Emily had looked at him sceptically when he passed on this information and said, simply, “I’m not sure I can imagine you as a sergeant, Nic. You’re either up there with Falcone or out on the street with Gianni. Although I suppose we could use the money….”
There were always decisions to be made, ones that conflicted with his own personal desires in the perpetual dilemma faced by any police officer with enthusiasm, ambition, and a conscience. How much of a man’s life was owed to his profession? And how much to those he loved?
Costa had found the answer to those questions eight weeks before, when Emily had joined him in an expensive restaurant in London, after his final meeting at the Gallery in Trafalgar Square. She had been living in his house on the outskirts of Rome for a year now. Come summer, she would possess sufficient qualifications to seek work as a junior architect.
When he looked into her face that night in the West End, over some of the most costly bad food he’d ever eaten, Nic Costa knew, finally. For once, he wasn’t hesitant. Too many times she’d reprimanded him with an amused look and the teasing words “Are you sure you’re Italian?”
Sometime that summer, in July possibly, or the early part of August, depending on how many relatives of Emily’s wanted to make the journey from the U.S., there would be a wedding, a civil affair, followed by a reception on the grounds of the house on the Via Appia. Sometime in late August — around the twenty-fourth if the doctors were right — they would have a child. Emily was now seven or eight weeks pregnant, enough for them to tell others of their plans. And when they were parents, Nic Costa promised himself, life would surely begin in earnest, something he was about to say to the four of them gathered in Leo Falcone’s living room, after he and Emily had made their two announcements, only to find his words drowned out in the clamour of noise around them.
Falcone hobbled off to the kitchen talking excitedly of the bottle of vintage champagne — real champagne, not just good prosecco — he’d been keeping for such an occasion. Raffaella was busy fussing over Falcone, while hunting for even more food to pile on the table. Teresa Lupo was piling kisses on the pair of them, looking worryingly close to tears or hysteria or both, before dashing to help Raffaella with the glasses.
And Gianni Peroni just stood there, a big smirk over his battered face, one aimed in the disappearing Teresa’s direction, saying I told you so.
Emily, a little amazed by the histrionics, leaned her head onto Costa’s shoulder, and whispered, “Haven’t they had any weddings in this country for a while?”
“It seems not,” he answered softly, and then, theatrically, took her in his arms and kissed her.
She broke away, laughing, as they were both confronted by a forest of waving arms bearing glasses and plates of food.
“Is it going to be like this forever from now on?” she asked, avoiding the wine, reaching for a glass of mineral water instead.
“Forever,” Gianni Peroni declared, and began to make a toast so eloquent, touching, and funny that Costa found it hard to believe he hadn’t rehearsed it many times before.
There was an entire community of cafés in the Via Degli Zingari, the narrow street round the corner that wound down the hill towards the Forum. When Falcone’s bottle of champagne was done he suggested a walk for some proper coffee. That bachelor habit had yet to disappear; the inspector still resolutely refused to believe it was possible to make a decent macchiato at home.
Half an hour later they were ambling towards Falcone’s preferred destination, enjoying the meagre warmth that had arrived with the disappearance of the morning murk. The wedding arrangements and the pregnancy had been dealt with, in a flurry of frantic questions, hugs, and no small amount of tears on Teresa’s part. Then, as so often happened with such dramatic personal news, they’d found the need to move on to other matters. For Costa, it didn’t get much better than this. Emily, friends, Rome, his home city, a few days of holiday. And both Peroni and Teresa in garrulous, postprandial mood, she reminiscing about work, Peroni fixated with its avoidance.
After one brief and inconclusive argument, the pathologist caught up with them, fat arms pumping with delight, pointed across the square, towards the Via dei Serpenti, tugged on Emily’s shirtsleeve, and exclaimed, in her gruff Roman tones, “Look! Look! I had this wonderful customer down there once. Some dreadful accountant skewered with a sword. It was—”
“It was horrible,” Peroni complained.
“Oh,” Teresa retorted, brightly surprised. “We’re getting discriminating in our old age, are we? I suppose this new female companion of yours puts these crazy notions into your head.”
“Don’t rub it in….”
This wasn’t a popular subject between them.
“Who is she?” Emily asked, unwisely.
“Indian girl,” Teresa said tersely. “Quite pretty too. God knows why she’s in the police.”
The big man grumbled, “Rosa — which does not sound a very Indian name to me at all — was born in some public housing block in Monte Sacro. As I have told you a million times, being of Indian extraction and being Indian aren’t the same thing.”
Teresa didn’t look convinced.
“Of course she’s Indian. Her dad’s from Cochin. He sells umbrellas and lighters and all that junk on some street stall in Tritone. So what? She’s got India in her genes. You can tell that just from talking to her. She doesn’t get mad about anything, not on the surface anyway. I guess it’s karma or whatever.”
Peroni waved a finger in her direction. “She’s a Catholic, for God’s sake!”
“That doesn’t make her an Italian,” Costa interjected. “Not even an honorary one, these days.”
“Quite,” Teresa went on. “And her old man’s a Catholic too. He was one back in India long before he came here. Did you know that?”
Peroni muttered a low curse. Then, grumpily, “No…”
“You should talk to her more,” the pathologist went on. “Rosa is a sweet, serious, responsible human being. Which brings me back to my original point. Why the hell is she in the police? What’s going to happen if she’s left hanging around people like you for long? You, with all these special talents? I mean it.” This last point was aimed at Emily. “I’ve worked in that morgue for a decade and when they’re gone it can be just plain boring. You miss the quality customers. No rubbish from these boys. No time-wasting. Just…” — Teresa sighed, a beatific expression on her face — “…the goods.”
Peroni shook his head and sighed. “Goods like that I can do without.”
“Goods like that put food and drink on our tables, Gianni. Someone’s got to deal with them. Unless you were thinking of moving over to traffic,” she added slyly. “Or still fantasising about… what was it?”
“OK, OK,” he conceded. “We don’t need to be reminded.”
“Pig farming,” Teresa persisted. “Back home in Tuscany. With me working as a local doctor. Stitching up the bucolics after their Saturday night fights. Ministering to fat pregnant housewives.” She slapped him on the arm, quite hard. “What were you thinking?”