David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

“So what happens to you guys?” she asked. “Are they throwing the book at you?”

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “Emily, I wish I’d known. That it was all some kind of game. That you had soda cans round your neck, not real bombs. You scared the life out of me, out of all of us.”

She waved a finger at him, an expression so Italian he had to remind himself she was a foreigner. “Oh no. I’m not taking flak on that. I guess you don’t do Gilbert and Sullivan in Italy. ”Corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.“ As long as you guys thought they were real bombs, your minds stayed focused. You didn’t go near the detail, trying to pick holes in it. This was a one-shot deal. I couldn’t take any risks.”

“We were running errands for the man we were trying to take.” He didn’t want to push it. He didn’t want to leave it unsaid either. “That was a little unusual.”

She wanted to clear the air too. “You were running errands for me too, Nic. I sent you running round to the Piazza Mattei, remember? Kaspar was just going along with my hunch that you’d find something there he couldn’t. Besides, do you think we could have won it on our own?”

He didn’t have a ready answer there.

“I know,” she went on. “You feel deceived. With some justification. I’m sorry. But I’d do the same thing again. Convincing you everything was for real was the only way. All anyone had to do was look at your face and they knew they had to go along with you. Besides, it was real. Just not in the way you all expected.”

He laughed a little. She looked relieved this wasn’t going to turn into an inquisition.

“Also,” she added, “Kaspar was going to use me one way or another. I had a choice. Be a reluctant hostage. Or go along with him, try to steer things a little and see where they led.”

“Legally…” He didn’t want to push the point. They could have picked her up themselves if they wanted. Wasting police time. Running a bomb hoax. Falcone had ruled the idea out immediately. Another officer could have thought differently.

“I don’t think anyone would dare throw the law at me,” she answered. “Or at any of us. That would be too embarrassing all round, surely. I’m sorry, Nic. I imagine you thought you knew me. But how could you? We only met a few days ago.”

“True.”

She lifted the lid on a box folder that stood on a table, the only thing in the room that didn’t seem covered in dust. It was new. Without asking, she lifted the lid and stared at the prints inside.

“What’s this?” she asked. “It’s recent.”

He stood by her and flicked through the professional-sized black-and-white photographs.

“I picked them up in the office when I went in yesterday. There’s a filing cabinet for photos in here somewhere. I wanted to keep them.”

“What are they?”

No one wanted Mauro Sandri’s last few rolls of film. Not his parents, who didn’t even want to see them, scared of the associations they had. Or forensic, who’d closed the case.

“This was the night it all began. The photographer we had with us. The one who died.”

“Oh.” She stopped on a single print. Costa hadn’t had time to go through them all. This one surprised him.

“I don’t remember him taking that one,” he said.

It was in the briefing room before they’d gone out that evening. Sandri must have taken it from the door. Costa was there, showing some report, probably on the weather, to Gianni Peroni. Falcone stood in the background, observing them. The photo was remarkable. Somehow Sandri had captured such life, such expression in their faces: Costa’s seriousness, the way it was received with a touch of jocularity by the grinning Peroni. And Leo Falcone peering at the pair of them, just the trace of a thin smile on his normally expressionless face.

“He must have been a good photographer,” Emily said. “To take a candid shot like that and you never even knew.”

What was it Mauro said that night in the deserted cafe? If you asked, people would just say no.

“It’s about stealing moments,” Costa reflected.

“Sorry?”

“That’s what Mauro said. About the kind of photography he did.”

She studied the picture, thinking. “Smart man. And you know what makes him extra smart?” Emily held the photo in front of him. “He’s just recording something there everyone else but you three sees. You’re a gang, really, aren’t you? A close one too, which is dangerous. If you were in the FBI and someone saw this they’d be breaking you three up tomorrow. Can I keep this?”

He picked up the roll of negatives. “I’ll get you a copy.”

“OK. That’s not to say there won’t be the opportunity, by the way,” she added.

“The opportunity for what?”

“For us to get to know each other. I’ve made a decision. I’m going to go back to college. Get my master’s degree. Here, in Rome. Why not?”

“To do what?”

“Finish learning how to draw buildings. Then learn how to create them. It’s called being an architect. It’s what I should have done all along.”

This was all so sudden. “When?”

“As soon as I can get in,” she said with a shrug. “There’s nothing keeping me in the States, really. I need the change, too. Now. I keep thinking about what happened. Not the details, the reasons. All those people breaking their backs over some stupid convictions. My dad and Thornton Fielding. Joel Leapman. They all thought-no, they knew- they were doing the right thing. And look where it got us. I’m sick of certainties, for a while anyway. I want to get a few doubts back in my life. Besides…”

She paused, trying to make sure this was clear to herself too, he thought.

“My dad’s dead and buried now,” she went on calmly. “He wasn’t before, and I just didn’t want to face that fact. I’m not proud of what I found out about him. But he was still my dad. There was still a part of him that always loved me. I’ve got this relationship with him right now. I-”

Her voice did falter then.

“Last night, I cried and cried and cried. I lay in bed in that soulless little apartment and let it all out. Just me, a very wet pillow, a resignation letter and some memories. Everything ended then, Nic. All this fake existence I’ve been trying to lead on someone else’s behalf. You know something?”

This puzzled her. The doubt, not something he was accustomed to seeing in her face, was obvious.

“In my head I kind of talked to him. I felt he understood. Nic, your dad’s dead: tell me, is that crazy?”

Emily was always astonishing him. She just came straight to the point, never minced words. He’d grown up in this farmhouse. He’d watched his father turn from youth to middle age, to a sick, frail, prematurely elderly cripple. He knew what she was talking about.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“All the things you never got round to when he was alive. About how you never appreciated the good times as much as you should have. How the bad always seemed worse than they really were. And how the time came when you weren’t a kid anymore. When you had to cut the cord, however painful that would be on both sides.”

Costa didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have conversations like this. Not with anyone.

“You didn’t answer me, Nic.”

“Did you feel better? After?”

She grinned. “After I talked to him? Much. And the really crazy thing is it felt as if he did too.”

He slipped Mauro’s photo back into the folder; the little photographer’s words rang in his ears.

“I know that feeling,” he said.

“My,” she murmured, “that was hard.”