by David Hewson
Costa thought he could hear Esposito’s voice in all this. The new commissario was a pragmatic man, one who would not wish to be tied by the mistakes of others.
“We’ve a wealth of material,” Teresa said confidently. “We’re working as quickly as we can. There are reams of documents downstairs…”
“You said they were historical,” the lawyer retorted.
“They are,” she answered, uncertain of herself.
“So what use is that?” Grimaldi flung his hands in the air. “This is here. This is now. If you want me to prosecute Franco Malaspina, I need evidence from this century, not the scribbles of a few ghosts.”
“And if a ghost could talk?” Agata asked quietly.
“I’d look even more of an idiot trying to sell this farrago of loose ends to a magistrate.”
Agata took the black bag off her shoulder and Costa realised, at that moment, what was wrong. The thing was heavier, and had been since sometime the previous day.
She retrieved a large, thick book from its interior, one bound in dark leather cracked with age. Agata opened it and they all saw what was on the page: line after line of scribbled script, broken into paragraphs with dated headings. A journal. A diary from another time.
“You took this from that room?” Costa asked her. “Without my seeing? You stole it before I even got there?”
She’d been reading it, too, when he’d walked into Emily’s studio the previous night. He recognised the book. It had been by her side.
Grimaldi groaned. “There goes any possibility of introducing it as evidence. Not that I believe for one moment—”
“You have the evidence,” Agata interrupted. “You’ve told me that. Time and time again. What you want is the link, isn’t it?”
Teresa walked over and placed her gloved fingers on the cover. “Prints,” she said. “Silvio. Arrange it. God knows…” She glanced at Agata. “We’ll have to take yours to exclude them from anything we get.”
She held up her hands. They bore white forensic gloves just like Teresa’s. They must have been in the bag as well, and she had slipped them on as she withdrew the volume.
“I stole these from your forensic officers,” she said. “Now, do you wish to prosecute me for petty theft? Or would you like to know what I found?”
Three
It was a diary, one that covered a period of nine years, from June 13, 1597, to May 29, 1606, the day after Ranuccio Tomassoni’s murder. She had spent much of the previous night reading it, but parts had still, Agata said, only been skimmed. She had focused on those that appeared to contain the most activity. Then, when she had made the excuse to visit the convent, she had consulted with another sister there, one skilled in documents of that period and capable of translating some of the words and terms with which she was unfamiliar.
There were many. Agata Graziano’s dark complexion hid her blushes, mostly. The front page of the book bore the title, in ornate gilt lettering, Gli Ekstasisti e Evathia, “The Ekstasists and Eve.” It concealed the private chronicle of the Ekstasists by-week account of a secret male brotherhood that began as a prank of wild young men and developed over the years into something darker, more malevolent. The contents were, to begin with, frank and boastful, the record of a private gang of talented and often moneyed men who spent their days in the bright, chattering intellectual society of Renaissance Rome and their nights in the bleak, hard, physical violence of the Ortaccio underclass. There were wild tales of sexual adventures with society women and prostitutes, and practises among the members themselves that could have attracted a quick death sentence had the truth become known to the Vatican. There were sketches, pornographic cartoons, and ribald, obscene poems. And the pages recorded rituals, too: ceremonies only hinted at, but, Agata said, with pagan and alchemical antecedents.
Among the ancient scribbles were preliminary drawings for paintings, at least some of which were the work of Caravaggio.
“Here,” she said, indicating the strange rough outline of three naked muscular figures seen from below, set around a globe. “This is a sketch for his only fresco, commissioned by Del Monte for the casino of the Villa Ludovisi. It’s still there today. Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, although in truth these are allegories for the triad of Paracelsus, and alchemical conceit… sulphur and air, mercury and water, salt and earth. The casino was used by Del Monte for dabbling in pursuits the Vatican would have regarded as heretical. Possibly with Galileo at his side.”
She turned to the beginning of the book and another sketch, one occupying two full pages as the frontispiece.
“Evathia in Ekstasis. Eve in Ecstasy. The moment those worldly sins they worshipped in secret entered our lives.”
They all crowded round to see. Even this sketch, in crude ink, took Costa’s breath away. It possessed the finished work’s subtle play upon the mind, the ability to shift in perspective and daring, depending on how the viewer gazed on the rapturous woman’s tense and highly physical moment of bliss.
“She,” Agata said quietly, “was the goddess of them all. Mother and wife. Whore and slave. Bringer of both joy and damnation. This was what they worshipped. This” — her fingers traced the sensuous outline of the female nude on the page — “is what Franco Malaspina worships today. Like his ancestor.”
There were, she said, seven of them, never referred to by name, only by trade or postion: the Painter, the Caporione, the Merchant, the Servant, the Poet, the Priest, and, more often than any, il Conte Nero, the Black Count. This was Ippolito Malaspina, she believed, while Ranuccio Tomassoni was the Caporione, Caravaggio the Painter, and the Priest someone in the service of Cardinal Del Monte, the artist’s landlord at the turn of the century.
“How do you know about the Priest?” Falcone demanded.
“It was” — a sly smile flickered in Costa’s direction — “guesswork. I was in luck. The records of Del Monte’s household still exist. In these days of modern miracles, I can even examine them in the Vatican repository on Christmas Day, at two in the morning, on someone else’s computer. There was a name there… Father Antonio L’Indaco, son of an artist recorded in the annals of Vasari, one who had worked with Michelangelo. This was a bohemian household.”
“And it was him… because?” Costa asked, half knowing the answer.
“Because at the end of May 1606, Antonio L’Indaco disappeared and was never seen again. Why?”
They waited, listening, all of them, the police officers and the lawyer, and scene-of-crime people in their suits.
“He is the one who went to Malta with Caravaggio and pretended to be Ippolito Malaspina, while the man himself was dead, inside this house, murdered in the violence that also brought about the death of Ranuccio Tomassoni.”
Costa touched the pages. The paper was thick and felt a little damp. It was not hard for him to imagine Caravaggio and the other Ekstasists standing over this book, scribbling down the details of their exploits, and small sketches, almost doodles, in the margins.
“Why did he die?” he asked. “Do you know?”
“I can guess,” she answered with a marked, quiet reluctance. “This book covers nine years. A substantial part of many a man’s life in those days. In the beginning” — she frowned — “it’s nothing more than a game. Drinking and fighting and women. The way it began for Franco, I think. Until something — the ‘sport in the blood’ — took hold of him. Then…”
She flicked to a page with a yellow bookmark, towards the end of the book. They crowded round and gazed at what was there: an ink drawing of a terrified woman naked on her back, surrounded by grinning, laughing men.…
He followed the line of her extended finger. In the margin of the page was written, God forgive me, for I know not what I do…
The flowing, easy writing, sloping, somehow almost regretful in its very nature, was the same as that on the missing painting, the same as that of Caravaggio himself.
Four
“You can see them fall apart,” she went on. “
Over the final two years. I am certain that it is Antonio L’Indaco who writes most of these entries. There are phrases and terms he uses that would be natural to a priest and to no one else. Here…”
She turned to a page dated November 16, 1604. There was no illustration this time. The entry described the abduction of an Ortaccio prostitute and her removal to a private place, “in front of the Goddess,” where she was subjected to a humiliating series of sexual acts, each described in precise detail though in a fashion that led the reader to believe the author of the account did not approve — or perhaps witness — what had happened.
“It became worse, and it was Ippolito Malaspina and Ranuccio Tomassoni who led this throughout. Time and time again. It is here in these pages. A steady downward cycle of despair and abasement until…”
Another yellow bookmark flagged the place. Agata opened the page. It was dated May 27, 1606, one day before the murder of Tomassoni.
“Read it,” she ordered.
The hand of the writer must have been shaking, with fury or terror or both. In large, uncharacteristically inelegant letters, he shrieked:
The Count is mad! He and Ranuccio run to the Pope and blame us! And believe they may win over some corrupt and crooked officer of the “law” by giving him the Goddess! There is no justice in Rome. No hope. No life. We flee for our lives. We pray for God’s forgiveness and his eternal damnation on the Black Count, who has forced this shame and humiliation upon us. Hear me now, O Lord! With your hand I defend myself!
Agata glanced towards the window. “The following day, out there, Ranuccio Tomassoni was slain by Caravaggio and the others. In here, I believe, Ippolito Malaspina died. The two of them were about to betray their brothers, using that painting they all adored as a bribe to shift the blame from themselves. This is how the Ekstasists disintegrated, in blood and hate and murder. Remember the sign around the corpse’s neck?”
“A traitor and a thief,” Costa said, recalling every word.
“Lines from Dante,” she added. “Who better than a priest to remember them? These were ordinary men in the main. Ranuccio had brothers, good, honest citizens, who were not involved with the Ekstasists as far as I can see. The records show that they fled Rome a few days after these events, but were allowed to return and remained here, handing their property on to their heirs. As it has been ever since, until poor, weak Nino Tomassoni. I suspect the brothers were ashamed of what had been done in the family’s name. I believe they gave assistance to Caravaggio too. They kept the painting. They stored the body of Ippolito as respectfully as they could. Meanwhile, Antonio L’Indaco assumed the guise of the dead count, escaped alongside Michelangelo Merisi, then wrote letters, copious letters — we have some still — from Malta and the other parts of Italy where he lived thereafter.” She slapped her finger hard on the page. “It is here. It is all here!”
Grimaldi sniffed, then looked at his watch. “I don’t doubt that, Sister. You may have solved a crime that is four hundred years old. Unfortunately, that is outside my jurisdiction. Now—”
“Nino Tomassoni knew that room,” she cried. “It was a secret, handed on from generation to generation. One he shared when he began this second career as an accomplice to Franco’s art thefts! Here! Look!”
She turned to the final page of the book. There, in what looked like modern ink, scrawled with the casual ease of graffiti, stood four names, each in a different hand: The Pornographer, The Merchant, The Servant, and The Black Count.
The word Black was underlined in Malaspina’s entry.
“Four hundred years on, they saw that painting and decided to revive the brotherhood. They read this book. They followed in the footsteps of Ranuccio Tomassoni and Ippolito Malaspina.” She hesitated. “And sad, lost Michelangelo Merisi too.”
Something bothered Costa. “Franco had this obsession with black prostitutes,” he pointed out. “Did they before?”
“No,” she replied, a little hesitantly. “Not at all. The street women of the time, those who lived in Ortaccio, were primarily white. We see that from their portraits, from the records we have. Simonetta was a kitchen maid in Florence, almost a century earlier. A slave, effectively. I suspect the real Ippolito Malaspina would have thought it beneath him to mix with a woman of colour. He must have been like Alessandro de Medici. Ashamed of his heritage. Like Franco too…”
Teresa Lupo looked the lawyer in the face. “There. Something modern. Something that goes from there to here.”
“Which means what?” Grimaldi asked. “Tell me.”
“It means,” Agata suggested, “that something happened to light a fire in Franco Malaspina’s head. Something that turned this idea into an obsession. Though what?” She uttered a long, despairing sigh. “This defeats me. It was always a joke in company. That he had a touch of the African in him. I remember…”
She stared at the page in the book, trying to think. “I remember perhaps a year or so ago that it became a joke one no longer made. Franco’s sense of humour had disappeared on this subject.” Her slender, dusky fingers stroked the page. “Yet I can see nothing here that would have proved this connection at all.”
Teresa Lupo glanced at her assistant. “It’s in the blood, you know,” she said quietly. “I just might be able to help.”
Five
Thirty minutes later they were in the Questura morgue, with Grimaldi glancing constantly at his watch, still looking as if he didn’t understand why he was listening to history when he could have been home with his family. Teresa stood over the skeleton that lay on the shining table at the centre of the room, a collection of grey bones now covered with labels and brightened in areas by obvious examination.
“The first thing to say,” Teresa began, indicating the skull, “is that everything I see here supports Agata’s interpretation of events. This man was murdered savagely.”
She indicated a gaping, shattered rent in the skull above the right temple. “It’s a pretty typical sword wound and would have been deep and serious. But” — her gloved fingers ran over the arms — “there are any number of defensive injuries here, on both limbs. Stab wounds to the rib cage. A broken femur. He was attacked and murdered, probably by more than one person.”
“Could this have been a fight?” Falcone asked.
Teresa shook her head. “No. He was fighting them off with his arms. The balance of possibilities is that he was struck down by several men. And also—”
Peroni was staring at the skeleton with a gloomy expression on his long, pale face. “They did that,” he cut in, and stabbed a long, fleshy finger at the largest obvious wound, one a good hand’s length long that ran down the left side of the chest and tore open several ribs.
“Someone did,” she observed with a long sigh. “But not in the way you think. This happened after he was dead. Technically it’s what’s called a postmortem ablation of the heart. It was a known, though not common, funerary practice in some medieval communities. The heart was removed for” — she shrugged — “worship usually. You know the kind of thing you get in churches? ‘Here are the saint’s remains. Pray for his soul… and yours.’ This is how it was done.”
“He wasn’t a saint,” Agata pointed out.
“No,” she agreed. “I think that much is clear. But it was done for famous men, too, sometimes. Kings. Lords. Dukes.”
“Where would they put the heart afterwards?” Costa asked.
“I can tell you where it was meant to be,” she replied immediately. “Silvio?”
Her assistant came over with a series of large blown-up photos. They showed in detail the cabinet in which the skeleton had been found.
“This was specially made,” Teresa said. “When they killed him, they meant to preserve him. The skeleton didn’t get this way by natural decay either. It was boiled. Sister Agata isn’t the only one who’s been looking at the Tomassoni family. Do you know what the brothers did for a living?”
Di Capua flung a few more photos on the table next to the bon
es. They were medieval prints depicting some kind of charnel house, men working hard to dismember a corpse.
“They were undertakers,” he revealed. “Specialist knowledge would have been around in a profession like that. They would have boiled the body in a mixture of water and vinegar. We can still detect traces of it. It must have taken a couple of days. There would have been some evisceration too. It’s nothing compared with what the Egyptians did, but still pretty impressive.”
“And the heart,” Teresa interjected, “surely sat here.” She indicated a hole in the base of the cabinet, one that looked as if it had been purpose-made for some kind of box. “Whatever was in there has gone missing. And recently,” she added. “We can tell that from the lie of the dust. It must have disappeared around the same time as whatever stood on the wall where Nino stuck up his dirty pictures.”
“Franco took it,” Agata said straightaway. “This was his ancestor.”
“That’s one explanation,” Teresa said hesitantly.
“Can you make the connection?” Falcone asked simply.
“I think we know the answer to that already,” Grimaldi moaned. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be listening to this rambling dissertation.”
“I can make some connections,” she answered quickly. “Whether our friend here thinks they’re enough…”
“I…” Grimaldi looked around at them. He knew when he was outnumbered. “I will listen a little more.”
“Excellent,” Teresa replied, and didn’t take her beady eyes off him. “I have four separate examples of male DNA from that hellhole in the Vicolo del Divino Amore. Three of them come from semen, on the corpses of those women, on the floor, that sofa they used. One has no sexual connotation at all. It is primary physical contact of an everyday nature. Fingerprints and sweat, the kind of evidence anyone would leave walking around a place and touching things.”