“This really is a wonderful day, Nora.”
The nun was carefully combing the long white hair of an old woman lying on the bed facing the window, accompanying her gestures with relaxing words.
“This morning as I walked through the park I left a little bread for the birds. With all this snow they spend all their time in their nests, keeping each other warm.”
Mila knocked at the already open door. Nicla turned round, and when she saw Mila her face lit up.
“My little one!” she said, coming over to hug her. “How lovely to see you again!”
She was wearing a sugar-colored sweater, with the sleeves rolled up because she always felt hot, a black skirt that reached below her knees, and trainers on her feet. Her hair was short and gray. Her very white complexion stressed her intensely blue eyes. The whole effect was one of candor and cleanliness. Boris noted that she wore a red rosary around her neck, like the one Mila had tied to the car mirror.
“This is Klaus Boris, a colleague of mine.”
Boris stepped forward, somewhat uneasily. “A pleasure.”
“You’ve just met Sister Mery, haven’t you?” Nicla asked, shaking his hand.
Boris blushed. “As a matter of fact…”
“Don’t worry, she has that effect on lots of people…” Then she turned to look at Mila again: “Why did you come here to the Port, little one?”
Mila grew serious. “You may have heard of the case of the missing girls.”
“We pray for them here every evening. But the newsmen don’t tell us much.”
“I can’t either.”
Nicla stared at her: “You’ve come here about the sixth one, haven’t you?”
“What can you tell me about her?”
Nicla sighed. “I’m trying to establish contact. But it isn’t easy. My gift isn’t what it once was: it’s got a lot weaker. Perhaps I should be glad of that, since if I lost it entirely they would let me go back and join my fellow sisters in the convent.”
Nicla Papakidis didn’t like being called a medium. She said it wasn’t the right word to describe a “gift from God.” She didn’t feel special. Her talent was. She was just the conduit chosen by God to bear it within her and use it for the benefit of others.
Among the many things she had said to Boris while they were heading for the Port, Mila had told him about when Nicla had discovered she had superior sensory abilities.
“At the age of six she was already famous in her village for finding missing objects: wedding rings, house keys, wills too well hidden by the deceased…One evening the chief of the local police turned up at her house: a five-year-old boy had gone missing and his mother was desperate. She was brought to the woman, who begged her to find her son. Nicla stared at her for a moment, and then said, ‘This woman is lying. She buried him in the vegetable garden behind the house.’ And that’s exactly where they found him.”
Boris was very shaken by the story. Perhaps that was partly why he went and sat a little apart from the others, letting Mila talk to the nun.
“I have to ask you something a bit different from usual,” said the policewoman. “I need you to come to a place and try to make contact with a dying man.”
Mila had used Nicla’s visions several times in the past. Sometimes the solution to her cases had come thanks to her intervention.
“Little one, I can’t move from here, you know: they always need me.”
“I know, but I can’t help insisting. It’s the only hope we have of saving the sixth little girl.”
“I told you: I’m not sure my ‘gift’ still works.”
“I thought about you for another reason, too…there’s a large sum of money available for anyone who finds the girl.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that. But what could I do with ten million?”
Mila looked around her, as if it was natural to think of using the reward money to renovate this place. “Believe me: when you know the whole story, you’ll realize that it would be the best possible use for that money. So, what do you say?”
“Vera has to come and see me today.”
It was the old woman in the bed who spoke. Until then she had lain silent and motionless looking out the window.
Nicla approached her: “Yes, Nora, Vera will be coming later.”
“She promised.”
“Yes, I know. She promised and she will keep her word, you’ll see.”
“But that boy is sitting on her chair,” she said, pointing to Boris, who immediately began to get up.
But Nicla stopped him: “Stay where you are.” Then, in a quieter voice: “Vera was her twin. She died seventy years ago when they were still children.”
The nun saw Boris blanch and smiled wryly: “No, officer, I can’t contact the afterlife. But Nora likes to be told that her sister is coming to see her every now and again.”
“So you’ll come?” Mila pressed. “I promise someone will bring you back here before evening.”
Nicla Papakidis thought about it again for a moment. “But you’ve brought something for me?”
A smile spread across Mila’s face. “The chocolates are waiting for you down in the car.”
Nicla nodded contentedly, then turned serious again. “I won’t like what I see in that man, will I?”
“I really don’t think so.”
Nicla clutched her rosary. “Fine, let’s go.”
It’s called “pareidolia”: it’s the instinctive tendency to find familiar shapes in chaotic images. In the clouds, in constellations or in the flakes of oatmeal floating in a bowl of milk.
In the same way, Nicla Papakidis saw things blossoming inside her. She didn’t call them visions. And she liked the word pareidolia because—like herself—it had Greek origins.
She explained it to Boris as she sat in the back of the car gulping down one chocolate after another. What startled him wasn’t so much the nun’s story as the fact that he had found his own car where he had left it, without a scratch, in that rough neighborhood.
“Why do you call it the Port?”
“That depends what you believe in, Boris. Some see it only as a point of arrival. Others as one of departure.”
“What about you?”
“Both.”
In early afternoon the Rockford estate came into view.
Goran and Stern were waiting for them outside the house. Sarah Rosa was upstairs making arrangements with the medical staff looking after the dying man.
“You’ve got here just in time,” said Stern. “The situation has worsened very quickly since this morning. The doctors are sure it’s only a matter of hours now.”
As they were leaving, Gavila introduced himself to Nicla and explained what she was to do, although he was unable to conceal all his skepticism. He had seen all kinds of mediums at work, making their own contributions to the police. Very often their interventions produced a big fat nothing, or else they muddled the investigation by creating false leads and pointless expectations.
The nun wasn’t surprised by the criminologist’s wariness; she had seen that expression of disbelief on people’s faces many times.
Stern, being religious, wasn’t convinced by Nicla’s gift. As far as he was concerned, it was all mere charlatanism. But the fact that it was being practiced by a nun confused him. “At least she isn’t doing it for money,” he had said a little while before to an even more skeptical Sarah Rosa.
“I like that criminologist,” Nicla whispered confidentially to Mila as they were going upstairs. “He has misgivings, and he doesn’t try to hide them.”
The comment wasn’t the product of her gift. Mila understood that it came straight from her heart. Hearing those words from such a dear friend, Mila felt a surge of gratitude. The statement brushed away all the doubts that Sarah Rosa had tried to sow in her about Goran.
Joseph B. Rockford’s room was at the end of a wide corridor hung with tapestries.
The big windows pointed to the west, towards the sunrise. From the balcon
ies you could enjoy the view of the valley below.
The four-poster bed was in the middle of the room. All around it, medical apparatus accompanied the billionaire’s last hours. They beat out a mechanical rhythm for him, made up of beeps from the heart rate monitor, the sighs and puffs of the respirator, repeated drips and a low and continuous electrical murmur.
Rockford’s torso was raised by several pillows, his arms rested along his hips on the embroidered bedcover, his eyes were closed. He wore a pair of raw-silk pajamas, pale pink in color, open at the neck to accommodate the endotracheal tube. The little hair he had was extremely white. His face was hollow, around an aquiline nose, and the rest of his body barely formed an outline under the blankets. He looked a hundred years old, when he was barely fifty.
At that moment a nurse was tending to the wound in his neck, changing the gauze around the nozzle that helped him breathe. Of all the staff who took turns around that bed twenty-four hours a day, they had been allowed to see only his private doctor and the doctor’s assistant.
When the members of the team crossed the threshold, their eyes met those of Lara Rockford, who would not have missed this scene for the world. She was sitting in an armchair, apart from the others, smoking in defiance of all hygienic rules. When the nurse had pointed out that this was perhaps not a great idea given the critical condition of her brother, she had replied simply, “It can’t hurt him anyway.”
Nicla walked confidently towards the bed, watching this privileged death scene. A death so different from the wretched ones that she saw every day at the Port. As she came close to Joseph B. Rockford she made the sign of the cross. Then she turned back to Goran, saying, “We can start.”
They couldn’t record what was about to happen. Never in a million years would a jury accept it as evidence. And neither could the press find out about this experiment. Everything had to stay within these walls.
Boris and Stern took up their positions, standing beside the closed door. Sarah Rosa went to stand in a corner and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. Nicla went to sit in a chair beside the bed. Mila sat next to her. Facing them was Goran, who wanted to keep a close eye on both Rockford and the nun.
The medium began to concentrate.
Mila didn’t know where Joseph B. Rockford really was at that moment. Perhaps he was there with them, and perhaps he could even hear them. Or else he had already gone down far enough to rid himself of his own fantasies.
But she was sure of one thing: Nicla might have to fall into a deep and treacherous abyss to find him.
“Ah, I’m beginning to feel something…”
Nicla’s hands rested on her knees. Mila noticed that her fingers were beginning to contract with tension.
“Joseph is still here,” the medium announced. “But he is very…far away. However, he can still perceive something of what’s happening up here…”
Sarah Rosa exchanged a puzzled glance with Boris. He couldn’t help giving an embarrassed half-smile, but managed to keep it in check.
“He is very disturbed. He is angry…he can’t bear the fact that he’s still here…he wants to go away, but he can’t. Something’s holding him back…he can’t stand the smell.”
“What smell?” asked Mila.
“The smell of rotting flowers. He says it’s unbearable.”
They sniffed the air, hoping for confirmation of those words, but all they could smell was a pleasant perfume: there was a big vase of fresh flowers on the windowsill.
“Try and make him speak, Nicla.”
“I don’t think he wants to…no, he doesn’t want to talk to me…”
“You’ve got to persuade him.”
“I’m sorry…”
“What?”
But the medium didn’t finish the sentence. Instead she said: “I think he wants to show me something…yes, that’s it…he’s showing me a room…this room. But we aren’t there. Neither are the machines that are keeping him alive right now…” Nicla stiffened: “There’s someone with him.”
“Who is it?”
“A woman, she’s beautiful…I think it’s his mother.”
From the corner of her eye Mila saw Lara Rockford stirring in the armchair as she lit her umpteenth cigarette.
“What’s he doing?”
“Joseph is very small…she is holding him on her knees and explaining something to him…she is telling him off and warning him…she’s telling him that the world out there can only hurt him. So he’s better off staying here, he will be safe. She’s promising to protect him, to take care of him, never to leave him…”
Goran and Mila looked at one another. That was how Joseph’s gilded prison had begun, with his mother removing him from the world.
“She’s telling him that of all the world’s dangers, women are the worst. The world out there is full of women who want to take everything from him…they will only love him for what he owns…they will deceive him, and take advantage of him…” Then the nun said again, “I’m sorry…”
Mila looked at Goran again. That morning the criminologist had confidently asserted, in Roche’s presence, that the origin of Rockford’s rage—the same rage that would in time turn him into a serial killer—lay in the fact that he couldn’t accept he was the way he was. Because someone, probably his mother, had one day discovered his sexual preferences, and had never forgiven him. Killing his partner meant erasing the guilt.
But plainly Gavila was wrong.
The medium’s story partially contradicted his theory. Joseph’s homosexuality could be linked to his mother’s phobias. Perhaps she knew about her son and said nothing.
But in that case, why did Joseph kill his partners?
“I wasn’t even allowed to invite a girlfriend…”
Everyone turned to look at Lara Rockford. The young woman gripped her cigarette between trembling fingers, and stared at the ground as she spoke.
“It was his mother who brought these boys here,” said Goran.
And she confirmed his words: “Yes, and she paid them.”
The tears began to pour from her one good eye, turning her face into a mask even more grotesque than before.
“My mother hated me.”
“Why?” asked the criminologist.
“Because I was a woman.”
“I’m sorry,” Nicla said again.
“Shut up!” Lara yelled, looking at her brother.
“I’m sorry, little sister…”
“Shut up!”
She yelled it in a furious voice, rising to her feet. Her chin trembled.
“You can’t imagine. You don’t know what it means to turn and find those eyes on you. A gaze that follows you everywhere, and you know what it means. Even though you don’t want to admit it, because the very idea disgusts you. I think he was trying to understand…why he felt attracted to me.”
Nicla was in a trance, trembling violently, as Mila held her hand.
“That’s why you left home, isn’t it?” Goran stared at Lara Rockford, trying to win her reply at all costs. “And it was then that he began killing…”
“Yes, I think that’s what happened.”
“Then you came back, five years ago…”
Lara Rockford laughed. “I knew nothing about it. He tricked me, saying he felt alone and abandoned by everyone. That I was his sister and he loved me, and we had to make peace. That everything else was fixations on my part. I believed him. When I came here, he behaved normally for the first few days: he was sweet and affectionate, he paid attention to me. He didn’t seem like the Joseph I’d known as a little girl. Until…”
She laughed again. And that laughter said more than words could have done about all the violence to which she had been subjected.
“It wasn’t a car accident that left you like this.”
Lara shook her head. “This way he could be absolutely sure that I would never leave again.”
They felt terribly sorry for that young woman, a prisoner not of
that house but of her own appearance.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she limped towards the door, dragging her ruined leg as she did so.
Stern and Boris stepped aside to let her pass. Then they turned to look at Goran, waiting for him to take a decision.
He turned to Nicla. “Do you feel like going on?”
“Yes,” replied the nun, although the effects of her exertion were clearly apparent.
The next question was the most important of all. They would have no chance to do it again. It wasn’t only the survival of the sixth child that depended on it, it was theirs as well. Because if they failed to discover the meaning of what had been happening for days, they would bear the marks of events for ever.
“Nicla, make Joseph tell us when he met the man who was like him…”
31.
At night he heard her screaming.
It was the migraines that gave her no peace and didn’t let her sleep. By now not even the morphine could calm her sudden twinges. She stretched out in the bed and shrieked until she lost her voice. Her former beauty, which she had tried so carefully to preserve from the inexorable withering of age, had vanished entirely. And she had become vulgar. She, who had always paid such attention to her words, who had been so measured, had become coarse and fanciful in her cursing. She had curses for everyone. For her husband, who had died too soon. For her daughter, who had run away from her. And for God who had left her like that.
He alone could placate her.
He went into her room and tied her hands to the bed with a silk scarf so that she couldn’t hurt herself. She had already pulled out all her hair and her face was streaked with coagulated blood from all the times she had plunged her nails into her cheeks.
“Joseph,” she called him as he stroked her forehead. “Tell me I was a good mother. Tell me, please.”
And he, staring into eyes that were filling with tears, told her.
Joseph B. Rockford was thirty-two. And he was only eighteen years from his date with death. Not long before, a famous geneticist had been called in to check if Joseph would share the fate of his father and grandfather. Given the scant knowledge at the time concerning the genetic heredity of illnesses, the answer had been vague: the probability that this rare syndrome had been at work in him since birth varied between forty and seventy percent.
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