The Rome Prophecy ts-2

by Jon Tracy

Verdetti smiles. ‘She has. She’s from Corviale, she’s twenty-seven years old and has two children. They’re called Carina and Carlo. The girl’s five and the boy three.’

  ‘Poor kids.’ The lieutenant starts to write down their details and wonders how they’re going to react when they find out their mother is as nutty as a fruitcake and is going to be locked up for a long time.

  ‘Save your ink,’ interrupts Verdetti. ‘That’s not who she is. And her children don’t exist.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Valentina looks perplexed.

  ‘We checked our computer network systems for her medical records. No one by that name is on the local register. Nor are either of her children.’

  Federico has formed such a strong image of the children that he can’t now clear them from his mind. ‘Maybe the family only just moved to Rome? You know how bad this city is at keeping records.’

  ‘No,’ insists Verdetti. ‘We found several Suzanna Grecoracis in the area. None of them is the right age, marital or parental status to be her.’

  Valentina spreads her hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘I still don’t get it. Why would she lie about this? We’ve arrested her and she’s going to jail.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Verdetti lets the shock of her response sink in and then explains. ‘Suzanna is another alter – another personality that steps forward in the host body to take control.’

  Valentina shakes her head. ‘So we have Cassandra and Suzanna. Two alters? Two personalities other than that of the real person?’

  ‘That’s right. We call the real person the host. The host may be taken over by multiple personalities.’

  ‘How many is multiple?’ asks Federico.

  Louisa tries to keep it simple. ‘That all depends. Usually, the number of alters is determined by the levels of trauma in the host’s life. The more trauma, the greater the multiple of personalities.’

  The two police officers exchange looks. They know that what Verdetti has just said is the kind of expert testimony that would ensure their prisoner would never face criminal charges.

  The clinician interrupts their ponderings. ‘As I said, you can see her, but I must insist on being in the room as well.’

  Valentina nods. ‘ Capiamo.’

  ‘ Va bene.’ Verdetti pushes back her chair and leads the way.

  Valentina is revising her opinion of the director. Sure, she’s stern. Maybe a bit of a control freak as well. But she’s impressively professional and must have the patience of a saint to deal with people as disturbed as Suzanna, or whoever she really is. And – on top of all that – she’s wearing a pair of black Gucci sneakers that Valentina would kill for.

  The doctor opens the door.

  Suzanna is sitting in a chair by her bed.

  She doesn’t look in the least bit intimidated by the sight of the Carabinieri officers.

  Verdetti makes the introductions. ‘Suzanna, these police officers would like to ask you some questions. Are you okay with that?’

  ‘Of course.’ She sits up straight and smiles. Valentina and Federico pull over some hard-backed visitors’ chairs.

  Federico cautiously starts the ball rolling. ‘You say you’re Suzanna Grecoraci from Corviale. You are married and have two children – is that right?’

  Her face lights up. ‘It is. I have two beautiful children. God has been very kind to me; they’re my angels.’

  ‘I’m sure they are. Where exactly are they now?’ asks Valentina.

  ‘With their father, Romano. He’s travelling the world with them.’ She looks a little sad. ‘They’re in Australia at the moment.’

  ‘Australia.’ Valentina repeats the word for no reason other than the fact that she can’t yet get a grasp on what’s unfolding.

  ‘Yes, I know that’s a very long way away.’ Suzanna laughs nervously. ‘Romano’s parents are down there. They’re very old and not in good health, so he wanted them to see their grandchildren – you know, one last time.’

  Valentina tries to sound sympathetic. ‘Why didn’t you go with them?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a long story.’ She looks embarrassed. ‘I have a fear of flying. I’ve never been in an aeroplane. Don’t think I ever will.’

  Valentina nods understandingly. ‘Do you recognise me, Suzanna? Do you remember where and when we met before?’

  It’s clear from her face that she doesn’t. ‘No, no, I’m afraid I don’t. I hadn’t thought we’d met until now.’ She glances towards the doctor. ‘No one has given me your names, so I’m afraid you’re both strangers to me.’

  Valentina keeps her tone non-judgemental. ‘I visited you in a police cell in Viale Romania and you attacked me.’

  Suzanna looks shocked. ‘Oh no. That’s not possible. I’d never attack anyone. I’ve never hurt anyone or anything in my whole life.’

  Verdetti tries to help everyone out. ‘If it wasn’t you, Suzanna, then who could it have been?’

  ‘One of the others, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She thinks for a while. ‘Well, if it was one of the others, it was most likely Claudia.’

  ‘Not Cassandra?’ queries Valentina. ‘Cassandra seems to be mixed up in a lot of bad things. Could it have been her?’

  Suzanna stays quiet.

  Federico sees an opportunity to push further. ‘Unless of course there is no Cassandra, and you’re lying about all this.’ He leans forward on the edge of his chair. ‘Are you lying, Suzanna? Are you making all this up?’

  Valentina tries to cut him off. ‘Federico…’

  He scents blood and won’t stop. ‘You don’t have any husband, or children. You’re just inventing all this rubbish about “others” because you’ve seriously hurt someone and now you’re trying to act crazy to avoid the consequences of your actions. Aren’t you?’

  Suzanna grows tense.

  The lieutenant presses his point. ‘Best tell us the truth now, before you make things worse.’

  Valentina studies the prisoner. She no longer looks nervous. She seems angry.

  Angry in a peculiarly restrained way. Like a politician or a headmistress when they’re under pressure.

  ‘I think you should go now,’ says Verdetti, sensing a mood change. ‘This may have been a bad idea. It’s too soon for her to face this kind of thing.’

  Valentina ignores her. Her eyes are still locked on the prisoner and the extraordinary look on her face. If she turns violent again, she’ll be ready this time.

  The patient stands and starts to pace the room, mumbling to herself.

  She turns and glares at them.

  Her face is filled with rage.

  Her whole body shape has transformed into someone more powerful and more confident.

  ‘ Juno inferna! How dare you common plebs question my veracity? How in the name of Zeus dare you?’ She shoots Federico a contemptuous look. ‘Sweet Veritas should geld you for your impudence.’ She strides to within a foot of Valentina. ‘And you, girl – you are but a trollop with a mouth made loose by pleasuring too much cock. Now get out! Get out of my sight before I have you tied to the wheel of a chariot and whipped.’

  Valentina gives Louisa a shocked look. ‘Is this Cassandra? The Cassandra in the note she wrote?’

  The doctor looks worried. ‘Perhaps. Will you and your colleague please wait outside?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, I am Cassandra.’ She strides defiantly towards them. ‘And Cassandra is too proud to have whores like you speaking about her in whispers.’

  The clinician opens the door and again urges the officers out. ‘I have to insist that you go.’

  Federico turns to Valentina for guidance and she gives him an assenting nod.

  They slip outside and close the door.

  Valentina hears one final outburst from inside the room.

  ‘I know what you want. Oh yes, I know exactly what you and the snuffling pigs in that septic Senate want. I will never tell you. I would rather take my secret to the grave than tell you.
You want the book, don’t you? You want to get your hands on it and ruin everything. Well, it will never happen. Never!’

  22

  The new one tries to hide her fear, but I see it.

  We all see it.

  It is glazed in the whiteness of her eyes as they lower her into the pit. Pass her into the womb of the earth.

  She is naked and pink. Curled and cowed like a foetus.

  Her soft, virgin skin is like a dropped silk handkerchief in the centuries-old soil. She sits on a cushion of earth, encrusted with the dried blood of many sacrifices.

  Soon there will be more.

  Above her, the drumming begins.

  It starts like the peck of a bird, becomes the thump of a hoof, and grows into the stampede of cattle.

  Taurobolium has begun.

  The new one peeks through her fingers into the blackness above her and sees the first flickers of our lights.

  I feel for her.

  I envy her.

  I love her and hate her.

  We are lighting candles around the edge of the triangular pit. Her eyes catch mine and I fail to see what is so special about her. They say she is ‘the one’.

  The favoured one.

  But I see nothing that will stop me usurping her.

  Nothing that will prevent me from taking my rightful place in line .

  The Korybantes dance their way to the front, naked but for their shields, swords and helmets.

  The sound of metal on metal makes a sinister percussion. The steel is there to slice.

  To cut.

  To kill.

  There is an orgiastic surge in the music.

  The Galli begin their chanting.

  We gather closer and bond tightly with our sisters from Baby lonia, Syria, Asia Minor, Etruria and Anatolia.

  The nine Korybantes are joined with the three magical Dactyls.

  We are all one.

  The music, drumming and chanting reaches its climax.

  The goddess is here!

  Our Mother has arrived.

  She holds aloft the hands that eight thousand years ago dug into the earth of Catal Huyuk, the hands that spread the soil of time while She gave birth flanked by leopards.

  We all scream.

  Scream so loud our spirits almost fly from our throats.

  Somewhere down in the blackness, the special one gathers the fine clothes we have sewn for her and dresses herself.

  She moves to the centre of the pit.

  The limbs of eunuchs strain on thick ropes and the rafters creak.

  Above us, a bull that has trod pastures for six summers bucks in its harness.

  Then it thrashes no more.

  The blades open up its sacred rivers of blood and they pour down on the libation boards across the pit.

  My sister showers in the animal’s life force.

  She dances joyously as the blood from the Bull of Heaven purifies her.

  Now she is born again – for eternity.

  Unless I can stop her.

  23

  Father Giordano is covering for a friend and working a double shift.

  That said, he’s doing it at a place where priests don’t mind putting in unspecified amounts of unpaid overtime.

  St Peter’s.

  Or, to give the greatest building of its age its full name, the Basilica Papale di San Pietro Vaticano.

  Tom has scurried across the city to be there for Alfie’s final appearance of the day, and already all the effort is worthwhile.

  The basilica is breathtaking.

  Tom can’t think of any other way to describe it. The beauty of the vast seventeenth-century facade built of pale travertine stone, with its giant Corinthian columns, makes him dizzy.

  Then there’s the inside.

  The spectacularly arched entrance with its heavenly stained glass just about holds Tom’s eyes before they fix on Michelangelo’s central dome, still the tallest in the world at more than a hundred and thirty-six metres. Then there’s the basilica’s wonderful nave, narthex, portals and bays to feast on, before his favourite visual treat, the main altar, with Bernini’s astonishing bronze baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure that stands almost a hundred feet high and looks even taller.

  St Peter’s is visual gluttony. No sense is left unstuffed. No emotion left sober.

  Mass is said at altars great and small throughout the cavernous building, so Tom has to search a while before he finds his friend in the relatively modest Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

  Modest is the wrong word.

  The gilded bronze Bernini tabernacle alone is worth more than the entire church that Tom last officiated in.

  He kneels with the rest of the congregation and can’t help but feel proud of his tall ginger-haired friend as he works his way gracefully and passionately through the service.

  For Tom, the Mass is over all too quickly.

  He settles back in a pew and enjoys the peace while he waits for Alfie to change and reappear. Few places in the world have the intense silence of a church, and he still finds it the most effective place to examine his own thoughts.

  And right now there are lots of them.

  Was it smart to rush into a relationship with Valentina? What does she expect from it?

  Where does he hope it will go?

  How is it most likely to end?

  So many thoughts. All backed up and jostling for attention like closing-time drinkers in a city-centre bar.

  Looking back, he can see that they grew close after the death of her cousin Antonio. But maybe there was always a spark between them. Some genetic trigger that attracts people and compels them to be together was pulled.

  But he thinks there’s more than that.

  More than just the physical.

  He admires her strength and ambition, respects her individuality and her determination to make a go of things on her own. He loves her sense of humour and her desire to do good.

  Yes, Tom concludes, it was smart to throw himself into a relationship with her. Chances of happiness don’t exactly queue up outside your door and knock noisily for an appointment. Especially if you’re an ex-priest with no job, no home and no savings.

  He looks up from the old dark wood of the pews and sees Alfie, his face beaming as brightly as the winter sunshine filtering through Michelangelo’s dome. The service is over.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the planet’s most troublesome ex-priest.’ He opens his arms.

  Tom embraces him warmly and puts a hand gently to his face. ‘You looked magnificent up there, my friend. I’m so proud of you. How did you end up saying Mass in here?’

  Alfie puts an arm around Tom and guides him towards the door. ‘A long story, best told over hot coffee and Italy’s finest pastries.’

  ‘Sounds heavenly.’

  ‘Sufficient to say it was God’s will. That and the fact that innumerable first choices went down with a severe dose of the shits after a very poor communal meal.’

  24

  The hospital cafeteria is sickeningly warm and smells queasily of hot fat and bleach.

  Over barely warm coffee and day-old croissants, Valen tina and Federico try to make sense of what’s just happened.

  Not that there’s much to make sense of.

  The woman prisoner is bark-at-the-moon mad. And from the quick check Federico does with HQ, there’s still no sign of a victim.

  When the dregs of a poor espresso have been drained, Lieutenant Assante heads off with instructions to write up his notes, mail them to Valentina and not mention the case to anyone else until she tells him to. He resents the tightness of her leash, but with any luck he’ll be off it and back with his wife and family by lunchtime.

  Valentina’s about to call Tom when she’s struck by an urge to return to the ward. If nothing else, she’d like to learn more from Louisa Verdetti about the patient’s latest outburst, providing of course the director hasn’t already left.

  She has.

  Her office is empt
y. Lights out. Blinds down. Door locked. It looks like most of the nursing staff have gone too. No doubt the skeleton Sunday crew has been stretched to invisibility doing routine jobs.

  Valentina takes advantage of the slack supervision. She flashes her ID at the guard in the corridor and within a minute is once again face to face with Suzanna.

  ‘Hi. How you doing?’ She closes the door gently behind her.

  The young woman is sitting up in bed, hunched over a wooden roller tray, the type patients are served meals on.

  She glances towards the captain but doesn’t say anything.

  Valentina makes small talk as she heads her way. ‘You look as though you’re busy. Are they making you work for your stay?’

  A tiny voice comes back. The voice of a sad child. ‘Mommy says I have to do my homework. She says if I don’t get it done I’m not going to be allowed to go with Daddy when he comes for me. Do you know what time it is?’

  Valentina stays calm. ‘Plenty of time, honey. You’ve got plenty of time. What’s your name?’

  She doesn’t look up from her writing. ‘Suzanna.’

  Valentina is relieved. ‘That’s right. Suzanna Grecoraci, I remember now.’

  ‘No, silly. That’s not my name. I’m Suzanna Fratelli. I’m only eight. Suzanna Grecoraci is the name of that old lady, the one who is friends with the others.’ She looks up and gives Valentina a childish giggle. ‘You must be really silly to mix us up.’ She adds a critical stare to her facial repertoire. ‘Have you been drinking? My daddy mixes things up when he’s been drinking.’

  Valentina moves closer to her. ‘No, I haven’t. Do other people mix you up?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She looks down and works some more on the paper in front of her. ‘The others call me Little Suzie; that way when I leave notes and things they don’t get us confused.’

  ‘The others? What others are they?’

  ‘You know. The others, the ones who live in here with us.’ Valentina’s out of her depth and she knows it. ‘How many, Suzie? How many others are there?’

  Suzie stops her work and counts them off on her fingers. ‘More than that!’ She holds up two outstretched hands, fingers spread wide. ‘ Lots more.’