here?’
‘One of the nuns is my sister.’
‘You’re at the Vatican, right?’ Leone said it with button-pushing derision.
‘I am.’
‘That’s a good place for you.’
In his years of working with the Swiss Guards, Zazo had learned the art of restraint. He drew on it and let the remark pass. ‘So what do you have?’
‘The guy cut a hole in a ground-floor window at the back and let himself in. The Mother Superior is checking through the classrooms and offices on the first two floors but so far there’s nothing missing. He was standing in front of one of the residence rooms when one of the nuns on her way back from the toilet saw him and started screaming her head off. He ran away and probably made his way out a rear door.’
‘It was my sister’s room.’
Leone shrugged. ‘It had to be someone’s. Who knows what he wanted? Maybe he was a thief, maybe a rapist, maybe a junkie. Whatever he was it’s a good thing he never got to her. We’ll do our interviews, dust for prints, check the CCTV footage from surrounding buildings. You remember the drill, right, Celestino?’
‘I’m still a police officer,’ Zazo spat back.
‘Sure you are.’
Elisabetta was sipping at her coffee when Zazo returned. Nuns were busying themselves providing hot drinks for the officers. With so many men on the scene, some of the women, out of modesty, had gone back to their rooms and changed into their habits. ‘You don’t look so good,’ he told her with the bluntness of a brother.
‘Thank you.’
‘What did you mean when you said you had a bad feeling?’
‘There was something about that man.’
‘I thought you only saw his back.’
‘I know. That’s why it’s only a feeling.’ She whispered now. ‘I know it sounds crazy but I think it was the same man who attacked me that night.’
Zazo accepted a cup of coffee from one of the sisters. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It does sound crazy. I think you’re having some kind of post-trauma psychological reaction. That’s all.’
‘There’s more than that to it, Zazo. There’s more that I should tell you.’
‘Whenever you want to talk,’ he said.
Elizabetta looked scared. ‘Now.’
She took him back to her room. Zazo sprawled on her unmade bed and she sat on her reading chair and began by delivering a preamble. She knew that she had no authority to tell him these things but she felt compelled to do so. She demanded an oath of secrecy from him as her brother, as a policeman and as a Vatican employee.
Zazo agreed and listened in rapt attention as his sister told him everything about her work as a student, her flashes of memory about her attacker’s spine, the skeletons of St Callixtus, the old man in Ulm, his tattoos, the Marlowe play.
There was a knock on her partially open door. One of the nuns told her the police were ready for her.
‘You’re not going to tell them anything about this, are you?’ Zazo asked.
‘Of course not.’
He got off the bed and said gravely, ‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here any longer.’
When he was awoken Krek’s head was still thick from the good brandy he’d drunk earlier. Alone in his big bed he answered the phone testily, ‘Yes?’
It was Mulej. ‘I’m sorry to wake you. I have news from Italy.’
‘It had better be good.’
‘It isn’t. Vani had to abort.’
Krek couldn’t conceal his rage. ‘I’ve had it with him. I can’t tolerate this incompetence. Did he at least get away cleanly?’
‘Thankfully, yes.’
‘Tell him this, Mulej. Tell him he has one more chance. If he’s not successful he will be terminated. Tell him I will do it personally.’
It was drizzling. From Elisabetta’s seat on the bus, Rome looked drained of color and joyless. Her fellow commuters were too preoccupied with their newspapers and earphones to notice the pinched look on the nun’s pale face.
At her stop she opened her umbrella and walked the short distance to the Institute. Professor De Stefano’s assistant was waiting for her in the lobby.
‘The Professor wants you at St Callixtus immediately,’ he said. ‘Theres’ a car waiting for you.’
The St Callixtus catacombs had been closed to the public since the cave-in and the visitors’ building looked deserted and forlorn in the rain.
Gian Paolo Trapani was pacing in front of the entrance, water dripping from his long hair. He opened the car door for Elisabetta. ‘Professor De Stefano is down at the site. Please come quickly.’
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘That’s for him to tell you.’
Elisabetta almost had to run to keep up with the long-legged young man. The catacombs seemed particularly gloomy that morning. Despite the chilliness of the place, she was sweating and out of breath when they reached the boundary of the Liberian Area and the cave-in site.
De Stefano was at the threshold, immobile except for those hands of his, obsessively rubbing at each other. Elisabetta was alarmed by his abject look of anguish.
‘You’re the only person I know who doesn’t have a mobile phone,’ he said angrily.
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ she answered. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Look! See for yourself what’s happened!’
He stepped aside and let her enter.
The sight was almost as shocking as the one she’d seen the first time but her emotional reaction today was more raw. She was assaulted by feelings of devastation and violation.
The chamber had been picked clean.
Where skeletons had been piled on top of one another, now there were only a few bones left in the dirt: a rib here, a humerus there, toe bones and finger bones scattered like popcorn on a cinema floor.
The fresco too was gone, but it had not been removed. It had been pulverized, certainly by hammer blows, for the plaster lay in clumps and fragments, completely annihilated.
De Stefano was mute with rage so Elisabetta looked to Trapani for help.
‘Whoever did this used our shaft,’ he said, pointing overhead. ‘There’s no sign of entry or egress through the catacomb. The night guards at the visitor center heard and saw nothing. We quit yesterday at five o’clock. They must have come when it got dark and then worked all night. Who knows what their methods were but I’d say they dug out one or two skeletons at a time and hoisted them up in crates or boxes to a truck. There are fresh tire marks running through the field. And, to top it off, they destroyed our fresco. It’s horrible.’
De Stefano found his voice at last. ‘It’s more than horrible. It’s a disaster of shocking proportions.’
‘Who could have done this?’ Elisabetta asked.
‘That’s what I want to ask
She wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. ‘Me? What could I possibly know of this?’
‘When Gian Paolo called me early this morning to inform me of what he’d found here I had my assistant check the phone logs of the few people at the Institute who had knowledge of the work here. Two days ago a call was made from your office line.’
Elisabetta searched her memory quickly before he had even finished. Had she actually used her phone to make an outgoing call? She didn’t think so.
‘The call was to
‘I didn’t make this call, Professor. You know I wouldn’t do such a thing.’
‘A call is made to a newspaper and two days later we’re cleaned out. These are the facts!’
