The Rome Prophecy

by Sam Christer

  79

  Federico Assante’s wife Mia has gone out for the day with their young daughter.

  He has no idea what they’re doing or when they’ll be back.

  Right now he has no idea about anything.

  Mia left straight after breakfast, and he’s sure she knows something is wrong.

  She always knows.

  Federico can’t bring himself to tell her that he’s been suspended and sent home.

  He’s too ashamed.

  To Mia and her family, his job is everything. She’s always talking about how proud she is that he’s a policeman. A photograph of him in full ceremonial uniform stands on a cabinet in every one of her relatives’ homes.

  He’ll never be able to tell her.

  For the moment he’s told her he’s off sick. An injured back. Backs are always a safe bet. Not even doctors can prove you don’t have some form of back pain.

  But he knows he can’t bluff for ever.

  The curtains of their apartment are closed. He sits in the white vest he’s worn for two days, chain-smoking over a low coffee table filled with magazines that he’s not reading.

  From somewhere in the pocket of his badly creased black trousers his cell phone sends out a tinny imitation of the iconic 24 ring tone.

  Not even Jack Bauer could save this day.

  ‘Pronto.’

  ‘Hey, Federico!’

  It’s Enrico Ferrari. Unbearably upbeat and almost the last person he wants to talk to.

  Federico pictures him, doughnut in hand, sugar on lips, his diary spread open in front of him as he calls around to find drinking chums.

  Well, Federico doesn’t want to go out.

  Not now. Not ever again.

  ‘Enrico, I’m sorry, this is a bad time, I—’

  ‘No it’s not!’ he insists cheerily. ‘This is actually a good time – a very good time.’

  ‘Enrico, I’m not really in the mood for—’

  ‘But Skywalker, your waiting is over.’

  ‘Enrico!’

  His friend isn’t deterred. ‘No, no, listen, this really is a good-news call. I just read the full mitochondrial DNA test results on both Anna Fratelli and the severed hand recovered from the Bocca in Cosmedin.’

  ‘You lost me, Enrico.’

  ‘They’re sisters.’

  ‘Sisters?’

  ‘See, the news is so good you have to repeat it. Your handless victim is Anna Fratelli’s sister.’

  Federico can’t get his head around it.

  Anna never mentioned she had a sister.

  One of the alters was referred to as Little Suzie, but from what he can remember, she wasn’t a sister to any of the others.

  Come to think of it, the medical records they’d pulled didn’t mention any sister either.

  ‘Hello, are you still there?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work things out. You’re saying that Anna’s sister had her hand cut off?’

  ‘Oh boy! How did you ever make detective? Yes, that’s pretty much what I said. Though if you want to quote me verbatim, I actually said that your handless victim is Anna’s sister.’

  ‘How are you so sure?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘I do, but keep it simple. Cop simple.’

  ‘Okay. Look, we have forty-six chromosomes; twenty-three we get from our mother and twenty-three from our father. We also get some mitochondrial DNA from our mother only. Using the mitochondrial DNA for sibling identification is quite accurate, because all children born of a certain female should share this DNA.’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘Different. Totally different fathers. Sorry, I shouldn’t say “totally different” because of course they can’t be slightly different fathers. I mean, they’re either different or the same, aren’t they? You see what I mean? It’s like being a little bit pregnant; you can’t be – you’re either pregnant or you’re not.’

  ‘Enrico, you made that as clear as mud. Just swear to me that you’re sure of this.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. It’s my job to be sure. I can categorically tell you that Anna has a different father to her sister.’

  Federico thinks things over. Not only about what Enrico has told him, but also about what he’s not told Enrico. Time to come out with it. ‘I should have stopped you telling me this. Enrico, I got suspended yesterday.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know about your suspension and about how I’m not supposed to call you and all that crap. News travels fast, bad news travels fastest.’

  ‘Do you know why they suspended me?’

  ‘No. And I don’t want to. Whatever you did or didn’t do, I know you had your reasons. And besides, even if you fucked up, so what? We all fuck up some time, and at times of the biggest fuck-ups you need your biggest friends, right?’

  ‘Grazie.’

  ‘Prego. So you want that we go out and get juiced tonight? Maybe help your biggest friend get his big fat leg over some drunken signora?’

  Federico manages his first smile for twenty-four hours. ‘For sure. I’d like that very much.’

  80

  Louisa hits the panic button and starts CPR on Anna.

  In a film or TV show, everything would be okay, but Louisa knows better. Statistically, her chance of saving her is only about fifty-fifty.

  She starts with mouth-to-mouth and is already working chest compressions when the crash team and their portable defibrillator arrive.

  Louisa steps back. ‘She seemed to have some kind of fit. When I came in, she’d blacked out and wasn’t breathing.’

  ‘Probably asystolic,’ says a young male doctor. ‘We’ll see what we can do for her.’ He turns to two nurses. ‘Hook up the machine; get me Vasopressin as well.’

  Louisa drifts to the rear of the room as they lift Anna back on to the bed and start the fight to save her life.

  ‘She’s flatlined!’ shouts a nurse.

  Anna’s gown is pulled open. Electrodes are stuck above the right and below the left breast. Controlled electric shocks juice into her.

  ‘Nothing so far.’

  Louisa looks down and sees her hands are shaking, something they’ve not done since she was in med school.

  She’d give anything right now for a good slug of brandy and a long draw on a cigarette, or maybe something even stronger.

  ‘Again!’ someone shouts.

  Louisa takes a deep breath. It’s an old machine, manually run, not like the AEDs in the main wards.

  Defib seldom works first time.

  They have to get the shock level right, so they often go in with too low a charge.

  The second or third go should do it.

  ‘Again!’

  Bodies scuffle around the bed.

  Hands seem to be all over Anna, eyes stuck to monitors recording vital signs.

  ‘Again!’ They all step back once more and watch in frozen hope.

  Then they’re on her again. Devouring information. Checking her heartbeat, her pulse, her eyes.

  More CPR.

  A long silence.

  ‘Call it.’

  Louisa can’t believe what she’s just heard.

  Two words. Said in a depressingly calm tone.

  ‘Call it.’

  A male wrist juts out from the scrum of green scrubs. ‘Time of death: 11.55.35.’

  The room starts to sway.

  Louisa has to sit before she falls.

  She watches the crash team swirl around the bed until they become just a tilting haze.

  Anna is dead.

  81

  Valducci surprises her.

  He turns out to be a perfect boss and gentleman.

  No lecture, no bawling out, no horrible speculation about what happens next.

  Just a glass of brandy. An offer of tissues. And the insistence that Louisa goes home.

  She doesn’t have to be told twice.

  She walks from the psychiatric block
to her car and pauses to take in as much fresh air as possible.

  Anna’s dead.

  She tries to block it out.

  Unless she’s mistaken, it’s a little warmer than yesterday. She looks at the bare branches of the silver birch trees around her. No buds. No sign of spring. But it really can’t be that far off.

  Anna’s dead.

  The thought keeps slamming into her. Demanding she dwell on it. She still can’t believe it. She hoped that maybe with the cops out of the way, there was going to be a chance to concentrate on her treatment. Get her well again. Not watch her die.

  Tears well up in her eyes. She has to be strong. Fight her way through the loss. It’s not her fault. She’s told herself that a dozen times.

  The stress of living with those multiple personalities must just have proved too much for Anna to bear. All that fear of night-time and the imagined evil must have piled up and broken her.

  Louisa unlocks her Alfa and slips inside.

  The radio shouts at top volume as she turns the ignition key and it makes her heart jump. She’s edgy. Tense. Stressed.

  Anna’s dead.

  She jabs the off button to silence some jock moron with no sense of respect. She doesn’t want to hear anyone or anything right now. But there’s no escaping her own thoughts.

  What more should she have done?

  What less could she have done? Was she guilty of pushing things too far, of digging up layers of trauma that would have been best left untouched?

  She dials Valentina’s cell phone. The captain has a right to know. Even if she’s suspended, she should still be told, and Louisa is in no doubt that it’s her duty to tell her.

  ‘Pronto, Morassi.’

  Louisa hesitates.

  The policewoman sounds annoyed. Just from the way she answered she sounds angry.

  It’s no wonder that a call from the woman who got her suspended isn’t welcome.

  Louisa thinks about hanging up, but decides to be tough and plough on. ‘Capitano, it’s Louisa Verdetti.’ She doesn’t pause now, doesn’t risk any interruption. ‘Anna Fratelli died about an hour ago. I thought you should know.’

  Valentina’s not sure she heard her correctly. ‘Anna what?’

  ‘She’s dead. She died of a heart attack in her bed at the hospital. I thought you’d want to know.’

  Louisa can’t talk any more. She flips the clamshell phone shut. Normally she wouldn’t be so rude, but today she can’t even say goodbye, let alone answer another question.

  She slips the Alfa into gear, drives through the hospital gates and heads home.

  In her bathroom cabinet is a box of Valium that she keeps for times like this. Times when all her training and the wisdom of three decades of living just aren’t enough. She’s going to pour a glass of brandy much bigger than the one Valducci gave her, go to bed and drug herself into a long, deep sleep.

  The road slips beneath the car tyres and the world smears itself across the vehicle’s windows.

  The traffic approaching Via Margutta is horrendous.

  It always is.

  Louisa’s apartment is in a gated courtyard off to the right, a little past where Picasso lived and just before the apartment where they filmed Roman Holiday.

  The electronic gates buzz open and the red and white security barrier behind jerks up like a railway crossing. Her Alfa crunches over the gravel and she parks up in her own space, just below her ivy-covered balcony.

  Being home makes her feel better. Safe from the horrors of the day. Absolved from the guilt of Anna’s death.

  She opens the door to the apartment block, holds it for a young couple behind her and picks up mail from her drop box.

  Bills. Bills and more bills.

  Thank God she earns a decent wage. She has no idea how normal people manage in a city as expensive as Rome. Half her block is already full of rich foreigners, because locals can’t afford the rents.

  She jams the bills in her teeth while she juggles her handbag and opens her apartment door. The place still smells of the remains of some fish she forgot to throw out.

  She vows to do it now. Empty the stinking bin before she crawls into her bed and floats off into a comforting blackness.

  She puts her hand on the light switch.

  But never manages to turn it on.

  Years in a hospital tell her that the sweet-smelling cloth pressed to her mouth is soaked in a trihalomethane.

  Chloroform.

  As unconsciousness creeps through her, she realises the man holding the cloth is half of the young couple she just let in.

  82

  ‘They’ll make us scapegoats.’

  Federico’s words hang in the air, snagged like a knot somewhere down the phone line between him and Valentina.

  ‘How so?’ she finally asks.

  He blows cigarette smoke as he paces. ‘We get suspended for intimidating a mentally ill patient and she ends up dying of a heart attack. This is a heavy stone they are going to drop on our toes. It’s good for the hospital – it clears them of blame – and good for that bastard Caesario.’

  Valentina’s surprised to hear him talk so venomously about the major. ‘We should meet. Do you know somewhere?’

  Federico thinks for a second. ‘Galleria Borghese. It’s not far from the centre.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘I have a friend who runs the private dining rooms inside the villa. You don’t get many Carabinieri taking time off for cultural tours.’

  ‘Within the hour?’

  ‘Within the hour.’

  They hang up.

  The villa and adjoining museums are set in lavishly landscaped gardens on the Pincian Hill, north of the Spanish Steps. Works by Old Masters adorn its multitudinous rooms and have been viewed by millions.

  The former vineyard is only walking distance for Tom and Valentina, so they are already there, admiring more than a hundred acres of parkland, when Federico arrives in his clapped-out Lancia.

  He grinds a cigarette butt into the gravel and calls his friend.

  Minutes later, they’re met on the entrance steps by a dark-suited young man with big brown eyes.

  After much cheek-kissing and back-slapping, they’re shown to a small room and left alone with beautiful china espresso cups and crystal water glasses.

  Sitting opposite each other for the first time since their suspension, Valentina can’t help but get several things off her chest. ‘I never expected Caesario to suspend you; I thought you and he were very close.’

  ‘You mistake closeness for obedience. When my major tells me to report directly to him rather than the new girl, I report to him. That doesn’t mean I will fabricate evidence for him, or support him if he has an agenda that I don’t think is ethical.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  ‘Prego.’ He takes a contemplative sip of his espresso. ‘Any ideas how we can get out of this?’

  She lets out a huff of exasperated air and sits back in her chair. ‘We need to talk to Louisa Verdetti and see how strongly set against us she is. Louisa’s key to it all. I suspect the official complaint was more of her boss’s doing than hers.’

  ‘If she testifies that we acted properly, then the case collapses.’

  ‘That’s about it. But she’ll need some talking to, especially now that Anna is dead.’

  Federico finishes his coffee, ‘How exactly did she die?’

  ‘Not sure. Louisa said it was a heart attack. That’s all I got from her.’

  ‘Did she ring to blame you? Could you tell anything from the tone of her voice?’

  Valentina has to think. ‘No. It was a really short call. But I don’t think she was ringing to rage at me. There was no pent-up anger in her voice. It was more like she just thought I should know.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, presumably she already knew you had been suspended, so if she was calling you despite that, then it indicates some kind of closen
ess. I think maybe she rang because she was upset and thought that you’d be more understanding than her boss.’

  Valentina sees his point. ‘Could be.’

  ‘That gives us room for hope.’

  She’s not so sure. ‘Strictly speaking we shouldn’t go near her. She’ll be a witness at a court martial.’

  He flinches. ‘Don’t say those words.’

  Tom speaks for the first time in several minutes. ‘I could talk to her, though.’ He sounds distant, because he’s studying a leaflet he’s found on a window ledge. It details paintings and sculptures at the villa by luminaries such as Bernini, Canova, Raphael and Caravaggio. ‘I have her address from when we were at the Ponte Fabricio and I got her a taxi home.’ He holds up the leaflet. ‘Does this remind you of anyone?’

  Both Federico and Valentina squint to see.

  It’s a portrait of a woman. A goddess with dark eyes and a distinctly dimpled chin.

  A goddess who looks identical to Anna Fratelli.

  83

  The blanket is warm.

  Warm, but rough and unfamiliar.

  The bed she’s lying on is not her own.

  Louisa Verdetti is on the slow and painful road to consciousness.

  Her head aches, and for a moment her chloroformed mind plays tricks on her. She’s a student again, helping out in a field hospital in a Third World country. She’s dozed off at the end of a hard day’s work and is sleeping in one of the supply tents; the headache is a hangover courtesy of a bottle or two of rough red shared with a hunky aid worker from Sweden.

  If only that were the case.

  Slowly Louisa starts to focus.

  Everywhere is brown.

  Dark – depressingly dark – brown.

  Her fuddled brain tries to snatch information. The smell of damp. The hardness of the surface she’s lying on. The near pitch darkness.

  She’s underground.

  Buried.

  Her heart skips a beat.

  Buried alive.

  Louisa sits up.

  Childhood claustrophobia sucks the air from her throat.

  She tells herself not to panic. She’s no longer a young girl accidentally locked in her grandmother’s gardening shed.

  Panic is the worst thing she can do.