A woman’s voice, taut, angry, and hurried, barked out of the speaker.
“Pizz—” he began to say.
“Jesus Christ!” the woman screeched.
The buzzer on the lock bleated. He pushed the door open and found himself inside a spare, cool atrium that smelled of bleach.
Without thinking, he patted his jacket. There was no gun there. He was just another civilian.
He walked upstairs, trying to think of what he’d say. He hadn’t just broken the photographer’s arm. He’d stood on it. This didn’t worry him any more now than when it had happened. Vogel had been stalking them for reward and the paparazzo had been determined to get out of there without helping once he had his pictures. Costa had needed to know where they were, to extract from him the exact location so that an ambulance could find them. Costa felt he’d had little alternative.
There was a sound from the floor above. A dog barking. A woman’s cry. Music. From somewhere the shriek of a baby. There was the smell of stale food and rotten trash. Down the stairwell fell the noise of people arguing several floors up.
When he got to the top of the staircase, he found himself in near darkness. Two of the strip lights in the corridor ceiling had failed. A third flickered sickly, on and off.
The baby wailed again, its cries echoing off the walls so much he had no idea from which direction the sound came.
Each door had a little light behind the bell push. The nearest read 256. He walked along. The next read 257.
The wrong side, and the wrong direction. It was turning out to be one of those days.
He wondered whether this was a good idea at all. Then he thought about what Falcone would say if he came back and admitted he’d pulled out at the last moment. The good mood that the presence of Catherine Bianchi instilled in the inspector was, like most things surrounding Falcone, transient. The inspector’s private life consisted of a series of short, intense relationships followed by periods of mute, surly celibacy. The pattern was well established now. Costa didn’t want to bounce it out of phase prematurely.
He recrossed the stairwell and strode down the opposite corridor. Only one light was out here. As he walked, the sounds of the apartment block receded. There were no crying babies in this part of the building, no angry voices.
Costa reached the door of apartment 213. It was ajar, just a finger’s width, enough to let a shaft of orange artificial light stumble through and fall on the tiled floor of the apartment in an eccentric shape.
Decisions, he thought.
He edged his foot forward until it reached the cheap painted wood that was supposed to keep Martin Vogel safe from the world beyond. The door moved steadily inwards at his touch, on hinges that needed a touch of oil.
11
The later the hour, the more uncomfortable Hank and Frank became. Churches really didn’t suit them and the bar was calling. Finally, just before eight, she lost patience and sent them on their way. She could ride a bus home. One went from the street outside all the way down to the waterfront at the Marina. She liked buses. They put you in touch with people.
Predictably, the priest appeared moments after the two brothers departed. She took one look at the man in the familiar black frock and felt her heart sink. He had a long pale face, pockmarked cheeks sagging with age. His eyes were sad and rheumy, as if they’d seen rather too much. A drink with the twins might be welcome relief after a little time in the gloom of Mission Dolores. She was glad she’d made a note of their favourite bar.
Then she told him who she was and where she came from. The priest opened his mouth and her opinion changed instantly. His voice did not match his appearance in the slightest. It was bright and young and engaged, as if some lively inner spirit was trapped inside an older, more fragile frame. The parroco introduced himself as Dermot Gammon, originally from Boston, but a resident of Rome for several years before returning to the U.S. and ending up in San Francisco.
“Where do you live?” he asked her.
“Off Tritone. The Via Crispi.”
He rubbed his hands together and a beatific expression put fresh light in his eyes. A comprehensive list of local stores and restaurants and wine bars streamed from his lips.
“You know Rome well,” she said sincerely.
They spent a few happy minutes discussing her home city. Finally the priest asked her why she was there. She told him a little about the case and the movie, then said, “They told me you had a photograph. Of the man they found stealing something in the cemetery.”
His long, sad face fell into a frown. “A bag full of almonds. The ladies …” He sighed. “Sometimes their desire to protect this place goes to extremes. We exist to cater to souls, not bricks and mortar. They saw the man, they took some photos. I showed them to the police. Our local captain was not, I have to say, terribly interested or impressed.” He edged forward, as if making some statement in confession. “Which pleased me greatly. I don’t wish to see the mission in the newspapers. Only for births and marriages and deaths, and a few charitable occasions. Certainly not as part of something as serious as this dreadful investigation you mentioned. Am I making myself clear?”
“I’ll be discreet. I promise. Besides, it’s probably nothing. I’m shooting arrows in the dark, hoping one will land somewhere sunny.”
“That’s work for a priest. Not a scientist.”
“I wouldn’t presume to teach you your job, Father. Science and religion aren’t enemies.”
“Really?” He didn’t look convinced. “I must disagree. Nothing wonderful that I recall of Rome has to do with science.”
“Not the Sistine Chapel? Michelangelo thought himself more an architect than a painter. And Bernini. Those statues. How could he create them without knowing anatomy?”
“I was always a Caravaggio man myself. I like real human beings, frail men and women, not make-believe perfect ones. Without the fallible …” The priest opened his hands and looked around the dark interior of the mission. “… I’m out of a job.”
“Without mysteries we both are. Please, Father. The photographs. Just to satisfy my curiosity.”
He excused himself for a few minutes. When he came back, he sat down by her side and retrieved a snapshot from the inside of his gown. It was too dark to see much of it, so she went and stood beneath the electric candles close to the altar.
The priest followed, looked over her shoulder, and said, “The gardener told me to chop that tree down two years ago. He said it’s dying. Too old.”
She peered at the figure in the picture. The man was holding a supermarket bag that, from its bulging shape, appeared to contain a good collection of nuts. He was arguing with the Mexican woman she’d seen earlier.
“I told them all, ‘It’s a tree,’ ” the priest went on. “ ‘Not a human being. The thing is insensate. It feels no pain, has no consciousness of its impending end, or its present feeble state. We can wait a little while,’ I say. Not thinking …” His glassy eyes stared into hers. “I’ve been here thirteen years, Ms. Lupo. We’ve never had a single person take something from the cemetery. Not something supposedly edible anyway. Now two in a matter of weeks.”
“It’s not edible. It’s a bitter almond. Poisonous in quantity.”
He looked shocked. “That’s why the man took those nuts? Because they’re poisonous?”
“Someone with a little knowledge might know, I imagine. Most people would simply see an almond tree …”
Its gnarled, failing form stood next to the patch of ground where the imaginary Carlotta Valdes’s grave had been created for the film, and stayed, for a few uncertain years, in real life, too, until someone deemed it unsuitable for a real cemetery. It was a link, one that, like the rest, seemed to lead into some opaque and unrelenting San Franciscan fog.