A Season for the Dead

Forty-Four

Arturo Valena stumbled out of the back of the van, grateful to leave the dogs behind. He sniffed the petrol-stained breeze from the Via Corso hopefully, then screeched in terror and pain as Fosse struck him a hard blow on the side of the head with the butt of the gun.

That was a mistake. Fosse was shocked by his carelessness. He’d half hoped the fat man would fall to the floor unconscious, making what came next easier. It was stupid. He should have realized this before the attempt. Valena was too heavy to be manhandled around a quiet piazza just a few yards from a street that still had its stragglers, even after midnight.

Fosse watched the fat man reeling in pain, wondering whether to run perhaps, and forced himself to think. Then he hit him once again, in the same place but with a little less force, waved the gun in his face and hissed at him to go to the church railings. Fosse had the keys in the small shoulder bag he’d brought with him from the van. He knew the place: where the light switches were. And where to find the instruments for the rest of the artistry.

Valena complied, shambling the few yards to the entrance. Fosse fumbled at the lock, opened the gate and pushed the terrified man through into the gloom of the portico. In the space of a minute he had unlocked the door to the church, sent Valena in and set the lights to low.

They stood in the nave, Fosse unable to detach his attention from the small chapel on the right which Brendan Hanrahan had revealed to him. Somewhere beyond the low, glittering frame of the iron grill a tiny voice squeaked. Fosse wished he could see them, not just hear their scuttering in the dark corners: tiny feet running, going nowhere, just like him. In his mind’s eye he could imagine their yellow rodent teeth, ready to snatch away his soul the moment he faltered. He could picture their bright eyes glittering, the color of polished jet. In those black pupils stood another universe, a black one that went on forever, in time, in every direction, an endless place that could swallow up an entire world and still leave space for millions more.

Valena was trembling, holding himself by a pew. His face was a waxy yellow under the lights and there was an unmistakable flicker of hope there. His abductor had hesitated. Something had spooked him. Perhaps there was a chance.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice husky with pain. “Money?”

“Just you,” Fosse said flatly.

Valena’s piggy eyes glistened, damp and pathetic. “I never did anything to you. I never hurt anyone.”

“It’s the not doing that counts,” Fosse said. “You can go to Hell just as easily for your omissions as your deeds. Didn’t they tell you that? Didn’t you even begin to suspect?”

Valena fell to his knees, clasped his hands. “I’m just a stupid old man,” he pleaded. “What do you want with me?”

“Your life.”

“Please…” His voice rose with that, turning almost into a squeal. It sounded like a rat. It sounded like the end of everything.

“Don’t pray to me. Pray to Him. And pray for yourself.”

The fat man sobbed. He closed his eyes. His lips moved, fleshy, blubbery lips, a mouth that had once caressed Sara Farnese. Gino Fosse knew that. He’d been the driver that night. He’d taken the photographs. It was one more stain to erase, one more station of grief along the way. He reached into the bag and took out the pack he’d stolen from the hospital. The hypodermic was ready. The liquid trembled in the barrel.

He walked behind the praying Valena and stabbed him hard in the upper arm. The fat man scrambled up, screeching.

“What are you fucking doing?” His eyes were burning black coals, full of hatred and pain. “For the love of God…”

“Be grateful,” Fosse said. “Hope it lasts.”

They danced slowly around each other for a time. He wasn’t letting the fat man make for the door. Eventually Valena’s eyes started to turn dull.

“What?” He swayed once. Then his pupils rolled upward into his head. His large frame collapsed like a building that had suddenly lost its foundation. Gino Fosse looked at the pile of humanity that lay on the marble floor, no more than ten yards from Lorenzo’s altar.

The drug was the easiest option. There was much preparation to be done to achieve the required effect. This would be the last before the final deed. He knew that somehow.

He bent down over the unconscious Valena and began to tug at his clothing. Five minutes later the TV man was naked on the tiles of the church. He’d pissed himself at some point. Fosse was disgusted but not surprised. Ordinary men feared death, failing to understand the need for the transformation. They lacked the sense and the courage to greet it smiling, to welcome its inevitable embrace.

He turned Valena to face the small altar in the chapel. With an effort he dragged the iron grill into the nave. It was cold and shiny to the touch, polished for centuries, a perfect instrument, alive with its past. Perhaps the story of Lorenzo’s martyrdom was apocryphal. To Fosse it seemed irrelevant. So many people had come to believe in it that this elaborate construction of iron, with its curlicues and its flamboyant grating, became what they imagined: the gateway to Paradise, the ultimate redemption. Even Arturo Valena deserved that.

Gino Fosse fetched the kindling, the charcoal and the petrol, and decided, at this point, that he must cease deluding himself. He’d learned enough in the hospital to understand how long the shot would keep Valena unconscious. Fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty, no more. Arturo Valena would not sleep his way to judgment.