The Devil Will Come by Glenn Cooper Read Free Book Online

Compared to Elisabetta, black-clad and draped, Micaela appeared almost naked in her low-cut dancer top.
    ‘I’m fine. Come and help.’
    The dining table sat six and, when there were fewer, Flavia Celestino’s chair stayed empty as if inviting her spirit back into the fold.
    ‘How was your week?’ Elisabetta asked her brother, passing the serving bowl.
    ‘You can imagine,’ Zazo said. ‘We’ve got dozens of cardinals and their staffs arriving soon. My boss’s boss is agitated, my boss is agitated and, for the sake of my men, I’m supposed to be agitated.’
    ‘And you’re not?’ his father asked.
    ‘When was the last time you saw me upset?’
    They all knew the answer but no one spoke of it. It was twelve years ago. They well remembered the wild state he was in when he rushed inside the hospital to find Elisabetta half-dead in one casualty room and Marco’s corpse cooling in another. They remembered how his anger had smoldered during the aftermath when at first he wasn’t allowed to participate in the investigation and later when he was denied access to case files after the official inquiries stalled. He was too close to the matter, a related party, he’d been told. His lack of impartiality would jeopardize a prosecution.
    What prosecution, he’d demanded? You haven’t caught anyone? You don’t have a single lead? The investigation’s a joke.
    After a year of frustration Zazo and his superiors reached the boiling point at the same time. He wanted out, they wanted him out. His natural cheerfulness had been eclipsed by sarcasm and bursts of hostility toward the upper echelons of his command structure and he’d been called on the carpet for the occasional bout of heavy-handedness during an arrest. They made him see a psychologist who found him fundamentally healthy but in need of a change of assignment to a place that didn’t provide daily reminders of the outrage perpetrated against his best friend and his sister.
    Zazo’s commander suggested the Gendarme Corps of Vatican City, the civil police force that patrolled the Vatican, a lower-key job where the most egregious offenders he’d have to contend with were pickpockets and traffic scofflaws. Strings were pulled and it was done. He traded uniforms.
    Zazo had done well at the Vatican. He regained his equanimity and rose through the ranks to the level of major. He was able to afford his own apartment. He had a car and a motorbike. There was always a pretty girl on his arm. He couldn’t complain, his life was good except for those moments when Marco’s ghostly bled-out corpse came to him in a flashback.
    Carlo commented on the tenderness of the lamb, then grunted, ‘Maybe when there’s a new Pope you can get a promotion to his security detail. The new man always likes to change things around.’
    Half the plain-clothes men doing close security for the Pope were from the Gendarmerie, the other half from the Swiss Guards. ‘I can’t work with the Swiss Guards. Most of them are pricks.’
    ‘Swiss,’ Carlo grunted disagreeably. ‘You’re probably right.’
    After Elisabetta cleared the dinner plates, Micaela laid out the tiramisu she’d brought from a bakery. She’d been moody and uncharacteristically silent during the meal and it only took a gentle prod from Elisabetta to get her to uncork.
    Micaela was in her last year of training in gastroenterology at the St Andrea Hospital. She wanted to stay put; Arturo was on staff there, she liked her department. She’d been angling for the one open junior-faculty position. ‘They’re giving it to Fanchetti,’ she moaned.
    ‘Why?’ her father snapped. ‘You’re better than him. I wouldn’t let that joker put a scope up my rear.’
    ‘He’s a man, I’m a woman, end of story,’ Micaela said.
    ‘They can’t be that sexist,’ Elisabetta said. ‘In this day and age?’
    ‘Come on! You work for the single most sexist organization in the world!’ Micaela cried out.
    Elisabetta smiled. ‘The