by Jon Tracy
‘No.’ She puts her hands across a sheet of crayoned paper on her lap.
‘No?’ Valducci smiles and pretends to peek at the picture. ‘What is it? I’d really like to see.’
She looks down at her knees. ‘I don’t want to show you. I don’t have to show you if I don’t want.’
‘Then tell me about it, Suzie. What’s in the drawing?’
She thinks for a minute, then gives in to the trade-off. ‘Romans.’
‘ Bene. I like Romans. What are they doing in your picture?’
Grudgingly Suzie takes her hands away and lets him see.
Valducci doesn’t know what to make of it.
It’s a scribble.
Thick red and orange lines rubbed hard on to the paper like a three-year-old would. There’s a sort of stick man in black lying down as though he’s sleeping, but nothing to suggest he’s Roman. Then there’s a bad drawing high in one corner of a star that looks more like a crucifix. ‘Can you tell me what the picture is about, Suzie?’
She shakes her head and looks down at her knees again.
‘Why not? It’s lovely; I’d just like to understand it a bit more.’
‘It’s not lovely, it’s horrid.’ Nervously she twists her hair around her fingers. ‘It’s not supposed to be lovely.’
‘It’s not? Why not?’
Suzie bites her lip and buries her chin further into her chest.
Valducci kneels in front of her and sits back on his heels so he can see her eyes. ‘Please don’t be frightened of me. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help.’
She turns her head to one side to avoid his gaze.
He lets out a sigh. ‘Why won’t you talk to me, Suzie?’
She finally looks his way. ‘Because you’re a stranger. Momma told me not to talk to strange men; they might be bad people.’
Valducci tries to reason with her. ‘Aah, now I see. Normally Momma would be right. But not this time. This time is different, because you’ve been brought to my hospital, and all my doctors and nurses are trying to help you. So you see, I’m not a bad man.’
‘Momma says you’re bad.’
He’s not so easily put off. ‘No, Suzie, you said your momma had told you not to talk to strangers because they might be bad men, and that’s usually right. But as I just explained, you were brought here to me so I could help you, so I’m not bad, am I?’
‘Momma says you’re bad.’
Something about her tone intrigues him. ‘When did Momma tell you that?’
‘Now. She told me just now.’
He looks around melodramatically and then back at the patient.
‘Is your momma inside this room, Suzie? Only I don’t see her.’
Suzie shakes her head and painstakingly avoids any contact with his eyes.
‘I thought not.’ He lets out a disappointed sigh. ‘You shouldn’t lie. You know we really can’t help you if you lie to us.’
Suzie doesn’t look up. ‘I didn’t lie.’
He looks quizzically at her.
‘She’s not inside the room. She’s inside me.’
Valducci doesn’t see it coming.
Suzie’s right hand flashes.
Two fingers jab hard into his eyes.
He topples backwards on to the floor.
‘Do you see me now?’ Suzie bellows, standing over him, her alter changed.
Valducci clutches his face. His pupils are burning. A red cloud billows up behind his eyelids.
‘Tell me! Tell me, imbecile! Do you see me now?’
49
Tom sleeps for several hours.
He wakes curled up in Valentina’s bed, still thinking about a hundred things all at once.
Valentina.
Temples. Goddesses. Cults.
Valentina.
Triangles. Churches. Corpses.
Valentina.
He’s in that state of warm fuzziness where he could fall back asleep, or – with considerable willpower – get himself together.
He thinks he should grab a coffee and try to do something with the remainder of the day before she comes home.
But he doesn’t.
Sleep wins.
Tom drifts back into even deeper dreams.
He sees the tall black necks of gondolas bobbing like black swans through the mists of Venice. Somehow the thick fog has rolled inland from the lagoon and is filling the alleyways and shops and restaurants. Everyone is choking and drowning in the gathering darkness. He sees himself with Valentina in a cafe, and the dark fog is creeping dangerously towards them. They’re holding hands like Hollywood lovers and running from the relentless sea of smoke.
It’s all so strange, and yet so real that he actually feels like he’s choking.
Then he realises he is.
He sits bolt upright in bed.
Gasps.
His lungs are filled with smoke.
The apartment is covered in blackness.
Thick, deadly smoke is pouring into the bedroom.
He jumps from the quilt and resists the urge to open the window. If there’s a fire outside the room, then the draught will only fan it.
He drops to the floor and looks through the crack beneath the door.
Red and orange flickering lights.
Flames!
The apartment is several floors up. There are no trees close to the window. No fire escape. The only way out is through the lounge and the front door.
Tom’s eyes are stinging. His throat is raw. The lack of oxygen is already making him weak as he tugs the quilt off the bed and steps into the small en suite. He quickly soaks the quilt in the shower and wraps several wet towels around his head and hands. His feet are bare and he knows there’s no hope of finding his shoes.
He returns to the bedroom and very carefully opens the door to the rest of the apartment.
Palls of dark smoke and fire seem to turn like dragons and swirl towards him.
For a moment he’s thrown.
He’d expected the seat of the blaze to be confined to the kitchen, no doubt caused by him forgetting to turn something off on the cooker.
But that’s not the case.
The flames have already engulfed the entrance area. A wall of fire stands between him and the safety of the front door.
There’s no more time to think.
Wrapped in the quilt, he runs into the heart of the blaze.
The front door is burned to cinders.
He crashes through the charred frame, ripping into a hinge as he stumbles out on to the concrete landing.
The quilt is on fire.
Tom sheds it.
One of the towels wrapped around his hands is burning like a torch. He drops it and steps away.
The fresh, cold air fills his lungs so sharply that it hurts.
People are running past him. Screaming. Carrying children in their arms or on their backs. They’re bowling each other over in the crush to get down the narrow stairwell and out into the street.
Tom runs barefoot after them. Glass cracks beneath the soles of his feet.
By the time he reaches the safety of the street, most of the apartment block is ablaze.
Some streets away are the frantic klaxons of approaching fire engines.
Only now does he care about the fact that he’s completely naked.
50
It’s the first time Valentina has seen the corpse under any decent lighting.
Down by the bridge under a mix of Carabinieri flashlights and forensic arc lamps, it looked more like an alien life form than anything human.
Now – spread out on Filomena Schiavone’s autopsy table – the cadaver looks pitifully real and strangely feminine.
What little remains of the dead man has almost no body hair and no eyebrows.
‘ Ciao!’ shouts the ME incongruously, as she happily scurries around the far side of the morgue, almost oblivious to the strip of pallid butchered flesh separating her from Valentina. ‘You’ve come on a very
busy day.’ Nonna sounds energised. ‘We’ve still got two traffic incidents from this morning, an auto-erotic fatality from last night, an overdose and a new domestic murder.’ She points to a set of stainless-steel drawers against the wall. ‘There’s a full report on your case for you over there. I gave a prelim copy to your lieutenant while your officers were taking prints from the body. Now let me run you through the highlights.’ She pauses and smiles. ‘I used to say let me run you through the bullet points, but then we had a couple of Mafia cases and there really were bullet points, so it was a little confusing.’ She laughs at her own story.
‘I can see it would be,’ Valentina agrees.
‘Reasonably well-nourished male,’ continues Nonna. ‘He tapes out at one hundred and seventy-eight centimetres. Would have weighed around seventy-two kilos, so we’re talking of a fit young man in his late twenties.’ She stops for a moment. ‘You know about him being a eunuch?’
‘I do,’ says Valentina, ‘but as I’m a complete stranger to eunuchs, can you explain to me exactly what it means?’
‘You’re right to ask. Too many officers presume too much. Traditionally eunuchs were not only castrated males; they were men who’d been castrated early enough to be hormonally affected. Despite, or maybe as a result of their increased femininity, they often made very trustworthy and exceptionally fierce guards. Of course they were more commonly used in both Rome and Greece as body servants and even officials.’
Valentina pulls a face as she looks at the corpse. ‘Sounds horrendously unnecessary.’
‘Indeed. Though I’ve met a few men I’d like to have done it to. Interestingly, the word doesn’t come from the act of castration. It goes back to the Greek word eunoukhos, describing the keeper or guard of a bedchamber or harem.’
Valentina nods towards the table. ‘Can you tell if our victim was castrated recently?’
‘He wasn’t. The scars are old. I suspect he was mutilated in his teens.’
‘Urgh!’
‘It hasn’t been done in a hospital. By the looks of it the entire scrotum, including both testicles, has been tied up with a very tight band and then cut off. The skin remnants beneath the ligature then rotted as the flesh above the band healed. It’s a highly dangerous procedure and hugely painful. It’s amazing he didn’t get gangrene.’
‘What a life he had.’
‘And quite a death, too. Come around this side and I’ll show you how your eunuch met his end, no pun intended.’
Valentina negotiates her way to the top of the table.
The victim’s head is elevated on a movable white block and the professoressa expertly readjusts the corpse to expose the area she wants Valentina to see. ‘The skull has a large hole in it – large enough for you to fit your hand in.’ Schiavone puts her fingers against the brutal opening and Valentina flinches. ‘There is also evidence of minor blows to the head. Fractures can cross the suture lines of the skull but not other fractures, so I’m sure these are separate injuries.’
The ME shifts around the table to show the front of the skull. ‘Now things get interesting. This frontal area, including the nasal cavities and eye sockets, is pitted with soil and grit.’
Valentina doesn’t entirely see the point. ‘Meaning?’
‘Your victim was lying face down when someone threw a large boulder on to the back of his head, causing the damage we’ve just looked at.’
‘To kill him? To finish him off?’
‘Possibly.’
‘You can’t tell if he was alive at that time?’
Nonna looks a little uncertain. ‘Technically I’d say alive, but very, very close to death. What I mean, though, is that this final act might not have been one of mercy, of putting the man out of his suffering. It may have been a display of anger. Someone still full of rage and needing to vent it.’
‘Classic overkill.’
She considers the phrase. ‘Perhaps.’
Valentina points to the cadaver. ‘So he’s lying face down when he’s hit with this rock, then more are piled on top of him. That doesn’t make sense, because when the body was found, it was face up.’
‘ Fermare! You’re jumping to conclusions.’
Valentina holds up her hands. ‘ Mi dispiace.’
‘It’s okay. Most good detectives jump to conclusions.’ She puts her gloved fingers to the corpse’s face. ‘The dust and grit engrained in the skin wasn’t from the river area. I’ve sent samples off for environmental analysis but honestly, I’ve examined enough bodies from the Tiber to categorise those samples without a microscope. Your man was killed somewhere else, somewhere more urban. It was post-mortem that the body was brought to the river and buried beneath rocks under the bridge.’
Valentina is wondering why. She can imagine someone disposing of the body in the river, but not going to all the risk and trouble of getting it there and then burying it beside the water.
Possibilities come to mind: maybe the killers were disturbed; maybe one or more of them fled and the one left behind simply couldn’t move the corpse any further.
Schiavone removes the head block and adjusts the corpse’s shoulders so it is flat again. ‘Now the abdominal injuries. At first I thought these were self-inflicted – hara-kiri or some other form of seppuku – but after X-rays and closer examination, I’m convinced that’s not the case.’
Valentina stares at the wide cavity. ‘Don’t fatal stab wounds usually look more frenzied? These appear controlled.’
‘Good point. I didn’t say the injuries weren’t ritualistic; I can’t be certain. But I am sure that they’re not self-inflicted.’ The ME walks around so that she’s standing opposite and close to Valentina. She holds out her left hand. ‘Imagine a very strong and sharp knife, short sword or bayonet in this hand.’
Valentina nods.
‘The attacker held the weapon with the blade vertical.’ She puts her index finger against Valentina’s stomach. ‘There are a number of slash marks, but the fatal incision is on the victim’s right side.’ She presses until she feels bone. ‘The blade was driven in here, twice I think, and nicked the last rib.’ She draws her finger across to the other side of Valentina’s body. ‘A deep cut was then made horizontally straight across the thoracic diaphragm to the left side of the victim.’ She presses again, this time on the bottom of the other side of Valentina’s rib cage, causing her to wheeze a little. ‘You exhaled because I’m pressing on your diaphragm. You get a slight blow here and we say you’ve had the wind knocked out of you. You get knifed here and it’s going to be fatal.’
‘What exactly is the diaphragm?’
‘I’m glad you asked. I like officers who ask. The diaphragm is a sheet of internal muscle that extends all the way across the bottom of the rib cage and separates the thoracic cavity – the area containing your lungs and heart, et cetera – from the abdominal cavity – the area that includes the stomach, liver, kidneys and such like. You still with me?’
Valentina looks down at Schiavone’s finger still stuck painfully just beneath her rib cage. ‘Thankfully, I am.’
‘Bene.’ Nonna makes a downward slice with her finger. ‘This second movement of the blade precipitated a shift in the way the attacker held the weapon. The grip needed to be adjusted to get enough force to cut from the thorax to the pelvic brim.’ Once more she presses hard against Valentina. ‘En route, this movement sliced through the spleen and part of the duodenum.’ She moves a little closer and then draws her finger up at an angle towards Valentina’s diaphragm. ‘This final movement completed the dis-embowelment. It came through the outer part of the duodenum and through both the gall bladder and liver. Another ten centimetres and the killer would have carved out a completed triangle.’ She removes her finger and looks at the corpse. ‘As it was, only a flap of skin held the last of the cut flesh together.’
A triangle?
Valentina wonders if the shape is a coincidence.
She’s heard so much about damned triangles, she’s now seeing them eve
rywhere. ‘Is this kind of cutting significant or famous in any way?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it a medical procedure? Maybe an old way of doing autopsies?’
Nonna shakes her head. ‘No. Not to my knowledge.’ She thinks for a second or two. ‘I really can’t recall any medical procedures that resemble this.’
Valentina looks at the dead man and tries to picture his final moments.
Instinctively the ME follows the detective’s train of thought. ‘As you just saw from our crude re-enactment, this kind of homicide is very personal. It has to be done at close quarters in order to be so precise. Had I really been attacking you, you would have been going crazy – wriggling, curling up, falling to the ground, fighting for your life – and I would have been hacking at you with the knife and creating wounds elsewhere. There’s no forensic evidence to suggest that anything like that happened.’
‘So the victim was restrained?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Valentina looks confused.
‘He was dead. Or at least very close to death. And judging from the marks of the knife against the bone, I think it fair to say that he was on his back when most of the cutting was done.’
Valentina’s cell phone rings.
There’s a strange number on the display.
Whoever it is, they’ll have to wait.
‘Have you seen anything like this before, Professoressa?’
Nonna half laughs. ‘Of course. Ritually disembowelled eunuchs are turning up all the time here in Rome! Fitting them in around those other plentiful cases of severed hands found in church porticos is a real drain on the unit.’
‘Stupid question. Sorry! I was just hoping you might have something more to add.’
Nonna starts to move things away for her next case. ‘I’m afraid not. I really wish I had some old case notes or a similar experience I could recall to help you, but I don’t.’
‘ Grazie. You’ve helped a lot.’ Valentina walks round and picks up the report the ME left on the drawers for her.
‘A little advice.’
Valentina stops in the doorway.