The Sacred Cut Page 9

  “But we haven’t,” Leapman interruped. “And the odds are we won’t. Why do we keep going over this? I don’t want to understand the bastard. I want to catch him. This guy’s killed at least eight people now, maybe more. All Americans. If we get the chance to ask him why once he’s in jail, fine. But I’m not going to lose any sleep if he’s just plain dead either. We’re not going to nail down this animal by profiling or mumbo jumbo. We get him through work.”

  He glared across the desk at Falcone. “If we’re lucky, we get him through you.”

  A hint of a smile crossed the inspector’s face. “I’m not a great believer in luck, Agent Leapman. And by the way, it’s nine victims. We lost a photographer last night, if you recall. He was Italian, but all the same.”

  Leapman cursed under his breath, then glowered at the images of the dead, scarred backs.

  “I do believe in detail, though,” Falcone continued. “Why don’t you just turn over everything you have and let us go through the material to see if there’s anything you’ve missed?”

  “We don’t miss things,” Leapman snarled.

  “Let me rephrase,” Falcone said, correcting himself carefully. “Perhaps there’s a fact, an event in there that means something to us and nothing to you.”

  To Costa’s surprise, Leapman didn’t throw the idea straight out of the window into the snow. “It’s got to work both ways,” he said eventually.

  “Meaning?” Falcone wondered.

  “Meaning a quid pro quo. Deacon works with you from now on. She reports back to me on what you find. In return, you get some files and she fills me in on anything you discover.”

  The woman looked up from the desk, her face suffused with sudden anger. “Sir—”

  Leapman interrupted, waving a dismissive hand in her direction. “I can spare you. Saves me hearing all this shit about profiling and numbers and stuff.”

  Falcone nodded and smiled at her. “Agreed,” he said. “Welcome on board.”

  Leapman dragged the keyboard of his PC towards him. “I’ll e-mail you some documents. Let me say this again: these are confidential. If you copy them outside the loop to anyone else, we’ll know and I will personally drag your ass to the Palazzo Chigi for a serious kicking. If I see them reported in the press you’ll be writing parking tickets in Naples before the week’s out.”

  “You seem to have such influence,” Falcone said with a faint smile.

  “If you like,” Leapman replied, “you can test me.”

  “No,” Falcone demurred. “But you could tell me one more thing.”

  “What’s that?” Leapman answered without looking up.

  “How long you’ve been here in Rome, waiting for this man to turn up. How he sent you here in the first place. And—”

  Falcone reached over and pushed the keyboard out of Leapman’s reach, making sure the American had to look him in the face.

  “—why the hell we had to wait for two people to die before you got around to telling us we had this monster on our streets.”

  Leapman glowered at him. “Deacon?”

  She blinked, hesitating, then punched the remote. Costa could feel the hatred rolling off her. A new photo came on the screen: an oriental temple, red-walled with three roofs, set behind rows of white marble steps.

  “The Temple of Heaven, Beijing,” she explained. “A Chinese Pantheon, if you like. The cosmology, the proportions, are virtually identical. It was a sacrificial altar once too.”

  “Still is for the man out there,” Leapman said quietly, almost to himself.

  Emily Deacon was struggling to keep her composure. “This is the last we know of before Rome. In September another body was found there. It took us a little while to get on the case. We never expected to see him outside North America or Europe. And”—she flicked the remote and pulled up more tourist shots of the temple—“there were other reasons.”

  “Show the good people,” Leapman ordered.

  She pulled up another shot. The man was on his back, naked, face contorted in death, a noose of cord biting cruelly into his neck.

  “Excuse me,” she said and walked briskly out of the door.

  Leapman sighed and picked up the remote, keying up the next picture: the victim turned facedown, with the now-familiar horned shape carved into his skin.

  “After this,” he continued, “we had some intelligence. It pointed us to Rome.”

  “Intelligence?” Falcone asked.

  “Intelligence. Don’t ask because I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted. Just take my word for it. We had some idea that he was on his way here. So”—Leapman closed his eyes for a moment as if this were boring him—“here I am, eating shit food, living in a service apartment, biding my time. Because my masters in Washington decide we should set up an office over here, wait around a little while and see what happens. Why didn’t we tell you? Well, what do you think, Inspector? We didn’t have any proof he was here. We didn’t have a single clue when or where he might do anything if he did turn up. What, exactly, would you have said if I’d walked in and dumped this bunch of half-guesses and supposition on your desk?”

  Leapman waited for an answer. It didn’t come. “I’ll take that as a sign you see my point. We had to come. We had to wait. Now we know this animal’s loose we’ve got to track him down once and for all. He’s fucked around with us too much already. Besides…”

  He keyed up shots of the corpse on the floor of the temple in Beijing.

  “It wasn’t some poor stupid tourist he killed this time. This guy was someone important. The military attaché at the US embassy in Beijing. Career diplomat. Talented guy. Came from one of those old New England families that put their offspring into public service just to prove what wonderful citizens they are, never once asking themselves whether it’s the right job for the spoiled little brats in the first place.”

  Leapman looked at the picture of the dead diplomat again and sighed. “That’s what class is about, don’t you think? Being able to make choices?”

  Then he pulled up another photo. It was the same man at a formal occasion, wearing a dinner jacket, shaking the hands of a smiling Chinese official. He was staring sourly at the camera, clutching at a full glass of booze as if it were a lifeline.

  “His name was Dan Deacon,” Leapman explained. “I don’t see a family resemblance myself, but I guess it’s there. Good old Dan fixed up his daughter with a fine career, huh? Not that I reckon he asked her once if it was what she wanted. One minute she’s sitting in Florence congratulating herself on getting an architectural degree. Next she’s doing push-ups in boot camp because Daddy says so and, my, doesn’t Daddy know how to glad-hand some of the people on the interview panels too. Still, it gives me an opportunity.”

  He switched off the projector and rolled up the lights so they could see his face all the more clearly.

  “You know what it’s all about, folks?” Agent Leapman asked. “Motivation. I’m giving you one motivated girl here. I picked her myself for that very reason. Use her well, won’t you? And try to bring her back in one piece.”

  MONICA SAWYER’S APARTMENT was in a dark side street near the Palazzo Borghese, some way north of the Pantheon. The place was a square modern cabin built directly on top of the roof of a solid grey nineteenth-century block. It sat unnaturally on the summit of the building like a child’s construction made of toy bricks. The estate agent boasted she had the best view in Rome. It was bullshit, but Monica had quite a view all the same, one so astonishing that she’d already booked another month at $3,500 a week, for May, when she and Harvey would be able to use to the full the terrace that stretched out on three sides of the ugly modern structure.

  A perfect layer of snow, marked only by bird prints, now hid the warm terra-cotta tiles she’d seen when she arrived three days before. Monica walked carefully across the snow, which was close to ankle deep, listening to Peter O’Malley talk with wonder about what they could see. He had a soft, musical voice like that of an actor, one
whose slightly metallic Irish tint reminded her how much the Hibernian accent had influenced American. The night was clear now, with a scattering of dark stratus high in a sky bright with a full moon. They had checked the TV when they arrived. Peter wanted to know what the weather would do and when he could return to Orvieto. She poured herself a Scotch while he listened to the impenetrable Italian on the box. There were pictures of cop cars around the Pantheon, shots of a police press conference with a tall, goatee-bearded inspector facing down the cameras and looking as if he wouldn’t say a damn thing.

  That wasn’t what interested Peter, though. He wanted to know what the sky would bring. When the bulletin was done he told her. There would be more snow after midnight.

  Now, on the terrace, still in her fur coat, she clutched the glass of Scotch and followed him round, listening. He’d stopped drinking. In truth, she thought, he hadn’t consumed much at all in the enoteca. It was hard to tell.

  Peter O’Malley was laughing now. They were standing on the northern side of the terrace, looking away from the river, up towards the rising lights of some hill.

  His arm slipped through hers and squeezed gently.

  “Symmetry,” he said. “Can you see it?”

  “Where?” she replied, feeling stupid.

  “Everywhere. You just have to look.” He pointed to the twinkling street lamps on the distant hill. “You know where that is?”

  “No idea.”

  “Trinità dei Monti. The church at the top of the Spanish Steps.”

  She nodded. She’d walked there before the snow came and had been surprised to find there was a McDonald’s near the foot of the twin staircases and an American-style Santa ringing a bell and yelling for money in Italian.

  “Been there. So what?”

  He led her round to the opposite wall of the apartment. The bright, white, wedding-cake building in the Piazza Venezia stood out like a sore thumb: in front of it the jumble of Renaissance rooftops, with the huge half sphere of the dome she had come to recognize.

  “That I do know,” she said, a little proud of herself. “I went inside yesterday. It’s beautiful. The Pantheon.”

  “The home of all the gods,” he said. “That’s good.”

  Then they went to the western wall, which had the larger part of the terrace, an expanse of open space a good ten yards deep, with flower pots, an old stone table and a permanent, brick-built barbecue with a little sink by it. An awning had been built in front of the full-length windows. The shrivelled and leathery stems of a couple of meagre grapevines wound their way around the supporting pillars. A few blackened leaves still hung on the furled, wiry whips feeling their way through the trelliswork. Two tall gas heaters whistled away, pumping out enough warmth to make it possible to sit outside, even on a night like this, to be alone in Rome, above everything, out of sight.

  He was gesturing. She looked over the river, where a snow-clad circular building rose, brightly illuminated by a forest of spotlights.

  “And that is?”

  “I told you,” she objected. “It’s only my first time here.”

  “Castel Sant‘ Angelo. Think, Monica. Draw a line from Trinità dei Monti to the castle. Draw another line from the Pantheon, out to the Piazza del Popolo over there. What do you get?”

  She looked out to the north, the direction he was pointing, out into the face of the icy breeze, then ducked beneath the trellis and fell into one of the hard, cold summer seats. She got what he was driving at. She wasn’t stupid.

  “A cross. A crucifix.”

  “And we are?”

  “Where the two arms meet? But so what, Peter? Don’t get scary on me. It’s just coincidence. It’s just…”

  She looked out over the city, shining under the icy, bright moon, then shivered. “It’s just how things are.”

  He walked under the shelter of the awning, stole her glass from the table, took a sip of whisky from it.

  “What if there are no coincidences? What if everything has history? A reason?”

  He wasn’t serious, she thought. It was just some game. “In a place like this, you could come up with stuff like that anywhere,” she protested. “I could say, look, here’s the Colosseum. Or the Capitol. Or whatever. Look. It makes a circle. A square. An octagon. It’s Rome, for God’s sake. It’s all here.”

  “Quite,” he replied.

  “You’re sounding like a priest now,” she said softly, slurring the words a little. “I’d forgotten for a while that’s what you are.” She didn’t know what to do. Whether to feel stupid for letting a stranger into her home, into her mind, like this. Or just to roll with it and see where everything went. He was a priest. There was nothing to be scared about.

  “Must be hard doing what you do,” she said. “Having to stay apart from other people.”

  “There’s nothing hard in that. It helps you think about what really matters.”

  “You don’t miss the comfort of another person?”

  His smart eyes clouded over. “You can’t miss what you never knew.”

  “I don’t believe that, Peter. Not of you.”

  Peter O’Malley was not a happy man. He was looking for something, all the time. Why? Monica wondered.

  “Why are you a priest? It doesn’t seem right. Whatever would make a man like you do this?”

  “A man like me…” He laughed lightly, breaking the fragile spell that had begun to hover around them, something dark at its edges, and she felt relieved, light-headed even. “A man like me is just a fool looking for magic where none exists. And then…”

  He waved a hand at the glorious night, the city slumbering under a jewelled sky.

  “Then it just sneaks up on you and you realize it was there, in front of you, all along.”

  It wasn’t the face of a priest. That was the problem. It was the face of a man of the world, one who’d lived a full and active existence before retreating into this dark shell, the anonymous uniform of the calling.

  “Magic,” she muttered, wondering if she would follow where she thought he was leading.

  He looked at his watch. Her heart sank. “And a city full of churches, Monica. I’d best find one to pray in, don’t you think?”

  AN HOUR AFTER THEY LEFT the embassy, Emily Deacon arrived at the Questura. She’d dressed down for the night: black jacket, black jeans, blonde hair loose around her slim neck. She looked younger, like a student just out of college. And relieved too, Costa thought, to be out of the grip of Agent Leapman, even if being reassigned so abruptly had come as a shock.

  She stood in the main office next to Costa’s desk, scanning the room. The night shift were hard at work, making calls, sifting through records on computer screens, reading reports. Falcone had put virtually everyone he had on the job. Some fifty men and women had now begun the task of collating information, trawling through CCTV videos, interviewing the people who lived in the apartments over the shops and restaurants near the Pantheon.

  “Are you getting anywhere?” she asked.

  Peroni glanced at Costa. Earlier, the two men had demanded a discussion with Falcone, wanting to know exactly how much information they should share with the Americans. It had been inconclusive. Falcone had made a good point: it was ludicrous to belabour the question until they found something worth sharing and that seemed some way off. They already knew the CCTV cameras in the Pantheon had nothing. Those in the streets nearby had captured little but the blizzard. Falcone had shrugged and left it at that, then closeted himself upstairs with Commissario Moretti for a private meeting.

  “Early days,” Peroni answered hesitantly. “Can I get you something? A coffee?”

  The acute blue eyes looked him up and down. “You don’t trust me. It’s understandable. I’d probably feel the same way if it was me. It’s because I’m American, I guess.”

  “No,” Costa told her. “It’s just… a little unusual.”

  “You have difficulty dealing with the unusual?” she asked.

  “Not at
all. It’s just that sometimes it takes a while to adapt. Police departments are like monasteries, really.”

  Peroni snorted. A smile flickered on Emily Deacon’s face.

  “Monasteries?” she asked, raising a slender fawn eyebrow.

  “Really,” Costa protested. “OK, we let in a few women for show. But these are institutions that keep themselves to themselves, rarely share their working practices with others and suspect all outsiders on principle. Big organizations work that way. The FBI’s the same, surely.”