by Jon Tracy
‘ Oui. I am very interested. Though I am not sure the truth will be as satisfying as the fantasy.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be. Valentina is a friend. A good friend. We’ve kept in touch – phone calls, email, that kind of thing. She’s just been promoted in the Carabinieri, so I’m going over to celebrate with her.’
‘I understand.’ JP fights back a grin. ‘An Italian woman invites you to stay with her and celebrate. This is as good as a proposal of marriage.’
‘Only if you’re a crazy Frenchman.’
‘To that I plead guilty.’ He flicks the last of his cigarette into the black abyss and watches it fall like a firefly. ‘You didn’t say how you met her.’
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘Come, it is a long way down, you can tell me as we go.’ JP leads the way to the lift. ‘A woman in uniform! Just the thought of it is exquisite.’
Tom hits the call button and hears great winding engines clunk and whirr below them. ‘She locked me in one of her cells and interviewed me in connection with a murder.’
He frowns. ‘A murder? I cannot see anyone imagining you to be a murderer. Though you fight well enough – for an American.’
‘She had good cause, Jean-Paul. I’d just told her how I’d killed two men in LA. And she had every reason to think I’d killed again.’
3
I lie in the dirt of the square.
The last of my blood drips slowly like warm red butter oozing from my butchered wrist.
My life is ebbing away.
Perhaps I will even die before the sun reappears from the grey, melancholic clouds above me.
I hope not.
I pray to see the great god’s face one final time before I pass.
Voices swirl above me.
They are not those of the soldiers – they are all gone now and are no doubt drawing rewards for their public chore. Some will already be bedding whores in the Aventine while telling stories of my demise.
No matter.
My dignity is preserved for eternity. I have a place in history.
One day, when my secret is out, I will be respected and honoured for both my silence and my sacrifice.
Without the guards, I am at the mercy of the mob, and they have no compassion. I see the plebs staring down their noses at me. Some scoff and spit in my face. Others loot the last of my jewellery and cloth. The hands of crude boys explore my cooling flesh.
I feel nothing.
Certainly no pain.
The agony engendered by the sword is thankfully too great for my mind to interpret. I do not scream. Nor do I cry or whimper. I cloak my suffering in a blanket of noble silence.
In the haze of faces above me there are none I recognise. No sign of my brutish husband. No tears from my shamed parents. Not even a last farewell from my friends.
But I am not alone.
My sisters are gathering. They are reaching out from the afterlife and wrapping their arms around me. I am ready to join them and to rejoice.
I am ready to be reborn in the spirit of another sister.
Ready to live beyond the grave.
4
Rome
The Fiat splutters its way south-west down Viale della Piramide Cestia, then right on to Via Marmorata, running parallel to Circus Maximus.
Cars are strewn at angles across the middle of the road near the Piazza dell’Emporio. An argument is heating up. Irate drivers are fencing with fingers around a steaming bonnet and busted trunk.
Once Valentina squeezes through the bottleneck and the cacophony of blaring car horns, it’s plain sailing along the banks of the Tiber, down the Lungotevere Aventino and Via Ponte Rotto.
She checks her street map as she turns right on to the Piazza della Bocca della Verita and promises herself that tomorrow she’ll find time to buy a sat nav.
She knows she’s arrived when the famous Romanesque bell tower of the chiesa comes into view.
Valentina slides the Punto into an envelope-sized space opposite the church and parallel to a spectacular fountain that on another occasion she’d love to linger around. She locks up and walks across to a young officer guarding the taped-off scene. He watches her every step and gives her shapely form an approving smile.
Before the young soldier can embarrass either of them, she flashes her Carabinieri ID. ‘Captain Morassi. I’m looking for Lieutenant Assante.’
The tape-minder loses his flirtatious smile. ‘The lieutenant’s inside.’ He nods courteously.
‘ Grazie.’ Valentina ducks the fluttering ribbon and before entering through a side door takes a quick look around. The main street is open and wide – maybe taking six lanes of traffic during rush hour – and there are parking places nearby for tourist coaches. Even given the lateness of the hour, it’s likely that whatever has happened here was seen by someone.
‘ Buonasera, Capitano.’ The voice floats out of the cool, waxy darkness of the church interior, long before Valentina sees its owner. Federico Assante looks like a ghost in the pale light. He is in his early thirties, of average height, with thinning black hair cut too short to help his full-moon face.
‘ Buonasera.’ Valentina shakes his hand. ‘So, what exactly went on here?’
‘A good question. Let me show you.’ He walks her part way through the side of the church. ‘Do you know anything about this chiesa?’
‘Nothing at all.’ She glances around: beautifully painted ceilings, high stained-glass windows that probably make sunlight look as though it has come from heaven, intricate marble flooring and two spectacular staircases leading to prayer lecterns. But everything is past its prime. ‘It looks as old as Rome itself.’
‘It almost is. Sixth century. In her day this girl was a stunner – hence the name, Cosmedin; it comes from the Greek kosmidon, meaning beauty.’
‘Impressive. But why do I need to know this now?’
‘You’ll see when we get to the portico.’ He guides her past a dark side altar and into a thin corridor paved in what looks like engraved tombs. ‘There’s a huge old drain cover in there, stood up by the far wall; it’s known as the Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth.’
‘Why’s it called that?’ There’s puzzlement in her voice, ‘Who would even think of giving a drain cover a name?’
‘The sewers in Rome are pre-Christian. Originally they were used for everything, and I mean everything. They even used to dump bodies down there.’
‘Ugh!’
Federico struggles to find the handle to the door that will actually let them into the portico. ‘There was also probably a demon from the underworld associated with it all, because the thing has a formidable face engraved on it and a wide slit for a mouth. It’s spent most of its life stood up on a plinth as part of a ritual whereby you put your hand into the mouth and if you told a lie it got cut off by the gods.’
Valentina puts the pieces together. ‘So we have a severed hand being found in the most famous place in the world for severed hands.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘And has this ever happened before?’
‘Not for a few centuries.’ He finally opens the interior door leading into the portico. ‘Be careful here, there’s no light. The photo team came but their equipment fused. They’ll be back shortly.’
‘No spare kit?’
‘No spare kit. Cutbacks. Recession. You know how it goes.’ He shines his Maglite along the dark pillars and walls. At the far end the beam picks out a drain cover as big as a man.
‘That’s the Mouth of Truth?’ It’s so much larger than she’d expected.
‘ Si. The hand was found actually in the mouth.’ He plays the beam around the lopsided slit a third of the way up the heavy slab. Blood has dribbled like Burgundy from the corner of the marble lips.
‘Was it done here?’
Federico points the light on to the portico floor. A puddle of red answers her question.
Valentina studies the dark mess. ‘Looks like it was severed from
the left of the victim.’ She remembers something that Tom Shaman – the man she’s meeting tomorrow – once told her. Sinister is Latin for left – traditionally the side of evil.
‘Why are you so sure?’ asks Federico.
‘Lend me your torch, please.’ He hands it over, and she scorches the beam down the long wall running to the right of them. ‘It would be difficult for someone to stand that side of the victim because of this wall. In this light – or lack of it – it’s hard to see the blood spatter, but what little I can make out flows left to right, not right to left, so we’re looking at the blade cutting from the victim’s left, with her kneeling. That would indicate at least two offenders. One to make her kneel and hold her there, one to deliver the precise blow.’ She looks across to him, ‘Where’s the hand now?’
‘ Patalogica. It’s in the mortuary in deep freeze.’ Federico’s cell phone rings, ‘ Scusi.’
He steps away to take the call. Valentina notices a sign for tourists that says: ‘Only one photograph per person please.’ She guesses the crime-scene photographers will have had a laugh at that. No doubt taken their own pictures, too. She walks closer to the blood, but not so close that she’ll contaminate the scene.
There’s no visible sign of a struggle.
She turns sideways on.
The portico is draped with crime-scene plastic sheeting to keep out prying eyes, but normally it would be very visible from the open road through iron railings.
Surely someone would have seen something?
Heard something?
The victim must have screamed. Unless she’d been drugged or gagged – then she could more easily be manoeuvred into position.
Why?
Why would someone want to do this?
The questions are still stacking up as Federico reappears. ‘Mystery over.’ There’s a real bounce in his voice, a tone of relief. ‘Seems some crazy woman has been picked up wandering the streets. She’s covered in blood and – you won’t believe this – she’s carrying some kind of old sword.’
If the light had been better, he’d have seen that the look of disbelief on Valentina’s face is nothing to do with the weapon.
She had the attacker down as male.
And the victim is still missing.
‘I think your mystery is far from being over, Lieutenant,’ says Valentina. ‘In fact, I’d say it’s only just beginning.’
5
My eyes are closing now.
Shutting for the final time.
Through the milky veil of death I see Arria, my body servant.
Sweet Arria, do not look so sad.
She calls me Domina, then gathers her robes and kneels beside me in the dirt.
The last of the crowd moves away.
Even they know that they must scavenge no more.
The time has come.
I am cold.
Colder than I have ever been. Arria is so alive she seems to burn like a fire next to me. She has brought blankets to wrap around my cooling husk.
No doubt she also has my shroud.
I have not the strength to move a muscle.
Oh, that I could smile to show her my gratitude. But I cannot.
I feel her warm hands press the cloth around me, as she tucks me tight like she once did when I was an infant in a manger.
Her old and bony fingers hold my one remaining hand.
Dearest Arria, I thank you.
In my palm I feel a coin. Enough to pay Charon the Ferryman. Enough to take me across the Styx to the gates of the underworld and stand before great Pluto.
I am being lifted up and carried. I cannot see who bears me. Nor do I wish to.
My eyes are closed fast now.
The lids that once upon the sight of a lover fluttered faster than the wings of a butterfly are now too heavy to move.
I am done.
The unseen hands drop me.
I thud and bounce on the rough wood in the back of a dusty cart.
I feel the heat of the sun surfacing from behind the clouds. Great Apollo, I praise you. Wondrous Pluto, I seek your kindness.
Through the muffled tunnel between life and death I hear the cart wheels trundle towards oblivion.
Someone lifts my head.
It is Arria. I recognise her smell. Her face is close to mine. She knows that my time is over, and as no relative is here, she performs her final duty.
I feel her hand across my bosom, her fingers seeking out my fading heartbeat. She is bent low. Her lips touch my face.
She is ready.
Ready to catch my last breath in her wise old mouth.
6
Rome
Federico gets a message from Central Comms. A street patrol has taken the female prisoner to a holding cell at the Carabinieri barracks in Viale Romania.
By all reports, their new admission is as jumpy as a box of frogs.
A doctor’s already been called to sedate her, but Valentina issues instructions that no medication is to be given until they arrive.
The night is cold, crisp and clear. Halogen lights pick out swirls of dust and insects around the giant grey sign identifying the ugly, squat building as the COMMANDO GENERALE DELL ARMA DEI CARABINIERI. Federico is a local boy and he thinks the whole concrete edifice sits like a boil on the face of Villa Ada, Rome’s largest and most beautiful park.
He and Valentina travelled separately from the chiesa in Cosmedin, but he’s waited patiently for her in reception.
They clear the front desk together and are shown through to the cell block where they’re left in the unpleasant company of the overnight custody officer, Paulo Ferrera.
A bad-tempered, heavy-set man in his late forties, Ferrera was just about to end his shift and go home before his late-night ‘guest’ arrived, covered in blood. He talks as he walks, breathing more heavily with each couple of steps. ‘We haven’t a name for her yet. She had no ID of any kind and she’s too drunk, drugged or ignorant to tell us who she is – e matto.’
Valentina takes an instant dislike to him.
‘We were told she had a weapon – where is it?’
‘Forensics have it. It’s still being processed.’ He unlocks one of several security gates. ‘I’ll call them for you. They have her clothes as well. I say clothes; it was more of a gown than clothes.’
‘Gown?’ queries Federico.
‘Hooded. Like a nun or a monk. A long white garment – well, not so white now, not with all the blood on it.’
‘Did you take trace evidence from her body?’ asks Valentina.
‘We managed to swab her hands, but nothing else. She’s just been too violent.’
Valentina winces. ‘You need to do it. Especially beneath her nails. She may chew and suck away something that we later find out we really need.’
Ferrera glares at her. ‘We’ve tried. It’s not that easy. We’ve actually had to be more concerned with her not hurting herself.’
Valentina stops walking and shoots him a playful smile. ‘Oh come on, Officer. You’re a big guy. I’m sure you and some of your men could restrain a mere woman and take evidence without hurting her.’ She glances at her watch. ‘I know it’s turned midnight, but to the best of my knowledge, normal daylight practices like acting professional still apply.’
Ferrera says nothing.
The colour of his face shows he’s fuming.
The cell-block veteran is still chewing his lip as they enter the new admissions area. He points towards the room where their prisoner is being held and takes a deep breath to ensure there’s no anger in his voice. ‘Until the doc arrives, we have two officers with her all the time. When you see her, perhaps you’ll be more understanding about our difficulties.’ He strides past Valentina and unlocks the penultimate cage. ‘Watch out for her kicking and biting.’
Valentina takes in her first impression of the small frightened woman sitting between two giant uniformed Carabinieri men.
She’s pretty in an old-fashioned way.
&nbs
p; Her hair is swept back and parted in the middle. She has dark eyes and a fine, angular face tapering into a slightly dimpled jaw that Valentina is sure men must find attractive. She’s wearing white zip-up one-piece overalls that cover everything except her bony hands, which are stained heavily with blood.
It will be a miracle if the victim is still alive.
‘I’m Captain Morassi, Valentina Morassi. Can you tell me who you are?’
The woman says nothing.
Valentina tries again ‘We need you to help us.’ She takes the woman’s wrist. ‘Your hands and body are covered in blood. We think someone might be badly injured. Can you tell me what happened to you?’
Nothing. No response. Just a blank gaze.
Valentina edges closer. She bends a little and tries to be more intimate. ‘Late last night, were you in Cosmedin, at Chiesa Santa Maria, at the Bocca della Verita?’
Suddenly the prisoner lunges.
The top of her head smashes into Valentina’s jaw.
The guards are too slow reacting.
The prisoner starts shouting and punching and kicking.
Valentina reels backwards, holding her bloodied mouth.
One of the officers finally grabs the woman.
The prisoner is hysterical, screaming and lashing out uncontrollably.
Ferrera and Federico bump into each other as they rush into the narrow cell.
Blood pumps from Valentina’s mouth. She’s bitten her bottom lip and maybe knocked a tooth loose.
The prisoner is now pinned on the floor. One of the guards twists her arms behind her back and clicks on some steel cuffs.
‘Now do you see what I mean?’ says Ferrera triumphantly. He looks across to Valentina. ‘With the captain’s permission, perhaps we could now sedate the prisoner and save ourselves a lot more pissing about?’
7
My corpse has been bathed.
My colourless skin sags as it is oiled and perfumed by the skilled hands of the pollinctores.