by Will Adams
Best of all, however, this was home to the Herculaneum Papyri.
Back home in America, a collection this extraordinary would have its own museum, complete with climate control, armed guards and hush-voiced curators. But Italy had too many treasures for such treatment. Most of the scrolls were stored in boxes on the shelves here, with just a few on display in glass cabinets for those few tourists who asked to see them. Perhaps because they weren’t much to look at, so badly scorched they resembled the charred branches of a morning-after bonfire. The first excavators had, in fact, thought them exactly that. They’d even used a few as torches to light their way. But finally they’d realised what they were, and that some were even well-enough preserved to open and read.
Word had spread. Excitement. Trepidation. Who could say what great lost works might not be among them? So they’d pared away their bark and unrolled them on a purpose-built machine at a centimetre per hour. To great disappointment, however, they’d mostly contained the work of a previously obscure Epicurean philosopher called Philodemus, likely a friend or relative of the Piso family who’d owned the Villa. And once all the amenable scrolls had been unrolled, the remainder were packed away and largely forgotten, to await a time when technology could reveal their secrets.
A time like now.
Lucia’s assistants Carlotta and Pippa were sharing a cigarette out on the terrace when Carmen arrived. They did this five or six times a day, allowing each to believe that it was the other who smoked, and they who merely kept them company. They fluttered in when they heard her, all agitation and enquiry. She assured them that Lucia would be fine, passed on her messages and gave them the hospital’s visiting hours. Then she returned downstairs to her more familiar haunt of Rare Books & Manuscripts, brooding as she went.
No one had ever addressed Rupert Alberts as Father before. Not in her hearing. Nothing wrong in him being a priest, of course. Nor even surprising. Many top classical experts were clerics of one kind or another. Yet why hide it? It felt disloyal to Lucia, but – unable to deny her curiosity – she googled him on her phone. It gave her a mild shock to discover he had his own Wikipedia page. The photograph was undeniably him, though several years younger. And not merely a priest, it transpired, but a Monsignor and a member of the Society of Jesus too. But what truly startled her was that he turned out to be a senior figure in the Pontificia Commissione Biblica, part of the Congregation of the Order of the Faith.
Or, to give it its older and better-known title, the Holy Inquisition.
III
A dark-blue van with museum livery was parked outside the studio. Only on seeing it did Cesco remember the photographic session booked for that afternoon. He pulled up alongside and saw Emilia Notaro reading a news report on her phone, her face a picture of grief, glazed with tears and smeared mascara. She gave a start when she noticed him. She wiped her eyes on a rumpled lace handkerchief, then jumped down to envelop him in her vast embrace and weep against his chest.
Forty years she’d worked at the museum, including six as Taddeo Santoro’s PA. Her globetrotting retirement had tragically been cut short when her husband had died scuba diving off Bali. Santoro had needed someone to oversee his digitisation project; she’d been the obvious choice. Efficient, hard-working, trustworthy and irrepressibly cheerful, despite her widowhood. And she’d taken straight to Raffaele and Cesco, always complaining how scrawny they were, doing her best to remedy it with her homemade cream cakes and chocolate puddings.
Valentina arrived in her squad car. She held up her hand to tell Cesco to let Emilia grieve. It took her another minute to compose herself. She dried her eyes, took a pace back.
‘Were you there?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Was it… was it as bad as they’re saying?’
He hesitated. ‘It was over quickly.’
‘Who did it? Do they know?’
‘They’ve got good people working on it.’ He gestured at Valentina. ‘I’m sure they’ll find out soon.’ He introduced them to one another, unlocked the front door, disabled the alarm, and led them through the small lobby into the studio. It was a large open room with walls of white, green and blue, and crowded with screens, backdrops, stands, lights and props, as well as a pair of worktables with their video- and image-editing suite. The phone was ringing. He let it go to voicemail. Two dozen messages already. Word was clearly out. He found a pad of paper and went through them, making a note of who he needed to call back.
Emilia went to the loo to freshen up. Messana poked dutifully around, as though to justify her visit. She flipped through the studio’s address and appointments book, jotting down the name and phone number of their bookkeeper, then reminded him he was going to tell her what time they’d locked up and left the night before. Cesco turned on the computer for their security app. ‘Five forty-six,’ he told her. She commandeered the mouse and brought up recent files. All were photographs. She opened its two browsers to check their histories. Neither had been used in months.
‘We saved it for image work,’ Cesco told her, almost apologetically. ‘It’s too clunky for anything else. And we’ve both got phones and laptops.’ She seemed satisfied by that. She asked him to contact her if anything turned up, then left him to it. Emilia came out of the loo, her face washed of everything but grief.
‘Our session?’ he asked gently. ‘You still want to go ahead?’
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Could you bear it? I can’t leave everything in the van, not overnight.’ The anxiety was palpable in her voice. ‘What if it was stolen? I’d never be able to—’
‘It’s okay,’ he assured her. ‘We’ll do today’s, leave tomorrow for tomorrow.’
‘We’ll devise a plan,’ she said vaguely. ‘Any thoughts of taking it on yourself?’
He shook his head. It was way too soon for that. ‘I need to let our clients know what’s happened. It’s only fair to offer to do any booked work, if they want. Or let them go elsewhere. Either’s fine by me. But the lease is coming up for renewal soon. I won’t make any commitments beyond that.’
‘And us?’
‘Same deal. I’ll carry on for the moment, if Taddeo so wishes.’
‘This is my project, not his,’ she told him, with unexpected vehemence. ‘And I want you on it. For your skill. For who you are. Please.’
‘Oh,’ said Cesco, taken aback. ‘Thanks. Then sure.’
They went outside together. The van was half full, but only a dozen or so boxes were marked up for studio photography. The way it worked was Emilia collected artefacts from one of the museum’s current warehouses to distribute among their in-house experts for assessment, cataloguing and basic snaps. Then she’d bring it all here for such further photography as was needed before taking everything on to their new home. They carried the boxes inside, cut the seals, removed the lids. He never knew what to expect. Last week, they’d had a consignment of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sex toys, including a pair of grotesque, vulture-shaped ceramic dildos. Raff had pretended bafflement in order to ask Emilia how each piece worked. A happy memory to make him sad. Nothing so exotic this afternoon. Four gorgeous Aragonese-era dishes, a pair of blue and white maiolica vases, and several bronze Amendola figurines. He turned each piece around in his hands, wondering how best to capture not just its physical appearance, but its character too, how it stood out. But he didn’t feel the magic that afternoon. He had to settle for workmanlike.
He gave Emilia a copy of the photographs, then packed the pieces back in the van. She hugged him farewell and had another cry against his chest. He waved her off, then checked the time. Hard to believe but it was still only mid-afternoon. Tough duties still lay ahead, however, so he took a bracing breath and headed back inside.
IV
Valentina Messana stopped off at Napoli Centrale on her way back to Herculaneum. A railway porter came up to tell her she couldn’t park on the station forecourt. She showed him her badge and asked him to watch her Renault while she wandere
d the banks of payphones, ringing the number from Conte’s apartment, until finally she found it just outside the western exit. She looked around. No CCTV in sight. But you never knew. She tracked down the security office, spoke with the station head, a pale thin tall man with blinking eyes and a pencil moustache. His eyes lit up when she mentioned the Lamborghini murder. A detective wannabe. No cameras on those phones, he admitted. But he could send footage from ones nearby, if that would help. She thanked him and gave him her card.
She brooded on her drive back to Herculaneum. So hard, indeed, that she passed Viale Due Giugno and Parco Massimo Troisi almost without realising their significance. Then she braked so sharply that the bus behind almost ran into her. She took the next left and made her way back to Due Giugno, a long straight avenue of firs and streetlamps alongside the park’s gardens and artificial lake.
2G PMT 6.30
Surely that was here. Again not a camera in sight. Luck or judgement? Assuming the note on Conte’s pad was connected to last night’s call from Napoli Centrale, then presumably it had been to arrange a meeting this morning – very possibly with his killer. A yellow Lamborghini at that hour; someone must have noticed it. She made a note to send a team out here at six tomorrow morning, armed with pictures of Conte and his car to show to anyone out and about.
It wasn’t likely to make her popular with her colleagues. But then Messana had never much cared about that.
Chapter Eight
I
It was still in something of a daze that Carmen arrived at Rare Books & Manuscripts. She was quickly shaken out of it, however, when mobbed by librarians and researchers anxious for word of Raffaele, Lucia, and the morning’s horrors. She shared with them what she knew before Victor, the department head, called time and sent everyone back to their duties.
The department itself comprised a string of six tall rooms linked by open archways, so that you could see from one end all the way to the other. The first five were virtually identical, the bulk of them lying to the left of the central aisle, each furnished with a long pine research table with power points and reading lamps, between walls lined floor to ceiling with fitted bookshelves fronted by security glass and cream curtains to keep the sunlight off their precious volumes. To the right of the aisle, by contrast, there were small alcoves large enough only for a librarian’s desk, each of which backed onto a pair of French windows that would have led out onto the grand stone terrace overlooking the port, had they not all been locked, barred and covered by white cotton sheets.
The sixth room, however, was a little different – not a room so much as a converted hallway, fitted with a small round research table and three wooden chairs. Instead of bookshelves, it was lined with steel storage cabinets housing the outsized books, plans and maps, and other special collections. And, rather than another open archway, it ended in the newly installed steel security door to the Colonna room – named for some now-forgotten Neapolitan mayor.
Every weekday for the past few weeks, Lucia Conte, Zeno D’Agostino and Father Alberts had gathered here – joined, when the mood took him, by Taddeo Santoro as well – to work on the newly discovered scroll. By Philodemus, they all said. They even called themselves the Philodemus Working Group.
But was it?
According to its own website, the Pontificia Commissione Biblica had been established to interpret and defend sacred Christian scripture. And what did Philodemus have to do with that? He’d died forty years before Jesus had even been born. His school of Epicureanism had had little overlap with Christianity. Why then would Alberts spend so much time on one of his texts? Why would his pontifical commission even care? The answer was self-evident. It wouldn’t. Philodemus was a smokescreen. The scroll held Christian interest of some sort.
And why not?
The Herculaneum papyri had excited intense interest upon their discovery in large part because of the possibility of finding early Church writings among them. Christianity had reached Rome well before Vesuvius, after all. Nero had reputedly blamed Christians for the Great Fire of 64 CE. He’d put Peter and Paul to death for it. And this whole coast had been the resort of choice for the Roman elite. Anything that reached there would have reached here too. All kinds of Christian texts might plausibly have been in circulation. Transcripts of sermons and prayers. Letters from church leaders. Books of rules and orders. Perhaps even an early account of the life and—
Her heart kicked like a spooked mule. Rome, the 70s CE. She looked again at the locked steel door, her mind spinning so wildly that it left her nauseous.
But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
Could it?
II
Romeo Izzo drove back home to change out of his dress uniform into the darker of his two brown suits. His mother-in-law Isabella was out, he was relieved to discover. They’d never got on well, but living here together through the gruelling last few weeks of his beloved wife’s life had exacerbated rather than healed the antagonism, each of them privately blaming the other for anything and everything that had gone wrong, so that now they could barely stand to be in the same room together. Yet he could hardly kick her out; he owed his wife better than that. Besides, she was genuinely devoted to Mario, who loved her back, and she was undeniably useful for the school run and other errands.
He left the keys to the Fiat for her, in order that she might collect Mario later, then walked on into the station, picking up a slice of pizza and a bottle of sparkling water along the way. He settled himself at his desk and brought up the extended clip of Agnetta Gaudino’s meltdown that he’d saved on his hard drive.
It began sedately enough with the local TV news reporter shouting questions at protestors as they marched upon the Town Hall. A few gave answers. Most ignored her. Then came a group of three, an elderly woman with scrawny arms and jerky movements being shepherded by her son and daughter. Any lingering suspicion that she might have been responsible for this morning’s horror was instantly put to rest. She was simply too small, too old, too frazzled. She wore bright orange lipstick and too much mascara, while her frizzy hair was dyed such a brilliant red that the sunlight made it look for all the world as though her head had caught fire. The reporter shouted out her question. At once Agnetta turned on her. Her eyes were wild and vengeful and her wrath was too intense for her mouth, rendering her almost incoherent, though it was easy enough to edit in one’s mind. ‘These are our homes,’ she cried. ‘Our homes. How dare they! I was born here. Right here. I’ve lived here seventy-six years. And now these wicked people… How can they be so… Archaeologists, they call themselves? Historians! Then they should know what we did to people like them who ruined lives. We locked them inside great brass bulls and set them on fire just to hear their screams. We sewed them into sacks with snakes and monkeys and cocks, then tossed them out to drown. We hung them by their feet and painted their eyeballs with honey for the birds to pluck.’ A documentary on ancient punishments had been broadcast two nights before the march, and Agnetta had evidently drunk it in. She turned now from the reporter to the camera, staring into its lens with such intensity that he could see the madness in her eyes even as her spittle flecked the glass. ‘I curse you. I curse you all. You and your children and your children’s children. Take me from my house and you will burn. Take me from my house and you will drown. Take me from my house and the birds will feast upon your eyes. We’ll lock you in cages for the rats to have your guts. We’ll spike you all the way from your arseholes to your throats.’ She lunged for the camera, as though it itself were taunting her, only to be held back by her mortified children. Instantly, she turned on them. ‘Let me go!’ she shrieked, trying to free her arms. ‘Let me go! Or do you want my curses too?’
‘And I thought my mother was embarrassing.’
Izzo looked around. Valentina Messana was standing there, a wry smile on her lips. ‘You checked her out, yeah?’ he asked. ‘Just in case?’
‘The guys did, yes,’ Messana told him. ‘She was out with her siste
r.’
‘How about one of her kids?’ he asked. ‘Doing a favour for their ma? Giving in to her bullying?’
‘The son works on containers. He’d been at sea three days already when the letter got put up on the gates. He’s still out there now. I checked. And you can see for yourself that the daughter has the tremors. Not terrible, but she could never have written that letter so neatly. I suppose the son could have written it for the daughter to post…’
‘Yes,’ sighed Izzo. ‘Fair enough. Point made.’
The clip stopped. Even for a hardened news crew, so public a disintegration had proved too much. Izzo stared at the screen a few moments, then brought up the death threat letter. It had been found early one morning by a local businessman of unimpeachable character on his walk into work. It had been written with a fountain pen in bright green capital letters on one side of a single sheet of plain woven cream writing paper, then slipped inside a protective plastic sheath and taped to the outside of the Villa’s gate.
TO ALL THOSE INVOLVED IN EXCAVATING THE VILLA, A FINAL WARNING.
DESIST NOW OR I CONDEMN YOU TO THE SICILIAN BULL, THAT YOUR SCREAMS MAY RING OUT AS YOU BURN.
DESIST NOW OR I SENTENCE YOU TO THE DROWNING SACK, WITH MONKEY, SNAKE AND COCK.