Authors: The Sacred Cut
Falcone
went silent, thinking. It was an odd moment, Teresa thought. For once he looked
as if he were racked by doubts.
Somewhere
outside a car started with a sweet, certain rumble.
"Join
me," Falcone ordered and walked to the window. There he pointed to an
expensive-looking Lancia travelling across the car park towards the exit, too
fast for the treacherous conditions.
"Know
who that is?" Falcone asked.
"What
am I?" she snapped. "Superwoman, perfect night vision through a car
roof or something?"
"Filippo
Viale. Top-rung spook from SISDE. I thought you might have bumped into him in
the past."
She
didn't say a word. This was
so
unlike Falcone.
"Viale
sat in on the entire conversation with Moretti. Truth is,
he
, not
Moretti, was running things there."
"Leo?"
she asked. "Are you all right?"
"I'm
fine," he grumbled. "I'm just pissed off. I've got the
Americans telling me I report to them about what we're doing. I've
got Viale telling me I report to
him
about what the Americans are
doing. And somewhere in the middle of all this I need to find out what happened
to that woman and make sure it doesn't happen again."
He
was scared. No, that wasn't right. He was lacking in confidence, and in
Leo Falcone that was almost the same thing.
"I'm
sorry," she replied. It was deeply out of character for Falcone to give
away details like this, particularly the part about the SISDE officer. Those
people moved in and out of the building like ghosts, unremarked, almost unseen.
It was standard form that no one acknowledged their presence, let alone
admitted to taking orders from them.
She
reached for some papers in the folder in front of her.
"Since
this is for you and you alone I'll make it short and sweet. Silvio? Get
the camera."
Silvio
slunk off to the filing cabinet and came back with a large, semi-professional
digital Canon.
Teresa
Lupo looked at him. "Lights, Silvio. Action."
Hands
shaking slightly, he fired up the screen. She took it and started flicking
through the shots there.
"Do
we know who she was, this tourist?" she asked.
"Not
really," Falcone answered. "Just the name. Her hotel. Is it
relevant? You heard what Leapman said. This man is supposed to select his
victims at random. The only linking factor is that they're all American
tourists."
"I
know that. But what did this woman do? What was her job?"
Falcone
shook his head. "I've no idea. I don't hold out much hope
we're going to find out either. Leapman has put out a statement to the
papers saying she was a divorcee from New York. No profession. No
personal details. We're supposed to refer all media inquiries to him from
now on, which is the one part of this piece I am quite happy with."
"Illuminating."
She
pulled up a shot of the woman's torso and hit the magnification button. "Of
course, this would be so much easier if I had a body to work with, but
I'll do my best. You see this?"
She
was pointing to an obvious scar on the left-hand side of the woman's
stomach.
"Appendix?"
Falcone asked.
"Are
you kidding me?" she gasped. "What kind of surgeon leaves an
appendix scar that size, with that much loss of flesh? If they did that in the
States this poor bitch would have sued them for billions. She wouldn't be
holidaying in Rome, she'd own the place."
Di
Capua was rocking backwards and forwards on his heels now, sweating a little,
distinctly uncomfortable, as if he knew where this was going.
Falcone
scowled at her. "So--"
"So
I don't have a damn body. I can't take a better look at this under
proper lighting. I can't try and see what lies underneath the scar
tissue. Thank you, thank you, thank you--"
"What
is it?" Falcone interrupted.
"My
guess? It's the scar from a bullet wound. Nasty one too. Judging by the
size of the affected area, she got shot close up. She was probably lucky to
live through it."
Falcone's
face screwed up in puzzlement. "A bullet wound? How old?"
She
traced her finger over the photo. "Can't be exact. More than three
years. It happened to her as an adult. After she'd stopped growing. Beyond
that I don't know. Of course it would be easy to clear this up if we
could get the woman's medical history. What was she called?"
"Margaret
Kearney," he replied. "We won't get any medical records out
of the Americans. You saw what they're like."
"This
happened in Rome, Leo!" Her voice had risen a couple of decibels. "Why
the hell are we being pushed around as if we're disinterested bystanders
or something?"
"I
don't know. Maybe because of who his last victim was. A diplomat.
What's the point in asking? We just have to learn to live with what we
have. You think I should walk back into Moretti's office and ask him to
change things around? Do you really believe this kind of decision's
coming from his desk? And that's all you've got?" he added.
"That she had a bullet wound? Even if it's true, so what? It
doesn't mean a damn thing."
"I
guess not."
She
looked at Silvio Di Capua, who was quaking in his small, very clean Chelsea
boots. "Get the cord, Silvio. And the hair."
He
went away making a soft, squeaking noise of terror, and came back with a couple
of sample bags.
Teresa
Lupo picked up the first. "In order to stop you screeching the place
down, let me say I removed this entirely innocently from the woman's
neck. They only said they wanted the body. I didn't think they'd
miss it."
The
fabric lay coiled like a tiny serpent inside the evidence bag.
"That's
the thing he used?" Falcone asked. "It's a cord?"
"It
looks
like a cord," Teresa replied, then took out the fabric
and, with two sets of tweezers, carefully unrolled it. "Until you take it
apart a little."
Falcone
blinked at the object unfurling under her precise fingers.
It
was dark grey and green, an odd patchwork that had been tightly rolled into the
ligature which had killed the woman.
"Recognize
the shape?" Teresa pulled the fabric tightly to make her point.
It
was the Maltese cross pattern from Emily Deacon's sacred cut. As near as
dammit.
"He
cut it out of a piece of fabric and then used it to kill her?" Falcone
asked, bewildered.
"That's
one explanation. This is very tough fabric, though, and it seems manufactured
to me. I've asked forensic to take a look."
Falcone
scowled. "I don't see where that gets us."
"Patience,
Leo. So what about this?"
Falcone
looked at a familiar sight: a sample of hair in a transparent morgue bag.
"This
is from Margaret Kearney's head," she explained. "Black as
coal, as you can see."
He
nodded, not understanding the point.
"You're
a gentleman, Leo. I'll say that for you. The poor cow was stone dead on
the floor there and you didn't even take a good look down below, did you?
This is not her natural hair colour. This"--she held up the second
slide. A hank of light brown hair lay trapped between the pieces of
glass--"is what her head's supposed to look like. We took out
the dye just to make sure. You can't rely on what the pubic zone tells
you. This is a general observation that goes beyond the matter of body hair, by
the way. I trust you and Silvio will take it to heart."
Falcone
sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was now nearly nine. "So
you think she had a bullet wound. He killed her with some crazy piece of cloth.
And you know she dyed her hair."
"Oh,
Leo, Leo," she protested, "you really know nothing about women, do
you? Naturally, her hair was a pleasant brown. Personally, I would have been
quite happy with it. See?"
She
waved her own lank crop at him. "What colour's this?"
"Black,"
he replied.
"No,
no, no! How can a man like you, someone who's usually so observant, be so
blind? It's really a very dark brown. Genuine black, the colour you have
here"--she held up the second slide--"that's quite
rare naturally."
He
opened his hands in an expression of bafflement.
"Look,"
she continued, "a woman who had black hair to begin with and went grey
might dye it black. The rest of us? Check out the statistics with the hair-dye
manufacturers. I have. A lot of women dye their hair blonde because
that's what gentlemen prefer, right? A good number like something
chestnut or so, too. Think about it. Have you ever met a woman with nice
chestnut hair who had an urge to dye it jet black? OK. You're struggling
to find the experience to answer that question. Let me do it for you. No. It
doesn't happen. It's weird. It doesn't compute. Black, real
black like this, is something you get handed down in the genes. You learn to
live with it. Maybe you learn to get rid of it. What you don't do is make
it happen if it wasn't there in the first place."
"That's
it?" he asked. "Maybe a bullet wound? Maybe an inexplicable use of
hair dye?"
Silvio
groaned. They both knew what Falcone was doing. Daring her to come up with
something else. However she happened to have acquired it.
"No.
That isn't it. Silvio?"
"Oh,
Jesus." Di Capua walked towards the deep cabinet drawers where they
stored everything that came attached to a death, however ordinary, however
apparently meaningless. "Jesus, sweet Jesus. Here comes the shit again,
here come the written warnings. Why can I not work with normal people? Why can
I not--"
"Shut
up!" she yelled.
He
picked out a green plastic box, brought it over and placed the thing on the
table. The name "Margaret Kearney" was handwritten on a label stuck
to the front. Inside were a pile of neatly stashed clothing, a bag and several
plastic folders full of personal belongings.
Falcone
did a double take looking at it. Finally he said, "The cord I can go
along with. Now tell me this isn't what I think."
"It's
her stuff, Leo. Hell, if I can't have her surely I can have her stuff,
can't I?"
"I
made it absolutely plain. Leapman had that piece of paper that gave him full
authority--"
She
was quick to interrupt. "Just a minute. You weren't there when that
team of dumbos he'd hired turned up with the hearse. "We're
here for the body," they said. Well, that's what they got. I even
let them take our gurney. Do you have any idea what those things cost?
I'll be billing the White House personally if we don't get it
back."
He
put a hand on the green box. "This..."
"This
is something they never asked for. Will they? Sure, once someone realizes what
a stupid mistake they made. And they can have it. I won't stand in their
way. But tell me, Leo. What was I supposed to do? Run after them and say,
"I think you forgot something?" Or leave it there in the Pantheon,
for God's sake?"
Something
extraordinary happened then. Leo Falcone's shoulders heaved an inch or
two. Teresa Lupo realized she was witnessing him laugh, an event which was
entirely new to her.
"I'm
just a bystander in all this, aren't I?" he asked finally, then
fixed her with a hungry stare. "So?"
"So
this."
She
pulled out Margaret Kearney's US passport and showed him the photo. "Notice
how very black her hair is there? How stiff the pose? She didn't get this
done in some supermarket booth, now, did she? I hate passport photos where
people are actually thinking about what they look like. It's so
unnatural."
"And?"
She
pointed to the picture. "Note the glasses." Then she picked up a
plastic bag containing a pair of spectacles and began opening it. "These.
Don't worry. We've checked for prints. Nothing. No prints anywhere,
as far as we can tell. Like the Americans said, this creep is good.
Here--try them. Tell me what you see."
Falcone
glowered at the spectacles in her hand. "I don't wear
glasses."
"Try
them, Leo!" she ordered.
He
did as he was told and put on the plain black-plastic glasses.
"I
don't see anything."
"Not
fuzzy? No different from normal?"
Falcone
removed them and she could see he was starting to get interested now.
"Exactly."
"No
reason it should be. Those are plain glass. They're not corrective at
all."
And
she wondered: would he run straight back to the Americans with this
information? Or would he mull it over first? She couldn't take the risk,
even if it did mean he just might go ballistic when he discovered what else she
had done. There was an easy way to find out, too.