David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

He was asleep on the sofa, sprawled out, fully dressed. Completely asleep, not moving a muscle except for the faint rise and fall of his chest.

“Nic,” she said softly, so quietly she didn’t know herself whether she wanted him to hear.

She closed her eyes and laughed inwardly.

“There’s always tomorrow,” she whispered in a voice no louder than a breath.

And there’s always a cigarette.

She went to her purse, took out a Marlboro and a lighter, pulled the black jacket around her shoulders and opened the door very quietly, making sure she didn’t wake him.

The air was still, the night arctic and exquisitely beautiful. A too-white moon shone like a miniature cold sun over the rounded, snowy landscape punctuated by the outlines of the tombs on the Appian Way.

She lit the cigarette, watched the smoke curl its way towards the bare writhing muscle of a vine winding its way around a trellis and imagined how beautiful this shaded, grape-laden terrace would be during the summer.

“And I can’t even get myself a man,” she murmured, then wished she could laugh out loud.

The voice was cold, American and familiar.

“I wouldn’t say that,” it grunted.

A powerful arm came round her neck. A hidden hand forced some kind of cloth into her face, pushing the fabric brutally around her nose and mouth. There was the slight sound of glass breaking inside the rag, a smell that made her think of a hospital operating room, long, long ago, in the ancient facility on the Lateran where her father took her when she broke her arm trying to make her bike fly like something out of Power Rangers .

This won’t hurt… Steely Dan, where are you now, and what the hell did you do all those years ago? … someone said, her dad, a faceless doctor, Kaspar the Unfriendly Ghost, grinning Joel Leapman, Thornton Fielding, all concern and pity, Nic Costa even…

Every last one of them said the stupid phrase simultaneously, seeing her feebleness from somewhere beyond her vision, somewhere outside the aching corona of the moon.

This won’t hurt one little bit .

THE WEATHER WAS CHANGING AND NOT IN THE WAY ANY of them expected. The snow hadn’t turned to rain. Instead, it had gone away, for a while anyway, leaving the sky to the sun, a sun that was starting to remember how to shed a little warmth on the city. A thaw, perhaps a temporary one, was in progress and a trickle of grey slush and grubby water was beginning to make its way into the gutters as proof. It was still damn cold, though. A bitter, persistent wind was blowing in from the sea, a harsh taint of salt in its blustery folds, warning that the vicious snap of cold had yet to retreat entirely.

Falcone strode along the Via Cavour, thinking. The previous night, before he got the message about Peroni, he’d made some calls, discreetly posed a few questions that had been bugging him. Now, with a set of careful answers, all legalese, all full of it’s and buts, racing around in his head, he was facing some important decisions. He had fifteen minutes before the meeting he had demanded with Viale, which had been fixed for nine in the SISDE building around the corner. Moretti and Leapman would doubtless come along for the ride at Viale’s invitation. Falcone had yet to decide how to handle himself there. Two of his men had risked their lives the previous day. That gave him the right to throw around a little weight. Peroni’s injuries had proved less serious than they looked in the hospital at two that morning, when the doctors had stitched and dabbed at a face that had already taken more than its fair share of punishment. Afterwards Falcone had sat with the big cop, next to Teresa Lupo and the Kurdish girl, and agreed, without hesitation, to his first demand: that Laila be placed temporarily in the care of a social worker Peroni knew who lived at Ostia, that very night. Then the girl got up, kissed Peroni on the side of his cheek that didn’t bear a bruise or wound and went off with a plainclothes female officer, giving the three of them the chance to talk some more, to exchange suspicions and to wonder.

Peroni was looking to him for something. There were limits to being jerked around, even by the grey men. Falcone had spoken to Costa first thing that morning and knew he felt the same way too. The American woman had told Costa a long, interesting and highly speculative narrative that attempted to explain what was happening around them now in Rome. Then she’d gone missing, leaving her things in his house. Costa hadn’t a clue where.

Falcone had phoned Joel Leapman immediately to report the fact that Emily Deacon had vanished. It was the right thing to do. Her car was gone. He also wanted to judge the FBI agent’s reactions to the news. Leapman seemed genuinely puzzled. Concerned, even. It was one more weapon Falcone could use.

He’d recognized, too, the worry in Costa’s voice that morning. Deacon wasn’t a field officer. There were personal reasons why she might step out of line. But there were personal issues everywhere in this case. Peroni and Costa carried them because they-and Falcone-had been present when the unfortunate Mauro Sandri fell bleeding in the snow outside the Pantheon three nights before. For most cops that would simply be bad luck. For Nic and Peroni-and Falcone understood this was one reason that he defended the pair constantly-the photographer’s death was a challenge, an outrage, a tear in the fabric of society which demanded correction. This dogged resistance of theirs had led to Falcone trusting them with information and thoughts he was reluctant to share with others on the force. Ineluctably, events over the past eighteen months had made the three of them a team, a worryingly close and private one at times. Costa, in particular, had reminded Falcone why he’d become a cop in the first place: to make things better. Hooked up to Peroni, the pair had shaken Falcone out of his complacency, dared him to throw off the dead lassitude and cynicism that came with two decades as a policeman. Costa and Peroni asked big and awkward questions about what was right and what was wrong in a world where all the borders seemed to be breaking down. No wonder Viale hated them.

When Falcone turned the corner he saw them, standing together outside the anonymous grey SISDE building next to a Chinese restaurant, an odd couple who looked nothing like plainclothes cops. Peroni was shuffling backwards and forwards on his big feet, hugging himself in a thick winter coat, scanning the sky, which now bore fresh scratches of white, wispy clouds that could be the presentiment of more snow.

Costa wasn’t thinking about the weather. He was examining the fresh marks on his partner’s battered face, looking concerned.

Falcone walked up and peered into Gianni Peroni’s face himself. “I’ve seen worse. Think of the up side. You weren’t that good-looking beforehand.”

“I could sue for that,” Peroni replied. “I could call you up in front of the board and out you for the bitch of a boss you are.”

“Do that,” Falcone said, almost laughing. “I’ll get there one way or another soon enough.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be at home in bed, Gianni?” Nic asked.

“Don’t nanny me, Mr. Costa,” Peroni replied curtly. “Do you think a few cuts and bruises are going to keep me away from all the fun?”

Fun? It wasn’t that, not for any of them, Falcone thought. It never had been. Even when Peroni had been an inspector in vice, before his fall from grace, he was a man known for his seriousness.

“The funny thing is,” Falcone observed, “I’ve never known anyone to get beaten up so often. What’s your secret?”

“Working with you,” Peroni responded. “Until I was bounced down to your team of misfits, I never got beaten up at all. Not once in my adult life.”