The Rome Prophecy

57

En route to Cosmedin, Valentina makes a series of calls to the overnight team working Central Control. She keeps Tom busy writing down several addresses that she calls out.

By the time they reach the Piazza della Bocca della Verita, he’s recorded five separate locations for variously aged Anna Fratellis, but only one for a twenty-seven-year-old living in Cosmedin.

Valentina turns off the engine and has a pang of guilt.

Despite the lateness of the hour, she calls Federico’s cell to tell him where she is and what she’s up to. She feels better that it’s turned off and coolly leaves a message promising to update him in the morning. There are several reasons why she’s relieved he hasn’t picked up, not least because she’s simply too tired to wait around for him to drive out and join them. He’ll be pissed when he gets the message, but so what?

After everything he’s done, he’s damned lucky she even thought to ring him.

The address is south of the small basilica. It’s off a series of back streets behind a thick clump of parkland that surrounds a tiny three-star hotel.

Valentina drives with her lights off and parks up at the end of the street, a good way from the target address.

It’s a ground-floor apartment in a four-storey block.

The position of Anna’s name on the bell block shows the apartment is on the left-hand side. Valentina cups a hand to Tom’s ear and whispers, ‘Stay outside, in the side road, and watch those windows.’ She points out two frames. ‘The frosted one is a bathroom; the other may be the bedroom or lounge. If she bolts again, it will have to be through one of those.’

Tom nods and rubs cold from his arms. His parachute of a shirt is not suitable attire for a sub-zero stake-out.

As she feared, Valentina finds the front door to the apartment block is on a magnetic lock. She buzzes several fourth-floor addresses until someone swears through the intercom and then opens up for her.

She moves quickly inside.

Anna’s apartment is just a few metres away to her left.

She knocks hard three times and shouts, ‘Carabinieri! Open up!’

She puts her finger on the buzzer to the right of the door and presses long and hard, then bangs again with her fist. ‘ Rapidamente! ’

She puts her ear to the door.

She can’t hear anything.

Nor can she wait any longer. She’s made enough noise to wake the whole block, so if someone’s in there they’ve had plenty of chance to get to the door.

She pulls out her Beretta and takes a well-practised running kick at the door.

It splinters below the lock, but holds firm around the mortise.

‘ Cazzo! ’ It’s deadlocked.

She backs up and hits it again.

This time the jamb splits and the door booms back on its hinges.

Valentina put so much effort into the kick, she stumbles to a stop in the middle of a strange dark room.

Instinctively she sweeps the gun in a protective arc and tries to get her bearings.

A door is opening.

Yellow street light starts bleeding in from somewhere off to her left.

A ball of shadow and noise hurtles towards her.

Valentina sidesteps and knocks something over.

A glass lamp crashes behind her.

The shadow ball smashes into her legs, sends her tumbling backwards into a wall.

Her Beretta spills into the darkness.

Arms and hands close like monstrous tentacles around her knees.

She slams her elbow down hard and feels it connect with the bone of a skull.

There’s a dull cry from beneath her.

The monster hands shift. But they are not gone. Now her attacker has hold of her feet and starts to pull her across the floor.

Valentina slides in the broken lamp glass. It digs into her back where her blouse has come up and spikes into her scalp like a crown of thorns.

She tries to lurch forward as she’s pulled. Grabs at thin air. Swings a wild punch and connects painfully with a wall to the right of her.

One of her legs flops free.

From the blackness comes a hard kick to her kidneys. She whooshes air and pirouettes in pain.

A follow-up kick catches her in the spine and she gets her first rush of panic. Maybe she’s going to get badly beaten here. Or worse.

There’s a blinding flash.

The light is on.

Tom is standing by the door with his hand on the switch.

He sees Valentina and her attacker bent over her.

It isn’t Anna. It’s a man.

There’s a second of inaction, a moment when everyone is overwhelmed by the first sight of each other.

Tom ends the stand-off.

The room is small, and within two steps he’s able to plant a high kick deep into the man’s abdomen.

Before he even doubles up, Tom slips behind him and executes a lethal choke hold. The guy is a good six inches smaller. All the big American has to do to fully immobilise him is turn his hip and inch him up along his outstretched leg.

Valentina gets to her feet.

She unholsters her handcuffs and locks them around the man’s wrists. She pushes him to his knees and breathes a sigh of relief.

Tom wants to go over to her, take her in his arms and comfort her, but he knows he can’t. This is her stage.

She has to be the one in control and he has to back out.

Valentina walks around the front of the kneeling man and gets in his face. ‘What’s your name?’

He dips his head.

She grabs his chin, reaches for her back pocket and pulls out her ID card. ‘I’m Captain Valentina Morassi. Who are you? Why are you here?’

He doesn’t answer.

There’s something about him that’s unnerving.

Now she spots it.

He has almost no facial hair.

In fact he looks almost feminine.

Valentina gets a flashback to the morgue.

The ball-less eunuch found bizarrely butchered beside the Tiber.

Could this be another?

‘Get up!’

The man either can’t or won’t.

‘Tom, help me.’

Between them they drag the prisoner to his feet. Valentina starts to unbuckle his black jeans.

Tom is shocked. ‘What are you doing?’

Valentina clearly has no concern for his rights. She drags his jeans and underpants down around his ankles, pushes him back on to a sofa and uses her foot to spread his legs. ‘ Porca vacca! Another eunuch.’ She wheels away from the debagged prisoner and pulls out her radio.

While she calls in the arrest, she pushes open the bedroom door, gun extended.

The place is in darkness.

She can just make out the outlines of a low bed, a small dresser and a wardrobe.

No Anna.

She returns to Tom. ‘Can you re-dress this asshole while I clean up? I have glass in my hair and God knows where else.’

‘Hey, that’s above and beyond what comes within the boyfriend remit.’

She manages a smile and walks away. ‘I know. Loop the cuffs under a chair leg and sit on him.’

Tom shoots her a look that says he can handle the small guy without needing to do that.

The bathroom is tiny.

Valentina finds there are only women’s things in there. One toothbrush, one tube of paste and some eyebrow tweezers on a glass shelf beneath a cheap white plastic mirrored cabinet. She pulls it open. Inside there’s a tube of thrush cream, a box of Tampax, a bottle of headache pills and some AllergEze.

No sign of the cotton wool or cotton buds that she was hoping for.

She closes the door and squints at the mirror. When she puts her hand to her head, she feels several splinters of glass. Carefully she picks them out with her fingers, briefly inspects the sparkling fragments then washes them away. It takes several minutes to be sure her scalp is glass-free.

She takes off her blouse and by twisting in front of the mirror she can see small slivers of smashed glass embedded in her spine. There’s also an angry red mark around her lower vertebrae where she’s been kicked.

Valentina contorts her fingers and uses the eyebrow tweezers and mirror to pick out the shards. She looks at the nearby shower. It’s a temptation. A hot soak is just what she needs, but she knows that’s a long way off. Just processing the piece of shit in the other room is going to take ages.

She pulls her blouse back on and now becomes aware of her damaged right hand. She can wriggle all of her fingers, but her knuckles are grazed and swollen. A pity she didn’t connect with the son-of-a-bitch’s jaw instead of the wall.

Her attacker is flat out on the floor when she re-enters the room. Tom is sitting near him, his foot in the middle of the guy’s back.

‘All okay?’ she asks.

‘Fine.’ He looks almost bored.

‘I’m going to check the rest of the place, all right?’

He nods.

Valentina goes back to the bedroom, fumbles for a switch and eventually finds it. She pushes it down, but the light doesn’t come on. She clicks it again.

Nothing.

Something is wrong.

She senses it.

She missed something earlier.

Something important.