A swirl of fatigue swam around her head. Then something made her jump: the phone trilling like a wild beast, the volume turned up to max the way a solitary man would in a big house like this.
“Yeah?” she yelled into the thing.
It was Silvio Di Capua, screaming hysterically from his mobile, wondering why she hadn’t answered hers, not understanding it was in another room, dead to the world while she slept elsewhere. She listened, ruefully grateful that some work had appeared to thrust aside the doubts and guilt lurking inside her head. Silvio had danced this frantic little dance in tantrum-land all too often, but this time round it sounded as if he had good reason to do so.
“It’s a body, Silvio,” she said, when she had a chance to interrupt the babbling sea of details and questions. “Just remember that and follow procedures.”
“Oh, wonderful!” he yelled. “Procedures, procedures. Tell me that when you get here. It’s a slaughterhouse and right near McDonald’s too.”
“Well, in that case it’s somewhat appropriate, don’t you think?”
“This is not a time for jokes, Teresa. Falcone’s livid you weren’t answering your phone.”
“What am I?” she screamed back at him. “Instant fucking pathologist? Just add water and I crawl out of the bottle?”
Besides, she thought, Falcone was going to have plenty more reasons to go berserk soon. His solitary witness had gone walkabout after that little lecture of hers and she didn’t need to wonder about who’d catch the blame on that one.
Think about work. It’s what they pay you for.
“One thing, Silvio. You say the woman’s been cut.”
“Oh yes.”
“Good. Now calm down and think about this because what I’m about to ask is important: are there any signs someone’s used a scalpel?”
The voice on the line paused for breath.
“That and the rest,” Di Capua panted. “You’ve got to get here, Teresa. It’s… scary.”
She grabbed her car keys out of the bag. At least the kid hadn’t stolen them, too.
“Twenty minutes,” she told Silvio. “And make mine a quarter pounder with cheese.”
Emily Deacon sat in her small embassy apartment eyeing the phone, wondering what she could say. It had been a month since she’d spoken to her mother, a week since they’d exchanged e-mails. The relationship was close but had boundaries. They’d never really had the right conversation about her father’s death. Even now, she was uncertain how her mother felt about what had happened. Saddened, obviously. But shocked? A part of Emily said that wasn’t the case. And there was only one way to find out.
She called home, went through the niceties, heard the conversation fade into its customary silences.
“What do you really want, Emily?” her mother said after a while.
“I want to bury Dad,” she answered immediately. “I don’t feel I’ve done that yet. Do you?”
There was a pause on the line. “We were divorced, honey. It wasn’t pretty. By the time he died, he wasn’t a part of my life anymore. It’s different for you, I know. That’s only to be expected.”
“But you loved him!”
“ ”Loved.“ ”
Her mother could be tough. Emily knew that. Maybe it was all part of being married to her dad.
“And you hated him? After?”
“No…” Yet there was no emotion in her voice. In a way, Dan Deacon had vacated both their lives long before his last breath in a temple in Beijing. “I can’t have this discussion over the phone. Let it wait till you get home.”
“I can’t wait. I’m in Rome. I’ve got memories. I’ve got things happening here…”
She had to hang on so long for an answer she wondered if the line had gone dead. “Things?” her mother asked.
“Maybe they’re not connected. I don’t know. It’s just…”
Connected or not, there was a larger point.
“Until I know what really happened,” she continued, “until I really know who he was, what he did, why it ended this way… I don’t think he’s quite dead. Not in my head.”
“He got killed by a lunatic, Emily!” her mother yelled. “What more is there to know?”
“Who he was. What he did.”
That pause again. And then the cruellest thing. An act she’d never have expected, not in the harshest, most difficult of times during the divorce.
“I’m not in the mood for this,” her mother snapped. Then the line really did go dead and Emily Deacon understood. She was the only one keeping Dan Deacon’s memory from the grave.
Thornton Fielding was one of the embassy good guys, a long-serving member of the embassy staff who’d gone native over the two decades he’d spent in Rome. Emily Deacon could remember Fielding from her childhood. He was now fifty-five or so, still as slim, as elegant, as ever, today in a dark, fine-wool suit, perfectly ironed white shirt and red silk tie. He’d lost only the big, bushy head of dark hair, a feature which, she recalled, even back then seemed a little outré for the job. Now he was back to a conservative, short, scholarly clip, turning salt-and-pepper grey. This unvarnished admission of age somehow made his intelligent, constantly beaming face even more likeable.
As a kid she’d had a crush on Fielding, even though she understood he was, in some way she couldn’t quite work out, different. Then, when she finally came back to the Via Veneto under Leapman’s wing, she’d understood. Thornton Fielding stayed in Rome for two reasons. He loved the place so much it was now home. Just as important, Rome didn’t judge him. His sexuality wasn’t an issue here. Professionally, it clouded his career, kept him out of the constant circle of foreign postings that meant promotion in the diplomatic world. Privately-and Fielding was a very private man, she now understood-this city let him breathe, let him be what he was. He’d never have got that in most places, and certainly not at home, amid all the backroom fighting and bitching of Washington.
Leapman always referred to him as “the faggot,” sometimes within his hearing. Maybe that was because Leapman realized she knew and liked him anyway. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid. Either way, the two men kept out of each other’s company as much as possible. It was for the best, though Fielding’s remit covered the maintenance of security systems. As far as she understood, Fielding was the Bureau’s point man within the embassy, the one they came to when things needed fixing or they had to liaise on relations with other agencies. It was inconceivable they’d be able to avoid each other all the time.
She had typed the two names she had-“Henry Anderton” and “Bill Kaspar”-into the network and got nothing. She needed more clearance so, after thinking this through and realizing there were so few options, she walked to Thornton Fielding’s office, waited for one of the assistants to finish talking to him and then went in, taking care to close the door behind her.
Fielding was a smart man. He watched her push the glass shut, then said, “I’m just guessing here, but if you’re about to complain about your boss, Emily, let me save you some time. First, I don’t handle human resources issues for the FBI. Second, even if I did, there’s nothing I or anyone here can do to help you. Leapman is his own man. We just provide you guys with floor space, heating and free coffee. What you do with them is your business.”
It was amusing, almost. Fielding automatically assumed she couldn’t cope with a prick like Leapman. He couldn’t yet separate her from the kid he’d known more than a decade before.
“Why should I want to complain about him?”
“Are you joking? If I had to work with that pig I’d be complaining. Mightily.”
Which wasn’t true at all. Fielding had too much of the diplomat in his blood for that. He’d have found some way around the problem. “He’s not employed for his manners, Thornton. He’s there because he’s good at his job. He is, isn’t he?”