The Rome Prophecy ts-2

by Jon Tracy

  ‘ Si. I asked my staff to hand it to your colleague.’

  ‘I have it.’ Federico holds up the bag.

  Valentina turns to Verdetti. ‘Do you know why it was so important to her? Why she felt she had to hide it?’

  ‘No. It’s probably personal and not of any real value or importance. DID sufferers sometimes attach enormous significance to certain objects, just like babies do to favourite teddy bears or blankets.’

  ‘But she wrote about it,’ says Valentina, ‘in some weird Roman story.’

  The doctor gives them a comforting smile. ‘Again, I don’t see anything unusual. The young woman we’re treating is very disturbed. She needs close attention and understanding. Did you notice her wrists, her arms?’

  Federico shakes his head.

  ‘Drug tracks?’ asks Valentina.

  ‘No,’ says Verdetti. ‘Something even harder to treat. Her arms are laced with scars from self-harming; her psychological state is very disturbed.’

  Valentina has seen self-harming before. Way back when she was a recruit, she arrested a teenage girl for shoplifting whose forearms were slashed to ribbons. ‘She cuts herself when she’s stressed because it gives her some strange sense of relief?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s symptomatic of deep-lying trauma or abuse, and by the look of it she’s been doing this for years.’

  ‘I’m sorry; I hope you can help her.’

  ‘We can, given time. Come back tomorrow. Give us twenty-four hours to continue our assessments and diagnosis. Let us make her feel safe and comfortable, and then I’ll consider giving you access, under supervision, to interview her.’

  Valentina nods. She knows she doesn’t really have a choice. It’s clear that no amount of pressure is going to change Verdetti’s mind. ‘We’ll be back in the morning. G razie.’

  ‘ Prego.’ The doctor rises to shake hands.

  ‘One thing before we go,’ adds Valentina. ‘Patients with… er…’ She struggles for the clinical name she’s just been told.

  ‘Dissociative identity disorder.’

  ‘ Grazie. Patients with dissociative identity disorder, are they capable of murder?’

  Verdetti’s face hardens again. ‘Undoubtedly. They’re capable of almost anything.’

  14

  On the drive back to Via Annia Faustina, Valentina sticks an earpiece into her iPhone and calls her boss.

  He’s at home and answers as though he’s shouting out a swear word. ‘Caesario.’

  ‘Major, it’s Captain Morassi. I thought you might appreciate an update on the case you sent me out on.’

  He lets out a tired sigh. ‘Capitano, you’ve arrested a woman in her late twenties who calls herself Cassandra, and she’s so crazy she’s already locked up in a psych ward. Lieutenant Assante says Forensics are working on some bloodstained clothes and a weapon, but there’s still no sign of a victim. Do you have anything to tell me that I don’t already know?’

  Valentina is shocked that Federico has gone behind her back and spoken directly to the major. ‘We’re hoping to interview the suspect in the morning.’

  ‘So I understand. Anything else?’

  Valentina now makes no effort to hide her annoyance. ‘Yes, sir, did you ask Assante to report directly to you? I certainly didn’t.’

  There’s a brief pause. ‘For the sake of keeping this conversation short, let’s say I did. Now good evening to you, I have a far more important disagreement to finish with my wife.’

  Valentina’s left listening to dial tone. She punches the steering wheel with the palm of her hand and drives off at a speed she knows she shouldn’t.

  It’s eight p.m. by the time she re-enters her apartment.

  It’s dark and lit by candles in the kitchen.

  She smells fresh flowers long before she sees the spray of pink and cream roses in a water jug on the worktop.

  ‘My goodness, you’ve been busy.’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’ Tom is in the narrow kitchen, his back to her. ‘Give me a sec to uncork this wine, then I’ll tell you all about the spectacular piece of fish I’m cooking for you.’

  She flinches. ‘I booked a table. I told you we were going out.’

  He turns around and smiles. ‘Cancel it. Fish is my speciality. You won’t find better food or service anywhere in Rome.’

  She can’t hide her disappointment. ‘It was tough to get a table. Very tough.’

  He feels too awkward to say anything.

  She scratches at the back of her neck. ‘Why is it men always believe they have the right to do whatever they want, regardless of whether it’s the opposite of what women want?’

  Tom’s taken aback. ‘I’m sorry. I’d foolishly hoped the candles, flowers and wine might have rekindled some of that friendliness you expressed earlier.’

  Valentina sits on the arm of the sofa, buries her head in her hand and swears softly. ‘ Porca vacca! ’

  He moves towards her. ‘Those are bad words, aren’t they?’

  She manages a muffled laugh. ‘Not the worst I know, but yes, they’re bad.’

  He puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘I only just warmed things a little, because I didn’t know when you’d be in. I can easily turn it all off and we can go out.’

  She looks at him. ‘No. I’m sorry. What a cow. I’ve had a difficult day with my boss and I just snapped.’ She glances around. ‘It’s really very nice that you went out, bought everything and did all this.’ She smiles. ‘Quite romantic.’

  He smiles back. ‘I can be. Given the chance.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Certainly is.’

  They trade looks, eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘Do I have time to change for dinner?’

  ‘Sure. Plenty.’

  She heads to the bedroom.

  Tom calls after her. ‘You want some help?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  He sits for a minute on the same sofa arm where Valentina has just perched and wonders if he’s doing the right thing. His body is tingling with the thrill of flirtation and the anticipation of what could be. At the same time a part of him wants to run.

  Valentina reappears.

  She’s wearing a cream silk robe.

  Her dark hair falls lavishly against the porcelain whiteness of her neck. ‘Did you finally get that cork out? Or do you need a woman’s help?’

  Tom gets up and heads to the abandoned bottle, his heart flipping like a pancake. He has to calm himself in order to safely use the corkscrew.

  Valentina picks up a big-bowled wine glass by its stem and tilts it towards him. ‘Your lip still hurt?’

  He pours a drizzle of golden Meursault into her glass. ‘No. Yours?’ Their eyes lock again.

  ‘Not at all.’ She moves the glass away, leans slowly forward and kisses him tenderly but fully on his bruised mouth.

  Tom just about manages to put the bottle down safely.

  Somehow Valentina finds a kitchen worktop to rest her glass on.

  His hands undo her robe and slip inside the warm silk. Her skin is smooth and she smells of coconut.

  He kisses her again and glides his fingers up to her shoulder blades, massaging them as she curls into him.

  Valentina moves her hands from the back of his neck to the front of his shirt. Some buttons she manages to undo, others just snap off as she pulls the cloth open and tugs it down his thick arms.

  They’re both almost breathless, mouths bleeding from the intense contact, bodies flushed with excitement.

  Valentina smoothes her palms across his hard chest and feels his nipples stiffen. He’s much taller than she is. She pulls him down to her height, then all the way to the dirty kitchen floor.

  Tom’s fingers find her legs and thighs. He plants rows of soft kisses across the silken pastures of her stomach and breasts.

  She lets out a warm sigh of expectancy.

  He slides his fingers around the arch of her back and slips off her small red La Perla briefs.


  Valentina stretches like a cat as kisses trickle across her hips, then along her bikini line, and finally gather between her legs.

  His hands cup her buttocks and his tongue snakes deep inside her.

  She clings to him. Digs her nails into his vast back and holds on like she’s going to fall off a cliff.

  And in a way she does. A vast tumble into oblivion, her head spinning and her heart pounding while a river of pent-up emotion breaks wonderfully free.

  15

  The guard outside the hospital room is the first to notice that the prisoner is out of bed and moving around.

  He can see her through a slit of unfrosted glass, shuffling close to the wall.

  The young man is about to call the nursing station when the night sister appears. ‘She’s out of bed,’ he announces in a worried tone.

  ‘I know.’ Sister Elizabetta Erio is a slightly overweight forty-year-old. ‘She pulled the emergency cord. Let’s see how she is.’

  They enter the room together and find the prisoner-cum-patient sitting on the floor in the corner adjacent to the bed. Her hands are wrapped tightly around her drawn-up knees. She looks like a small, terrified child.

  ‘Come on, young lady,’ says Sister firmly. ‘You shouldn’t be down there. Let’s get you back into bed and make you comfortable.’

  The guard bends down to help her, but this makes the woman cower even more. He guesses she’s afraid of the uniform and the white-holstered gun on his belt.

  Elizabetta steps forward, takes her by the elbow and helps her to her feet in a no-nonsense way. ‘You’re going to freeze down there. Now let’s get you tucked up again.’

  The prisoner allows herself to be moved back to the high metal bed. Her eyes never leave the guard.

  Sister Erio quickly adjusts the patient’s faded hospital nightgown and covers her up. She’s read the woman’s case notes and knows she needs to stay alert. While the patient looks as meek as a mouse, and hasn’t spoken since admission, the huge bruise on her forehead is a reminder that there’s a constant chance of sudden and unexpected violence. ‘Does your head hurt, honey? That’s quite a bump you’ve got there.’

  The woman scowls and tentatively puts her fingers to the patch of purple and black skin.

  ‘I’ll get you some painkillers. Would you like me to bring you a drink as well? Some nice cool water?’ She looks for a confirmatory nod.

  ‘ Si. Grazie.’

  Elizabetta’s shocked. She stares disbelieving at the prisoner’s lips. ‘Okay. It’s good that you’re talking. Give me a minute, I’ll go and get some for you.’

  On the way out, she pulls the guard aside. ‘Watch her. Watch her closely. I’ll be back in no time.’

  Elizabetta phones the night doctor and grabs 400 mg of ibuprofen. She takes a plastic cup from the cooler in the corridor, fills it with chilled water and is back in the room within a minute.

  The patient pops the tablets and drains all the water. ‘ Grazie.’

  ‘ Prego.’ Elizabetta sits on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m going to take your pulse and your blood pressure. Is that all right?’

  The woman nods nervously. ‘Where am I? Why am I here?’

  ‘You really don’t know?’

  The fear in her eyes says she doesn’t. ‘I have no idea.’ She bites at an already well-chewed thumbnail and looks around. ‘Was I hurt? Was I in some kind of accident?’

  Elizabetta glances towards the guard. ‘The Carabinieri brought you here. They’ll probably want to talk to you, tell you about everything.’ She gives her a kindly smile. ‘Don’t worry about things; we’re going to look after you. Can you tell me what your name is?’

  ‘Suzanna.’

  Elizabetta looks pleased.

  ‘ Va bene.’ She reaches for the clipboard at the end of the bed and writes on some notes. ‘And your last name, Suzanna, what’s your last name?’

  ‘Grecoraci. Suzanna Grecoraci.’

  ‘Excellent. That’s a good start.’

  The patient looks puzzled. ‘You didn’t know who I was?’

  ‘No. No, we didn’t.’

  Suzanna dips her head; when she raises it again, she looks ashamed. ‘Was someone else here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes the others come. They come and take my body without me knowing. Then they do things that I don’t know about. Bad things.’

  16

  It’s a long time before Valentina and Tom make it to her bedroom, and even longer before they return to the kitchen for a much-delayed dinner.

  Valentina throws on a black jogging suit, not at all what she’d imagined she’d wear for their date, but it seems suitable when she clambers out of her wrecked bed.

  They work side by side in the kitchen, cooking, chatting, sharing wine as though they’ve been a couple for years rather than minutes. She gets old white plates out of a top cupboard beside the cooker where he’s working. ‘You’ve changed a lot since we first met.’

  The comment amuses him, ‘How so?’

  ‘More confident. More worldly.’ She puts down the plates and sits up on the work counter so she can see his face while he cooks. ‘Was that what living with Tina did for you?’

  Tom feels uncomfortable for the first time. ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t want to talk about her?’

  ‘Not really.’ He drops chopped onions into the heavy heated skillet to make a base for a sauce and begins to crush a garlic clove while musing on how much more he’s prepared to tell her. ‘It’s just over a year since we split up. I guess it was inevitable. You remember Tina, she was a professional woman determined to build a career and have a settled life. Me, I was an ex-priest determined to drift a bit and certainly not keen to have any responsibility after what happened in LA and Venice.’

  Valentina remembers how she and Tom first met, how she was shocked at discovering that he’d accidentally killed two street thugs in LA who were attacking a woman near his old church. She remembers too the case in Venice she got him involved in and how they both nearly died solving it. She picks up her glass of wine and wonders whether it was the fact that they’d nearly died together that led to this moment when they slept together. She watches him chopping tomatoes while browning onions and somehow the picture of domesticity prompts her to ask a question she never thought she’d ask. ‘You loved Tina, didn’t you?’

  He doesn’t look up from the sizzling onions. ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I tried to. I wanted to.’ He slides the tomatoes into the pan, stirs with a wooden spatula and adds spices. ‘We both tried to, we both wanted to. You have to remember that Tina was my first relationship since leaving the priesthood. The first person I’d ever… you know. Certainly the only woman I’ve ever lived with.’

  Valentina is surprised. ‘She was?’

  ‘Yes, she was.’ He smiles at her. ‘Despite what you read in the papers, most of the Catholic clergy don’t have active sex lives.’

  She laughs. ‘Didn’t you – you know – have sex before you went into the priesthood?’

  He seasons two substantial tuna steaks, adds them to the skillet and covers them in the rich tomato sauce. ‘I feel like you’re interviewing me again. Any second now your old boss Vito is going to walk in, and the two of you are going to give me the third degree all over again. Only this time it won’t be about a body in a canal; it’ll be about my sex life as a teenager.’

  She leans towards him, not confrontationally, just enough to catch his eye and make sure he understands she’s playing with him, merely digging around a little to get to know him better. ‘If I were interviewing you, I’d be suspicious, Tom Shaman, because you just avoided answering my question.’

  ‘And I, Captain Morassi, would be asking for my lawyer and saying no comment. But as you seem determined to have a straight answer, no, I didn’t have a full sexual relationship with anyone before I became a priest.’

  ‘Aah, a President Clinton answe
r.’ She fakes a deep American voice, ‘ I did not have a full sexual relationship with that woman.’ She leans on his shoulder. ‘But maybe there was a bit of fooling around, yes?’

  He can’t believe she’s doing this to him. ‘Maybe. Now, can we change the subject? Or else I’m going to burn your food.’

  ‘Okay.’ Valentina knows she’ll have other opportunities to open him up. She swings herself down from the worktop and wanders across the apartment.

  Tom tries to concentrate on the cooking. The whole process is a wonderfully therapeutic ceremony and one he fell in love with while in France.

  A few minutes later Valentina calls to him, ‘Would you look at something for me? Give me a second opinion.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ He removes the skillet from the heat and slides the tuna on to pre-warmed plates. ‘ Fantastico! Wait until you taste this.’

  Valentina picks papers up from the sofa. ‘The woman we arrested, the one I told you about, she wrote down some strange things. I’ve got photocopies here.’

  He carries the plates waiter-style, one across his wrist, the other on his palm, gripped by the tip of his fingers. ‘You want more wine?’

  ‘Not yet. Thanks.’ She taps the sofa. ‘Sit next to me. I’m sorry there’s no dining table. Not yet. Probably not ever in here, it’s too small.’

  He hands over her plate and a knife and fork, ‘ Buon appetito. I hope you like it.’

  ‘Looks good.’ She grins a little. ‘I’m sure it’s worth staying in for. Have a look at these while you eat.’

  He takes the photocopied papers, smoothes them out on the arm of the sofa and tastes his food.

  The tuna is cooked too little and the accompanying green beans boiled too much. So much for trying to make an impression.

  He works slowly through the papers, wondering if he should offer to re-cook her fish. A glance across the room shows it’s not necessary. She’s almost finished.

  He taps the paper as he reaches the end. ‘This is fascinating. What’s your prisoner like? Intelligence? Age? Looks?’