A Season for the Dead

Twenty-Five

Only thirteen people braved the night in the roped-off area which the police had set aside for the media. For a while they passed around beer and cigarettes, knowing there would be no action until daylight, and maybe not then either. The cops were keeping this woman to themselves. Maybe, the word went, one of them had good reason to do so.

Just after midnight they were awakened by a noise. A newcomer arrived, on foot it seemed. Denis Renard was wide awake; he wasn’t drunk. The paparazzo from a French celebrity weekly glowered at this odd figure coming out of nowhere. Renard had already decided he would be the first to get a decent photograph of Sara Farnese. No one was getting in his way.

“Where you from, friend?” Renard called.

The reviewer shone a torch in his face. He wasn’t big but he looked powerful, not the sort to mess with.

“Time magazine,” the stranger replied.

Denis Renard rolled over onto his stomach and swore into the dry grass. It was the ones who lied that you had to watch. Time. As if this was their kind of story. Renard knew a fraud when he saw one. This was a rival, maybe, with a little digital snap camera in his pocket, looking to steal his story. He was trouble, to be watched.

Renard set the alarm on his watch to 6:22: sunrise. When it rang, the man was gone.

Nic Costa rose at daybreak knowing he had to run. It was an addiction.

When he ran, he felt in control of himself. There was a stillness that came with the constant effort and the onset of exhaustion, a solitude which sometimes produced the most extraordinary insights. He had solved a case once, an awkward and violent domestic tragedy, one morning at dawn as he raced along the bank of the Tiber near his apartment, beneath the shadow of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Running was a source of satisfaction, of consolation. Whatever Falcone might think of him leaving Sara briefly, he needed it now more than ever.

The house was still. The sun peeked above the eastern horizon intent on searing another summer day. He wore shorts, a white T-shirt and the battered trainers that had somehow survived the last two months, a record. Quietly, he let himself out the front door and walked down the drive to where the police cars were parked. The shift changed at midnight. He might not know the men who had now come to guard them.

Steeling himself for an argument, he stopped. Luca Rossi sat in the first Fiat, glaring at him through the window: Only one other cop in the adjoining cars was awake and he showed little interest in what was going on.

The big man got out, stretched, yawned and then said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Today of all days.”

“You should be home. Time for bed.”

“Yeah. And what’s for me there? Too late to start drinking. I can sleep in a car. I’ve done it before.”

It was all a lie. Nic Costa understood what the big man was doing: staying there to look after him. He was touched and a little ashamed Rossi felt he needed the attention.

“Let me repeat myself,” Rossi said. “You’re not even thinking about this.”

“Team motto, Uncle Luca. Run or die.”

“You mean run and die? We’re setting you up as a target here, kid. Don’t make it too easy for him.”

Costa spread his arms wide, pointing down both sides of the narrow dirt track that led to the farm entrance. “Oh, come on. Just up and down the road. Where’s the harm? What’s going to bite me? Mosquitoes?”

“Don’t do it,” the big man pleaded. “Just go back inside. Drink some coffee. Be patient.”

“Uncle Luca…”

The big man knew it was pointless to argue. “I am not your fu— Oh, hell, what’s the point? Why do you do this to me?”

“I’ve got to run. I’ve got to get some space inside me.”

“Shit.” Luca Rossi sighed. “How far? How long?”

“Just a little way. I won’t even make it to the public road. I’ll stick to the drive, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Rossi grunted. “But I’ve got no one who can keep up with you. And if you’re not back here in ten minutes I start screaming. Understood?”

Nic Costa grinned and opened his arms wide.

“No hugging, no funny stuff,” the big man said forcefully. “You got your way, haven’t you? Now let’s have it over.”

Costa laughed and was gone, down the track, kicking up dust, glad to feel the cool morning air in his face, glad that, for a few minutes at least, he could put the complex mix of problems in the farm into some kind of perspective. He thought of his father and how much the old man had relished the previous night. He thought too of Sara Farnese. It had given her pleasure to be such good company. That seemed a rarity in her life. He could only speculate what she would be like if it happened more regularly.

He’d lied to Luca Rossi. The track wasn’t long enough. He needed to run farther, as fast as his powerful legs could take him. The hard basalt stone that paved the surface of the ancient highway was part of his childhood. Once, when he was thirteen, after a row with his father, he had run all day until he was ready to drop. Some thirty miles from home, exhausted, and he called the farm from a village bar.

Marco had come cheerfully to fetch him and laughed off the whole thing as a grand adventure. They’d been closer after that. His efforts had somehow marked him out for the old man. Giulia was too scared to argue with him; Marco, being the eldest, too smart. Neither would have countenanced that kind of escape and Nic knew, from the moment the car arrived and his father had stepped out grinning from ear to ear, that this denoted some change in the nature of their relationship. It didn’t become easier, just closer in some unspoken, mysterious way, as if they shared part of the same mind.

He spotted the press pack down the road, put his head down and sprinted past them. They scarcely gave him a second glance. It was early. All the associations were wrong too. They were looking for a beautiful woman and a smartly dressed cop, not a sweating runner in a tattered T-shirt and grubby trainers, beating his way down the road.

He allowed himself one look back to make sure no one was coming, then kicked hard and headed into the scrub. There was a narrow path of rock and dust that led behind the farm. He could take that, double back around the house and surprise Luca Rossi by appearing out of nowhere.

The morning was turning out to be glorious, full of light and beauty.

He put on some speed, dodged beneath a couple of olive trees, writhing and gnarled like old men, sprinted hard, then stopped. From this position, the back of the farm was less than fifty yards away. He could see into the windows. In the guest bedroom he could just about make out Sara moving around. She wore a scarlet shirt, nothing else. He felt guilty watching her like this but it was hard to stop.

Every time they met, her actions had been shaped by the presence of others. Seen like this, she was, perhaps, the person who lived inside the hard, fragile shell she showed to the outside world. It worried him. He was becoming obsessed, and not just by her beauty. There was something beneath the surface of Sara Farnese he wanted to see, to touch and to know.

He breathed deeply, leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees. It had been a good idea, whatever Uncle Luca thought.

A voice behind him, a hard voice with a foreign accent, said suddenly,

“Smile.”

The sweat went cold on Nic Costa’s skin. He turned. The man was skeletally thin and entirely bald, with a black shirt and trousers and staring blue eyes. He had a large SLR camera in his hands.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Press.” The bald man fired off a couple of shots, then moved to improve the angle.

“This is private property. I want that film right now.”

“Fuck you,” the photographer spit out from behind the lens.

Nic Costa sighed. It was so obvious. He’d seen the trick many times. They’d try to make you mad just to get a better shot. A fist raised to the lens made the picture. Passive people didn’t sell. “Okay,” he said. “Fire away.” He stood upright, folding his arms in front of him and smiled, a big, cheesy smile, like that of a teenager out for a joyride.

The photographer swore under his breath. This wasn’t what he wanted.

“Do I get paid?” Costa asked, then stopped. Someone else was coming.

One of the team, he guessed, and about time too. They were supposed to be watching the perimeter. They should never have let the photographer get this far.

He squinted at the figure walking rapidly up the track toward them. He was about thirty, powerfully built, with a striking face and dark, straight hair. The checked shirt and loose jeans didn’t fit properly. The black spectacles he wore seemed out of place too. Costa didn’t recognize him. But the photographer did.

“Not you?” the paparazzo yelled. “Hey. This is my find. You fuck off back where you belong. Back to… ‘Time’ magazine.” He made a sarcastic quote-mark gesture with his fingers.

The man in the checked shirt said nothing. He was staring beyond both of them, staring at the house. Costa said, “You’ve both got to get out of here. Before there’s trouble.”

Then he followed the gaze of the one in the checked shirt. The man’s eyes were fixed on the window. Sara Farnese was there, watching this odd confrontation, as if she were trying to make sense of it.

There was a noise from the photographer, a gasp of surprise and hurt. The checked shirt had pulled a flick knife from somewhere and had stuck it into his ribs. The wounded man was stumbling forward, his hand clutching his chest as if he were trying to stop his life from running out onto the dry, rocky ground.

Nic Costa watched him, watched the checked shirt change his focus, away from the paparazzo, first to the distant figure of Sara and then to him. Sometimes you fight.

“The blood of the martyrs…” the man said and took a swift step toward him.

Costa didn’t move, finishing the sentence for him. “… is the seed of the Church.”

The man stopped a couple of yards away, puzzled, watching. His eyes narrowed behind the ill-fitting glasses. This was not part of the plan.

“None of it’s true,” Costa told him. “I never touched her. It was all a game. To get you here. And it worked.” He opened his hands, a calm, conciliatory gesture. “Let’s call it a day, huh? This place is crawling with police.”

The man looked around him, amused, as if to say: Really?

Nic thought: Something is wrong. They should have been here already.

They should never have let him get this far.

The man roared, coming forward with an unexpected turn of speed, the knife, now red, held firm in his right hand. Nic Costa feinted to one side, dodging the power of the attack. There was no way he could reason with this man anymore. He needed to get out of there, to distract him away from the wounded photographer, to bring in the rest of the team. He ran.

He dashed through the thorny scrub feeling it rip his thighs, then breathed deeply, leaned into the light morning wind and thought of nothing but the speed in his legs. He’d taken no more than four long strides when something fiery and painful bit into his shoulder.

Nic Costa’s foot struck a hard, sharp object. He fell onto the dry, rough earth, slamming his head onto a rock, dragging at the thing in his back. The blade was lodged deep. He grasped the handle and felt like screaming, in pain and anger. He should have been able to pull it out and get back to running away from this deadly lunatic who seemed to have risen from the rocks of the parched scrubland.

He stumbled drowsily to his feet, anxiously scanning the dead farmland. There was a figure on the shimmering horizon, approaching fast. Sometimes you fight. Sometimes you run. And sometimes, Nic Costa thought, his head reeling into concussion, you had no choice at all.

The dark shape grew larger. He wondered what else the man carried in his armory, wondered again where the rest of his team were. A cop didn’t deserve to die like a saint. It seemed inappropriate, somehow, almost profane. Nic Costa slumped to his knees, feeling his consciousness fade.

Then there were voices. Loud voices. Shouting. Two people only, and one of them familiar. One of them—the word came easily in his present state; he felt no shame in thinking it— cherished.

He lay sprawled on the hard, arid earth, feeling the darkness begin to swamp his mind, listening to Sara Farnese. It sounded as if she were begging for his life.