David Hewson (3 page)

"Gimme
a cappuccino," Costa said to the barman. "It's going to be a
long, cold night out there."

There
was a howl of protest from behind the counter. "It's nearly twelve
for God's sake. What am I running here? A soup kitchen for cops?"

"Gimme
one too," Sandri piped up from the other end of the bar, pushing away his
cold
corretto
. "Get one for all of us. I'm paying."

Then
the photographer walked over, looked Peroni in the eye and placed a 35 mm film
cassette in his hand.

"I'm
sorry," he said. "Really. I shouldn't have done it like that.
It's just..."

Peroni
waited for an explanation. When it didn't come, he asked, "Just
what?"

"I
knew you'd have said no. I apologize, OK? I was wrong. But you have to
understand this, Peroni. If a man like me had to ask every time he took a
photograph, there'd hardly be any pictures in the world. All those ones
you remember. All those ones you think are important. They came from some guy
with a camera who pointed the stupid thing while no one was really taking any
notice and went... pop. Improvisation. Speed. That's what this
job's all about. Stealing other people's moments."

Peroni
looked him up and down and considered this.

"A
little like your job, huh?" Sandri added.

The
barman slid three coffees down the counter, spilling milk and foam everywhere.

"Listen,
assholes, this is the last," he snarled. "Do you think you could
possibly just pay for them, then go steal a few moments someplace else, huh? I'd
like to go to bed and count the seven and a bit euros I earned tonight. And I
got to open those doors at six-thirty tomorrow morning, not that anyone's
going to be walking through them."

Costa
had downed one mouthful of hot, milky coffee and foam when the radio squawked. Peroni
was looking at him hungrily as he took the call. They had to get out of the
bar, they had to find something to do. If they stayed any longer, they'd
never leave.

"Burglar
alarm," Costa said when he'd listened to the message from the
control room. "The Pantheon. We're the closest."

"Ooh,"
Peroni cooed. "A burglar alarm. Did you hear that, Mauro? Maybe
we've got some wild action after all. Maybe all those bums who hang
around there fleecing the tourists are breaking in, looking for somewhere warm
to spend the night."

"Damn
stupid thing to do if they are," Sandri said immediately, looking
puzzled.

"In
weather like this?" Peroni asked.

"It's
got a hole in the roof the size of a swimming pool," Sandri replied. "The
oculus. Remember? It's going to be as cold in there as it is outside. Colder
even. Like a freezer. And nothing to steal either, not unless you can remove a
few marble tombs without someone noticing."

Peroni
gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. Not too hard this time. "You
know, for a guy who talks art you're OK really, Mauro. You can take
pictures of me all you want.
Outside
the crapper." Then he gave
Costa a querulous look. "Are we calling the boss? He sounded
desperate."

Costa
thought about Leo Falcone. Their boss had made a point of insisting he could be
easily disturbed. "For a burglar alarm?"

Peroni
nodded. "Leo doesn't say those things without a reason. He wants
out of that place."

"I
guess so." Costa pulled out his phone as they walked to the door and the
white world beyond, feeling somewhat uneasy that Leo Falcone was so reluctant
to spend a little leisure time with his superiors. And thinking all the while
too about what Mauro Sandri had said.

There
was no reason for anyone to break into the Pantheon. None at all.

LEO
FALCONE LISTENED to the drone of men's voices echo around the private
room in Al Pompiere, the stiff, old-fashioned restaurant in the ghetto where,
by tradition, they met once a year just before Christmas. Then he looked at
their heavy business coats, lined up on the hangers by the wall like black
dead-animal skins, and turned his head towards the window, wishing he were
somewhere--anywhere--else.

The
snow was now falling in a steady, persistent stream. Falcone took his mind off
the dinner for a moment and wondered what the weather meant for the days to
come. He liked to work Christmas. Most divorced men did. Those without kids
anyway. He'd seen the quick, internal flash of disappointment on Gianni
Peroni's face earlier in the week when the new rotas had been posted, and
Peroni and Costa had realized they would both be on duty over the holiday. Peroni
had hoped to go home to Tuscany for a brief reunion with his estranged family. Falcone
had wondered, for a moment, whether he could arrange that. Then he'd
checked himself. Peroni was just another cop now. He had to live with the hours
just like everyone else. That's what duty was about. That, and turning
out for an annual dinner with a bunch of faceless grey men from SISDE, the
civilian intelligence service, men who never really said what they meant or
what, in truth, they really wanted.

The
seating arrangements were preordained: one cop, one spook, arranged alternately
around the white starched tablecloth and the highly polished silverware. Falcone
sat at the window end of the long banquet table next to Filippo Viale, who
smoked a cigar and clutched a glass of old chardonnay grappa as clear as water,
his second of the evening. Falcone had listened to Viale's quiet,
insistent voice throughout the meal, picking at his own food: a deep-fried
artichoke to start, a plate of
rigatoni con la pajata
, pasta seated
beneath calf's intestines sauteed with the mother's milk
still inside, then, as secondo, a serving of bony lamb scottadito served
alongside a head of torsello chicory stuffed with anchovies. It was the kind of
food Al Pompiere was known for, and, like his dinner companion, it was not to
Falcone's more modern taste.

Viale
had been his point man with the SISDE since Falcone had been promoted to
inspector ten years before. In theory that meant they liaised with one another
on an equal basis from time to time, when the two services needed to share
information. In reality Falcone couldn't remember a single occasion on
which Viale or any other of the grey men, as he thought of them, was of real
assistance. There'd been plenty of calls from Viale, fishing for
information, asking for a favour. Usually Falcone had complied, because he knew
what the cost of reluctance would be: a call upstairs and an icy interrogation
from his superiors, asking what the problem was. Before he was promoted,
he'd believed the grey men's power was on the wane. That was in the
early nineties, when the Cold War was over and terrorism seemed a thing of the
past. A time of optimism, as he saw it now, when a younger Falcone, still
married, still with some sense of hope, was able to believe the world was
becoming a smarter place, one that grew a little wiser, a little more safe,
with every passing year.

Then
the circle turned again. New enemies, faceless ones with no particular flag to
identify them, emerged out of nowhere. While the police and the Carabinieri
struggled to hold the fort against a rising tide of crime using increasingly
meagre and conventional resources, the funding went to the grey men, filling
their coffers for operations that never came under any public scrutiny. There
was a shift in the moral fulcrum. For some in government the end came to
justify the means. This was, Falcone knew, the state of the world he would
probably have to work with for the rest of his professional life. That
knowledge didn't make it any easier to bear. Nor was he flattered by the
grey men's apparent belief that they saw something in Leo Falcone they
wanted.

"Leo,"
Viale said quietly, "I have to ask. I know we've been through this
before. But still... it puzzles me."

"I
don't want another job." Falcone sighed, hearing a note of testiness
in his voice. "Can't we just leave it at that?"

They'd
been trying to recruit him off and on for a good four years or more. Falcone
was never quite certain how genuine Viale's offer was. It was a standard
SISDE trick to hold out lures to men in the conventional force. It flattered
them, made them feel there could be a future somewhere else if life got too
difficult in the Questura.

Viale
downed the grappa and ordered another. The waiter, who was handing around a
very old-fashioned sponge cake as dessert, took the glass and returned with it
filled immediately. Viale was a regular here, Falcone guessed. Maybe he had
booked the dinner. Maybe he was the boss. SISDE officers never said much about
their rank. By rights Falcone was supposed to be matched against someone near
his own position in the hierarchy. He didn't know Viale well. Like so
many SISDE officers, the man was infuriatingly anonymous: a dark suit, a
nondescript pale face, a head of black hair, dyed in all probability, and a
demeanour that embraced many smiles and not a touch of warmth or humour. Falcone
couldn't even put a finger on his age. Viale was of medium height,
slightly built, with a distinct paunch. Yet Falcone felt sure there was
something more serious about the man than he revealed. Viale didn't sit
behind the same kind of desk Falcone did, nor did he have to tackle the same,
incessant trinity of problems: detection, intelligence and resources. Viale
was, somehow, a man who made his own life and there, Leo Falcone thought, was
something to envy.

Viale
put a slight hand on Falcone's arm and looked directly into his face. There
was northern blood in him, Falcone decided. It showed in the flat, emotionless
landscape of his anonymous face, and those grey-blue eyes, cold, mirthless.

"No,
we can't just leave it at that, Leo. Just say yes now and I can push
through the paperwork straightaway. You could be sitting behind a new desk
before the end of January."

Falcone
laughed and watched the snow again. It made him feel good somehow. It reminded
him of his parting words to every man he'd sent out into the city that
night, ordering them, for once, to disturb his private time on the slightest
excuse.

"I'll
think about it," Falcone replied. "Just like last time."

Viale
cast him a vile glance and muttered a low, obscene curse. Viale was, Leo
realized, more than a little drunk.

"Don't
fuck with me, Leo," Viale murmured. "Don't play games."

"It's
always been one of my rules," Falcone answered calmly, "not to fuck
with the grey men. It's bad for your career."

Viale
snorted, then casually stuffed a piece of sponge cake into his mouth,
despatching crumbs and sugar down the front of his black jacket. "You
think you're above all this, don't you? Sitting there in your
grubby little office. Sending out grubby little men to chase people you
probably can't put in jail anyway, even if you catch them."

"It's
a job someone's got to do," Falcone answered, then looked at his
watch. It was almost midnight. Perhaps it was late enough to make a polite exit
without offending anyone except Viale, who was offended enough as it was.

"It's
a job?" Viale snarled. "Jesus Christ, Leo."

The
grey man cast his eyes around the room, then shook his head. Falcone did the
same. Most of the individuals there were getting stinking drunk. It was
tradition. It was Christmas.

Viale
barked at the waiter. The man came back with a flask of grappa. Viale poured
out a couple, just for them, as if no one else in the room existed.

"This
is a hundred a bottle and I'm paying," he muttered, then nodded at
the tiny window, now blocked with snow. "Even you need something warm
inside on a night like this."

Falcone
took the glass, sipped at the fiery drink, then put it on the table. Alcohol
had never been his thing.

Viale
watched him. "You don't like joining in, do you? You think you can
get through all this shit on your own, so long as your luck holds and you keep
getting good marks every time they come to check the statistics. What's a
man like you messing around with that crap for?"

Targets,
benchmarks, goals... Falcone didn't like the jargon of the modern
police force any more than the rest of his colleagues. But unlike most he saw a
point behind the paperwork. Everyone needed some kind of standard by which
their efforts could be measured internally, and publicly if need be. That was
anathema to people like Viale, who could screw up for years and never get found
out unless a rare, scrupulous civil servant or politician got on their back. That
thought jogged a memory from somewhere, but Falcone couldn't nail it
down.

He
glanced at his watch again, then pushed the glass away. The raw smell of the
grappa was overwhelming. "Say what you want to say, Filippo. It's
late. I want a good night's sleep. With this weather the Questura's
going to be short of people tomorrow. Maybe we'll have to help out
uniform or traffic."

"Traffic!"
Viale snapped. "Why the hell would you want to waste your time on
that?"

"I
believe it's something to do with being a public servant," Falcone
replied dryly.

Viale
waved the glass of clear liquid at him. "And I'm not, huh? How do
you know?"

"I
don't, Filippo. That's the point." Falcone shifted awkwardly.
He didn't want to upset this man any more than he had already. Viale had
influence, power over him perhaps. But he didn't want to prolong this
difficult interview either. "Shouldn't we discuss this some other
time? During the day. When we both feel"--he couldn't suppress
a glance at the carafe of grappa--"more ready to talk sense."