The Sacred Cut

“Then what?” Emily asked, livid.

“Then you find yourself facing painful choices. It wasn’t Dan’s fault. Not mine. Not Kaspar’s, really. It was just a stupid idea that began as a good one. A couple of tired spooks dragging out some peacenik idealism we thought might stop the world from tilting even further out of balance. Stupid. Dumb as they come, and when those Iraqis came back to each and every one us after the war, kept calling, kept asking for more, threatening to expose us if we didn’t go along with them, we found out exactly how dumb.”

She was shaking her head. “Dad wouldn’t-”

“He did!” Fielding cried. “We all did. There wasn’t any alternative. It was either go along with what they wanted or see every last one of us in jail or worse. Until Kaspar got out, of course. And you know the fu

There was a sudden look of bitter hatred on his face. “By then it didn’t matter. If Bill Kaspar hadn’t come a-hunting, all of this would have just slipped out of sight. Except,” he added sourly, “when you started waking up in the middle of the night sweating from the memories.”

There was activity beyond the big doors. Brisk, bossy Carabinieri voices.

Fielding nodded at the button and took several steps back. “So you want to press that, Little Em? If it makes you feel good, go ahead.”

“Oh, Thornton,” she said immediately. “It will make me feel so very, very good.”

Emily Deacon hit the button and Thornton Fielding’s vest lit up like a string of firecrackers. Costa was over to her in a flash, trying to drag her down to the cold, hard floor.

She fought him, watching Fielding all the time. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “Kaspar’s broke. It’s just Coke cans, sand and a few detonators. And a little fertilizer for the one I got to throw. You’d be amazed what I’ve learned over the last couple of hours.”

Thornton Fielding did a fiery little jig around the heart of the building then, when the detonators fizzled, fell to the ground in a crumpled, sobbing heap.

Nic Costa looked into Emily’s face and a part of him was convinced he knew what she saw at that moment. An image from a different time. A young girl dancing with her father’s best friend, not knowing what darkness lay beyond the bright white room in which every happy memory seemed to exist, and how difficult it was to see into the mind of another human being, even one you thought you knew and loved.

“Nic,” she said with a sudden, bright efficiency. “Inspector Falcone. Gia

“Of course,” Falcone replied, then grimaced at the dejected figure of Thornton Fielding crawling underneath the grey eye of the oculus. “I think,” he said to Leapman, “that belongs to you.”

There was an expression on Falcone’s face Costa didn’t recognize. Finally, he put a name to it: astonishment.

They followed her to the bronze slab doors, helped her pull the right one back on its ancient hinges. A flood of policemen poured into the hall, asking questions, waving guns, shrinking back as Falcone barked at them about this being a state police show.

“Come with me,” Emily said.

Costa and Peroni walked behind her over to the office. She took out a key, unlocked the door and let them in.

There was a well-built, craggy-faced man there, in a caretaker’s uniform that was one size too small for him. He was leaning back in a chair, feet on the desk next to a mobile phone and a small radio, laid out in a precise line parallel with the edge of the surface. An old and dusty copy of Dante’s Inferno lay in front of him, open at the page.

William F. Kaspar took out the radio earpiece, looked at the three of them, nodded to Emily and said, “As I always say, improvisation is the key to everything, Agent Deacon. Nice job. I’m proud of you.”

He waved the book at them. “Mind if I keep this? I found it in here and, to be honest, I don’t think it’s one of his.”

He pointed to a figure bundled into the corner, gagged, hands tied behind his back, wearing a grubby vest and underpants. Peroni recognized the florid-faced caretaker and stifled a laugh.

“Let me tell you,” Kaspar continued, “this guy is a world-class shirker. Plus he has potty mouth you wouldn’t believe. Beats me how they let him look after a place like this.”

Falcone pushed open the door of the side entrance. There were no Carabinieri there. Only a fresh, light scattering of snow coming down through the growing darkness.

Costa waved a pair of handcuffs in the air. Emily Deacon forced her way in front of him and peered at Kaspar.

“How are things?” she asked him.

He stared through the open interior door, back into the great circular hall, looking as if he were saying good-bye. Then he peered closely at the objects on the table. The book. The radio. The phone. All set in a line.

“Quiet,” Bill Kaspar said, and shuffled the items in front of him, making a random pattern, like three dominoes rattling aimlessly around a board. “Quieter than they’ve been in a long time.”

Natale

TERESA LUPO STOOD AT THE KITCHEN WINDOW, WORKING her way through the mountain of dishes Peroni had left in his wake. He’d now retreated to the living room with Nic and Emily, clutching a bottle of grappa, and begun to talk in that low, concerned way she’d come to recognize. Leo Falcone was outside with Laila, working to put a little life back into the disintegrating snowman before better weather came along and melted it into the hard earth.

Teresa had been astonished when Falcone accepted the invitation to Christmas lunch. She was a little surprised she’d gone along with the idea too, but the expression on Peroni’s face when Nic Costa floated the idea meant there really was no other option. Peroni wanted to cook a holiday meal. He wanted to sit down at a table with other people. With a kid, more than anything.

And Falcone… He was a lonely man. He had nothing else to do. So it made sense for him to be outside now, parading around the diminishing white figure, wondering where best to place an old, limp carrot. Laila, who’d been ferried to the farm from the social worker that morning and would be ferried back in the evening, watched with an equal amount of seriousness. The two of them were driving Teresa crazy.

“Lighten up, for God’s sake,” she muttered. Falcone drove her crazy a lot. She’d always known he was an intense, solitary man. But she’d never realized this was as much a puzzle to him as it was to everyone else. Watching him walk slowly around the snowman, carrot in hand, looking as if he were about to enter into the most important decision he’d faced in his entire life, made Teresa Lupo feel uncomfortably sympathetic towards a man she didn’t, in truth, much like.

Unable to contain herself any longer, she threw open the window and yelled, “The face, Leo. Try putting it on the face.”

Falcone gazed back at her in despair, sighed, then nodded at Laila.

“The carrot’s not the problem,” the girl said. “The face is.”

Teresa looked at the blasted thing. The face was wrong.

“Well, just do something,” she snapped.

“But…” Falcone protested.

She slammed the window shut, not wanting to hear any more or see it either. There were people on this planet for whom time was a stranger. People who took no notice of the passing years, never stopped once to add them up and work out the sums: what was now possible, what would soon disappear from your grasp once that hand ticked past midnight on another New Year’s Eve.

Peroni claimed he’d found the last turkey in town. She stared at its carcass, a bundle of fleshy bones that resembled a small, stripped dinosaur. God, they could eat. The girl in particular. Peroni’s cousin outside Verona, who’d offered to take Laila in, just for a few months to see if it could work, was going to have to buy a new freezer. Even Nic Costa had tried a tiny taste of the turkey, which Peroni had cooked to perfection, slathered in oil and garlic and rosemary. Costa eating meat. That was something she’d never thought she would see.