David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

“Chicken salad?” the girl demanded.

“Just salad.”

“We don’t do ”just salad,“ ” she snarled. “You can take the chicken off if you like.”

Costa sighed, digging in his heels. “Why don’t you take the chicken off?”

“Hah! And have you moaning when it comes to paying the bill? Do I look that stupid?”

Rossi leaned forward and gave her the serious look. “Hey. If it comes to it, I’ll take the chicken off. He’s a vegetarian. Okay?”

The nose ring twitched. The girl suddenly looked more sympathetic.

“Sorry,” she said sincerely. “Me too. Jesus, are we in the wrong place or what?”

When the waitress returned with a large plate of rocket and salad leaves and a decent glass of icy wine Crazy Teresa was midway through an explanation of the physical function of the mushy glands sitting in front of them, lightly cooked with garlic and celery.

“Can we not talk food tonight?” Nic Costa asked.

“You’re squeamish?” Crazy Teresa inquired, amazed. “You two, of all people. After what happened yesterday?”

Luca Rossi sided with his partner. “Maybe it’s because of what happened yesterday. I mean, I like eating this stuff. To be absolutely honest with you, I’d really rather not know what it is.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “But you”—she pointed a strong, aggressive finger at Costa’s face—“need to watch this diet thing carefully. Medically, scientifically, vegetarianism is a fad. A dangerous one too. Unless you know how to balance your diet.”

Costa looked at the plate of unidentifiable meats, the pile of spent cigarettes and the near-empty flagon of wine in front of her and wondered who Crazy Teresa was to hand out lectures on eating habits.

“He can run faster than any man in the Questura,” Rossi said defensively. “They say you should’ve seen him on the pitch.”

“I did see him on the pitch, before he took up this running thing. He’s fast but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be faster if he ate some meat now and again. Look at that guy who plays hooker.”

Teresa was a rugby groupie. That was another well-known fact.

“Lamponi?” Rossi asked, a little jealous perhaps.

“Yeah. Look at the pecs. Look at the thighs on that.” She stabbed a ribbon of tripe. “That’s what meat does for you. Gives a man a body.”

Luca Rossi exchanged a knowing look with his partner. “He’s gay,” he said.

“What?”

“Lamponi. He’s gay,” Rossi repeated.

“Hell!”

“Perhaps,” Nic Costa suggested, “it was something in his diet. Too many female hormones in all those glands he keeps eating.”

“Yeah,” Rossi agreed. “Things start growing where they shouldn’t. Stuff starts shrinking instead of…” He shrugged.

Crazy Teresa banged the empty carafe on the table to order a new one, lit a cigarette and glared at them. “Bullshit merchants. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Nic Costa looked at his watch. It was his turn to go to the house tonight. He didn’t want to be late. “What are we supposed to be talking about, Teresa? I gathered there was something on your mind.”

She pushed her fork around the remains on the plate. Costa realized he liked this woman. She was smart, fun too, but there was a serious side to her that underpinned everything.

“This skinning trick?” she asked slyly. “You’re happy with the way things have turned out? All nice and obvious like that?”

“It’s not closed,” Costa said. “Not by any means, though I didn’t see anything in your report that raised any new issues.”

“To hell with the report. That’s just about what I know. Sometimes there are things that grate, and maybe they’re nothing at all, but you still ought to hear them.”

Rossi folded his arms and looked at her. “We’re listening.”

“The professor. Did he have any medical experience? Had he worked in an abattoir at some stage?”

Costa shrugged. “Not that we know of. He was an academic. I can’t see how he would have done either of those things. Why?”

Teresa Lupo was unhappy about something. “I don’t know. I may be wrong about this, but it’s just a very odd thing to do. To skin someone like that and do it pretty well too at what I assume is his first attempt.”

Rossi’s long face grew doubtful. “Is it that hard? I had an uncle in the country. He used to do this trick when he killed a rabbit. He’d make some little nick in the back of the neck, sort of shake the thing up and down in some way he knew, and the whole skin came right off. Like a glove or something, inside out, clean as anything.”

Crazy Teresa was incredulous. “You’re comparing human beings with furry rodents? Are you serious? What you call 'skin' is actually three separate, living organs. The epidermis, which is the outer part, the dermis underneath, the subcutis, the layer of fat below that. You can’t make a nick somewhere, throw the corpse up in the air and have it come down stripped. This is complicated…”

She watched some food land on the neighboring table courtesy of the pierced waitress.

“Wait here. I won’t be a moment.” Crazy Teresa stalked into the kitchen. Rossi watched his partner warily from across the table.

“I’m paying,” he said.

“Oh, I know that, Uncle Luca.”

“She said it was important, Nic.”

And maybe it is, Costa thought. More important than Luca Rossi could begin to guess.

Crazy Teresa came back with a side of pork belly, uncooked, and a small kitchen knife. She dropped the meat in front of them and watched the raised eyebrows from the tables around.

“It’s okay,” Teresa yelled back at them. “We’re not going to eat it just yet.”

Costa smiled at her. “That’s a relief.”

“Listen. The pig’s is a pretty close approximation to the human skin system in some ways, which is why it’s used for grafts from time to time. You’ve got to remember too that some cannibal cultures call us the 'long pig,' and there’s a reason for that. Physiology and taste. So here.”

She sat down and gave the short knife to Rossi.

“Try skinning it.”

He waited a moment, then began to slice away at the fat underneath the thick epidermis. Then he pulled, hoping to lift it away from the carcass. It was impossible, even for a strong man like Rossi.

“There’s all that fat,” he complained. “People aren’t like that.”

Teresa eyed him. “Not all people. You’d be amazed how much fat you can get on a corpse. You’re right. It’s not an exact match, but it’s close. What I’m trying to say to you is there’s no easy, quick solution. I looked up some of the classical images of this Bartholomew person on the Web. Almost every one shows him about to be martyred and they all have the same idea. The person who wants to do it is staring at him, wondering how to do the job. It’s not obvious.”

Costa thought of the painting in the church. This was exactly what it portrayed. Skinning a man required more than just strength and resolution. It surely needed some level of knowledge of the body as a starting point.

“So how’d he do it?” Costa asked.

Teresa took the knife off Rossi, stood up, went behind the big man and made him hold his arms up in the air.

“My guess is he went in behind the neck and circled there, feeling his way, getting an idea for how deep to cut, not trying to remove anything right then.”

Rossi lowered his arms, feeling stupid. “You mean he cut his throat?”

“Not enough to kill him,” Teresa noted. “That’s not the idea. All the reference works on skinning people emphasize how important it is for the victim to remain conscious for as long as possible. In some North American cultures they prided themselves on their ability to remove most of the skin intact and be able to show it to the victim before he died.”