The Lost Girls of Rome (43 page)

The woman noticed the light filtering under the door of the bathroom. ‘Who’s in there?’ She raised the gun in that direction.

Marcus knew that, as soon as it was open, she would shoot. ‘Listen to me. Think of your new child. What’s its name?’ He was trying to gain time, to shift her attention on to something that would make her hesitate. But Camilla didn’t reply. She was still staring straight at the door. He tried again: ‘Think of your husband. You can’t leave the two of them alone in the world.’

The first tears welled in Camilla’s eyes. ‘Filippo was such a sweet child.’

Marcus decided to be blunt with her. ‘What do you think will happen when you’ve pulled the trigger? How do you think you’ll feel afterwards? I’ll tell you: it won’t change anything. Everything
will be exactly the same as it is now. There’s no relief in store for you. Things will still be hard. And what will you have gained?’

‘There’s no other way to get justice.’

Marcus knew the woman was right. There was nothing to link Astor Goyash and Canestrari to Filippo. The one piece of evidence – the bone he had found at the clinic – had been taken by Goyash’s men. ‘There’ll never be justice,’ he said in a firm but compassionate tone, with a tinge of resignation, because he feared he wouldn’t be able to prevent the worst. ‘But revenge isn’t the only possibility left to you.’ He recognised in her the same look he had seen in Raffaele Altieri’s eyes when he shot his father, the same determination Pietro Zini had shown when he had executed Federico Noni instead of turning him in to the police. This time, too, it was all pointless – the door of the bathroom would open and Camilla would pull the trigger.

They saw the handle turning. The light inside went off and the door opened wide. The girl screamed from the bed. The target appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a snow-white dressing gown, he stared at the barrel of the gun in sudden confusion, and his icy eyes melted in an instant. But he wasn’t an old man of seventy.

He was a boy of fifteen.

There was confusion and dismay all round. Marcus looked at Camilla, who stared at the boy. ‘Where’s Astor Goyash?’ she asked.

He replied in such a thin voice that they couldn’t make out what he was saying.

‘Where’s Astor Goyash?’ Camilla repeated angrily, brandishing the gun in his direction.

The boy said, ‘I’m Astor Goyash.’

‘No, you aren’t,’ she replied, disbelieving.

‘You must mean my grandfather … My birthday party’s upstairs, he’s there now.’

Camilla realised her mistake and for a moment she looked unsteady on her feet. Marcus took advantage of this to go to her, put his hand on the gun, and make her slowly lower it. The woman’s exhausted eyes lowered at the same time. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to her.
‘There’s nothing else to do here. You’re not going to kill the boy just because his grandfather is somehow involved in your son’s death, are you? That would be gratuitous cruelty, not revenge. And I know you’re not capable of that.’

Camilla was thinking about this when she stopped suddenly. She had noticed something.

Marcus followed the direction of her gaze and saw that she was again looking at the boy, staring at his bare chest as revealed by the opening of his dressing gown. She advanced and he retreated, until he found himself with his back to the wall. Camilla gently moved aside the lapels, uncovering the long scar on his chest.

A shiver went through Marcus, taking his breath away for a moment. My God, what did they do?

Three years earlier, Astor Goyash’s grandson had been the same age as Filippo Rocca. Alberto Canestrari was a surgeon. He had killed Filippo on commission in order to procure a heart for this boy.

Camilla couldn’t have known that, Marcus told himself. But some premonition, maternal instinct, a sixth sense – had driven her to make that gesture, even though she didn’t seem to fully understand why.

She put her hand on the boy’s chest, and he let her. She stood there, feeling the throb of that heart. A sound coming from another place, another life.

Camilla and the boy looked at each other. Was she looking for something deep in his eyes, a light that told her that her son was still there? Or perhaps the revelation that Filippo, too, could somehow see her at that moment?

Marcus didn’t know, but he realised that the only evidence that could link old Astor Goyash to the child’s death was encased in his grandson’s chest. A biopsy taken from the boy’s heart and a DNA comparison with Filippo’s family, and they could nail him. But Marcus was not sure that such justice would be any consolation to this poor mother. The grief would be agonising. So he decided to keep silent. All he wanted right now was to take Camilla out of the room. The woman had another child to think about now.

He summoned the courage to break the contact between her and young Goyash. He took her by the shoulders with the intention of leading her to the door.

She gently removed her palm from the boy’s chest, as if in a last farewell.

Then she walked to the door with Marcus. They went along the corridor, heading for the lift. Unexpectedly, Camilla now turned to her saviour and seemed to see him for the first time. ‘I know you. You’re a priest, aren’t you?’

Marcus was taken aback and didn’t know what to reply. He simply nodded, waiting for the rest.

‘He told me about you,’ she went on.

Realising that she was referring to the mystery penitenziere, Marcus let her continue.

‘A week ago on the telephone he told me I would meet you here.’ Camilla tilted her head and looked at him with a strange expression: she seemed to be afraid for him. ‘He asked me to tell you that the two of you will meet where it all began.
But this time you’ll have to look for the devil.
’

10.07 p.m.

She had caught the number 52 bus from the terminus in the Piazza San Silvestro, and got off near the Via Paisiello. There she had taken the 911 to the Piazza Euclide. She had gone down into the station and caught the local train from Viterbo to Rome, which at that point went underground, connecting the northern zone of the city with the centre. She had got off at the only stop on that stretch of the line, Piazza Flaminio, and changed to the Metro in the direction of Anagnina. Getting off at Furio Camillo, she had come back out on to the surface and called a taxi.

Each transfer had taken only a few minutes and the route had been dictated by chance, just to throw any possible pursuers off the scent.

Sandra didn’t trust Schalber. He had shown a certain skill in
predicting her moves. Although he had managed to escape on the way out of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, she was sure he must still be lurking somewhere, trying to get back on her trail. But the tricks she had adopted should have been sufficient to throw him off. Because she still had one more thing to do tonight before she went back to her hotel.

She had to pay a visit to a new acquaintance.

The taxi dropped her in front of the main entrance of the Gemelli hospital. Sandra followed the signs until she reached the small building that housed intensive care – the department that the staff of the Gemelli knew as ‘the border’.

She went through the first door, a sliding one, and found herself in a waiting room with four rows of plastic chairs, one joined to the other, as blue as the walls that surrounded them. Even the heaters were the same colour, as well as the coats of the doctors and nurses, and even the drinking water dispenser. The effect was an incomprehensible monotony of colour.

The second door was a security door. To get to the heart of the building – intensive care – you had to have a special magnetic card that opened the lock electronically. There was a policeman on guard here, a reminder that the department housed a number of dangerous individuals, even though they were currently unable to harm anyone. Sandra flashed her badge at her colleague, and a nurse showed her the procedure for visitors, making her put on overshoes, a white coat and a cap. Then she activated the door to admit her.

The long corridor that stretched out ahead of her reminded her at first of an aquarium, like the one in Genoa she had visited a couple of times with David. She loved fish, she could watch them for hours, letting herself be hypnotised by their movements. In front of her now she had a series of goldfish bowls, which were in fact the recovery rooms, each behind a glass partition. The lights were low, and there was a strange silence over everything. If you listened hard, you realised that it was in fact made up of sounds. As quiet as breathing and as rhythmic and constant as a submerged heartbeat.

The place seemed to be asleep.

She walked along the linoleum floor of the corridor and came to the nurses’ station, where two nurses sat in the gloom in front of a console, their faces reflecting the gleam of the monitors tracking the patients’ vital signs. Behind them, a young doctor was sitting at a steel desk, writing.

Two nurses and a doctor: that was all the staff needed to keep an eye on the ward at night. Sandra introduced herself and asked for directions, which they gave her.

As she passed the goldfish bowls, she looked at the men inside them, lying in their beds as if swimming in a sea of silence.

She headed for the last of them. As she approached it, she realised that someone was watching her from the other side. A short young woman, about the same age as her, in a white coat, stood up and came to the door. There were six beds in the room, only one of which was occupied. By Jeremiah Smith. He was intubated and his chest rose and fell regularly. He looked much older than his fifty years.

The young woman looked straight at the newcomer. Seeing her face, Sandra had a sense of déjà vu. After a moment, she remembered where she had seen her before, and the memory sent a shiver through her. The monster was being visited by the ghost of one of his victims.

‘Teresa,’ she said.

The young woman smiled. ‘I’m Monica, her twin sister.’

This wasn’t just the sister of one of the poor innocents killed by Jeremiah, this was also the doctor who had saved his life.

‘My name’s Sandra Vega, I’m with the police.’ She held out her hand.

Monica shook it. ‘Is this the first time you’ve come here?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Yes, from the way you were looking at him.’

Sandra turned to look at Jeremiah Smith again. ‘Why, how was I looking at him?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe the way you’d look at a goldfish in an aquarium.’

Sandra shook her head, amused.

‘Did I say something wrong?’

‘No, nothing. Don’t worry.’

‘I come here every evening. Before starting the night shift or when I’ve finished the day shift. I stay here for fifteen minutes, then go. I don’t know why I do it. I want to, and that’s it.’

Sandra admired Monica’s courage. ‘Why did you save him?’

‘Why do all of you ask me the same thing?’ Monica retorted, although not in an unpleasant way. ‘The right question should be: why didn’t I let him die? They’re two different things, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’ She hadn’t thought of it that way.

‘If you asked me whether I’d like to kill him now, I’d reply that I’d do it if I didn’t fear the consequences. But what would have been the point of letting him die without intervening? A normal person getting to the end of his life should pass away naturally. He’s not a normal person. He doesn’t deserve it. My sister didn’t get that chance.’

Sandra was forced to reflect. She was looking for David’s killer, and she kept telling herself that it was in order to get at the truth, to find some meaning in her husband’s death. To get justice. But how would she have behaved in Monica’s place?

‘No,’ Monica continued, ‘my greatest revenge is to see him in that bed. No trial, no jury. No law, no technicalities. No psychiatric reports, no extenuating circumstances. True revenge is in knowing that he’ll stay like this, imprisoned in himself. That’s a prison he certainly won’t escape from. And I’ll be able to come and see him every day, look him in the face and tell myself that justice has been done.’ She turned to Sandra. ‘How many of those who’ve lost loved ones through other people’s wickedness have been granted the same privilege?’

‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘I was the one who gave him cardiac massage. I put my hands on his chest, on those words …
Kill me
.’ She choked back her revulsion. ‘The smell of his faeces, his urine, was on my clothes, his saliva was on my fingers.’ She paused. ‘In my job, you see many things. Illness is a great leveller. But the truth is that we doctors don’t save anyone.
Each person saves himself. Choosing the right life to lead, the right path to go down. For all of us, the time comes when we’re covered in faeces and urine. And it’s sad if we don’t discover who we are until that day.’

Sandra was surprised at so much wisdom. And yet Monica was more or less her age and seemed quite fragile. She wished she could stay and listen to her some more.

But Monica looked at her watch. ‘I’m sorry I’ve kept you. I’d better go, my shift will be starting soon.’

‘It was a pleasure to meet you. I’ve learned a lot from you tonight.’

Monica smiled. ‘Even slaps in the face teach you to grow, as my father always says.’

Sandra watched her as she walked away down the deserted corridor. Once again an idea materialised in her head. But she continued to dismiss it. She was convinced that Schalber had killed her husband. And she had slept with him. But she had needed those caresses. David would have understood.

She took a mask from a sterile container and put it on, then went through the door into that little hell that contained only one damned soul.

She counted the steps as she approached Jeremiah Smith’s bed. Six. No, seven. She stared at him. The goldfish was within reach. His eyes were closed, surrounded by an icy indifference. The man was no longer in a position to arouse either fear or compassion.

There was an armchair next to the bed. Sandra sat down in it. She placed her elbows on her knees, put her fingers together, and leaned towards him. She would have liked to read his mind, to understand what had driven him to evil. When you came down to it, that was what the penitenzieri’s work consisted of: scrutinising the human heart in search of the underlying motives for every act. She, on the other hand, as a forensic photographer, examined the outward signs, the wounds that evil left on the world.