The Rome Prophecy

81

Valducci surprises her.

He turns out to be a perfect boss and gentleman.

No lecture, no bawling out, no horrible speculation about what happens next.

Just a glass of brandy. An offer of tissues. And the insistence that Louisa goes home.

She doesn’t have to be told twice.

She walks from the psychiatric block to her car and pauses to take in as much fresh air as possible.

Anna’s dead.

She tries to block it out.

Unless she’s mistaken, it’s a little warmer than yesterday. She looks at the bare branches of the silver birch trees around her. No buds. No sign of spring. But it really can’t be that far off.

Anna’s dead.

The thought keeps slamming into her. Demanding she dwell on it. She still can’t believe it. She hoped that maybe with the cops out of the way, there was going to be a chance to concentrate on her treatment. Get her well again. Not watch her die.

Tears well up in her eyes. She has to be strong. Fight her way through the loss. It’s not her fault. She’s told herself that a dozen times.

The stress of living with those multiple personalities must just have proved too much for Anna to bear. All that fear of night-time and the imagined evil must have piled up and broken her.

Louisa unlocks her Alfa and slips inside.

The radio shouts at top volume as she turns the ignition key and it makes her heart jump. She’s edgy. Tense. Stressed.

Anna’s dead.

She jabs the off button to silence some jock moron with no sense of respect. She doesn’t want to hear anyone or anything right now. But there’s no escaping her own thoughts.

What more should she have done?

What less could she have done? Was she guilty of pushing things too far, of digging up layers of trauma that would have been best left untouched?

She dials Valentina’s cell phone. The captain has a right to know. Even if she’s suspended, she should still be told, and Louisa is in no doubt that it’s her duty to tell her.

‘ Pronto, Morassi.’

Louisa hesitates.

The policewoman sounds annoyed. Just from the way she answered she sounds angry.

It’s no wonder that a call from the woman who got her suspended isn’t welcome.

Louisa thinks about hanging up, but decides to be tough and plough on. ‘Capitano, it’s Louisa Verdetti.’ She doesn’t pause now, doesn’t risk any interruption. ‘Anna Fratelli died about an hour ago. I thought you should know.’

Valentina’s not sure she heard her correctly. ‘Anna what?’

‘She’s dead. She died of a heart attack in her bed at the hospital. I thought you’d want to know.’

Louisa can’t talk any more. She flips the clamshell phone shut. Normally she wouldn’t be so rude, but today she can’t even say goodbye, let alone answer another question.

She slips the Alfa into gear, drives through the hospital gates and heads home.

In her bathroom cabinet is a box of Valium that she keeps for times like this. Times when all her training and the wisdom of three decades of living just aren’t enough. She’s going to pour a glass of brandy much bigger than the one Valducci gave her, go to bed and drug herself into a long, deep sleep.

The road slips beneath the car tyres and the world smears itself across the vehicle’s windows.

The traffic approaching Via Margutta is horrendous.

It always is.

Louisa’s apartment is in a gated courtyard off to the right, a little past where Picasso lived and just before the apartment where they filmed Roman Holiday.

The electronic gates buzz open and the red and white security barrier behind jerks up like a railway crossing. Her Alfa crunches over the gravel and she parks up in her own space, just below her ivy-covered balcony.

Being home makes her feel better. Safe from the horrors of the day. Absolved from the guilt of Anna’s death.

She opens the door to the apartment block, holds it for a young couple behind her and picks up mail from her drop box.

Bills. Bills and more bills.

Thank God she earns a decent wage. She has no idea how normal people manage in a city as expensive as Rome. Half her block is already full of rich foreigners, because locals can’t afford the rents.

She jams the bills in her teeth while she juggles her handbag and opens her apartment door. The place still smells of the remains of some fish she forgot to throw out.

She vows to do it now. Empty the stinking bin before she crawls into her bed and floats off into a comforting blackness.

She puts her hand on the light switch.

But never manages to turn it on.

Years in a hospital tell her that the sweet-smelling cloth pressed to her mouth is soaked in a trihalomethane.

Chloroform.

As unconsciousness creeps through her, she realises the man holding the cloth is half of the young couple she just let in.