The Rome Prophecy

29

Major Armando Caesario sits attentively behind his old walnut desk in a high-backed leather chair, with his chin resting on his folded hands.

It’s quite a story that his new capitano is telling him, and he can’t wait for her to leave so he can ask Assante if she’s gone completely mad.

Female captains are not a good idea.

Never have been. Never will be. High Command, in all its forward-thinking wisdom, seems to believe it’s wise to promote more women.

It isn’t.

It’s a big mistake, and one day they’ll realise it.

Until then, long-suffering officers such as Caesario have to suffer the likes of Valentina Morassi and her meandering report about churches, severed hands, hooded gowns and ancient swords.

What rubbish.

He blames himself.

He sent her out to Cosmedin because she’d come from Venice with a reputation for working some big case with juicy headlines about Satanism, and he thought it amusing to send her back to a church again.

Now he wishes he hadn’t.

‘No,’ he says out loud. ‘No extra resources. No extra manpower. No extra anything.’

Even Assante looks shocked.

‘I’m saying no because you don’t even have one victim, let alone two.’ Caesario scratches an ear. ‘All this might be some crazy joke. Maybe this madwoman got the body part from a hospital and it was a sick prank that went wrong and traumatised her.’

‘The blood on what you call the madwoman’s gown didn’t come from the hand,’ stresses Valentina, annoyed at his tone and that he’s missed the point of her lengthy explanation. ‘It’s probably from another victim.’

‘I know,’ says Caesario angrily. ‘None of this makes sense, and I’m not about to waste any more precious hours and money on what so far is a crime without a body.’

Valentina is about to press her case.

Caesario doesn’t let her. ‘Captain, you’ve got forty-eight hours to come up with a victim – or victims – or I shut this case down. Now could you leave me, please? I have another matter to discuss with Lieutenant Assante.’

Valentina’s out of the room in a flash. She’s angry enough to punch a hole through a wall.

Body parts from hospitals?

Is he serious?

Her heart is pounding and she can’t bear the thought of waiting at her desk for Assante to reappear with a sexist grin on his face.

She grabs her coat and car keys and heads outside, wondering why on earth she didn’t stay in Venice, where she was known and respected.

In less than fifteen minutes, she’s zipped in front of a number 30 tram grinding its way down Via Regina Elena, parked the Fiat inside the grounds of the Policlinico Umberto and is opening Louisa Verdetti’s office door.

‘Oh no, really no.’ Louisa gets up from her desk. ‘Captain, please, I’m having a morning straight from hell, and-’

‘So am I,’ interjects Valentina, ‘and mine is to do with short-sighted, narrow-minded men who can’t see further than their diminutive penises and even smaller brains.’

Louisa starts laughing. She recognises the symptoms. ‘Our afflictions appear remarkably similar.’ She gestures to a sofa. ‘Would you like a coffee? I’m really up to my neck in work, but I have ten minutes for a fellow sufferer.’

‘That would be great. Espresso. No sugar. Grazie.’ Louisa phones it through and takes a seat on a sofa opposite her surprise guest. ‘So, how can I help? Suzanna Grecoraci, I presume.’

‘ Si.’ Valentina struggles out of her short wool coat and wishes she’d taken it off before sitting down. ‘We still haven’t found a victim to connect to the blood found on her, and my boss will shut the inquiry down if I don’t come up with something tangible in forty-eight hours.’

‘I have a similar gun to my head. My administrator is talking about releasing her. Putting her out on the street so you’d have to look after her.’

Valentina runs her hands through her hair. ‘If he does that, we’ll just lock her in a hospital ward inside the barracks without any proper treatment. That’s assuming I can even find a charge that would stick.’

Louisa lets out a pained breath. ‘How do these guys get to such positions? They’re not idiots, obviously, but it seems like they’re capable of behaving like them.’

‘One of life’s mysteries.’ Valentina ventures to mention a notion she’s been considering. ‘I remember in psychology at college reading about the Cassandra Complex. Could that be anything to do with Suzanna?’

Louisa looks surprised. ‘Interesting notion. Cassandra because of the story she wrote?’

‘Yes.’

The doctor remembers, ‘The Cassandra Complex was a term coined in the late 1940s by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard to deal with patients who believed they had the power of premonition.’

‘So it fits?’

Louisa flinches. ‘Not really. Suzanna’s alter called herself Cassandra but she didn’t predict anything. In the account, she wrote down that she was publicly punished and humiliated because she was hiding something.’

‘A secret. She said she’d rather die than disclose what she was involved in. What if the secret itself was a premonition, a prophecy or warning of some kind?’

Louisa doesn’t say anything; she’s silently sifting through her dusty back files to recall lessons from long ago.

Finally, something comes back to her. ‘There’s a Jungian analyst called Schapira who wrote a lot about the Cassandra Complex in relation to very disturbed patients who were disbelieved when they disclosed the true cause of their problems. Let me look it up online.’ She moves back to her desk and talks as she types into a medical search engine. ‘From what I can remember, all of this metaphorical referencing is linked back to Greek mythology. Hang on, here we are.’ She reads silently, then paraphrases the text for Valentina. ‘Schapira says that Cassandra women see something dark that isn’t apparent to others and can’t be corroborated by facts. They envisage negative or unexpected outcomes to situations and disclose so-called truths that apparent authority figures find hard to accept.’ She turns to her guest. ‘Sounds like she encountered a lot of sexist men as well.’ Louisa returns to the monitor and adds, ‘In frightened, ego-less conditions, Cassandra women shout out whatever vision they are having, unconsciously hoping that others might understand. But of course they don’t. To them, the disconnected words are just melodrama or nonsense.’

Coffee arrives on a plastic hospital tray brought in by a skinny assistant in her late thirties. She’s in and out so quickly she could pass as an apparition.

Valentina cradles the warm cup in her hands. ‘Is it possible for me to speak to the patient?’

Louisa returns to the sofa and picks up her drink. ‘Suzanna, you mean?’

‘No. Not Suzanna. Could you help me speak to Cassandra? Get Suzanna to persuade Cassandra to talk directly to me?’