Not after he had told them, quite simply, but with a firmness that couldn’t be misinterpreted, “We find the bird. We kill it. We swear on its blood we never tell anyone else about what happened. Then it’s done. We don’t mention this again to anyone. Ever. Understood?”
Andrea Guerino and Raul Bellucci were still out there, somewhere in the warren of corridors, trying to do his bidding. Abati would cause no more trouble. Sandro Vignola was back on his knees peering at the inscriptions on the stonework, openmouthed, looking idiotic, still aghast at what they’d found: an underground shrine to a long-lost god, one despoiled by Constantine’s Christians at the moment of their victory.
And then there was that other voice.
“How are you going to kill the bird?” LaMarca asked.
Torchia had researched that, just to make sure. This was a ritual, for him, even if the rest were just going along with what he wanted, out of fear, out of survival. Rituals had to be enacted correctly, with precision. Otherwise they could rebound on those who performed them. Make the god angry, not satisfied.
“I hold it over the altar and cut its throat.” He pulled out the penknife from his pocket. “With this.”
LaMarca’s eyes glistened under the light of the big lantern Abati had brought and placed on the ground, scattering its weak rays in all directions.
“We visited this farm in Sicily once. Out in the middle of nowhere. And one day I see this kid in the farmyard. No more than six or seven. They sent him out to get a chicken. He just chases one, picks it up by the legs” — LaMarca was mimicking the actions now, stooping and waving his arm — “and he’s swinging it like this. Around and around. Like it’s a toy. And you know what happens in the end?”
“Tell me.”
“The fucking head comes clean off! I’m not kidding you…. He swung it so hard.”
Toni LaMarca couldn’t handle drink or dope. He was utterly stoned, a fact Torchia registered in case it came in useful.
“One moment the chicken’s going round and round, squawking like it’s furious or something. Next, the head flies straight off and there’s nothing there but a neck and it’s…” Something clouded over his face for a moment, some forgotten image that had been prodded out of its slumber by the drug. “…pumping blood. Like a little fountain. Pumping away. Not for long. We had it for supper. They had it. I didn’t feel so hungry.”
Dino Abati took away the cloth from his head and said, “These caves are dangerous. We shouldn’t be here.”
“When… the… chicken’s… dead…” Toni LaMarca said with the slow, difficult precision of the stoned, prodding Abati with his foot, then he began to giggle stupidly.
“Don’t touch me, Toni,” Abati said calmly.
LaMarca backed away.
“We’ll go,” Torchia repeated, “when we’re done.”
Abati shook his head and went back to dabbing it with the handkerchief. “If Giorgio hears of this…”
“Leave Giorgio out of it,” Torchia snapped.
He thought he could hear footsteps coming down the corridor outside now, approaching. Something about the nature of the sound made him uneasy. The others fell quiet too.
“Ludo…” Abati was beginning to say.
Then Bellucci marched in, grinning like a moron. He had the black cockerel in his arms, cuddling it like a pet. The bird turned its neck with a mechanical precision and let out a low, puzzled complaint.
Andrea Guerino was behind Bellucci, pushing a small child, a young boy Ludo Torchia recognised, though it took him a moment to remember how. It was the party the previous Christmas, when students were invited to meet staff and their families, in a garishly decorated room — he didn’t believe Giorgio could be part of such crass Christian foolishness — in the building in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.
The young Alessio Bramante had been there, staring at them all resentfully, as if there were something in their age he envied.
“Jesus Christ,” Abati murmured, and clawed his way to his feet. “That’s it, Ludo. Time to go and meet the man.”
“What are you doing here?” the boy yelled at them angrily, struggling to get out of the strong arms that held him tight. “This is a secret. When my father finds out—”
Guerino seized his long hair and pulled it until he stopped yammering.
“Where’s your father, Alessio?” Torchia asked the boy.
“Here.” An odd expression crossed his face. Furtive. Some memory had stirred, some idea in the child’s head had brought the blood to his cheeks. “Somewhere. Don’t you know that?”
He was angry and confused, uncertain of himself, disturbed at being lost in these caves. But he wasn’t frightened.
“I know what this is,” he added. “It’s a… game.”
Then he jerked his hands out of his pockets. An object fell to the floor. Ludo Torchia reached down and picked up a pair of toy glasses. The kid didn’t complain. Torchia looked through them for a moment, saw the room, the people in it, multiplied many times over. There was something unnerving about the sight. He stuffed the glasses into his pocket.
“It’s just a game,” Torchia agreed. “But a very important one.”
They were all quiet, even Dino Abati. The scent of opportunity was in the air, and even the most stupid of them surely understood that. Each knew what would happen if Bramante found them there. Suspension. Expulsion. Disgrace. The end of their time at university.
“So what do we do now?” Dino Abati demanded.
Torchia picked up one of the flashlights and walked to the door. To the left the corridor ran slightly downhill, working its way further into the rock, further beneath the earth. A labyrinth lay ahead of them, a spidery maze of possibilities among the narrow channels cut into the soft stone. Very few of them, it occurred to Torchia, explored.
Alessio Bramante was by his side for some reason.
“Now we play,” Torchia answered.
He grasped the boy’s hand and tugged him down the corridor, down towards the darkness.
Falcone told Rosa Prabakaran to find a driver.
“I don’t know drivers,” she confessed.
“See that big sovrintendente from uniform? The one looking as if he’s ready to sneak off for a cigarette?”
“Taccone,” she said. “I think.”
“Taccone. You’re right. I thought you didn’t know any drivers.”
“Sometimes I seem to know more than I remember at first.”
“I sympathise,” he said dryly.
“Sorry. You’ve got more reason. They said you nearly died.”
“They say all kinds of things about me. Tell Taccone to bring the car round. We’re paying someone a visit.”
“Who?”
“Someone you’ve met already. Someone I last met years ago. Beatrice Bramante.”
He saw the expression of concern on Rosa’s face.