David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

They stood in the nave, Fosse unable to detach his attention from the small chapel on the right which Brendan Hanrahan had revealed to him. Somewhere beyond the low, glittering frame of the iron grill a tiny voice squeaked. Fosse wished he could see them, not just hear their scuttering in the dark corners: tiny feet running, going nowhere, just like him. In his mind’s eye he could imagine their yellow rodent teeth, ready to snatch away his soul the moment he faltered. He could picture their bright eyes glittering, the color of polished jet. In those black pupils stood another universe, a black one that went on forever, in time, in every direction, an endless place that could swallow up an entire world and still leave space for millions more.

Valena was trembling, holding himself by a pew. His face was a waxy yellow under the lights and there was an unmistakable flicker of hope there. His abductor had hesitated. Something had spooked him. Perhaps there was a chance.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice husky with pain. “Money?”

“Just you,” Fosse said flatly.

Valena’s piggy eyes glistened, damp and pathetic. “I never did anything to you. I never hurt anyone.”

“It’s the not doing that counts,” Fosse said. “You can go to Hell just as easily for your omissions as your deeds. Didn’t they tell you that? Didn’t you even begin to suspect?”

Valena fell to his knees, clasped his hands. “I’m just a stupid old man,” he pleaded. “What do you want with me?”

“Your life.”

“Please…” His voice rose with that, turning almost into a squeal. It sounded like a rat. It sounded like the end of everything.

“Don’t pray to me. Pray to Him. And pray for yourself.”

The fat man sobbed. He closed his eyes. His lips moved, fleshy, blubbery lips, a mouth that had once caressed Sara Farnese. Gino Fosse knew that. He’d been the driver that night. He’d taken the photographs. It was one more stain to erase, one more station of grief along the way. He reached into the bag and took out the pack he’d stolen from the hospital. The hypodermic was ready. The liquid trembled in the barrel.

He walked behind the praying Valena and stabbed him hard in the upper arm. The fat man scrambled up, screeching.

“What are you fucking doing?” His eyes were burning black coals, full of hatred and pain. “For the love of God…”

“Be grateful,” Fosse said. “Hope it lasts.”

They danced slowly around each other for a time. He wasn’t letting the fat man make for the door. Eventually Valena’s eyes started to turn dull.

“What?” He swayed once. Then his pupils rolled upward into his head. His large frame collapsed like a building that had suddenly lost its foundation. Gino Fosse looked at the pile of humanity that lay on the marble floor, no more than ten yards from Lorenzo’s altar.

The drug was the easiest option. There was much preparation to be done to achieve the required effect. This would be the last before the final deed. He knew that somehow.

He bent down over the unconscious Valena and began to tug at his clothing. Five minutes later the TV man was naked on the tiles of the church. He’d pissed himself at some point. Fosse was disgusted but not surprised. Ordinary men feared death, failing to understand the need for the transformation. They lacked the sense and the courage to greet it smiling, to welcome its inevitable embrace.

He turned Valena to face the small altar in the chapel. With an effort he dragged the iron grill into the nave. It was cold and shiny to the touch, polished for centuries, a perfect instrument, alive with its past. Perhaps the story of Lorenzo’s martyrdom was apocryphal. To Fosse it seemed irrelevant. So many people had come to believe in it that this elaborate construction of iron, with its curlicues and its flamboyant grating, became what they imagined: the gateway to Paradise, the ultimate redemption. Even Arturo Valena deserved that.

Gino Fosse fetched the kindling, the charcoal and the petrol, and decided, at this point, that he must cease deluding himself. He’d learned enough in the hospital to understand how long the shot would keep Valena unconscious. Fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, no more. Arturo Valena would not sleep his way to judgment.

Forty-Five

Anoise woke her: the sound of a dog barking from some distant farm.

He stood at the window, with his back to her, staring out into the blackness of the night, silhouetted against the moon. She glanced at the clock on the stand. It was nearly two.

“What’s wrong?” she asked softly.

He didn’t even turn around.

“Nic? Look at me.”

He sighed and returned to sit on the bed. In the cold light that fell through the window his face wore the same hard expression she had seen when they first met. This was serious Nic, tough Nic, a man who preferred duty over passion. A man who feared anything that might disrupt an ordered, logical world.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was too soon. I should have stopped myself.”

He stared down at the sheets and said nothing.

She took his chin with her hand, made him look at her. “Don’t sit in judgment on me.”

He scowled. “I didn’t want this to happen. I promised myself I wouldn’t allow it.”

“And I made you? Is that it?”

“No. Of course not.” He meant what he said, although there was no comfort in his sincerity. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

“It felt right to me,” she replied icily.

That touched him. He reached out and held her hand. “It felt right to me too. But Sara…”

The words ran dry. His reticence annoyed her. “What?”

“I don’t know you. Not really. Just a side of you. There’s still something missing, something important in your life you don’t want me to see.”

She withdrew from his grasp. “Haven’t you seen enough?”

“No. Because what I know doesn’t add up and that just makes everything worse. There’s something else. Something you won’t disclose. Something you’re keeping from me, still, and I can’t bear the thought because without that piece of knowledge I feel I don’t really know you at all. It just… tortures me.”

“Listen to the cop inside you talking. Am I supposed to be more frank after you’ve screwed me?”

“No!” His voice almost broke. She recognized the truth in what he said and despised herself for doubting him. Nic was honest, too honest perhaps.

She came closer to him, put her hand to his face, stared into his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was just the fear in me talking. This is hard for me too, you know.”

“Is it? You’ve a capacity for keeping things inside. I never learned that.”

“I asked if you’d come off this case for me. I begged. You still can.”

“It’s impossible. This is my job. It’s what I do.”

“Then maybe this is what I do too. Maybe this is who I am. Just someone who sleeps around and then goes on somewhere else, not remembering, not caring. What’s wrong with that? Is it a sin just because you don’t think that way?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s a sin because you don’t. This person you’re trying to paint for me is someone you created and I need to know why.”

“Trust me. You don’t need that.”

He put his arms around her shoulders. He kissed her lightly on the mouth, then stroked her hair. “I woke up with the taste of you. I can smell you in my head. Don’t take this lightly. It doesn’t happen to me.”

The first sign of dampness appeared at the corner of her eye. He wiped it away with a finger and placed the tip in his own mouth, tasting the salt of her, as if it were some precious fluid.

She closed her eyes. The tears ran freely down her cheeks.