“Have you ever suffered from a pelvic inflammatory disease?”
This was all too close.
“I had chlamydia when I was twenty. It was nothing. They cured it, they said. Antibiotics.”
The doctor scribbled some notes, then looked up. “Did your doctor in Rome ask any of these questions?”
“No.”
The woman nodded, got up, and reached into the medical cabinet by her desk, taking out a syringe.
“We will need a blood test. And an ultrasound. A special one, I think. We have the equipment here. Your husband?”
“My partner’s working.”
“What is work? He should be here. This is important.”
Nic seemed so engrossed in the search for Leo Falcone. It was impossible to divert him from that.
“I have a friend with me. Outside.”
The doctor bent over her. She smelled strongly of old-fashioned soap. The needle went into her arm. Emily was, as always, amazed how dark that blood appeared in real life.
“What’s wrong?”
“In a little while I hope we will know. Your friend can bring some things for you?”
Emily blinked. “I’ll be staying?”
The woman sighed and looked at the papers on her desk. “Emily, bringing children into this world is a game of chance. In some ways, the odds are better now, because we know more. In others, they’re worse, because of our habits, and little demons like chlamydia. Sometimes events have consequences, long after we’ve forgotten them.”
The doctor paused, wondering, it seemed to Emily, whether to go on.
“Listen to me,” she urged. “You’re an intelligent young woman. I don’t imagine this thought hasn’t run through your head. One in a hundred pregnancies in our wonderful civilised world is ectopic. They are more common in women who have suffered pelvic inflammatory diseases. The symptoms are… your symptoms. Do you want the truth?”
No, she thought. I want a lie. A beautiful lie. The doctor was already on the phone, speaking rapidly, with authority.
“I want the truth,” Emily said when the call ended.
“We will see what the ultrasound reveals. If there is a baby in your uterus, then fine. You will stay here, I shall look after you, and it is entirely possible there is nothing to worry about at all, though you will not leave until I am quite satisfied of that. If the uterus is empty, then this pregnancy is ectopic. Your baby is in the wrong place, somewhere it cannot survive. In that eventuality, what I shall be endeavouring to do is ensure that you will be able to conceive again. Parenthood is often a question of persistence, and I say that as a mother myself.”
Emily felt cold and feeble.
“My name is Anna,” the doctor said. “Please use it.” She stuck out a slender, tanned hand. Emily took it, and found her fingers in a warm, powerful grip.
“Anna,” she repeated.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call your friend in Rome?”
There was a nun at the door already. She held a grey hospital gown and a pale manila folder. Behind her stood Arturo Messina, leaning to see into the room. He looked curious, apprehensive, and, for once, lost.
But all Emily could think of was Nic, trying to cope with an investigation that was falling apart, worried to death about the disappearance of Leo Falcone, a man who, she’d long recognised, had become a kind of substitute father for him.
“I’m sure,” she answered.
They sat in a large, empty café around the corner from the Testaccio market, stirring three excellent coffees. Teresa had waved for another one already, and was rapidly munching her way through a second honey-and-hazelnut pastry the size of her fist.
“So now that’s out of the way,” Peroni asked, “what career were you thinking of next? Chief negotiating officer with a reconciliation service or something? You know the kind of thing: Two people who hate each other’s guts walk into the room and you state that, unless they promise to leave loving one another to pieces, you’ll punch their lights out.”
“Messina, Messina,” she moaned, pausing for a big bite of the pastry. “I told you. The man’s doomed already. I don’t believe in kicking people when they’re on the ground, but there’s nothing wrong in giving them a little nudge, is there? This woman mingles for Italy, boys. I mingled greatly this morning, with people you wouldn’t even dare talk to. Messina has three days, four maybe, no more. Once this mess is over, however it works out, he’ll be despatched to Ostia to take notes for the committee designing the next generation of parking tickets. In my opinion, they overestimate his abilities, but for now I’ll let that pass.”
In the space of ten minutes they’d accomplished much. Free of the ties of the Questura, answerable to no one, it was easy to act. On the way out of the market, Teresa had summarised the growing dissatisfaction with Messina upstairs in the Questura. Then, after agreeing on their options, they’d made three calls to pet journalists they knew: radio, TV, and a newspaper. It was important the news got out quickly. There was one point on which they and Bruno Messina were in agreement. As long as there was no body, they would assume Leo Falcone was alive. Prabakaran and Uccello had been in Bramante’s hands for more than twelve hours. He was not a man to be hurried.
“You really think this fantasy about a new lead on the son will keep Bramante from hurting Leo?” Teresa asked.
The story — which was pure fabrication — would be on the radio and TV news within the hour, and in the early-afternoon editions of the papers.
Costa shrugged. “For a while maybe. It can’t do any harm. Bramante’s got to be curious, hasn’t he? Leo thought the man would give up if he knew. Besides, he must realise that if he murders a police inspector, we’re not going to focus much time on chasing what happened to his son.”
“Leo’s not himself,” Peroni pointed out.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Costa said.
“Nic!” Teresa said, shocked. “He walked out in the middle of the night to get that poor girl freed. Who’s to know this bastard wouldn’t have killed them both?”
It was Peroni who spoke. “No. Bramante wouldn’t do that. He’s bad, but bad within his own rules. Which are, I suspect, pretty much set in stone.”
“He kidnapped poor Rosa!” she objected. “And killed the rest! That’s what kind of man he is.”
Costa recalled Falcone’s words as he left: Check out Bramante before the nightmare began. He’d played around with the records database for a few minutes before Prinzivalli raised the alarm.
“He is that kind of man,” Costa agreed. “Or at least, he could be. Leo asked me to run some checks to see if we had anything on him before Alessio disappeared.”
“Well?” Peroni asked.
Costa grimaced.
“Not much there. The Questura had received two complaints of sexual harassment from students a couple of years before.”
“Anyone we know?” Teresa demanded.
“No. Someone had spoken to the university and got the usual tale. Students make up that kind of story all the time. Either way, it was impossible to prove.”
“Doesn’t tell us much, Nic,” Peroni pointed out, disappointed. “They probably do get that all the time.”
“How often?” Costa replied. “The officer who went to the university discovered there’d been other complaints about sexual intimidation too. They’d dealt with those internally. The university authorities said they couldn’t release the details. For legal reasons. The two female students who complained to us wouldn’t push the case. Bad for their degrees. So that was where it ended.”