of my files were taken, including the notes and photographs of our gentleman. Even my digital camera was stolen, complete with the relevant memory card. The police were quite useless, in my opinion. There was never any solution.’
Elisabetta’s heart sank at the news. Had their journey been a waste of time? All she could ask was, ‘What did his loved ones do?’
‘There were none. The man had no living relatives that we could find. He was a long-retired university professor who lived in a rented flat near the city center. It seems that he was quite alone. The police concluded that someone in the hospital might have talked about his unusual anatomy and some oddball group stole his remains for ritualistic purposes or as a sick joke. Who knows?’
‘How did you write the paper if everything was stolen?’ Micaela asked.
‘Ah, so!’ Gunther said slyly. ‘Because the case was unique, I printed a duplicate set of photos and a copy of the autopsy report and brought them back to this office the evening of his post-mortem. I wanted to study them at my leisure. It was fortunate that I had two offices.’
‘So you have photos?’ Micaela asked.
‘Yes, several.’
‘More than the ones you published?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘Yes, of course. Now perhaps it’s your turn to tell me why a nun and a gastroenterologist are so interested in my case.’
The sisters looked at each other. They’d rehearsed their reply. ‘It’s the tattoos,’ Elisabetta said. ‘I’m doing research on a project concerning early Roman symbology. I have reason to believe this man’s tattoos bear a relationship to them but the published photos are too indistinct for me to make them out.’
‘What kind of symbols?’ Gunther asked, clearly fascinated.
‘Astrological,’ Elisabetta replied.
‘Then you are going to be disappointed,’ he said, picking a folder off his orderly desk. He laid out a series of color photographs, one by one, like a dealer at a casino, snapping their edges. They were all of the man’s wizened back. The first few were wide-angles and included the two that had been published in the paper. The tail was long, extending below the corpse’s buttocks. Its shriveled skin exposed the extra vertebrae underneath.
In other shots the field tightened and the magnification increased as the photographer worked his way up to the conical tip stretched over a tiny coccygeal bone. The tail swelled in diameter at its midsection; fine white hairs covered the skin. Had they been black in the man’s youth, Elisabetta wondered?
Then Gunther laid out the critical shots, those from the base of the spine.
It might have been impolite to grab but Elisabetta couldn’t help herself. She snatched one of the close-ups and devoured it with her stare.
Three concentric semicircles of numbers surrounded the base of the tail.
63 128 99 128 51 132 162 56 70
32 56 52 103 132 128 56 99
99 39 63 38 120 39 70
Micaela, not to be outdone, had gotten her hands on a similar photo. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked.
‘We had absolutely no idea,’ Gunther said. ‘We still don’t.’
They both looked to Elisabetta.
She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I have no idea, either.’ She put the photo down. ‘May we have a copy?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Do you know anything else about the man?’
‘We have his name and his last address, that’s all.’
‘May we know these?’ Elisabetta asked gently.
Gunther shrugged. ‘Ordinarily, patient confidentiality would prohibit this, but when the affair went to the police it became a matter of public record.’ He produced a data sheet from the folder. ‘One day, ladies, you must repay me by telling me the results of your inquiries. I have a feeling you’ve got something up your sleeves.’
Micaela smiled and said, ‘My sister’s sleeves are bigger than mine.’
The address on Fischergasse was a short distance from Ulm Munster and if the two women hadn’t been rushing to make their return flight, Elisabetta would have tried to pay a flying visit. The cathedral had begun its existence as a relatively modest Catholic building but thanks to the region’s conversion to Protestantism and a grand nineteenth-century spire added by its Church Elders, it was now the tallest cathedral in the world.
Their driver parked outside a row of pretty half-timbered houses in the Old Town, close enough to the Danube for the wind to carry a faintly riverine smell. Number 29 was an ample four-story house with a bakery on the ground floor.
When they arrived, Micaela was on her mobile, engaged in an overheated conversation with her boyfriend Arturo, so Elisabetta got out alone.
‘If you don’t get anywhere, at least bring me back some cakes,’ Micaela called after her.
The pleasant street called out to Elisabetta. How marvelous it would be to find a bench and spend some time alone. Except for a few brief moments in the convent chapel at dawn she’d spent an entire day without prayer. She felt unhealthy and unfulfilled and she wondered darkly if her faith was being tested. And if it was, would she pass the test and emerge clean?
A spring-loaded bell chimed her entry into the bakery. The rotund woman at the till seemed surprised to see a nun in her shop and ignored another customer in a rush to serve Elisabetta.
‘How can I help you today, Sister?’ she asked in German.
‘Ah, do you speak Italian or English?’ Elisabetta asked in English.
‘English, a little. Would you like some bread? Some pastries, Sister?’
‘Just some assistance. A man used to live at this address. I wonder if you knew him?’
‘Who?’
‘Bruno Ottinger.’
It was as if Elisabetta had conjured a ghost. The shopkeeper braced herself against the counter and almost rested her hand on a fresh pie. ‘The professor! My God! Funnily enough, Hans and I were talking about him just last night. We were his landlords.’
‘I see you’re busy. I was just stopping by on the way to the airport and wanted a word with someone who knew him.’
‘Let me get rid of her,’ the shopkeeper said, pointing her chin at the elderly customer who Elisabetta hoped spoke no English. ‘She always buys the same thing so it won’t take a minute.’
When the customer was gone, the baker’s wife, who introduced herself as Frau Lang, hung a back-in-10- minutes sign in the shop window and locked the door. She touched Elisabetta’s wrist and said guiltily, ‘Hans is Protestant but I’m Catholic. I should do more with my religion but you get out of the habit, what with our crazy hours and all the family commitments.’
‘There are many ways to live a good life,’ Elisabetta said, trying to be helpful. ‘I wonder if I might get my sister from the car.’
‘Is she a nun too?’ Frau Lang asked in bewilderment.
‘No, she’s a doctor.’
‘Well, tell her to come inside. Does she like cakes?’
‘In fact, she likes them a great deal.’
Krek sat behind his large desk with his mobile phone pressed against one ear. Double-glazed windows cut the street noises of Ljubljana’s Preseren Square to a minimum but he could see that Copova Street was thick with lunchtime traffic.
‘Yes, I know that communication is a perennial issue.’
He listened to the response and said, ‘I don’t trust the internet. We’ll use the old ways. The day before the Conclave our people will see it and they’ll know it was us.’
He rang off brusquely and looked up. Mulej was there, filling the door frame with his bulk and wearing a constipated expression.
‘What is it?’ Krek asked
‘I just took a call. There’s a new problem, probably not a major one but one that we should monitor
