The Devil

by Nadia Dalbuono

  ‘But what was so interesting about Borghese in particular?’ Scamarcio pushed.

  ‘His intelligence, his perspicacity, his cunning. Often, it felt as if the devil was trying to manipulate Andrea’s talents for himself. I had to fight hard to win them back.’

  Scamarcio hesitated. ‘And your interest went no deeper than the professional?’

  The cardinal looked up from his handkerchief, his mouth agape. ‘What on earth?’

  It was Scamarcio’s turn to fall silent.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ muttered Amato.

  Cafaro just grimaced and glanced away. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  ‘It’s a question I have to ask,’ said Scamarcio quietly.

  ‘And I have to tell you that it’s a revolting insinuation. I’m nearly seventy-five, I’m a man of the cloth, I’m dedicated to my job …’ Amato had raised a small fist in the air. It was starting to shake.

  ‘Police work is often uncomfortable,’ sighed Scamarcio. ‘One is forced to ask terrible questions of good people.’

  The cardinal lowered the fist and stared into his lap.

  ‘So, you were not in any way in love with Andrea Borghese?’

  The cardinal looked up again, his eyes wide. ‘No,’ he almost shouted, the word shaking and quivering before breaking into a terrible wheezing whistle that turned into a coughing fit. When Amato’s voice finally returned, it was weak and fragile: the voice of a child. Scamarcio had to lean forward to hear him.

  ‘I was just fascinated by him. I was keeping a diary of his progress so that I could perhaps draw on it for a future book — if I ever got around to writing another.’

  Scamarcio considered the old man sitting before him: his thin wrists bunched in his lap, the old dressing-gown sagging around his wheezing chest, the echo from the force of his ‘no’ still heavy on the stale air. If there was ever a moment to realise that you had to cut a particular theory adrift — let it go — this was it. The ‘sexual obsession’ angle would do nothing but drag Scamarcio down a blind alley. It was time to call it quits.

  On his way to the squad car, the brief interview over, Scamarcio considered the rest of his conversation with Amato and his claims that he hadn’t known Father Meinero well. The cardinal had insisted that he had no idea why Meinero would be using a false ID in his name. If Amato had been lying, and Scamarcio’s instincts told him otherwise, it was a performance deserving of an Oscar. Instead, Scamarcio was left with the impression that the cardinal lived almost entirely in the world of his exorcisms, and that he had no time for those the devil chose to leave in peace.

  Scamarcio knew full well that Garramone and his Occam’s razor wouldn’t like it that the man at the very centre of the investigation, the man to whom all roads led, appeared to have nothing to do with both murders. But Scamarcio was comfortable: the confirmation that he was dealing with an intellectual rather than sexual obsession was liberating and freed him to consider other angles. There was much he now needed to do: first and foremost, he wanted to take a closer look at the politician’s son, Castelnuovo. After that, he’d turn his attention to the Borgheses, their life, and their apparent wealth. He needed to find out if Mr Borghese, still AWOL, was planning an act of revenge, as his wife suspected.

  Just as the police driver was opening the car door, Scamarcio heard Sartori shouting from some distance away. ‘Scamarcio, wait up.’ Sartori was running towards him, something white flapping in his clenched fist. Scamarcio felt his heart skip a beat.

  ‘I thought you’d want to see these,’ Sartori panted, thrusting what appeared to be photographs into his hand. Scamarcio turned them towards the pale sunlight. The pictures were black and white and were portraits of Andrea Borghese: Borghese looking out a window; Borghese leaning on a balcony, azure sea in the background; Borghese at a restaurant. But it was the last photo, the smallest, that really took Scamarcio’s breath away. It was a shot of a boy of eight or nine riding a bicycle. It took him a moment to realise he was looking at Andrea Borghese as a child.

  ‘Where did you find these?’ he asked Sartori.

  ‘They were at the end of a row of books on one of the cardinal’s shelves.’

  ‘What’s Amato doing with a picture of Borghese as a kid?’

  Sartori shrugged. ‘Fuck knows.’ He paused for a beat. ‘I’ve saved the best for last.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Sartori handed over another small photo, printed on thicker paper than the rest. A toddler of two or three was pushing a small wooden cart. The carefree grin was unfamiliar, but the wide eyes were unmistakable — the same soulful brown.

  ‘What the hell?’ whispered Scamarcio.

  ‘Quite,’ muttered Sartori, pulling up his collar against the wind.

  20

  SCAMARCIO TOOK HIS FIRST swig of espresso for the day and studied the photos fanned out in front of him. He drained the cup, then dialled Mrs Borghese.

  ‘Perhaps you could solve a mystery for me,’ he said quietly. ‘Why would Cardinal Amato be keeping childhood photos of your son in his private rooms?’

  There was a sharp intake of breath, then silence. ‘What?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘We found a stash of pictures of Andrea, some showing him as a toddler, some as a teenager. I’m perplexed.’

  There was no sound at the end of the line. She was either blindsided by shock or she was thinking, hard. Finally, she said, ‘The cardinal claimed he was writing a book. He asked me for some photos, a few weeks ago now. He promised to return them.’

  Scamarcio realised that he shouldn’t have phoned through a question like this: he needed to see her face, read her expression. But he’d been impatient, wanted a quick answer. ‘I see,’ he murmured, unconvinced.

  ‘Nothing sinister there, I’m afraid,’ added Mrs Borghese in what seemed a poor attempt at a lighter tone.

  ‘Any sign of your husband?’ he asked, drawing the nicotine from a fresh fag down deep. ‘We issued a police alert, but we’ve got nowhere. He didn’t come home last night, did he?’

  She fell silent again. After a few seconds she answered, ‘No.’

  ‘Any idea where he might have gone? His mother’s?’ asked Scamarcio, knowing full well that Borghese hadn’t pitched up there.

  ‘No. Not his mother’s. And his brother is still away hiking in Nepal …’ Scamarcio had delegated chasing the brother to Sartori, but, despite numerous attempts, he’d been unable to reach him. Katia Borghese let out a tired sigh. ‘Gennaro’s at his mistress’s probably.’

  ‘Ah.’ Scamarcio took another long drag and closed his eyes, trying to calm his frustration. ‘That been going on long?’

  ‘I found out about it around six months ago. How long it had been going on prior to that, I have no idea.’

  ‘I should have been told.’

  ‘It’s not an easy thing for a wife to admit to.’

  ‘It might have a bearing on the case.’

  ‘You’ve watched Fatal Attraction too many times, perhaps.’

  ‘Mistresses can sometimes behave irrationally.’

  ‘Only if they feel they’re on the losing side. Anyway, she’s not that kind of woman.’

  Scamarcio heard something glug in a bottle.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She was one of my best friends.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Women are vipers. You can’t trust them — any of them.’

  ‘That’s bleak.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  He took another long smoke, refusing to give up on the fag, though it was down to the filter. ‘Don’t take it personally.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think women understand men. Well, as much as men don’t understand women. Men, given half a chance, will cheat. We have too many hormones we don’t know what to do with. It c
an get us into trouble if the wrong woman comes along and leads us by the leash. We don’t want to stray, but, given the opportunity, we will. You were just unlucky that your so-called friend decided to try her luck when she did. If she hadn’t intervened, your husband probably wouldn’t have betrayed you.’

  ‘You southerners, my God … I think my husband bears some share of the responsibility, don’t you? He’s not a robot. You can’t pin it all on the woman.’

  Scamarcio said nothing.

  ‘My marriage was in a mess for a long time,’ she added.

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Do you have any idea what a problem child can do to a relationship?’

  Scamarcio swallowed. ‘No.’

  ‘The pressure is enormous, unbearable. You’re constantly pitted against one another, there is no time to breathe, you’re desperate for peace, even just five minutes of it. You have no time for yourself, no time for your partner: nothing left to give. The relationship withers, then dies.’

  ‘God,’ muttered Scamarcio, feeling the old unease stir again. He noticed that the second fag he’d only just lit was already halfway through.

  ‘Let me know if you find my husband,’ sighed Mrs Borghese, sounding as if she didn’t really care anymore.

  Scamarcio replaced the receiver. As he was shuffling the photos back into a tidy pile, he reflected that he didn’t yet have the measure of Katia Borghese. He still hadn’t checked why her return home had been delayed. His earlier sense that there was something going on behind the scenes was deepening.

  He noticed the stack of DVDs of the Borghese exorcisms and reached for them. He wanted to watch them all, in case there was anything — any tiny detail that might provide some clarity. He loaded the first of the discs and pressed play. The scene appeared to mirror the one on the DVD he’d watched with Mrs Borghese. The only difference was that Andrea’s hair was shorter.

  Amato was running through the usual rites, his voice building in intensity as Andrea’s angry cries threatened to drown him out.

  ‘I hate you!’ screamed the boy for a third time, before he finally ceased shouting and slumped into a chair, his hair caked to his forehead with sweat. The priests massed around him like a black swarm, holding him down, and then Amato approached and stood over him.

  ‘Requie, creatue dei,’ he said, firmly but quietly. Scamarcio knew he was instructing Andrea to rest.

  Andrea’s head lolled against his chest, and the screen turned black. Scamarcio wondered why Mrs Borghese had stopped filming.

  The next DVD offered nothing new, and the third was shaping up to be no more enlightening. Scamarcio continued watching until the exorcism arrived at a point where the aggression on the part of both Amato and Andrea was so overwhelming that he feared they might strike each other. They were screaming in each other’s faces, spittle flecking their cheeks and sharp fists raised. Scamarcio found it almost unwatchable. Andrea’s face was red with fury, his eyes dark with intent, but then, as in the previous films, a sudden change swept over him, and he closed his eyes and collapsed into a chair. It was like watching the power being drained, as if a switch had been flicked.

  Yet again, Scamarcio asked himself if this was for real or just theatre. He was about to fast-forward through the rest of the film, when he noticed something and paused. On the screen, the cardinal had struggled painfully into a crouching position and was reaching out to place a calming hand on Andrea’s upper arm. There was nothing particularly unusual about the gesture, but it was the reaction of Meinero, standing to Amato’s left, that stole Scamarcio’s breath. Meinero’s forehead contorted into a frown, and his eyes narrowed. His right hand bunched into a clenched fist, which hung at his side like a club. He seemed outraged, livid even. Almost instinctively, Meinero inclined his shoulder towards the cardinal, and Scamarcio wondered if he was about to hit him. Scamarcio studied the other faces in the room. None of the other priests seemed to have a problem with what Amato had done, so why was Meinero so very troubled?

  Scamarcio closed his eyes and massaged his aching forehead.

  Really, there was only one obvious answer to this question, and it also explained why Meinero had complained to his sister about the cardinal’s so called ‘obsession’.

  Meinero was jealous.

  21

  ‘I’VE GOT A DEAD priest possibly in love with the victim, the vic’s father gone AWOL, and a hothead schoolkid with a serious axe to grind. Not to mention a weirdly obsessed cardinal. There’s something off about the vic’s mother, too, but I haven’t figured that one out yet.’

  Scamarcio didn’t want to tell Sartori that the cardinal had commented on the Cherubini disappearance. The cold case had been playing on his mind, and the background to the young girl’s disappearance was a potential crime huge enough to have triggered serious fallout inside the Vatican, but discussing it now felt like a step too far: Scamarcio didn’t want to complicate things for Sartori at this delicate stage.

  ‘If you ask me, the only weird thing about the mum is the booze. Drink can make people seem stranger than they really are,’ said Sartori, ripping the wrapper off a Snickers bar.

  ‘She hasn’t seemed that pissed when I’ve seen her.’

  ‘Maybe she knows how to handle it by now.’

  Sartori took a bite that encompassed three quarters of the bar. Scamarcio grimaced. ‘How can a drunk be a good mother?’

  ‘How can a drunk be a good wife?’ Sartori popped the last piece delicately in his mouth.

  ‘Are we 100 per cent sure she’s a drunk?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘We just have that schoolgirl Graziella’s word for it. I’ve seen the odd thing, but I wouldn’t necessarily conclude she’s an alcoholic.’

  ‘Maybe we need to look for some signs.’

  Scamarcio rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘Do you know anyone in marketing?’

  Sartori stopped chewing. ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Do you or not?’

  ‘A friend of my wife’s, I think.’

  ‘Does she earn well?’

  ‘As far as I know, nothing spectacular. Again, why are you asking?’

  ‘But maybe a marketing director would? If he’s in a lucrative sector?’

  ‘Lucrative like what?’

  ‘What kind of salary would you need to afford the kind of apartment the Borgheses live in? What would you have to earn to afford a Porsche Panamera and a Bang and Olufsen sound system?’

  Sartori scratched his chin. ‘No idea. My wife’s friend lives in San Basilio. It’s hardly Manhattan.’

  ‘Is she senior?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Mr Borghese works in the pharmaceutical sector. All I can think is that it might pay highly compared to other industries.’

  Sartori stared at him. ‘It may do, and I can get that kind of info in a flash, but if you have any kind of hunch, Scamarcio, we should probably be running it down. Now.’

  Scamarcio pulled his last Marlboro from the pack and waved it at Sartori. ‘Get the spit and cough on who Borghese works for. And take a stroll through his bank accounts. Let’s just check it’s all above board, so I can cross it off my list and worry about something else.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sartori, rising from his seat.

  ‘And while you’re at it, find out who he’s screwing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  Sartori shook his head. ‘Why is it that on every sodding case, there’s some loser cheating on his wife?’

  ‘It’s life.’

  ‘Life down here in the pit. Up in Rimini, the family is sacrosanct.’

  ‘You’re just the exception that proves the rule, Sartori.’

  Scamarcio felt torn: the centre of gravity of this case did seem to be shifting towards the Vatican a
nd the Borgheses, but he knew from experience that he couldn’t just write off Andrea’s other life and the entanglements that came with being a teenager. Even if it didn’t immediately feel like it, any knowledge gained here might have a bearing on other things. With this in mind, he resolved to pay a visit to Andrea’s Facebook friend Tommaso Pombeni. He needed to hear his testimony about Castelnuovo and his violent tendencies first-hand.

  He was making the turn into Pombeni’s street when his phone rang.

  ‘You’re an arsehole,’ said Aurelia softly. Scamarcio didn’t know whether to be more surprised by the phone call or the words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were about to become a father?’

  He clenched his jaw — this was the last thing he needed.

  ‘It didn’t really feel like the right time. I hadn’t seen you in over a year. What was I supposed to say, “Hi, welcome back and, by the way, my girlfriend’s about to have a baby”?

  ‘Oh, fuck right off.’

  ‘You called me, Aurelia.’ But he was glad she’d called. Worryingly glad.

  ‘I deserve an explanation.’

  Scamarcio fell silent for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, that’s the very least you deserve.’ He stalled, hesitated, but he heard himself ask the question anyway. ‘Can you meet me — in an hour and a half? Trastevere? So we can talk.’

  ‘It’s Saturday night.’

  ‘Would you prefer another time?’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Where?’

  ‘Bar Solari?’

  ‘You remember what happened last time we met there?’

  ‘I promise it won’t get violent.’

  Aurelia tried to stifle a laugh. ‘OK, see you then.’

  ‘See you.’

  Scamarcio looked at his phone and sighed. If he wasn’t very careful, he’d soon be on the road to disaster.

  Tommaso Pombeni was a strange looking kid. Very skinny, with big, almost bulbous, eyes, a wide flat nose, and a huge brow. Altogether, the effect was of a sorrowful frog. And the voice didn’t help. It was unusually deep and raw: exactly the kind of voice a frog might have could it speak.