David Hewson: A Season for the Dead

Those steady withdrawals from the bank each week said as much. Somewhere in the city was the dealer who knew them, a person who, Costa understood, dealt only with professionals, never took risks, and was probably smart too, full of some quick philosophy to justify what he did.

The two of them spent an hour going through the address book in Mary Rinaldi’s bag, phoning every number there, talking to hairdressers and doctors, distant friends and a couple of travel agencies. Any of them could be a supplier but it didn’t feel right. Then they did the same with the names on Rinaldi’s computer, printed off every one, forty in all, mainly academic contacts. The narcotics people could run through the list later and see if any rang a bell.

Rinaldi used the computer a lot. It was full of essays and letters, many to the bank. Costa clicked on the e-mail program, expecting it to be protected by some kind of password. To his surprise it popped up and showed an inbox with three messages, each dated from two days before: one was junk mail, the other an invitation to an academic convention in Florida.

He opened the third and stared at it. The message said, simply, “Money no problem. Be there ten am.” For some reason, the sender’s name and e-mail address had been deleted. But there was a Rome phone number at the bottom of the screen. Rossi looked at him, staggered. “They missed this? Falcone is going to go crazy.”

Costa picked up the phone on the desk and dialed. A woman answered. She said, “Cardinal Denney’s office.”

“Sorry. Wrong number.”

Rossi’s long face wouldn’t leave him alone. “Well?”

“It was the office of someone called Cardinal Denney.”

The big man’s watery eyes grew wide. “Someone called Cardinal Denney?”

“The name means something?” Rossi was heading for the door. “I need a drink. Before one more damn thing. A drink. Now.”

Costa insisted: if they were going to a bar while on duty it would be somewhere he knew. Rossi now glowered at the modest wineglass which was half full of a liquid the color of straw. He sniffed, tasted it, grimaced, then crammed a piece of cheese on some bread and nibbled artlessly, spilling crumbs everywhere.

They sat on tiny stools around a low table in a wine bar Costa sometimes went to. It was near his tiny home in the Campo dei Fiori. The place was quite empty apart from the two cops and a woman who had stopped mopping the floor to serve them.

“Why can’t we go to a real place and drink beer like normal people?” Rossi moaned. “Don’t you know mathematics? Why do we have to pay twice the price to make our own sandwiches when I can get three times this quantity around the corner for half what it costs in this dump? And they do beer.”

Costa cautiously patted Rossi’s colossal stomach. It was an act of some intimacy which the big man tentatively allowed, like a lion allowing its trainer to stroke its head. “Beer makes you fat,” Costa said. “Beer makes you fart. Trust me. A partner knows. Diet is important, Uncle Luca. Particularly for a man of your age, in your… condition.”

“I’m happy where I am, thanks. And I’m not your fucking uncle.” Rossi moaned again. “And what’s with this fancy apartment in the Campo? Cops don’t live in places like that. That’s why I have to drink in a stuck-up enoteca…”

“It’s not fancy. It’s just where I like to live.”

“So you can screw the tourist girls when they’ve had too much to drink on a Saturday night?”

“No. Because I like it. That’s all.”

“Inexplicable,” Rossi declared. “So where’s the nearest painting now, huh?”

“Too many to choose from,” Costa answered. The big man looked at him as if to say: So now I know why you live here. “I didn’t know about the accident, Luca. What happened there. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve seen worse,” Rossi grumbled. “We both have. Yesterday. Sometimes it catches you like that. You just walk along thinking, it’s not so bad, I can make it through the day. Then you just stumble around the corner and put your shoe into something that makes you realize the bad stuff was there all along and you just fooled yourself into thinking it could be any other way.”

“There’s a painting near here. It’s about that. I could show you if you like.” Rossi almost laughed.

“Me? Look at a painting?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You won’t tell anyone? Some of those bastards take the piss.”

“It’s a deal. But I want to hear about Cardinal Denney first.”

Rossi grabbed him by the arm. “Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake.”

Costa raised an eyebrow. There was still just the woman in the place, mopping away, well out of earshot.

“You never know,” the big man said defensively.

“Know what?” Rossi shook his head.

“You don’t even get to hear the station gossip, do you?”

“Too busy doing a job.”

“Oh my,” the big man grumbled. “The kid’s a saint. Listen. You heard of the Banca Lombardia?”

“Sure.” Costa nodded. “I read it was in trouble. Bad investments. Trouble with the authorities. There’s supposed to be some mob money in it. Ours. The Americans‘.”

“Clever boy. Well let me tell you something. Two partners ago I used to share the Fiat sofa with this grown-up guy who couldn’t keep his trap shut. Probably yakked in his sleep, but the funny thing was… he was worth listening to. He’d been on temporary assignment with the spooky people in the Finance Ministry and, my, did he like to talk about all these secret stakeouts he did, and all the good-guy politicians that were really on the take. He knew all the names of the people who pulled the strings without anyone in the outside world seeing. You know what? One of them wore a red cap. Goes by the name of Michael Denney, and if it wasn’t for the fact he could hide in that place of his we’d be throwing him in the cells right now.”

“The Vatican?”

“Where else?” Rossi waited, hoping for some enlightenment. “Jesus. The bankers were just the front men. This was a private little operation that Denney spun out of some genuine Vatican venture without telling anyone.” He raised his glass, drained it. “And now it’s rapidly going bust. Liquidity problems. No one knows whether it’s going to pull through or what. Remember?”

“Yeah,” Costa conceded. “I think I read about that.”

“You read nothing. Listen to me, Nic. This Denney’s been putting his holy hands into stuff no one ought to be messing with, least of all a priest. He had offshore funds in places that don’t have offshore funds. Places anyone could put money and no one—not the tax people, not the intelligence agencies—would be any the wiser. There’s a queue of people waiting to talk to him about that. Us. The Ministry of Justice. FBI. And probably the Mafia too from what I hear. They don’t like it when the man from the Vatican does the laundry wrong. Lucky for him he can hide there trying to get the rest of us to agree that, if we let him walk out, he’s covered by diplomatic immunity.”

He paused. “You remember what Falcone said? About Rinaldi?”

Costa did. The dead man had been called to give an expert opinion on the subject only a few months before. “You think Denney was somehow paying Rinaldi to come up on the right side?”

Rossi looked around him to make sure no one else came in. “If he was it didn’t work. Maybe that’s why Denney got pissed off with him. He quit being a churchman years ago to work on the financial side. Should have filled in the right forms if he wanted to claim he was a diplomat. Too late to start whining when there’s money gone missing. A whole lot of money too. I read the file.”

Costa was struggling to make sense of this. “Why would he steal it? Why would a man like that want money?”