David Hewson - A Season for the Dead

The Irishman had spread his net wide, culling so much information, from tapped phone calls, Fosse’s own illicit photographs, stolen items perhaps. Hanrahan knew names and dates. He was a constant voice in Fosse’s ear. Even so, there was no blood on Hanrahan’s hands. He may have suggested the means but it was Gino Fosse who used them.

Then there were the two cops. Hanrahan would never have sanctioned that. He had his limits.

“What do you do?” she asked. “When you go out of here? Who are you, Gino?”

He scowled at her. She should know better. She was in enough danger as it was. “Don’t ask.”

“I want to know!” she pleaded.

He closed his eyes, wishing she weren’t there. The end was so close. This distraction was the last thing he needed. And this revelation too: that she felt him inside her, that two people could touch one another in such a strange and intimate fashion. This was, in its way, a momentary, mystical epiphany just as shocking as the glittering rodent eyes behind the altar in San Lorenzo. This threatened his resolve. This made the world seem a different place.

He stood up, went to the bag and took out the gun, brought the weapon back to the bed and placed it in her hand. “I bring deliverance,” he answered. “To people who deserve it.”

Her pretty face cracked at that. She wouldn’t touch the weapon. She seemed terribly young again, and scared. It occurred to him that she knew what a gun could do. He thought of where she came from. Maybe she had personal experience.

“Why?” she asked, handing him back the weapon.

“I told you. Because they deserve it. Because their sins cry out for vengeance.”

Not the cops, though. They got theirs for free. She wiped her damp eyes with her forearm, like a child.

“Come with me,” she said. “We could run away.”

“Where?”

“The coast somewhere. Rimini. They say Rimini’s nice.”

He thought of the sea, the endless sea, and the way the blue tide washed away everything.

“I’d like that,” he said.

He walked over to the bag and took out an envelope. It was full of notes. He counted out all but a handful and gave her the money. She stared at it. There was so much, more than she could ever have imagined.

“I’m not finished. I’ve one more piece of work to do. Irena…” He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, surprised by his own tenderness. “You must leave, right now. In two days’ time. Rimini. Be on the beach. I’ll see you there.”

She was silent. He wanted to feel she lied too, lied about feeling his warm, sparking presence inside her. You’re the doorway of the Devil. Tertullian was right. He had to believe that. If he didn’t, he could never be the Gino Fosse he knew, the one he understood, the one with a goal, a mission. This Gino had heard the rats chattering in San Lorenzo, had dared the anonymous, shriveled heads in the Lateran to speak their true names.

There was no choice. He clasped her hand, forcing her fingers tightly around the money. “Go,” he ordered, and handed her the cheap champagne. “Take this and we’ll drink it together.”

Her eyes were wet. She didn’t dare call him a liar.

He watched her pack her few things, waited as she walked out of the door, not looking back. Soon now, he knew, the phone would ring. Soon there would be a new deliverance.

Fifty

The office was empty apart from a couple of cops shuffling papers at the far end, out of earshot. Falcone had gone on from San Lorenzo in Lucina to organize the cover for Denney’s departure. He had teams throughout the city and more at the airport. Almost every man in the department was on the case, except Nic Costa, who now sat at Luca Rossi’s old desk, drinking bad coffee from the machine, trying to clear his head. Throwing his ID card at Falcone had helped. Now that he thought of himself as a civilian again, a state he barely remembered, he was surprised and interested to discover his mind could go to places that some inner restraint prevented it from visiting in the past.

There were footsteps across the big, bare office. Teresa Lupo was approaching, a folder in her hand. She looked dreadful. He wondered if anyone would ever call her Crazy Teresa again.

“Thanks for coming,” he told her.

“You caught me on the way out. Got some papers for Falcone. What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

She took a good look at him, trying to judge his mental state. “I have to do the autopsy on Luca this afternoon. If you want to see him, it would be best now.”

“Seen enough dead people for a while.”

She sat down and put her folder on the desk. “Me too. And I never thought I’d say that. What are you doing here, Nic? Falcone’s throwing every man he’s got onto the street.”

“I guess he doesn’t want me around. I’m supposed to deal with the loose ends over Luca. Contact the pension people. Do whatever you do when a cop gets killed.”

She shook her head, baffled. “There are civilians who do that for a living. He doesn’t need the poor bastard’s partner to get involved.”

“I don’t mind. He had a sister. Did you know that? She’s deaf and dumb. Luca took her out of the home and looked after her.”

He took the photo out of his pocket and passed it across the desk.

“He never mentioned a thing.” She sighed and ran her hand across the photo, as if there were some of his presence still there.

Then he threw across the book. “Luca kept notes too.”

She opened it and stared at the contents. “Who’d have thought a big man would write like that? It looks like a girl’s hand or something. One screwed-up individual. And all these tiny doodles. Jesus. Poor fucked-up man.”

There were scribbled headings with dates and times. It was a kind of diary, but one driven by Luca Rossi’s head more than actual events.

“It’s what he was thinking,” Costa said. “I just spent the best part of an hour inside his mind and I’m damned if I can get out again. It begins the day after that accident on the motorway, when he thought he was losing it. It’s”—he hunted to get the right words—“a little insane, to begin with anyway. Some of it I just don’t understand at all. Rossi really thought he might be going mad. Then you come into it. Then Falcone.” He stared at her. “Then me. It wasn’t meant for public consumption. You don’t have to take it personally.”

She was flicking through the pages. “He thought I was sweet? No one uses that word about me. Never.” Then she turned the page and went quiet.

“It’s okay,” Costa said. “I’m not offended. Read it. Maybe it will make more sense that way.”

“'Kid Costa.’” She spoke softly, even though the office was as good as empty. “‘V. naive. Why the hell me?’ What does that mean?"

“Go on,” he said. “It doesn’t end there.”

A few pages later Rossi returned to the subject and didn’t mince words. She seemed surprised by the venom in the dead man’s words.

She hadn’t realized Rossi resented being his partner so much. He seemed offended by Costa’s innocence and, in particular, the way he had dealt with the Vatican.

“I don’t want to look at this,” she said, putting the diary down on the desk. “It doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s just Luca rambling. Doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“You think he was mad at me?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “Or mad at himself. I don’t know.”

“You haven’t read enough,” he suggested. “He was mad at Falcone. He genuinely didn’t understand why the man was leaning on me like that. Luca thought I was taking too much on myself and not asking enough questions. Maybe he was right.”

“Don’t resent a dead man, Nic. Luca liked you. He told me so himself and that means more than any crap in some stupid diary.”