The Rome Prophecy

16

It’s a long time before Valentina and Tom make it to her bedroom, and even longer before they return to the kitchen for a much-delayed dinner.

Valentina throws on a black jogging suit, not at all what she’d imagined she’d wear for their date, but it seems suitable when she clambers out of her wrecked bed.

They work side by side in the kitchen, cooking, chatting, sharing wine as though they’ve been a couple for years rather than minutes. She gets old white plates out of a top cupboard beside the cooker where he’s working. ‘You’ve changed a lot since we first met.’

The comment amuses him, ‘How so?’

‘More confident. More worldly.’ She puts down the plates and sits up on the work counter so she can see his face while he cooks. ‘Was that what living with Tina did for you?’

Tom feels uncomfortable for the first time. ‘I suppose.’

‘You don’t want to talk about her?’

‘Not really.’ He drops chopped onions into the heavy heated skillet to make a base for a sauce and begins to crush a garlic clove while musing on how much more he’s prepared to tell her. ‘It’s just over a year since we split up. I guess it was inevitable. You remember Tina, she was a professional woman determined to build a career and have a settled life. Me, I was an ex-priest determined to drift a bit and certainly not keen to have any responsibility after what happened in LA and Venice.’

Valentina remembers how she and Tom first met, how she was shocked at discovering that he’d accidentally killed two street thugs in LA who were attacking a woman near his old church. She remembers too the case in Venice she got him involved in and how they both nearly died solving it. She picks up her glass of wine and wonders whether it was the fact that they’d nearly died together that led to this moment when they slept together. She watches him chopping tomatoes while browning onions and somehow the picture of domesticity prompts her to ask a question she never thought she’d ask. ‘You loved Tina, didn’t you?’

He doesn’t look up from the sizzling onions. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘You think so?’

‘I tried to. I wanted to.’ He slides the tomatoes into the pan, stirs with a wooden spatula and adds spices. ‘We both tried to, we both wanted to. You have to remember that Tina was my first relationship since leaving the priesthood. The first person I’d ever… you know. Certainly the only woman I’ve ever lived with.’

Valentina is surprised. ‘She was?’

‘Yes, she was.’ He smiles at her. ‘Despite what you read in the papers, most of the Catholic clergy don’t have active sex lives.’

She laughs. ‘Didn’t you – you know – have sex before you went into the priesthood?’

He seasons two substantial tuna steaks, adds them to the skillet and covers them in the rich tomato sauce. ‘I feel like you’re interviewing me again. Any second now your old boss Vito is going to walk in, and the two of you are going to give me the third degree all over again. Only this time it won’t be about a body in a canal; it’ll be about my sex life as a teenager.’

She leans towards him, not confrontationally, just enough to catch his eye and make sure he understands she’s playing with him, merely digging around a little to get to know him better. ‘If I were interviewing you, I’d be suspicious, Tom Shaman, because you just avoided answering my question.’

‘And I, Captain Morassi, would be asking for my lawyer and saying no comment. But as you seem determined to have a straight answer, no, I didn’t have a full sexual relationship with anyone before I became a priest.’

‘Aah, a President Clinton answer.’ She fakes a deep American voice, ‘ I did not have a full sexual relationship with that woman.’ She leans on his shoulder. ‘But maybe there was a bit of fooling around, yes?’

He can’t believe she’s doing this to him. ‘Maybe. Now, can we change the subject? Or else I’m going to burn your food.’

‘Okay.’ Valentina knows she’ll have other opportunities to open him up. She swings herself down from the worktop and wanders across the apartment.

Tom tries to concentrate on the cooking. The whole process is a wonderfully therapeutic ceremony and one he fell in love with while in France.

A few minutes later Valentina calls to him, ‘Would you look at something for me? Give me a second opinion.’

‘Just a minute.’ He removes the skillet from the heat and slides the tuna on to pre-warmed plates. ‘ Fantastico! Wait until you taste this.’

Valentina picks papers up from the sofa. ‘The woman we arrested, the one I told you about, she wrote down some strange things. I’ve got photocopies here.’

He carries the plates waiter-style, one across his wrist, the other on his palm, gripped by the tip of his fingers. ‘You want more wine?’

‘Not yet. Thanks.’ She taps the sofa. ‘Sit next to me. I’m sorry there’s no dining table. Not yet. Probably not ever in here, it’s too small.’

He hands over her plate and a knife and fork, ‘ Buon appetito. I hope you like it.’

‘Looks good.’ She grins a little. ‘I’m sure it’s worth staying in for. Have a look at these while you eat.’

He takes the photocopied papers, smoothes them out on the arm of the sofa and tastes his food.

The tuna is cooked too little and the accompanying green beans boiled too much. So much for trying to make an impression.

He works slowly through the papers, wondering if he should offer to re-cook her fish. A glance across the room shows it’s not necessary. She’s almost finished.

He taps the paper as he reaches the end. ‘This is fascinating. What’s your prisoner like? Intelligence? Age? Looks?’

Valentina thinks for a second. ‘She’s late twenties. White. Italian – I think. Not very tall. Not very fat. Not very strong. In fact, not very anything. She’s mousey. Hasn’t spoken. The only communication has been through those written words, so I can’t really say how intelligent she is.’ Then she remembers something. ‘I did notice that her nails were all broken. Her hands looked rough – that is, once we cleaned the blood off them. So I’d guess she’s a manual worker rather than a brainier office type.’

‘Don’t write manual workers off as unintelligent.’ He wags a fork at her. ‘I washed dishes in every other kitchen in Paris; that doesn’t make me stupid.’

‘Never said it did. Why do you ask about her intelligence?’

Tom waggles the photocopy. ‘No spelling mistakes. Good grammar. She has an old-fashioned, formal and educated style of writing.’

The comment amuses Valentina.

‘She should have. She says she’s a noblewoman, of noble birth.’

‘The scene she wrote of is ancient Rome, certainly pre-Christ, and given the respectful references to the Senate, maybe even pre-Julius Caesar.’

Valentina’s impressed. ‘My, you are a smart old kitchen porter, aren’t you?’

‘Less of the old!’ He forks another bite of tuna, loads it with sauce and looks again at the paper. ‘The writer’s descriptions contain religious and ritualistic references; the whole thing is intriguingly riddled with allusions to secrets and truths. Do you know what the name Cassandra means?’

‘Nope. Can’t say I do.’ Valentina mops up the last of the sauce with a final forkful of fish. ‘I can’t believe I ate all this. You made me so hungry.’

‘Doom,’ says Tom, ‘Cassandra was a prophet of doom.’