David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

It hung on a knife edge. He could so easily ruin things.

“Henry Anderton,” she repeated.

“I can write it down,” he said, reaching for the pad.

She snatched it away. “That would be really smart. Are you at home this evening? Six or seven onwards?”

“Could be.”

“Do me a favour too.” She started scribbling something on the notepad. “Look up this name. Everywhere you can find. Tonight we can compare notes. And… Damn!”

There was a shape by the car. Costa felt his spine stiffen, saw images from the previous two nights flash through his head and reached for his gun.

The jeep door opened. Agent Leapman stood there, staring in at them, looking even more pissed off than usual.

“What is this? The kindergarten run?” Leapman demanded. “You should’ve been at your desk an hour ago, Deacon.”

Behind her back, Emily’s hand, small, firm and warm, thrust itself briefly into Costa’s, pushing the screwed-up page from the pad into his palm. Their fingers entwined, just briefly.

Leapman didn’t see a thing. He was too busy making an impression.

“Go sit in there and look busy, will you, Deacon?” the FBI man snarled. “I got things to do.”

She pulled her hand free, reclaimed her bag and started to get out of the car.

“Can’t I come along?”

“What’s the point?” Leapman’s back was turned to her already; he wasn’t even bothering to watch. “Go write a report. File something. Defrag a hard drive. Whatever…”

Costa watched them go their separate ways. She didn’t look back. A part of him resented that. Another knew better. Falcone had said it. Perhaps he’d seen this coming all along.

“Dangerous games,” Nic Costa murmured to himself, then opened the piece of paper and read the name: Bill Kaspar .

From across the road, seated on a hard wooden chair in a tiny cafe, someone else watched them too, watched Emily Deacon flash a card at the gate, then walk past the security guard, straight through the door, into a sea of bright, unintelligible noise.

GIANNI PERONI was good with the girl. No, Teresa Lupo corrected herself, he was amazing . He built a bond with her in a way Teresa couldn’t hope to comprehend, able to communicate an emotion-sympathy, disappointment, expectation-with just a look, able to see too that Laila had a need for what he could provide. Reassurance. And sometimes just attention. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t all plain sailing. Each time Laila got tired, Peroni backed off. He knew just when to stop pushing.

And the kid wanted to be on her own a lot. Or at least that’s what she pretended. It was an act, though. After a while-ten, fifteen minutes-she’d drift back to Peroni, nudge him with an elbow, ask some pointless question. Her Italian was heavily accented but much better than they’d first thought. She was quick-witted too. Teresa could see a glint of keen intelligence in her dark eyes, though much of the time it was marred by the stain of suspicion every street kid seemed to own. They were never quite happy, even in their own company. Something, some cataclysm, hunger, disaster, an encounter with the cops, was always waiting around the corner.

Laila couldn’t stop stealing either, even in the house. Peroni had patiently removed all manner of stuff-cutlery, food, family photographs, even an old, stained ashtray-from the multitude of pockets in the grubby black jacket the girl wore all the time. God knows what she’d stashed in the room Nic had given her upstairs, where she retreated from time to time.

The three of them now sat in front of the bigger of the two fires, Laila sprawled out teenage-fashion on an old sofa, trying to read a comic book Nic had dug up from somewhere. Peroni was slumped in the chair next to her, eyes closed, snoring lightly. It was getting on for noon. Teresa had already called the office and checked with Silvio Di Capua. The autopsy on Mauro Sandri was done, the report filed safely in the cabinet marked “boring,” the one that said people who die from gunshot wounds and knives were rarely deserving of further attention. Agent Leapman and his friends had made sure she couldn’t get her hands on the one body that did interest her, that of the so-called Margaret Kearney.

Silvio sounded as if he was coping. He needed to be left on his own more, Teresa thought, needed to understand he was capable of this.

Then the sequence of events of the previous day raced through her mind.

“Shit,” she hissed abruptly to herself and reached again for the phone. Gianni Peroni didn’t even stir. He was sound asleep.

When she phoned, Teresa had meant to tell Silvio to take the dead American woman’s belongings round to the embassy. It had slipped her memory. You’re getting old , she thought. This is Alzheimer’s kicking in .

And it doubtless meant another argument soon, maybe more trouble for Leo Falcone from those faceless men above him. She’d heard whispers going round the Questura the previous night. Falcone was in trouble. His career escalator was stuck. Maybe soon it would start to go the other way.

Yeah , she thought. These were the tricks men played when they wanted something. Don’t take a person to one side and say, what’s the problem? Just bring out the whips and the shackles and start talking demotion. Maybe worse.

On the other hand …

It meant there was the opportunity for another look. Once they’d achieved something here. Not that she expected to find anything. She didn’t fool herself about that for one moment. It would just feel right to be trying. She’d been no use to Peroni and Nic with the girl. They might as well have invited in an alien.

Or Leo Falcone, she suddenly thought.

“Laila,” she whispered, catching the kid’s attention. She got a hint of a suspicious smile in return. Teresa nodded at the sleeping Peroni, making the obvious gesture with her two palms pressed to the sides of her head.

Then she pointed to the kitchen and got up. The girl, as she’d hoped, followed her.

There was just enough juice left for a couple of small glasses. Men and shopping, she thought. Venus and Mars.

“We made a good snowman. You must have done that before.”

The girl made a puzzled face. “No.”

The squat figure sat in the garden, staring back at them through the frosted glass, an old man’s hat found in a cupboard somewhere perched lopsidedly on his white head.

“We treat you like a kid. And you’re not. Not really, are you?”

Laila squirmed. Teresa wished she could get the hang of this awkward challenge in communication. Peroni had a family of his own. It gave him a head start with a recalcitrant kid like this.

“It doesn’t matter. When I go to town, is there something you need? Someone you’d like me to contact?”

The dark eyes clouded over instantly. All that suspicion again. Maybe Peroni would have been graced with a real answer. Not her. “No…”

Teresa touched the old, grubby jacket. “How about some new clothes?”

“I get my own clothes.”

“You’re such a pretty kid. Slim too. It would be a pleasure to buy something. I was never slim. At your age…”

Teresa tried to remember herself then, to put the image she had in her own head against what she saw in Laila now. “I was a fat, bad-tempered little monster. Not much changes.”

The girl laughed, a little nervously.

“What’s so funny?” Teresa asked. “Don’t you believe me?”

“No!”

There was a divide you couldn’t cross and if she knew more about kids, as much as Peroni did, she’d have understood that already. A kid could never see an adult and imagine them when they were young, never envisage them as anything but what they were: part of another world, in Laila’s case a threatening one, fixed, run by other people, with their arguments and hidden possibilities. Peroni had worked on that assumption from the moment he started talking to the girl. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. He simply set out his position- I will be your friend, you can trust me, just keep listening and you’ll see -and let her find a way to get close to him, like a moth attracted to a distant flickering flame. It established a connection, almost straightaway. It created room for hurt too. Teresa and the kid had both heard the tail end of Peroni’s heated conversation with Falcone. Peroni even told her a little of what it was about. Teresa, the grown-up rational adult, was able to dismiss this level of bickering as the way things were. Laila was different. She heard the sound of men yelling at each other and shrank into herself, fearing the worst.