by Sam Christer
He’s bare-chested, in only his pyjama bottoms and has just come out of a Downward Facing Dog.
Right now, he’s balanced on his hands counting a five breath in The Crow.
Alfie has never held The Crow pose for a full five before. He usually crashes sideways at the start, slips backwards on reaching two or bangs his forehead on a very shaky-handed three count.
Right now, his palms are well spread and he’s rock solid on a four, so no way is he going to answer that phone until he’s made the full five.
‘Cinque! Yee-haaaw!’ He rolls out of the yoga pose and pads across the polished wooden floor of his tiny room. He pulls his cell phone from the charger cable stuck in a wall socket and answers with gusto: ‘Pronto, Giordano – il padrone di yoga fantastico!’
His old friend daren’t ask what he’s up to. ‘Alfie, it’s Tom. I need your help.’
‘You have it, my friend.’ He takes a deep yogic breath. ‘Il padrone can fold you into a Bird of Paradise or twist you into a One-Legged King Pigeon. Which would you prefer?’
‘Alfie, this is serious. What do you know about St Cecilia’s?’
He drops the comedy routine. ‘St Cecilia’s in Trastevere?’
Tom switches on the speakerphone function so Valentina can hear, then glances at notes on a pad. ‘The one in Piazza di Santa Cecilia; that’s Trastevere, right?’
‘Yes, yes, it is. What’s wrong, Tom?’
‘I’ll fill you in later. Please, Alfie, just tell me what you know.’
‘Okay. The church is very famous. Let me think … it was built in something like the third century. It has an amazing Romanesque campanile … lots of rebuilds over the ages, notably the ninth and I think eighteenth centuries.’
Tom scribbles furiously. Valentina watches over his shoulder.
Alfie continues with his list. ‘Oh, one of the weirdest things, there’s a convent adjacent to the church, and the sisters there shear the lambs from Sant’Agnese fueri le Mura and use the wool to make sacred vestments. Inside the church there are paintings depicting the beheading of St Cecilia. You remember the story of her?’
Tom has to jog his memory. ‘Lived her life wearing sackcloth, married but stayed a virgin out of devotion to the Lord?’
‘Haven’t we all,’ interrupts Alfie with a tang of irony.
Tom continues to download the rest of what he knows about St Cecilia. ‘Patron saint of musicians, feast day in October – no, sorry, November. And her killers had great trouble putting her to death.’
‘Seven out of ten, or B plus, whichever you prefer.’
Valentina flaps her hands in frustration. Fascinating as this is, it isn’t helping rescue Louisa.
Tom ignores her. ‘I’m not finished. Didn’t she suffer some Rasputin-like death? Her persecutors tried to kill her two or three times and failed?’
‘I’ll up you to an A minus. They attempted to suffocate her in the bath at her house. When that failed, they decided to behead her. That didn’t go well either. The executioner tried three times to decapitate her, and then, seeing that she was still alive, fled in fear.’
‘And she didn’t die until three days later, after she’d received Holy Communion.’
‘Another thing,’ adds Alfie. ‘The original church is widely believed to have been built on the place of her home and martyrdom.’
Tom writes down ruins of old home beneath church and underlines it as Valentina reads over his shoulder. ‘So are there a lot of tunnels and open areas beneath the ground at Santa Cecilia?’
‘A lot?’ Alfie sounds almost incredulous. ‘Tom, there’s a whole city beneath Rome. The place is built over this soft volcanic rock and there are miles and miles of catacombs. Have a look at the crypt at Santa Cecilia and you’ll understand what I mean.’
93
The blindfold is a big improvement on the hood.
Louisa is hugely relieved not to have her head covered and a rope tied around her neck.
It’s the kind of observation she never dreamt she’d make, but it’s true.
‘Relax. It’s okay,’ says a man holding her right elbow and helping her walk.
But it’s not okay.
Louisa still feels claustrophobic. Hidden claws are scratching at her lungs. She knows it’s only a matter of time before she has another fit if they don’t get this damned thing off her.
They make her climb several steps.
Steps that are steep and turn sharply in on themselves.
It’s a spiral staircase.
A never-ending one.
Her heart rate is alarmingly elevated, and it’s increasing all the stress she’s feeling.
‘You’re doing fine, it’s nearly over,’ says the voice at her side.
Louisa steps up, but there’s no step there. She stumbles. Unseen hands catch her. ‘You’re at the top. It’s okay.’
A door opens and she feels a rush of cold, wintry air.
Paradise.
The sensation of being outside stops her feeling panicky.
They make her walk for about ten seconds.
A car door clunks open.
‘Watch your head,’ says her new minder. ‘We’re putting you in a vehicle; you’re going to have to slide in.’
He grabs her by the back of her hair and manhandles her into the rear of the car.
Louisa can smell leather.
Leather and sweat.
She puts one down to the car’s upholstery and the other to the bulky body pressed against her.
Even without seeing him she knows he’s huge.
She knows it because her back-seat buddy has biceps like boulders and one keeps cracking the side of her head every time he shifts in his seat.
After several minutes of driving, a voice booms out from the front of the car. ‘You can take the blindfold off her now.’
The guy in the back seat squashes her as he fumbles around her head and unfastens it.
‘Grazie.’ Louisa keeps her eyes closed to begin with. Even through her lids, the daylight is bright, and the tight binding has made her pupils and skin sore.
The first thing she sees is the back of the front passenger seat, then the windows on her side of the vehicle. They’re heavily tinted, the kind that are so dark that from the outside you can’t see in. She’s in some expensive four-by-four, but she can’t see any badging and can’t work out the model or make.
She turns to the man alongside her and tries to give him a friendly look. Year One psychology taught her that if kidnappers see their captives as human, they have more difficulty hurting them.
She’s not so sure it has any effect.
The guy’s every bit as big as she imagined, but surprisingly he’s rake thin and has arms like the hind legs of a bull. She realises that her inner prejudices equated the unwashed smell with someone fat.
‘Thanks for taking that off,’ she says, gradually widening her eyes to get them used to the light. ‘I thought I was going to pass out.’
‘Shut up!’ shouts the driver, without turning round. ‘Just sit there and shut the fuck up!’
Louisa takes the hint.
In the silence that follows, she works out that the short-tempered driver is Purple Cloak and the other two men in the car with her are the two Scarlet Cloaks she saw when they were holding her underground.
As they crawl over the cobbled and congested back streets, she takes strange comfort in the familiarity of seeing traffic jammed up all around her.
Are the doors centrally locked?
She thinks they probably are. It would be stupid if they weren’t.
And even if they weren’t, could she flip the handle and make a run for it without being grabbed by the half-bull, half-man creature sitting next to her?
She reckons not.
The most sobering thought is that if she tries and fails, she knows she won’t get another chance. They’ll watch her even more closely. Distrust her even more.
She has to be patient.
The chanc
e will come.
She distracts herself with more traffic-watching. The road around her is now completely jammed. Car horns blare every other second. Drivers mouth madly at each other from their little vehicular goldfish bowls.
The traffic starts to move.
It’s like someone flicked a switch.
The car she’s in glides past a huge furniture van that’s now shoehorned down a side street and is no longer blocking the traffic.
They turn the corner and she instantly recognises where she is.
They’re approaching the Tiber.
Just minutes from the rendezvous site.
94
Santa Cecilia stands on the west side of the river, almost equidistant between the Ponte Palatino and the Ponte Portese.
Valentina sees it for what it is.
Architectural mesmerism.
It’s one of those buildings that draws the eye to everything that’s not really important.
For a start, there’s the distraction of a walled and gated courtyard so well designed that even in the depths of winter you can imagine the riot of colour set to explode in spring. Then there’s a vast fountain, dominated by a giant ancient cantharus – a water vessel second to none.
But none of what’s on show is what’s really important about Santa Cecilia.
As Alfie told them, the fascinating stuff is inside, below ground, and in all the stories and legends that hover around the place.
Valentina weighs it up from the car, almost a hundred metres away. ‘It’s useless. Those damned archways, gates and pillars at the entrance to the courtyard block out so much of the church. Without a full surveillance team, I feel like a Japanese tourist trying to cover a moon landing with a point and shoot.’
Federico Assante is sitting low in the back. ‘Did you see Tom go inside?’
‘About a minute ago.’ She wonders if she’s doing the right thing. If she’d called Caesario, he’d have had to take her seriously and put a proper team out here. On the other hand, she’d have lost a golden opportunity to ensure that Louisa would drop her testimony against herself and Federico. She glances at her watch. Three minutes to eleven. ‘We’d better get in position.’
Federico ties on a headscarf Valentina bought en route and wraps up tight in blankets that she brought from the hotel. The only thing that could give the game away from a distance is his feet. They bought a pair of black low-heeled women’s shoes, but Federico has taken to them like a drunk to ice.
Valentina gets out of the car and goes round the back.
Now she’s out on the street, she presumes her every move is being watched.
She opens the rear door and begins to act in character. ‘Take it easy now, you’re very weak. Let me help you out of there.’
The lieutenant tries to keep his head down and his back bent as he clambers out of the car.
Valentina puts a protective arm around him, just as she would a frail old grandmother. ‘We’re going to walk you over to the fountain, where we’ll meet Dr Verdetti.’
Federico shuffles along, acutely aware that nothing about his walk is feminine. The best he can do is move slowly so it looks like he’s weak and in pain.
The wind across the street blows up into his face and threatens to dislodge his headscarf. He grabs it and inches it further down his forehead.
It takes them almost a year to make the hundred metres to the fountain.
Or at least it feels like that.
The wind kicks up again, and with it comes the first spit of a light shower. Valentina uses it as an excuse to hold Federico close to her, his face all but buried between her breasts.
Not that he minds.
She glances at her watch. Almost five past. There’s no sign of Louisa.
She swivels her head and looks around, as would anyone innocently trying to find their boss at a public meeting point.
Nothing.
All stake-outs and stings get the adrenalin rushing, and this one is no different. Both Valentina and Federico are fully tanked, and they have to use all their professionalism not to do anything rash.
A group of pensioners emerges from the church, chattering enthusiastically.
Valentina takes some comfort from the fact that Tom is inside somewhere.
If she needs him, she knows he’ll come through for her.
The shower starts to become more of a downpour. The rain driving into her face gives her an idea. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to the car before you get soaking wet.’ She turns a bewildered Federico round and all but frogmarches him towards her Fiat.
‘Hey!’ he whispers anxiously, head pressed to her arm as they walk. ‘What are you doing?’
Valentina ignores him.
Her instincts tell her they’ve already been spotted.
She’s pretty certain the kidnappers will recognise her motive as just being protective of a sickly patient.
But it’s a gamble. A big one.
She pulls open the passenger’s door and gently manoeuvres the swathed Federico inside. She leans into the car and whispers, ‘Keep your head down. Wait until I’m all the way back inside the courtyard, and then drive off and park up a few streets away.’
Valentina doesn’t wait for an answer.
She shuts the door, turns around and takes out her cell phone.
In the distance she sees movement near the fountain.
Not Louisa.
A tall, wiry man.
Staring at her.
She looks down and pulls up Louisa’s cell number on her phone.
She dials and looks up again.
The man is walking towards her.
Louisa’s phone is ringing out.
Valentina takes a long, slow breath to calm the thumping in her chest and starts to walk towards the staring man.
95
Louisa’s phone is ringing.
Purple Cloak is sitting behind the wheel of the four-by-four in a side street adjacent to Santa Cecilia. He takes Louisa’s ringing phone out of his jacket pocket and reads the display. ‘Valentina?’
‘My assistant.’
He hands it over the back of his seat. ‘Put it on speakerphone and watch what you say.’
Louisa presses the accept button, fearful that she might miss the call, then switches to speaker function. ‘Valentina, ciao. Where are you?’
‘Ciao.’ She tries to sound unstressed and normal. ‘I’m just walking to the fountain. I had to take Anna back to the car because it’s raining hard and she’s really not too well. I thought she might pick up an infection. Where are you?’
Louisa looks to her captor.
He mouths back, ‘In the church.’
‘I’m inside Santa Cecilia. Wait for me by the fountain, I’ll be out in a second.’
Purple Cloak nods his approval.
She switches off the phone and hands it back to him.
Or at least that’s what he thinks she’s done.
He slips it back into his jacket, unaware that Louisa never ended the call. The line is still open and will stay open providing Valentina doesn’t hang up.
‘What now?’ asks Louisa.
‘My brothers and sisters will look after things. You sit tight. When we have Anna, I will let you go.’
Louisa suddenly realises she’s made a mistake.
A big one.
She assumed that only Purple Cloak and his two henchmen had come to the church with her.
Now she knows she’s wrong.
He mentioned sisters. No women travelled with them.
Louisa looks through the rear window.
Parked tight to their bumper is an old Land Rover, with a man behind the wheel.
She drops her head into her hands. He must have been driving several members of the gang to the scene.
She realises she’s put Valentina in grave danger.
And herself.
96
Valentina knows the line is still open.
The voice that followed Louisa’s is too m
uffled for her to understand, but she can make out that it’s a man.
There’s also no trace of echo.
That means that it’s more likely that Louisa is in a car, rather than in the church as she said.
Valentina glances ahead. Rain is falling hard again and the man in her sights near the fountain has paused and is getting soaked as he answers a call on his own phone. Normally, someone would just let it ring and call back when they got somewhere dry, so he’s pretty much blown his cover. She listens to Louisa’s open line, and it’s now obvious that whoever is with her is talking to the guy standing by the fountain.
Valentina starts to piece the puzzle together.
If Louisa is in a car and not in the church, then she can’t be far away. Logically, if the vehicle is close by, it’s most likely to be in one of the official bays in Via di San Michele, off to one side of the piazza. Kidnap gangs never park illegally; they don’t want to risk drawing any kind of attention to themselves.
Valentina pauses under the main gated archway and reception block at the entrance to the courtyard.
She has to act fast.
Lightning fast.
The man by the fountain finishes his call and looks towards her.
She stops and kills the open line to Louisa.
Casually she calls Tom. ‘Louisa’s in a car. Probably in a bay by the right-hand side of the courtyard when you come out. I’m almost with the targets.’
She rings off and walks towards the fountain.
Despite the rain, the courtyard is still busy with people coming and going. Multicoloured umbrellas sprout up around the flower beds like fast-growing exotic blooms.
Valentina’s nerves jangle as Tom comes within ten metres of her.
He doesn’t even glance her way.
As far as she can tell, there’s no panic in his movement. He’s walking briskly, but not so fast that the rainfall doesn’t easily explains his haste.
She allows herself a small smile.
He’d make a good cop.
The tall, wiry man in the courtyard is now barely three metres away.
He’s in her peripheral vision but she’s avoiding eye contact.
To her surprise, he walks straight past her.
