David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

Costa watched Peroni fumbling with the key to the apartment block door. “Gianni, are you OK?”

“Yeah. I just need some sleep. Something to eat. Excuse my moods, Nic. It’s not like me.”

“I know,” Costa said. “You go inside. I’ve got something to do. Plus I’ll bring you a little present.”

Peroni’s eyes sparked with worry. “Don’t overdo the vegetables!”

“It’s a promise.”

It was just before one. There was a store around the corner Nic knew. They did the kind of food Peroni liked: roast porchetta, complete with crisp skin, nestling inside a panino raked with salt and rosemary. He could pick up something for himself too.

But first he caught the photographic shop before it closed and half talked, half badgered the man behind the counter into running the seven cassettes from Mauro’s cameras and his accessory bag straight through the Fuji developing machine. The prints would be ready before four. Costa could pick them up by ringing the private bell to the apartment above.

When he got back, Peroni was sprawled out on Teresa’s sofa, looking very at home and listening to the weather on the TV. He took the pork sandwich and started stuffing his face with it straight from the bag.

“Not bad,” he conceded. “How come I never found this place?”

“You do much shopping when you’re staying here?”

Peroni sniffed, then said, “The snow’s locked in for days, Nic. No trains. No planes. Not much moving on the roads either. I guess that means our man’s not going to find it easy to get out of Rome. If he wants to.”

“Why would he want to?” Costa asked. There was a message in the American woman’s body. A problem demanding a solution. Why would a person set a riddle, then walk away without seeing whether it was solved?

“I dunno,” Peroni grumbled, finishing the sandwich, then struggling to his feet, brushing crumbs off his shirt. “I don’t know a damn thing anymore. Except I need to sleep. Wake me at the right time.” Then he hesitated, thinking. “Why the hell did Leo give in to those Americans so easily? I mean, he could have put up a fight. I can’t believe we’re trooping round to their place like this when the poor bitch got killed on our territory. Her and Mauro too.”

That was one thing Costa did understand. Leo Falcone never fought battles he knew he couldn’t win. It was one of the things that made him stand out in the Questura. He was smarter than most. There was, perhaps, another reason too. A faceless figure from SISDE had turned up halfway through the morning-just in time to see the American woman loaded into the hearse-and had talked to Falcone in private. Costa had never seen him before. Peroni, who knew just about every cop and spook in town, civilian and military, had and had sworn ferociously under his breath at the sight.

“What was that guy’s name? The one from SISDE?”

Peroni pulled a sour face. “Viale. Don’t ask me what he does. Or how big he is. Very, probably. I ran into him a couple of times on vice when we picked up people he wanted left alone. He’s good at the pressure.”

Costa could feel he was treading on delicate ground. “Good enough to squeeze you?”

“I could tell you, Nic,” Peroni said pleasantly, “but the trouble is, afterwards, I’d have to cut out your tongue. I joke, but I’m not supposed to. The honest answer is men like Viale get what they want these days. You mess with them at your peril.”

Costa smiled, said nothing, and moved over to the sofa, stretching out for the first time in what seemed like twenty-four hours.

“Point taken,” Peroni said with a wave of his hand, then disappeared into the bedroom.

MONICA SAWYER STOOD at the plain wooden counter of L’Angolo Divino and wished to God she’d learned to speak Italian. Someone at the rental agency had recommended the place and tried to explain the play on words, how “divino” meant both “divine” and “about wine.” Monica kind of got the joke. It was a wine bar. Or, more than that, an enoteca , a place that sold a variety of wines, cheap and expensive, and some pretty pricey plates of pasta, cheese and cold meats too. At least, that was what she’d been told. Now that she was in the bar, which was set on the corner of two narrow alleys off the Campo dei Fiori, she didn’t have much of a clue about anything. One end of the L-shaped room looked like a library, with row upon row of expensive-looking bottles stretching up to the high ceiling. The rest of the bar was a plain narrow channel that could take three people deep, no more, with a wooden-plank floor, a few pine tables and some plates of very fragrant cheese in a glass cabinet. An old guy in a brown jacket, the kind people in hardware stores used to wear, was talking rapid Italian at her from behind the counter, and it might as well have been Urdu. There was only one other customer in the place, a man in a black suit who sat on a nearby bench reading an Italian paper and sipping at the biggest wine glass Monica Sawyer had ever seen, swilling around the splash of red liquid in the base from time to time before sniffing it, smiling and drinking the tiniest drop.

Monica came from San Francisco. She was familiar with bars. She ought to be able to handle this, she thought. So she said very distinctly, for the third time, “ Una copa de chardonnay, por favor ,” and felt like bursting into tears when the old man just babbled on incomprehensibly and waved at the huge selection of bottles behind the counter.

“Oh crap,” she muttered. Things had gone from bad to worse. The weather meant she was going to be alone in Rome for days with nothing to do, no one to talk to. And not much chance of getting a decent drink when she wanted one, outside of hotel bars, where a lone American woman of forty-two who was, Monica Sawyer knew, still pretty good-looking could not sit safely without the risk of constant harassment.

“Italian and Spanish are close relatives, but they are, I fear, hardly interchangeable,” said a warm Irish voice at her shoulder.

Monica Sawyer turned and saw that the man in the dark suit was now at her side. He’d got there without making a sound, which in normal circumstances would have been a touch creepy. But she didn’t feel that way somehow. He was smiling at her, a pleasant smile, from a pleasant, intelligent face, somewhat lined and hewn, as if it had been through the wars, but attractive all the same. He was, perhaps, fifty and still had perfect, very white teeth. He wore wire-framed, rectangular spectacles, which were a little old-fashioned, and slightly tinted too, so she could only just make out what she believed to be grey, thoughtful eyes behind the glass. He had a good head of hair, salt and pepper locks, long and wavy, like an artist’s.

They never leave you alone, she thought. But at least this one was Irish. Then she watched him unfold the scarf at his neck and felt deeply and childishly guilty.

“Father,” she said, staring at the slightly crumpled dog collar, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

He was a handsome man. That was the problem. Given that Harvey probably wouldn’t make it to Rome for days, possibly a week or more, she was, she had to admit, in need of a little company. Just the sound of a friendly voice speaking English made such a difference.

“And why should you?”

He was six feet tall and well built. And he was glancing at her fox-fur coat, wondering, perhaps, what kind of woman roamed around the empty, snow-blocked streets of Rome looking as if she’d dressed for the theatre.

“It’s the warmest thing I’ve got,” she explained hastily. “Besides, I was wearing it for my husband. He was supposed to join me from New York today. Then they said the airport was closed. For God knows how long…” She cursed herself inwardly. Monica Sawyer had gone to a Catholic school in Palo Alto. She ought to be able to remember how to behave. Not that he seemed shocked. Priests were different these days.