When the Dead Awaken (3 page)

‘Does she have a name?'

Dr Sapienza pointed to the nearest board.

‘Lucia Forlani, née Maletta. Born 12 February 1973 in Castellarano.'

‘Never heard of it,' she said.

‘It's a small mountain village in the north of Reggio Emilia. I went there once on a school trip,' he said. ‘Napoleon stopped by in 1801.' Dr Sapienza pointed to something in the middle of the tray. ‘And that's Number thirty-one, as it were.'

A third, tiny skeleton lay protected by the woman's pelvic bones. The baby inside the woman had turned and was engaged with its head down and its back facing left. Ready and waiting for departure – for contractions that never came.

The sturdy grey cable strips with which the woman's wrists had been tied were indestructible. Dr Sapienza had
arranged her arms in front of her pelvis so the bones of her hands were spread protectively across the remains of the foetus.

Sabrina's breathing apparatus hissed.

‘An eight-month-old foetus,' Dr Sapienza said.

‘Cause of death?'

‘Unknown.'

‘Cover them up,' Sabrina said.

‘The woman was lying beside the boy. We've concluded that they're mother and son; the DNA profiles match up. There is no doubt.'

Dr Sapienza sat down in his office chair and started typing.

Out of the corner of one eye Sabrina noticed a burst of light. She turned around, but saw nothing unusual. It could have been anything. A torch, a hiccup in the steady rhythm of the generators that powered the fluorescent lights. The blue figures moved methodically around the trays. Some were assembling cadavers as if they were shards of pottery from an archaeological excavation; others photographed the bodies or took tissue samples for microscopic or spectroscopic analyses. Others still were carrying trays of test tubes to the freezer where the samples would be stored until DNA tests could be carried out.

A man walked slowly past the whiteboards, taking notes. He had wedged his mobile between his shoulder and his
ear. Sabrina frowned. She thought the use of mobile phones inside the tents was strictly prohibited. For the time being the Vittorio Emanuele II Quay existed in a state of emergency. No identifications could be leaked to the public until the next of kin had been informed.

‘I thought you would want to see this,' the forensic pathologist continued. ‘We've cross-referenced lists of missing persons from our Interior Ministry, the Red Cross and Interpol in Lyons. Lucia Forlani is listed as missing. As is her son, Salvatore. They were last seen entering a lift in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan on 5 September 2007.'

‘Who was the last person to see her?'

‘No idea.'

‘Education, relatives, addresses? What are you saying, Raimondo? What else have you got for me?' she demanded to know.

‘Nothing! That's the problem.'

He pointed at the screen over his shoulder. It displayed the Interior Ministry's authoritative and confidential list of missing persons, which was updated daily. The cursor blinked next to ‘Forlani, Lucia / Maletta, Lucia [35 – Castellarano] & Forlani, Salvatore [12 – Milan]'. Their names were followed by the acronym ‘MIPTP', an address in Milan and the name of the case officer to whom all queries should be directed: Nestore Raspallo.

‘
Grazie
,' she said and closed her eyes. The smell, the
undulating tent walls overwhelmed her. The fifth of September 2007 – three days before her father was killed.

It had become a habit to date everything from the death of her father. A rather unhealthy habit, according to her therapist. Sabrina had smiled without saying anything, but had visualized the therapist in freefall from his office window to the pavement five floors below. The problem wasn't her father's death. It was the haunting, restless thirst for revenge that lived on.

MIPTP.

‘What does that mean, Sabrina?' Dr Sapienza said. ‘How the hell do you expect me to do my job when all information is classified?'

‘I'll take care of it, Raimondo. Forget about it.'

‘Forget about it, forget about it – I'm paid not to forget, Sabrina, but to remember. All victims are entitled to someone who does that.'

She blushed. ‘Of course they are, Dr Sapienza,' she said quietly. ‘MIPTP –
Ministero Interno Protezione Testimoni e Pentiti
 – is a programme for the protection of witnesses or their relatives. People who have helped the police solve organized crime. Do you understand?'

‘So she's a witness?'

‘Or she's related to a witness. Dear Raimondo, few things in this country are hermetically sealed. The Vatican's antique porn collection perhaps, but even they aren't as impenetrable as witness protection programmes. That's
why we have the odd breakthrough every now and again, despite everything. You can't blame the programme just because some remorseful Mafiosi,
i pentiti
, choose to compromise their new identities and resume their old, sinful ways.'

‘A couple of bottles of vodka and I'll be prepared to overlook these intolerable restrictions,' the giant said amicably. ‘But someone ought to know, Sabrina. Some-one needs to know that they've been found.'

Sabrina, who knew that Dr Sapienza never touched alcohol, smiled and squeezed his shoulder.

‘Of course. Someone will be told. I'll make sure of it. Personally
. Subito. Grazie
.' She walked up to the whiteboard, found a sponge and erased the names. ‘I don't want to see those names here again, Raimondo,' she said. ‘And call me the moment you know how they died.'

She turned on her heel and headed for the exit.

Raimondo Sapienza looked after the straight-backed prosecutor with melancholic eyes and shrugged. He liked her, and was saddened by the permanent twilight in which she seemed to exist.

The man with the mobile turned and looked after her as well, but without much interest. A few minutes later he stepped out into the sunshine, lit a cigarette and walked behind the nearest stack of containers, which the Carabinieri were using as part of their cordon. He stopped,
unzipped his coveralls and started to relieve himself. Making sure there were no curious onlookers nearby, he took the mobile he had used to photograph the names of the victims, put it inside a polystyrene box, sealed it with tape and threw it over the containers.

Like everyone else, Sabrina D'Avalos had to wait her turn in the queue outside the office of Federico Renda, the Public Prosecutor of Naples. Roughly every fifteen minutes, she moved one seat further to the right on the marble bench, and the next person in the queue behind her moved from the wall to a seat on the far left of the bench. The tall, carved mahogany doors at the end of the archway were guarded by two Carabinieri in combat uniform armed with machine guns. In Naples the Palace of Justice was always a potential war zone. To her right was a young civil servant she vaguely knew. The young man had loosened his tie and was alternately typing furiously on a laptop balanced on his knees and leafing through some papers. It was well-known that Federico Renda gave short shrift to anyone who was ill prepared.

The young man was eventually swallowed up by the tall doors and emerged ten minutes later, visibly downcast. Sabrina smiled at him and got up, summoned by a curled
index finger. The finger belonged to one of the matrons in Renda's anteroom.

‘Would you like to go straight in,' said the woman in the floral dress.

It wasn't a request.

She walked through the dappled green light that filtered through the inch-thick bulletproof glass in the windows. The walls were lined with polished mahogany panels, the path to Renda's desk as long as a penitential walk. The thick Persian carpets silenced her footsteps, but Renda had heard her anyway. The public prosecutor's salt-and-pepper hair was combed straight back from his forehead and his brown eyes were even darker than she remembered. As always, Renda was wearing a well-pressed, dark suit with a waistcoat, a white shirt and a discreet tie. A pair of reading glasses was lying on his desk and his hands rested on the arms of the wheelchair. The same bomb which had bestowed on Sabrina her scars and an occasional and irritating tinnitus had paralysed the public prosecutor from the waist down.

Renda shied away from media attention, and gossip about his private life was unthinkable. Quite simply, the man had sacrificed too much, and was regarded almost as a saint. Sabrina knew that he was unmarried and had no children. This ascetic way of life was something he shared with many other senior lawyers committed to a lifetime of fighting the Mafia.

Sabrina regarded Federico Renda as a good boss. He had no favourites and was equally blunt and impatient with everybody. He nodded in the direction of a low chair and Sabrina sat down, crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. Her shoulder holster bumped against her ribs and she nudged it aside with her elbow.

‘
Buongiorno, dottoressa
. How is it going?'

‘We've nearly finished my area of investigation,' she said. ‘We've identified a journalist and two young trade union members. There is a North African man in his thirties whose identity we haven't been able to discover.'

She shifted in her chair.

‘In addition, an unexpected discovery was made among the other body parts. Quite remarkable, in fact. I've just come from speaking to Dr Sapienza.'

She fell silent and was annoyed with herself: unexpected
and
remarkable. Great …

Federico Renda smiled graciously, though his eyes showed no desire to join in. He gestured for her to continue. Most visitors were aware that the public prosecutor would prefer it if they would manage to come somewhere close to speaking faster than he could think.

‘A thirty-five-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old boy. Mother and son. The woman was eight months pregnant,' Sabrina went on.

Renda leaned forwards.

‘Lucia and Salvatore Forlani. They've been missing for
three years,' she said. ‘The woman is from Castellarano, and the boy was born in Milan.'

‘Do you know the town?' he asked.

‘No.'

‘Reggio Emilia in the Apennine Mountains,' Renda informed her. ‘It has a well-preserved city wall and a convent school for the daughters of wealthy families. Napoleon camped near the town in …'

‘1801,' she said. ‘Yes, so everyone tells me.'

The public prosecutor smiled faintly.

‘The Forlani tragedy,' he said, leaning back and hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat. ‘You can be forgiven for not knowing the details, signorina. Circumstances forced us to play down the affair as far as the media was concerned. Defence of the Realm Act, for one. Whatever that means.'

‘I understand.'

She looked directly behind Renda, at the only photograph in the office: his obsession, L'Artista, the woman whose car bomb had put him in a wheelchair. The image was poor, the woman a blurred figure in an underground car park. The prosecutor had picked out the image from a CCTV camera, had it enlarged and mounted in an aluminium frame. A permanent reminder of the need for constant vigilance, Sabrina presumed. The woman had been caught mid stride: dark clothes, sunglasses, a dark baseball cap pulled down over her eyes. The figure had
stayed on the borderline between light and shade; the most difficult conditions for the CCTV cameras.

Sabrina had seen the legendary assassin out of the corner of her eye – but far too late. The woman was unrecognizable behind her sunglasses and crash helmet, dressed in the uniform of the Italian highway patrol, the Polizia Stradale, riding one of their Moto Guzzi California motorbikes.

Every day Sabrina had wondered if she had seen any hint of emotion in the woman's face.

The motorbike had pulled up alongside Federico Renda's motorcade before the slip road to the motorway. Renda's driver had swerved to avoid a pothole and this tiny manoeuvre had saved the public prosecutor's life, but the driver and a male bodyguard were killed instantly.

L'Artista was standing upright on the motorbike's foot-rests. She raised her hand with the magnetic car bomb and held it over the roof of the car, but rather than attach itself right above the back seat where it would undoubtedly have killed Renda, the explosive charge had ended up on the side of the car.

In order to avoid the crash barrier, L'Artista had tilted the motorbike over until sparks flew from the footrest screeching against the tarmac and escaped through a via-duct under the motorway. It had been an awesome sight. The last thing Sabrina remembered before the eviscerating white explosion were the bright red brake lights of the Moto Guzzi.

She looked at the green windows.

‘It was a tragedy not just for the family but also for all of Italy,' she said. ‘Giulio Forlani and his business partner, Fabiano Batista, were eminent scientists with a powerful new invention. They were developing a device that would make it impossible to fake products made by the fashion industry. The technology could also have been used to proof passports, share certificates, bonds, software distribution discs, banknotes against forgery. Their company, Nanometric, had two employees, a German chemist by the name of Hanna Schmidt and a young computer expert, Paolo Iacovelli. Nanometric researched advanced nanotechnology and had worked out how to manipulate nano-crystals. The basic science was well-known, but their methods of embedding crystals in a stable micro-environment were new. They had two investors: the EU through an ongoing research grant, and the Italian fashion industry – the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana – through its director, Massimiliano Di Luca. The Camera obviously had a vested interest in the success of the technology – and the Camorra the opposite. Bootleg and fake branded products are their most important sources of income.'

‘I'm impressed,' Federico Renda said quietly. ‘You've done your homework.'