Authors: The Sacred Cut
Falcone
glanced at Teresa Lupo. She'd broken off from the work in the tent to
speak, in low and guarded tones, to Gianni Peroni, who was standing by the
altar looking exhausted. Nic Costa hung around just out of earshot.
"I
understand," Falcone murmured.
"Good,"
Moretti replied. "You didn't say how the dinner went. I would have
gone myself but, frankly, I don't think they feel I'm
sufficiently... interesting. At least they never talk to me with quite the
enthusiasm they seem to summon up for you."
"It
slipped my mind. It was... fine."
"Really?"
the commissario sniffed. "That's not what that slippery bastard
Viale said when he called this morning. He doesn't like hearing the word
"no," Leo. You're either very brave or very foolish."
TWO
PEOPLE WERE WALKING into the building now, picking their way through the tape
maze like professionals. A man and a woman who were complete strangers. He was
about forty-five, thickset, with cropped grey hair, like that of a US marine,
and a head that looked too small for his body. The woman was much younger,
perhaps twenty-five, striking in a bright scarlet coat. They were walking into
a crime scene as if they owned the place and Leo Falcone already possessed a
gloomy, interior conviction about who they were.
Moretti
eyed the couple too, watched Costa and Peroni walk briskly over to intercept
them, then shuffled his coat around him, getting ready to go back to the warmth
of his office. He laughed. "Tell your monkeys to be polite, Leo.
We're all watching. Maybe Filippo Viale too. Brave or foolish? When this
is over, I suspect we'll all know which."
Costa
saw them first, brushing past the uniforms on the door with a flash of an ID
card and a cocky self-assurance that irked him immediately.
"Hey,
Gianni," he murmured, "you know these people?"
Peroni
looked washed out. Teresa had told them to use her place in Tritone when they
got a break. There was no way Costa would make it home to the farm on the
Appian Way. As for Peroni... Costa could only wonder when the big man had
last slept in the small, functional rented apartment he'd found out in
the suburbs on the other side of the river, beyond the Vatican. Peroni already
had a set of keys to Teresa's place. Maybe he lived there most of the
time anyway.
"No,"
Peroni answered, perking up suddenly. He moved quickly to block the
couple's path, holding out his big arms wide, stretching from tape to
tape.
The
man with the crew cut glowered up at him, half a head shorter but just as big
in the body.
"You
don't mind if I ask," Peroni said. "This isn't exactly
a public performance we're giving here."
"FBI,"
the American murmured in a low, grunty voice and kept on walking.
"Whoa!"
Peroni yelled, and caught the man firmly by the arm, not minding the filthy
look he was getting in return.
"Officer,"
the female agent said, "this woman is an American citizen."
"Yeah,"
Peroni replied, "I know. But let's go through some niceties first. My
name is Gianni Peroni. This is my partner, Nic Costa. We are policemen. This
nice-looking gentleman walking towards us is Inspector Falcone. He's the
boss around here. When he says you get to go further, you go further. Until
then--"
Falcone
arrived, looked the two FBI agents up and down and said, "Over here we
like people to call ahead and make appointments."
The
man withdrew an ID card from his pocket. The woman in the scarlet coat did the
same. Costa leaned forward and stared at the photos, checking them, making sure
the two Americans understood the point. There were rules here. There were
procedures to be followed. She didn't look much like the photo on the ID
card. According to the date it was two years old. She'd seemed much
younger then.
"The
IDs are fine," he told them politely. "We have to check.
You'd be amazed what the press will do over here just to get a
picture."
"Of
course," the woman answered. She was trying to look like a business
executive: expensive, well-cut clothes, blonde hair tied back a little
scrappily in a bun that seemed to want to work itself free and let her locks
hang more freely around an attractive, almost girlishly innocent face. Something
didn't match up and, just for a moment, he couldn't stop staring at
her. She had razor-sharp, light blue eyes that were cutting into him now.
"I'm
Agent Emily Deacon," she said in perfect Italian. "This--"
She
pointed at her colleague without once looking at him and Costa realized, on the
instant, she didn't like the man by her side.
"--is
Agent Joel Leapman. We're here for a reason. If you let us through to see
what you've got, we just might be able to help."
Peroni
tapped Leapman on the arm and gave him a broad grin. "There. Now
that's asking nicely."
"So
do we get through?" the American snapped.
Falcone
nodded, then led the way. Teresa Lupo had cleared the corpse of snow entirely
now and indicated to them to wait as she quietly dictated some notes into a
voice recorder. The dead woman lay on the geometric slabs, legs and arms
akimbo, her white, bloodless skin waxy under the artificial lights. When
he'd had the chance between phone calls and working with the SOCOs, Costa
had watched closely as the body had emerged from the ice. The positioning of
the corpse on the central marble circle was quite deliberate. Her limbs were
outstretched, directed at equidistant points in the vast, curving sphere of the
Pantheon, as if making a statement. It was an image that jogged a memory and
was, perhaps, designed to. He recalled it now. Leonardo da Vinci's sketch
of an idealized figure, a naked man with a full head of hair, set inside first
a square then a circle. His limbs described two positions: legs together, at
the base of the circle, touching the central arm of the lower side of the
square, then apart, on the circle alone; and arms outstretched first
horizontally, touching the square alone, then raised, to both the circle and the
square's upper corners.
The
dead woman's stiff position on the shining, damp floor, one surely fixed
by her murderer, matched the second of each of these poses perfectly. This was
not simply a striking image. It had a meaning, a very specific one.
"The
Vitruvian Man," he said quietly, remembering a distant art lesson from
school.
The
American woman looked at him oddly. "Excuse me?"
"She
reminded me of something. From a long time ago."
"You've
got a memory, Mr. Costa," she conceded. "What else do you recall?"
He
tried to flesh out the hazy recollection his brain had dug up from somewhere. It
was
a long time ago. The idea itself was elusive and complicated too. "That
it's about dimensions and form." He nodded at the huge spherical
roof above them. "Just like this place."
"Just
like this place," she repeated and, unexpectedly, smiled. The change in
expression was remarkable. It took years off her face. She looked like a
student suddenly, fresh, unmarked.
It
didn't last. Agent Leapman was making impatient noises. He looked at
Teresa Lupo, who was still chanting into the recorder. "You're the
pathologist, right?"
Teresa
hit the pause button, blinked and gave him a hard stare. "No, I'm
the fucking typist. Just give me a moment and I'll take your letter next.
Who the hell are you, by the way?"
The
card got flipped out again as if it were some kind of magic amulet. "FBI."
He nodded at his colleague. "Both of us."
"Really?"
Teresa sighed and went back to talking into the machine.
Quietly,
calmly, with a distinct effort designed to cool down the temperature of the
conversation, Emily Deacon interposed. "I think we can help."
The
pathologist hit the stop button. "How?"
"She
was strangled. With a piece of cord or something. Am I right?"
Teresa
glanced at Falcone, searching for a sign. He looked as lost as Peroni and
Costa.
"There's
no evidence of sexual assault," the American woman continued. "This
isn't sexual at all, not in the usual sense anyway. Which begs the
question: why did he undress her? It happened here? You do have her
clothes?"
"It
happened here," Costa conceded. "Sometime between eight in the
evening, when the staff closed the place, and midnight, when we turned
up."
Teresa
Lupo was staring at the body again, trying to think. She didn't stay mad
with people for long. Not if she thought they had something she wanted.
"It was snowing all last night. All that ice is going to play havoc with
everything I normally use for time of death. There are calculations I can use,
but they're not going to be wonderfully accurate in the
circumstances."
The
two FBI agents exchanged a glance. It was almost as if they'd seen enough
already.
Falcone
finally found his voice and Costa couldn't work out why he'd stayed
silent for so long. "I've been very generous around here. What do
we get in return?"
"We'll
let you know," Leapman murmured.
Emily
Deacon glanced at the pathologist. "This is your call. I'm not
trying to push you along. But do you think it would be possible to turn her? I
need to see her back."
Teresa
glanced at her assistant Silvio Di Capua, who was putting away some of the
equipment they'd been using. Di Capua shrugged.
"We
can turn her," she said, then held out a hand to stop Leapman, who was
heading for the body without the slightest hesitation. "I said
"we." "
The
American halted reluctantly. Teresa and Di Capua called on two morgue
assistants to help. They positioned themselves around the right-hand side of
the corpse and placed gloved fingers on her limbs and shoulders.
"Is
this going to be nasty?" Peroni asked, worried. "I like warnings
about nasty stuff whenever possible."
"Then
don't look," the Deacon woman said bluntly.
On
Teresa's call, the team lifted the white corpse, rotated it on its own
axis and gently placed the woman front first onto the marble floor, her head
now tilted to one side against the shining stone. Peroni swore, then went to
stand in the corner. Costa stared at the woman's naked back and the
strange shape carved there, an oddly symmetrical pattern of curves cut straight
into the skin from above her waist to the shoulders, like a huge, cruel tattoo.
"What's
it meant to be?" he asked. "A cross?"
It
was a diagonal shape, with four protruding curving arms.
Teresa
stared at the body. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Consider
yourself lucky." Leapman bent to take a closer look at the corpse. "He
used the cord. At least I don't see any other marks. She was dead when he
got round to doing what he wanted to do."
The
pathologist was shaking her head, bemused. "The pattern's so
precise. How could you do it? Here?"
Emily
Deacon didn't want to look at the shape on the woman's back. She
knew it too well already, Costa guessed. "To begin with you'd need
a crayon, a ruler, possibly, and a scalpel," she said softly. "After
a little while I guess you just need something that cuts and a very steady
hand."
Leapman
took out a hankie and blew into it noisily. "We've seen enough. We
need a meeting in our office at the embassy. Five this evening. Bring who you
want, but I'm going to trust you people with material I don't want
to go any further than our front door. So make sure whoever you bring can keep
their mouths shut, and listen good because I don't like repeating
myself."
Falcone
shook his head in disbelief. "This is Rome. This is a murder inquiry. We
are the state police force and we do this our way. You will visit us when I
say. And I'll ask you any damn thing I like."
Leapman
pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. "This,
Inspector, is a signed order from a guy in the Palazzo Chigi none of you people
want to argue with. This is all agreed with your superior and with SISDE too. Take
a look at the signatures. It gives me the right to take this body into our
custody any moment I choose. Which happens to be now. So don't you go
messing with anything before our people arrive."
Teresa
Lupo's pale face went florid with fury. She walked over to the American
and stabbed him in the chest with a podgy forefinger. "What were your
names again? Burke and fucking Hare? The age of body-snatching is over, my American
friend. I am the state pathologist here. I say where she goes and when."
Falcone
was glaring at the sheet of paper, livid. "How long before your people
get here?" he asked Leapman without even looking at him, ignoring Teresa
Lupo's growing shrieks of complaint.
"Ten
minutes. Fifteen."
Falcone
handed back the envelope. "She's yours. We'll see you at
five. Until your people arrive, you can wait outside."
Agent
Leapman snorted, then stamped off back to the door and the snow beyond.
Emily
Deacon hesitated for a moment, some uncertainty, regret perhaps, in her sharp
blue eyes.