by Sam Christer
There’s a dull cry from beneath her.
The monster hands shift. But they are not gone. Now her attacker has hold of her feet and starts to pull her across the floor.
Valentina slides in the broken lamp glass. It digs into her back where her blouse has come up and spikes into her scalp like a crown of thorns.
She tries to lurch forward as she’s pulled. Grabs at thin air. Swings a wild punch and connects painfully with a wall to the right of her.
One of her legs flops free.
From the blackness comes a hard kick to her kidneys. She whooshes air and pirouettes in pain.
A follow-up kick catches her in the spine and she gets her first rush of panic. Maybe she’s going to get badly beaten here. Or worse.
There’s a blinding flash.
The light is on.
Tom is standing by the door with his hand on the switch.
He sees Valentina and her attacker bent over her.
It isn’t Anna. It’s a man.
There’s a second of inaction, a moment when everyone is overwhelmed by the first sight of each other.
Tom ends the stand-off.
The room is small, and within two steps he’s able to plant a high kick deep into the man’s abdomen.
Before he even doubles up, Tom slips behind him and executes a lethal choke hold. The guy is a good six inches smaller. All the big American has to do to fully immobilise him is turn his hip and inch him up along his outstretched leg.
Valentina gets to her feet.
She unholsters her handcuffs and locks them around the man’s wrists. She pushes him to his knees and breathes a sigh of relief.
Tom wants to go over to her, take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knows he can’t. This is her stage.
She has to be the one in control and he has to back out.
Valentina walks around the front of the kneeling man and gets in his face. ‘What’s your name?’
He dips his head.
She grabs his chin, reaches for her back pocket and pulls out her ID card. ‘I’m Captain Valentina Morassi. Who are you? Why are you here?’
He doesn’t answer.
There’s something about him that’s unnerving.
Now she spots it.
He has almost no facial hair.
In fact he looks almost feminine.
Valentina gets a flashback to the morgue.
The ball-less eunuch found bizarrely butchered beside the Tiber.
Could this be another?
‘Get up!’
The man either can’t or won’t.
‘Tom, help me.’
Between them they drag the prisoner to his feet. Valentina starts to unbuckle his black jeans.
Tom is shocked. ‘What are you doing?’
Valentina clearly has no concern for his rights. She drags his jeans and underpants down around his ankles, pushes him back on to a sofa and uses her foot to spread his legs. ‘Porca vacca! Another eunuch.’ She wheels away from the debagged prisoner and pulls out her radio.
While she calls in the arrest, she pushes open the bedroom door, gun extended.
The place is in darkness.
She can just make out the outlines of a low bed, a small dresser and a wardrobe.
No Anna.
She returns to Tom. ‘Can you re-dress this asshole while I clean up? I have glass in my hair and God knows where else.’
‘Hey, that’s above and beyond what comes within the boyfriend remit.’
She manages a smile and walks away. ‘I know. Loop the cuffs under a chair leg and sit on him.’
Tom shoots her a look that says he can handle the small guy without needing to do that.
The bathroom is tiny.
Valentina finds there are only women’s things in there. One toothbrush, one tube of paste and some eyebrow tweezers on a glass shelf beneath a cheap white plastic mirrored cabinet. She pulls it open. Inside there’s a tube of thrush cream, a box of Tampax, a bottle of headache pills and some AllergEze.
No sign of the cotton wool or cotton buds that she was hoping for.
She closes the door and squints at the mirror. When she puts her hand to her head, she feels several splinters of glass. Carefully she picks them out with her fingers, briefly inspects the sparkling fragments then washes them away. It takes several minutes to be sure her scalp is glass-free.
She takes off her blouse and by twisting in front of the mirror she can see small slivers of smashed glass embedded in her spine. There’s also an angry red mark around her lower vertebrae where she’s been kicked.
Valentina contorts her fingers and uses the eyebrow tweezers and mirror to pick out the shards. She looks at the nearby shower. It’s a temptation. A hot soak is just what she needs, but she knows that’s a long way off. Just processing the piece of shit in the other room is going to take ages.
She pulls her blouse back on and now becomes aware of her damaged right hand. She can wriggle all of her fingers, but her knuckles are grazed and swollen. A pity she didn’t connect with the son-of-a-bitch’s jaw instead of the wall.
Her attacker is flat out on the floor when she re-enters the room. Tom is sitting near him, his foot in the middle of the guy’s back.
‘All okay?’ she asks.
‘Fine.’ He looks almost bored.
‘I’m going to check the rest of the place, all right?’
He nods.
Valentina goes back to the bedroom, fumbles for a switch and eventually finds it. She pushes it down, but the light doesn’t come on. She clicks it again.
Nothing.
Something is wrong.
She senses it.
She missed something earlier.
Something important.
58
Before Valentina can enter the bedroom and satisfy her curiosity, the arrest team arrives.
She fills them in on the prisoner.
Maybe a night in the cells will loosen the eunuch’s tongue. Come tomorrow she’ll have enough energy to find out what the hell he was doing in the apartment rented by their missing woman.
She borrows a flashlight and returns to the bedroom.
The room is spookily cold and smells of damp, like wet and rusty iron.
Under the glare of the torchlight, the darkness gives way to a tobacco-coloured creaminess. Beyond the burn of the beam, all the walls and even the ceiling seem to be lined with some kind of shabby tiles that are hanging loose.
She shines the light up.
There’s no central lightshade or bulb, only a dangling flex and raw open socket where the appliance should be.
Valentina moves the beam around.
Dozens of strange shadows crawl over the walls and move in sync with her torch.
She flicks the beam back to the ceiling.
Unbelievable.
Hundreds of identical rosary beads, complete with silver crucifixes, dangle cross down from the plaster ceiling.
‘Tom! You need to see this.’ She twists the beam to full flood.
He comes to the doorway and stops.
Valentina moves the torch around. ‘What do you make of it?’
He has to shield his eyes from the brightness. ‘Nothing to be frightened of. Do you mind? You’re blinding me with that thing.’
‘Scusi.’ She dips it and in doing so notices that the floor is also strangely covered.
Tom moves to the centre of the room and touches her hand. ‘This is a place of sanctuary. It’s a refuge for someone who is very frightened.’
‘And someone totally damned crazy.’ Valentina pans the light beam back and forth across the floor. ‘Isn’t this the Bible? Isn’t the whole floor covered in pages from the Bible?’
Tom bends so he can see. ‘Yes, it is. In Latin, too.’
She shines her light upwards and around. ‘And the walls and the ceiling; the whole room is covered in biblical text.’
Tom crosses himself.
Valentina runs her hand over the papered wall. ‘It
’s so creepy.’
‘The word of God is creepy?’
‘Yes. When it’s plastered all over the place like this, it’s immensely creepy.’ Valentina’s light picks out brass candlesticks arranged around a small painted statue of a Madonna and Child. ‘Not only creepy, but a fire risk. It’s a wonder this place didn’t go up in flames every time she lit a candle and said a prayer.’
Tom examines the papered walls. Unless he’s mistaken, it’s not only a Vulgate, a standard Latin Bible, that has been ripped up and stuck there. He recognises some other pages as sections of the Polyglot Bible for the Greek New Testament. He moves along, his hands feeling and tracing the wallpapered text.
He points out several pages of old print. ‘These are extracts from the Septuagint, the oldest Greek version of the Jewish Bible.’ He slides his hand along, ‘Next to it are pages from the classic Hebrew Bible.’ He points a long, shadowy finger. ‘Just at the edge of your light there, I can see English – those are sections of the Old Testament.’
‘What’s going on, Tom?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s like someone has taken out an insurance policy and covered themselves with every form of overlapping religion.’
His foot knocks against something. ‘Shine your light down here for a second.’
She flashes the beam his way.
‘Down at my feet.’
‘My God, what is it?’
He crouches. ‘The bed – it’s made from Bibles.’
She steps closer and kneels beside him.
Tom pulls at part of the single bed. ‘The frame is made four Bibles high and by the looks of it, one … two … three deep. They’ve been used like bricks to build a small wall, with the openings facing outwards, so the inside fits tight against a single mattress.’ He manages to force some pages open. ‘Looks like masonry nails have been driven through them and into the floor to hold them together.’
Valentina moves her hand beneath the torchlight and over the bed. ‘And the mattress and quilt are both lined with more Bible pages.’ She is the first back on her feet. ‘Now tell me you don’t find this creepy.’
Tom gets up as well. ‘I don’t. I’ve seen similar things.’
‘You have?’ she says incredulously.
‘Some people are frightened of being attacked – of being possessed – in their sleep. They’re afraid that when their defences are down they become vulnerable. I guess this is similar. Your girl is scared that when she’s asleep, some evil alter will take over her body.’
Outside, in the living room, there are voices and noises.
‘Forensics and a search team,’ she explains, seeing he’s on edge. ‘We’d better back away while they do their jobs.’
They return to the main room and Tom stands to one side while Valentina takes charge, issuing instructions to several different people.
Within minutes, portable lamps are being brought in and men in latex gloves are unlocking silver suitcases. All of them take a second or two to stare at Tom’s strange pink shirt and baggy grey pants.
Someone shouts something in Italian from the bedroom where they’ve just been, and Valentina flies in there.
Tom rushes to the doorway.
Everyone’s crowded around the tiny wardrobe.
Inside, curled up on the floor, is a young woman.
Covered in blood.
59
Louisa Verdetti is in a deep and peaceful sleep.
A much-craved and wonderfully healing rest that is slowly dissolving the traumas of one of the worst days of her life.
Losing her patient, getting punched in the face, arguing with her boss and being interviewed and scolded by the cops are all gradually being reduced to mere grains of sand on her beach of mental history.
Another few hours of dream time and they’ll be filed and forgotten. She’ll be fit to go again. Ready for whatever mysteries and machinations a fine new day has to throw at her.
But not yet.
Not now.
Right now she’s good for nothing, and the last thing she wants on her mind is a ringing phone.
But there it is.
For a moment – a very long and sleepy moment – she pretends that it isn’t real. The noise is part of a dream she’s having. Perhaps a call from an ex-lover, pestering her to give him another chance.
But it isn’t.
It’s real.
And it’s not going away.
Worse than that, the phone is ringing in the cold darkness on the other side of her super-soft and super-warm quilt.
She reaches out, pulls the receiver into her cosy world and manages to mutter her name. ‘Si. Verdetti.’
What Valentina Morassi says to her banishes any last vestiges of comfort.
Louisa sits bolt upright in shock.
She listens until the Carabinieri captain is done.
The now dead phone dangles in her hand while the news sinks in.
Yesterday’s nightmare isn’t over.
In fact, it just got worse.
The psychiatrist dresses without showering or even running a comb through her hair. She’s in such a rush that she only takes time out to use the toilet and wash her hands before dashing to her car and driving to the hospital.
Suzanna – or Anna, or Cassandra, or whoever she damned well is – is in the ICU at the Policlinico, fighting for her life.
Louisa is breathless when she arrives. She stumbles into the triage area almost as frantically as a panicking relative.
She introduces herself at reception, and a nurse leads her to a long-faced man in green scrubs called Ricardo Contessi. He’s one of the luckless trauma surgeons working the graveyard shift. ‘Your girl’s okay – but only just.’ He extends his left arm, tilts it so it’s palm up and demonstrates. ‘She cut herself, something like twenty times. Most of the incisions were superficial – made horizontally across and around the wrist – though she’s damaged a tendon and we have had to stitch that. However, there was one more disturbing cut, made vertically, running a long way down the arm.’
Louisa flinches. Self-harmers know horizontal cuts are usually safe. Vertical cuts are different. They’re genuinely suicidal. A good dig into any of the major arteries running down the forearm usually proves fatal.
Contessi slowly traces his index finger down his own pale and hairy forearm. ‘Fortunately she started a few centimetres lower than the radial and ulnar intersection. Most of the damage around there was muscular. But she did nick one of the lower branches of the ulnar artery, and that means she lost a lot of blood.’
‘She’ll be okay?’
‘I think so. The paramedics did a really good job on the way over here. She’s already bandaged up and sedated.’ He nods to a ward sign on a wall. ‘She’s on an open ward. Some Carabinieri officer, a woman, is at her bedside.’
Louisa realises it must be Valentina. She scratches her head and finds there’s no longer hair up there, just a thick, muzzy nest that bats or birds have no doubt settled in.
The surgeon holds up a clipboard. ‘There’s some confusion over the patient’s name. Do you know what she’s called?’
A small laugh escapes Louisa’s exhausted body. ‘Play it safe, call her Suzanna Anna Cassandra Fratelli.’
He raises an eyebrow as he writes on his notes. ‘Grazie. I’ll look in on her before I knock off. Ciao.’
‘Ciao.’ Louisa takes a slow breath and walks the short distance to the ward.
Valentina is pacing and talking on her cell phone right next to a sign that says they shouldn’t be used.
Tom is asleep in a low chair.
A young uniformed guard is standing by the curtains and a nurse is busy at a desk opposite – but not so busy that she can’t occasionally catch the eye of the handsome soldier.
Anna is out for the count.
Louisa approaches the bed and is saddened to see how frail her patient looks.
Valentina finishes her call and turns to the clinician. ‘We found her unconscious bene
ath a false floor at the bottom of a wardrobe in her apartment.’
Louisa can barely imagine how desperate the woman must have felt.
‘And Anna Fratelli is her real name?’
‘Seems so. There were no bills in the apartment. I guess you’ll be able to pull her full medical records now?’
Louisa glances at her watch. ‘Not at three a.m. But yes, in a few hours we should be able to get hold of them.’
Valentina looks towards the bed. ‘Do you have any idea what’s been going on in her mind? What’s made her like this?’
The clinician bends over the bed and clears a strand of hair off Anna’s forehead. ‘I could ask you the same thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that whatever is troubling her is also at the root of the crimes that you’re investigating.’
Tom stirs in the chair, then slides a little further down, his head resting on a cushion pressed against the wall.
Louisa watches Valentina watching Tom.
Valentina senses the psychiatrist’s eyes on her.
Louisa smiles. ‘As a professional observer of human behaviour, I’d say you two were more than just friends.’
Valentina doesn’t answer.
‘Okay, I’m sorry I spoke. I can take a hint: private is private.’ Louisa coughs and moves on. ‘So, work-wise, is there anything else I need to know about Anna? Anything you found at her house – drugs, that kind of thing?’
‘No drugs. At least, nothing more than the usual – headache pills, allergy tablets and such like. You need to see her bedroom, though. I’ll send over some photographs.’
‘Why? Why do I need to see it?’
‘To believe it. She’s turned the room into a religious bolt-hole. The walls, floor and ceiling are completely covered in pages torn or copied from Bibles. Hundreds of rosary beads are dangling from the ceiling. It’s quite freaky.’
Louisa falls silent.
‘What is it?’
‘I was just casting my mind back. I don’t think any of the other alters expressed any Catholic beliefs or traits.’
‘Well, this is full-on Catholicism. She’s even made her bed out of Bibles, as though she’s scared of sleeping without God being close to her.’
‘What an awful way to live – frightened during the day and then even more frightened of going to sleep.’ Louisa scratches at her nest of uncombed hair and looks down at her comatose patient. ‘I feel so sorry for her. I wish I could just drop a rope into that subconscious pit and pull her out of there.’
