by Sam Christer
‘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 cafés 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 water 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.
The next page is more valuable. It references the use of triangles in the history of Rome and Greece.
‘Dive in a bit and let’s have a look,’ suggests Tom.
Alfie clicks open page after page. There are passages detailing the use of the symbol all the way back to the Bronze Age.
They get sidetracked by articles on Euclidean geometry, and then they chase the use of the symbol through palaces and sacred caves in Crete and mountain sanctuaries and tombs in archaic Greece.
‘Let’s narrow it down,’ suggests Alfie, his tone giving away the fact that he can’t take much more browsing. ‘I’ll just type in “Temples in Rome” and see what we get.’
Two million entries – that’s what they get.
Tom sits back in amazement.
‘Wuuu! Talk about needles and haystacks. I thought you were narrowing things down.’
‘Me too.’ Alfie clicks open a Wikipedia link. Up pops an alphabetical guide to temples, cult centres and pagan structures across the Eternal City. ‘So, what have we got here?’ The temple links are displayed according to area and also according to each person or deity they’re dedicated to.
‘There seem to be seven areas.’ Tom runs his finger across the iPad. ‘Campus Martius – the Field of Mars – the Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, Forum Boarium, Roman Forum, Imperial Fora and the Fora Venalia.’
‘Yikes,’ is the best Alfie can manage.
‘And then there are these five other categories.’ Tom glides his finger over the super-smooth screen. ‘The Temples of Cybele, Elagabalium, Marcus Aurelius, Minerva Medica and Virtus.’
‘Double yikes.’
Bright sun is now pouring through the window of the bar. The two friends can feel it on their faces. The warmth makes Tom yawn and reminds him of the sleep deficit he’s run up. Settlement time is coming up fast. ‘I’m wiped out. I’m going to get the bill.’ He eases himself off the chair and goes to pay Josep. ‘Will you write down the sites for me, Alfie, so I can give them to Valentina?’
‘Sure.’ Alfie jots them down on a white paper napkin, then follows Tom to the bar, iPad held carefully in both hands. He goes behind the counter and puts it back on charge. Josep’s hawk eyes watch his every move.
They say goodbye with much handshaking and back-slapping and slip into the bright, late morning sunlight.
Neither of them notices the man across the road.
The one who’s been watching them for the last two hours.
42
The local cops and mortuary staff call her Nonna.
Professoressa Filomena Schiavone is actually a grandmother, so she doesn’t at all mind the nickname.
But it hasn’t always been like that.
There was a time when the medical examiner worried almost obsessively about growing old.
Turning thirty was a trauma. The first grey hair had come and agonisingly signalled the end of her girlish world.
Forty was horrendous. A time when everyone was getting divorced or realising their marriages would end childless. It was the first time in her life she’d felt remotely uncertain about the future.
Fifty was catastrophic.
It was an age she lied about. A milestone she denied having reached for as long as believably possible. And looking back, that was quite a while.
Despite hitting the big half-century mark, she still had admirers. Even after the death of her husband four days before her fifty-fifth birthday.
But sixty changed everything.
At last, she learned to accept things.
Life was short, and getting shorter by the moment. It was there to be lived to the full.
Compared to the loss of Mari
o, white hair and the pull of gravity on flesh were nothing. She’d been rocked by his death. Shaken to her core. She’d been a recluse for five years, finding time only for her daughter, two grandsons and of course her work.
But not now.
Now she’s out dating again.
Yep, as ridiculous as it sounds, Filomena’s ‘playing the field’, as she calls it. And right now she’s walking out with a former lawyer who’s seventy next year.
Life is good.
Or at least it seems that way until she bends over the remains of the corpse that her staff have left on her slab.
The floor is splashed with brown river water and the sauce of death is spilling from his lifeless orifices.
All manner of molluscs and crustaceans have taken up lodgings in the gaping wounds she’s gazing down on.
The body is that of a reasonably well-nourished male in his early thirties. He is about five feet eight inches tall and would have weighed around eleven stone had his stomach not been opened up and half his organs washed away. She lifts his hands and sees that many of the finger bones have been broken. Perhaps a sign of torture. Possibly the result of rocks or stones being piled upon him post-mortem to conceal the corpse. A cracked rib cage, broken jaw and damaged eye socket are also consistent with the latter. A little later she’ll have x-rays done. Looking at the prints of bone fusion is still one of the best ways of ageing a corpse.
Filomena manoeuvres the cadaver on to its side and notes corresponding pressure injuries on his back. It’s not the worst case she’s ever seen, but it’s up there. The scalp shows a number of minor abrasions to the front and side, but in particular to the rear, where a huge piece of bone has been smashed in. Fragments are inside the jagged cavity of the skull, but for the moment it’s hard to be sure whether the wound was made by an attacker before death or was the result of rocks being piled on the corpse.
She lays the body flat and examines the stomach wound.
It’s even more peculiar.
The man has not just been stabbed; he’s been opened in some kind of ritualistic way. It makes her think of hara-kiri, the Japanese suicide ritual, and a lecture she once attended on the samurai tradition of seppuku – stomach cutting. Noble practitioners were supposed to plunge the sword into the abdomen and then move the blade left to right in a slicing motion.
She continues with her examination and ignores the smell of the bloated body. It certainly looks like the cut was made from the victim’s left. Marks on the lower ribs show the blade was dragged horizontally, then, by the looks of it, pulled downwards at forty-five degrees for about seven inches. She makes notes on a pad and wonders whether a weapon was found alongside the victim. She’s not been told of one, and its absence would certainly indicate murder rather than suicide.
A picture forms of the victim being hit from behind and then stabbed in the stomach as he fell to the ground.
She looks again at the wound.
That theory doesn’t seem to fit.
The cut marks against the ribs are upwards, as though the victim was still vertical.
Something else isn’t right.
Filomena pulls up the flap of abdominal flesh and jumps back.
From inside the stomach cavity, two dark baby mice bolt for freedom.
She screams like a teenager.
Within seconds, an orderly is in the room.
The best the professoressa can do is point at the rodents, both of which are now trying to hide beneath the neck of the corpse.
Roberto, a man in his early thirties, traps them with a stainless-steel bowl, and with all the speed of a magician, palms the offending creatures and heads outside.
The other thing he hides professionally is his smile. Nonna’s phobia about mice is legendary, and unfortunately the morgue is not without its unwelcome intruders.
After a brief respite, Filomena shouts Roberto back in.
Only when the cadaver has been checked and declared mouse-free does she resume her work.
Setting a time of death is difficult.
The corpse has been exposed to the elements and has probably been covered by the tide of the Tiber. It’s also been masked by rocks, affording a little shelter.
She always tells the police: ‘time of death is precisely between when the victim was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered’.
The lower part of the torso is heavily damaged by rocks, and the knees and shins show extensive injuries.
She diligently marks them on a standard anatomical drawing.
Only now does she realise that the gaping wounds to the man’s head and stomach have drawn her attention away from something she would otherwise have instantly found fascinating.
The man has no scrotum and no testicles.
She looks closer. This isn’t a recent injury. In fact, it isn’t an injury at all.
It’s been done very deliberately.
Judging from the scars, there’s been a crude operation to castrate him.
The deceased is a modern-day eunuch.
43
The apartment seems strange without Valentina in it.
Empty. Silent. Soulless.
Tom uses the bathroom, strips and falls into bed.
Maybe his life would also be strange without Valentina in it.
Interesting thought.
He remembers what Alfie had said. You could interpret ‘interesting’ to mean he hoped one day to be with her for the rest of his life.
Maybe that’s true.
He puts his sentimentality down to exhaustion and pulls the quilt up tight around his neck. A long, deep sleep will give him perspective. It always does.
He squashes his pillow a few different ways until it seems right, and shuts his eyes.
It feels wonderful to rest. His tired muscles and joints are relieved to be laid out flat and still.
A couple of hours’ sleep will do him the world of good.
But he’s not going to sleep.
He knows it.
His eyes are shut, but there’s no way he’s going to sleep.
One of those awful moments is happening. One where the more you try to sleep the more you know it’s not going to happen.
Finally, he gets up.
He wanders to the lounge, grabs Valentina’s Vaio and brings it back to bed.
A distraction is all he needs.
His brain will stop buzzing and his eyes will grow weary and then he’ll nod off.
Fantastic.
He surfs the net for ten minutes. He checks out the LA Times sports pages and scrolls through the latest on the Lakers and Dodgers. He even finds out how the Clippers, Kings and Ducks are doing.
Sleep still seems a long way off.
He can’t even glimpse it hiding around the corner.
Tom reaches down the bed to recover his trousers. He pulls out the napkin that Alfie wrote on at La Rambla.
He might as well start a virtual search of the temples.
A is for Apollo Sosianus.
The site takes him to pictures of the Field of Mars – just walking distance from where he found the murdered man. The site shows that nothing remains of the temple except three tall columns. Accompanying text says there was once a cult of Apollo, established outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome ploughed by Romulus.
Tom Googles Apollo and sees nothing he doesn’t already know.
The guy was a superhero. As famous in Greece as he was in Rome. Son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis, the god of everything from archery to medicine, music to poetry.
He gets a bad feeling as he looks at a second-century marble of Apollo holding a lyre and a python.
Snakes always give him bad feelings.
But there are no triangles. No rituals or stories of severed hands to link the deity with his modern-day case.
He goes back to the home page.
B is for Bellona.
This is a temple close to that of Apollo and was dedicated to a goddess of war who seemed to
have Etruscan origins. Her followers were said to have syncretised their beliefs with those of another sect, that of the Magna Mater. The web page shows a painting of Bellona by Rembrandt, and Tom wonders if he’s ever seen a woman look so masculine. Below it is a bronze by Rodin that makes her look a little more feminine.
He flicks back to pictures of the temple.
It’s in ruins. Nothing except broken chunks of marble and busted pillars.
Only a single podium still stands as a reminder of the powerful building that was once there.
He closes his eyes for a second and thinks about what C might be for.
He doesn’t find out.
Sleep finally comes, right at the wrong moment.
44
A windy morning miraculously morphs into a mild and sunny lunchtime.
It’s a long way until spring but is still warm enough for Valentina to take her tray of food to a table on the patio outside the police canteen.
She’s more than ready for the break.
The morning has been brutal.
First the bad news from the forensic labs, then the strange report Federico has just phoned in from the mortuary.
A dead eunuch?
What sense does that make?
She takes a tomato salad, two slices of fresh rustic bread, an espresso and a glass of water off her tray.
While she eats with just a fork, she stifles a yawn and scribbles in her notebook.
The body by the Tiber is a major development, but it’s also a huge distraction. All the real clues to cracking the case surely lie in the multiple personalities of the woman they are calling Prisoner X, the thin slip of a thing confined to a hospital bed at the Policlinico.
Valentina downs her espresso and quickly sketches out names, ages and the briefest of details presented by the suspect’s several personalities.
The small chart makes fascinating reading.
Suzanna and Little Suzie seem to be the two contemporary personalities, while Claudia and Cassandra – both classic Roman names – are the ‘legendary’ alters.
Little Suzie alluded to the fact that there were many others.
Are there really more? Questions stick like bugs on a windscreen.
