“The photographer’s dead, sir,” Costa said, trying to allow a note of reproach to slip into his voice.
“I know,” Falcone replied without emotion. “Scene of crime are on the way. And the rest. Do you have any idea where the man in the square went?”
“No.”
Falcone’s stony face said everything.
“I’m sorry,” Costa continued. “We came here thinking it was some homeless guys breaking in to keep warm. It was a burglar alarm, for God’s sake.”
“I know,” the inspector said impassively. He walked to the head of the funnel, where it was close to the apse and the altar, pointing due south, directly opposite the portico entrance and the open bronze doors. Costa followed. There Falcone bent down and, with a gloved finger, pointed at the edge of the fresh snow.
Costa’s breath caught as he began to understand. A thin line of pigment was running from inside the funnel, out to the edge of the crystals as they tried to turn to water on the marble and porphyry. The stain became paler and paler as it flowed towards the edge but there could be no mistake. Nic Costa knew the colour by now. It was blood.
“I’ve done this once already,” Falcone said, pulling out a handkerchief from his coat. “Damn snow.”
Slowly, with the same care Costa had seen Teresa Lupo use in such situations, Falcone swept at the funnel with light, brushing strokes.
Costa stood back and watched, wishing he were somewhere else. The head of a woman was emerging from beneath the soft white sheet of ice. An attractive woman with a large, sensual mouth, wide open dark green eyes, and a face which was neither young nor old, a full, frank, intelligent face that wore an expression of intense shock so vivid it seemed to border on outrage.
Falcone briefly touched her long jet black hair, then turned to watch the snow coming down and the way it was beginning to bury her anew.
“Don’t lay a finger on a thing,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done as much as I did.”
“No, sir,” Costa whispered, his head reeling.
“Well?” Falcone didn’t even seem put out by this. It was as if everything were normal, just another everyday event that the cold, distant inspector could take in his stride.
“Well, what?” Costa snapped back.
“Well, how about you sit down on that chair over there and write down every last thing you remember. You’re a witness here, Costa. Interview yourself. And don’t skip the awkward questions.”
Giovedi
FALCONE PLAYED IT BY THE BOOK. HE SEALED THE Pantheon and the immediate vicinity. He called in every officer he could lay his hands on and marshalled the best scene-of-crime team available. When the crew from the morgue arrived they were led by Teresa Lupo, who’d been dragged out of bed and, when she saw the reason, glad of the fact. Then Falcone supervised an initial search of the Pantheon’s interior, uncovering enough evidence to ascertain the identity and American citizenship of the dead woman, and set in train the sequence of events needed to inform the American embassy and Mauro Sandri’s relatives. Finally, along with a string of more minor requests, he’d ordered the recovery of the tape of every last CCTV camera in the area, including several inside the Pantheon itself.
When Falcone was satisfied that the crime scene was effectively preserved in aspic, ready for a more thorough and searching examination come sunrise, he’d walked through the continuing blizzard to one of the empty squad cars parked next to the frozen fountain. There, exhausted, he had reclined the passenger seat all the way back and tried to get a little sleep. It would be a long day. He needed his rest and the energy to think. And even that was denied him because one thought kept running through Leo Falcone’s mind. When he’d reached the portico of the Pantheon he had been about to climb the very steps where Mauro Sandri stood. All that had stopped him was the phone call, the nagging, drunken tirade from Filippo Viale, which had begun when he entered the square and went on, pointlessly running through the same question, over and over again.
Are you with us, Leo?
Falcone hadn’t understood why Viale felt the need to come back to this tedious issue so quickly. He’d put it down to the drink and the SISDE officer’s curious mood. The call was still in his head, every precise second of it. Viale’s voice had become so shrill in his ear that he had paused just short of the portico, and in doing so had avoided walking into the space created by the two central pillars and outlined by the light from the interior, which formed the perfect frame for the gunman on the fountain steps.
Without Viale’s call, he would have gone on to join the photographer. And perhaps he would now be the one lying in the black plastic body bag stored on a metal gurney, safe inside the Pantheon, parked like a piece of luggage in front of one of the building’s more hideous modern accretions, the gross and gleaming tomb of the first king of a post-Roman united Italy, Vittorio Emanuele.
Professionally, Leo Falcone met death and frustration frequently and never gave them any more consideration than the job required. On the rare occasions they had touched him personnally, he found himself less confident of his response, and this lack of certitude became itself one more unfamiliar, unwelcome intruder into a life he tried to regard as sane, ordered and functional.
In the space of one evening an officer of the security services had given him a curious warning that his career had, at the very least, stalled and was, perhaps, already in decline. Then, in short order, almost in response to this very idea, the black veil of the grave had swept against his cheek, so closely he could feel how chill and empty a place it truly was.
Sleep, real sleep, was impossible in such circumstances. When Leo Falcone was woken by the rapping of a gloved hand on the window, just after sunrise at seven on that frozen Roman morning, he had no idea whether he’d slipped fully into unconsciousness at all during the preceding hours.
He wiped the condensation from the window and realized there was no time to worry about the loss. Distorted by the condensation on the glass, Bruno Moretti’s stern, moustachioed face was staring at him from the white and chilly world outside. Falcone’s immediate superior, the commissario to whom he reported on a daily basis, had found a reason to drag himself out of the office and visit a crime scene. It was a rare and unwanted event.
Falcone climbed out of the car, trying to fathom some reason for this departure from custom.
“This is a nice way to start the holiday season,” the commissario moaned immediately, glancing at the lines of uniformed men blocking off the Pantheon and most of the piazza. “Just what we need, Falcone. The tourist people are screaming at me already. They’ve a lot of people on their books who thought they were coming here today.” He scanned the square, full of cops. “Now this…”
“We have two deaths, sir,” Falcone replied patiently.
“That was more than six hours ago.”
Moretti was a bureaucrat. He’d worked his way up through traffic and intelligence, branches of the service that had their merits in Falcone’s opinion but left the man with little feeling for investigation.
Falcone glanced at the scene-of-crime officers and wondered if Moretti had any idea how important their work was, how easily it could be spoiled by a hurried search. “I can’t expect the SOCOs to make a serious effort in the dark. It’s impossible. Particularly in a place like this.”
Moretti sighed and said nothing. That was, Falcone thought, the closest he was going to get to some sign of recognition that there really was no other way to proceed.
“We have to do this very carefully, sir. It’s the only chance we have. Once we leave there the hordes are going to be climbing over everything. If we’ve missed one small piece of evidence, it’s gone, for good probably.”