The Lost Girls of Rome (49 page)

He went straight to the bedroom. There on the pillows were the two pairs of pyjamas. He hadn’t been mistaken, he remembered it well. One was a woman’s, the other a man’s. The knick-knacks and other objects were as neatly arranged as ever. The first time he had been here, he had thought that this tidiness was a refuge from anxiety, from the chaos generated by the disappearance of a child. Everything had been in its rightful place, everything had been perfect. Anomalies, he thought, reminding himself what he should have looked for.

The smiling photograph of Filippo watched him from the chest of drawers, and Marcus felt as if he was being led. On the bedside table, on the side of the bed where Camilla slept, was the baby monitor with which the woman should have been listening to her new child sleeping. And that made him think again of the room next door.

He crossed the threshold of what had once been Filippo’s bedroom, now divided into two equal parts. The one that interested him was occupied by a changing table, a mountain of toys and a cot.

Where’s the child I ought to be seeing? What’s behind all this show? He remembered Bruno Martini’s words: Her husband left her two years ago, he has a new life now, with another woman, they even have a child.

Camilla had been forced to suffer a further blow. The man she had chosen to love had abandoned her. But his betrayal didn’t lie in the fact that there was another woman, but in the fact that this woman had given him a child. A replacement for Filippo.

The worst thing isn’t the loss of a child, he thought. It’s the fact that life goes on regardless. And Camilla Rocca hadn’t wanted to stop being a mother.

As soon as he realised the truth, Marcus noticed the anomaly. This time, it wasn’t a presence. Rather, it was something that wasn’t there.

Next to the cot, the other baby monitor was missing.

If the receiver was in Camilla’s room, where was the transmitter?

Marcus went back to the first bedroom and sat down on the double bed, next to the bedside table. He reached out a hand to the baby monitor and switched it on.

Constant, uninterrupted surface noise, like the incomprehensible voice of darkness. Marcus put his ear closer, trying to perceive something. Nothing. He raised the volume to maximum. The noise invaded the room. He sat there waiting, on the alert. The seconds passed as he probed the depths of that sea of whispers, in search of a slight variation, a different colour.

Then he heard it, deep in the grey dust emitted by the loudspeaker: another sound. A rhythmical sound. It wasn’t artificial, it was alive. Breathing.

Marcus grabbed the baby monitor and, holding it in his hands, started walking around the house in search of the origin of the signal. It couldn’t be far, he told himself. These devices don’t have a very long range. So where is it?

He opened all the doors, checked all the rooms. Reaching the back door, he looked out through the mosquito screen and saw the blurred image of an overgrown garden and a tool shed.

He went outside and for the first time noticed that the neighbours’ houses were not especially near and that the property was surrounded by tall pines that acted as a screen. The place was ideal. He walked along the gravel path towards the shed. His steps sank into the wet ground, the rain beat down without respite. He was walking against the wind, feeling as though dark forces were trying to persuade him to give up. But at last he reached his goal. There was a heavy padlock on the shed door.

Marcus looked around and immediately found what he needed: a small iron pole stuck in the ground that served as the base for a sprinkler. He put down the baby monitor, grabbed the pole with both hands, and tugged at it until he managed to get it out of the ground. Then he turned back to the padlock and started hitting it as hard as he could. At least, the steel ring snapped and the door opened a few inches. Marcus flung it wide open.

The murky daylight invaded the small space, revealing a carpet of refuse and a small electric heater. The second baby monitor stood next to a mattress thrown on the ground with a heap of rags on it – a heap that moved.

‘Lara …’ he called, and waited for a long time for an answer that did not come. ‘Lara?’ he repeated, more loudly.

‘Yes,’ came an incredulous voice.

Marcus rushed to her. She was huddled beneath filthy blankets. She was exhausted, dirty, but still alive. ‘It’s all right, I’m here for you.’

‘Help me, please,’ she said, weeping, without realising that he was already helping her.

She kept repeating the same words even when Marcus took her in his arms and led her out into the rain and along the gravel path and through the back door of the little house. Here, Marcus stopped.

Camilla Rocca was standing completely still in the corridor, soaked to the skin. She was holding a bunch of keys and some shopping bags. ‘He took her for me. He said I could keep his child …’

Marcus realised she was referring to Jeremiah Smith.

She looked at him and then at Lara. ‘
She
didn’t want it.’

Evil generates evil
, had been Jeremiah’s words. Camilla had received a bad deal from life. But it was what she had suffered that had made her become what she was now. She had accepted a gift from a monster. Marcus realised how she had managed to deceive him. She had created a parallel world, which for her was real. She was sincere, she wasn’t playing a part.

He resumed walking and went past her with Lara in his arms. Ignoring her, he took the car keys from her hands.

Camilla stood watching them, then collapsed on the floor. She was talking to herself in a thin voice, constantly repeating the same words. ‘
She
didn’t want it …’

10.56 p.m.

Inspector De Michelis was feeding coins into a coffee machine. Sandra was hypnotised by the care with which he carried out this
operation. She had never imagined she would be back in the Gemelli hospital so soon.

Camusso’s call had come one hour earlier, as she was getting ready to pack her bags, leave the hotel and get in a train that would take her back to Milan together with her superior, who had come to fetch her. At first, she had assumed the superintendent had news about Schalber, but after assuring her that Interpol were dealing with it, he had told her the latest development in the case of Jeremiah Smith. At that point, she and De Michelis had rushed to the hospital to see with their own eyes if it was true.

Lara was alive.

The circumstances were unclear. The architecture student had been found in a vehicle abandoned in the car park of a shopping centre on the outskirts of Rome. There had been an anonymous tip-off, in the form of a phone call. The information was still sketchy and was not filtering beyond the door of the emergency department, where Lara was currently being kept for tests.

What Sandra did know was that Superintendent Camusso and his men had made an arrest in Ostia, led there both by Lara’s testimony and by the documents found in the car. She wondered exactly how Jeremiah Smith had been involved, but of one thing she was sure: Marcus had had something to with this happy outcome.

Yes, it was him, she kept telling herself. Lara was bound to mention a mysterious saviour with a scar on his temple. Would the police be able to trace him? She hoped not.

As soon as the news that Lara was free had got out, the media had besieged the hospital. Reporters, cameramen and photographers were lying in wait in the grounds. Lara’s parents had not yet arrived – it would take them time to get to Rome from the south – but her friends had started coming to ask after her. Among them, Sandra recognised Christian Lorieri, the assistant lecturer in art hist ory and the father of the child she was carrying. They exchanged a fleeting glance that was more eloquent than a thousand words. The fact that he was here meant their little chat at the university had borne fruit.

So far, there had been only one medical bulletin. It reported
tersely that the student’s clinical condition was good and that, despite the stress she had suffered, there had been no harm to her unborn child.

De Michelis approached Sandra, blowing into a plastic cup. ‘Don’t you think you have a bit of explaining to do?’

‘You’re right, but I warn you, you’ll need more than one coffee.’

‘Then we won’t be able to leave before tomorrow morning. We’re going to have to spend the night here.’

Sandra took his hand. ‘I’d prefer to talk to you as a friend, not as a police officer. Is that all right with you?’

‘What is it, don’t you like policemen any more?’ he said teasingly. But seeing that Sandra was serious, he changed his tone. ‘I wasn’t there for you when David died. The least I can do is listen to you now.’

For the next two hours, Sandra told him the whole story. She knew she could: he was a man whose moral integrity had always served as an example to her. De Michelis let her speak, interrupting her only to clarify a few points. When she had finished, she felt much lighter.

‘Penitenzieri, you say?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘Have you really never heard of them?’

De Michelis shrugged. ‘I’ve seen so much in this job that nothing surprises me any more. It sometimes happens that there are cases that get solved through a tip-off or by chance, without any explanation. But I’ve never linked it to people investigating in parallel with the police. I’m a believer, you know. It’s nice to think there’s something irrational and yet beautiful that I can trust when I can no longer stand the ugliness I see every day.’

De Michelis stroked her arm, just as Marcus had done before disappearing from the recovery room and her life. Over the inspector’s shoulder, Sandra noticed two men in jackets and ties addressing an officer, who then pointed in their direction. The two men approached.

‘Are you Sandra Vega?’ one of them asked.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Could we have a quick word?’ the other man asked.

‘Of course.’

They made it clear that the subject was confidential, and as they drew her aside, they showed her their badges. ‘We’re from Interpol.’

‘What’s going on?’

It was the older man who spoke. ‘Superintendent Camusso called us this afternoon asking for information about one of our agents. He said he was calling on your behalf. The officer’s name is Thomas Schalber. Can you confirm to us that you know him?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Yesterday.’

The two men looked at each other. ‘Are you sure?’ the younger man asked.

Sandra was starting to lose patience. ‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘And is this the man you met?’

They showed her a badge with a photograph and Sandra leaned forward to get a better look at it. ‘There’s a definite resemblance, but I have no idea who this man is.’

The two men looked at one another again, and this time they looked nervous. ‘Would you be ready to give a description of the person you saw to one of our identikit specialists?’

Sandra had had enough: she wanted to know what was going on. ‘All right, boys. Which one of you is going to tell me what this is all about? Because there seems to be something I’m missing here.’

The younger man looked at his elder for approval. When he had obtained it, he said, ‘The last time he was in contact with us, Thomas Schalber was working undercover on a case.’

‘Why do you say “was”?’

‘Because he then disappeared, and we haven’t heard from him in more than a year.’

Stunned by this news, Sandra didn’t know what to think. ‘I’m sorry, if your agent is the person in the photograph and you don’t know what’s become of him, then who was the man I met?’

The wolves were calling to each other in the deserted streets, howling their names at the dark sky. They were the masters of Prypiat now.

The hunter could hear them as he tried to break open the door of Anatoly Petrov’s apartment on the eleventh floor of Block 109.

The wolves knew that the intruder had not left the city, and now they were looking for him.

He couldn’t leave before sunrise. His hands were hurting with the cold and the lock was proving a tough proposition. But in the end he managed to open it.

The apartment was the same size as the one next to it. Nothing had been touched.

The windows had been sealed with rags and insulating tape to keep out draughts. Anatoly must have taken this precaution immediately after the nuclear incident, to stop radiation from getting in.

The hunter saw the tag with his photo on the uniform of the plant hanging just inside the door. He was about thirty-five years old. Smooth fair hair, with a fringe that covered his forehead. Glasses with heavy frames. Empty blue eyes. Thin lips surmounted by a light-coloured down. His job was ‘turbine technician’.

The hunter looked around. The furnishings were modest. In the living room there was a flowered velvet sofa and a television set. In a corner stood two glass display cabinets, both empty. A bookcase covered part of one wall. The hunter went closer to read the titles of the volumes. There were texts on zoology, anthropology and many on ethnology. Among the authors represented were Charles Darwin, Konrad Lorenz, Desmond Morris and Richard Dawkins. Studies on animal learning processes, the environmental conditioning of species, the relationship between instinct and external stimuli. Not the usual reading matter of a turbine technician. On a lower shelf, a series of exercise books, about twenty of them, all numbered.

The hunter didn’t know what to think. But the most important conclusion was that Anatoly Petrov had lived alone. There were no signs of the presence of a family. Or of a child.

He was overcome by a momentary sense of unease. Now he was forced to stay all night. He couldn’t light a fire, because it would boost the effects of the radiation. He had no food with him, only water. He would have to find some blankets and a few tins. As he searched, he realised that there were no clothes in the bedroom wardrobe and that the shelves in the pantry had been emptied. Everything suggested that Anatoly had been farsighted enough to leave Prypiat immediately after the incident at the Chernobyl reactor, but before the mass evacuation. Unlike the others, he hadn’t abandoned everything in a hurry. He had probably not believed the reassurances of the authorities who, in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, had kept telling the population to stay at home.