The Rome Prophecy

41

La Rambla is a Spanish bar, slung like an abandoned Vespa on the corner of a busy street between Piazza San Pietro and Ospedale Generale Santo Spirito. Alfie Giordano has been coming here and eating bad tapas and big breakfasts since he was first posted to Rome.

He and Tom sit on tall chrome and leather stools in the traffic-dusted window, remembering old times, while the owner, Josep, treats them to colazioni large enough to feed most of the city.

‘Valentina has this case linked to a church in Cosmedin.’

‘The Santa Maria?’

‘That’s it.’

Alfie knows it well. ‘Dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Also known as Santa Maria in Schola Graeca – Our Lady of the Greek Community.’ He passes Tom a tiny espresso cup and saucer.

‘But it’s famous for this giant mouth?’

‘Home to the Bocca della Verita.’ Alfie grasps his left wrist in his right hand. ‘And to thousands of stories about liars and deceivers having their hands cut off.’

‘Well, it has another story now. Valentina’s case involves a hand being found in the portico near the Bocca.’

Alfie plops a cube of brown sugar into his coffee. ‘I haven’t read anything about it.’

‘Good. I think that’s how she wants it. They arrested this woman, Suzanna Grecoraci, but she seems mentally ill.’

‘People who cut other people’s hands off usually are.’

‘Valentina doesn’t think she did it. Even though she wrote some strange first-person story about being a noblewoman in ancient times called Cassandra who was having her hand chopped off at the church.’

Alfie stirs his coffee. ‘That seems an unbelievable coincidence.’

‘I agree.’ Tom thinks about it as he stares out into the street. People have their collars up as they walk by. A scarf is flying from the back of a kid’s neck like the flag of a ship in a storm.

Alfie sips his espresso and clinks the cup down on its saucer. ‘The Santa Maria is also the resting place of the remains of St Valentine.’

‘Really? I should have known that.’

‘I’ve seen the skull. Quite impressive. Though not at all romantic, of course.’

‘I guess they do a good trade around St Valentine’s Day.’

‘Absolutely packed.’ Alfie gives him a thoughtful look, ‘Talking about love, is it serious between you and Valentina?’

Tom almost splutters espresso. ‘In what way serious?’

‘In the way that one day I might be called upon to give my services.’ He makes an elaborate blessing with his hand.

His friend looks horrified. ‘You’re very premature with that one.’

‘Ah, premature. That’s an interesting choice of word. It means not only that you wouldn’t rule it out, but also that you don’t want to rule it out. Interesting. You could therefore interpret the word to mean “hopefully one day”.’

‘Hey, a guy who gets to say Mass in St Peter’s doesn’t need to go touting for work. Anyway, I think she’s already married. To her work.’

‘Such a shame.’ Alfie turns down his bottom lip in mock sympathy. ‘This bizarre case is keeping her away from you?’

‘It’s even more bizarre than I’ve told you.’ Tom pours orange juice for them both. ‘Murder, ritual dismemberment, a suspect with dissociative identity disorder and more pagan cults, myths and legends than Tolkien ever dreamt of.’

Alfie laughs. ‘In Rome, everything’s connected to ancient pagan cults, myths and legends. The entire place was built on them. And – come to think of it – it was also built on more than its fair share of murders and mutilations.’

‘That’s pretty much what Valentina said.’

‘Bright girl. You should marry her.’ He scrubs the end of a croissant in some Tuscan cherry jam. ‘DID is interesting, though. Are you sure it’s multiple personalities and not possession?’

‘I thought of that. From what I’ve gleaned, the alter personalities are psychological, not spiritual. They seem to be a defence mechanism to cover childhood trauma rather than individually evil entities.’

‘Can you definitely rule out that at least one of the alters isn’t demonic?’

Tom doesn’t have to think before answering. ‘No, I can’t do that. I haven’t seen all of the alters, so it would be foolish to be so categorical.’

Alfie rips open a croissant filled with vanilla cream. ‘What’s the murder? The handless victim in Cosmedin?’

‘No, that body hasn’t turned up yet. This was last night. A man, found down at the Ponte Fabricio.’

Alfie licks cream off his fingertips. ‘I’ve lived long enough in Rome to know that the Fabricio is practically the birthplace of the empire. What’s the connection between this and the rest of the case?’

Tom tries to backtrack. ‘The woman who Valentina arrested, Suzanna, spoke about a body beneath the bridge during her time as this alter called Claudia. Valentina, me and the woman’s shrink drove down there, and I found the corpse at exactly the place she described killing someone hundreds of years ago.’

Alfie’s intrigued. ‘So maybe this Suzanna killed him in real life and then couldn’t deal with the reality of what she’d done and tried to turn it into a fantasy.’

Tom shakes his head. ‘The body was cut up and its skull smashed in. I couldn’t imagine any woman doing that, let alone Suzanna. She just doesn’t seem like a killer to me.’

‘Perhaps you’ve not seen enough killers to know what they look like.’

‘I’ve seen my share. Remember, I did pastoral care in several Californian prisons and worked the Death Watch at San Quentin. I know they don’t have “killer” tattooed on their foreheads.’ He catches Josep’s eye behind the bar and gestures politely towards their cups for more coffee. ‘Do you know anything about the Sacro Cuore del Suffragio and the Museum of Souls in Purgatory?’

‘A little.’ Alfie finishes the last of the creamy croissant. ‘I think some of the exhibits are far-fetched. When you go in there, you feel more like you’re visiting a circus tent than a sacred room.’

Tom felt the same way. ‘Well, the words Master, Mistress, Temple and Deliver us from evil were found on the wall of a confessional.’

‘Seems a good place to leave those kinds of words.’

‘But these were in Latin. And they were the same words used by one of the suspect’s other alters, the one called Cassandra, who met her fate at the Santa Maria.’

‘Cassandra?’ Alfie taps his fingers on the tabletop. ‘Cassandra was the Greek prophetess of doom.’

‘I know. And on top of that, there was a drawing of a triangle in the plaster.’

‘Some kind of symbol?’

‘Perhaps. Valentina said the woman she’d arrested had a triangular pendant the same.’

‘I imagine lots of women have triangular pendants.’ Alfie sounds dismissive. As an afterthought, he adds: ‘I remember reading a long time ago that triangles used to symbolise fertility.’ He draws the shape in the air, ‘It was supposed to represent the pubic region and had quasi-religious connections to the womb.’

Tom nods. ‘I said the same to Valentina. The Greeks used it to represent the vulva of the Mother Delta.’

‘You’re just trying to lead me astray by saying vulva, aren’t you?’

Tom laughs. ‘Vulva, vulva, vulva.’

Alfie crosses his two fingers to form a crucifix. ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’

They both laugh. ‘Of course the sight of a triangle makes me instantly think of a pentagram, but I guess that’s because of our religious training.’

‘ Pentagrammon, pentagrammos,’ says Alfie, showing off his Greek, ‘Five-lined, five-sided. You can trace those damned things back to Mesopotamian writings three thousand years before the good Lord first wriggled his toes into a pair of sandals.’

‘Pythagoreans called the pentagram Hygieia, after their goddess of health.’

Alfie’s not to be outdone, ‘Aah, but medieval neo-Pythagoreans – whom you could argue were not Pythagoreans at all – claimed the pentagram represented the five classical elements.’ He draws out the points in the air, ‘Four of these represent fire, water, wind and earth and the fifth is the supernatural, the spirit.’

Tom’s had enough of the intellectual jousting. ‘Look, does any of this make sense to you? Can you see the wood for the trees, because I sure as hell can’t.’

Alfie fondly rotates the small espresso cup in his hands. ‘Not really. Symbols always mean secrets. Secrets often mean cults. Cults usually attract crazies.’

Tom doesn’t see where he’s going. ‘So?’

‘You know how coffee drinkers congregate in cafes like this when they want their fix of the really hard stuff, the excellent stuff?’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, it would follow that cults and those who believe that symbols have everyday powers will also gravitate to their own centres in order to experience rituals of excellence.’

‘Temples, you mean?’

‘Exactly. And in Rome, that may even include old temples that have been pulled down.’

‘Triangular pendant wearers worship at the temple of triangular pendants. I guess I find the place under T in the phone book.’

Alfie laughs. ‘T for temple or T for triangle?’

‘This is madness.’ Tom begins to peel the label off a bottle of water on the table. ‘We have to remember that the poor woman at the heart of all this is mentally ill. She has a severe form of multiple personality disorder and doesn’t even know her own name or whether she’s married or has kids.’

Alfie takes the bottle off him and gives him the look a mother might give a naughty child. ‘Maybe your poor woman isn’t totally mad. It’s possible that she’s using her alters to leave clues, to cry out for help. Perhaps she hopes someone like you – or your future wife – will decode them and help her.’

Tom scowls at him. ‘I was going to ask you to have dinner with us; now I think it’s too dangerous to have you around.’

‘ Mea culpa.’

Tom thinks things over. What Alfie is saying makes sense. If Suzanna’s caught up in a cult, she’ll be terrified of talking about it, maybe even uncertain she should betray it. The historic alter personalities and the strange clues all point to a desperate cry for help. He finally takes a slug of the wonderfully bitter espresso. ‘You said temples.’

Alfie nods.

‘I guess there are dozens in Rome. Is there anything like a triangular temple?’

‘I know Rome well, but not that well.’ Alfie slides down from his stool and steps towards the bar. ‘Josep, can we use your computer a minute?’ He nods to a new Apple iPad kept under the owner’s admiring supervision on a counter near the till.

It’s Josep’s pride and joy.

‘ Si, but Father, you be careful, yes?’ He hands it over like he’s being forced to pass a newborn child to a drunken rugby player.

Alfie cradles it and smiles. ‘I’ll treat it like it was your soul.’

Tom’s no technophile, but even he can’t help but be seduced by the iPad’s sleek design. ‘That really is cool. I’ve heard about these but never seen one.’

‘Well, now you get to see – and to touch.’ Alfie shuffles his stool around so they can both access the tablet as he opens up its Safari browser. He taps in the keywords: Temple. Triangle. Rome.

And wishes he hadn’t.

Up come useless links to Temple University in Philadelphia, the Chattanooga Triangle and an obscure inventor called Leonard Temple Thorne.

The next page is more valuable. It references the use of triangles in the history of Rome and Greece.

‘Dive in a bit and let’s have a look,’ suggests Tom.

Alfie clicks open page after page. There are passages detailing the use of the symbol all the way back to the Bronze Age.

They get sidetracked by articles on Euclidean geometry, and then they chase the use of the symbol through palaces and sacred caves in Crete and mountain sanctuaries and tombs in archaic Greece.

‘Let’s narrow it down,’ suggests Alfie, his tone giving away the fact that he can’t take much more browsing. ‘I’ll just type in “Temples in Rome” and see what we get.’

Two million entries – that’s what they get.

Tom sits back in amazement.

‘Wuuu! Talk about needles and haystacks. I thought you were narrowing things down.’

‘Me too.’ Alfie clicks open a Wikipedia link. Up pops an alphabetical guide to temples, cult centres and pagan structures across the Eternal City. ‘So, what have we got here?’ The temple links are displayed according to area and also according to each person or deity they’re dedicated to.

‘There seem to be seven areas.’ Tom runs his finger across the iPad. ‘Campus Martius – the Field of Mars – the Capitoline Hill, the Palatine, Forum Boarium, Roman Forum, Imperial Fora and the Fora Venalia.’

‘Yikes,’ is the best Alfie can manage.

‘And then there are these five other categories.’ Tom glides his finger over the super-smooth screen. ‘The Temples of Cybele, Elagabalium, Marcus Aurelius, Minerva Medica and Virtus.’

‘Double yikes.’

Bright sun is now pouring through the window of the bar. The two friends can feel it on their faces. The warmth makes Tom yawn and reminds him of the sleep deficit he’s run up. Settlement time is coming up fast. ‘I’m wiped out. I’m going to get the bill.’ He eases himself off the chair and goes to pay Josep. ‘Will you write down the sites for me, Alfie, so I can give them to Valentina?’

‘Sure.’ Alfie jots them down on a white paper napkin, then follows Tom to the bar, iPad held carefully in both hands. He goes behind the counter and puts it back on charge. Josep’s hawk eyes watch his every move.

They say goodbye with much handshaking and back-slapping and slip into the bright, late morning sunlight.

Neither of them notices the man across the road.

The one who’s been watching them for the last two hours.