David Hewson: A Season for the Dead

Crazy Teresa lit the cigarette, blew a cloud of tobacco fumes into the scorching afternoon air and said, with a beatific smile, “It’s days like this that make it all worthwhile, boys. Don’t you agree?” Costa swore, then went back inside the nave, cursing himself for the way he’d handled that one.

She was still at the altar, on her knees, hands locked low on her blood-spattered suit, eyes wide open, praying. Costa waited until she had finished. He knew what she was looking at. Ahead of her, behind a painting of the head of Christ, done in gold, like some Byzantine icon, was a bigger image on the wall. It was Bartholomew, about to die. The saint had his hands tied above his head, just as the corpse did in the tower. A grim-faced executioner stood next to him, holding the knife, looking into his eyes as if he just couldn’t work out where to begin. Finally, Sara Farnese got off the floor and joined him on the bench.

“We can do this some other time,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be now.”

“Ask what you want. I’d rather get this out of the way.” She was calm again and he thought about what Rossi had said. Sara Farnese was certainly a woman in control of herself.

“This Stefano Rinaldi,” he asked, “what was he to you?”

“He was a professor in my department. I had an affair with him. Is that what you wanted to hear? It was brief. It ended months ago.”

“Okay. And the woman upstairs in the room. His wife.”

“Mary. She’s English.”

“I got that from the papers in her bag. Did she know?”

Sara Farnese peered at him. “You want all this now?”

Costa said, “If that’s fine with you. If not, we can do this some other time. It’s your decision.”

Sara Farnese looked at the painting behind the altar again. “She found out. That was why it ended. I don’t know why it began in the first place. It was a friendship that just spilled over into something else. Stefano and Mary’s marriage was shaky in any case. I didn’t make it that way.”

He pulled out a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. There was a sheet of paper on it, a message from an office notepad covered in handwriting. “The dead guy in the tower had this in his pocket. It says it’s from you and asks him to meet you here, at the church, as soon as he can. Says it’s really important. Did you send this?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“How could Rinaldi know he was coming?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps I talked about it at work. I really don’t know.”

“The other man was your lover?” She winced at the word. “We… met from time to time. His name is Hugh…”

“… Fairchild. I know. He had his passport with him. You want to look?”

“Why?”

“Next of kin. It says he’s married.”

“No,” she said coldly. “I don’t want to look.”

“You didn’t know?”

“Does it matter?”

Costa wondered. Was he being prurient? And if so, why? “Maybe not. There was that thing about blood and martyrs written on the wall. You saw that, I guess. And that other stuff. Who’s this St. Ives? Is he another martyr or something?”

“No. It’s a place in England.”

“And seven wives?”

“I didn’t even know he had one,” she answered with some bitterness.

“So what do you think happened?”

Sara Farnese glowered at him, her green eyes full of resentment. “You’re the policeman. You tell me.”

“Anyone who looks at this will say one thing,” Costa said with a shrug. “Your old boyfriend found out about your new one and decided it was time to bring things to a close. For all of them, he and his wife included. Maybe you too.”

“I told you. Stefano didn’t want to kill me. And they weren’t ”boyfriends.“They were people I slept with from time to time. In Stefano’s case, months ago.”

Costa didn’t get it. Even now, pale and shocked, Sara Farnese was a beautiful woman. He couldn’t understand why someone like her would want to lead such an empty life. “People go crazy for all sorts of reasons,” he said. “Not always the obvious ones.” Men walked up a set of stairs and found someone’s blood dripping down their face. People you loved walked out in the morning and came home at night with a death sentence hanging around their necks.

“Perhaps.” She looked unconvinced.

“I’m sorry I had to ask these questions. You understand why?”

She didn’t say anything. She seemed transfixed by the painting behind the altar: Bartholomew about to lose his skin. “It’s apocryphal,” she remarked in a matter-of-fact way.

“What?”

“The story of the skinning. He was martyred, certainly. But probably something more mundane. Beheading was the usual method. The early Church embroidered these stories to encourage the waverers. To make sure the movement didn’t falter.”

“Hence 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church'?" She peered at him, surprised, he thought, that he had seen the point. “Is there some family I can call?” he asked.

“No one, thanks.”

“No one? Parents?”

“My parents died a long time ago.”

“There are people we can get to help in situations like this. Counseling.”

“If I need it I’ll let you know.” He thought again of what Rossi had said. There was much more to this woman than met the eye.

“Don’t you ever pray?” she asked unexpectedly. Costa shrugged.

“Not a family habit. And I never knew what to ask.”

“You just ask the same old questions. Such as, if there’s a God, why does he let bad things happen to good people?”

“They were good people? This Englishman? The one who killed him?”

She considered this. “They weren’t bad people, if that’s what you mean.”

“Hey,” he added without thinking, “you should think yourself lucky you’re not a cop. We get to wonder about that and the other one too: Why do good things happen to bad people? Why did Stalin die in his bed? Why are the rich so rich and the poor so poor? My old man’s a Communist. I used to ask that one a lot when I was a kid, and boy, did I get whacked around the ear plenty.”

There was the slightest flicker of a smile on her face and it made Sara Farnese look like a different person, someone younger, someone with a fragile, interior beauty nothing like the cold, icy elegance that was her normal face for the world. Nic Costa was amazed. Against his own instincts he suddenly found himself understanding why a man could become obsessed by this woman. “Families matter,” Costa said. “They make you a team against the world. I don’t envy anyone who has to stand up against all this crap alone.”

“I’d like to go now,” Sara Farnese said. She rose and walked toward the door, where the sun was finally starting to lose some of its power and the day was starting to die. Nic Costa followed her all the way.

Five

The next morning Costa and Rossi found themselves summoned into Falcone’s office at eight.

The inspector looked grumpier than ever and uncannily alert, his sharp-featured face set in an unwavering frown. No one liked his temper. No one credited him with any great management skills. But Falcone was a man of talent, and there were insufficient of those in the higher levels of the force. He’d solved some difficult cases, ones that had made big headlines in the news. He had influence, beyond the police station. There was plenty of respect for him in the Questura, and little in the way of affection.

He had the papers from the Rinaldi case on his desk, complete with a set of grisly photographs. Falcone waved the reports in their faces.

“Skimpy,” was all he said.

“Sir,” Costa answered, “we’re working on something fuller now. You’ll have it by ten.”