“In principle, it’s like being in a cosy five-star hotel. Just without breakfast, a spa or any other luxuries.” With a beaming face, Isabella pushed open the cell door. “And the furnishings are also, well, a little… spartan.” She watched the features of today’s newly arrived guest and smirked when they slipped into a forced smile.
“It’s just perfect,” the oblate replied dutifully.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
Isabella looked at the girl. Searching. Waiting. Determination flashed from the young woman’s deep blue eyes. Both knew life in the Convento di Nostra Regina della Pace was medieval even by monastic standards. But the Abbess wanted it that way, and so all the sisters had got used to it. They even welcomed it. After all, they rejected anything that distracted them from God. More or less.
With a twinge in her chest, Isabella thought of how this had once been Sister Raffaela’s cell. Her fellow sister, who had been killed in such an unholy way. She wondered if she would tell the new oblate, Donna, about her at some point. And about how she had played her own part in solving that murder, which had looked like a suicide at first. She hoped so. She would really like to get along with her new sister.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Isabella admitted. “It’s lousy. But you’ll get used to it.”
She gave the young oblate her friendliest smile, feeling reminded of how she herself had been the new girl a few months ago and how unsure she had felt about everything. But since then, she had found her place in this convent and was growing more comfortable with each passing day. Not least because of her new job at the Caterina Market, which now absorbed her completely.
She hoped Donna would find her own place among them just as quickly. She was young and had a friendly face, with prominent cheekbones that gave her a somewhat Eastern European appearance. She had that certain something that made her instantly likeable. Isabella was confident they would both get along well.
“Sister, oh there you are!”
Isabella and the oblate wheeled around at the same time as the upset novice Ortensia entered the cell. Her robe was stained with mud, and dried earth stuck to her hands, which she waved nervously. When she pushed her thick black glasses up, they left a streak of dirt on her nose. Ortensia was completely out of breath.
“You have to come. The police want to talk to you. Now.”
The oblate looked at Isabella in alarm, but she raised an eyebrow critically. “You mean Matteo Silvestri.”
The novice nodded. “The police. Yes.”
Isabella waved off Donna’s questioning look. “Make yourself comfortable for now. Later, we’ll say Nones together in the herb garden. I’ll pick you up then.” Alongside Matins and Lauds, Nones, the afternoon prayer, was one of Isabella’s favourite prayers.
She followed Ortensia into the courtyard where Matteo was waiting for her. Despite his striking dark blue uniform with the smart red stripes at the seam of his trousers, she almost didn’t recognise him. A pronounced shadow had taken possession of his chin, even though it had only been a few days since they had last seen each other. Isabella wasn’t sure she liked it, but it made the young policeman seem a little more mature. But also a little more unkempt. Spontaneously, she made a decision not to say anything about it as they greeted each other.
She was surprised he was here. They usually met at the market or ran into each other in the village. It wasn’t often Matteo found his way to the convent on his own. And he rarely came without good reason.
She looked at him expectantly as she had a hunch about the reason for his visit. “Have you been able to find the engine casing for the Vespa?”
But Matteo shook his head sorrowfully. “I wish. That’s not why I’m here at all. It’s about something else. Something very, very serious.”
The way he was looking at her was making Isabella nervous. Normally, Matteo was a person who always had a smile on his lips.
“Heavens, what’s the matter?”
His gaze roamed through the Abbey courtyard. Isabella noticed they were being watched by some fellow sisters weeding the vegetable beds.
“Can we talk somewhere in private?” he asked quietly.
Isabella thought for a moment. “Come on, I know where we can talk undisturbed at this hour.”
They entered the convent library, which smelled so wonderfully of old wood, dusty paper and infinite knowledge. But it was full of stale air, too. Isabella pulled open one of the mullioned windows and let the warm light in. The incredibly fine dust particles swirled up and made the seemingly endless rows of wooden shelves look even more ancient.
It was a wonderful place that Isabella often visited. She didn’t know every book—not yet—but she knew every shelf and every worn old leather chair. Like the entire convent, this library was a place that made you feel as if time had stopped centuries ago. She often found herself sitting in one of the cosy armchairs, browsing through forgotten stories hidden in the ancient books. She liked to imagine how sisters before her had perhaps done exactly the same. More than a hundred years ago, or possibly even longer. Because if there was one thing that defined these venerable walls, it was timeless permanence.
Matteo looked around with interest. “My goodness, how old are the books here?”
“Old,” Isabella replied curtly. “So what’s up?”
Matteo was silent, looking at her urgently. Then finally he spoke. “Gaetano’s dead. He was murdered, down by the riverbank. I found him this morning.”
The heat was building up under her robe. “Dead?” she asked quietly, sending a prayer to heaven as Matteo nodded slowly.
In a few words, he told her about his find, that forensics had already examined the crime scene, and that Gaetano’s dog had disappeared. Caesar.
Isabella tried to follow his words, but with each passing second, a painful feeling of grief was fighting its way closer to the surface. She remembered all her meetings with Gaetano. The innocuous chats about life and the weather. And about God. Gaetano had been a devout man.
“Are you sure he was murdered?” she interrupted Matteo’s flow of words.
He could hardly bring himself to answer her question. “There’s no doubt about that. We don’t have to wait for the coroner’s report. He was beaten to death from behind.” His hands twitched uncontrollably. “Still, there are questions upon questions. I mean, who’d kill someone as nice as Gaetano? I don’t know anyone who didn’t like him. And—just as important—who was Gaetano?”
“It’s terrible.” Isabella sank into one of the leather armchairs and heaved a deep and sorrowful sigh.
Matteo did the same and sat down directly opposite her.
“You knew him. What do you know about him?”
“Not very much,” she replied immediately. “I wouldn’t even say I really knew him. Every now and then, we’d talk in the market, exchange small talk.”
Matteo looked at her expectantly. “Do you know his full name?”
She thought, shook her head. “I’m not even sure Gaetano was his real name. In fact, I’d be very surprised. It means someonewho comes from Gaeta.I once asked him about his name, and he explained that to me. He said he found the name apt because his ancestors came from the region.”
“Gaeta.” Matteo rubbed the shadow of his beard. “I know the town. It’s in Lazio, right by the sea. I went there with my parents when I was a kid. Great sandy beaches. But that doesn’t really help us.”
Isabella watched him pull something out of his breast pocket. It was a photo. He held it out to her.
“I found this in his clothes, hidden in the lining of his jacket. It must have meant something to him.”
Isabella accepted the picture and looked at it for a long time. Finally she raised her eyes and looked at Matteo, frowning. “What’s this photo supposed to tell me?”
“Wait and see. I looked at it with a magnifying glass,” Matteo continued. “I believe the young man in the middle is Gaetano. Just look at the red mark under his receding hairline.”
“And the eyes,” Isabella exclaimed as she recognised the resemblance. “They’re definitely his bright, sympathetic eyes.”
“There’s a date printed on the back. Probably the date of development. According to this, the photo’s almost twenty years old. So you agree it’s Gaetano in the photo?”
“Definitely!” Isabella nodded firmly, but looked again at the eyes of the man in the middle of the group. She nodded, more certain than ever now. “There’s no doubt about that. How old would he have been in that photo? Thirty?”
“At least.” Matteo leaned forward, looking grim. “Well, now we have a photo and we know what Gaetano looked like when he was young. But we still have no idea how to track down his true identity.”
He held his head in his hands and kept running his fingers through his thick dark hair. Isabella looked at him closely. Was he growing his hair out?
“You don’t know how to proceed?” She couldn’t suppress a hint of a smile.
“What are you grinning at?” he asked irritably as he looked back up at her.
“Excuse me. But I find it quite amusing a nun, of all people, has to explain to a Carabiniere how to do police work nowadays.”
Something twitched in his face. “And how, pray tell?” he returned snappishly.
She waved the photo at him. “Well, using the computer.”
Jerkily, she stood up without paying attention to Matteo and went behind the library computer desk. It took an eternity for the machine to fire up.
Matteo remained seated for quite a while, watching her, until he finally seemed to get fed up and joined her behind the desk.
“What exactly is this?” he asked impatiently.
“Every now and then, Sister Hildegard asks me to find and copy recipes from cookbooks,” Isabella explained confusingly. “But we don’t have a photocopier here, just a scanner. A gift from the diocese.” She pointed to the flat block-sized box stood next to the computer. “Probably because a good photocopier was too expensive.” She raised her shoulders. “It’s a pity, because it’s quite a tedious job, because all the pages have to be scanned in individually and can’t be run through the copier with batch processing.”
“Batch processing?” Matteo looked quite lost.
Isabella flipped open the scanner and placed the image face down on the glass plate. Then she opened the corresponding programme. Only a few seconds later, the scanned photo appeared on the computer screen.
“Pure magic, isn’t it?” Isabella grinned merrily to herself.
Matteo hadn’t the faintest idea where this was going.
“So now the scanned image can be easily changed and printed.”
“Of course,” Matteo said energetically. “That’s what a scanner’s for.”
“But we don’t want that.”
“No?” Matteo looked at her obliquely from the side.
Isabella shook her head in amusement. “No. After all, we’re only concerned with the man in the middle.” She opened an image programme, drew a frame around the identified drifter and used it to crop away the image around him so only he was visible in the photo. “Now I save the processed scan as an image file on the desktop. And then I open the search engine in the browser.”
Matteo still didn’t quite understand Isabella’s plan, but he was beginning to get an inkling. “You go and search,” he said at last.
Isabella nodded. “You can search for more than just text. Few people know this, but you can also search for images. All you have to do is click on the icon with the camera instead of the magnifying glass.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Isabella could see the Carabiniere gawping in astonishment. Clearly this information was news to him.
The officer’s dark brows knitted together questioningly. “And how do you know that?”
“Ornithology,” Isabella answered curtly. Matteo’s confused expression amused her once more. When she had revelled in it enough, she became more specific. “My brother showed me. He’s an enthusiastic bird migration researcher, and in his free time, he snaps like crazy at everything that has feathers. In order to be able to identify the birds later, he uses this search engine function again and again.”
“Ingenious.”
“You bet! Did you know the Abbess has the same hobby?”
“Search engines?”
“No, ornithology.”
“Um, no, I had no idea.”
Isabella waved a hand. “That’s not important. Now all that’s left is to upload the image you just scanned.” She clicked on the corresponding button. “And the image search starts all by itself.”
Matteo scratched his ear and forgot to stop.
“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, yes, the internet,” Isabella smiled. “A curse and a blessing at the same time.”
Moments later, a page opened with thumb-sized tiles, all showing one and the same person.
“Bullseye!” exclaimed Matteo, snatching the mouse from under the sister’s fingers and clicking himself. “That’s it! Just look. That’s exactly the photo we’ve got here.”
“Take a closer look. The page shows several different results for this photo.”
Isabella reclaimed the mouse and began to slowly scroll through the results. In fact, she saw half a dozen entries from different sites linking to this photo. Suddenly she got an inkling of what it must mean.
“May I?” Without waiting for her answer, Matteo slid Isabella’s hand off the mouse and was now scrolling through the pictures himself, until the cursor hovered on a particular photo.
“You have to click it again to go to the homepage where this image is embedded.”
Matteo did as ordered and was directed to an English language page. There were names associated with the five people, and the man in the middle wasn’t identified as Gaetano, but Louis Giuliani.
The text below said the picture was taken at a banquet in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, known as Silicon Valley and home to many global technology companies. One such company had thrown the banquet in 2001. The reason why these five people were looking so cheerful was also offered in the article. Louis Giuliani had won a prestigious Developer Award for programming a search engine called Weazly.
“Gaetano was a programmer?” asked Matteo tonelessly.
“A pretty good one, by the looks of it. If they gave him a prize for it. Not only that, it says here he owned the company that invented the programme.”
“Louis Giuliani. Hmm, I’ve never heard that name before.”
Isabella opened another browser window and entered the name along with the name of the search engine he had invented: Louis Giuliani, Weazly.
“There,” Matteo called out frantically. “The second entry.”
Isabella clicked it. It led to an article from a business magazine. It showed the face of Gaetano alias Louis Giuliani again. But here he was rather older, as was clear from the more advanced loss of hair on his head.
“It says here he sold his invention to Google. For…” Isabella broke off as she grasped the number.
Matteo’s head went close to the screen, and she could see him skim the lines and then gasp a breathless Mamma mia as he, too, read the number.
“So many millions of dollars for a computer programme.”
Isabella didn’t know much about the internet, but she had heard so-called garage start-ups occasionally hit the big time. They managed to sell their software to big firms for huge sums. And apparently Gaetano, or rather Louis Giuliani, and his small firm, had managed to do just that.
She clicked back to the search results page and looked at the other results mentioning Giuliani.
“It says here he retired immediately after the sale and returned to his family’s homeland.”
“Italy,” Matteo said promptly. “Does it say where exactly?”
Isabella shook her head. “No, not here. Maybe we need to refine the search.”
She closed her eyes and thought sharply. She knew search engines could tell you anything if you asked them the right question. Then she had an idea and typed into the input field: What does Louis Giuliani actually do? Not in English, but in Italian.
The first entry scored a direct hit. He directed them to the homepage of La Stampa, Italy’s best-known daily newspaper. There she came across a comprehensive report that looked exclusively at Louis Giuliani. Especially with regards to his mysterious disappearance. Isabella read that Louis had moved to Tuscany with his wife Emma immediately after the sale of the company to spend his early retirement there.
“Almost enviable,” Matteo remarked. “To be able to retire at such a young age with no money worries and your dream woman. Not too shabby.”
“Yes, but according to the article, the marriage didn’t last. They parted ways after just two years, and from then on, every trace of Louis Giuliani is lost. The reporter even writes that it almost seems as if this man had vanished into thin air.”
“Well, we know better now,” Matteo replied quietly.
The article featured a photo of Louis’ ex-wife Emma—a beautiful blonde with a slim figure and delicate features. Isabella immediately recognised her as the same person standing next to Louis in the group photo.
“This changes everything.” Matteo had leaned against the edge of the desk and folded his arms. Isabella could literally see him brooding away inwardly. “Poor and penniless, my arse. Gaetano was loaded!”
“But something must have happened to turn the former multi-millionaire into a vagrant.”
“But what?”
“I think his ex-wife can give us some information about that.”
“Well, then we just have to track her down.” Isabella patted Matteo’s hand. “I’m glad I know a certain Carabiniere who can take care of this matter.”
“You’re right, Sister. If anyone can tell us more about Gaetano, it’s his ex-wife.” He smiled mildly at her. “Where would I be without my detective’s nose?”
Isabella grinned back mischievously. “Overlooked, like me.” She liked this young man, and he had already turned out to be quite a passable policeman. He just needed a prod in the right direction every now and then. And she was only too happy to provide it.
“And I’ll ask around at the market tomorrow. Maybe we’ll find out something else about Gaetano that might shed some fresh light on the matter.”
Alongside her sadness, Isabella felt another emotion stir. A kind of tension, a nervous tingling in the stomach. Yes, excitement. She was realising they had their next case in front of them.