5

FIAMMETTA WAS FAST ASLEEP when he entered the bedroom. He was relieved, because he didn’t feel like talking; he was tired and strung out. But as he climbed into bed, she opened her eyes.

‘Where have you been so late?’

‘Garramone gave me an inquiry.’

‘You could have told me. I’d done dinner.’

‘Sorry, it was manic.’

‘What’s he doing handing you a case at this late stage?’

‘He thinks it’s complicated and that the press will be all over it. For some reason, that means I’m the only man for the job.’

She propped herself up on an elbow. ‘What happened?’ Her face was flushed by sleep, and the colour of her cheeks set off the steel blue of her eyes. Scamarcio still couldn’t believe his luck sometimes. He kissed her forehead. ‘Can I tell you tomorrow, when the dust has settled?’

‘You think I’m going to blab to my TV friends?’

‘I thought you didn’t see them anymore.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I’m not worried about that. I just want to get all my ducks in a row. It almost feels like I could jinx it just by talking about it.’

Fiammetta smiled. ‘I get that.’

And there it was, the simplicity from which this relationship seemed to derive its strength. Scamarcio hoped they would be able to preserve it when the baby arrived.

‘How’s my little lad doing?’

Fiammetta rolled her eyes. ‘Leo, I worry you’re going to be disappointed …’

He laughed. ‘No chance.’

‘He or she is quiet today. Maybe they’re tired, just like their mum.’ She yawned. ‘I’m sorry, but can we talk in the morning?’

‘No worries,’ he whispered, kissing her on the lips and turning off the light.

As he lay there in the dark, the anxiety returned. His mind churned on demons and devils and sinister-looking angels, who smiled as if they knew a terrible secret. The gold cross on the cardinal’s desk kept breaking through it all, glinting, solid, incorruptible, while all around, shadows danced and writhed and slipped away. Scamarcio felt a tightness in his chest and wanted to switch the light on. But he resisted, until, finally, he drifted into a troubled sleep.

The rain was still beating down the next morning when he arrived at the morgue. He was light-headed with tiredness, and his limbs felt disconnected from his mind. Fiammetta had been tossing and turning all night, and he hadn’t once been able to sink into a deep, restorative sleep. When he’d complained, she’d just remarked that he’d better get used to it.

Scamarcio nodded at the bald guy at reception and headed straight for the coffee machine. As he was extracting the tiny plastic cup, he felt a hard grip on his shoulder.

‘God, you look like shit. Has the baby arrived and no one’s told me?’

Scamarcio looked up into the bronzed face of the chief CSI, Manetti. They’d missed each other at the crime scene.

‘That’s quite a tan, Manetti. Do you use a lotion? I thought that was just for girls.’

‘Thailand,’ said Manetti smugly. ‘Four-star hotel, all included — 1200 euros for me and the wife. We had a brilliant time.’

Scamarcio felt a twinge of jealousy. He and Fiammetta hadn’t been away for ages — they’d been too worried about the baby putting in an early appearance. ‘Glad to hear it,’ he said, downing the espresso. ‘You here for my exorcee?’

‘Is that even a word?’

‘No idea.’

‘I decided to kill two corpses with one stone. I need to talk to Giangrande, so, as I missed you yesterday, I thought we could catch up.’

‘Why did you have to rush off? I had a shitload of questions, and no one was there to help.’

Manetti opened his arms. ‘We caught another homicide just twenty minutes after. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a clusterfuck when it does.’

‘It will start happening more and more. Less resources, spiralling crime — go figure.’

Manetti rolled his eyes. ‘You’re a little ray of sunshine this morning.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Dr Giangrande, as he leaned his head round the doorway to the suite, ‘can we get started? I’m on a tight schedule.’

‘Who isn’t?’ muttered Manetti.

Scamarcio tossed his cup in the trash, and they followed the chief pathologist inside.

‘Listen,’ said Giangrande, as he swept a thick lock of greying hair away from his wide forehead. ‘I’ve already done the autopsy. I needed to get ahead, and I didn’t think you’d be that bothered if I just gave you the broad brushstrokes.’

‘No worries,’ said Scamarcio. ‘I’m feeling crap enough as it is.’

‘In my opinion, you drink way too much coffee, Scamarcio. It must be playing havoc with your stomach acid.’ Giangrande lowered his head to scan the numbers on the outside of the refrigerated storage unit.

‘He’s about to drink a hell of a lot more,’ said Manetti.

‘When’s the baby due?’ asked Giangrande as he consulted a creased piece of paper.

‘Any day now.’

‘And you’re working a case?’

‘It’s better than staying home and twiddling my thumbs.’

Giangrande looked up. ‘Nervous?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Scamarcio realised that the doctor was now eyeing him closely.

‘Because I remember that, when I was about to have my first, I couldn’t sleep for weeks. I worried about everything — would she be healthy, would I be a good father, would my wife change, would she still have time for me, etc., etc. …’ Giangrande sighed. ‘Then, as your kids grow up, the old worries are replaced by new ones. Each phase is a whole new set of problems that you need to adapt to.’

‘Thanks for that.’

Giangrande waved the discussion away and placed his hand on the door to one of the units. ‘This one has all the makings of a media fuck-fest.’ He pulled out the drawer, but didn’t remove the sheet that covered the body.

Scamarcio felt a needle of fear prick his gut. ‘What have you found that will make it any worse? We’ve got the Vatican’s chief exorcist at the scene, a dead boy — an extremely good-looking dead boy — and the son of a mafioso heading up the inquiry; there’s meat enough for the vultures without a side dish.’ Then a second thought struck him. ‘I haven’t seen the papers — they’re not running it already, are they?’

‘It wasn’t in La Repubblica or Corriere,’ said Manetti. ‘I reckon you’ve got another twenty-four hours to play with — if you’re lucky.’

‘Then I’ll be lucky,’ said Scamarcio, as he watched Giangrande pull back the sheet.

Andrea Borghese’s brown hair had fanned out to frame his handsome face. His chiselled features reminded Scamarcio of the bust of a Roman emperor. Scamarcio’s eyes tracked down to the neck, and he immediately noticed the purple necklace of bruising.

‘As you can see, there’re ecchymoses. There’s been haemorrhaging in the strap muscles and under the skin. I found abrasions from the movement of the ligature, as well as a few fingernail marks, where I believe the victim tried to remove the rope,’ said Giangrande.

‘Rope?’ echoed Scamarcio.

The doctor nodded. ‘He was strangled from behind, taken by surprise. There aren’t too many fingernail marks, so there probably wasn’t time for much of a struggle. From the marks on the victim’s neck, I’d say the murderer used a slipknot. The marks tell me this was a quick and efficient strangulation.’ He paused. ‘And there’s something else. As a rule, in strangling, the killer uses far more force than is necessary, which often results in injuries to the deeper structures. But I’ve not seen that here. It’s as if the murderer knew exactly the right amount of pressure to apply.’

Scamarcio turned to Manetti. ‘Doesn’t all that suggest a certain level of expertise?’

‘Probably,’ hedged the chief CSI.

‘Professionally trained?’ wondered Scamarcio out loud.

‘Could be, but I’ve nothing else to suggest that,’ said Giangrande.

‘Time of death?’

‘Around 4.30 pm yesterday. He’d died very shortly before he was found — but you knew that already.’

Scamarcio turned to Manetti once more. ‘Any trace yet?’

‘Nada. Just the mum and dad and the priests. It’s early days, but it’s starting to look as if the killer cleaned up after himself.’

Scamarcio’s mind flashed on the spotless flat. Then he thought back to his meeting with Cardinal Amato. ‘The cardinal believes it’s the devil’s work.’

‘What? Not literally, surely?’ asked Manetti, his tanned face screwing tight into a frown. Scamarcio was reminded of a walnut.

‘Yes.’

The chief CSI narrowed his eyes. ‘What a headfuck. How do you like the cardinal for this?’

Scamarcio sniffed. ‘Not a lot, unfortunately.’

‘Why unfortunately?’ asked Giangrande.

‘Because I don’t have anyone else — no one seen coming in or out, no motive, no friends, no enemies,’ he paused. ‘No sodding DNA.’ He suddenly wondered about friends. He couldn’t just take the parents’ word for it. Perhaps Andrea did have a social life that they’d been unaware of. So much of life was lived out online now.

‘Oh, it’s only Day Two,’ said Manetti breezily. ‘You know how these things can shape up.’

‘Well, I hope they shape up quick ’cos I need this done and dusted before my life’s no longer my own.’

‘Christ, Scamarcio, you make it sound like a prison sentence. There are some great things about being a parent.’

‘Manetti, you’ve always complained about your kids.’

‘Yes, but the good far outweighs the bad.’

Scamarcio rubbed a tired palm across his stubble. ‘Any chance some trace of our suspect will still come to light?’

‘I’ve got a couple of results due in later, carpet fibres and a discarded tissue, but I wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve been around long enough to know when a scene’s been scrubbed.’

Scamarcio raised an eyebrow. ‘That thorough?’

‘If I were you, I’d keep my eye on the professional angle.’

Scamarcio nodded towards Giangrande. ‘OK, I think we’ve seen enough.’

Giangrande reached for the sheet, but before he pulled it up, he stopped. ‘There’s a couple of other things. I found some bruising to the back of the head, recently inflicted, as if he’d fallen and knocked his head against something. I also found signs of malformation in the bowel, areas where it looked like it had been subject to intense inflammation over the years. It might have been a problem from early on in life. I don’t know whether that information is of any use to you. If it is, I could ask a gastroenterologist to take a closer look.’

Scamarcio pondered it. He never liked to rule anything out in the early stages of an investigation, but budget was a big issue these days. ‘What will it cost?’

‘Nothing. I was going to ask a consultant friend of mine to pop by after work and do it as a favour.’

‘That would be great, Giangrande.’ Obviously, the doctor was still trying to rack up points in the hope that Scamarcio would never speak of a past indiscretion which, if it ever came to light, would kill Giangrande’s career in an instant.

‘I’ll let you know what my friend says. It might be worth asking the parents if he had stomach problems.’

‘What was his last meal?’ asked Scamarcio, not really knowing why he was interested.

‘Looks like a Mars bar — I couldn’t find any lunch. Breakfast was a bowl of cocoa pops.’

Scamarcio wondered why the boy hadn’t had lunch. Hadn’t his mother been home? Maybe she’d fixed it for him, but he’d declined.

Dr Giangrande started replacing the sheet, but a glint caught Scamarcio’s eye, and he pushed out a hand to stop him. ‘What’s that on his finger?’

A simple gold band on Borghese’s right index finger was blinking under the halogen lights.

‘Sorry, but I couldn’t get it off — it seems stuck. And then I forgot about it.’

Scamarcio leaned down to examine the ring. ‘Funny, it looks like a wedding band.’

‘Yes, I know,’ mumbled Giangrande absently.

‘Did you take a photo, Manetti?’ asked Scamarcio, still examining the ring.

‘Of course we took a photo,’ Manetti shot back.

Scamarcio let go of Borghese’s hand and straightened up stiffly.

‘You no longer hitting the gym?’ asked Manetti, but Scamarcio ignored him.

Giangrande pulled up the sheet and pushed the body back into its compartment, then shut the door. ‘Er, Scamarcio.’ He sounded strangely nervous.

Scamarcio was surprised to see that Giangrande was glancing uncomfortably at Manetti, as if he wished he wasn’t there. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s nothing.’

The full force of Giangrande’s ‘nothing’ hit Scamarcio as he was leaving the mortuary. Aurelia was striding towards him up the path. Her hair was cut short in a new modern style which made her look younger and, if such a thing were possible, more beautiful, and she was talking into her phone and laughing. At the sound of her laughter, Scamarcio’s mouth turned dry and his heart skipped a beat. He felt a strange warmth spreading through his lungs, a toxic mixture of joy, excitement, and anxiety. He couldn’t tell which was winning. It was as if, after months of stasis, every cell, every fibre in his body, was suddenly coming to life. He willed her to look up.

When she finally did, something dark crossed her features. She muttered a few words into her phone, then pressed a button and pushed it quickly into the back pocket of her skin-tight jeans. She glanced around furtively, as if she was perhaps searching for an exit, but the path through the gardens led in only one direction. Scamarcio stood his ground. She had no choice but to face him.

Once she’d reached the steps, he leaned down to kiss her on both cheeks. He’d been about to say that it was good to see her, but he changed it to a neutral ‘How are you?’

‘Good,’ she said, avoiding eye contact.

‘I didn’t know you were back.’

‘Why would you?’

She finally looked at him and frowned. ‘You look tired, Leone.’

‘Not sleeping well.’

‘You weren’t sleeping last time I saw you.’

Does she know about the baby? he wondered. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her.

‘How was Munich?’

‘Interesting. I learned a lot.’ He’d heard she’d been seeing someone. Maybe they’d split.

‘Are you back for good?’

‘Until a better opportunity comes along.’

‘You didn’t feel like staying?’

She turned to him, and he watched her eyes burn with a sudden anger. ‘Why? Would that have been more convenient for you?’

His first thought was that she did know about the baby, then he wondered if it was all just resentment about what had happened with the Cappadona. And, really, who could blame her? He worried about her being back here now, right under their noses in Rome. Then again, he’d heard that the leadership had changed and priorities had shifted.

His voice fell to a whisper. ‘I’m so sorry, Aurelia. About everything. I’ve missed you, you know. And seeing you …’ The words trailed off. He didn’t know how to phrase it; he didn’t understand his own mind.

She saved him the trouble by holding up a palm and pushing straight past him.

‘Aurelia!’

But the doors swung shut behind her, and his voice was lost in a sudden shower of rain.