The Lost Girls of Rome (34 page)

Sandra couldn’t believe it. What had her role been in this tragic outcome? Might she have contributed, in however small a way, to these deaths? When she heard the chronology of the events, she realised the answer was no. The timetable did not match: while the tragedy was taking place, she was talking to the priest. Which meant that he hadn’t been present while it was happening either.

Nevertheless, the Figaro case seemed to be over, and it wouldn’t be of any help to her in getting back in contact with the penitenziere.

It was frustrating. She didn’t know where to start.

Wait a minute, she told herself. How did Schalber find out that the penitenzieri were interested in the Figaro case?

She went over what he had told her about the case until she found what she was looking for: Schalber had become aware of the penitenzieris’ interest by bugging a conversation. He had placed listening devices in a villa outside Rome where the police were carry ing out a search.

What villa? And why were they there?

She recovered her mobile phone from her bag and dialled the number of the last call she had received the previous day. De Michelis replied at the sixth ring.

‘What can I do for you, Vega?’

‘Inspector, I need your help again.’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’ He sounded in a good mood.

‘Do you know if the police here have been searching a villa in the last few days? It’s probably in connection with a major case.’ Sandra deduced that from the fact that Schalber had gone straight there to place his bugs.

‘Don’t you read the papers?’

She was taken aback. ‘What have I missed?’

‘A serial killer was captured the other day. You know how crazy people get over that kind of thing.’

It must have been an item on the TV news, but she had missed it. ‘Bring me up to speed.’

‘I don’t have much time.’ She could hear voices around De Michelis. He moved to somewhere a little more private. ‘Here goes: Jeremiah Smith, four victims in six years. He had a heart attack three days ago. An ambulance team went to his aid and that’s when they discovered the kind of man he is. He’s in hospital now, more alive than dead. Case closed.’

Sandra paused for a moment to think this over. ‘I need a favour.’

‘Another one?’

‘A big one this time.’

De Michelis muttered something incomprehensible. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘A service order to work on that case.’

‘You’re joking, I hope.’

‘Would you prefer it if I started investigating without any cover? You know I’d do it.’

De Michelis only took a moment. ‘You’ll explain all this one of these days, won’t you? Otherwise I’ll feel like an idiot for believing you.’

‘I promise.’

‘Okay, I’ll send the service order via fax to police headquarters in Rome in an hour. I have to invent a plausible reason, but I have a vivid imagination.’

‘Do I need to tell you I’m grateful?’

De Michelis laughed. ‘Obviously not.’

Sandra hung up. She felt as if she was back in the game. She wished she could forget what Schalber had done to her, but had to make do with venting her anger on the train ticket he had left her, tearing it into very small pieces and scattering them over the floor. She doubted that Schalber would be back here to receive that message. She was convinced they would never see each other again. And the thought hurt her a little. Best not to think about it. Sandra vowed that she would cast aside what had happened. She had other things to do. For a start she had to go to Headquarters to collect the service order. Then she would ask to be given a copy of the material on Jeremiah Smith. She would look through it, guided by one insight: if the case was of interest to the penitenzieri, then it wasn’t closed at all.

8.01 a.m.

Marcus was sitting at one of the long tables in a soup kitchen run by Caritas. There were crucifixes on the walls as well as posters proclaiming the Word of God. An all-pervading smell of beef stock and fried onions hung in the air. At this hour of the morning, the homeless people who usually frequented the place had left and the kitchen staff were starting to prepare lunch. For breakfast, people usually started lining up about five in the morning. By seven they
were back on the streets, except when it was cold or rainy, when some lingered a while longer. Marcus knew that many of them, although probably not the majority, were no longer capable of being shut in and so they refused accommodation, even a dormitory for one night. This was especially true of those who had spent a lot of time in prison or a psychiatric institution. The temporary loss of freedom had disorientated them, and now they no longer knew where they were coming from or where their homes were.

Don Michele Fuente would always greet them with a welcoming smile, dispensing both hot meals and human warmth. Marcus watched him as he gave instructions to his colleagues to make things ready for the next wave that would come flooding in silently within a few hours. Compared with this man and the mission he had set for himself, Marcus felt incomplete as a priest. Many things had vanished, not only from his memory, but also from his heart.

When he had finished, Don Michele came and sat down opposite him. ‘Father Clemente told me you’d be coming. All he said was that you’re a priest and that I shouldn’t ask your name.’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind.’

Don Michele was a plump man of about fifty, with puffy red cheeks, small hands and unkempt hair. His cassock was dotted with crumbs and oil stains. He wore a pair of glasses with round black frames, a plastic watch that he looked at constantly, and shapeless Nikes.

‘Three years ago, you heard a confession,’ Marcus said. It was not a question.

‘I’ve heard a great many since then.’

‘You should remember this one, though. I don’t suppose you hear somebody planning to commit suicide every day.’

Don Michele did not seem surprised, but all the cordiality abruptly drained from his face. ‘As usual, I transcribed the penitent’s words and submitted it to the
Paenitentiaria
. I couldn’t absolve him, the sin he confessed was too awful.’

‘I read the account, but I’d like to hear it directly from you.’

‘Why?’ It was clear that this was a subject Don Michele would have preferred not to revisit.

‘Your first impressions are important to me. I need to grasp all the nuances of that conversation.’

Don Michele let himself be persuaded. ‘It was eleven at night, and we were closing. I remember noticing the man standing on the other side of the street. He had been there all evening. I realised he’d been trying to summon up the courage to come in. When the last visitor left, he finally made up his mind. He came straight to me and asked me to hear his confession. I had never seen him before. He was wearing a heavy coat and a hat, and he didn’t take them off the whole time. It was as if he was in a hurry to get away. Our conversation didn’t in fact last very long. He wasn’t looking for solace or understanding, he merely wanted to relieve himself of a burden.’

‘What did he tell you, exactly?’

Don Michele scratched at his straggly grey beard. ‘I realised immediately that he was thinking of doing something extreme. There was a kind of torment in his gestures, in his voice, which made me think his intentions were serious. He knew that there was no forgiveness for what he was about to do, but he hadn’t come to be absolved of the sin he hadn’t yet committed.’ He paused. ‘He wasn’t asking pardon for the life he was planning to take – his own – but rather for the one that he had already taken.’

Don Michele Fuente was a streetwise priest, constantly in contact with the ugly side of life. But Marcus did not blame him for his discomfort: what he had listened to that night was the confession of a mortal sin. ‘Who had he killed, and why?’

The priest took off his glasses and started wiping them on his cassock. ‘He didn’t tell me. When I asked him, he was evasive. He said he thought it was best I shouldn’t know, or I might be in danger myself. All he wanted was to be absolved. When I told him that, due to the gravity of his sin, a mere priest wouldn’t be able to absolve him, he seemed upset. He thanked me and went away without another word.’

Terse as this account was, it was all that Marcus had to go on. In the archive, the confessions of murderers were kept in a separate
section. The first time he had set foot there, Clemente had given him a single piece of advice: ‘Don’t forget that what you will read is not a statement in a police database, where objectivity acts as a kind of protective barrier. In these confessions, the vision of what happened is subjective, because it is always the murderer himself telling the story. Sometimes you may feel that you are in his place. Don’t let evil deceive you, remember that it’s an illusion, it can be dangerous.’ Reading those accounts, Marcus had often been struck by tiny details. There was always some element in the stories that seemed incongruous. One killer, for example, remembered that his victim had been wearing red shoes, and the priest had included that in his transcription. It wasn’t important, it wouldn’t influence the judgement. But it was as if, in a list of horrific acts of violence, they wanted to create a way out, an emergency exit. Red shoes: a splash of colour interrupted the narrative for a moment, allowing whoever was reading it to catch his breath. In Don Michele’s account there were no details of that kind. And Marcus suspected that the transcription was incomplete. ‘You know who the penitent was, don’t you?’

Don Michele hesitated a fraction too long, and Marcus knew he was right. ‘I recognised him a few days later, in the newspapers.’

‘But when you submitted his confession, you omitted the name.’

‘I consulted the bishop, and he advised me to conceal the man’s identity.’

‘Why?’

‘Because everyone thought he was a good man,’ he said laconically. ‘He built a big hospital for the poor in Angola. The bishop convinced me that there was no need to tarnish the memory of a great benefactor, that it was better to preserve it intact as an example to others. Any judgement to be made on him was no longer our concern.’

‘What was his name?’ Marcus insisted.

Don Michele sighed. ‘Alberto Canestrari.’

Marcus sensed that there was something else, but he did not want to force the other man’s hand. He sat watching him in silence, waiting for him to speak again.

‘There’s another thing,’ Don Michele said, with some trepidation. ‘The newspapers wrote that he died of natural causes.’

Alberto Canestrari was not only a world-famous surgeon, a luminary of medical science and an innovator in his profession. He was above all a philanthropist.

That much was clear from the plaques that adorned the walls of his office in the Via Ludovisi, along with the framed press cuttings that described his many innovations in surgical technique and praised his generosity in exporting his skills to the developing world.

His greatest achievement had been the building of a large hospital in Angola, where he often went and performed operations.

Those same newspapers that had celebrated his work had later reported the news of his sudden death from natural causes.

Once Marcus got into what had been Canestrari’s surgery, located on the third floor of a prestigious building near the Via Veneto, he let his eyes wander over these relics, examining the doctor’s smiling face in photographs in which he was posing with various celebrities, as well as the patients – many of them very poor – who owed their recovery and, in some cases, their lives to him. They were his family. Having devoted his entire existence to his profession, Canestrari had never married.

If he’d had to judge the man from the paeans of praise displayed on that wall, Marcus would have had no hesitation in calling him a good Christian. But experience had taught him to be cautious in his judgements. All that might have been a facade. Especially in the light of the words Canestrari had uttered a few days before his death, in his last confession.

As far as the world was concerned, Alberto Canestrari had not killed himself.

But Marcus found it difficult to believe that that he could actually have died from natural causes so soon after announcing his intention to commit suicide. There had to be more to it.

The surgery consisted of a large waiting room, the secretary’s office, and the doctor’s own office, a room with a large mahogany desk surrounded by a vast collection of medical books, many of
them bound. Behind a sliding door was a small consulting room, with a couch, various pieces of apparatus and a compact medicine cabinet. Marcus concentrated on Canestrari’s office. Part of it was a reception area with leather sofas and a swivel chair, also of leather, in which – according to the media – the surgeon had been found dead.

Why am I here? he asked himself.

Even if the man really had committed a murder, the case was now closed. There was nothing left for Marcus to do. The killer was dead, and this time the mystery penitenziere wouldn’t be able to give anyone the chance to take revenge. But he had led him here, which meant the truth couldn’t be as simple as that.

One thing at a time, he told himself. The first step was to ascertain the facts, and the first anomaly to deal with was the suicide.

Canestrari had no wife or children, and after his death his nephews and nieces had disputed the inheritance. That was why the surgery, which was one of the contested assets, had remained unchanged over the last three years. The windows were shuttered and there was a thick layer of dust over everything. The dust also hovered like gleaming fog in the thin beams of light that filtered through the shutters. Although time, in its indifference, had preserved the room as it had been, the place certainly didn’t resemble a crime scene. Marcus almost regretted that there hadn’t been a violent death here. Such deaths always left traces on which he could hang his own deductions. Amid the chaos generated by evil it was easier to detect anomalies. Here, though, in the false tranquillity of this office, they would be much harder to find. This time, the challenge required him to change his methods drastically. He would have to identify with Alberto Canestrari.