Another time, in different weather, when the wind wasn’t trying to peel him off the roof and dash him to the ground below, it would have been quite a view. The Palazzo Borghese should have been somewhere ahead. On a good day the great dome of St. Peter’s would have shone from across the river. Now all he could see was the blinding cloud of ice swirling painfully around his face, threatening to confuse his senses.
Falcone had made it plain: it was his choice. The sly old bastard knew all along what Costa would say too. Nic was the youngest there and the most suited for the job. He’d done some mountaineering once, solitary trips into the Dolomites and the Alps as a teenager. They could have waited until a specialist was brought in, but that meant time, in this weather perhaps a long time. The problem was simple. A woman in the block had reported that an American tourist living on the top floor had, unusually, been absent all day. The previous evening she’d been seen entering the building with a stranger. The same stranger had walked out that morning carrying a couple of big, expensive-looking suitcases. They’d got a description of the man. It could be the same person Costa and Peroni had seen twice now, outside the Pantheon and by the Tiber the previous night.
So should they pile through the door with an entry team, blundering into the place, hoping he was still hiding there? Or did they check it out first to see whether it was occupied or not? And if it was empty, wait a while outside to see if anyone happened to call back?
For Costa the decision was clear-cut. The killer was human, not a monster. It was important not to let go of that fact. The man needed somewhere warm and private to retreat to in weather like this. This could be the first real chance they had of trapping him.
Ordinarily there were easier ways to find out if someone was inside. They could spy from neighbouring blocks. They could use listening equipment through the walls. Not this time. The place was a tiny, probably illegal cabin perched high above street level like a giant toy box flung onto the big, flat roof of the nineteenth-century apartment block. The windows were higher than any of the buildings around. This must be the only home in the area with a scenic outlook, which also meant it was impregnable, impossible to watch. The only way to find out what lay inside was to try to get close somehow, and not through the front door either, which lay up a narrow covered staircase leading from the top floor, giving no visual access into the cabin whatsoever. The fire escape was the only option. If the man was at home, Costa would, the plan said, see so through the outside window and call in the forced entry team. If the place was empty, he’d just take a quick look around, get the hell out of there, then wait with the rest of them until someone came home.
Plans.
Costa shivered on the shaky ladder and wondered what plans were worth now. He hadn’t thought too hard about the weather after he’d talked to the woman who first made the call. He’d just cleared his ideas with Falcone, then walked up three flights of stairs in the building, found the ancient fire escape and started climbing through the swirling snowflakes. He hadn’t thought much about the odd geography of the building either. Falcone and his men were parked discreetly outside, sufficiently close to stop anyone getting away, anonymous enough not to be noticed by someone walking in through the entrance. Or so they hoped.
Still, it didn’t give Costa much room for manoeuvre. They’d agreed it was too risky to post a second person outside the apartment, even one posing as a cleaner or a deliveryman. The individual they were after seemed too smart for tricks like that. Any intruder would stick out like a sore thumb if the man came back in the meantime. So if something went wrong Falcone and his team would have to make an entrance from outside.
Now that he’d climbed those steep, steep stairs Costa appreciated how long that would take. His instinct couldn’t tell him whether someone was at home, but if someone was, it was going to be vital not to alert him.
On this side of the cabin was a blind ledge just a metre wide, pointing back towards the hill where Trinità dei Monti lay, now hidden by the blizzard. Around the corner was a private terrace made for another climate. A pair of small palm trees cut incongruous shapes in their giant terra-cotta pots there, ice fringing their dead leaves, making them look like fantastic Christmas trees. The snow was so deep Nic could only guess at what occupied the other areas of the roof from the rounded white outlines they made: a barbecue, an outside sink with a single, swan-necked tap, a collection of brushes and brooms carelessly left to rot in the open air.
He took one final, careful step up the treacherous ladder, reached the wall and pulled himself upright onto the constricted strip of the ledge, teeth chattering, shivering uncontrollably, feet almost off the building’s edge.
Falcone had ordered him to keep the ring tone on his phone turned off until they knew the state of the cabin. No one wanted the risk of an unwanted call. But in the freezing cold Costa found it difficult to think straight. His brain felt numb. Had he remembered to turn it off or not? And if so when?
With numb fingers he struggled to pull the handset out of his pocket, fumbling it in his hands. The thing was off. He still couldn’t remember doing that. Then he tried to put the phone away, found it slipping in his frozen fingers, knew what would happen next, how the ineluctable laws of gravity and stupidity could collide at times like this.
The handset turned in his dead, icy grip, revolved slowly through the snow-flecked air, bounced off the ledge and tumbled down into the street below.
Costa closed his eyes, felt the flakes begin to fall on them instantly and cursed his luck. He couldn’t go back down the ladder. He was too weary, too cold. The icy rungs were perilous enough when he was climbing, with the odds and gravity in his favour. Nothing could persuade him to risk a descent.
He took out his gun, checked the safety was on, the magazine loaded. He was a lousy shot at the best of times. Now, with unsteady fingers and a head that felt like a block of ice, he’d be as much of a danger to himself as anyone else.
Trying to clear an open space in his mind, he pushed the weapon into the side pocket of his jacket and hoped some warmth and blood would come back to his hand, and with them some semblance of control.
Costa edged carefully along the narrow ledge, spent one dizzying, terrifying moment negotiating the corner, then rolled onto the deep snow of the terrace, glad that he finally had some railings between him and the precipice down to the street. When he got back his breath, when his head told him to keep moving or he’d just curl up in a tight, shivering ball, freeze and die on the spot, he stood up, clung to the wall and edged along it. There was just one small window here. A bedroom in all probability. He neared the glass. The curtain was closed. There was no light inside, not a sign of life.
Keep it that way, he prayed and stumbled on towards the river side of the building.
A memory came from his mountaineering days. Wind speed increases with altitude.
A sudden, gusting blast roared round the cabin’s apex, crackling with vicious energy, dashing hard, stinging ice into his face. He huddled into himself, drawing his arms around his head, fighting to keep upright, vainly trying to wish away the blank numbness growing in his brain. Then the blizzard paused for breath. After a moment in which Costa doubted his ability to go on, he struggled towards the corner of the building, hugged the drainpipe there, steeled himself against another battering from the storm.
Sometimes there were no choices. Whatever the situation inside the cabin, he’d have to break in. It was simply too dangerous to do anything else. He turned the corner, clinging to the brickwork. Most of this side of the building was given over to a French window, almost opaque under a glazing of ice, with just a small gap kept clear by an updraught from the heating inside.