Suddenly the ring is full of people.
Shouting. Cheering. Slapping Tom’s arms.
Even embracing him. The beast is down and staying down.
Maybe he’s not so stupid after all.
9
They gather my bones and ashes.
Loyal fingers seek out every part of me – what I was, what I am, what I shall be.
They search for the stone. The sacred triangle stolen from around my neck by the thief at the Bocca.
It is gone.
When they discover what has happened, they will find him. Find him and recover the precious scalene.
Then they will kill him.
They poke among the embers of a pyre that was soaked in cups of oil and bouquets of perfume.
My husband is not among the grubbers.
He is no doubt in our matrimonial bed, slaking his thirst for wine and boys.
Arria is here, of course. Sweetest Arria. She will be among the first to remember me at Parentalia. Was not Dies Parentales made for women with faces as sad as Arria’s?
The urn they have fashioned for me is a cheap one. From its lack of elegance I know already that they will not carry me to my husband’s tomb.
I am pleased. Lying with him in death would be even more unpleasant than in life.
I shall not wait for him beyond the three canine heads of Cerberus. I pray to Pluto that his wasted flesh sticks in their jaws and is chewed for eternity in Hades.
Before me I see my sisters. The others of the spirit world. Those who have for ever been and will for ever be.
They are the keepers of the secrets.
The prophetesses. The betrayed. The goddesses.
They surround me as the mortals take my burned remains to their dank resting place in the Columbarium. Here among the shelved peasantry is my place in the potted history of poorest Rome. My niche in society.
No ornately engraved plaque marks my spot. No statue or portrait. Nor any message of love.
Just a number.
My sisters and I wonder if beyond the grave they can hear us laughing.
The number is X.
10
Rome
It’s Saturday morning, so at least Valentina is spared the indignity of walking into a packed office and explaining why she looks like a victim of domestic violence. She can barely begin to think of all the sexist jokes there would be at her expense. Hopefully, by Monday, some good make-up and judicious head-bending will get her through the day without too much embarrassment.
For now, though, the bathroom mirror is telling a different story.
Although the swelling is going down, her lips still look awful. Bloated and discoloured, as though a Botox injection has gone horribly wrong. The prisoner’s head butt has left a very unattractive scab on her lip.
And all this on the day of her big date.
Not that she’s thinking of her celebratory get-together with Tom Shaman as a date. She keeps telling herself that they’re ‘just friends’.
But of course, there’s always the possibility that he feels like she does.
She checks the clock on the wall of the small kitchen in her apartment.
Midday.
Four hours before Tom’s plane lands and she needs to be at the airport to pick him up. Valentina takes another glance in the mirror.
Maybe some of the swelling will have gone down by then.
She decides to coax an espresso out of her coffee machine and turn her attention back to work.
Earlier that morning she spoke to Federico and learned that there was still no trace of a victim.
Assante had already set up a rudimentary incident room and had ensured that all local hospitals had been called. No one with a missing hand had been treated.
Valentina checks her cell and fixed-line phones and finds that there are no missed calls.
She rings the local station and asks to speak to the custody suite.
They tell her that the woman prisoner slept most of the night. No doubt knocked out by sedatives. She refused breakfast. A doctor saw her mid-morning, and within the next hour she’s due to be moved to a secure room at the Policlinico Umberto for a full psychiatric assessment.
It takes another twenty minutes of calls and an extra espresso to find out that the medical examiner working the case is a woman, Professoressa Filomena Schiavone, and she happens to be in the morgue at the Policlinico working another case. With a little luck – and a quick dash to the hospital – Valentina will catch her.
The short drive to the Quartiere San Lorenzo is pleasant enough. It’s late October and the leaves are falling; rugs of reds and oranges have been thrown down by giant maples and sycamores filtering the day’s golden sunlight.
Policlinico Umberto 1, to give it its full name, is the largest public hospital in Italy and one of the largest in the world. Named after the Italian king who ruled from the late 1870s, it’s academically and physically intertwined with the famed Universita La Sapienza, and as a result is so large it’s really a city within a city.
After a few false turns, Valentina finds signs to the morgue near to the unit for tropical diseases over at the Viale Regina Elena entrance. It’s almost opposite the gates where she came in.
She parks and walks past several patients in gowns smoking in the doorways to distant wards.
She enters the mortuary block and freshens up in a staff washroom before walking the final few metres to the professoressa ’s office area.
A cluttered desk is attended by a bespectacled but pretty young woman who Valentina suspects is a student from Sapienza. She dutifully calls through to the medical examiner and then relays to Valentina a message that the ME is just finishing and will give her twenty minutes of her time if she meets her down in the scrub area.
Almost an hour passes before the doctor has finished ‘finishing’.
Filomena Schiavone is a small woman in her early sixties with tight curls of white hair, piercing blue eyes and an impatient look on her grandmotherly face. ‘Remind me – who are you? Why are you here? The girl minding my phones wasn’t very clear.’ She strips off her greens and drops them in a laundry bin. ‘I have a lunch date in an hour and I don’t want to look like a drowned poodle, so be quick.’
‘Captain Morassi.’ Valentina produces her ID.
‘Put it away. I believe you.’ The ME glances at her. ‘What have you done to your face? You look like a trout.’
Valentina puts her fingers to her lip. ‘I got hit by a woman prisoner. She was arrested near Cosmedin in connection with a severed hand that I believe you took possession of.’
The ME laughs. ‘ Took possession of. How sweet. You police officers do mangle our language. It was sent to me in a plastic bag, packed with ice. Someone obviously hoped it might be sewn back on to whoever lost it. I examined it, made notes and put it in the fridge.’ She opens a long metal locker and gets out a simple but stylish black maxi dress.
‘What do you think? Too dull? I have a Grecian-drape affair upstairs, just back from the cleaners.’
‘First date or second date?’
