"Most undignified," Santiago said, not even attempting to hide his glee as they stood together beneath a hazy drizzle of rain, staring at the twisted body of the Jefe de Gobierno, stuffed into the trunk of a minor government official's car like an oversized piece of luggage.
Matteo just grunted; he wouldn't mourn the Jefe, but it had only been five weeks since the murder of the Archbishop. He'd begged and pleaded and amassed as much additional manpower as the higher-ups would deign to give him, furiously searching for leads, but now the entire might of the police force had been redirected, brought to bear against the killer of the Jefe, whoever that brave soul might have been. The Archbishop would have to wait.
"I imagine there's a pretty long list of known enemies," Santiago said, scratching absently at his cheek. "Starting with Garcia over there."
"It wasn't Garcia," Matteo said. He wasn't looking at his partner; he was studying the body of the Jefe, his bulging eyes, the bruises round his throat. Absently Matteo reached out, as if to wrap his own hand around the Jefe's neck, to test the pattern of the bruising against his own fingers, but he caught himself in time; the forensics team hadn't finished their inspection yet, and there would be hell to pay if he touched the body before they gave the all clear.
"He is in Garcia's car," Santiago pointed out. "And Garcia was at that party last night, and he looks a little wild around the eyes."
"Half of Buenos Aires was at that party," Matteo told him, still eyeing the victim. Must have been a big man, this killer, he thought, to strangle him barehanded, to carry him to the car, to stuff him inside. "And wouldn't you be a little nervous, if you found your rival like this?"
"A little," Santiago allowed, though his tone was dissatisfied.
"Garcia is no mastermind, but he would have to be insane to kill this man, put him in his own car, and then ring for the police himself. He'd have to be suicidal."
Killers weren't always clever; for every clever one there were ten who had acted in the heat of the moment, and completely botched the cleanup. In Matteo's experience, killers did stupid things all the time. Sometimes they even called the police to the crime scenes themselves, but those were usually men who'd killed their wives, who were struggling to play the part of the dutiful, grieving husband while secretly exulting in their newfound freedom. This was not such a case, Matteo thought. Dead political rivals did not merit such treatment, and were more often found floating in the river, or rotting on the side of the highway. No, he did not think Garcia had killed this man and then rung the police; it made no sense.
"If not Garcia, then who?" Santiago asked him. "Someone who wanted to frame him?"
"No," Matteo said again. Garcia and his compatriots were doing a fine job losing power all on their own; in a few months Garcia would be irrelevant, and ousting him sooner was not a cause worth killing for. "How long did they say he's been in there?"
"They're not sure yet, but they say he was definitely killed last night, and he was still warm when the killer put him in the car. Probably happened after the party."
"Or during it," Matteo mused. Santiago looked at him strangely; Matteo had a reputation, among his fellow police officers, for making uncanny observations about these crimes. Some of them said he must have been a killer himself, to understand the mind of a murderer so well. Matteo paid them no mind; whispers did not interest him. "If he was killed after the party, how would he have gotten into the car? No, I think it is more likely he was killed during the party, and our murderer was just looking for a convenient place to hide him. Find out from Garcia if his car was unlocked while he was at the party."
"On it, boss," Santiago said, and then he drifted away, and left Matteo alone with his musings and the Jefe.
The party the night before had been splendid, by all accounts. The guest list was miles long, a who's-who of Argentine elite. There would have been music and dancing, food and laughter, bodies everywhere, and so much noise. The Jefe could not be in two places at once; likely most of the guests had not even spoken to him during the party, and had not missed him. It would be easy, in such a throng of self-involved notables, to slip away, to do this deed, and return. The Jefe's mansion was a veritable warren of corridors, designed so that servants could make their way through the place unseen. It would be easy, for someone who knew what they were doing.
And though there were no apparent ties between this murder and the murder of the Archbishop - the Jefe was not known for his piety, and the two men had been killed, and disposed of, in wildly different fashion - the acts were bound together in Matteo's mind, a blood-red cord of violence winding from one to the other. Two of the most prominent men in Buenos Aires, killed less than two months apart, killed in places that were familiar and comfortable to them, places they should have been safe. Killed by professional means, by a man - and Matteo was certain it was a man - of considerable strength and cunning. A man who had taken organs from the Archbishop. Likely there had not been enough time for him to take something from the Jefe, but -
"Oh, Christ," one of the forensic techs swore as he looked over the body in the trunk.
"What is it?" Matteo demanded, stepping through the push of eager investigators, trying to get a better look.
"They took his tongue," the tech said, his face crinkled with disgust.
A trophy has been taken here, too, Matteo thought. Would it be enough to convince his superiors that the two crimes were linked? It wasn't much to go on, but it was more than he'd had a few minutes before.
As he stood, hands in his pockets, wishing for a cigarette, Santiago returned with a frown on his face.
"Garcia says the vehicle was unlocked during the party," Santiago reported.
It's something. If the vehicle was unlocked, then any one of the guests could have accessed it, if they knew what they were doing, if they were stealthy and mindful of the valets and personal bodyguards who would have been milling around the carpark while their employers enjoyed the festivities.
"Get me that guest list," Matteo told him grimly. "I want to speak to every single person who was at that party last night."
Though Hannibal was himself an early riser the comfortable life they led in Buenos Aires had made Clarice soft, and her pregnancy made her softer still. She had come to enjoy a lie-in, stretching luxuriously beneath the bedsheets and tempting her husband to join her with every sinuous movement of her ever-changing body. Today was no different; Hannibal had left her in the early hours, gone to exercise and devote some time to travelling through the halls of his mind palace, searching for Mischa. She was hiding from him; he had looked for her, in all the usual places, and sometimes he thought he caught the sound of her gentle laughter, her softly clapping hands, but every time he turned toward that sound he found himself alone. This did not trouble him overmuch; he was, after all, in the process of preparing a place for Mischa. Perhaps, he told himself, she had already taken it up, was even now nestled comfortably beneath Clarice's beating heart, cocooned in safety.
With that delightful thought to comfort him he requested a tea service and a bit of breakfast from the servants, and took the tray himself, carried it up the stairs and into the private domain he shared with his Starling. The sun was rising higher in the sky, but it was only just after ten; the servants knew better than to venture upstairs, just yet. Hannibal was free to come and go as he chose, and so he went, slipped back into the bedroom he shared with his wife, and smiled as he found her splayed out across the bed. Autumn was fast approaching, but it was a warm morning, and Clarice's own internal temperature was fickle, now that she found herself sharing her body with this newcomer. She had wriggled out from beneath the blankets, and lay on her side, her pale, toned legs thrown scissoring across the bedsheets, her silk nightdress riding high towards her hips, the faintest hint of black lace visible beneath it where her body curved so deliciously. What a sight she made, hair black as night spilling over white pillowcases, her body soft and decadent now in a new, exciting way he was coming to appreciate.
"Room service," he announced winsomely.
Clarice smiled at him over her shoulder, but did not move; she was waiting, he knew, for him to come to her. That was not always the way of things between them. Sometimes Clarice reached for him herself, delighted to initiate contact between them, bold enough to ask for what she wanted, but sometimes she simply invited him, and waited to see what he might do. Perhaps he sometimes surprised her still; this was not one of those times.
Very carefully Hannibal set their breakfast on a low table in the corner of the room, and then he went to her, curled himself along the length of her back, brushed her hair aside with his nose so that he could suckle gently at the base of her throat. Clarice hummed, delighted, and reached behind her, tangled her fingers in his hair and held him close against her skin. His arms wrapped around her, seeking the heat of her body; one snaked beneath her, so that he could cup her breast in his palm, and one slid over the rise of her hip to press flush against her belly.
"You are far more tempting than breakfast," he whispered against her skin, and she laughed. That laugh turned into a gasp in a moment, however, and she suddenly clutched his hand, held it tight to the swell of her belly.
"Can you feel that?" she asked him breathlessly. Hannibal splayed his fingers out, starfish-like, focused all of his attention upon the warmth of her beneath his palm. Yes, he could feel it, faintly, like the echo of a familiar song playing from another room; the whisper of movement beneath her skin, the brush of a butterfly's wing.
"She's strong," Hannibal said. "Like her mother." Already she was moving, this child who would soon come to be, testing the confines of her current habitat, stretching out in search of more. You shall have it, he told her silently. All that you want, all that you need, all that you have ever dreamed. The sunlight upon an aubergine will not be the last thing of beauty you behold.
"He's stubborn," Clarice answered, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "Like his father."
A flicker of irritation stirred in Hannibal's gut, but he bit it back. She meant nothing by it, he knew, was not challenging him. Clarice would not stop Mischa's second becoming; she was only teasing him. And in light of the miraculous gift she had given him, he supposed he could allow a little teasing.
"Are you suggesting her mother is not stubborn?" he asked her lightly, punctuating his words with the gentle scrape of his teeth against her neck, the flexing of his hand at her breast. Clarice sighed and pressed herself more firmly against him, the swell of her bum brushing against his slowly wakening interest, her breast filling his palm, searching for more of him.
"I would say determined," she told him.
"You would be right."
Deep within Hannibal's mind palace another door opened, and he tucked this moment inside it; the sunlight streaming in from behind silver-grey curtains, the dust motes dancing in the air, the warmth of Clarice, the black lace of her knickers, the scent of her lemon soap, insufficient to mask the faint notes of her arousal his well trained senses caught so easily, the butterfly's wing movement of Mischa, turning somersaults beneath his palm. A beautiful moment, and precious, preserved for eternity now, the room and all its contents carefully enshrined in the only place that really mattered to him.
"Are you finished with this business, Hannibal?" she asked him suddenly, and his attention fled from his mind palace to focus her voice at once. It seemed a strange non-sequitur, to him, that Clarice should leave behind the warm thoughts of their child and the sex that was surely to come and travel instead to his recent activities. Then again, perhaps not strange, he told himself; they were thinking of Mischa, Mischa who was moving, who was making her presence known, and it was for Mischa that he had done these things. There had always been a silken cord between Mischa and death; perhaps even Clarice had realized this.
"No," he told her honestly. There were a few names on his list as yet, and they had months before Mischa would enter the world. Time enough for him to complete his task to the fullest, as he intended to.
"I worry about you," she told him, tracing the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers, her touch featherlight and tender. "There's so much that could go wrong."
His pride longed to protest, but he had been held in a cage when he first met his Starling; he would not lie to her, and say he could never be caught. Even lightning may strike the same place twice, and he knew firsthand, now, that he was not entirely beyond the reach of lesser men. He had been captured by the police, by Mason Verger; even Clarice herself had tracked him down.
"There is always a risk," he allowed. "But the risks are calculated. You leave the maths up to me."
"I thought we agreed you would not keep secrets from me." There was the slightest edge of hurt to her voice; she thought he was trying to push her aside, to shield her from his plans, when he had so recently promised to involve her in them. It would not do, he thought, for her to mistrust him now; he would not give her cause to. He would give her the truth, always. At least, he would give her as much as she could bear.
"For right now," he said, his hand sliding slowly over her belly, charting a course for the warm valley of her thighs, "I have no secrets from you. I will not go hunting again, not for some time. And when I do, I shall tell you everything. But for now," his hand had found the silken skin of her inner thighs, drifted up to dance beneath smooth black lace, and found her already slippery and hot as fire. "I think you ought to let your doctor examine you."
"You're - oh - you're changing the subject," she accused him, but she did not stop the progress of his hand, his fingertips playing across her sensitive flesh.
"There will be time enough for taking out the trash later," he told her, nipping at the slowly darkening mark he had left upon her neck. "I have something more interesting in mind, at present."
Perhaps his reassurances were enough for her, for she turned herself in his arms then, reached for his face and drew him to her for a searing kiss. His eyes closed as she touched him, and so did not see the doubt that swirled within her own.