The Rome Prophecy ts-2

by Jon Tracy

  40

  Professor Enrico Ferrari sits at his desk in the crime lab, facing his biggest problem of the morning.

  It’s one of those dilemmas where you have to eliminate something but you’re really torn between what to keep and what to lose.

  In his case, it’s a big decision.

  Raspberry doughnuts or chopped fresh fruit.

  Despite going into the coffee shop to buy only an espresso, he ended up also buying the fruit tub and the boxed treats.

  It wasn’t really his fault.

  Temptation mugged him close to the checkout. A little voice whispered in his ear that he was a big guy and that he wouldn’t function properly on just chopped fruit. It was his duty to make sure he was on the ball.

  So he left with the doughnuts as well.

  Now it’s a case of diet or no diet. He should eat the fruit and show his willpower by tossing away the box of fun.

  But that’s not going to happen.

  He licks sugar from his fingers.

  Wow!

  The jammy centre explodes in his mouth. Warm and sweet, crunchy and sugary, and then magnificently chewy deep-fried pastry.

  Wow! Wow! Wow!

  He knows it’s a million calories a swallow and he fully realises he’ll be internally imprisoned in fatdom for his sins, but for the next three minutes he doesn’t care.

  There are no tissues close at hand and he’s still in search of a box when Valentina arrives unannounced.

  She’s the only thing he can imagine tasting better than a second doughnut.

  God, for her he would even have missed the fruit and made do with only coffee.

  ‘ Buongiorno,’ he says cheerily. He scans for Federico, but there’s no sign of him. ‘Are you alone?’

  She raises an eyebrow. ‘Is that okay? My momma said I was allowed out if I was careful crossing the road.’

  He spreads his palms apologetically. ‘ Scusi. I just expected Federico.’

  She doesn’t explain why he’s not with her. ‘A few hours ago a body was found down near Tiber Island. It’s at the morgue now, but last night I asked for a rush blood job on the clothing.’

  ‘Aah, the great quest for ketsueki-gata.’

  Valentina is completely thrown. ‘Ket what?’

  ‘ Ketsueki-gata. The Japanese believe that blood types are indications of personalities. I’m type A. That means I am earnest, creative and sensible, perhaps with the failing of being a little fastidious.’

  ‘Fascinating, but unfortunately not my type. The type I’m interested in was swabbed off a gutted corpse in the early hours of this morning.’

  His hopes of flirtation disappear. ‘I’ve only just come in, so I don’t know if it’s been done yet.’ He brushes his sugary hands together as he walks past her into the corridor. ‘Follow me. I’ll hunt down the paperwork and we’ll see.’

  Valentina trails him down one grey corridor after another.

  ‘Do you have a name for the victim?’ he calls over his shoulder.

  ‘No. It was male. The samples will have come into the labs around four a.m., so hopefully you don’t have too many cases of murdered unknown men at exactly the same time.’

  ‘Let’s hope not.’ He tilts his wrist and sees it’s only just gone nine. ‘That shift will have gone home. You’ll be lucky if the report’s been done.’

  ‘I am.’

  He stops walking and turns around. ‘You are what?’

  ‘Lucky. I’m one of those people. Lucky in love, lucky in life.’ She half corrects herself. ‘Well, mostly.’

  Ferrari believes her. She’s made captain, is super-smart, and when it comes to looks, well, he’d crawl naked through broken glass just to lick dirt from the soles of her feet.

  ‘What?’ Valentina frowns at him.

  ‘What what?’

  She laughs. ‘You’re staring at me. Freakishly. What’s wrong?’

  He shakes himself out of his trance. ‘ Mi dispiace. I’m just dazed by your beauty.’

  ‘Oooh, good line!’ she says, her face bright with mischief. She steps tantalisingly close to him and raises a long, slender finger close to his mouth. ‘If I didn’t already have a man whom I adore, and if you didn’t have jam and sugar spread all over your chin like a two-year-old’ – she rubs it away with two fingertips – ‘then I might just fall for a line like that.’

  The open-jawed scientist is horrified. Fat fingers fly frantically to his chin and he rubs so hard his flesh burns. ‘Breakfast!’ he blurts. ‘ Scusi. I was having my breakfast when you came in.’ An open door saves him further embarrassment. He lurches into an office that is already alive with the sound of printers and telephones. Several administrators and secretaries look up as he buries his head in a stack of in-trays on top of a cabinet near the entrance.

  Valentina patiently watches him rifling the documents, aware that half the office is watching her watching him. Young secretaries are admiring her clothes and how she has a senior scientist scrabbling around like a puppy on a lead.

  ‘Here!’ shouts Ferrari, like he’s recovered a ball and brought it back to his owner. ‘Blood tests from the clothes of an unidentified male victim found in the early hours, and it has your name as the officer in charge.’

  ‘Grazie.’ She nods over-graciously to the papers in his hand. ‘A little more information, perhaps?’

  Ferrari is now actually ahead of her. He knows she’s looking for a connection between this new body and the tests on the woman and her sword that his labs have been running. He silently scans columns and paragraphs, then looks up. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. The body last night was covered in only one type of blood, O positive. That’s currently the most common type in Italy and actually in most of the world.’ He wobbles his hand like it was an unbalanced seesaw. ‘At some times, and in some countries, A positive is most popular. But not right here and not right now. Either way, I’m afraid the blood on your new victim does not match that of any of the samples we took for you the other day.’

  Valentina feels drained. ‘Not any of them?’

  ‘No.’ His eyes show sympathy. ‘Let me recap for you. The new sample is O positive. The blood on the prisoner’s gown we tested was AB. The blood on the sword taken from your prisoner is Rhesus positive and the blood on the severed hand is Rhesus negative. You’ve got quite an impressive spread of blood types there.’

  Valentina shakes her head. She’s not impressed at all. She feels like she just lost on the lottery. A full set of unlucky statistics.

  She came to the lab hoping for answers, and all she’s got is more questions.

  Lots more questions.

  41

  La Rambla is a Spanish bar, slung like an abandoned Vespa on the corner of a busy street between Piazza San Pietro and Ospedale Generale Santo Spirito. Alfie Giordano has been coming here and eating bad tapas and big breakfasts since he was first posted to Rome.

  He and Tom sit on tall chrome and leather stools in the traffic-dusted window, remembering old times, while the owner, Josep, treats them to colazioni large enough to feed most of the city.

  ‘Valentina has this case linked to a church in Cosmedin.’

  ‘The Santa Maria?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  Alfie knows it well. ‘Dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Also known as Santa Maria in Schola Graeca – Our Lady of the Greek Community.’ He passes Tom a tiny espresso cup and saucer.

  ‘But it’s famous for this giant mouth?’

  ‘Home to the Bocca della Verita.’ Alfie grasps his left wrist in his right hand. ‘And to thousands of stories about liars and deceivers having their hands cut off.’

  ‘Well, it has another story now. Valentina’s case involves a hand being found in the portico near the Bocca.’

  Alfie plops a cube of brown sugar into his coffee. ‘I haven’t read anything about it.’

  ‘Good. I think that’s how she wants it. They arrested this woman, Suzanna Grecoraci, but she seems mentally ill.’

  ‘Peop
le who cut other people’s hands off usually are.’

  ‘Valentina doesn’t think she did it. Even though she wrote some strange first-person story about being a noblewoman in ancient times called Cassandra who was having her hand chopped off at the church.’

  Alfie stirs his coffee. ‘That seems an unbelievable coincidence.’

  ‘I agree.’ Tom thinks about it as he stares out into the street. People have their collars up as they walk by. A scarf is flying from the back of a kid’s neck like the flag of a ship in a storm.

  Alfie sips his espresso and clinks the cup down on its saucer. ‘The Santa Maria is also the resting place of the remains of St Valentine.’

  ‘Really? I should have known that.’

  ‘I’ve seen the skull. Quite impressive. Though not at all romantic, of course.’

  ‘I guess they do a good trade around St Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘Absolutely packed.’ Alfie gives him a thoughtful look, ‘Talking about love, is it serious between you and Valentina?’

  Tom almost splutters espresso. ‘In what way serious?’

  ‘In the way that one day I might be called upon to give my services.’ He makes an elaborate blessing with his hand.

  His friend looks horrified. ‘You’re very premature with that one.’

  ‘Ah, premature. That’s an interesting choice of word. It means not only that you wouldn’t rule it out, but also that you don’t want to rule it out. Interesting. You could therefore interpret the word to mean “hopefully one day”.’

  ‘Hey, a guy who gets to say Mass in St Peter’s doesn’t need to go touting for work. Anyway, I think she’s already married. To her work.’

  ‘Such a shame.’ Alfie turns down his bottom lip in mock sympathy. ‘This bizarre case is keeping her away from you?’

  ‘It’s even more bizarre than I’ve told you.’ Tom pours orange juice for them both. ‘Murder, ritual dismemberment, a suspect with dissociative identity disorder and more pagan cults, myths and legends than Tolkien ever dreamt of.’

  Alfie laughs. ‘In Rome, everything’s connected to ancient pagan cults, myths and legends. The entire place was built on them. And – come to think of it – it was also built on more than its fair share of murders and mutilations.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what Valentina said.’

  ‘Bright girl. You should marry her.’ He scrubs the end of a croissant in some Tuscan cherry jam. ‘DID is interesting, though. Are you sure it’s multiple personalities and not possession?’

  ‘I thought of that. From what I’ve gleaned, the alter personalities are psychological, not spiritual. They seem to be a defence mechanism to cover childhood trauma rather than individually evil entities.’

  ‘Can you definitely rule out that at least one of the alters isn’t demonic?’

  Tom doesn’t have to think before answering. ‘No, I can’t do that. I haven’t seen all of the alters, so it would be foolish to be so categorical.’

  Alfie rips open a croissant filled with vanilla cream. ‘What’s the murder? The handless victim in Cosmedin?’

  ‘No, that body hasn’t turned up yet. This was last night. A man, found down at the Ponte Fabricio.’

  Alfie licks cream off his fingertips. ‘I’ve lived long enough in Rome to know that the Fabricio is practically the birthplace of the empire. What’s the connection between this and the rest of the case?’

  Tom tries to backtrack. ‘The woman who Valentina arrested, Suzanna, spoke about a body beneath the bridge during her time as this alter called Claudia. Valentina, me and the woman’s shrink drove down there, and I found the corpse at exactly the place she described killing someone hundreds of years ago.’

  Alfie’s intrigued. ‘So maybe this Suzanna killed him in real life and then couldn’t deal with the reality of what she’d done and tried to turn it into a fantasy.’

  Tom shakes his head. ‘The body was cut up and its skull smashed in. I couldn’t imagine any woman doing that, let alone Suzanna. She just doesn’t seem like a killer to me.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve not seen enough killers to know what they look like.’

  ‘I’ve seen my share. Remember, I did pastoral care in several Californian prisons and worked the Death Watch at San Quentin. I know they don’t have “killer” tattooed on their foreheads.’ He catches Josep’s eye behind the bar and gestures politely towards their cups for more coffee. ‘Do you know anything about the Sacro Cuore del Suffragio and the Museum of Souls in Purgatory?’

  ‘A little.’ Alfie finishes the last of the creamy croissant. ‘I think some of the exhibits are far-fetched. When you go in there, you feel more like you’re visiting a circus tent than a sacred room.’

  Tom felt the same way. ‘Well, the words Master, Mistress, Temple and Deliver us from evil were found on the wall of a confessional.’

  ‘Seems a good place to leave those kinds of words.’

  ‘But these were in Latin. And they were the same words used by one of the suspect’s other alters, the one called Cassandra, who met her fate at the Santa Maria.’

  ‘Cassandra?’ Alfie taps his fingers on the tabletop. ‘Cassandra was the Greek prophetess of doom.’

  ‘I know. And on top of that, there was a drawing of a triangle in the plaster.’

  ‘Some kind of symbol?’

  ‘Perhaps. Valentina said the woman she’d arrested had a triangular pendant the same.’

  ‘I imagine lots of women have triangular pendants.’ Alfie sounds dismissive. As an afterthought, he adds: ‘I remember reading a long time ago that triangles used to symbolise fertility.’ He draws the shape in the air, ‘It was supposed to represent the pubic region and had quasi-religious connections to the womb.’

  Tom nods. ‘I said the same to Valentina. The Greeks used it to represent the vulva of the Mother Delta.’

  ‘You’re just trying to lead me astray by saying vulva, aren’t you?’

  Tom laughs. ‘Vulva, vulva, vulva.’

  Alfie crosses his two fingers to form a crucifix. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’

  They both laugh. ‘Of course the sight of a triangle makes me instantly think of a pentagram, but I guess that’s because of our religious training.’

  ‘ Pentagrammon, pentagrammos,’ says Alfie, showing off his Greek, ‘Five-lined, five-sided. You can trace those damned things back to Mesopotamian writings three thousand years before the good Lord first wriggled his toes into a pair of sandals.’

  ‘Pythagoreans called the pentagram Hygieia, after their goddess of health.’

  Alfie’s not to be outdone, ‘Aah, but medieval neo-Pythagoreans – whom you could argue were not Pythagoreans at all – claimed the pentagram represented the five classical elements.’ He draws out the points in the air, ‘Four of these represent fire, water, wind and earth and the fifth is the supernatural, the spirit.’

  Tom’s had enough of the intellectual jousting. ‘Look, does any of this make sense to you? Can you see the wood for the trees, because I sure as hell can’t.’

  Alfie fondly rotates the small espresso cup in his hands. ‘Not really. Symbols always mean secrets. Secrets often mean cults. Cults usually attract crazies.’

  Tom doesn’t see where he’s going. ‘So?’

  ‘You know how coffee drinkers congregate in cafes like this when they want their fix of the really hard stuff, the excellent stuff?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, it would follow that cults and those who believe that symbols have everyday powers will also gravitate to their own centres in order to experience rituals of excellence.’

  ‘Temples, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. And in Rome, that may even include old temples that have been pulled down.’

  ‘Triangular pendant wearers worship at the temple of triangular pendants. I guess I find the place under T in the phone book.’

  Alfie laughs. ‘T for temple or T for triangle?’

  ‘This is madness.’ Tom begins to peel the label off a bottle of wate
r on the table. ‘We have to remember that the poor woman at the heart of all this is mentally ill. She has a severe form of multiple personality disorder and doesn’t even know her own name or whether she’s married or has kids.’

  Alfie takes the bottle off him and gives him the look a mother might give a naughty child. ‘Maybe your poor woman isn’t totally mad. It’s possible that she’s using her alters to leave clues, to cry out for help. Perhaps she hopes someone like you – or your future wife – will decode them and help her.’

  Tom scowls at him. ‘I was going to ask you to have dinner with us; now I think it’s too dangerous to have you around.’

  ‘ Mea culpa.’

  Tom thinks things over. What Alfie is saying makes sense. If Suzanna’s caught up in a cult, she’ll be terrified of talking about it, maybe even uncertain she should betray it. The historic alter personalities and the strange clues all point to a desperate cry for help. He finally takes a slug of the wonderfully bitter espresso. ‘You said temples.’

  Alfie nods.

  ‘I guess there are dozens in Rome. Is there anything like a triangular temple?’

  ‘I know Rome well, but not that well.’ Alfie slides down from his stool and steps towards the bar. ‘Josep, can we use your computer a minute?’ He nods to a new Apple iPad kept under the owner’s admiring supervision on a counter near the till.

  It’s Josep’s pride and joy.

  ‘ Si, but Father, you be careful, yes?’ He hands it over like he’s being forced to pass a newborn child to a drunken rugby player.

  Alfie cradles it and smiles. ‘I’ll treat it like it was your soul.’

  Tom’s no technophile, but even he can’t help but be seduced by the iPad’s sleek design. ‘That really is cool. I’ve heard about these but never seen one.’

  ‘Well, now you get to see – and to touch.’ Alfie shuffles his stool around so they can both access the tablet as he opens up its Safari browser. He taps in the keywords: Temple. Triangle. Rome.

  And wishes he hadn’t.

  Up come useless links to Temple University in Philadelphia, the Chattanooga Triangle and an obscure inventor called Leonard Temple Thorne.