around to find drinking chums.
Well, Federico doesn’t want to go out.
Not now. Not ever again.
‘Enrico, I’m sorry, this is a bad time, I-’
‘No it’s not!’ he insists cheerily. ‘This is actually a good time – a very good time.’
‘Enrico, I’m not really in the mood for-’
‘But Skywalker, your waiting is over.’
‘Enrico!’
His friend isn’t deterred. ‘No, no, listen, this really is a good-news call. I just read the full mitochondrial DNA test results on both Anna Fratelli and the severed hand recovered from the Bocca in Cosmedin.’
‘You lost me, Enrico.’
‘They’re sisters.’
‘Sisters?’
‘See, the news is so good you have to repeat it. Your handless victim is Anna Fratelli’s sister.’
Federico can’t get his head around it.
Anna never mentioned she had a sister.
One of the alters was referred to as Little Suzie, but from what he can remember, she wasn’t a sister to any of the others.
Come to think of it, the medical records they’d pulled didn’t mention any sister either.
‘Hello, are you still there?’
‘I’m just trying to work things out. You’re saying that Anna’s sister had her hand cut off?’
‘Oh boy! How did you ever make detective? Yes, that’s pretty much what I said. Though if you want to quote me verbatim, I actually said that your handless victim is Anna’s sister.’
‘How are you so sure?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘I do, but keep it simple. Cop simple.’
‘Okay. Look, we have forty-six chromosomes; twenty-three we get from our mother and twenty-three from our father. We also get some mitochondrial DNA from our mother only. Using the mitochondrial DNA for sibling identification is quite accurate, because all children born of a certain female should share this DNA.’
‘And the father?’
‘Different. Totally different fathers. Sorry, I shouldn’t say “totally different” because of course they can’t be slightly different fathers. I mean, they’re either different or the same, aren’t they? You see what I mean? It’s like being a little bit pregnant; you can’t be – you’re either pregnant or you’re not.’
‘Enrico, you made that as clear as mud. Just swear to me that you’re sure of this.’
‘Of course I’m sure. It’s my job to be sure. I can categorically tell you that Anna has a different father to her sister.’
Federico thinks things over. Not only about what Enrico has told him, but also about what he’s not told Enrico. Time to come out with it. ‘I should have stopped you telling me this. Enrico, I got suspended yesterday.’
‘I know.’
‘What?’
‘I know about your suspension and about how I’m not supposed to call you and all that crap. News travels fast, bad news travels fastest.’
‘Do you know why they suspended me?’
‘No. And I don’t want to. Whatever you did or didn’t do, I know you had your reasons. And besides, even if you fucked up, so what? We all fuck up some time, and at times of the biggest fuck-ups you need your biggest friends, right?’
‘ Grazie.’
‘ Prego. So you want that we go out and get juiced tonight? Maybe help your biggest friend get his big fat leg over some drunken signora?’
Federico manages his first smile for twenty-four hours. ‘For sure. I’d like that very much.’
80
Louisa hits the panic button and starts CPR on Anna.
In a film or TV show, everything would be okay, but Louisa knows better. Statistically, her chance of saving her is only about fifty-fifty.
She starts with mouth-to-mouth and is already working chest compressions when the crash team and their portable defibrillator arrive.
Louisa steps back. ‘She seemed to have some kind of fit. When I came in, she’d blacked out and wasn’t breathing.’
‘Probably asystolic,’ says a young male doctor. ‘We’ll see what we can do for her.’ He turns to two nurses. ‘Hook up the machine; get me Vasopressin as well.’
Louisa drifts to the rear of the room as they lift Anna back on to the bed and start the fight to save her life.
‘She’s flatlined!’ shouts a nurse.
Anna’s gown is pulled open. Electrodes are stuck above the right and below the left breast. Controlled electric shocks juice into her.
‘Nothing so far.’
Louisa looks down and sees her hands are shaking, something they’ve not done since she was in med school.
She’d give anything right now for a good slug of brandy and a long draw on a cigarette, or maybe something even stronger.
‘Again!’ someone shouts.
Louisa takes a deep breath. It’s an old machine, manually run, not like the AEDs in the main wards.
Defib seldom works first time.
They have to get the shock level right, so they often go in with too low a charge.
The second or third go should do it.
‘Again!’
Bodies scuffle around the bed.
Hands seem to be all over Anna, eyes stuck to monitors recording vital signs.
‘Again!’ They all step back once more and watch in frozen hope.
Then they’re on her again. Devouring information. Checking her heartbeat, her pulse, her eyes.
More CPR.
A long silence.
‘Call it.’
Louisa can’t believe what she’s just heard.
Two words. Said in a depressingly calm tone.
‘Call it.’
A male wrist juts out from the scrum of green scrubs. ‘Time of death: 11.55.35.’
The room starts to sway.
Louisa has to sit before she falls.
She watches the crash team swirl around the bed until they become just a tilting haze.
Anna is dead.
