. I can’t make…” He glanced away from them. “…I can’t base my decisions on personal issues. I just want this whole mess cleaned up. Now. For good. With no more bodies. Unless it’s Giorgio Bramante’s. He’s caused us enough grief for one lifetime.”

Peroni leaned forward and tapped the desk hard with his fat index finger. “You think we want otherwise?”

“No,” Messina admitted, shrinking back into his leather chair. No one liked the look of Peroni when he was getting mad. “I just don’t intend to take any more risks. How would the three of you feel about a little holiday? I’ll pick up the bill. Sicily maybe. Take your women along. The pathologist too. Two weeks. A month. I don’t mind.”

They looked at one another. It was Peroni who spoke first.

“What kind of men do you think we are?”

“Meaning?” the commissario replied warily.

“What kind of serving police officer walks away from a case like this? To sit in some out-of-season hotel swilling wine at the taxpayers’ expense just because you don’t like having us around?”

“It’s not that—” Messina began to say.

“What kind of senior officer would even contemplate offering such a thing?” Peroni persisted, interrupting him.

“The kind of officer who doesn’t like going to funerals.” Messina picked up a pen and waved it in the big man’s direction. “Is that so bad? Understand this. I don’t know if I can keep you alive. Any of you. If I can’t guarantee your safety in the Questura, where the hell am I supposed to put you? In jail? How would you run an investigation from there, Leo? Answer me that.”

Falcone thought about it for a very short moment.

“I keep this case for two more days. I give you my word I won’t put myself in the way of danger. Costa and Peroni here…it’s up to them. I think they can look after one another.”

“Correct, sir,” Costa said.

“If there’s no concrete progress,” Falcone continued, “if I don’t seem to be on the point of closing Bramante down after forty-eight hours, you give the whole show to Bavetti. That’s the deal.”

Messina laughed. It didn’t seem to be a sound he made often. “A deal? A deal? Who the hell do you think you are to come in here and offer
me
deals? You’re a cripple living on past gratitude. Don’t stretch my patience.”

“Those are my conditions.”

Messina made that strange dry noise again. “Conditions. And if I say go to hell?”

“Then I quit,” Falcone answered. “Then I do something I’ve never even contemplated before: I walk straight out there and tell those jackals from the newspapers why.”

“Quit,” Peroni repeated. “I love that word.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his wallet, withdrew his police ID card, and placed it on the desk.

Costa did the same. Then he added the handgun he’d used to no good purpose the previous night.

Peroni looked at the weapon, then glanced at him. “You never really liked guns, did you, Nic?”

“There are a lot of things in this job you get to dislike,” Costa said. “It’s just a question of learning to live with them.”