Blood Counts

The first of the killing shots was effected by a 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge fired from a police Beretta 92G at a range of no more than ten metres. Milliseconds after leaving the muzzle of the Beretta it broke through the skull of Taddeus Manichella two centimetres above the right eyebrow, mashing a path through the soft tissue of the frontal lobe and exiting four centimetres behind and below the left ear.

The second killing shot was another 9x19mm Parabellum bullet, also fired from a police Beretta 92G at a similar range, entering Tomas Manichella’s chest four centimetres to the left of the mid-sternal line, shredding the muscled anterior wall of the heart, cutting down through the lungs and lodging in the lower spine.

During the police pathologist’s autopsy which followed the shoot-out in the Roucas Blanc district of Marseilles only two bullets were retrieved from the brothers’ bodies, leaving a total of twelve entry and exit wounds. None of these wounds was treated except for the massive cranial damage to the back of Taddeus Manichella’s head where a wedge of gauze dressing was applied and bandaged into place to contain the splintered remains of the skull and to prevent any further leakage.

After three weeks in police custody, the refrigerated bodies of the twin brothers were shipped on an overnight SNCM ferry from Marseilles to their home in Corsica. For ease of transport the thick, black and zippered plastic bags containing their bodies had been put into two deal coffins. On arrival in Ajaccio, after passengers had disembarked from the vehicle ramp and companionways, the cargo hold was opened and the coffins discreetly transported to a dockside warehouse. It was there, in the late-afternoon, that two women, the twins’ sisters, took possession of the caskets, driving them back to the family farm in the village of Tassafaduca, high in the hills above Corte.

As is the custom in such remote and isolated settlements the first thing the women did was to open the caskets, unzip the bags and lay out the bodies on trestle tables in the kitchen. They did this alone, that first night, after the children had been settled in the roof space of the old family home and their elderly parents seen off to bed. By the light of a low-wattage ceiling light and a scattering of home-made candles, the two women washed their brothers’ bodies and plugged their wounds with a thick poultice of honey, chestnut flour, macerated myrtle leaves and crushed arbutus berries.

They worked in silence, one sister to one brother, their fingers soon red and aching with cold, the putrefying stink of the bodies barely disguised by the smoky tallow scent of the candles and the sweet perfumes of the honey and herbs. When the two bodies had been properly prepared and dressed in clean clothes they were returned to their caskets with red coral charms clasped in their hands, and the night-time shadows of the old farmhouse were filled with a light tap-tap-tapping as the lids were secured for the final time.

At eleven o’clock the following morning the caskets were taken from the family home and carried in slow and sombre procession through the steep tilting streets of Tassafaduca to the church of Sant’ Anselmo. There, with family and villagers crowding into the icy nave, prayers were said and blessings given before the brothers were delivered to the village’s small hillside cemetery, their caskets lowered into a single shallow pit, jerking and tipping on their ropes, rough wooden edges scraping against the stony sides of the grave until they lay five feet down, one beside the other, heads pointing north.

It had taken two days to dig this pit with spade and pick-axe, three of the twins’ cousins volunteering for the task. Another month and the two coffins would have been left in a barn for the winter, or a fire would have been lit and kept alight long enough to soften the ground for digging. But the snow had not yet come, just a dusting on the distant peaks of Monte Cinto in the west and on Pica Tassa to the north. In its place, that bleak winter morning, came a chill, shawling drizzle that silvered the mourners’ best black homburgs, stiff black suits and woollen headscarves, all hands gloved or pocketed against a sharp little breeze that whipped through the chestnut trees and snatched at the brown tufted grass.

On these hillsides Taddeus and Tomas had played as boys, and as young men they had learnt to hunt here – boar and partridge and quail – before the summons came to leave the island and serve their master. At twenty they had gone, and more than twenty years later they had come home for good, attended now by a silent, jostling crowd of mourners. At their head was the twins’ nodding father, borne along in his favourite chair by four burly nephews and set beside the single grave, with their shawled, whiskered stub of a mother at his side, shuffling rosary beads through crooked fingers. Then came their two sisters, their five uncles, assorted cousins and family friends, and the elders of the village of Tassafaduca, its slate walls and steeply pitched roofs crowding together on the slope below the cemetery.

No tear was spilled. No flower was laid. Just pale faces framed in black, and dark, dulled eyes cast down towards the hard ground. They had done this before, all of them gathered there. In these distant hills they knew death, just as they knew life, and neither held any surprise for them. It was the way things were. Life and death. Just that. And as the single, hollow bell of Sant’ Anselmo tolled through the valley of Tassafaduca, taken up by the nearby campanile of Cabrillio and Borredonico and Scarpetta, and the first shovelful of earth and stone drummed over the wooden lids of the twins’ coffins, the mourners turned their backs on the grave and made their way home.