The Rome Prophecy

by Jon Trace

  But he thinks there’s more than that.

  More than just the physical.

  He admires her strength and ambition, respects her individuality and her determination to make a go of things on her own. He loves her sense of humour and her desire to do good.

  Yes, Tom concludes, it was smart to throw himself into a relationship with her. Chances of happiness don’t exactly queue up outside your door and knock noisily for an appointment. Especially if you’re an ex-priest with no job, no home and no savings.

  He looks up from the old dark wood of the pews and sees Alfie, his face beaming as brightly as the winter sunshine filtering through Michelangelo’s dome. The service is over.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the planet’s most troublesome ex-priest.’ He opens his arms.

  Tom embraces him warmly and puts a hand gently to his face. ‘You looked magnificent up there, my friend. I’m so proud of you. How did you end up saying Mass in here?’

  Alfie puts an arm around Tom and guides him towards the door. ‘A long story, best told over hot coffee and Italy’s finest pastries.’

  ‘Sounds heavenly.’

  ‘Sufficient to say it was God’s will. That and the fact that innumerable first choices went down with a severe dose of the shits after a very poor communal meal.’

  24

  The hospital cafeteria is sickeningly warm and smells queasily of hot fat and bleach.

  Over barely warm coffee and day-old croissants, Valen tina and Federico try to make sense of what’s just happened.

  Not that there’s much to make sense of.

  The woman prisoner is bark-at-the-moon mad. And from the quick check Federico does with HQ, there’s still no sign of a victim.

  When the dregs of a poor espresso have been drained, Lieutenant Assante heads off with instructions to write up his notes, mail them to Valentina and not mention the case to anyone else until she tells him to. He resents the tightness of her leash, but with any luck he’ll be off it and back with his wife and family by lunchtime.

  Valentina’s about to call Tom when she’s struck by an urge to return to the ward. If nothing else, she’d like to learn more from Louisa Verdetti about the patient’s latest outburst, providing of course the director hasn’t already left.

  She has.

  Her office is empty. Lights out. Blinds down. Door locked. It looks like most of the nursing staff have gone too. No doubt the skeleton Sunday crew has been stretched to invisibility doing routine jobs.

  Valentina takes advantage of the slack supervision. She flashes her ID at the guard in the corridor and within a minute is once again face to face with Suzanna.

  ‘Hi. How you doing?’ She closes the door gently behind her.

  The young woman is sitting up in bed, hunched over a wooden roller tray, the type patients are served meals on.

  She glances towards the captain but doesn’t say anything.

  Valentina makes small talk as she heads her way. ‘You look as though you’re busy. Are they making you work for your stay?’

  A tiny voice comes back. The voice of a sad child. ‘Mommy says I have to do my homework. She says if I don’t get it done I’m not going to be allowed to go with Daddy when he comes for me. Do you know what time it is?’

  Valentina stays calm. ‘Plenty of time, honey. You’ve got plenty of time. What’s your name?’

  She doesn’t look up from her writing. ‘Suzanna.’

  Valentina is relieved. ‘That’s right. Suzanna Grecoraci, I remember now.’

  ‘No, silly. That’s not my name. I’m Suzanna Fratelli. I’m only eight. Suzanna Grecoraci is the name of that old lady, the one who is friends with the others.’ She looks up and gives Valentina a childish giggle. ‘You must be really silly to mix us up.’ She adds a critical stare to her facial repertoire. ‘Have you been drinking? My daddy mixes things up when he’s been drinking.’

  Valentina moves closer to her. ‘No, I haven’t. Do other people mix you up?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ She looks down and works some more on the paper in front of her. ‘The others call me Little Suzie; that way when I leave notes and things they don’t get us confused.’

  ‘The others? What others are they?’

  ‘You know. The others, the ones who live in here with us.’ Valentina’s out of her depth and she knows it. ‘How many, Suzie? How many others are there?’

  Suzie stops her work and counts them off on her fingers. ‘More than that!’ She holds up two outstretched hands, fingers spread wide. ‘Lots more.’

  ‘Really?’ Valentina works her way around so she can see over Suzie’s shoulder. ‘That’s really good. What is it?’

  Suzie moves her hands to reveal a large crayoned drawing. ‘Romans. Do you like Romans?’

  ‘Some of them.’ Valentina leans closer. The crayoning is good. She can easily identify Roman soldiers, a crowd, senators in togas and – she has to look twice – a woman with her hand in the mouth of a giant white disc.

  The Bocca della Verità.

  ‘That’s blood!’ says Suzie, jabbing excitedly at a smear of red. ‘It’s from Cassandra.’

  The background of the drawing is filled with strange shapes: a sun, maybe a moon, and some badly drawn stars, so bad they’re more triangular and lopsided than star-shaped.

  ‘Cassandra is having her hand cut off,’ explains Suzie, almost as though she were recalling a favourite fairy tale. ‘It’s because she won’t tell them about the secret.’

  ‘Oooh, it looks nasty.’ Valentina rubs her own wrist. ‘What secret is that?’

  Suzie frowns. ‘I don’t know. It’s Cassandra’s secret and she never tells. No matter what.’

  There are sounds outside the door. A trolley being wheeled into an adjacent room. A woman’s voice talking loudly.

  Suzie looks scared. ‘You should go now.’ She glances nervously towards the door. ‘If you don’t go, Momma will find you – then you’ll be sorry.’

  Valentina gives her a reassuring smile. ‘I’m a police-woman, Suzie; nothing bad is going to happen while I’m here. I promise you.’

  Fear takes Suzie’s voice up another ten decibels. ‘Please go! I don’t want you in here. If you don’t go, Momma will take it out on me and she won’t let Daddy come.’

  The trolley is on the move again. They can hear its wheels squeaking. The door to the room next to them is opening. Valentina is desperate to ask more about Cassandra – about the secret – but she can see it would be pointless.

  The poor girl is petrified.

  She’ll come back and do it when she’s had time to gather her thoughts and think the whole crazy thing through a little more.

  She gives Suzie a smile and moves away to open the door. ‘Don’t worry, no one will hurt you. I’ll come back tomorrow and make sure you’re all right.’

  Suzie doesn’t reply.

  She’s already pulled the bed sheet above her head and curled herself into a tight ball.

  25

  There is whispering in the womb.

  Hushed voices.

  Confidential tones.

  But I hear them.

  I lie curled up, pretending to be asleep, but I hear all their secrets and their laughter.

  Mother and the special one – the favoured one – are together. They are out of sight, hidden in the darkness, but their sentences fly like birds and nest in my ears.

  It is easy for me to picture them there.

  Easy but painful.

  They sit side by side and Mother has her arm fondly around her. She strokes my sister’s hair and tells her how beautiful she is.

  The most beautiful of all of us.

  She tells her how clever she is.

  By far the cleverest among us.

  And She tells her how like Her she is.

  And how She likes her the most.

  The others want me to run away.

  Escape.

  They say they know how and can set me free.

  They tell me they have done
it before – in Phrygia, in Crete, in Anatolia, in Etruria, Hellas and Rome.

  They can do it again.

  But I know Mother will stop them. She will stop them and She will stop me.

  And deep inside I feel that I don’t want to escape.

  I want to belong.

  I want to be the one to sit beneath Mother’s outstretched arm and be cherished and confided in.

  I strain to listen.

  I wait patiently for the word birds to nest again in my ears. They are coming now, their beaks heavy with secrets carried from centuries long ago.

  They drop them gently and I pick through them.

  Precious stories about the kings of Rome, the Seven Hills of the Eternal City, the Prophecies.

  And more.

  The Tenth Book.

  The secrets of the Tenth Book.

  These are the scraps I am left as the voices fade in the darkness of the womb.

  Now there is only silence, darkness and one thing else.

  The silent screaming of my mind.

  PART TWO

  26

  Monday morning isn’t Louisa Verdetti’s favourite time of the week. Especially, if she’s already worked Saturday and Sunday.

  To make matters worse, the first part of her least favourite day is being spent with the man who tops her list of least favourite people.

  Hospital administrator Sylvio Valducci is mid-fifties. He has white hair and is one of those bosses who one minute manages from a distance of six miles and the next from six inches. He’s the kind that conveniently ignores you when you’re in the middle of a crisis but is all over you about the cost of paper clips when it’s annual budget time. He and Louisa only have one thing in common – a mutual loathing of each other.

  Valducci doesn’t knock on her office door or even manage a good morning as he bursts in. ‘I’m told you have something of a cause célèbre.’ He tosses a manila file on her desk and enjoys watching it slide. ‘I’d very much like to hear about it. In person. From you. I prefer it that way – it’s much better than getting it second-hand from the animals who gather around the water cooler.’

  Louisa takes off her glasses. She slowly spins her desk chair and vows not to lose her temper. ‘I’m not sure I would call it a cause célèbre, but the patient is certainly interesting.’ She opens the file he dropped and sees inside a copy of medical notes she’s made. ‘As it says in here: our admission is an Italian woman, identity so far unknown, mid to late twenties, well nourished.’

  ‘This I know.’ He pats his mouth to stifle a fake yawn and settles into a seat opposite her.

  ‘And as you are also apparently aware, she’s exhibiting as DID. Dissociative identity—’

  ‘I know what DID is,’ he snaps. ‘Or to be more specific, what it isn’t.’ He shows his teeth, in what he mistakenly believes is an enigmatic smile. ‘Better doctors than you have made fools of themselves with this little acronym.’ He melodramatically puts his hand to his forehead. ‘And my, isn’t it strange that patients with DID are so often involved in criminal activity? Crimes they conveniently blame on one of their many other personalities. Stranger still if you ask me that none of those other personalities turn up at the police station and confess, or rat on the offending alter, as you so ridiculously call them.’

  Louisa tries to ignore his goading. ‘Our patient is presenting classic symptoms. She’s writing and drawing in different personalities. Speaking in multiple voices and tones, as though she were different people of different ages. Her mood swings are extreme – from timid to violent.’

  He waves a hand dismissively. ‘Fakery! This is all rubbish and you know it. Have you run diagnostic tests for borderline personality disorder?’

  ‘Of course we’ve run tests – and we’re running more. You don’t need to tell me how to do my job. We’ve taken more blood and urine samples than an Olympic doping committee, and before you ask, no, there is no chance of amphetamine-induced psychoses, if that’s what you’re fishing for.’

  He’s amused by her anger.

  Pleased that he has roused it so fully.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with fishing, Louisa. When you have but a small crack in the ice of the mind, fishing is the best thing you can do.’

  She is bursting to tell him not to be so stupid and so pompous.

  He stands and folds his arms autocratically. ‘And while we’re angling away, we should make sure we also run endocrine function tests to rule out hyperadrenalism, pernicious anaemia and thyroid disorders.’ He takes her silence as a sign of his intellectual victory. ‘Given the delusionary symptoms, don’t dismiss the possibility of schizophrenia. It’s tricky to diagnose—’

  Louisa’s out of her chair before he can finish. ‘Schizophrenia? She’s no more schizophrenic than you or I. With all respect, can I remind you that I am a qualified neuropsychiatrist? At least credit me with some expert judgement.’

  Snapping point. He just loves it when he gets people here. ‘Not in this country.’ He wags a finger at her, ‘Your qualification is an American one, and as you know, we don’t follow the outdated bible of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders quite as slavishly as your American mentors do.’

  Louisa shakes her head at him. Boss or no boss, he’s a sentence away from getting a slapped face. She worked damned hard to get qualified, and even in Rome, ten years at Johns Hopkins should stand for something.

  The administrator picks his file up off her desk. ‘Blood tests, urine tests, tox tests: I want more doing – and all of them completed – before you even mention DID again. Do I make myself clear?’

  If looks could kill, he’d be no more than a plasma stain up Louisa’s office wall. ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘These beds are expensive. If she’s fit, I want her out on the street and off my budget as quick as possible. Let the police work out what to do with her.’

  Before Louisa can explode, her door bangs shut and he’s gone.

  27

  Valentina Morassi’s start to the day isn’t going much better than Louisa’s.

  She planned to take this week off as holiday, but the incident in Cosmedin has scuppered any hopes of spending much time with Tom.

  She forces herself to leave him naked in bed, sleeping off the wonderfully numbing effects of another night of excessive sex and the great bottle of Barolo they shared after getting home from a local restaurant.

  Dozens of doubts and hundreds of hopes jangle like wind chimes in her mind as she drives from the apartment to the office.

  Federico is already at his desk, and he looks even worse than she feels. Wife problems, he calls it, solved by half a bottle of brandy and a night on the couch. It’s not something Valentina wants to discuss.

  Love is meant to bloom, not wither and die.

  He gets his act together after several long slugs of tar-black espresso and a sneaky cigarette in a toilet cubicle. ‘I’m going to the labs to see what they’ve done with that bloodstained robe we got from the crazy woman. You want to come?’

  Valentina certainly does.

  It’s not long before Federico soon regrets asking her. All the way to the offices of the Raggruppamento Carabinieri per la Investigazioni Scientifiche, she pushes him for progress reports on every aspect of the inquiry.

  ‘Please stop busting my balls,’ he pleads as they’re ushered through reception and climb some stairs. ‘It all takes time. You need to learn that in Rome things move at a certain pace.’

  ‘Snail’s pace – and it’s not fast enough,’ says Valentina. ‘I want to bury this case quickly. I’ve got a feeling that if it hangs around, it’s going to cause us all kinds of problems.’

  Federico doesn’t fight her.

  He leads the way down corridors with walls as brown as tobacco. They finally reach a door to a small office filled by a very fat middle-aged man in a white coat. He’s sitting on a swivel chair that’s way too small for him. Valentina notices that he has a telephone tucked between his left shoul
der and ear and a dried waterfall of croissant crumbs down the front of the black T-shirt he’s ill-advisedly wearing beneath his lab coat.

  Federico does the introductions with a wave of his hand. ‘Professore Enrico Ferrari, this is my boss, Capitano Valentina Morassi.’

  ‘Buongiorno. I am charmed to meet you, Capitano.’ He looks at his friend. ‘And I must confess, I am somewhat surprised. I have never known Federico to venture out this early in the day.’

  Valentina shakes his hand and resists obvious remarks about him not looking like any Ferrari she’s ever seen. ‘I believe you have the clothing and weapon recovered from the case in Cosmedin?’

  ‘I have.’ He struggles off his chair and brushes some of the crumbs from his chest. ‘The sword is actually in this locked cabinet over here. We are going to take some more photographs of it this morning. An amazing object.’

  He opens the top drawer of a three-box cabinet and lifts out a heavy chunk of metal wrapped in brown paper. ‘It’s been fingerprinted already and there are several latents on it, but we don’t have any direct matches as yet.’ He places it on his desk and moves papers, a stapler and laptop to one side so he can unwrap it. ‘It’s very old.’

  ‘Bravo!’ mocks Federico. ‘All your training and very old is the best you can come up with?’

  ‘Okay. Then it’s very, very old.’ Ferrari smiles at his friend. ‘I know you want facts, but until we’ve X-rayed and carbon-tested it, I’m not even going to guess at a date. What I will say is this is not a replica. It is an ancient Roman weapon forged several centuries ago.’

  Valentina struggles to picture Suzanna with it. A frail Italian woman in the twenty-first century wielding a heavy Roman sword in a church is an insane image. Almost as crazy as the thought of how it could have come into her possession. Family heirloom? Stolen from her husband, boyfriend or lover? ‘And this thing could actually cut a hand off?’

  ‘I believe it could.’ Ferrari lifts it so the blade is close to Valentina’s eyeline. ‘I haven’t chopped anything with it, but the metal has probably been tempered. That would make it sharper, stronger, even deadlier, but ironically a little more brittle. Against a heavier weapon it might shatter, but it would slice through flesh like a hot knife through butter and, with several hacks, would go through bone.’