After a brief respite, Filomena shouts Roberto back in.
Only when the cadaver has been checked and declared mouse-free does she resume her work.
Setting a time of death is difficult.
The corpse has been exposed to the elements and has probably been covered by the tide of the Tiber. It’s also been masked by rocks, affording a little shelter.
She always tells the police: ‘time of death is precisely between when the victim was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered’.
The lower part of the torso is heavily damaged by rocks, and the knees and shins show extensive injuries.
She diligently marks them on a standard anatomical drawing.
Only now does she realise that the gaping wounds to the man’s head and stomach have drawn her attention away from something she would otherwise have instantly found fascinating.
The man has no scrotum and no testicles.
She looks closer. This isn’t a recent injury. In fact, it isn’t an injury at all.
It’s been done very deliberately.
Judging from the scars, there’s been a crude operation to castrate him.
The deceased is a modern-day eunuch.
43
The apartment seems strange without Valentina in it.
Empty. Silent. Soulless.
Tom uses the bathroom, strips and falls into bed.
Maybe his life would also be strange without Valentina in it.
Interesting thought.
He remembers what Alfie had said. You could interpret ‘interesting’ to mean he hoped one day to be with her for the rest of his life.
Maybe that’s true.
He puts his sentimentality down to exhaustion and pulls the quilt up tight around his neck. A long, deep sleep will give him perspective. It always does.
He squashes his pillow a few different ways until it seems right, and shuts his eyes.
It feels wonderful to rest. His tired muscles and joints are relieved to be laid out flat and still.
A couple of hours’ sleep will do him the world of good.
But he’s not going to sleep.
He knows it.
His eyes are shut, but there’s no way he’s going to sleep.
One of those awful moments is happening. One where the more you try to sleep the more you know it’s not going to happen.
Finally, he gets up.
He wanders to the lounge, grabs Valentina’s Vaio and brings it back to bed.
A distraction is all he needs.
His brain will stop buzzing and his eyes will grow weary and then he’ll nod off.
Fantastic.
He surfs the net for ten minutes. He checks out the LA Times sports pages and scrolls through the latest on the Lakers and Dodgers. He even finds out how the Clippers, Kings and Ducks are doing.
Sleep still seems a long way off.
He can’t even glimpse it hiding around the corner.
Tom reaches down the bed to recover his trousers. He pulls out the napkin that Alfie wrote on at La Rambla.
He might as well start a virtual search of the temples.
A is for Apollo Sosianus.
The site takes him to pictures of the Field of Mars – just walking distance from where he found the murdered man. The site shows that nothing remains of the temple except three tall columns. Accompanying text says there was once a cult of Apollo, established outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome ploughed by Romulus.
Tom Googles Apollo and sees nothing he doesn’t already know.
The guy was a superhero. As famous in Greece as he was in Rome. Son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis, the god of everything from archery to medicine, music to poetry.
He gets a bad feeling as he looks at a second-century marble of Apollo holding a lyre and a python.
Snakes always give him bad feelings.
But there are no triangles. No rituals or stories of severed hands to link the deity with his modern-day case.
He goes back to the home page.
B is for Bellona.
This is a temple close to that of Apollo and was dedicated to a goddess of war who seemed to have Etruscan origins. Her followers were said to have syncretised their beliefs with those of another sect, that of the Magna Mater. The web page shows a painting of Bellona by Rembrandt, and Tom wonders if he’s ever seen a woman look so masculine. Below it is a bronze by Rodin that makes her look a little more feminine.
He flicks back to pictures of the temple.
It’s in ruins. Nothing except broken chunks of marble and busted pillars.
Only a single podium still stands as a reminder of the powerful building that was once there.
He closes his eyes for a second and thinks about what C might be for.
He doesn’t find out.
Sleep finally comes, right at the wrong moment.
44
A windy morning miraculously morphs into a mild and sunny lunchtime.
It’s a long way until spring but is still warm enough for Valentina to take her tray of food to a table on the patio outside the police canteen.
She’s more than ready for the break.
The morning has been brutal.
First the bad news from the forensic labs, then the strange report Federico has just phoned in from the mortuary.
A dead eunuch?
What sense does that make?
She takes a tomato salad, two slices of fresh rustic bread, an espresso and a glass of water off her tray.
While she eats with just a fork, she stifles a yawn and scribbles in her notebook.
The body by the Tiber is a major development, but it’s also a huge distraction. All the real clues to cracking the case surely lie in the multiple personalities of the woman they are calling Prisoner X, the thin slip of a thing confined to a hospital bed at the Policlinico.
Valentina downs her espresso and quickly sketches out names, ages and the briefest of details presented by the suspect’s several personalities.
The small chart makes fascinating reading.
Suzanna and Little Suzie seem to be the two contemporary personalities, while Claudia and Cassandra – both classic Roman names – are the ‘legendary’ alters.
Little Suzie alluded to the fact that there were many others.
Are there really more? Questions stick like bugs on a wind-screen.
Why do two of the personalities use the name Suzanna? Valentina thinks there’s a psychological reason – maybe a bridge to her real life. It could be that Suzanna is the name of someone who’s been kind to her, supported her through difficult times, or perhaps it’s someone she admired.
Valentina has already made sure the Carabinieri’s records team has checked out the surname Grecoraci.
They drew blanks.
So too did the hospital’s own enquiries.
No one with that name fitting Suzanna’s age and physical description has shown up on any official records anywhere across Italy. But to the best of Valentina’s knowledge, no one has run a check on Suzanna Fratelli. She makes a note to action the search – and also for Cassandra Fratelli and Claudia Fratelli.
The sky is starting to cloud over and the warmth is disappearing from the patio. She heads back inside and leaves her food tray on a lopsided rack by the canteen door. She takes the stairs rather than the lift and thinks about calling Tom before she enters what she knows will be a dreadful meeting with Caesario.
Predictably, Armando Caesario’s office is one of the grandest in the building. Occupying a south-facing corner position with enough floor space to double as a parade ground.
The wooden floor is dark and polished and creaks as she walks over it. To her left is a seating area, marked by a large Indian rug full of deep reds and two chestnut-coloured leather settees. The rest of the room is dominated by a giant mahogany desk straight in front of her. The small man sitting behind it is backlit by a large sash window with a view across the city. Old hardback chairs covered in faded brown leather stand to attention to the front and flanks of the major’s desk. This is not a room where anyone is meant to feel at ease.