David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

“Jesus Christ…” Peroni cursed, and added a few more epithets under his breath that it was best the girl didn’t hear. “What is this?”

“Christmas,” she hissed. “Almost. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Damn teenagers, he thought. You never got an ounce of respect from them. Though maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Not that he would tell her so.

“I was going to do it anyway,” he objected, heading for the door, trying not to listen to her muttering, “Yeah, right,” straight into his big back.

It was crazy. Now that he thought about it he never called Teresa. He had to look up her mobile number in his address book because he hadn’t even programmed it into the phone.

Teresa answered on the third ring and was quiet for a moment when she heard his voice.

“Gianni?” she asked eventually. “Are you OK?”

“Of course I’m OK! Nothing wrong with me phoning you, is there?”

The pause on the line said otherwise. “Not exactly. Though I have to tell you I am in a very strange apartment right now dealing with a stray head. That lady you met earlier, if you remember. I think we have all the pieces at last.”

“Jesus,” he swore quietly. “Listen, Teresa. There’s something I need to know. About Laila. What happened this morning? Why’d she leave like that? Have you any idea?”

She sighed and said something about taking the call outside. The line was quiet for a short while, then Peroni heard the unmistakable sound of the night wind roaring behind her.

“I told her you were going to get fired unless she gave you something about what happened in the Pantheon,” Teresa said over the noise. “I’m sorry. I thought it might help.”

“I wish I’d thought of that,” he said. He made absolutely sure that there was no edge to his words. “It was really clever. Classic stuff too, Teresa. Good cop, bad cop, huh? Maybe they should pin a badge on you and let me drive the corpse wagon.”

He could almost feel the tension on the other end. “Don’t be so ridiculous, you big goof. Falcone would be lost without you. Gianni?”

“Yeah?”

“You mean that? I did the right thing?”

“Of course I mean that! It should have worked too. If she had anything to tell us…”

She sounded so relieved he felt like going back into the cafe and hugging that mouthy girl.

“Gianni, she knows something. That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Me neither.” If Laila did have more to tell, that ought to have dragged it out of her. “I just don’t get it.”

“Unless…”

Teresa Lupo would have made a good cop. “Unless what?”

“She keeps stealing things. What if she stole something from this guy? What if he took his jacket off when he was doing what he did? Do you think Laila could resist a peek? Or something more?”

“I don’t know. But if she stole something why doesn’t she just give it to us? I mean, it’s not as if we don’t know about her habits. I must have emptied her pockets ten times this morning.”

She didn’t say anything. He was glad of that. She was thinking.

“I’m improvising here so don’t treat it as any more than that,” she said after a long moment. “What if she hid it somewhere? What if that’s why she ran away? To get what she stole, recover it from somewhere? Then give it to you?”

It just fell into a place in his head, the little compartment that said: right .

“God, I wish I could kiss you now,” Gianni Peroni sighed.

The sound of short, tinny laughter flew through the cold night air. “I’m wearing surgical gloves covered in blood. And I’m standing on the roof of some dead woman’s apartment freezing my ass off.”

“All the same…”

He was an idiot, moping over his kids. They were safe and comfortable and warm. He’d drive up to Tuscany when the weather cleared, take them to one of those little country restaurants they loved, maybe introduce them to Teresa Lupo, too. They were just a couple of young people learning to live with damaged parents. It wasn’t ideal, but there were a lot worse things the world could throw at you.

“I’m sorry if I’ve not exactly been normal lately,” he said, his voice choking a touch, doubtless from the aftermath of the lemon gelato.

“If I wanted ”normal,“ Gianni, do you think I’d be dating you?”

“No, I mean…”

The words dried up. He was terrible at this. He just hoped she got the message.

“Can I go back to my head now?” she asked. “This isn’t the right way to have a conversation like this.”

“OK.”

“And by the way-thanks for phoning.”

He heard her cut the call, looked at the empty Piazza Trilussa, and said, “You’re welcome.”

Then Gianni Peroni went back into the cafe, smiled at the girl, said thanks, and sat over a newly replenished bowl of ice cream thinking about what Teresa Lupo had said.

Laila stole something. Where ? In the Pantheon, surely. Laila hid that something. Where ? In the Pantheon. Where else ?

He looked at his watch and thought about that miserable, florid-faced caretaker and the hours he kept. The place closed at seven-thirty. Maybe she’d been there already. But if that was the case why hadn’t she tried to get in touch? Wouldn’t she wait till the very last moment when there were hardly any people around? Or-and this thought appalled him-had she left the thing somewhere that meant she had to spend another night there to recover it?

The waitress was reading a magazine. He placed a ten-euro note on the counter and got up.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “You want to know why that boyfriend never calls you?”

The green eyes looked at him with steady, intrigued intent. “Possibly…”

“Because he’s a jerk. That’s why.”

WILLIAM F. KASPAR SAT in the yellow Fiat Punto he’d ripped off from the cavernous underground car park by Porta Pinciana, waiting, thinking, watching the steady, light fall of snow descend on the deserted Via Veneto, listening to nothing but static from the tiny device clipped into his ear. This could go on forever. Not that he was worried about being caught. The weather meant the car park was dark and dead and deserted. He’d been able to swap the Fiat’s plates with those of a dusty Lancia that hadn’t moved in days. Even when the theft got reported they’d be looking for the wrong car.

That was the kind of thing the old Bill Kaspar would have done. This recent carelessness wasn’t like him. He’d tested his luck in the Net cafe and, for once, got away with it. Still, this was bad. This was unlike him. He knew who he was: William F. Kaspar. He knew where he came from: Kentucky, a big old stud farm outside Lexington, where the horses flew like the wind across green fields that stretched forever, where family meant family, a tight, unbreakable bond of love, and you could get good whiskey straight from an illicit still if you knew where to ask.

Kentucky was where he’d grown up, where he’d loved his first woman. After college in Alabama (and the memory alone sent a Dan song, with its refrain about the Crimson Tide, spinning through his head), a Kentucky military academy had started him on the long, hard road to becoming a soldier, filled him with a love of the classical world through studying the campaigns of Hadrian and Caesar and Hannibal. A Kentucky congressman, no stranger to the covert world himself, had first marked him out as someone whose talents could be used outside a conventional military career.

Memories. Fading ghosts, blurring the line between reality and illusion.

It was a lost world now, a distant sea of faded, two-dimensional mental pictures. He couldn’t return there even if he wanted to. He’d assembled his team, the best team, the Babylon Sisters ( shake it , his head said immediately, right on cue) and he’d screwed up, been betrayed, whatever. There’d been blood on the ground, the holy ground, on the floor of the ziggurat, gore tracing the outlines of the patterns there, a red stain on the filigreed stone tattoo Hadrian himself had once touched. He’d wrapped the corpses of his own men and women in that same pattern, trapped in something as mundane as camouflage webbing. Then, before he’d had the chance to go down with them, bad luck got in the way. Thirteen wasted years that changed forever what he was and what he could be.