Louisa can barely imagine how desperate the woman must have felt.
‘And Anna Fratelli is her real name?’
‘Seems so. There were no bills in the apartment. I guess you’ll be able to pull her full medical records now?’
Louisa glances at her watch. ‘Not at three a.m. But yes, in a few hours we should be able to get hold of them.’
Valentina looks towards the bed. ‘Do you have any idea what’s been going on in her mind? What’s made her like this?’
The clinician bends over the bed and clears a strand of hair off Anna’s forehead. ‘I could ask you the same thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that whatever is troubling her is also at the root of the crimes that you’re investigating.’
Tom stirs in the chair, then slides a little further down, his head resting on a cushion pressed against the wall.
Louisa watches Valentina watching Tom.
Valentina senses the psychiatrist’s eyes on her.
Louisa smiles. ‘As a professional observer of human behaviour, I’d say you two were more than just friends.’
Valentina doesn’t answer.
‘Okay, I’m sorry I spoke. I can take a hint: private is private.’ Louisa coughs and moves on. ‘So, work-wise, is there anything else I need to know about Anna? Anything you found at her house — drugs, that kind of thing?’
‘No drugs. At least, nothing more than the usual — headache pills, allergy tablets and such like. You need to see her bedroom, though. I’ll send over some photographs.’
‘Why? Why do I need to see it?’
‘To believe it. She’s turned the room into a religious bolt-hole. The walls, floor and ceiling are completely covered in pages torn or copied from Bibles. Hundreds of rosary beads are dangling from the ceiling. It’s quite freaky.’
Louisa falls silent.
‘What is it?’
‘I was just casting my mind back. I don’t think any of the other alters expressed any Catholic beliefs or traits.’
‘Well, this is full-on Catholicism. She’s even made her bed out of Bibles, as though she’s scared of sleeping without God being close to her.’
‘What an awful way to live — frightened during the day and then even more frightened of going to sleep.’ Louisa scratches at her nest of uncombed hair and looks down at her comatose patient. ‘I feel so sorry for her. I wish I could just drop a rope into that subconscious pit and pull her out of there.’
For almost a minute, both women just stare at Anna.
She looks so weak.
Her pinched white face is accentuated by eyelids the colour of raw meat. Her scarred arms are bandaged, and medical tubes tentacle their way off into hanging bags and monitoring machines.
Louisa breaks the sombre silence. ‘Look, I’m sorry we took her out, back to Cosmedin. It was a stupid thing to do. If Valducci hadn’t been tugging me along on a lead, I would have called you and asked you about it.’
‘And maybe not given my guard the slip?’
‘And not given your guard the slip. Is he in trouble?’
Valentina lightens up. ‘He’s not yet scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush, but he’s not far from it.’ She gestures to a water cooler just a metre away. ‘Aqua?’
‘Si. Grazie.’
Valentina fills two plastic cups and hands one over. ‘There’s something else you should know. On my way over, I got a call saying more than a dozen exercise books have been discovered at Anna’s place. All filled with drawings and writing.’
‘Life logs.’
‘Scusi?’
‘DID sufferers are aware that the host is taken over by multiple personalities, so the alters write journals, daily diaries about what’s happening to them. That way, when the host momentarily regains control of the body, it’s possible to put some pieces of the puzzle together.’
‘Wait a minute. Are you saying that all Anna would know about what has happened to her — what’s been done with her body — is when she reads about it in a journal filled in by the alters?’
‘That’s about it.’
Valentina doesn’t say it, but she thinks it.
This could be a breakthrough.
The logs might well explain the mystery of a severed hand in a church in Cosmedin and a dead eunuch on the banks of the Tiber.
60
It’s almost four a.m by the time the Carabinieri arrest team process their newest prisoner.
Down in the shower block a shameful freak show is under way. Soldiers crowd around to see the guy with no balls and the smallest penis known to man.
‘I should have sold fucking tickets. Get back to work!’ barks custody officer Piero la Malfa.
Outside, at the admissions counter, Federico Assante is trying to shrug off a heavy night’s drinking and go through the prisoner’s clothes. He got home after what everyone would admit was a pretty emotional day and decided drink was the best short cut to a place where all the shit with Caesario and Morassi had never happened.
Then Valentina had called.
That damned woman was relentless. Even when he didn’t answer the phone, she left haunting messages, the kind you can’t ignore, the type that keep the pressure on and don’t let you rest.
Federico pulls apart the stack of forensically bagged clothes in front of him. Black trainers, black socks, black jeans, black pants, black T-shirt, black hooded top and black gloves. That ball-less buffoon either has a black fetish or he dresses professionally for the night-time.
Federico is sure it’s not a fashion choice.
Black doesn’t only help burglars, robbers and rapists blend into the shadows; it completely screws eye-witness reports. Without distinctive clothing or something visually unique to tie to an offender, judges and juries are wary of any testimony that includes the phrase ‘I think it was black.’
The young lieutenant is dispirited. There’s nothing to give him a clue to the identity of the man, and so far the son-of-a-bitch hasn’t said a word.
Maybe he’s mute as well as ball-less.
Assante looks again at the prisoner’s sum possessions: two hundred euros, a handful of Kleenex tissues and a spool of old fishing line. The line is significant: it’s handy to tie people up or choke them with. Apart from that, there are car keys and an interesting piece of cheap jewellery.
It’s a black pendant on a rope necklace.
He gets a shiver as he turns it over in its clear forensic bag.
It’s exactly the same as the one the nurses at the hospital took from Anna.
‘Anything come back on his prints yet?’ Federico calls to la Malfa through the open door to the cell block.
‘Domani!’ comes the reply. ‘Why the fuck don’t you go upstairs to your own office and do the job yourself?’
‘Come on, man. I told you how much I’ve had to drink. I can barely search for the toilet. Give me some help here.’
‘Vaffanculo stronzo!’
‘Hey! Per favore.’
La Malfa stomps off somewhere.
Lazy fucker, thinks Assante. He’d have helped out if the tables had been turned.
He pulls up a second chair, puts his feet up and closes his eyes. Twenty minutes’ sleep is what he needs. A quick nap, then he’ll do the job himself.
Somewhere off in the distance he hears raised voices.
Iron doors clanging shut. Keys rattling. Drunks swearing. Someone throwing up. More swearing. Cops laughing.
The chunky old radiator he’s curled up next to coughs and hisses, and within a few minutes he’s drifted off.
‘You want this or not?’
Federico is still half-asleep, and the voice doesn’t really register.