The Lost Girls of Rome (53 page)

‘I don’t know you.’

‘There is a place where the world of light meets the world of darkness,’ he recited from memory. ‘It is there that everything happens: in the land of shadows, where everything is vague, confused, undefined. We are the guards appointed to defend that border. But
every now and again something manages to get through … My task is to chase it back into the darkness.’

The old man shivered, he was yielding. The transformist was close to him, close enough to grab the gun from his hand, when he saw the first drop fall on the carpet. He realised his nose was bleeding. Nosebleeds were the one thing about himself he couldn’t change. The only original element, the rest was borrowed. His true identity, buried for decades, was contained in that one distinguishing feature.

The illusion shattered and the old man realised the deception. ‘Damn you.’

The transformist threw himself on the hand clutching the gun, and grabbed it just in time. The old man fell to the floor. The transformist had him in his sights.

Lying on the carpet, the old man started laughing, wiping his bloodstained palm on his shirt. The transformist’s face was covered in blood.

‘Why are you laughing? Aren’t you scared?’

‘Before I came here, I confessed my sins. I’m free and ready to die. And besides, it amuses me that you think you only have to kill me and you’ll solve all your problems. Actually, they’re just beginning.’

The transformist scented a trap, he wouldn’t fall into it. ‘Maybe it’s better to keep silent, don’t you think? I don’t like last words. They’re usually quite undignified. All the men I’ve killed tarnished their deaths with insipid, trivial phrases. They asked for pity, they begged me. Without knowing that for me this was the confirmation that they had nothing else to tell me.’

The old man shook his head. ‘Poor fool. A priest who’s a lot better than me is hunting for you. He has the same talent as you: he can become whatever he wants. Except that he isn’t a transformist and doesn’t kill anyone. He’s good at assuming the identities of people who’ve disappeared. Right now he’s posing as an Interpol agent, which means he has access to police files. Soon he will track you down.’

‘But you’re going to tell me his name.’

The old man laughed again, coarsely. ‘Even if you tortured me, it wouldn’t get you anywhere. The penitenzieri don’t have names. They don’t exist, you ought to know that.’

While the transformist was trying to work out if he was bluffing, the old man took advantage of his distraction and somehow summoned up the strength to leap at him. He grabbed hold of the gun and pushed it downwards, revealing an unsuspected agility. The struggle began again. But this time the old man wouldn’t let go.

A shot rang out, the bullet hit the mirror, and the transformist saw his own image shatter. He managed to direct the gun towards his adversary and pulled the trigger. The old man froze in dismay, his eyes and mouth open wide. The bullet had punctured his heart. But, instead of collapsing backwards, he fell forwards, hitting the ground together with his killer. The impact made the gun go off again. The transformist seemed to see the bullet pass like a fleeting shadow in front of his eyes, before lodging in his temple.

Lying on the carpet, waiting for the end to come, he looked at his own image reflected in the thousand fragments of the shattered mirror. All his identities were there, all the faces he had stolen. It was as if the wound in his temple had freed him from the prison of his mind.

They were looking at him. Moment by moment, he started to forget them.

By the time he died, he had completely forgotten who he was.

7.37 a.m.

The corpse opened his eyes.

This story has its origin in two unforgettable encounters.

The first of these was with an unusual priest, and took place in Rome late one afternoon in May. Father Jonathan had arranged to meet me in the Piazza delle Cinque Lune at dusk. Obviously, he was the one who fixed the time and place, and when I asked him to be a bit more specific about ‘dusk’, he calmly replied, ‘Before sunset.’ Not knowing how to respond, I decided to arrive well in advance.

He was already there.

Over the following two hours, Father Jonathan told me about the
Paenitentiaria
, the archive of sins and the role of the penitenzieri. As he spoke, it struck me as incredible that nobody had ever told this story before. Our walk through the back streets of Rome led us eventually to San Luigi dei Francesi, and to Caravaggio’s
Martyrdom of St Matthew
, which is the first stage in the training of these priest-profilers.

In many cases, the priests collaborate with the police. In Italy, since 1999, there has been an anti-sect squad in which they work with the police to gain a better understanding of so-called Satanic crimes. Not because they are trying to reveal the existence of the devil, but because of the demonic significance that some criminals, especially murderers, attribute to their acts. Explaining this significance requires them to clarify the criminals’ motives and to prepare a profile that may help the investigating team.

In the two months following our first meeting, Father Jonathan taught me many things about his unusual ministry and introduced
me to a number of magical places in Rome, some of which took my breath away, and which are described in the novel. His range of knowledge was extensive, not only in the field of crime, but also in art, architecture, history, even the origin of phosphorescent paint.

As for questions of faith and religion, he good-naturedly tolerated my hesitations and dealt openly with my criticisms. At the end of it all, I realised that I had unwittingly been on a spiritual journey that helped me gain a better idea of the story I wanted to tell.

In modern society, spirituality is often seen as a bit of a joke, considered as something fed to the ignorant masses, or that has given rise to all kinds of ‘new age’ practices. Individuals have lost the elementary distinction between good and evil. The result has been to hand God over to the fundamentalists and extremists on the one hand, or the humorists on the other (because fanatical atheists are not so different from religious fanatics).

All this has produced an inability to look inside ourselves, beyond the categories of ethics and morality – not to mention the totally arbitrary category of the ‘politically correct’ – to find the essential dichotomy that allows us to judge human actions.

Good
and
evil
,
yin
and
yang
.

One day, Jonathan told me that I was ready to tell my story, he hoped I would ‘always be in the light’, and then said goodbye, promising that we would meet again. That was the last I saw of him. I have looked for him in vain, and I hope that this novel will lead to us meeting again soon. Even though part of me suspects that will not happen, because everything we had to say to each other has already been said.

The second encounter was with N.N., who lived at the turn of the twentieth century.

The first (and so far only) transformist serial killer, and one of the most interesting cases in the history of criminology.

N.N. represents not the initials of his name but an abbreviation of the Latin expression
Nomen Nescio
, the term habitually used for unidentified individuals (the equivalent of John Doe in the United States).

In 1916, the body of a man of about thirty-five was found on a beach in Ostend, Belgium. The cause of death was drowning. His clothes and the papers he had on him indicated that he was a clerk from Liverpool who had vanished into thin air two years earlier. When the authorities showed the body to his relatives, who had come specially from England, they did not recognise him, insisting that this was a case of mistaken identity.

Photographs produced by these relatives, however, confirmed that there was a remarkable physical resemblance between N.N. and the English clerk. But that was not the only similarity. The two also shared a liking for puddings and for prostitutes with red hair. Both took medication for a liver ailment and, most important of all, both had a slight limp in the right leg (in the case of the drowned man, the pathologist inferred this from the wear and tear on the sole of his shoe and from the hard skin on the side of his right foot, a sign that the weight of his body had been concentrated there).

In addition to the evidence of these similarities, when the police inspected N.N’s last known address they came across various documents and objects belonging to individuals from a number of European countries. Subsequent investigation revealed that they had all disappeared suddenly and without a trace. Not only that, but these disappearances could be put in chronological order according to the age of the victims, which rose constantly.

Hence the deduction that N.N. had chosen them with the purpose of taking their place.

No bodies were ever recovered, but it was assumed that N.N. had killed these men before appropriating their identities.

Due to the lack of supporting scientific evidence – a result of the backwardness of investigative techniques at the time – the case was forgotten, only to come back to public attention in the 1930s, when Courbon and Fail published their first psychiatric studies on Fregoli syndrome – named after the famous Italian quick-change artist – and articles began appearing on the neurological disorder known as Capgras syndrome. In both these syndromes, the phenomena observed were the reverse of the case of N.N.: those affected by them were convinced they saw a transformation in others. But their
description opened the floodgates to a series of scientific investigations that led to the identification of other syndromes, such as the chameleon syndrome, which is very close in nature to the Belgian case (and which inspired Woody Allen’s brilliant film
Zelig
).

The case of N.N. is the starting point for a new branch of criminology, forensic neuroscience, which studies crime from a genetic or physiological viewpoint. These techniques have allowed us to understand some crimes in a different way. One example is the reduction in sentence granted to a murderer with problems in the frontal lobes and a genetic map that indicated a predisposition to violence. Another is the demonstration that a man who stabbed his fiancée to death had been affected by a vitamin B12 deficiency as a result of the vegan diet he had been following for twenty-five years.

N.N.’s talents have remained unique. The only similar case known so far is that of ‘the girl in the mirror’, which I have recounted in this novel. The young Mexican woman really existed, even though, unlike N.N., she never killed anybody. For obvious reasons, I have changed her name, calling her Angelina.

N.N. is buried in a small cemetery by the sea. On his gravestone, the epitaph reads:
Body of an unidentified drowned man. Ostend – 1916.

Donato Carrisi

Stefano Mauri, my editor. For the passion he puts into his work and the friendship he bestows on me.

Along with him, I thank everyone at Longanesi, as well as my foreign publishers. For the time and energy they invest in making sure that my stories reach their destination.

Luigi, Daniela and Ginevra Bernabò. For their advice, care and affection. It’s great to be part of your team.

Fabrizio Cocco – the man who knows the secrets of (my) stories – for his calm dedication and for being so
noir
.

Giuseppe Strazzeri, for the fire and vision he brings to this publishing adventure.

Valentina Fortichiari, for her drive and affection (I don’t know what I would do without them).

Elena Pavanetto, for her smiling ideas.

Cristina Foschini, for her luminous presence.

The booksellers, for the task they take on every time they entrust a book to a reader. For the magical work they do in the world.

This story also owes a lot to the involuntary – and often unconscious – contributions of a great many people. I mention them in no particular order.

Stefano and Tommaso, because they’re here now. Clara and Gaia, for the joy they give me. Vito Lo Re, for his incredible music and for finding Barbara. Ottavio Martucci, for his healthy cynicism. Giovanni ‘Nanni’ Serio, because he is Schalber! Valentina, who makes me feel part of the family. Francesco ‘Ciccio’ Ponzone, a great
man. Flavio, a wicked man with a tender heart. Marta, who never spares herself. Antonio Padovano, for his lessons on the enjoyment of life. Aunt Franca, because she’s always there. Maria ‘Ià’ for a wonderful afternoon at the Quirinale. Michele and Barbara, Angela and Pino, Tiziana, Rolando, Donato and Daniela, Azzurra. Elisabetta, because there is a lot of her in this story.

Chiara, who fills me with pride. My parents, to them I owe the best of myself.

Leonardo Palmisano, one of my heroes. I’ll never talk of you in the past tense and I’ll never forget you.

Achille Manzotti, who in 1999 gave me my first start in this strange profession by asking me to write the story of a priest named Don Marco. The choice of the name Marcus for the main character is a tribute to this great producer’s genius, madness and, above all, instinct about screenwriters.