The Sacred Cut Read online

  The girl was breaking into a sprint, moving quickly towards the next set of steps. She was on her own now, clear in a retreating sea of dark, furious bodies.

  “Oh great,” Emily Deacon barked at him. “And I thought we were the ones who were supposed to be gun-happy?”

  “Just making sure I take you back to Mr. Leapman in one piece like he asked,” Costa said. “How good are you at running?”

  “Damn good,” she replied.

  He nodded at the bridge. “Take these steps. See where she goes when she emerges. I’ll go after her. Gianni, you stay with Emily.”

  Peroni was heading for the stone stairway already.

  A good twenty metres ahead of him, Nic Costa saw the girl tumble, slipping on the slushy pathway, then scramble up and continue to flee. He took a deep breath, broke out from under the bridge and set off in her tracks.

  It was a minute before he reached the next set of steps. He raced up them, following her footprints in the snow, thinking all along it had been a mistake to loose off those shots, not quite knowing why.

  Then he climbed back to the road level, checked Peroni and Emily waiting for his lead a couple of hundred metres down the Lungotevere, Alexa by their side, her cigarette sending a thin plume of smoke up into the icy night air.

  Costa glanced across the street and saw the slim, young figure of the girl slip into the snarl of alleys adjoining Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

  Watching her disappear, in the dun security lights of a grocery store, was a tall, upright man dressed in black.

  THE HERETICAL MONK Giordano Bruno died at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori on a cold February day in 1600. Now his black, hooded statue stood on a pedestal in the centre of the square, dispassionately surveying the twenty-first century. The trash from the daily market—wooden boxes, limp vegetables, plastic bags—lay in the filthy slush, uncollected by market workers who’d pleaded the weather as an excuse for skipping work. Only a handful of late-night drinkers braved the snow to make the customary round of bars, the Americans heading for the Drunken Ship and Sloppy Sam’s, the locals to the Vineria and the Taverna del Campo. And around the statue, huddling against the wind, wondering how to make money, a bunch of down-and-outs, permanent hangers-on in a part of the city that was never short of tourists to work.

  Of the hundred or so people milling around the Campo that night Emily Deacon was one of the few who knew who Giordano Bruno was. She could, if she wanted, recall the reasons why an eccentric recluse, one who brought about his own death through sheer stubbornness towards a vengeful authority, became a founding father of modern humanist philosophy. She’d visited the square often as a teenager and, as her family gradually fell apart, come to wonder what Bruno, a man convinced the world of the future would be immeasurably better than the one he inhabited, would make of modern-day Rome. These ideas rolled around her consciousness now. She knew the city so well, the place brimmed with so many memories, good and bad, that it was hard to focus on what mattered. Leapman had brought her to Rome, surely, for her specialist knowledge. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d be better off with someone who was fresh, untouched by the scars and connections of the past. And these thoughts themselves touched a raw nerve. They were unwanted, unnecessary. Emily knew she had a job to do, an important one. A job that could close this case for good because, when she’d left Peroni gasping for breath in the back streets near the bridge, when she’d realized Nic Costa had taken his own path and was now lost to her in the night, she’d found the girl herself, tracked her doggedly through the labyrinth of medieval alleys, over the broad main road of Corso Vittorio Emanuele, then past the Palazzo della Cancelleria, towards the Campo, noting, too, that they were not alone. Emily Deacon could run. She was as fast as the girl, faster probably. Whoever was following them was also fit, but older, a black figure flitting through the shadows, with one clear intent as he struggled to keep up with them.

  She turned the corner into the Campo and knew what she’d see. The kid was predictable. She headed for crowds, particularly those she thought of as hers. Sure enough, the slight young figure was slowing now, strolling into the knot of bodies by the statue, hoping to be anonymous again. Emily cast a worried glance behind her and saw nothing. Not a soul was moving down the narrow medieval thoroughfare of the Via del Pellegrino, and she tried to convince herself she’d lost the man.

  “But he’s good,” she muttered, and took out her issue revolver, put it snugly in the right-hand pocket of her jacket, then placed the pair of regulation handcuffs she carried in her left, wishing all the time she’d paid more attention during the repetitive, noisy tedium of the firearms classes back in Virginia.

  She put her head down, stared at the grubby snow and began to cut a diagonal path across the square, marking out a decent distance from the statue, looking, she hoped, like any passerby moving through the night.

  Laila was cowering there, hiding herself in a crowd of youths. Emily didn’t like what she saw. The girl looked odd.

  Emily locked one cuff around her own left wrist, keeping the metal hidden from view. They could spend all night running around Rome after this girl. It was important to bring her to a halt here.

  Then she doubled back to the statue quickly, silently slipped between two youths sharing a joint, stood beside the girl and placed a hand on her arm.

  “Laila,” she said quietly, firmly, “there’s nothing to worry about. We’re here to help.”

  The kid turned, her pale face shining with pure terror.

  “It’s all right,” Emily said.

  But Laila was ready to run again and there was no option. Emily reached out, took Laila’s slender right wrist, and locked the right handcuff around it, tight to the soft skin. The girl leapt away from her, as if touched by an electric shock. The others were beginning to mill round the two of them, not taking any notice when she kept on yelling, “Police, police.”

  Laila almost dragged her off the steps. Someone’s hand tried to separate them, jerking hard on the cuff chain. It was the scene by the river all over again, and Emily thought of the options in front of her, thought about how carrying a knife was, in circles like these, just part of everyday life. Finally, she remembered what Nic Costa had done in similar circumstances. She needed help. She needed to make a point.

  Emily Deacon took the gun out of her right-hand pocket, held it high in the air and, for the second time that night, two shots burst towards the luminous disc of the moon.

  “Nic!” she yelled. “Peroni!”

  The youths got the message. They were moving back, looking scared, ready to run, to get as far away from trouble as possible. There were faces at the windows of the Campo bars but no sign of movement. The shot had bought her time. Now she needed assistance.

  “Nic!” she screamed again and pushed the girl hard into the stone pedestal of the statue to stop her trying to drag herself away.

  “Wait…” she was saying, until something got in the way. A fist, hard as stone, coming from somewhere behind her right shoulder, catching her on the jaw, making her shaky grip on the gun loosen so much that it slipped, with a steady, inevitable momentum, right out of her fingers and flew rattling across the ancient, slushy cobblestones.

  She half stumbled against the plinth, tasting blood in her mouth, struggling to think straight. Then a figure bent over her, the face hidden in the shadows, and he was laughing, a normal, natural laugh, calm, controlled, one that made her spine go stiff.

  “You ask for men,” he murmured in a flat, North American voice. Something black and cold and familiar pressed against her cheek, sending the stink of gun oil straight into her head. “They send you children.”

  Her eyes dodged the weapon, raking the square anxiously, wondering where the hell Costa and Peroni were. They’d surely heard the shots. Then he dragged her upright, stared into her eyes. He was about fifty, with a chiselled anonymous face and lifeless grey eyes. A stupid thought came to her: I know this man somehow.

  He yanked the chain of
the cuffs high in the air, dragging the two of them together. With her left hand, unseen, she fumbled in her pocket, searching desperately for a solution.

  “You cuffed her well,” he said. “I watched. But you have to think about consequences. Always. Was it the right thing to do? What happens next?”

  The gun moved from the girl’s terrified head to hers.

  “Decisions,” he said wearily. “Sometimes there’s no avoiding them. You American? Or Italian?”

  “Guess,” Emily hissed at him.

  She pushed in front of the kid, tugging against his powerful grip on the chain, and covered Laila’s slight body, wondering all the time if it were really possible to escape from such a situation, to try to find a refuge in the scattering handful of people retreating from the violence of this scene.

  Then some clarity entered her mind and it said: Best not to fool yourself.

  She drew back and spat full into the pale, emotionless face, then said, in a quiet, controlled voice, “You murdered my father, you bastard. I hope you rot in hell.”

  The grey eyes blinked. Something went through his head at that moment and in a strange, unexpected way it changed things. Not that there was time to consider what he might be thinking just then. Her fingers had found what she wanted: the key.

  This man recognized her. There could be no mistake. He was staring at her, partly bemused, partly lost, troubled, struggling to come to terms with something she couldn’t fathom.

  His hand reached out, jerked her blonde hair close to his mouth.

  “Emily Deacon,” he murmured. “Little Em. Following in Daddy’s footsteps. Such a waste…”

  He relaxed his grip a little, let her head move back from his face. The gun brushed her lips. She twisted the key in the lock on her wrist and, with one deft twist, released the clasp, squeezing Laila’s hand to let her know she was free, then held on to her gently, waiting for the moment.

  “Civilians,” he whispered and there was doubt in his voice now, something holding him back. “Don’t you hate it when they get in the way? Little Em…”

  “Don’t call me that, you murdering bastard,” she hissed at him and lunged hard with her free hand, punching straight into the throat with the side of her hand, the way they’d taught her.

  “Go, go, go!” she yelled at Laila as he fell back into the snow, pushing the kid out from under Giordano Bruno’s shadow, out into the square, beneath a sky that was beautiful with stars but starting to cloud over with the filmy promise of snow.

  Someone was shouting. A familiar voice. Nic Costa’s.

  The figure on the ground pulled himself upright. She mustn’t run. This man was good. He could bring her down anytime he wanted.

  He still held the gun loosely at his side, like a professional.

  “Do it, asshole,” she snarled at him. “No time for your scalpel, though, is there? No chance to leave your mark.”

  “Steely Dan Deacon’s girl,” he said quietly, casting a cautious eye at the two figures racing across the square now. “Didn’t she grow up smart and pretty? And don’t the Deacons fuck you up just when you least expect it?”

  He was on her in an instant, strong hand at the neck of her jacket, index finger and thumb pushing into her sinews, forcing his face into hers, looking cold again, deliberate.

  “Don’t get in my way again, Little Em,” the monotone whispered. “I don’t have time for distractions.”

  He was so close she saw his breath clouding in front of her eyes. A kind of tic occupied one of his cheeks, marred the fake handsomeness of his features.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, trying to focus her attention on the angular face and the voice, to work out what part of him was familiar, locked hidden somewhere in her brain.

  “Kaspar the unfriendly ghost,” he answered, distracted for a moment, as if an idea was coming to him. “Figure it out, Little Em. We’ve both got work to do.”

  Then he relaxed his grip, took one last look at her and started running, away from the shadow of the hooded monk, fleeing into the darkness of a side street, gone for now, she thought, not forever.

  She leaned back against the pedestal and found her mind racing. She’d touched the beast. She knew him, even if he didn’t at that moment have a name that was anything but a riddle. And it came to her that what she’d felt instinctively about the error of Leapman’s approach was true. The killer wasn’t born this way. Something had created him, and he was acutely aware of that fact himself, probably resented it with all his soul. Like the philosopher turned to stone above her, he didn’t fear judgement. Perhaps, in a sense, he sought it.

  Little Em.

  No one had called her that since she’d turned twelve. It was a name used by her family, and those close to them, during those warm, sunny days in Rome, back when the world was whole and human and new, back when a string of strange men came through their apartment in Aventino, leaving her presents, making her feel special, dancing with her in the bright white living room to any damn music they felt like.

  Little Em.

  Someone approached. It was Nic Costa. The young Italian cop walked up, his interesting, intelligent face full of concern. He retrieved her gun from the slush, looked at her, then pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Here,” he said.

  She remembered the pain now, and ran her tongue over her bruised lower lip, grateful it didn’t feel too bad.

  “Thanks. Where the hell were you?”

  “Looking. It’s a big dark place out there.”

  She nodded. “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

  There’d never been an experience like this in her life, ever. Nothing in the Bureau had prepared her for it.

  “I lost the kid, Nic. Sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”

  He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t seem too bothered.

  Gianni Peroni arrived, a little out of breath, obvious pleasure on his face at seeing she was safe. She liked these men. A lot. Her head felt funny. Her balance wasn’t what it ought to be. For a split second she thought she was going to cry.

  By Peroni’s side was Laila. The girl came straight up to her, looked in her eyes with something that resembled gratitude, then held up the lone cuff dangling from her wrist, wanting to be released.

  “Sure,” Emily Deacon said. “After…”

  After we’ve talked, she wanted to say. After I’ve done the FBI agent thing, all confidence and bluster, pretending everything’s OK now, everything’s just dandy, if only you’ll answer a few questions, listen to what the cold, tough automaton from the Bureau has to say.

  After…

  The lights went out. She was scarcely aware that it was Nic Costa’s arms that stopped her head from splitting open on the Campo’s freezing cobblestones.

  IT WAS QUIET in the cabin high over the side street close to the Palazzo Borghese. Monica Sawyer twitched and writhed under the heavy sheets, shadows moving through her head, unseen figures dancing to events that had an interior logic they didn’t care to share with her. These were disturbing dreams, enticing dreams, ones she wasn’t used to, dreams that made her roll and turn and moan from time to time, out of fear, out of anticipation. Made her sweat too, struggling inside the scarlet silk slip Harvey had bought her once, on a brief holiday to Maui, thinking he could inject life back into the marriage.

  Harvey.

  His name just popped into her mind, like a sour discordant note that had sounded in a piece of glorious, fiery, scary music.

  Scarlet was her colour, or so Harvey said. Scarlet made her look slutty too. He liked that.

  “Harvey, Harvey,” she whispered, not knowing whether she wanted to summon him there or not, wishing she hadn’t drunk so much, hadn’t let all those strange old grapes from Virgil’s day get deep inside her brain.

  “Look at me now. Look at…”

  With a sudden physical shock, a jerk that made her body go rigid, she was awake, mind racing with sudden activity, one awkward fact ringing in her head. It
wasn’t Harvey she was trying to summon into her dream, like an incubus invited in by some deep dark part of her imagination. It was Peter O’Malley.

  Who was out looking for churches.

  Except he wasn’t. Now, with a half-hungover clarity, she could see something that was hidden from her when he was around. Peter O’Malley was just plain wrong. Priests didn’t hang around bars like that, slyly working their way into the confidence of stray women. They didn’t know about wine and food. They couldn’t turn on the charm, creep into someone’s head with such a sly degree of determined stealth. And they didn’t stay out all night either. Monica knew she’d have woken up if he had returned. Even when she’d been drinking, she was a light, nervous sleeper.

  Nothing in his story added up. He wasn’t the kind of man to tend a flock of nuns in Orvieto, or anywhere else. Peter O’Malley was a loner wandering the streets of Rome, homeless for some reason, with just a small black bag for company. If it hadn’t been for the dog collar she wouldn’t have countenanced inviting him into the apartment. That thought made her feel foolish. And resentful too.