A Season for the Dead (38 page)

His fingers shook as he fumbled at the lid. Then, with a fierce determined movement, he tipped the urn upside down. Gray ash and dust spilled out onto the rising wind, gathered in a fleeting gray cloud then vanished, scattering across the land a lifetime of memories, an abundance of love and shared grief, gone in the blink of a disbelieving eye.

He clung tightly to the vine, watching this mortal smoke disperse. It was nothing. It was everything. It was gone. It would never leave him.

Then the breeze stiffened. The page on the table, with its five words written in a firm, elegant hand, fluttered in the wind, rose and began to tumble through the air, flitting across the arid ground, turning and turning before it disappeared into the scrub by the road.

He watched it vanish, wishing he could run again.

Nic Costa felt no wiser. Just a little stronger, perhaps, and that, in the circumstances, was as much as he could bear.

About the Author

DAVID HEWSON has written five novels as well as several travel books. A weekly columnist for the
Sunday Times,
he lives in Kent, England, where he is currently working on his next novel featuring Nic Costa,
The Villa of Mysteries.
Look for his stand-alone novel of suspense
Lucifer’s Shadow,
coming from Dell in summer 2004.

A SEASON FOR THE DEAD

A Delacorte Book / April 2004

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2004 by David Hewson

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Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.,
and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Hewson, David.

A season for the dead / David Hewson.

p. cm.

I. College teachers—Crimes against—Fiction. II. Police—Italy—
Rome—Fiction. III. Women teachers—Fiction. IV. Serial murders—
Fiction. V. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. VI. Vatican City—Fiction.

PR6058.E96 S43 2004

823′.913 22—2003062522

eISBN: 978-0-440-33484-2

v3.0