The Sacred Cut

She looked at Laila. The poor kid didn’t know what was going on.

“ Venice isn’t far from Verona, Gia

She tousled the girl’s hair. Laila smiled back at her. A real smile. Teresa Lupo stifled an urge to hug her.

“I hate Venice,” Peroni moaned. “It’s cold and damp and horrible. The food stinks. The people are cheating, miserable good-for-nothings…”

Falcone looked at his watch. “We start a week from Monday. It would be best to avoid the Questura in the meantime. Take a vacation, you two. Enjoy yourselves.”

He was different somehow, Costa decided. For once, Leo Falcone seemed genuinely content, free of all those invisible burdens he was used to carrying around on his stiff shoulders. He was looking forward to the change. He needed it. Perhaps they all did.

“We did the right thing,” Falcone declared. He smiled at Emily. “Particularly you. If Nic hadn’t gone to the Piazza Mattei…”

“I was just guessing, Leo,” she replied. “Really. It was just a stab in the dark.”

Falcone looked dubious. “Really?”

She sighed. “It’s such a long time ago. Maybe it was just my memory playing tricks. I remember… sitting on that fountain, underneath the tortoises, eating an ice cream. It was summer. Very hot. And my dad had left me there to go and do some business in one of the houses. This happened more than once, I think. I never did see who he was visiting, but I understood something. It was someone he knew. Not a stranger.”

Emily glanced at Laila, who was bored by this conversation, engrossed instead in a teenage magazine Peroni had brought her.

“I remembered the name of the place. Because of the tortoises. I remembered being so happy I thought that world would never disappear.” Then, a little ruefully, “I was a child.”

Falcone nodded, acknowledging her point. “What you did was very brave. You risked everything.”

He looked at each of them. “All of you. I’m grateful.”

“Don’t hug me,” Peroni growled. “Don’t even think of it. Venice. Venice? What is happening to my life?”

“We’re taking a little detour,” Falcone said. “Let’s try to enjoy the ride. And now…”

He downed the champagne and glanced at his watch.

“I must be going. Ciao!”

Falcone moved so quickly. He had his coat back on and was about to leave before any of them could object, stopping only at the threshold as a final thought struck him.

“Oh,” he said, “one more thing.”

Peroni and Costa watched him with a mute foreboding.

“Uniforms,” Falcone said. “You will be needing them. Best get measured after the holiday. When you’ve lost some weight.”

Then Leo Falcone was through the door, with what, in another, might pass for a skip, leaving the growing storm behind him.

About the Author

DAVID HEWSON is a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times. The Sacred Cut is the third novel in a crime series that began with the acclaimed A Season for the Dead, set in Rome and featuring Detective Nic Costa. He is also the author of The Villa of Mysteries and Lucifer’s Shadow.

A former staff writer on The Times, he lives in Kent, where he is at work on the fourth Nic Costa crime novel, The Lizard’s Bite, which Delacorte Press will publish in 2006.