Mind/Reader

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘I don’t remember that, either. I think I may have shouted something … said “Oh my God” or something like that. But I really don’t remember …’ His hands were at his mouth again. ‘I really fouled up, didn’t I?’

  ‘Of course you didn’t foul up,’ said Claudine. ‘When you shouted - if you shouted - and then started to run, what did other people around you in the park do? Did they seem to notice you were running … see what you were running from perhaps … or didn’t they take any notice?’

  Stills considered the question. ‘When I started running I definitely remember calling, “Help.” I don’t know why I said it: I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I wanted to find an official.’

  ‘So people looked at you?’

  ‘I think so, yes. Then I saw someone in a uniform by the via Veneto gate.’

  ‘You remember people looking at you when you ran?’ pressed Claudine. ‘What about the figure at the wall, which might or might not have been someone?’

  ‘I told you, I’m not sure it was a figure. It might have been a statue.’

  Claudine couldn’t remember any statues close to where the head had been. ‘What did you do when you got to the man in uniform?’

  ‘Tried to make him understand. He spoke English but he couldn’t make out what I was saying, so I made signs that he had to come with me.’

  ‘And he did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had anyone else realized it was a human head when you got back?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘There was no one standing around?’

  ‘The garden official screamed when he saw it. Then a lot of people looked. Some women screamed. I think some fainted.’

  Hoping against hope Claudine said: ‘Did you take any photographs then?’

  ‘I don’t think I did. There were a lot of people shouting. I think the official used a mobile telephone to call other guards. Then the police arrived. I suppose—’

  The remark was broken off by a sudden bustle at the door. Giovanni Ponzio came in first, followed by the detective who had interviewed Morton Stills accompanied by his interpreter, a bespectacled, tightly corseted woman. The translator carried sheaves of individually clipped paper. Ponzio offered Claudine the topmost copy and said: ‘I had one prepared for you,’ and Claudine realized her meeting with the American boy was effectively over. She didn’t think there would have been anything more to learn.

  To avoid any misunderstanding through Ponzio’s limited English Claudine explained through the interpreter why the film in Morton Stills’ camera should be developed in the police laboratory, and suggested a public appeal be made for anyone who had been in the Borghese park that morning to come forward. The interrogating detective glared at her and Claudine guessed the man had not extracted in his questioning the possibility of something being recorded on film. Ponzio said he’d already initiated both ideas: he’d actually launched the witness appeal at the on-the-spot Borghese press conference, which had gone remarkably well. He’d scheduled another briefing later that day. Claudine could participate if she wished. She repeated that she didn’t. The embassy lawyer thought it better that Morton Stills didn’t take part, either, which seemed to disappoint the boy until Pegley pointed out the possibility of his making himself a target. Pegley added that accommodation would be made available for Stills in the embassy compound and that any further interviews could be arranged through him. The film was extracted from the camera with promises of a replacement and Ponzio thanked everyone profusely.

  Rosetti was waiting in the police chiefs office with the other pathologist when Claudine and Ponzio reached it. The only additional finding from the mortuary examination was that the spike had gone in a virtually direct upward line into the head. There were no fixed-grin mouth lacerations or internal skull bruising to indicate any severe blow to the head, although from the downward direction of the ear split he thought it had been caused by an attempt to snatch the earring off. There was no dental work to the teeth. Neither the Italian pathologist nor Ponzio queried the significance of mouth cuts so Rosetti didn’t volunteer it. He didn’t say anything about the absence of ice traces in the recovered blood, either, and Claudine delayed the question although guessing the answer.

  The scene at the Borghese Gardens was still cordoned off and guarded by carabinieri, so Ponzio was able to answer Claudine’s query by mobile telephone. There was no life-size statue within a fifteen-metre radius of where the head had been found.

  There was time for several espresso and cappuccino coffees before Morton Stills’ film came back from the laboratory. It had been printed on 25cm by 20cm paper which was still damp, the individual photographs clipped into a separating frame. Ponzio let the technician display them on a wall-attached bench along one side of his office reserved for newspapers, magazines and an impressively large television set.

  The American student had unknowingly exposed three frames showing the severed head. None was properly in focus. In the first there were clearly visible the shadows of two people whom, able to judge east from west from her visit that morning and therefore know the position of the sun around 9 a.m., Claudine guessed to have been passers-by for whom Stills had waited to go further into the park. The second featured just the head and was beginning to go off centre from what must have been the American’s horrified, hand-jerking awareness of what he was looking at.

  And the third posed more questions that it answered.

  It was, illogically, the best focused of them all. The head was even further off centre, possibly from the boy’s action of turning away to run. The dome of St Peter’s was in sharp silhouette to the right, bisected by the centuries-old wall. Against which, to the left, was the darkness of a shape too indistinct positively to be identified. While they studied it, already knowing it could not be the mark of a statue, Ponzio contacted his officers by telephone again and eliminated a tree branch or trunk. It could, Claudine supposed, have been an odd cloud formation momentarily obscuring the sun. Or the shape of a human figure standing against the wall so close that it would have been impossible not to have been aware of the head, just centimetres away.

  ‘You think it’s the killer, just having put it there?’ demanded Ponzio excitedly.

  ‘It needs scientific enhancement and analysis,’ said Claudine cautiously.

  The Italian pathologist uttered three words, to which Rosetti retorted sharply in one. Claudine said: ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That it could be a ghost,’ translated Rosetti. ‘I called him a fool.’

  There was another exchange between Ponzio and the technician before the police chief said in his laboured English: ‘They are subjecting the negative to more tests, trying to enlarge and sharpen the image. But it’s going to take time.’

  ‘So we’ll have to wait,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘For what? And for how long?’ wondered Claudine aloud.

  The arrangement was for them to liaise through Sanglier, which Claudine dutifully did from the office Ponzio made available to her and Rosetti. Sanglier’s task force division between the new and the old crimes was precisely that for which Claudine would have argued, if she’d had to. Claudine had no functional interest in crimes that were apparently solved, apart from the satisfaction of knowing her profile had contributed, as it had in Cologne. She hadn’t argued, either, against the supposed procedural reasons for Poulard and Siemen’s going there, to take part in the interrogation and to decide from the evidence and the hoped-for confessions if there were any links with their other murders, knowing there were not. With her customary, even cynical, objectivity Claudine recognized that the split was not at all for her benefit. After the debacle of their totally wasted time in France, Sanglier had obviously decided it was necessary for the two detectives to appear to be part of a successfully concluded investigation and had chosen them to represent Europol in the public awareness of that success.

  None of the three arrested skinheads had made any admission, San
glier told her, but in the home of one had been found diamond stud earrings Cologne police believed to be those missing from the murdered girl, who remained unidentified. There were witnesses to the three boasting they had rid Germany of another coloured parasite and all three belonged to the Nationalistische Front neo-Nazi party banned by the German government after racist outrages in 1993.

  Claudine told the French commissioner that although she had insufficient evidence to support the opinion, she didn’t think the Rome killing fitted any of their patterns: she stopped short of voicing her suspicion that it might be a copycat prompted by Europol’s over-detailed initial press release. She didn’t, either, mention the shadowed photograph. Potentially it could be of enormous importance - as well as guaranteeing more sensational headlines - but she wanted the results of the photographic analysis before raising the possibility.

  She did, however, suggest to Rosetti that they re-examine the scene after registering at the hotel he proposed in the via Sistina, at the top of the Spanish Steps, within walking distance of the Borghese Gardens.

  The area was still sealed and Claudine was impressed that the carabinieri officer checked their identities and the passes Ponzio had provided before admitting them, wishing the man had been on duty that morning to hold back the trampling hordes. Before they’d left the police chief had said nothing of any forensic value had been recovered.

  Claudine confirmed to her own satisfaction that no nearby statue or overhanging tree or branch could have caused the shadow. There was a pillared gazebo about twenty metres away and she even stood behind that to check its sightline, knowing before she did that it didn’t fit the east to west movement of the sun at the time Morton Stills took his picture.

  ‘So it could be significant?’ queried the pathologist, briefly cupping her arm to help her through the via Veneto gate and the clogged traffic beyond to the wide pavement on the other side.

  ‘Vital, if it can technically be identified as a human figure and some detail picked out. It would have to be the person who put the head there: it’s too close for someone to have been there and not seen it.’

  ‘Yet the boy can’t remember seeing anyone.’

  ‘He’s nineteen years old and was confronted by a severed head,’ said Claudine. ‘That’s a hell of a shock for anyone.’

  ‘He would have surely seen the action of the head being impaled?’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t done then.’

  Rosetti frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Claudine hesitated, aware she was about to quote a dictum enshrined by Scott Burrows but persevering because it was an established modus operandi. ‘Serial killers really do return to the scene of their crime.’

  ‘You’re talking about one killer, not a group like all the others?’

  ‘Serial killers show a lot of anger. There was a lot of anger in the way the head was severed: actually hacked away from the body. And again by the force with which it was jammed into position for at least ten centimetres. At the mortuary you found the entry path directly upwards. It was held between the hands of one man and thrust down. If it had been more than one person it would have been a crooked entry wound …’ She was rehearsing her profile, Claudine realized. ‘And as well as returning to the scene of their crime serial killers often take souvenirs: they represent a sexual reminder of what they did. I think the injury to the ear was an attempt to take one of her earrings.’

  ‘Do you really think it could be the image of a man? A human figure at all?’

  It was easier walking down to the via Sistina than it had been climbing up the hill. ‘I don’t know that it’s anything,’ warned Claudine. ‘And with Ponzio talking of monsters and the pathologist wondering about ghosts I don’t intend speculating until we get a definitive photo-analysis.’

  ‘You’re talking about it to me,’ Rosetti pointed out.

  ‘You don’t believe in ghosts and monsters.’

  ‘How do you know?’ demanded Rosetti, with unexpected lightness.

  ‘I’m a psychologist. We can read minds,’ retorted Claudine, matching his mood, welcoming it.

  Although it was obvious Rosetti’s immediate family would be in The Hague Claudine supposed some relatives to be living in Rome and half expected the pathologist to announce a private arrangement that night. But in the foyer Rosetti suggested their eating dinner at the hotel, where Ponzio could instantly reach them if more of the body was found. Claudine agreed at once, as readily as she accepted Rosetti’s promise to introduce her to better restaurants when there was less chance of their being needed urgently.

  Claudine was encouraged by how much stronger her mother sounded, when she telephoned. There had still been no positive decision about chemotherapy, the older woman said. She’d been overwhelmed by the flowers and gifts and get-well messages from customers: there’d been so many she’d lost count. Gerard wanted to take her somewhere quiet in the south, where she could recuperate after leaving hospital, but she’d dismissed the idea out of hand: both of them couldn’t be away from the restaurant at the same time. Claudine was unsure if she could get to Lyon at the weekend and her mother told her not to bother. Claudine promised to try.

  She bathed and took her time getting ready, critically examining her reflection in the wardrobe mirror - glad she’d included the black dress when she’d packed - before descending to the bar. Rosetti rose politely to meet her but didn’t comment about how she looked. It would have been inappropriate if he had - they were two colleagues on an assignment, not an assignation - but as the thought came to her Claudine realized that equally inappropriate though the circumstances were, she was actually involved in a social outing. She genuinely could not remember the last time. It would, of course, have been with Warwick but that didn’t help recollection. She certainly didn’t think it had been like this, the two of them at dinner. It was probably an office function - hers or his, something else she couldn’t recall - a farewell, perhaps, or an engagement. Rosetti accepted, without comment, her announcement that she didn’t drink and she accepted, trustingly, his aperitif recommendation, which turned out to be an orange-based cocktail with a sharp acidic flavour that she liked very much. Rosetti drank campari in the bar and ordered only a half-bottle of white Chianti for himself at dinner. At his suggestion she changed from pasta to antipasto to start and chose veal for the main course, as he did.

  ‘Before we leave Rome I’ll take you to Alfredo’s: they really did invent fettuccine there.’

  They were colleagues on an assignment so the investigation - in general and in particular - was initially the obvious topic of conversation. Claudine said she would not have been able to conclude as much as she had without his contribution and he said he’d been amazed by her interpretation. She wasn’t flattering him and he knew it, just as she knew he wasn’t flattering her. Claudine began to feel comfortable, for once not having to balance every word and place it with tweezers into whatever she said.

  ‘What about Europol itself?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’ll work, given the chance.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe more than one chance. It has to work: there’s got to be something. After more than sixty years the American FBI is tolerated rather than accepted by local forces. So how can we expect anything quicker or better?’

  ‘Happy to be a part of it?’

  ‘Absolutely. You?’

  ‘It answered a lot of needs, personal as well as professional.’ Claudine was shocked at her own candour. She felt warm and hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  He nodded but didn’t speak and to avoid an awkward silence she said: ‘I thought you might have relatives to see in Rome,’ and wished she hadn’t, remembering his strange response in the incident room to her remark about an understanding wife. What the hell’s wrong with me, she thought, agonized: I’m risking a pleasant evening by talking like a bloody fool!

  Rosetti said: ‘I might make time tomorrow, if nothing comes up. I was here last weekend.’

  When he didn’t continue Claudine s
aid: ‘My mother lives in Lyon. She’s not well. I’m trying to get there every weekend now but it’s not easy.’

  ‘Do you have to be quite so committed?’

  The question was defused by his smile but Claudine immediately guessed at gossip while Poulard and Siemen had been with him during the autopsies. ‘You don’t need me to tell you how important it all is.’

  ‘More important to whom, Europol or you?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘You can’t have any career worries, after what you’ve already achieved?’

  ‘There hasn’t been an arrest yet. Cologne would have succeeded without our input. It won’t be acknowledged even though the organization the three belonged to was on our list, not theirs.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about external recognition which from the way you refused Ponzio’s press conference invitation doesn’t seem to interest you. I was thinking how you’ve established yourself within Europol.’

  It was an unwelcome reminder of what she’d briefly succeeded in relegating from her mind. It returned in a rush and more to herself than to the man she said: ‘Unless something external intrudes to wreck it all.’

  ‘Like what?’ frowned Rosetti.

  Claudine began to tell him. It started as an internal debate with herself, which it always had been, and it was not until she got to Peter Toomey’s questioning about a suicide note Warwick might have left, as Gerald Lorimer had, that she abruptly realized she was talking aloud and that Rosetti had pushed his plate aside and was listening with his head cupped between his hands. She halted, horrified, trying to remember what she had said (she’d stopped before disclosing Warwick’s note: she knew she had!), completely bewildered by what she’d done.

  ‘You’ve stopped,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry … I don’t know what …’ she stumbled.

  ‘I haven’t understood very much, apart from the fact that your husband’s friend committed suicide, as he did. And that there’s some official inquiry …’