The Rome Prophecy

by Sam Christer

Tom doesn’t, but he tries to give her the impression he does. ‘Help us all to understand, Anna.’ He smiles sympathetically. ‘Tell us in your own words why you do that to your room.’

  ‘God protects me. Jesus protects me. When I’m in the midst of his words, I believe in Him and I believe He will protect me.’ She closes her eyes. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me.’ She opens them again. ‘I truly believe that, Father.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Anna – and you are right to.’ Tom tries to be gentle. ‘But exactly what – or who – do you need His protection from?’

  ‘I told you earlier. Mother.’

  ‘Do you mean the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, or your own mother?’

  Anna clenches her fists.

  She crosses her wrists and holds them like a crucifix across her breasts. ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you understand?’

  Tom can see that whatever trust she had in him is evaporating as fast as a waft of frankincense at morning Mass. ‘I do know, Anna, but I need you to tell these other people.’ He gestures to Louisa and Valentina. ‘They won’t believe me if I tell them; it has to come from you.’

  Anna starts breathing deeply.

  Very deeply.

  Panting hard.

  Louisa wonders if she’s starting to hyperventilate.

  Anna stretches her arms wide and pulls her shoulders back, like a swan opening its wings.

  Valentina moves to the edge of her seat.

  Something’s going to happen, and this time she’s going to be prepared. There’ll be no surprise head-butting, and no bust lips.

  ‘The Mother is all we are!’ shouts Anna.

  Only she’s no longer Anna.

  Tom stands and takes a step towards her.

  ‘Mater, who is all, is within us.’ She tears at the bandage on her cut arm.

  Louisa jumps from her seat and tries to stop her.

  ‘Mater, who is all, is with us every day.’ She pushes Louisa away and claws at the stitches.

  Valentina is now on her feet and has reached the bed.

  ‘From Her we are – and to Her we go!’

  She grabs Anna’s wrists and restrains her.

  ‘From Her we are – and to Her we go!’ The nonsense is no longer being shouted, it’s being screamed. ‘From Her we are – and to Her we go!’

  Only one person in the room understands what’s happening.

  Tom Shaman sits silently and listens.

  It makes perfect sense to him.

  66

  The whole place stinks.

  Federico wonders if he’s going to get ill from just being here.

  No way was he going to let that androgynous son-of-a-bitch loose on the streets until he’d personally been to where he lives and found out what he’s hiding.

  It’s filthier than the Black Hole of Calcutta.

  But he can’t find anything incriminating.

  No drugs. No weapons. No stolen goods.

  The search team has already tossed Guilio Angelis’s squalid apartment in the Aventine more thoroughly than a Michelin-starred salad, but Federico’s determined to shake it some more.

  He holds a handkerchief to his nose as he joins an officer in a tiny bathroom with a postage-stamp window smeared in green mould.

  The stench from the toilet makes him want to hurl.

  It’s never seen bleach.

  Correction: by the look of it, it’s never been flushed.

  ‘Show me the cistern again,’ instructs Federico. ‘Let’s make doubly sure there’s nothing bagged and hidden in the water.’

  The young officer drops the seat cover, steps up and lifts off the heavy white ceramic top of the water tank.

  Federico climbs up on the adjacent sink and cracks his head on the ceiling. ‘Madonna porca!’ He rubs it. Static crackles off his latex gloves and makes his hair rise. He inches forward and peers down into the brown water around the ballcock and flush lever. He grimaces as he plunges his hand into the murky soup and fishes around. ‘Why is the water here so filthy?’

  ‘Bad plumbing. Rusty pipes,’ says the officer from below. ‘You drink this stuff and you’re either dead or immortal within the hour.’

  ‘No kidding.’

  Federico jumps down. ‘Nothing.’ He strips off his glove because water’s seeped in and looks at the sink. ‘Don’t tell me, this dirty pig doesn’t even have a bar of soap? I can’t believe it.’

  ‘We’ve got some sterile wash in a kit bag, sir.’

  ‘Get it.’ Federico shakes the water off his hand and then remembers his manners, ‘Scusi, per favore.’

  While he’s waiting, he wanders back to the small lounge.

  No TV.

  How can anyone live these days without a television?

  No balls and no TV.

  What the hell does this guy do for fun?

  Federico looks around.

  There are no books either.

  He doesn’t read, doesn’t watch the tube, doesn’t have sex, doesn’t even jerk off.

  He does nothing.

  This guy is Mr Nothing.

  Federico wanders into the next room.

  The bedroom doesn’t even have a bed. Only a mattress on the floor.

  No sheets.

  He pulls open a small built-in wardrobe.

  The search team have already stripped it of clothes and shoes.

  It’s empty, except for some old sheets of newspaper lining the bottom.

  He lifts some up.

  They’re not old papers.

  They’re pages from Bibles.

  Hundreds and hundreds of pages from dozens of different Bibles.

  67

  ‘It’s all going to be okay. I can help you. God will protect you.’

  Tom moves his chair so that Anna can only see him and is not distracted by Louisa or Valentina. ‘I know you believe in God, that you pray to Him and that you trust in Him.’

  Anna holds his hand as tightly as she can, but it’s a grip of fear rather than reassurance. She’s on the brink of tears.

  Stress is building rather than subsiding.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asks Tom gently.

  ‘They’re going to kill me.’ The first tear rolls down her left cheek. ‘Please don’t let them kill me.’

  Tom strokes the back of her hand. ‘No one’s going to hurt you.’

  ‘They have to. They say they have to.’

  ‘Who, Anna? Who has to?’

  ‘The Galli and the Sisters.’ She sniffs and reaches towards a box of tissues. ‘I know they’ll kill me.’

  Tom stretches, picks up the box and hands over several of the soft white tissues. ‘No one’s going to harm you, I promise.’

  Her mood changes.

  She looks angry and speaks in a strange and hostile voice.

  ‘Anna has wronged us. She is sacer! Mater says we must take those who are given to the gods and bury them alive around the sacred walls of our womb.’

  Meekly Anna responds to the new alter. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  The angry voice counters, ‘You are a threat to us, a threat to our existence here in the womb and to the discovery of the book.’

  ‘I am no threat!’ the quieter voice pleads. ‘And it is no womb. The place you hold me in is an infernal cell, a cave in the depths of Hades!’

  ‘Be careful, sister, or by morning you will find earth in your mouth. Now come with us.’

  ‘No! I hate it there. Leave me alone.’

  The two voices almost overlap now, the words fast and furious, a verbal stream of inner turmoil. There is no difference between them in tone. ‘You will never be alone, we will always be with you, in your sight and in your spirit.’

  ‘Let me be! I’m frightened of this darkness. Please let me out, let me go outside.’

  ‘There is no outside for those who are not with us.’

  ‘Enough!’ shouts Louisa. She’s out of her seat and pushing her way past Val
entina and Tom.

  Anna lashes out. ‘Be gone! I will feed you to the dog with three heads.’

  ‘There is no dog! You are making it all up to frighten us.’

  ‘Great Cerberus can already taste your blood and bones.’

  Louisa pulls an emergency cord dangling from the ceiling. She turns to Tom and Valentina. ‘Please leave the room, and let me deal with this.’

  They back slowly away, both uncertain whether Louisa can really handle the situation.

  Anna’s eyes are bulging, her face flushed with blood. The alters are battling for control of her.

  ‘Mother is coming for you. Mother is mad at you.’

  ‘She’s not real. I don’t believe in her.’

  ‘She can hear you, Anna. She can hear you and she’s going to punish you.’

  Tom and Valentina are brushed aside as nurses and the duty doctor rush into the room. From outside the glass they watch Anna being pinned down and sedated.

  Finally Louisa emerges.

  She’s scarlet with anger.

  ‘You don’t care, do you? You just don’t care about anything or anyone other than yourselves and your stupid case.’

  ‘Calm down.’ Valentina takes a step back so the clinician is less in her face.

  ‘Calm down?’ Louisa can’t believe her ears. ‘I just had to panic-call a doctor to sedate my patient. She’s torn the stitches in the arm that we had to sew up after she almost killed herself, and you – you ask me to calm down!’

  Valentina is unfazed. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’

  Louisa steps into her space again. ‘In here, you don’t tell me anything. In here, care for the patient comes first, way before what you want and your blessed criminal investigation.’

  She turns and storms off down the corridor.

  Tom and Valentina are left standing next to the Carabinieri guard minding the room. Green curtains have now been pulled around the windows, but there’s a gap big enough to see the medical team finishing the patch-up job on the strangest patient ever to occupy a bed in ICU.

  ‘What now?’ asks Tom.

  Valentina shakes her head. ‘Good question. What indeed?’

  68

  Only when they get out of the pressure-cooker heat of the hospital and stand in the cold fresh air does Valentina realise exactly what she and Tom have to do next.

  ‘Shopping,’ she announces, with a certain sense of fun. ‘We’ve got to go shopping.’

  She zaps open the Fiat and adds, ‘You look ridiculous in those things that you’re wearing, and I feel filthy in this stuff. I haven’t worn the same clothes for two days running since I first slept over at a boyfriend’s house.’

  Tom opens the passenger door. ‘And that was how long ago?’

  She grins at him over the car roof. ‘Ex-boyfriends are not the kind of thing a lady talks about.’

  And that’s the best Tom can get out of her.

  The journey into the city doesn’t take long, but Valentina spends a large part of it making calls.

  Calls to fix a new place for them to sleep that night.

  To her insurance company to inform them about the blaze at her apartment.

  To Federico.

  ‘You okay?’ she asks Tom, as she finally hangs up. ‘You look lost in thought, and not a particularly pleasant one.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  He watches a scooter almost rip off the passenger-side wing mirror. ‘We should think about some of the things Anna said.’

  ‘In particular?’

  He’s not sure how much to speculate and how much to keep to himself. ‘You know how you and Louisa have been discussing whether Anna was abused as a kid, maybe by her own mother?’

  ‘It seems a way to explain her multiple personalities.’

  ‘Well, she mentioned sisters today. Did you notice?’

  ‘I did, but I couldn’t work out whether she meant blood sisters or sisters in some kind of organisation or movement.’

  ‘Neither could I,’ admits Tom. ‘Either way, she was indicating that whatever horror she’s mixed up in, there are other women involved. Maybe they’re at risk as well.’

  ‘Only women,’ notes Valentina.

  Tom has to think back. ‘No. Not true. She mentioned Galli.’

  She’s none the wiser. ‘And Galli is who?’ She slips the Fiat into a parking bay at Carabinieri HQ. ‘I’ve never heard of him before.’

  ‘Them, not he.’ Tom unbuckles his seat belt and waits until they’re both out of the Punto before he completes the explanation. ‘They were priests. Eunuch priests who existed hundreds of years before Christ. By the way, where are we going?’

  She takes his hand. ‘Not far. Don’t worry, we’ll soon have you properly dressed. Eunuch priests? Did you know any?’

  ‘I knew some who should have been eunuchs.’ Before Tom can continue, a waft of wind fills his pink parachute of a shirt and puffs him up like the Michelin Man. It gives Valentina a fit of the giggles while she pats it flat. ‘Let’s hurry up; you must be freezing without a coat.’

  ‘No, I’m fine; I’m a super-tough American, remember.’

  ‘Of course you are. You keep on believing that.’

  His clothes provide endless amusement as they walk along Via del Corso and duck into a discount designer store full of fervent fashion fans. Young women nudge their beautifully dressed boyfriends and point him out with whispered asides. Trendily dressed Italian men slalom around him, as though just touching such unfashionable clothes might be sartorially contagious.

  ‘Do you see anything you like?’ asks Valentina, unable to stop smiling.

  ‘The exit. That’s what I’d like most.’

  ‘Understood!’ She grabs two packs of Calvin Klein boxers from a basket.

  He looks surprised. ‘You know my size?’

  Her eyes sparkle. ‘To the centimetre.’

  Tom fries with embarrassment. He picks up a plain blue shirt from sale stock. Valentina shakes her head at him and heads for a rail marked New Arrivals.

  Ninety minutes and almost a thousand euros later, she has him fitted out with everything from socks to a Dolce and Gabbana scarf.

  Valentina has the sales assistant drop his old clothes in a bin behind the check-out and Tom leaves dressed in a long-sleeved white polo jumper from Collezioni Armani, a pair of Hugo Boss jeans and a new overcoat.

  The air outside is icy sharp after the heat of the shop.

  He takes Valentina’s hand, his other clutching a spray of shiny bags. ‘I feel like I’ve just been in one of those before and after makeover shows.’

  ‘Except the before was pretty good already.’ She checks her watch. ‘Now me.’

  He looks shocked.

  She points across the street to a snack bar. ‘How about you grab a table in there and I’ll meet you in half an hour?’

  He knows he’s got off lightly. ‘You sure?’

  ‘I just saw how bad you are at shopping for yourself. Watching me choose clothes would be Purgatory, no?’

  He thinks about doing penance and going with her, but she’s already on the move, so he lets her go and drifts towards the bar.

  Valentina shops at lightning speed.

  She resists the luxury of lingering over anything, and quickly collects a black wool trouser suit, white and black blouses, faded blue jeans and a monochrome cardigan.

  Choosing underwear takes more thought and care than it’s done for a very long time.

  She finds herself agonising in the shoe area before grabbing practical flats rather than a pair of high slingbacks that she’s sure were calling out her name.

  Tom spends the time toying with a beer and thinking of Anna, her ‘sisters’ and the eunuch priests.

  From what he remembers, the Galli were attached to a secret sect devoted to a prophetess who had followers spread throughout Greece, Rome, Anatolia, Crete and beyond.

  He shuts his eyes and tries to recall everything he can about this strange pre-Christian er
a, when rituals and prophecies were the most powerful things on earth.

  He’s still crawling through the dust of societies long crumbled when he notices Valentina standing over him. ‘Planet Earth to Major Tom, can you hear me?’

  He rouses himself. ‘Sorry.’ He touches the nearly empty beer glass. ‘One drink and my sharpness has gone.’

  She feels guilty about not letting him unwind. ‘I’m afraid we have to go. I got a call from Federico while I was in the shops. He’s back at the incident room and we need to start a briefing.’

  ‘No problem.’ Tom struggles to his feet, gathers his bags and traipses after her.

  They walk briskly, a difficult thing to do in Rome. Not just because the pavements are crowded, but because they’re so uneven and the slightest rain turns them into ankle-twisting water traps.

  Back at the station, they stuff their shopping in Valentina’s car, and steal a kiss before entering the grand old building. A slight hesitation and a glance over his shoulder tips Tom off to the fact that she’s looked for CCTV cameras first and then decided she really doesn’t care who sees them. A small act, but nevertheless one that sends a big jolt of warmth running through him.

  Maybe this relationship is going to turn out to be even more than he’d hoped for.

  69

  Things have gone wrong.

  Horribly wrong.

  The meeting hasn’t even started, but Valentina knows it from the tense, grey look on Federico’s face as he approaches her.

  The briefing room is filling with people, ready for the case update. Tom sits quietly at the back, his eyes seldom leaving Valentina.

  Federico beckons her to one side. He’s keen to make sure they’re not overheard as he breaks the bad news. ‘Angelis is back on the street.’

  ‘So quickly?’

  ‘After Anna supported his story about inviting him into her apartment, we had no grounds to hold him on the charge of breaking and entering. He asked again for a brief while I was out, and the duty solicitor sprang him.’

  ‘Caesario sanctioned this?’

  He shrugs. ‘In fairness, he couldn’t stop it. Without the illegal entry charge there was no way we could justify the assault charge.’

  Valentina feels her temper rise. ‘I got thrown all over the apartment and almost killed, and the law doesn’t call that assault?’