David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

The jeep moved forward onto the bridge. Alexa looked down towards the river. “Then things fell apart. Not just personal things, you understand. Life. The country. Everything. Pull in somewhere. I can see lights down there.”

Costa parked the vehicle on the deserted pavement. They got out of the car and stood in the snow, shivering. The night was bitterly cold, with a stiff wind whipping through the open channel cut through the city by the Tiber. They were close enough now to see the black, silky surface of the river and a silver moon reflecting back at them, a perfect shining circle. It was dark down there, but there were people around, huddled in the shelter beneath the bridge. Costa could see the tiny firefly embers of cigarettes and smell the bitter smoke of a makeshift brazier.

“Stay here,” Alexa said, “until I call.”

She hesitated before heading for the steps. “There’s something you ought to know. Stefan is my uncle. When we lost the farm-his farm, our farm, everyone’s-I just ran away here. I thought I could make everything right. I thought the streets were paved with gold. You know the funny thing?”

She stared at them, with those black, gypsy eyes, and didn’t bother to hide her bitterness.

“Compared to what it’s like back home now, they are. I sometimes have to remind myself of that when I’ve got some fat businessman wheezing into my face wondering if he’s ever going to get there. I came here… and did what was easy. Stefan used what little money he had to find me, to try to get me to go back. We argued. I won. Which is as it should be because, in the circumstances, I was right. If you’ve got to have a pimp, best it’s your uncle. Best it’s an honest man, and Stefan is. Ask any of his girls.”

Emily looked her in the face and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

The three of them waited while Alexa walked down the steps shuffling their feet in the snow in a vain effort to keep warm. The night had the crisp, biting smell of a hard winter, one that wanted to hang around. The snow would surely resume soon. Peroni glanced down at the sound of voices below.

“What do we do when this doesn’t work?” he asked.

“Keep looking,” Costa replied, “until she runs out of places.” He turned to Emily Deacon. “You don’t need to stick with us. We’re on night duty anyway. You’re not.”

“I’m fine,” she answered.

“You could-”

“I’m fine.”

Peroni caught Costa’s eye and shrugged. “How many people has Leapman got working for him here?” he asked.

She scowled. “I don’t know.”

“Two? Three? Fifty?” Peroni insisted.

She hugged herself tight inside her jacket. “Listen, until a couple of months ago I was a lowly intelligence officer working nine to five in a systems office in Washington. Then I got plucked out to come here. Why? Maybe because I know Rome. Or I speak good Italian. Maybe Leapman thinks I’m owed it because of my dad. But believe me when I say this. I do not know . He doesn’t tell me. He doesn’t listen to a damn word I say. As far as he’s concerned we’re just chasing some lunatic serial killer with a lot of air miles.”

“Maybe we are,” Peroni wondered.

“No!” she insisted angrily. “There’s a logic here. A crazy, distorted logic but it’s rational somehow too. We just have to see it.”

“I agree,” Costa said, and wondered how much that was worth. Leapman’s focus might be awry but the American had a point. They all knew the way these cases went. Intelligence, forensics, careful investigation… all of these things were important. But the final act of closure usually came by accident. A mistake, a chance encounter. The killer was active. With activity came risks. The point was to have people there, on the ground, when he slipped up. Falcone knew that as well as anyone. Both he and Leapman would surely have men on the street steadily building up a picture of the man from what little information they had, hoping that one day soon they would turn a corner and find him staring into their faces.

The reason they were chasing the girl was to save her and not, in all honesty, because they thought she’d lead them to his lair.

The voices from under the bridge began to grow in volume. They were heated, too, and it wasn’t just Alexa shouting. Costa cast Peroni a concerned glance. They’d let the woman walk straight into the unknown, assuming she could handle herself. Then, to Costa’s relief, they heard careful footsteps on the snow-covered stone steps. Alexa reappeared. She looked puzzled, a little scared maybe.

“We were getting worried,” Peroni said. “They didn’t sound too friendly down there.”

“They’re just doped up to hell, most of them. I’ve got a name for you. Laila. Kurdish. She was here tonight, apparently. They don’t know where she’s gone. Or so they say.”

“And?” Costa pressed.

“I don’t know,” she answered hesitantly. “They just took the money and came up with the story. It could be complete bullshit. Tell me, are you the only people looking for her?”

“As far as we know.”

“It’s just that someone else has been asking. He didn’t have a picture, but he knew what she looked like.”

“What did he say?” Costa demanded.

“He was a priest. He said she’d been staying at the hostel where he worked. There’d been an argument. He wanted to patch it up. Except…” She looked down at the faces by the river, from where some angry rumbles were coming. “This girl. Laila. They say she doesn’t stay in hostels much. She’s a street kid, likes to be on her own. Kind of weird. Not dope. Just funny in the head. If they’re telling the truth, this man’s lying.”

“To hell with this,” Peroni grunted, heading for the steps. “We’ve got to talk to them.”

Alexa put a hand on his jacket. “Be careful. There are some real assholes down there.”

“Yeah, right,” Peroni grumbled, and brushed past her.

He was there so quickly that Costa and the two women missed what he said. Then Costa found himself remembering why he stuck with Peroni as a partner, why he never even thought of moving somewhere else. Peroni was speaking to a huddle of kids, perhaps fifteen of them, peering out of the darkness, young faces full of fear and resentment lit by a stinking brazier burning cardboard and damp wood. They knew they were talking to cops. They were waiting for all the trouble that meant. And Gianni Peroni was speaking to them in exactly the opposite way to the manner they expected: carefully, with conviction, and a quiet, forceful respect.

“You have to believe me,” he was saying. “We know you want to protect this girl. We understand why you don’t want to help the likes of us. But she’s in trouble. We have to find her.”

Alexa barked something incomprehensible and pulled out some more of Peroni’s money. The gang of youths stood there, immobile, but restless too. Finally a skeletal kid as tall as Costa came out of the darkness and took the money.

“I show you,” he said, pointing upriver, towards the Vatican. “You come with me. Over there. Now. You come. You come.”

He was dragging Peroni’s sleeve. It was all a game, Costa thought. Just a runaround for a few euros. He watched Peroni start to shuffle off, wondering at what stage they had to admit defeat. Then a sound made him turn his head. The huddle of bodies in the shadow of the bridge had changed. They were moving, making space for someone. Emily Deacon was walking straight into the middle of them, talking, in an accent which through fear betrayed her origins, asking, asking.

Seeing something too. A slim slight figure hiding at the back.

“Laila,” she yelled. “Laila!”

Somebody murmured, “ Amerikane …”