Private Rome

Chapter 62

I spent the night in a dive hotel that was one notch above derelict. There were rodent droppings in the corridor, damp and mold on the walls and rot everywhere, but it was the kind of place that took cash, didn’t ask for ID, and couldn’t afford to probe too deeply into the backgrounds of its motley clientele. I was sharing the building with drug dealers and sex workers and a selection of street criminals.

The room was shabby but the bed wasn’t too bad. I managed to get a decent night’s sleep despite my worries. I woke soon after dawn, dressed in new clothes I’d bought the previous evening: jeans and a Rome T-shirt. My shades and baseball cap completed my enthusiastic tourist look.

I was on the street at 6:15 a.m., walking along Via di Porta Maggiore, an ugly road situated between the railway tracks and an old industrial park. I passed other low-cost hotels and hostels, the rundown buildings that housed them all covered in graffiti. The neighborhood was still in the process of waking up and I didn’t have to avoid too many people as I headed south.

An hour later, I was outside the headquarters of La Repubblica on Via Cristoforo Colombo. The newspaper was located in a business district south of the city center, where broad avenues and parkland combined to create a sense of space. Via Cristoforo Colombo was a wide road lined with low-rise office blocks, open-air parking and mature trees. I stood on a grassy square in the shadow of a tall fir and watched the entrance of the building opposite. I had no idea whether Faduma would show, but I was prepared to wait until lunchtime. If she didn’t come into the office by then, I would track her down offsite.

Thankfully, I saw her drive her Volkswagen into the lot in front of the building a little after 8 a.m. She stepped out of the car, wearing white linen trousers and a red blouse. I hurried toward her as she wove her way through the parked cars and walked over to the newspaper building. There was a security guard in the lobby and other staff filing through the entrance.

“Don’t overreact,” I whispered as I took her arm.

She glanced at me and spoke through gritted teeth. “Are you crazy? Do you have a death wish, coming here?”

“Why?”

We kept walking south, past the entrance to the building, and she took her phone from her purse.

She held the device in front of me and I saw my own face on-screen.

“This footage was released this morning. Authorities say it implicates you in the murder of Father Carlos Diaz.”

My stomach wrapped itself in knots as I watched a video clip of me, taken from inside Chiesa Santa Maria dei Miracoli, the twin church we’d fled to through the secret tunnel. The footage must have been shot by a security camera and in fact showed me trying to help Father Carlos.

In the absence of context, though, it did look as though I might be trying to kill him.

“You know I didn’t hurt him,” I said, suddenly aware of all the faces around us. I studied them for flashes of recognition. “It’s a set-up.”

“Of course,” Faduma replied. “But you come to Rome’s best newspaper when your face is plastered all over the front page? Someone is going to recognize you.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, feeling very exposed.

“Then if you didn’t know, why are you here?” she asked. “If it’s not about Father Carlos’s murder, what do you want?”

“I need to find the cop who was on duty the night Matteo was supposed to have tried to take his own life,” I said. “His name is Bernardo Baggio. I need to speak to him.”

“At police headquarters?” Faduma asked in disbelief.

“Of course not,” I replied, ignoring her mischievous smile. “Not in the circumstances. And besides, last time we checked, he hadn’t shown up for his shift.”

“I’ll see what I can do. There’s a little café around the corner, next left, about two hundred meters along. Wait for me there.”

I nodded and she left me. I watched her head into the newspaper building, hoping I was right to trust her.