David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

The triumph in his voice was muted. Nic heard a despairing note of bitterness behind it. Leo Falcone felt the loss of Rossi and Cattaneo, more deeply than Costa would have expected. “What else?”

Falcone reached for his briefcase and took out an envelope. He opened it and thrust the contents onto Costa’s knee. It was a black and white photograph of dubious quality, taken from some distance judging by the flatness and the grain of the picture. A telephoto lens from slightly above the subject, perhaps, shot through a window. It showed Denney in a grand apartment, the one, Costa guessed, he used to occupy by right, before they threw him into the rat hole where he sweated now.

Denney stood with his back half turned to the camera. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers. His gray hair was neatly groomed. Sara Farnese faced the lens, smiling, a wonderful, open smile, full of love, an expression he’d seen for himself the previous night. Her arms were around Denney. She was coming forward as if to kiss his cheek or his neck. She held him, tightly, in a way which brooked no mistake. It was impossible to fake. This was the two of them engaged in a loving, close embrace. A prelude to what? Costa looked again and knew. Denney’s right hand was already reaching for the curtain at the apartment window. In a few seconds the two of them would be snatched from sight.

The photo had the same grainy quality as the ones in Fosse’s flat.

It wasn’t hard to guess where it came from.

“Where are the rest of the pictures?” he asked Falcone.

“That’s all I have. Look for yourself. He’s getting himself a little privacy. This is the Vatican, after all. What do you want? To see them in bed?”

Something still nagged at him. “Where did it come from?”

Falcone scowled again and looked at his watch. “You’ve figured that out, surely?”

He had. He just didn’t want to admit it. “Fosse took it. Just like he took the others. He kept the ones of Sara, of the other women, for his own purposes. He was really there to provide backup. To make sure that if they didn’t bend from the favor, they’d bend from a little blackmail.”

“Precisely,” Falcone said, pleased with Costa’s analysis. “Fosse drove for Denney. He was the chauffeur on these little nighttime escapades. For the Farnese woman. For the more conventional hookers Denney used too. He hung around peeking through the curtains with his lens while they got on with their work.” He paused for effect.

“They knew what was going on. She knew.”

Costa thought of her face in the pictures in the Clivus Scauri. The way she was looking toward the lens. Falcone was right but Teresa Lupo had seen this first: Sara was party to the trick. “She knew,” he agreed. “And Denney thought this was all his doing. He never realized Fosse was working on the side for someone else. Maybe giving them the same information. Spying on Denney as well.”

He looked Falcone in the eye. “Who was that? Who’s pulling the strings? Hanrahan?”

“Hanrahan’s just a servant. Like you and me. What does it matter? We’ve got what we need. At eight o’clock these go public. Match that up with the news about Fosse and I don’t see how the Vatican can continue to hold him. He’s an embarrassment. He’s a visible scab they’ll want rid of.”

Costa dropped the photograph back into the envelope.

The older man took it and said, “If you breathe a word of this to anyone before it appears I’ll have your hide. And I mean her in particular. This is all beyond you now. I don’t want any more accidents, understand? So you just talk to Rossi’s sister, then sit back, get some rest. You look like you need it.”

“Accidents?” he demanded, his voice rising, some red stub of anger beginning to fire in his head. “I lost a partner to this lunatic. I want to be there when he’s taken.”

Falcone looked offended. “Hey. Gimme a break here. I got two dead cops squatting on my conscience. I don’t want your skinny hide added to the pile.”

This was the limit, this was the moment. Costa reached into his jacket pocket and took out his police ID card.

“Fuck you,” he said, and threw the thing into Falcone’s lap, then walked out of the car, out into the heat of the morning.

Forty-Six

She walked out to the gate at seven and spoke to one of the cops. It was easy to get what you wanted with a smile. The man took her money, looked a little puzzled, and drove off to the nearby nursery. It wouldn’t be open yet but he was a cop. He’d bang on the door till they came.

Then she stayed near the lane, mutely watched by the other policemen, trying not to think, trying not to expect too much from the day to come, waiting. Half an hour later the cop returned with the plants nestled in a battered cardboard box. There were three sets, each wrapped in damp newspaper. She looked at the seedlings of cavolo nero, little taller than an index finger. It was hard to believe they would grow through the coming harshness of winter, thriving in the cold and damp, becoming stronger each day until, in spring, they would be ready for harvest.

Sara walked back to the house and found Marco and Bea on the porch drinking coffee. He sat happily in his wheelchair, Bea at his side. Marco finally looked at peace with himself. He’d lost the impatient energy, the need to make some kind of point at every opportunity which she had noticed since the moment she stepped into the farmhouse.

The internal, gnawing need to settle accounts had been resolved, for the time being at least. There had been a debt to be settled, she thought, and one he’d forgotten, which only made things worse. In a sense he looked older, wearier, more resigned. Perhaps these were steps along the way, stations of love, of insight, which needed to be passed. This was the luxury—and the agony—of a lingering death. It gave one the time to consider, to make decisions. It contained, too, sufficient space for both regret and, with a little luck, reconciliation.

Bea stood and took the box from her, smiling at the slender green forms that lay inside.

“You remembered?” Marco said, amazed.

“Of course.”

He laughed. “It was the wine. I didn’t mean you to do this. You can’t really want to get down on your hands and knees and plant these damned things. What for?”

Bea patted him on his gray head. “I thought we’d agreed. Because it’s a farm, silly man. Things should be growing here. It looks barren otherwise.”

He scanned the arid, yellow ground, then gazed at both of them.

“I’m a fool, aren’t I?”

“You’re a man,” Bea replied.

“Well, at least I won’t be grubbing around planting something no one’s going to look after come the winter.”

“They’ll grow,” Bea said. “I promise.”

He harrumphed, though there was still an amused satisfaction in his eye neither of them could miss. “What’s happening to my life?” he asked, then shot Sara a glance. “You heard from Nic?”

“He left early,” she said, not committing herself. She understood they knew where she had spent the night. Her time with him, in his arms, astride him, touching his hair, feeling him inside her, all this now seemed like a dream. They had parted on bad terms. It was her fault. She knew this and she regretted hurting him. Nevertheless there were boundaries that had to be established. She wondered whether she would ever see Nic Costa again. Whether he would even want to see her. The future rose ahead like a mist, full of so many formless possibilities.

“We should watch the news,” she told them, and saw the expression cross Marco Costa’s lined face, followed the way he looked at Bea.

It was something bad. It had to be.