David Hewson (5 page)

"Open
the doors," he said. "The main ones."

Costa
was walking towards them already, anxious to enjoy the look of astonishment on
the faces of Gianni Peroni and Mauro Sandri when those gigantic bronze shutters
were pulled back to reveal this wonder to the world on the other side.

"What?"
the caretaker asked, putting a hand on Costa's shoulder until something
in the detective's eyes told him this was not a good idea.

"You
heard!" Costa snapped, getting angry with the man, wondering what he
thought he was protecting here.

There
were more keys and some kind of electronic monitor needed attention. Costa got
on his cell phone and called his partner, just beyond the doors.

"I
think it's just a kid, Gianni," he told Peroni. "If he runs,
you can get some exercise. Otherwise... hell, it's almost
Christmas."

The
big man's laugh came back as a double echo, from the phone and, fainter,
from beyond the doors. "You're itching to do Leo's clean-up
statistics some good tonight."

"Just
stand back and watch when we open this place." Then Costa thought about
what Peroni had said. "Is Falcone there?"

"Walking
right across the square. And on the phone too. This isn't a conference call
or something?"

Costa
heard a low metallic groan and slid the phone back in his jacket. The caretaker
was heaving at the bronze behemoth on his right, tugging it back on a set of
ancient hinges. Costa took hold of the second door and pulled hard at the handle.
It moved surprisingly easily.

In
the space of a few seconds they had the doors open. The night wind slammed
straight up the portico and flung snow into their faces. Nic Costa brushed the
stinging flakes out of his eyes. Gianni Peroni stood there, clearly transfixed
by what he saw. Sandri was a few steps behind him, tense, upright, firing off
photos constantly. Falcone had arrived too and seemed to be barking angrily
down the phone.

Costa
turned round and took another look at the magical scene behind him, snow
swirling down from the heavens, as if tethered to some magnetic, twisting beam
of light.

The
vagrant was moving in the Pantheon now. Nic Costa no longer cared. He stood
back from the door to let the intruder run, to break out from this tight, enclosed
universe that was the dream of an emperor who had been dead for nearly two
millennia.

Then
he looked outside again and recognized a different shape--upright and
stiff on the steps of the fountain--not quite able to believe what he was
seeing, to reconcile it with this bewitching night.

A
figure slipped past him, brushing against his jacket. Costa didn't even
look. With fumbling fingers he unzipped his coat, felt for his gun in the
holster.

"Get
down," he said, still trying to marshal his thoughts, letting the words
slip from his mouth so softly he doubted the caretaker even heard. Then he took
a deep breath and yelled, as loudly as he could, "Gianni! Get down for
Christ's sake!"

Instinctively,
without planning the move, he dashed out into the portico and felt the freezing
wind bite at his face. Gianni Peroni was still staring into the interior of the
Pantheon, ugly face alight with joy, grinning like a kid. Falcone was getting
close to him too, his stern, immobile features for once rapt, enthralled by the
scene inside.

"Get
down!" Costa screamed again, waving his hands, waving the small black
revolver through the falling cloud of white flakes. "
Now
! The
bastard's got a gun."

He
heard the first shot drown out the end of his warning. Something small and
deadly sang its way through the air. Sparks flew off the column close to the
astonished faces of the two cops under the portico. Falcone's arm went
out and pushed Peroni down to the stone pavement.

Costa
was focused on the man on the steps now. The figure was directly by the
fountain, dressed in black from head to foot and wearing one of those idiotic
tie-down hats with earpieces that made you look like Mickey Mouse caught in a
storm. He was standing in a professional firing position, the Weaver stance,
right hand on the trigger, left supporting the gun, feet apart, comfortable as
hell in the sort of pose Costa sometimes saw at target-shooting events. The
small pistol was aimed, very deliberately, in their direction. A tiny flame lit
up the barrel as Costa watched and a muffled crack rolled their way.

Costa
scanned the piazza, doing his best to check there was no one else in the
vicinity, then unleashed two shots towards the figure in the snow. A stream of
tiny fires lit up furiously in response, sending more sparks up from old stone
that was, at least, some kind of protection for them. For those who were smart
enough to take it.

Mauro
Sandri was still standing. Maybe it was panic. Maybe it was just second nature.
The photographer was flapping around like a wild man, one hand still on his
stupid camera, loosing off shots of anything, the Pantheon, the night, the
three cops trying to squirm their way out of the firestorm coming at them from
the square.

Then
he turned, and Costa knew precisely what would happen next. Mauro spun round on
his little heels, camera in hand, the motor drive of the Nikon clicking away
like a clockwork robot, turned and faced the black figure still upright on the
steps.

"Mauro,"
Costa said quietly, knowing there was no point.

He
was a stride away from the little photographer when the bullets hit. Two. Costa
heard the reports as they left the barrel of the gun. He heard them hit the
diminutive black figure on the steps, tear through the fabric of his winter
jacket, bite like deadly insects deep into Sandri's body.

The
little photographer flew into the air like a man receiving an electric shock,
then fell in a disfigured heap onto the ground.

"See
to him!" Costa yelled at Peroni and Falcone as they scrambled to their
feet in the deep, consuming snow. "This son of a bitch is mine."

Knowing
the idea was pointless, that no one could shoot that well, not even the
dark-hearted bastard still standing by the frozen dolphins and fauns, Costa
fired all the same, then began to sprint, began to hit his speed, and thought:
At
least I can run. Can you
?

The
figure was folding on himself, turning, like a crow shrinking into a crouch
before it half jumped, half fell off a fence. There was fear there as he fled
down the steps on the far side of the dolphins and fauns. Costa knew it and the
knowledge made him run harder, heedless of the slippery, centuries-old paving
stones beneath his feet.

He
loosed off another shot. The man was fleeing into a corner of the square,
trying to find sanctuary in the dark, tangled labyrinth of narrow streets and
alleys that lay beyond, in every direction.

And,
just as Costa was beginning to digest this thought, the weather joined in. A
sudden vicious squall careered straight out of the north, a thick wad of snow
lurking deep in its gut. The cruel, cutting ice stung and blinded. His feet
gave way. The rugby player in him surfaced from the long-dead past, told him
there was no option but to roll with the fall, to tumble into the soft,
freezing blanket on the ground, because the alternative was to pitch gravity
and momentum against the weakness of the human body and snap a tendon or a bone
along the way.

It
was dark and cold as he fell into the soft, fresh snow, striking the hard stone
beneath with his shoulder. For a brief moment the world was a sea of whirling
white and sharp, violent pain. Then he was still, feeling himself, checking
nothing was broken.

When
he got his equilibrium back and forced himself painfully to his feet, the
figure in black had vanished. Dense clouds of white were falling with an
unforgiving force again, burying the man's footprints with every passing
second, turning everything into a single, empty shade of nothingness. Costa
strode to the corner of the street. The shooter could have gone one of two ways,
west down the Via Giustiniani, towards the church of San Luigi dei Francesi,
with its Caravaggios and, for Nic Costa, some bitter memories. Or north, into
the warren beyond Piazza della Maddalena.

Costa
stared at the ground. It looked like a fresh bedsheet, scarcely crumpled, full
of secrets, all of them unreachable.

Reluctantly,
knowing what he would find, he retraced his steps to the portico. A siren was
sounding somewhere in the wintry night. Costa wondered how long it would take
the ambulance to make its way through the treacherous streets. Then he saw
Gianni Peroni hunched on the flat stone of the portico, hands over his eyes,
next to Mauro Sandri's inert form, and he knew it didn't really
matter.

He
walked over, determined to handle this well.

"Hey,"
Costa said, placing a hand on his partner's shoulder, then crouching to
peer into those strangely emotional squinty eyes, now liquid with cold and a
bright inner fury. "We couldn't have known, Gianni."

"I
will remember to point this out when I break it to his mamma, or his wife or
boyfriend or whoever," Peroni replied bitterly, trying to bite back his
rage.

"He
must have looked like one of us, I guess. It could have been you. Or me. Or
anyone."

"That's
a comforting thought," Peroni mumbled.

Costa
glanced at the dead photographer. Blood, black under the moonlight, was caking
in Sandri's open mouth. Two more patches, one on his upper chest, the
second in the centre of his abdomen, gleamed on his jacket. Costa remembered
that curious stance the gunman had held while firing at them. It contained some
meaning. When they had started to swallow down the bitter bile of their shock,
when the investigation proper began, this was a point to note, an item of
interest to be pursued.

Peroni
patted Sandri's motionless arm. "I told him, Nic. I said,
"Mauro, you're not going to die. I promise. You're just going
to lie there and wait for the medics to come. Then one day you go back to
photographing mugs like me, and this time round you can take snaps of my pecker
as much as you want. This time round"... Oh shit."

"We'll
get the bastard, big man," Costa said quietly. "Where's
Falcone?"

"Inside,"
Peroni said with a slow, deliberate venom. "Maybe he's enjoying the
view."

A
blue flashing beacon began to paint the walls on the far side of the square. Then
a second. The caterwauling of the sirens became so loud that lights came on in
apartment windows in the neighbouring streets. Costa straightened up. There was
no point in talking to Peroni when he was in this mood. He had to wait for the
storm to pass.

Costa
walked through the doors towards the stream of white that fell, still circling
around itself, from the vast open eye of the oculus.

The
caretaker was in his cabin by the entrance, florid face tucked into his chest,
trying as hard as he could to stay out of everything. Leo Falcone stood by the
inverted funnel, which kept growing as it was fed from the sky. Costa
remembered studying the Pantheon at school in art class. Here, at the centre of
the hall, lay the defining focal point of the ancient building, the axis around
which everything was arranged in a precise show of ancient symmetry, both the
great hemisphere and the monumental brick cylinder which tethered this
imaginary cosmos to the ground.

"The
photographer's dead, sir," Costa said, trying to allow a note of
reproach to slip into his voice.

"I
know," Falcone replied without emotion. "Scene of crime are on the
way. And the rest. Do you have any idea where the man in the square
went?"

"No."

Falcone's
stony face said everything.

"I'm
sorry," Costa continued. "We came here thinking it was some
homeless guys breaking in to keep warm. It was a burglar alarm, for God's
sake."

"I
know," the inspector said impassively. He walked to the head of the
funnel, where it was close to the apse and the altar, pointing due south,
directly opposite the portico entrance and the open bronze doors. Costa
followed. There Falcone bent down and, with a gloved finger, pointed at the
edge of the fresh snow.

Costa's
breath caught as he began to understand. A thin line of pigment was running
from inside the funnel, out to the edge of the crystals as they tried to turn
to water on the marble and porphyry. The stain became paler and paler as it
flowed towards the edge but there could be no mistake. Nic Costa knew the
colour by now. It was blood.

"I've
done this once already," Falcone said, pulling out a handkerchief from
his coat. "Damn snow."

Slowly,
with the same care Costa had seen Teresa Lupo use in such situations, Falcone
swept at the funnel with light, brushing strokes.

Costa
stood back and watched, wishing he were somewhere else. The head of a woman was
emerging from beneath the soft white sheet of ice. An attractive woman with a
large, sensual mouth, wide open dark green eyes, and a face which was neither
young nor old, a full, frank, intelligent face that wore an expression of
intense shock so vivid it seemed to border on outrage.