The Rome Prophecy

62

Federico is almost sober.

He spends twenty minutes steaming the booze out of his system in a shower at HQ.

For breakfast he grabs black coffee from the canteen and drinks it while chain-smoking two cigarettes on the steps of the station house. It’s not healthy, but it’s the closest he’ll ever get to a low-calorie, zero-fat meal.

Back at his desk, he enters the new information he has on the male prisoner languishing downstairs in the cells and pulls up his record. On his computer monitor he stares at a slightly younger version of the guy they arrested.

The text below the mug shot tells him it’s Guilio Brygus Angelis and he’s thirty years old. He’s unmarried and has no children.

No surprises there.

Federico scrolls down. Guilio was born in Athens and moved to Rome with his mother, Maya, when he was only three. It figures. Both the Christian and surnames are Greek, not Italian.

Maya worked in a city library and died a year later.

The report doesn’t say how.

Federico reads on. There’s no trace of the kid being fostered or adopted. He only appears on official records again in his early teens. It seems he was in trouble.

Serious trouble.

His juvenile record shows convictions for possession of drugs, assaults on two teachers and even an attack on a Catholic priest inside a young offenders’ detention centre where he spent just over a year.

By his late teens, the librarian’s child had added another volume of serious charges, including burglary and wounding. He spent his twenty-first birthday in jail for theft, assault and breach of previous bail orders.

Recently, though, there’s no trace of any convictions and no outstanding warrants for his arrest.

On paper, Guilio almost looks as though he’s turned over a new leaf.

Or at least he did, until he got caught red-handed in Anna’s apartment and nearly beat Valentina to death.

Federico stops scrolling and sits back.

One thing puzzles him.

Why are there no listed associates? From what he’s just read, it doesn’t seem as though this guy ever hung around with gangs or teamed up with anyone to commit his crimes.

That’s unusual.

He dives deeper into the files and digs around in the assessment notes from the governor at the detention centre.

Eventually he falls on a clue.

Guilio is described as ‘painfully shy’, ‘explosively violent’ and ‘an out-and-out loner’. The centre’s psychiatric report says that ‘pre-puberty castration can be expected to have resulted not only in his anger and violence but also in his introversion’.

Federico logs off and catches the elevator to reception.

He steps outside for a final cigarette before starting his interview with Guilio, and watches people drift by the front of the Carabinieri building. The weather’s turned wintry again. Everyone’s wrapped tight in coats and scarves and gloves. It’s his least favourite time of the year. Give him summer any day. Girls with long smiles and short skirts. That’s how God intended things to be.