David Hewson by The Sacred Cut Page B

arm and gave him a broad grin. "There. Now
that's asking nicely."
    "So
do we get through?" the American snapped.
    Falcone
nodded, then led the way. Teresa Lupo had cleared the corpse of snow entirely
now and indicated to them to wait as she quietly dictated some notes into a
voice recorder. The dead woman lay on the geometric slabs, legs and arms
akimbo, her white, bloodless skin waxy under the artificial lights. When
he'd had the chance between phone calls and working with the SOCOs, Costa
had watched closely as the body had emerged from the ice. The positioning of
the corpse on the central marble circle was quite deliberate. Her limbs were
outstretched, directed at equidistant points in the vast, curving sphere of the
Pantheon, as if making a statement. It was an image that jogged a memory and
was, perhaps, designed to. He recalled it now. Leonardo da Vinci's sketch
of an idealized figure, a naked man with a full head of hair, set inside first
a square then a circle. His limbs described two positions: legs together, at
the base of the circle, touching the central arm of the lower side of the
square, then apart, on the circle alone; and arms outstretched first
horizontally, touching the square alone, then raised, to both the circle and the
square's upper corners.
    The
dead woman's stiff position on the shining, damp floor, one surely fixed
by her murderer, matched the second of each of these poses perfectly. This was
not simply a striking image. It had a meaning, a very specific one.
    "The
Vitruvian Man," he said quietly, remembering a distant art lesson from
school.
    The
American woman looked at him oddly. "Excuse me?"
    "She
reminded me of something. From a long time ago."
    "You've
got a memory, Mr. Costa," she conceded. "What else do you recall?"
    He
tried to flesh out the hazy recollection his brain had dug up from somewhere. It
was
a long time ago. The idea itself was elusive and complicated too. "That
it's about dimensions and form." He nodded at the huge spherical
roof above them. "Just like this place."
    "Just
like this place," she repeated and, unexpectedly, smiled. The change in
expression was remarkable. It took years off her face. She looked like a
student suddenly, fresh, unmarked.
    It
didn't last. Agent Leapman was making impatient noises. He looked at
Teresa Lupo, who was still chanting into the recorder. "You're the
pathologist, right?"
    Teresa
hit the pause button, blinked and gave him a hard stare. "No, I'm
the fucking typist. Just give me a moment and I'll take your letter next.
Who the hell are you, by the way?"
    The
card got flipped out again as if it were some kind of magic amulet. "FBI."
He nodded at his colleague. "Both of us."
    "Really?"
Teresa sighed and went back to talking into the machine.
    Quietly,
calmly, with a distinct effort designed to cool down the temperature of the
conversation, Emily Deacon interposed. "I think we can help."
    The
pathologist hit the stop button. "How?"
    "She
was strangled. With a piece of cord or something. Am I right?"
    Teresa
glanced at Falcone, searching for a sign. He looked as lost as Peroni and
Costa.
    "There's
no evidence of sexual assault," the American woman continued. "This
isn't sexual at all, not in the usual sense anyway. Which begs the
question: why did he undress her? It happened here? You do have her
clothes?"
    "It
happened here," Costa conceded. "Sometime between eight in the
evening, when the staff closed the place, and midnight, when we turned
up."
    Teresa
Lupo was staring at the body again, trying to think. She didn't stay mad
with people for long. Not if she thought they had something she wanted.
"It was snowing all last night. All that ice is going to play havoc with
everything I normally use for time of death. There are calculations I can use,
but they're not going to be wonderfully accurate in the
circumstances."
    The
two FBI agents exchanged a glance. It was almost as if they'd seen enough
already.
    Falcone
finally found his voice and Costa