The Seventh Sacrament (11 page)

“These people had changed their names,” Teresa pointed out. “How the hell would he know how to find them?”

“That’s for you to discover,” Messina answered, then stuffed the pages back into the briefcase. “One more thing. The boy’s mother gave a T-shirt to some weird little church in Prati. They have a collection of memorabilia that appeals to psychics. She told them that soon after Alessio went missing, and Ludo Torchia was pronounced dead, she found it at home. With a fresh bloodstain on it. As if the two events were connected. The church collects that kind of thing apparently.”

Teresa scowled. “Leave me out of this. I’m a scientist. I don’t do witchcraft. Maybe someone had a nosebleed?”

“They didn’t,” Messina said flatly. “This T-shirt has gained a few more bloodstains over the years, not that we found that out until this morning. The church warden tried to keep it all quiet. But he’s a precise man. He made a note of the date each fresh bloodstain appeared. Any guesses?”

They looked at one another and stayed silent.

“The first happened just after Sandro Vignola went missing. Then, following each death, a day, two at the most, the warden finds another stain on Alessio Bramante’s shirt. It’s no big deal. The place scarcely has any security. Anyone could get in there, open the case, and pour something on the shirt. It doesn’t take magic. This morning…”

He paused to look out the window. They were moving into the Viale Aventino at last. It couldn’t be far away.

“…the church had a visitor. A man on his own, with a physical description that matches Bramante. This was around seven-thirty. Afterwards there were several fresh stains.
Big
stains this time, ones they couldn’t keep quiet. And some writing. That’s what brings us here. Not, unfortunately, before the caretaker had got in there first. Rosa Prabakaran is talking to her.”

Peroni’s face lit up with fury. “You’ve got a junior officer straight out of school on something like this? Aren’t there any grown-ups around?”

Messina gave him a cold managerial stare. He didn’t appreciate the interruption.

“She’s got nothing to worry about. You people, however…”

Even Falcone looked lost for a clue at that moment.

“He’s got two left on his list,” Messina continued implacably. “Dino Abati. God knows what he calls himself these days or where he’s living. And the police officer Bramante blames for stopping him beating the truth out of Ludo Torchia fourteen years ago. I hope you like the emergency quarters in the Questura, by the way, Leo. You’ll be staying there, all four of you, until this is over.”

“Oh no,” Peroni declared, waving his hand. “I’m just a man on the street these days. Don’t lay this at my door.”

“It’s already there,” Messina snapped. “Don’t you get it? Bramante isn’t just killing these people one by one to get his revenge. He’s taking someone they’re close to beforehand, holding them ransom, trying to…”

The commissario struggled for the words.

“He wants to put them through exactly the same nightmare he experienced,” Falcone filled in calmly. “But what makes you think he wants me?”

“After we worked out what was going on here, I sent a team round to the apartment Bramante has been using since he got out of prison. He was long gone. But he’s been busy. Too busy to take everything with him. Take a look at these.”

He withdrew three packs of photographic prints out of the briefcase, checked the labels, and passed one to each man. They sifted through the contents in silence.

Nic Costa was halfway through his own when he stopped, bewildered.

He was looking at a photograph of himself and Emily, walking out of the Palazzo Ruspoli, happy, smiling, arm in arm. He recognised the new red coat she was wearing. The picture had been taken two days before. They’d seen the doctor that morning, had the standard talk about what to do, what to expect, during the coming months of impending parenthood.

“What’s this lunatic doing taking photographs of me?” Teresa demanded, pointing at the pack in Peroni’s hand.

Costa glanced at them, then at Falcone’s set. In the photograph in the inspector’s hand was Raffaella, shopping in the Via degli Zingari. Something didn’t ring true.

“He didn’t try and seize any of us today,” Costa said, his eyes returning to Emily’s tired, strained face, still trying to work out what to make of the photo of them together. “He went straight for Leo.”

Messina scowled at the familiarity. “Yes, he went for the inspector. Perhaps he just saw an opportunity. He’s intelligent enough to improvise, isn’t he?”

“He’s intelligent enough to get what he wants first time round,” Falcone answered, giving Costa an interested look.

The commissario looked pleased by this response.

“I’m glad you find this worthy of your attention, Leo. It’s your case now. As I said, sick leave ends today. Peroni’s off the beat. Costa here is done playing museum curator. Head this up or sit inside the Questura trying to remember how to play chess. It’s up to you.”

Some choice, Costa thought. The avid look in Falcone’s eyes told him it was already made. A part of him was glad to see the old inspector fired up by something outside himself for a change. Another part wanted, more than anything, to see Emily, to take her away from this new threat, let her sit down, rest, recover some of the strength she seemed to have lost, without his noticing, in recent weeks.

“And the ladies?” Peroni asked.

Messina smiled. “Yes. The ladies. We have a villa near Orvieto. Big, secluded, and hard to find. A car will take them straight from the Questura. My father’s there. Giorgio Bramante isn’t looking for him. So they’ll be safe. Call it a surprise vacation. I don’t want the complication of having them around in Rome.”

“That’s their decision,” Costa complained.

“No,” Messina replied. “It’s not.”

Teresa Lupo leaned forward and tapped the commissario hard on the knee.

“Excuse me for pointing this out, but I’m a lady too. Maybe I could use that vacation.”

“You’re a pathologist,” he retorted. “And I want to introduce you to Toni LaMarca. What’s left of him.”

B
ASIC CAVING TECHNIQUE,” ABATI SAID, AND PUSHED
LaMarca back into the centre of the room. “Know the place you’re in and what’s around it. This wasn’t always a temple. I told you. These were tufa workings. Someone put the temple in here later, after they were finished digging out the stone. This is an underground quarry. Half those things you think of as corridors either lead nowhere. Or they just meet up with some fissure or fault in the rock.”

“I heard water,” Vignola said, puzzled.

“This is Rome!” Abati declared. “There are springs. Fault lines. Unfinished tunnels that lead nowhere. There must be channels that go all the way down to the river. It could link up with the Cloaca Maxima itself somehow. If I had the equipment and the people…” He gave them that condescending look Torchia was beginning to resent. “I could find out. But I don’t think any of you quite fits the bill. So don’t walk anywhere I can’t see you. I really don’t feel in the mood for rescue work.”

In his head, Ludo Torchia had allotted each of them a role. Abati was Heliodronus, protector of the leader. Vignola was Perses, clever, quick, and not always willing to reveal what he knew. Big, stupid Andrea Guerino made a good foot soldier as Miles. Raul Bellucci, an underling who always did what he was told, could pass as Leo, the mechanism for the sacrifice. And for Nymphus, the bridegroom, some kind of creature who was both male and female in the same body, the slim, annoying creep who was Toni LaMarca.

There could be only one Pater. Torchia understood exactly what that meant. Pater involved leadership, not blood relationship, certainly not love. He’d watched the way his own father had behaved, the simple, blunt dictatorial attitude that said
Here in my own house I am a kind of god too.
From obedience came knowledge and security. It had been that way for Ludo Torchia right up to the age of nine, when his father went down to work at the docks in Genoa one day and never came back. A year later, when his weak, incapable mother thought he was over everything, Torchia had stolen into the jetty where the accident occurred. He’d stared at the giant black crane, its head like that of some stupid crow, trying to imagine what had happened, how it would feel to have that mass of evil steel tumble over towards you, ravenous for something to destroy.

Ludo loathed the Church from that moment forward, watching his mother cling to the Bible each night, trying to find some solace in a religion that, the young Ludo Torchia knew, had failed them by allowing the crane to topple in the first place.

When he came to La Sapienza and began, under the careful tutelage of the brilliant Giorgio Bramante, to study Mithraism, Ludo understood finally what his life had lacked, and how that gaping hole could be filled. By duty, responsibility, leadership. Some clear declaration of his own identity, one that set him apart from the drones.
He
would be Pater one day, part of the old religion, one that kept its secrets beneath ground, didn’t share them foolishly with the masses in vast golden palaces. Here, in the temple that Bramante had uncovered, all the pieces should have been in place, and Ludo could begin by finishing the task those long-dead soldiers had begun almost eighteen centuries before.

Except one detail was missing. The cowardly Vincenzo had failed them, failed his destiny, to be Corax, the initiate, the beginner, a child even, if the old books had it right.

“Also…” Abati added quickly, marching towards the altar again, intent on something Torchia couldn’t predict, “I am not countenancing any of this nonsense.”

To Torchia’s astonishment, Abati now had the bird’s cage in his hands, was lifting it high. The shining black cockerel flapped its wings and made a low, aggressive crowing noise.

“Don’t touch that,” Torchia ordered. “I said…”

Dino Abati was working on the cage lid.

“Ludo. Think about it. We’re in trouble enough without these stupid games.”

“Andrea,” Torchia yelled. “Stop him.”

“What…?” Guerino mumbled. The big farmer’s son looked half stoned already.

None of them understood, Torchia realized. Bramante’s words kept ringing in his ears. How terrible must it have been to have lost your religion? To have seen it snatched from your hands, just before death, to be denied the final sacrament, the last opportunity you would have on this earth to make peace with your god?

Abati had the cage open, was turning it sideways, trying to shake the cockerel out into the damp dark air.

“Don’t do that,” Torchia said, walking over towards the red-suited figure.

Heliodronus always wore red, Torchia remembered. He always coveted the position of Pater. Had to. Until Pater died, there was nowhere for him to go.

Ludo Torchia surreptitiously retrieved a fist-sized rock from one of the stone benches as he moved, gripped it low and hidden in his right hand.

“I said…” he began to murmur, then stopped, found he was waving away a cloud of stinking black feathers, flapping furiously around his face.

Maybe he screamed. He wasn’t sure. Someone laughed. Toni LaMarca, by the sound of it. Terrified, screeching with fear and rage, the cockerel dug its claws into Ludo Torchia’s scalp, then launched itself over him, towards the exit, flapping manically, its cawing metallic voice echoing around the stone chamber that enclosed them like a tomb.

He didn’t know why he’d picked a bird that was black. Like a crow, its wings and limbs extended. Like some miniature mocking imitation of a crane.

Sometimes Ludo Torchia didn’t know why he did things at all. When he’d caught his breath again, he found he was on his knees, looking at the bloodied head of Dino Abati, pinning the figure in the red caving suit to the ground.

Not that it was necessary. Abati’s eyes were glassy. His mouth flapped open, slack-jawed. Torchia didn’t actually remember hitting Abati, which meant, he realised, he could have smashed the big, jagged rock that was still in his hand deep into his skull time and time again.

The rest were crowded round the two of them now. No one spoke. The chamber stank. Of dope and the bird and blood and of sweat and fear, too.

“Oh Christ, Ludo,” Toni LaMarca—it had to be Toni LaMarca—whispered. “I think you killed him….”

Torchia looked down at Abati. There was blood seeping from his nostrils. It bubbled, then subsided as he watched. Abati was breathing. He was probably just unconscious. That was all. Still, he’d made his point. He’d established himself, the way the Pater had to.

Torchia turned, gripping the rock, and looked up at the four of them. The Pater must rule. That was how it worked.

“Listen. All of you.”

He realised he was speaking in a different kind of voice already. Older. A voice with an authority he hadn’t quite found inside himself before.