Private Rome

Chapter 16

He cried out as he fell. The terrible sound was cut short by a sickening thud as he hit the ground far below. I ran to the edge and pushed through the surrounding scrub as far as I could until I saw Luna begin to ease her way hesitantly over the boulders. As I leant forward, I saw our assailant’s twisted body on the road below, a pool of blood spreading from his head.

Movement caught my eye and I saw our taxi approaching, taking one of the bends further along the valley, about a mile away.

I stepped back from the outcrop, hurried along the ridge to the sloping hillside and scrambled down the steep incline, sending stones and dirt sliding ahead of me. I was gasping and drenched with sweat by the time I joined Luna beside the man’s body. She had crouched down next to him, her fingers pressed against his neck.

“He’s dead,” she stated, though I’d been in doubt. “What happened up there?”

There was accusation in her eyes or maybe I was just projecting my own guilt? I hadn’t done anything though. It was strictly self-defense. Maybe she couldn’t suppress the cop in her.

“He jumped,” I replied. “We were fighting, and when I got the upper hand, he threw himself over the edge.”

Luna stood and eyed me skeptically, but her attention shifted to something behind me and I turned to see the cab approaching.

The driver’s eyes widened as he halted close by.

“You take the taxi back to Rome,” I said. “I’ll call the cops. Keep your name out of it.”

Luna hesitated.

“Go,” I urged her. “I can handle this.”

She nodded and pulled her identification from her purse as she walked toward the cab.

“Polizia,” she said, holding up her ID.

She spoke to the driver through his window. After a brief exchange, she climbed in the back.

The cab crawled by the body, the driver unable to take his eyes off the broken corpse. He sped up once past the bloody mess, and I saw Luna give me a final glance before the vehicle disappeared around the bend.

I pulled out my phone and dialed emergency services on 112. When my call was answered, I said, “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” a man replied. “Of course. Please state the nature of your emergency?”

“My name is Jack Morgan. I’d like to report an accident.”

The operator took details of my location and a brief account of what had happened before telling me the police were on their way.

With the call made, I approached the body and conducted a quick search. I didn’t find any personal possessions other than a cell phone, which I slipped into my pocket. The shooter’s left arm was in the pool of blood spreading out from his cracked skull, but his right lay limp against the asphalt. I lifted it and rolled up his shirt sleeve to discover a series of distinctive tattoos.

I pulled his sleeve all the way up to his shoulder and used my phone to take photographs of the body art. I could see religious and occult symbols, skulls, crosses, strange fleur-de-lys, but nothing immediately recognizable, so I sent the images to Mo-bot for analysis.

When I had everything I needed, I rolled down the man’s sleeve, repositioned his arm and then took some photos of his body and close-ups of his face, which I also sent to Mo-bot.

I had a feeling the cops would search me, so as I stepped away from the body, I removed the SIM card from his phone and put it in the second slot in my own.

I walked to the patch of shade beneath the stone pine next to the sheepfold that had saved our lives and stayed clear of the trunk and neighboring boulders, which had become a mine of forensic evidence. There were dozens of bullets buried in the pockmarked bark and embedded in the stones. I turned away from the body and gazed at the beautiful Technicolor countryside shining under the glorious Italian sun and waited for the police to arrive.