The Rome Prophecy

43

The apartment seems strange without Valentina in it.

Empty. Silent. Soulless.

Tom uses the bathroom, strips and falls into bed.

Maybe his life would also be strange without Valentina in it.

Interesting thought.

He remembers what Alfie had said. You could interpret ‘interesting’ to mean he hoped one day to be with her for the rest of his life.

Maybe that’s true.

He puts his sentimentality down to exhaustion and pulls the quilt up tight around his neck. A long, deep sleep will give him perspective. It always does.

He squashes his pillow a few different ways until it seems right, and shuts his eyes.

It feels wonderful to rest. His tired muscles and joints are relieved to be laid out flat and still.

A couple of hours’ sleep will do him the world of good.

But he’s not going to sleep.

He knows it.

His eyes are shut, but there’s no way he’s going to sleep.

One of those awful moments is happening. One where the more you try to sleep the more you know it’s not going to happen.

Finally, he gets up.

He wanders to the lounge, grabs Valentina’s Vaio and brings it back to bed.

A distraction is all he needs.

His brain will stop buzzing and his eyes will grow weary and then he’ll nod off.

Fantastic.

He surfs the net for ten minutes. He checks out the LA Times sports pages and scrolls through the latest on the Lakers and Dodgers. He even finds out how the Clippers, Kings and Ducks are doing.

Sleep still seems a long way off.

He can’t even glimpse it hiding around the corner.

Tom reaches down the bed to recover his trousers. He pulls out the napkin that Alfie wrote on at La Rambla.

He might as well start a virtual search of the temples.

A is for Apollo Sosianus.

The site takes him to pictures of the Field of Mars – just walking distance from where he found the murdered man. The site shows that nothing remains of the temple except three tall columns. Accompanying text says there was once a cult of Apollo, established outside the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome ploughed by Romulus.

Tom Googles Apollo and sees nothing he doesn’t already know.

The guy was a superhero. As famous in Greece as he was in Rome. Son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis, the god of everything from archery to medicine, music to poetry.

He gets a bad feeling as he looks at a second-century marble of Apollo holding a lyre and a python.

Snakes always give him bad feelings.

But there are no triangles. No rituals or stories of severed hands to link the deity with his modern-day case.

He goes back to the home page.

B is for Bellona.

This is a temple close to that of Apollo and was dedicated to a goddess of war who seemed to have Etruscan origins. Her followers were said to have syncretised their beliefs with those of another sect, that of the Magna Mater. The web page shows a painting of Bellona by Rembrandt, and Tom wonders if he’s ever seen a woman look so masculine. Below it is a bronze by Rodin that makes her look a little more feminine.

He flicks back to pictures of the temple.

It’s in ruins. Nothing except broken chunks of marble and busted pillars.

Only a single podium still stands as a reminder of the powerful building that was once there.

He closes his eyes for a second and thinks about what C might be for.

He doesn’t find out.

Sleep finally comes, right at the wrong moment.