‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you so late, but, after speaking to Meinero’s sister, I have some new questions.’
Lania pushed his long fringe away from his eyes and blinked. ‘How’s she holding up?’
‘As well as can be expected. It’s a huge shock for his family, obviously.’
The other priest frowned. ‘It seems that the deaths around this case are mounting. It makes you wonder if you might be next.’
Scamarcio hadn’t considered it from their perspective. ‘I don’t believe either of you are at risk, but if you feel uncomfortable or notice something out of the ordinary, please call me immediately. You both still have my card?’
They nodded solemnly.
‘So, what is it his sister said?’ asked Lania.
‘She told me that Meinero had called her shortly before his death, and said he was concerned about the cardinal’s behaviour. Apparently, he believed Amato was obsessed with Andrea Borghese.’ Scamarcio wasn’t sure what reaction he’d been expecting, but no response came other than a stony silence and a brief exchange of glances.
‘So, neither of you have anything to say on this?’
The young man from the Veneto sighed and looked at his colleague who just nodded slowly, as if giving permission.
Lania took a long breath. ‘We’d all noticed it. Meinero was not alone in his worries.’
‘Ah.’ Scamarcio sat up straighter in his chair.
‘He treated Borghese differently from all the rest: gave him more time, seemed to be totally obsessed with curing him. He’d always be getting us to move other appointments around to accommodate Andrea and his family.’
‘Did you have any sense about why?’
The other priest rubbed a hand along his jaw and shook his head. He said nothing.
‘No. None of us could understand it,’ said Lania.
Scamarcio had been hoping he wouldn’t have to spell it out for them. ‘Might the cardinal have been in love with Andrea?’
The younger priest screwed his face tight into a frown and raised his eyes heavenward. ‘Cardinal Amato is a seventy-five-year-old priest. Are you crazy?’
Scamarcio sighed. ‘Well, what else would it be?’
‘It’s anything other than that,’ said Lania, looking around him at the vast library. ‘Strange rumours do fly about this place, but the one thing I know is that I’ve never heard anything like that in connection with Amato — he’s totally focussed on his work, to the exclusion of everything else.’
Scamarcio couldn’t come up with anything other than, ‘Hmmm.’
‘This obsession thing did trouble us, as we felt it wasn’t fair on the other cases, but to my mind it was always an intellectual obsession. As a subject, Andrea intrigued the cardinal. He told us he was one of the most complicated cases he’d seen, and I think he was absolutely determined to succeed where all the doctors had failed.’ He glanced at his colleague. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Bruno?’
The priest nodded. ‘That’s always how I saw it, too. I did think it was unhealthy, though — the constant phone calls to the mother, the constant rescheduling, the interrogations after.’ He looked to his friend. ‘After every session with Andrea — and only Andrea, because he didn’t do it with the others — the cardinal would ask us how we thought it had gone: was Andrea improving? Did we think he’d make it through? It was almost …’ The priest stopped as if he didn’t want to use the word.
‘Embarrassing?’ offered Scamarcio.
‘Kind of,’ said the priest, looking away.
Scamarcio rubbed at an eyebrow. ‘You know, I’ve been in this game a long time, but I confess I don’t know what to make of this.’
‘Because it’s new to you,’ said Lania. ‘It’s a world you don’t know.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Scamarcio softly. He paused for a moment, trying to find a comfortable way to phrase his next question. ‘I’ve reason to believe that Alberto Meinero was gay — that he may recently have started a new relationship. Is that something either of you were aware of?’
Lania actually blushed. He cleared his throat. ‘Alberto was a lovely person, but he was a very private man. This was never something he would have discussed with any of us.’
His colleague confirmed it with a sad nod. Scamarcio found it interesting that neither of them had tried to deny it. ‘So, what links these two deaths? That’s my problem right now.’
The priest pulled at the corner of his lip. ‘I don’t envy you. It’s odd, I can see that. None of it makes any sense. I wish we had more information to give you.’
Unfortunately, Scamarcio believed him.
19
‘JUDGE GARIBALDI HAS COME good,’ said Garramone over the phone as Scamarcio tried to finish an apricot brioche at an up-scale bar he sometimes liked to visit for breakfast. ‘I called in a favour.’
‘What favour was that?’
‘None of your business.’
Scamarcio wondered for an idle moment if Judge Garibaldi was ‘The Judge’ — the subject of a hot rumour last year that had entertained the squad room. A team from Vice had raided an orgy at a Thai massage parlour, but almost immediately a call had come in from on high leading to the instant release of one of the ‘clients’ arrested at the scene. All the other customers had gone on to face charges. The Vice team had been sworn to secrecy or risk losing their jobs, so, unsurprisingly, no one had been willing to give up a name. All anyone in the squad knew was that the guy had been a high-powered judge.
‘Thank God for Thai massage parlours,’ said Scamarcio under his breath.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. So, it’s all signed, sealed, and delivered?’
‘Swing by my desk, and I’ll hand it to you in person.’
‘How’s it going to play out with the whole jurisdiction thing? Can Cafaro still put a spoke in my wheels?’
‘He’s the one who requested the warrant, but in theory, yes. I’m sending one of our lawyers with you. He will outline to Cafaro the consequences of not complying. Having spoken to our man, I think it’s likely that Cafaro will choose pragmatism. Well, if he’s wise, he will. It’s not worth the legal firestorm if he doesn’t.’
‘Right,’ said Scamarcio, feeling suddenly on edge. The brioche sat heavy in his stomach.
‘I’ll give you three officers and Sartori. Between the lot of you, you should manage to organise a decent sweep through Amato’s stuff.’
‘The cardinal’s under the weather with a chest infection.’
‘This probably won’t make him feel any better.’
Scamarcio raised a hand to his chin. ‘What I really need is something that links him to Borghese in a way that it shouldn’t.’
‘How do you mean?’
Scamarcio filled him in on the obsession angle. When he’d finished, Garramone asked, ‘And you buy the young priests’ version that it was a purely professional interest?’
Scamarcio fell silent for a moment. ‘Yes. I was awake most of last night, and I spent a long time thinking about the nature of obsession. I came to the conclusion that perhaps it doesn’t have to be sexual to be dangerous.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, you know that guy — that psychiatrist — who did that controversial research where people were persuaded to inflict pain on one another with a fake machine, ramping up the severity with a dial each time? And everyone said, “Oh God, this proves that, as a species, we humans are basically evil.”’
‘Hmm, yes, I think I know the man you mean, but what does this —’
‘Let me finish. For a long time, the world took that research seriously. It was discussed, cited, referred to time and again. Only now, it’s come out that he faked a lot of the data to reach the conclusion he wanted. His research subjects were lied to and manipulated. Then they discovered that this psychiatrist had had
a terrible childhood: he’d witnessed unbelievable cruelty and suffering during a massacre. His distortion of the research was basically an attempt to come to terms with what had happened to him as a kid.’
‘I still don’t see why this is relevant, Scamarcio.’
‘That psychiatrist was obsessed with evil, he went to enormous lengths to pin it down, identify it, explain it. In a way, Amato is doing the same thing, except he’s not just saying, “Here it is,” he’s trying to rid the world of it. And he’s been on a mission for the last thirty years. Perhaps, near the end of his life, he feels like he’s failing, he’s desperate to see real results. Perhaps he returned to Andrea after the session, perhaps he tried to get him to do something, behave in a certain way, perhaps it went wrong …’
‘Andrea was strangled. The cardinal …’
‘Before you say it, the Vatican clean-up machine is efficient, and you know it. If there’d been a mistake, the cardinal could have summoned help to sort it — make it seem like something else.’
‘So quickly?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Scamarcio, you’ve impressed me many times, but I’m not buying this. It’s Occam’s razor. We know that murder victims are often killed by someone they know and that romantic entanglements are high on the list when it comes to motive. Ignore those young priests — go for the likeliest explanation: sex. As much as I wish it wasn’t. It might be something sexual involving those Facebook friends, or it might be something sexual involving Amato.’
‘Amato is seventy-five.’
‘So? Ever read Death in Venice? Maybe it was love, rather than sex?’
Scamarcio clicked his tongue. ‘No, there’s professional obsession, and then, behind it, there’s something else that I need to identify. Something that pushed it all to the next level.’
‘You think the cardinal killed Andrea or had him killed? And Meinero? But why? It remains a fucking big why, Scamarcio.’
‘Because Meinero knew something he shouldn’t, or he’d discovered something that others preferred to keep hidden.’
‘Perhaps Meinero walked in on Andrea and the cardinal …’
Scamarcio drummed the counter top. ‘Too simple, too Occam’s knife or whatever it is.’
‘In my experience, simple is often right.’
‘Not in mine.’
‘Jesus, Scamarcio, just think it through, step by step. You’ll catch a break, I’m sure.’ Scamarcio exhaled sharply and turned to see a few customers at the bar observing him over their newspapers. He’d forgotten he was in a public place. Garramone sighed. ‘Let’s talk more when you come by my office. I’ve got an early meeting in five.’
‘Sure,’ said Scamarcio, now keen to leave the café.
The rain was beating down hard against the windscreen of the Panther as they made the turn into Via di Porta Angelica, which led to the Vatican.
‘Bells and whistles?’ asked the police driver seated beside him.
‘Nah,’ said Scamarcio. ‘No need for a fuss. We’re just here for a friendly chat.’
‘You think it will be friendly?’ asked the Flying Squad’s top lawyer, from the back seat. Lucio Baldini was a good-looking, lanky forty-three-year-old, who had graduated magna cum laude from Bocconi University in Milan, and had then made it to the prosecutor’s office in record time. How he had been persuaded to join the police was a mystery to Scamarcio, although it was probable that his bureaucrat’s salary was considerably higher than those of the detectives he assisted.
Scamarcio frowned. ‘It’s rarely friendly at the Vatican.’
‘I blame it on the nuns,’ muttered Baldini. ‘There’s a malevolence there. Makes for a bad atmosphere.’
‘You were a convent kid?’
‘Good guess.’
‘I hear they’re terrible places.’
‘They were. They’ve improved, I believe.’
Baldini fell silent and Scamarcio wondered if he’d hit a raw nerve. He rested his head against the seat and spooled through his conversation with Garramone. Was simple always right? Was it possible that the two priests had done a good job of obscuring the truth in steering Scamarcio away from the sexual angle? Would he be foolish not to keep that element alive, however off it felt?
They approached the main vehicular entrance to Vatican City at Porta Sant’Anna, and the police driver buzzed down the window. The gendarme studied their documents, and then got on his walkie-talkie. Scamarcio guessed that Cafaro would soon be making an appearance, and, indeed, as they rounded the turning circle, the chief of the gendarmerie was waiting for them, legs apart, arms crossed, and flanked by five of his armed officers. What was he expecting? Scamarcio wondered. A shoot-out?
Scamarcio stepped out of the car and handed him the warrant. ‘I’d like to point out that it was you who brought things to this point,’ he said quietly.
Cafaro smiled tightly and shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure.’ He waved the paper in the air, holding a corner of it by his fingertips as if it was a piece of litter about to be lifted by the breeze. ‘I’m not even convinced this actually means anything.’
‘I’m here to assure you it does,’ said Baldini, stepping out from behind Scamarcio and extending a hand, which was ignored.
‘And who the hell are you?’ asked Cafaro.
Baldini apprised him of his credentials.
Cafaro stared at him hard, then said, ‘Well, this is all very nice, but the cardinal is unwell.’
‘We’ll make sure he’s comfortable. We don’t need his help to search his rooms,’ said Scamarcio, checking his watch.
‘I just hope he doesn’t have a heart attack with the stress of it all,’ said Cafaro, leading them inside, his officers falling into step. To Scamarcio, it sounded like a thinly veiled threat, and a quick glance at Baldini told him that the lawyer felt the same.
When Cardinal Amato came to the door, Scamarcio was shocked by the change in his appearance. He was very pale, and his shoulders now seemed hard and bony beneath his dressing-gown. There were dark rings beneath his eyes, and his voice was raw and shaky. Scamarcio seriously wondered if they should get him to a hospital.
‘The cardinal looks bad,’ whispered Baldini. ‘If he’s unwell, his lawyers could challenge the validity of any interview.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ said Scamarcio. ‘But I’m not really here for an interrogation. I’m just looking to confirm or deny a hunch.’
Baldini shrugged and shuffled inside behind the police team.
The cardinal watched aghast as the team started to examine papers on his desk and pull out books from his shelves. They were doing it with care, as instructed, but Scamarcio knew it would prove an alarming sight nevertheless.
‘Is all this really necessary?’ asked Amato, struggling to lift his voice above a gravelly whisper.
‘I believe it is,’ said Scamarcio, examining a crystal paper weight bearing a gold plaque that read ‘Honorary visit of Cardinal Amato, Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, 24th of July, 1989’.
He signalled to Sartori that he was leaving, and then asked, ‘Is there somewhere we can go where you can sit comfortably, Cardinal?’
Amato tutted in frustration and whispered, ‘Follow me.’
Scamarcio was dismayed, but not surprised, to see Cafaro hurry out behind the cardinal.
Amato led them out into the corridor and knocked on a door opposite his rooms. An elderly priest answered, wide-eyed.
‘The police are using my rooms, could I borrow your study for a while?’ said Amato, not looking the least bit embarrassed.
The old priest seemed taken aback for a moment, but then waved them all in, saying, ‘I’m just on my way out, so go ahead.’
He turned to Scamarcio as he passed and gripped his arm. ‘Please go easy on him. He’s having a terrible time.’ The man’s eyes were as hard as
steel, and Scamarcio found his dark stare unsettling. ‘Leave the key under the mat when you’ve finished.’
Scamarcio just nodded.
When Amato had been made comfortable on a wide sofa and a blanket draped across his knees, Scamarcio asked, ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘I’ve always had a weakness in my chest — it’s just an infection. I prefer to avoid antibiotics if I can.’
‘Even so, it might be good to get yourself checked out.’
‘So, all this fuss is because you’re concerned for my health?’
Scamarcio sighed. ‘No.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I spoke with Meinero’s sister. She told me that he’d called her, worried about what he perceived to be an unhealthy obsession on your part towards Andrea Borghese.’
The cardinal said nothing, just steepled his bony fingers in front of his mouth. The silence in the room was a dark void. Scamarcio couldn’t even hear breathing or the tick of a distant clock. How can a room in the very centre of Rome be so quiet? he wondered.
When it seemed that the cardinal wasn’t going to speak, Scamarcio turned to Cafaro and said, ‘You understand my problem?’
Cafaro just blinked.
‘Cardinal Amato, from my perspective, this is just a chat. I haven’t called you to the station, you haven’t phoned your lawyer. I’m not looking to bring charges, I’m just hoping for some clarity, so I can steer this investigation in the right direction.’
Amato coughed. It was a thick phlegmy cough that came from deep in his lungs, and Scamarcio felt even more convinced that the man needed medical attention.
‘Meinero was right, in a way,’ said the cardinal slowly, the words barely audible. ‘Andrea Borghese was the most interesting and challenging case I had ever come across, and I was determined to succeed. Andrea had so much promise — so much talent. I so desperately wanted to see him lead a normal life.’
The cardinal’s voice broke into a cough once more, and he reached beneath the blanket and pulled out a crumpled cotton handkerchief. He dabbed at his cracked lips and sighed.
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