The Rome Prophecy

4

Rome

The Fiat splutters its way south-west down Viale della Piramide Cestia, then right on to Via Marmorata, running parallel to Circus Maximus.

Cars are strewn at angles across the middle of the road near the Piazza dell’Emporio. An argument is heating up. Irate drivers are fencing with fingers around a steaming bonnet and busted trunk.

Once Valentina squeezes through the bottleneck and the cacophony of blaring car horns, it’s plain sailing along the banks of the Tiber, down the Lungotevere Aventino and Via Ponte Rotto.

She checks her street map as she turns right on to the Piazza della Bocca della Verita and promises herself that tomorrow she’ll find time to buy a sat nav.

She knows she’s arrived when the famous Romanesque bell tower of the chiesa comes into view.

Valentina slides the Punto into an envelope-sized space opposite the church and parallel to a spectacular fountain that on another occasion she’d love to linger around. She locks up and walks across to a young officer guarding the taped-off scene. He watches her every step and gives her shapely form an approving smile.

Before the young soldier can embarrass either of them, she flashes her Carabinieri ID. ‘Captain Morassi. I’m looking for Lieutenant Assante.’

The tape-minder loses his flirtatious smile. ‘The lieutenant’s inside.’ He nods courteously.

‘ Grazie.’ Valentina ducks the fluttering ribbon and before entering through a side door takes a quick look around. The main street is open and wide – maybe taking six lanes of traffic during rush hour – and there are parking places nearby for tourist coaches. Even given the lateness of the hour, it’s likely that whatever has happened here was seen by someone.

‘ Buonasera, Capitano.’ The voice floats out of the cool, waxy darkness of the church interior, long before Valentina sees its owner. Federico Assante looks like a ghost in the pale light. He is in his early thirties, of average height, with thinning black hair cut too short to help his full-moon face.

‘ Buonasera.’ Valentina shakes his hand. ‘So, what exactly went on here?’

‘A good question. Let me show you.’ He walks her part way through the side of the church. ‘Do you know anything about this chiesa?’

‘Nothing at all.’ She glances around: beautifully painted ceilings, high stained-glass windows that probably make sunlight look as though it has come from heaven, intricate marble flooring and two spectacular staircases leading to prayer lecterns. But everything is past its prime. ‘It looks as old as Rome itself.’

‘It almost is. Sixth century. In her day this girl was a stunner – hence the name, Cosmedin; it comes from the Greek kosmidon, meaning beauty.’

‘Impressive. But why do I need to know this now?’

‘You’ll see when we get to the portico.’ He guides her past a dark side altar and into a thin corridor paved in what looks like engraved tombs. ‘There’s a huge old drain cover in there, stood up by the far wall; it’s known as the Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth.’

‘Why’s it called that?’ There’s puzzlement in her voice, ‘Who would even think of giving a drain cover a name?’

‘The sewers in Rome are pre-Christian. Originally they were used for everything, and I mean everything. They even used to dump bodies down there.’

‘Ugh!’

Federico struggles to find the handle to the door that will actually let them into the portico. ‘There was also probably a demon from the underworld associated with it all, because the thing has a formidable face engraved on it and a wide slit for a mouth. It’s spent most of its life stood up on a plinth as part of a ritual whereby you put your hand into the mouth and if you told a lie it got cut off by the gods.’

Valentina puts the pieces together. ‘So we have a severed hand being found in the most famous place in the world for severed hands.’

‘That’s about it.’

‘And has this ever happened before?’

‘Not for a few centuries.’ He finally opens the interior door leading into the portico. ‘Be careful here, there’s no light. The photo team came but their equipment fused. They’ll be back shortly.’

‘No spare kit?’

‘No spare kit. Cutbacks. Recession. You know how it goes.’ He shines his Maglite along the dark pillars and walls. At the far end the beam picks out a drain cover as big as a man.

‘That’s the Mouth of Truth?’ It’s so much larger than she’d expected.

‘ Si. The hand was found actually in the mouth.’ He plays the beam around the lopsided slit a third of the way up the heavy slab. Blood has dribbled like Burgundy from the corner of the marble lips.

‘Was it done here?’

Federico points the light on to the portico floor. A puddle of red answers her question.

Valentina studies the dark mess. ‘Looks like it was severed from the left of the victim.’ She remembers something that Tom Shaman – the man she’s meeting tomorrow – once told her. Sinister is Latin for left – traditionally the side of evil.

‘Why are you so sure?’ asks Federico.

‘Lend me your torch, please.’ He hands it over, and she scorches the beam down the long wall running to the right of them. ‘It would be difficult for someone to stand that side of the victim because of this wall. In this light – or lack of it – it’s hard to see the blood spatter, but what little I can make out flows left to right, not right to left, so we’re looking at the blade cutting from the victim’s left, with her kneeling. That would indicate at least two offenders. One to make her kneel and hold her there, one to deliver the precise blow.’ She looks across to him, ‘Where’s the hand now?’

‘ Patalogica. It’s in the mortuary in deep freeze.’ Federico’s cell phone rings, ‘ Scusi.’

He steps away to take the call. Valentina notices a sign for tourists that says: ‘Only one photograph per person please.’ She guesses the crime-scene photographers will have had a laugh at that. No doubt taken their own pictures, too. She walks closer to the blood, but not so close that she’ll contaminate the scene.

There’s no visible sign of a struggle.

She turns sideways on.

The portico is draped with crime-scene plastic sheeting to keep out prying eyes, but normally it would be very visible from the open road through iron railings.

Surely someone would have seen something?

Heard something?

The victim must have screamed. Unless she’d been drugged or gagged – then she could more easily be manoeuvred into position.

Why?

Why would someone want to do this?

The questions are still stacking up as Federico reappears. ‘Mystery over.’ There’s a real bounce in his voice, a tone of relief. ‘Seems some crazy woman has been picked up wandering the streets. She’s covered in blood and – you won’t believe this – she’s carrying some kind of old sword.’

If the light had been better, he’d have seen that the look of disbelief on Valentina’s face is nothing to do with the weapon.

She had the attacker down as male.

And the victim is still missing.

‘I think your mystery is far from being over, Lieutenant,’ says Valentina. ‘In fact, I’d say it’s only just beginning.’