David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

How quickly that happened depended on what he did next. Denney had proved himself a stubborn man, unwilling to run, to let himself be exposed to risk, in the face of the most severe provocation. There had to be a final exertion, a turn in the savagery none of them expected.

Gino Fosse rubbed off the white makeup, as much as he could. He wore his old clothes again: jeans and a black T-shirt. He was sweating like a pig. The night was unbearably close. The city felt like an oven. He felt conspicuous, as if the darkness were full of eyes, glittering rodent eyes, greedy human ones, glancing feverishly in his direction. He stuck his head outside the van window. The piazza was empty. A few lone figures wandered down the Via Corso, past the shuttered shops and the flashing neon signs in the windows.

He picked up the sack of keys he had stolen six days before from the administration office in the Vatican when he called to pick up the rest of his belongings. He sorted through them until he found the set marked for the church. He had reversed the van so that the rear door was tight against the locked entrance into the building. No one would see Arturo Valena being dragged inside. Behind those heavy wooden doors, in this deserted part of the city, no one would hear what then ensued.

Forty-Three

They stood in the corridor on the landing, unable to find the words.

Bea was quiet downstairs now. The house was silent, filled with some strange happiness, an oasis of sanity hidden from the sight of the hard, bleak world beyond the gates. Sara thought of the other times; how she had allowed herself to be used, how her own desires were always secondary to theirs.

Then, gingerly, she walked up to him and looked into his eyes. Was there fear in them? Perhaps, but not doubt. He had stepped beyond its reach. Something had happened in the old farm that night, moving them all: Bea, in her search for love before it disappeared, Marco, in his quest for some meaning in this fast-diminishing period of life which remained to him. She too had been touched by their closeness, their frank questions and answers. This was so unlike the world she had inhabited before. Here no one asked for anything except her presence and understanding. This small, enclosed universe—and Nic Costa—existed now for her satisfaction, to do with as she wished.

Sara Farnese reached out, touched his hair, waiting, mouth tentatively open, for his kiss. He hesitated. She brought her lips up to his, felt his response, letting her tongue wander into his mouth, touch the wetness there, feeling the outline of his teeth. His hand came behind her back, strong, determined, and moved below to her thighs, gripping them. In a single powerful movement he lifted her from the ground. Her legs wound around his waist. She tore at his hair, kissed him hard and deep.

Then he carried her purposefully into the bedroom, let her legs slip to the floor and slowly, nervously, with no small wonder, they undressed each other, coming to stand naked by the bed, breathless, full of anticipation.

Again he hesitated.

“Nic,” she whispered.

His dark eyes tried to look inside her, beyond the surface he scarcely knew. “And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow I plant seeds for your father,” she replied without a moment’s hesitation.

She looked at the bathroom and the small marble shower in the corner.

“Here,” she said, taking him by the hand.

He followed her into the cubicle. She turned on the water, letting it run down on their heads, soaking their hair, stone cold at first, then lukewarm.

He laughed. She took the liquid and began working it into his soft white skin. His head came down to her neck. His lips closed gently on a nipple.

Her face arched upward, teeth clenched, charged by a new and sudden determination in his grip. She felt his hardness, reached down, let her fingers run up and down its length and leaned back against the cold wet tiles, opening her legs, guiding him.

For a minute, no more, he entered her, making a few measured strokes, shallow at first, then gradually deeper until she clung to him, hand tight in the back of his head, legs wrapped around his back.

She sighed, anguished, as he withdrew. Nic led her to the bed, watched as she spread herself across the white coverlet, beckoning.

His head went down, his teeth suckled briefly at her breasts and moved on to probe her navel. Her breath caught and shortened to brief snatches. This too was new to her. In the past she had always been the one to serve, who sought to deliver satisfaction. Nic seemed determined to deliver that gift to her. His tongue licked lower, pressed beyond her hair, found her widening, warm crevice, entered fully, writhing inside with a powerful, muscular intent. She held his scalp, forced him down further into her, arching her back, wishing she could open herself so wide he might be consumed in the rich fleshy dampness of her sex. Then, with a certain, relentless rhythm, he began to work upon the smallest, sweetest part of her, raising its tumescence until her head had lost all reasoning, her mind knew nothing but the fiery delight he brought. And at this last gasping moment he revealed another secret too: His little finger sought another entry, pressed insistently from a second direction so that these secret, private doors to her ecstasy became a single coursing torrent of wild and shapeless pleasure.

And then he paused, rising from the bed to peer at the pale, lovely body on the sheets, as surprised by himself as he was by her. She laughed, wiped away the sweat from her brow, then cupped his face with her hands. His fingers moved across her cheek. She sucked greedily on the tips, tasting herself on the skin and the nails. He moved onto her. She lifted her legs, placed her feet around his back, gripping him, tugging him, demanding more, taking him into her with anxious fingers.

He hesitated again, waiting in front of the unfolding entrance like an uninvited guest unsure of his welcome. Then she held him more tightly and the game ended. In the small bedroom of the farmhouse off the Appian Way, where Nic Costa had turned from boy to man, where his personality had been forged, through happiness and pain, the oldest ceremony of all was enacted with joy, enacted again and again until a sated exhaustion took them into a sleep undisturbed by dreams, untainted by the memory of a fallen world beyond the open window and the vine-twisted veranda.

Forty-Four

Arturo Valena stumbled out of the back of the van, grateful to leave the dogs behind. He sniffed the petrol-stained breeze from the Via Corso hopefully, then screeched in terror and pain as Fosse struck him a hard blow on the side of the head with the butt of the gun.

That was a mistake. Fosse was shocked by his carelessness. He’d half hoped the fat man would fall to the floor unconscious, making what came next easier. It was stupid. He should have realized this before the attempt. Valena was too heavy to be manhandled around a quiet piazza just a few yards from a street that still had its stragglers, even after midnight.

Fosse watched the fat man reeling in pain, wondering whether to run perhaps, and forced himself to think. Then he hit him once again, in the same place but with a little less force, waved the gun in his face and hissed at him to go to the church railings. Fosse had the keys in the small shoulder bag he’d brought with him from the van. He knew the place: where the light switches were. And where to find the instruments for the rest of the artistry.

Valena complied, shambling the few yards to the entrance. Fosse fumbled at the lock, opened the gate and pushed the terrified man through into the gloom of the portico. In the space of a minute he had unlocked the door to the church, sent Valena in and set the lights to low.