Tom examines the papered walls. Unless he’s mistaken, it’s not only a Vulgate, a standard Latin Bible, that has been ripped up and stuck there. He recognises some other pages as sections of the Polyglot Bible for the Greek New Testament. He moves along, his hands feeling and tracing the wallpapered text.
He points out several pages of old print. ‘These are extracts from the Septuagint, the oldest Greek version of the Jewish Bible.’ He slides his hand along, ‘Next to it are pages from the classic Hebrew Bible.’ He points a long, shadowy finger. ‘Just at the edge of your light there, I can see English — those are sections of the Old Testament.’
‘What’s going on, Tom?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s like someone has taken out an insurance policy and covered themselves with every form of overlapping religion.’
His foot knocks against something. ‘Shine your light down here for a second.’
She flashes the beam his way.
‘Down at my feet.’
‘My God, what is it?’
He crouches. ‘The bed — it’s made from Bibles.’
She steps closer and kneels beside him.
Tom pulls at part of the single bed. ‘The frame is made four Bibles high and by the looks of it, one … two … three deep. They’ve been used like bricks to build a small wall, with the openings facing outwards, so the inside fits tight against a single mattress.’ He manages to force some pages open. ‘Looks like masonry nails have been driven through them and into the floor to hold them together.’
Valentina moves her hand beneath the torchlight and over the bed. ‘And the mattress and quilt are both lined with more Bible pages.’ She is the first back on her feet. ‘Now tell me you don’t find this creepy.’
Tom gets up as well. ‘I don’t. I’ve seen similar things.’
‘You have?’ she says incredulously.
‘Some people are frightened of being attacked — of being possessed — in their sleep. They’re afraid that when their defences are down they become vulnerable. I guess this is similar. Your girl is scared that when she’s asleep, some evil alter will take over her body.’
Outside, in the living room, there are voices and noises.
‘Forensics and a search team,’ she explains, seeing he’s on edge. ‘We’d better back away while they do their jobs.’
They return to the main room and Tom stands to one side while Valentina takes charge, issuing instructions to several different people.
Within minutes, portable lamps are being brought in and men in latex gloves are unlocking silver suitcases. All of them take a second or two to stare at Tom’s strange pink shirt and baggy grey pants.
Someone shouts something in Italian from the bedroom where they’ve just been, and Valentina flies in there.
Tom rushes to the doorway.
Everyone’s crowded around the tiny wardrobe.
Inside, curled up on the floor, is a young woman.
Covered in blood.
59
Louisa Verdetti is in a deep and peaceful sleep.
A much-craved and wonderfully healing rest that is slowly dissolving the traumas of one of the worst days of her life.
Losing her patient, getting punched in the face, arguing with her boss and being interviewed and scolded by the cops are all gradually being reduced to mere grains of sand on her beach of mental history.
Another few hours of dream time and they’ll be filed and forgotten. She’ll be fit to go again. Ready for whatever mysteries and machinations a fine new day has to throw at her.
But not yet.
Not now.
Right now she’s good for nothing, and the last thing she wants on her mind is a ringing phone.
But there it is.
For a moment — a very long and sleepy moment — she pretends that it isn’t real. The noise is part of a dream she’s having. Perhaps a call from an ex-lover, pestering her to give him another chance.
But it isn’t.
It’s real.
And it’s not going away.
Worse than that, the phone is ringing in the cold darkness on the other side of her super-soft and super-warm quilt.
She reaches out, pulls the receiver into her cosy world and manages to mutter her name. ‘Si. Verdetti.’
What Valentina Morassi says to her banishes any last vestiges of comfort.
Louisa sits bolt upright in shock.
She listens until the Carabinieri captain is done.
The now dead phone dangles in her hand while the news sinks in.
Yesterday’s nightmare isn’t over.
In fact, it just got worse.
The psychiatrist dresses without showering or even running a comb through her hair. She’s in such a rush that she only takes time out to use the toilet and wash her hands before dashing to her car and driving to the hospital.
Suzanna — or Anna, or Cassandra, or whoever she damned well is — is in the ICU at the Policlinico, fighting for her life.
Louisa is breathless when she arrives. She stumbles into the triage area almost as frantically as a panicking relative.
She introduces herself at reception, and a nurse leads her to a long-faced man in green scrubs called Ricardo Contessi. He’s one of the luckless trauma surgeons working the graveyard shift. ‘Your girl’s okay — but only just.’ He extends his left arm, tilts it so it’s palm up and demonstrates. ‘She cut herself, something like twenty times. Most of the incisions were superficial — made horizontally across and around the wrist — though she’s damaged a tendon and we have had to stitch that. However, there was one more disturbing cut, made vertically, running a long way down the arm.’
Louisa flinches. Self-harmers know horizontal cuts are usually safe. Vertical cuts are different. They’re genuinely suicidal. A good dig into any of the major arteries running down the forearm usually proves fatal.
Contessi slowly traces his index finger down his own pale and hairy forearm. ‘Fortunately she started a few centimetres lower than the radial and ulnar intersection. Most of the damage around there was muscular. But she did nick one of the lower branches of the ulnar artery, and that means she lost a lot of blood.’
‘She’ll be okay?’
‘I think so. The paramedics did a really good job on the way over here. She’s already bandaged up and sedated.’ He nods to a ward sign on a wall. ‘She’s on an open ward. Some Carabinieri officer, a woman, is at her bedside.’
Louisa realises it must be Valentina. She scratches her head and finds there’s no longer hair up there, just a thick, muzzy nest that bats or birds have no doubt settled in.
The surgeon holds up a clipboard. ‘There’s some confusion over the patient’s name. Do you know what she’s called?’
A small laugh escapes Louisa’s exhausted body. ‘Play it safe, call her Suzanna Anna Cassandra Fratelli.’
He raises an eyebrow as he writes on his notes. ‘Grazie. I’ll look in on her before I knock off. Ciao.’
‘Ciao.’ Louisa takes a slow breath and walks the short distance to the ward.
Valentina is pacing and talking on her cell phone right next to a sign that says they shouldn’t be used.
Tom is asleep in a low chair.
A young uniformed guard is standing by the curtains and a nurse is busy at a desk opposite — but not so busy that she can’t occasionally catch the eye of the handsome soldier.
Anna is out for the count.
Louisa approaches the bed and is saddened to see how frail her patient looks.
Valentina finishes her call and turns to the clinician. ‘We found her unconscious beneath a false floor at the bottom of a wardrobe in her apartment.’