The Rome Prophecy

42

The local cops and mortuary staff call her Nonna.

Professoressa Filomena Schiavone is actually a grandmother, so she doesn’t at all mind the nickname.

But it hasn’t always been like that.

There was a time when the medical examiner worried almost obsessively about growing old.

Turning thirty was a trauma. The first grey hair had come and agonisingly signalled the end of her girlish world.

Forty was horrendous. A time when everyone was getting divorced or realising their marriages would end childless. It was the first time in her life she’d felt remotely uncertain about the future.

Fifty was catastrophic.

It was an age she lied about. A milestone she denied having reached for as long as believably possible. And looking back, that was quite a while.

Despite hitting the big half-century mark, she still had admirers. Even after the death of her husband four days before her fifty-fifth birthday.

But sixty changed everything.

At last, she learned to accept things.

Life was short, and getting shorter by the moment. It was there to be lived to the full.

Compared to the loss of Mario, white hair and the pull of gravity on flesh were nothing. She’d been rocked by his death. Shaken to her core. She’d been a recluse for five years, finding time only for her daughter, two grandsons and of course her work.

But not now.

Now she’s out dating again.

Yep, as ridiculous as it sounds, Filomena’s ‘playing the field’, as she calls it. And right now she’s walking out with a former lawyer who’s seventy next year.

Life is good.

Or at least it seems that way until she bends over the remains of the corpse that her staff have left on her slab.

The floor is splashed with brown river water and the sauce of death is spilling from his lifeless orifices.

All manner of molluscs and crustaceans have taken up lodgings in the gaping wounds she’s gazing down on.

The body is that of a reasonably well-nourished male in his early thirties. He is about five feet eight inches tall and would have weighed around eleven stone had his stomach not been opened up and half his organs washed away. She lifts his hands and sees that many of the finger bones have been broken. Perhaps a sign of torture. Possibly the result of rocks or stones being piled upon him post-mortem to conceal the corpse. A cracked rib cage, broken jaw and damaged eye socket are also consistent with the latter. A little later she’ll have x-rays done. Looking at the prints of bone fusion is still one of the best ways of ageing a corpse.

Filomena manoeuvres the cadaver on to its side and notes corresponding pressure injuries on his back. It’s not the worst case she’s ever seen, but it’s up there. The scalp shows a number of minor abrasions to the front and side, but in particular to the rear, where a huge piece of bone has been smashed in. Fragments are inside the jagged cavity of the skull, but for the moment it’s hard to be sure whether the wound was made by an attacker before death or was the result of rocks being piled on the corpse.

She lays the body flat and examines the stomach wound. It’s even more peculiar.

The man has not just been stabbed; he’s been opened in some kind of ritualistic way. It makes her think of hara-kiri, the Japanese suicide ritual, and a lecture she once attended on the samurai tradition of seppuku – stomach cutting. Noble practitioners were supposed to plunge the sword into the abdomen and then move the blade left to right in a slicing motion.

She continues with her examination and ignores the smell of the bloated body. It certainly looks like the cut was made from the victim’s left. Marks on the lower ribs show the blade was dragged horizontally, then, by the looks of it, pulled downwards at forty-five degrees for about seven inches. She makes notes on a pad and wonders whether a weapon was found alongside the victim. She’s not been told of one, and its absence would certainly indicate murder rather than suicide.

A picture forms of the victim being hit from behind and then stabbed in the stomach as he fell to the ground.

She looks again at the wound.

That theory doesn’t seem to fit.

The cut marks against the ribs are upwards, as though the victim was still vertical.

Something else isn’t right.

Filomena pulls up the flap of abdominal flesh and jumps back.

From inside the stomach cavity, two dark baby mice bolt for freedom.

She screams like a teenager.

Within seconds, an orderly is in the room.

The best the professoressa can do is point at the rodents, both of which are now trying to hide beneath the neck of the corpse.

Roberto, a man in his early thirties, traps them with a stainless-steel bowl, and with all the speed of a magician, palms the offending creatures and heads outside.

The other thing he hides professionally is his smile. Nonna’s phobia about mice is legendary, and unfortunately the morgue is not without its unwelcome intruders.

After a brief respite, Filomena shouts Roberto back in.

Only when the cadaver has been checked and declared mouse-free does she resume her work.

Setting a time of death is difficult.

The corpse has been exposed to the elements and has probably been covered by the tide of the Tiber. It’s also been masked by rocks, affording a little shelter.

She always tells the police: ‘time of death is precisely between when the victim was last seen alive and when the corpse was discovered’.

The lower part of the torso is heavily damaged by rocks, and the knees and shins show extensive injuries.

She diligently marks them on a standard anatomical drawing.

Only now does she realise that the gaping wounds to the man’s head and stomach have drawn her attention away from something she would otherwise have instantly found fascinating.

The man has no scrotum and no testicles.

She looks closer. This isn’t a recent injury. In fact, it isn’t an injury at all.

It’s been done very deliberately.

Judging from the scars, there’s been a crude operation to castrate him.

The deceased is a modern-day eunuch.