David Hewson (9 page)

"A
what?"

"It's
from a grape which is, perhaps, the oldest in Italy. The Pelasgians brought it
in from Thessaly way back before Christ. If my memory serves me right there are
just a hundred or so small
aziende
--vineyards to you,
Monica--east of Naples that still make it. When you drink a Greco
you're drinking what Virgil did while he was writing the
Aeneid
,
as near as dammit. If you go to Pompeu, as you must, there's a
couple of lines of graffiti on the fresco there, two thousand years old if
they're a day. They go something like, "You are truly cold, Bytis,
made of ice, if last night not even Greco wine could warm you up." "

Monica
wondered about this, watching as the barman, unbidden as far she could see,
poured a glass of the white the priest had merely waved at with a long finger. "Who
the hell was Bytis?"

The
Irishman shrugged. "A lover? What else? One who seems to have shirked his
duties, in spite of the wine. Or perhaps because of it. Remember
Macbeth
.
"Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but
it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an
equivocator with lechery; it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it
takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the
lie, leaves him." "

He
cast a sudden, dark, regretful glance at the door. "There, you see. Too
much of my youth spent wasting away in the stalls of the Abbey Theatre. It
leaves one with a quotation for every occasion. To wit--"

Suddenly,
he was very close and whispering in her ear. "Hamlet and the omens of
change. "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead did squeak and
gibber in the Roman streets." "

It
was a very hammy performance. She couldn't help but laugh. The
wine--clear, dry and quite unlike anything she'd ever tried
before--helped. "You've done a lot of reading."

"Not
really. I'm merely a very ordinary priest who happened to have a lot of
spare hours once upon a time," he replied. "Ordinary as they come.
Ask my little flock of sisters in Orvieto. Though Lord knows when they'll
see me again. To be frank I'm a little giddy at being released into the
world like this. I've spent most of the day at the station trying to get
a train. And the rest of it knocking on the doors of the few hostels I can
afford trying to find accommodation. After which"--he raised his
glass--"the Irish in me will out."

Monica
Sawyer was surprised to discover she'd finished her white. The Greco was
good: sharp, individual, unexpected. She wanted another. She wanted something
to eat too.

"What's
that?" she asked, pointing at the priest's balloon-like glass,
which still had a smear of red running around the bottom, one he'd been
sipping gingerly throughout their conversation as if he couldn't quite
afford another. "And why's the thing so goddamn big?"

Peter
closed his eyes for a moment and his face suffused with delight. "Amarone.
A small pleasure I allow myself when in Rome. The stuff we have to drink at
home--"

He
wrinkled his nose.

"And
that thing you're drinking from?"

He
swilled the smudge of red liquid around the base and held it in front of her
face. She took the glass, accidentally brushing his warm fingers on the way,
stuck her nose deep inside the rim and was amazed as an entire, enclosed
universe of aromas rose through her nostrils and entered her head. It made her
think of the flowery prose she read in
Decanter
magazine: a sudden
rush of a warm, spicy summer breeze rising up off the Mediterranean and
sweeping over a scrubby brush of parched wild thyme. Or something.

"This
is a fine establishment," the priest said, glancing at the barman. "Like
any fine establishment, it will keep a selection of glasses according to the
rank of wine. Amarone is in the pantheon. At nine euros a glass it bloody
better be."

"OK,"
she said, slapping a hundred-euro note on the counter. "Is your Italian
good enough for "Line "em up, buster, the rich are paying'? And
food. I want food, Peter. Don't you?"

He
hesitated and, for one short, worrying moment, she felt she had lost him.

He
pulled out a small, rather feminine purse and stared mournfully at the
contents. "I'm still enough of an Irishman to feel uncomfortable
about having a lady buy me drinks."

She
put her hand on the soft black arm of his priestly jacket. "Then consider
it a tuition fee."

"Done,"
he said and rattled off some orders to the barman.

The
wine came: Amarone, with a brief lecture about how the grapes were dried before
being fermented, then something called Primitivo di Manduria, which, from what
she gathered, was kind of the red equivalent of the Greco, an ancient grape
still kept alive by a handful of small producers, this time in Puglia, the heel
of Italy. And the food: bresaola, paper-thin slices of mountain-dried wild
boar; a selection of salumi, some spicy, some mild; pale, translucent parings
of pork fat, lardo di colonna; slivers of ripe, fruity Parmesan and a salad of
buffalo mozzarella served with pomodorini di Pachino, tiny red tomatoes as
sweet as cherries.

They
ate and they drank and outside day turned to night through a steady, continuous
veil of falling snow.

She
didn't know how much time she'd spent in the bar. She didn't
care. She was alone in Rome. She didn't speak a word of the goddamn
language. And Father O'Malley was such good company. The single most
charming man she could remember meeting in years. He listened and when he spoke
afterwards it was about the very subject she'd been discussing. He could
talk about anything. Architecture. Literature. Politics. The pleasures of the
table. Almost everything, it occurred to her, except religion. Perhaps Peter
O'Malley had enough of that, trapped in servitude to his sisters back in
Orvieto. Perhaps he felt abruptly and briefly free in this strange, small world
of cold, white, impassable streets.

Monica
Sawyer listened and she laughed, knowing she was getting more than a little
drunk. She was used to the attention of men: tall, with a well-kempt head of
long, chestnut hair, and a smart, articulated face, one people liked to look
at. Back home, when Harvey was away, she didn't hesitate to stray a
little now and then. Finally she took his wrist, looked at his watch, then
looked at him, with an expression she was sure did not amount to an invitation.
That would be wrong. Improper. It wasn't what she was feeling or
planning. She simply wanted company and his was, at that moment, the best.

"Peter,"
she said quietly, "I have to go. I don't want this to sound wrong. Please
believe that. I'm not in the habit of picking up men in strange bars. Certainly
not priests. But we rented an apartment round the corner. For the next two weeks,
would you believe. It's as empty as the grave with just me rattling
around in it. The TV doesn't even have cable and I can't understand
a damn word of those Italian stations. If you need somewhere to stay, you can
take the sofa or the floor. It's up to you."

He
did something odd at that moment. He looked at their two glasses--his
almost full with red, hers empty--and very carefully moved them so they
were in a perfect line, parallel with the edge of the table. It was a touch
obsessive, she thought. Or perhaps not. His pale, smart face had turned
thoughtful.

"I
don't know," he murmured. "I can find somewhere, I'm
sure."

"It's
got a terrace," she added. "We're right on the top of the
block. You can see the dome of St. Peter's. You can see places I
don't even know the names of."

"A
terrace?" he repeated.

"One
of the best damn terraces in Rome. That's what the agent said and I
can't imagine a Roman would lie, now would he?"

"Not
for a moment," he replied and raised his glass to her.

Five
minutes later they went outside. She was giggling, light-headed, and scarcely
noticed the softly falling snow. A handful of office workers were struggling
through the deep, crisp drifts in the street. Peter had just a small bag with
him, a black polyester one stuffed to bursting, the way single men did.

He
reached into his coat pockets, pulled something from the depths, stretched it
out and looked ready to begin adjusting it over his finely sculpted grey head.

His
quick, intelligent eyes caught hers. He was unsure about this for some reason.

"I'd
look a fool now, wouldn't I?" he asked, abruptly stuffing it back
into his pocket as if he'd just had second thoughts.

It
was one of those stupid Disney-style hats that kids wore. Big Mickey Mouse ears
you tied around your own ears.

"You'd
look a fool," she agreed, then took his arm when he offered it, leaning
on him as they struggled through the snow, past a deserted Piazza Navona, on
towards home.

LISTENING
TO GIANNI PERONI cough his way through a series of bathroom ablutions, Nic Costa
flicked through the prints that had come back from the photo shop and found
himself bugged by the minutiae of the last sixteen hours. The focus of the
investigation was now fixed understandably on the man in black, who stood on
the steps of the fountain, locked in the Weaver stance next to the frozen
dolphins, dispensing deadly fire from his outstretched hand. Trying to summon
up a vision of that distant figure made it easy to forget there was one other
unknown actor in the scene: the person who was trapped inside the Pantheon when
they arrived, the individual who had brushed against Nic Costa as he fled the
cavernous interior of the hall, with its macabre secret trapped beneath a
growing mountain of ice and snow.

Costa
knew it was important to gather information on the man in black, to find out
where he stood in the story the FBI agents were about to share with them. But
he couldn't forget the other player in events either, someone who seemed
an interloper at the scene, whose presence there--as accomplice or
accidental spectator?--demanded an explanation.

He
tried to remember his impressions of those hurried moments in the dark, tried
to follow Falcone's sensible if caustic admonition:
interview
yourself, and don't leave out the tough questions
. He'd scarcely
seen the figure who dashed in and out of the murky corners of the airy,
freezing hemisphere that night. Mauro's photos didn't help either.
Costa had scanned through most of the two hundred prints, covering everything
from their time in the bar to the last moments outside the Pantheon. In the
crucial shots all Mauro had captured were vague, ghostly shadows, black smears
on film. Once they returned to the Questura, he would pass the photos to a
specialist in forensics, but his gut told him there was nothing there worth
keeping.

Or
worth killing for. Surely the man in black would have understood that too?

Interview yourself
. Nic Costa knew he'd seen nothing but shadows. But there were
other senses. He closed his eyes and tried to think. There was something there.
He recalled the moment now, and it was surely the very oddness of the memory
that had sent it to the back of his mind since it seemed so implausible.

When
the fugitive had brushed past him two things had happened. A hand--small,
quick, nimble--had flicked at his jacket, automatically searching, as if
it did this always without thinking. And there was a fleeting
fragrance--something musky and lingering, familiar too, a scent that was
fixed to a single connection in his head.

He
looked at the slight shadow slipping out from the corner of the illuminated
portico in the last-but-one photograph Mauro Sandri took in his life.

The
perfume was patchouli oil. Nic knew the kind of person who liked to wear the
old hippie scent these days too. Street kids, the ones who'd worked their
way in from the Balkans, Turkey and beyond, looking to find a welcoming
paradise, discovering, instead, that for many the only way to stay alive was to
develop, as quickly as possible, a talent for pickpocketing or worse.

Peroni
walked into the room and stared over his shoulder. "Anything
there?"

"No,"
Costa replied, tapping his forehead. "It was there. I should have known. Whoever
was in the interior, it
was
a bum. He tried to get something out of my
pocket on the way out. He had that... kind of perfume you get on the street
kids. Sweet. Almost like dope. Patchouli. You know the smell I mean?"

Peroni
sat next to him on the sofa. He was fresh from the shower. Costa liked the way
his partner looked now. Activity was good for both of them.

"Oh
yes," Peroni said with a nod.

"It's
an eastern thing. You see them selling the stuff in the Campo a lot."

"Around
Termini too," Peroni added. "From what I recall you tend to find
that stuff only on girls. Which means they're into dope. Or selling
themselves. Or both. On very rare occasions, they can be remarkably conscious
of their personal hygiene for kids who live on the streets."

Costa
thought about that light, fluting voice in the dark. "It's a girl,
then."