“Do it, asshole,” she snarled at him. “No time for your scalpel, though, is there? No chance to leave your mark.”
“Steely Dan Deacon’s girl,” he said quietly, casting a cautious eye at the two figures racing across the square now. “Didn’t she grow up smart and pretty? And don’t the Deacons fuck you up just when you least expect it?”
He was on her in an instant, strong hand at the neck of her jacket, index finger and thumb pushing into her sinews, forcing his face into hers, looking cold again, deliberate.
“Don’t get in my way again, Little Em,” the monotone whispered. “I don’t have time for distractions.”
He was so close she saw his breath clouding in front of her eyes. A kind of tic occupied one of his cheeks, marred the fake handsomeness of his features.
“Who are you?” she demanded, trying to focus her attention on the angular face and the voice, to work out what part of him was familiar, locked hidden somewhere in her brain.
“Kaspar the unfriendly ghost,” he answered, distracted for a moment, as if an idea was coming to him. “Figure it out, Little Em. We’ve both got work to do.”
Then he relaxed his grip, took one last look at her and started running, away from the shadow of the hooded monk, fleeing into the darkness of a side street, gone for now, she thought, not forever.
She leaned back against the pedestal and found her mind racing. She’d touched the beast. She knew him, even if he didn’t at that moment have a name that was anything but a riddle. And it came to her that what she’d felt instinctively about the error of Leapman’s approach was true. The killer wasn’t born this way. Something had created him, and he was acutely aware of that fact himself, probably resented it with all his soul. Like the philosopher turned to stone above her, he didn’t fear judgement. Perhaps, in a sense, he sought it.
Little Em.
No one had called her that since she’d turned twelve. It was a name used by her family, and those close to them, during those warm, sunny days in Rome, back when the world was whole and human and new, back when a string of strange men came through their apartment in Aventino, leaving her presents, making her feel special, dancing with her in the bright white living room to any damn music they felt like.
Little Em.
Someone approached. It was Nic Costa. The young Italian cop walked up, his interesting, intelligent face full of concern. He retrieved her gun from the slush, looked at her, then pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Here,” he said.
She remembered the pain now, and ran her tongue over her bruised lower lip, grateful it didn’t feel too bad.
“Thanks. Where the hell were you?”
“Looking. It’s a big dark place out there.”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t argue with that.”
There’d never been an experience like this in her life, ever. Nothing in the Bureau had prepared her for it.
“I lost the kid, Nic. Sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”
He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t seem too bothered.
Gianni Peroni arrived, a little out of breath, obvious pleasure on his face at seeing she was safe. She liked these men. A lot. Her head felt funny. Her balance wasn’t what it ought to be. For a split second she thought she was going to cry.
By Peroni’s side was Laila. The girl came straight up to her, looked in her eyes with something that resembled gratitude, then held up the lone cuff dangling from her wrist, wanting to be released.
“Sure,” Emily Deacon said. “After…”
After we’ve talked, she wanted to say. After I’ve done the FBI agent thing, all confidence and bluster, pretending everything’s OK now, everything’s just dandy, if only you’ll answer a few questions, listen to what the cold, tough automaton from the Bureau has to say.
After…
The lights went out. She was scarcely aware that it was Nic Costa’s arms that stopped her head from splitting open on the Campo’s freezing cobblestones.
IT WAS QUIET in the cabin high over the side street close to the Palazzo Borghese. Monica Sawyer twitched and writhed under the heavy sheets, shadows moving through her head, unseen figures dancing to events that had an interior logic they didn’t care to share with her. These were disturbing dreams, enticing dreams, ones she wasn’t used to, dreams that made her roll and turn and moan from time to time, out of fear, out of anticipation. Made her sweat too, struggling inside the scarlet silk slip Harvey had bought her once, on a brief holiday to Maui, thinking he could inject life back into the marriage.
Harvey.
His name just popped into her mind, like a sour discordant note that had sounded in a piece of glorious, fiery, scary music.
Scarlet was her colour, or so Harvey said. Scarlet made her look slutty too. He liked that.
“Harvey, Harvey,” she whispered, not knowing whether she wanted to summon him there or not, wishing she hadn’t drunk so much, hadn’t let all those strange old grapes from Virgil’s day get deep inside her brain.
“Look at me now. Look at…”
With a sudden physical shock, a jerk that made her body go rigid, she was awake, mind racing with sudden activity, one awkward fact ringing in her head. It wasn’t Harvey she was trying to summon into her dream, like an incubus invited in by some deep dark part of her imagination. It was Peter O’Malley.
Who was out looking for churches.
Except he wasn’t. Now, with a half-hungover clarity, she could see something that was hidden from her when he was around. Peter O’Malley was just plain wrong. Priests didn’t hang around bars like that, slyly working their way into the confidence of stray women. They didn’t know about wine and food. They couldn’t turn on the charm, creep into someone’s head with such a sly degree of determined stealth. And they didn’t stay out all night either. Monica knew she’d have woken up if he had returned. Even when she’d been drinking, she was a light, nervous sleeper.
Nothing in his story added up. He wasn’t the kind of man to tend a flock of nuns in Orvieto, or anywhere else. Peter O’Malley was a loner wandering the streets of Rome, homeless for some reason, with just a small black bag for company. If it hadn’t been for the dog collar she wouldn’t have countenanced inviting him into the apartment. That thought made her feel foolish. And resentful too.
“He’s a fraud,” she said quietly to herself and wondered why she didn’t feel more scared.
Because you’re kind of hoping he comes back and…
“No,” she said, and remembered. He’d taken the one set of keys. This was, the more she came to consider matters, deeply, deeply stupid. She was in a foreign city, unable to speak a word of the language, unable to pick up the phone and call for help if she needed it. She glanced at her watch, thought about what the time was in San Francisco, where Harvey might be during that part of the late afternoon.
And what would she say if she called?
There was this priest, Harvey. He didn’t have anywhere to sleep. We downed some drinks and one thing almost led to another. Correction. I downed some drinks. And now I know he’s not a priest at all, though what he really is still beats me.
This wasn’t getting better. Maybe he was just a harmless bum looking for somewhere to sleep. Now she thought of it, he’d had an opportunity to take things further. If he’d pushed a little more after they’d talked on the roof…
Monica Sawyer considered that moment and knew the truth of it. If he’d pushed a little more, she’d have fallen into bed with him and thought: To hell with Harvey, let’s see what a little of God’s glory can do.
But he didn’t. He went out.
Looking for churches.
Quite.
She got up, pulling on a nightgown because it was damn cold in this tiny, artificial box. Monica knew what she had to do, which was to find something, anything, that would make her suspicions concrete, give her reason to call the cops and scream into the phone until someone somewhere listened.