FOURTEEN
THE BASEMENT TILES of the St Andrea Hospital were a sickly yellow, making it difficult to say if they were clean or dirty. To the outside observer, the presence of a nun standing among policemen outside the morgue might have suggested a scenario of family grief and pastoral attendance.
But Elisabetta was tending her own garden, steeling herself to confront the face of death.
Micaela emerged from the morgue wearing her long white doctor’s coat. She pulled Elisabetta off to the side. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Elisabetta answered with a pretended confidence. Then, ‘I have to.’
Micaela gave her a hug.
Inspector Leone was there, his usual irascible self, looking like he’d slept in his uniform. ‘We’re coming in too.’
Micaela took on the posture of a fighting cock about to raise its claws. ‘The Chief Pathologist said only her. You can speak to him – don’t speak to me.’
Elisabetta found it odd how she herself was comfortable with ‘old’ death but shaky with ‘fresh’ death, how skeletons and mummified remains were slotted into a cool, academic part of her brain but new corpses were relegated to a more fearful place.
Maybe it was something primeval, feeding on the fear of diseased flesh. Or perhaps, she realized, it was as simple as a childhood memory: trying to reconcile the dead body of her mother in her casket with the vibrant life force she had been.
The man was lying face up on the slab, a small towel covering his private parts – no doubt, Elisabetta thought, in respect for the modesty of a nun. His torso was riddled with angry black holes, the entrance wounds of 9mm slugs. His eyes were open but curiously no more dead-looking than they had appeared during life. His face, fixed in death, was identical to the immobile one she’d seen the night before and again years earlier.
‘It’s him,’ she whispered to her sister. ‘I’m sure it’s the man who stabbed me.’
Doctor Fiore, the Chief Pathologist, asked whether Elisabetta was ready. She nodded and two thick-armed mortician’s assistants turned the body on its face. The exit wounds in his upper and lower back were horrific.
The towel was pulled away to reveal his well-muscled buttocks.
‘You see,’ Micaela whispered. ‘The same.’
Doctor Fiore, visibly shaken by the sight, overheard the remark. ‘Same as w – what?’
‘Just the same as I told her it would be,’ Micaela answered evasively.
It was as if the photo of the old man from Ulm had materialized incarnate.
The stubby tail hanging down to the fold of his buttocks like a dead serpent.
The numbers tattooed in three rings at the base of his spine.
Elisabetta took it in numbly. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she said after a while.
She would have preferred a few minutes alone – perhaps a short respite in the hospital chapel – but it was not to be. There were more people in the basement hall and a heated contretemps had flared up. Zazo had arrived with Lorenzo and immediately got into an argument with Inspector Leone. Zazo started things by insisting that the convent intruder and the man on the slab were likely to be one and the same. Leone responded sarcastically that his investigation clearly demanded a higher level of proof than would satisfy the Vatican Gendarmerie.
The two of them argued and Micaela left to answer an urgent hospital page. Elisabetta was left alone with her thoughts until she felt a presence behind her.
‘Are you okay?’
It was Lorenzo, his arms folded across his front, two fingers gripping his major’s cap.
‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said.
‘It was a terrible night for you, I’m sure,’ he said, looking down shyly at his feet.
There was something familiar about this. She saw Lorenzo but she felt Marco. The physical similarities weren’t so great. Marco was taller, darker, more handsome, at least in her mind’s eye. But here was another friend of Zazo’s, in uniform, making her feel safe just by his presence. And there was another similarity, she realized. The eyes. Both men had sympathetic eyes.
He glanced at Zazo and shook his head. ‘He’s fed up to here with the Polizia. They treated him like the criminal last night. Six hours of interrogation and that’s only the beginning, apparently. It’s complicated when you shoot someone.’
‘Have you ever …?’
Lorenzo answered quickly. ‘Never. I’ve never fired my gun in anger. Zazo neither – until now – but you know that.’
‘It’s an awful thing,’ Elizabetta said sadly. ‘I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I wish Professor De Stefano hadn’t been killed. I wish evil didn’t exist.’
‘Your family church,’ Lorenzo said. ‘It’s Santa Maria in Trastevere, isn’t it?’
‘Do you know it?’
‘In passing. Zazo’s mentioned it. Maybe when the Conclave is over and the dust has settled, maybe I can come and pray there with you.’
‘I’d like that.’ Elisabetta caught herself. ‘We all need to pray for Christ’s forgiveness.’
When the police got their turn in the morgue, Zazo came over to Elisabetta and Lorenzo. ‘These idiots have nothing. They’ve got a name, Aldo Vani, and that’s about it. He doesn’t have any employment records, no records that he ever paid tax. They searched his apartment and they say they came up empty. His mobile phone didn’t have an address book and the log of recent calls was empty. According to them, he’s a ghost.’
‘I worked in Naples as a young cop,’ Lorenzo said. ‘This guy is like a Camorra hit man with a life completely off the grid. But what’s with the tail? Whoever heard of something like that?’
Zazo looked protectively at Elisabetta. ‘We don’t know if this is relevant. Maybe yes, maybe no.’
Lorenzo’s phone rang. When he stepped aside to answer it Zazo asked her, ‘How are you holding up?’
‘I’m tired but still grateful to be alive.’
‘I told you not to leave Papa’s house.’
‘The professor called. He was so insistent, the poor man. He must have been threatened by that beast. At least I left a note, thank God.’
Zazo pointed at the morgue doors. ‘Jesus, Elisabetta. If you hadn’t it would have been you in there. I want you to go back to Papa’s and stay there. Don’t go out for anything. I’m going to try to get Leone to give you some police protection but I don’t think he’ll do it. He’s more focused on De Stefano and thinks you just stumbled into something. He’s not putting the pieces together.’
‘I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with him,’ Elisabetta said.
‘Don’t. It’s not in your best interests to tell him everything. Anyway it would blow the little fuse in his brain. He won’t even consider that the bastard in there was the same guy who tried to get you before. Christ, if the Conclave weren’t the day after tomorrow, I’d take a leave and protect you full-time myself.’
She touched his cheek. ‘You’re a wonderful brother.’
Zazo laughed. ‘Yes, I am. Listen, maybe it would be better if you went to stay at Papa’s farmhouse.’
Elisabetta shook her head. ‘I feel safer here. And I can go to my church. But Zazo …?
‘What?’
‘I’m neglecting my obligations and my devotions. I just want to go back to teaching and get my life back.’
‘Soon. I’m sure you’ll get it back soon. We’ll get to the bottom of this.’
Lorenzo and Micaela finished their calls at about the same time and joined them.
‘Inspector Loreti is having a stroke,’ Lorenzo says. ‘He wants us back at the Vatican right away. The place is crawling with red-hats and the media.’
‘Will you take her home?’ Zazo asked Micaela.
‘Inspector Leone said he wanted to speak with me again,’ Elisabetta said.
‘Then right after that, okay?’