The Sleeping Nymph, page 13
“VOCs—Volatile Organic Compounds—tend to sink to the ground once they’re released, so in our training, Smoky and I have mostly focused on tracing remains at ground level; after all, if there’s blood on a ceiling, it’s likely there will be some on the floor as well. It would be implausible for there not to be.”
“Agreed,” said the head of the forensics unit.
“Sniffer dogs will always have a harder time pinpointing targets located at a height beyond their physical reach,” Blanca continued, getting into her stride. “Smoky’s alert signal for a scent that he’s found at ground level is to lie down and fix his eyes on the source. If the scent is located at medium height, he’ll sit and stare at it. If it’s higher than that, he’ll sit and bark three times—as if to say how do you expect me to reach all the way up there?”
Gardini chuckled.
“That’s fair enough.”
Blanca’s hand found Teresa’s, who clasped it in hers, encouraging the young woman to keep going.
“It’s a similar process for buried corpses, though in that case the scent will not originate from a single point, as it would do for a drop of blood, say, or a bone, but from a broader surface area, corresponding more or less to the outline of the cadaver underground. The alert signal will also differ: Smoky will wag his tail, turn on the spot and maybe even start digging.”
Marini coughed.
“I won’t ask you how you got hold of a corpse to practice on,” he muttered.
“Blanca and Smoky are no amateurs,” Teresa intervened. “They’ve already led several search parties across the border and taken part in seminars in Sweden, Great Britain and Finland. Let’s make sure we don’t drive them away, shall we?” She pinched his cheek. “Now, go and spread a few drops around,” she added matter-of-factly, glancing at the vial Marini was still holding. “Then it’ll be Smoky’s turn to show us where they are.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re our doubting Thomas. And don’t forget, you’ve got to muddle the search area with your own scent.”
After a moment’s hesitation, and the long-suffering—or was it despairing?—look of a man indulging other people’s madness, Marini disappeared into the hallways of the asylum, tailed by Gardini and by the head of the forensics squad.
“He doesn’t like me,” Blanca said softly, stroking Smoky’s fur. She seemed sad.
“To the contrary,” said Teresa reassuringly. “I don’t know why it is, but despite how clever and talented he is, that handsome young man has a rather low opinion of himself. He sees you as a threat.”
“Really?”
“Oh, definitely. Massimo Marini’s biggest problem is Massimo Marini.”
It took Inspector Marini about twenty minutes to decide where to hide the five drops of blood. He was aided in this task by the head of the forensics team, who’d also brought along a briefcase containing a series of “decoys” designed to disturb the dog’s olfactory powers.
Teresa and Blanca waited patiently until Marini re-emerged, looking pleased with himself. He knew he had made it as tough as he could.
“Shall we proceed?” he said.
Blanca didn’t need asking twice. She called for Smoky, and once he was at her feet and ready, she gave the command: “Sniff!”
They began a kind of dance, a choreography of scent molecules and chemosensors, a performance of symbiotic, elective affinity. The girl and the dog understood each other, could detect in each other’s movements signals that remained indecipherable to the rest of the world. Unlike the dog handlers Teresa had seen in the police force, Blanca’s manner with Smoky wasn’t imperious. They were a single unit. They could communicate without making a sound. Blanca followed Smoky’s lead, knew when to coax him on, and when to sit back and let him take his time over things. She lived in a world of darkness, a world of endless confusion. Yet there she was, actually dancing, floating somewhere far above the shadows in her eyes.
Everyone else followed their progress from afar, afraid of distracting them.
“I can’t picture them at the police academy,” Marini muttered.
Teresa looked at him in amazement.
“I had no idea you were such an asshole,” she said.
“For expressing my perfectly justified misgivings?”
“For having a go at a girl who’s barely twenty.”
“I’m not having a go at her. She’s blind, for God’s sake. Don’t you see the position you’ve put her in? How much pressure she must be under?”
Teresa confronted him then, holding her head so high it almost touched his.
“Don’t set her boundaries she doesn’t feel the need for. You’d be doing her a disservice. I’m sure plenty of people have tried to do that to her before, yet here she is. She’s left them all behind. She’s stronger than you give her credit for and if you don’t get that, then that’s your problem.”
He spread his arms out, then let them fall to his side.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t have that kind of faith,” he replied. “They’re never going to make it.”
“Then go and see how she’s doing, St. Thomas,” she said, urging him to follow the girl.
Marini took his new role of skeptical observer very seriously indeed, steadfast in his determination to adhere to a notion of protocol—even though any semblance of correct procedure had been shattered the moment Teresa had turned up to see Blanca with Mr. Skinny in tow.
The girl was patient with Marini and put up with his presence, though there was a flush to her cheeks now that could have been a sign of vexation. Occasionally, she allowed herself to push him away with an outstretched arm, demanding that he give her more room and dial back his pedantic scrutiny—which also betrayed a certain fascination with her and the urge to help her in some way. It was all in the tiniest gestures, in the way Marini’s hand would stretch out of its own accord to steady her in case she should need it.
Teresa watched them bumping into each other, apologizing, backing away to a safe distance, moving closer and bumping into each other again. It was progress: they were sizing each other up, two pieces of a puzzle, their sharp edges just about blunted, figuring out how they might fit together.
After some initial growling in Marini’s direction, Smoky seemed to forget the existence of anybody other than his own human. His senses were focused entirely on the trail he was following until suddenly a new urgency crept into his movements.
Here we go. Teresa felt a knot of anxiety in her belly. A single mistake would be sufficient to cast doubt on the dog’s accuracy.
Smoky sniffed excitedly around a grate on the floor, lay down and waited for Blanca to place her hand on his back.
“Here’s trace number one,” she said and with barely the whisper of a command, had the dog leap back up onto its feet.
“Correct,” the head of the forensics team confirmed.
Smoky had seen through the trick: he had detected the scent cone from the blood sample even amid all that rust, which—like blood—contained ferritin.
“Let’s move on,” said Gardini.
Smoky resumed his game, happily wagging his tail even as he took careful note of Blanca’s occasional instructions. This time he detected a trace of blood on the blackened floor of the old kitchen, amid the remains of a fire that had probably been lit by kids in search of adventure.
Hidden in ash, which—Teresa realized—would have gotten into the dog’s nose and hindered his sensory faculties.
“Trace number two.”
“Correct!”
The third drop had been hidden among some rubbish inside a cupboard and the fourth in the cork of a bottle of grappa, still redolent with the heady scent of alcohol.
The test came to a close in a second-floor bathroom. Smoky sat down and barked thrice at the moldy ceiling.
“Trace number five.”
“Correct. You’ve passed.”
Marini had done a decent job, but it hadn’t been enough. Evidently, his precognitive qualities left much to be desired.
“They’re never going to make it,” he’d said earlier. Teresa could tell from his expression now that he would really have liked to take that back. Ambrosini had not been exaggerating. This girl and her dog were invaluable assets.
Would Smoky’s senses be able to detect—in the heart of an unfamiliar forest, amid millions of other scents—the presence of a body that had been buried seventy years ago?
26
I’m such an idiot!
The realization of what he’d done struck Massimo like a bolt of lightning. It came as he was driving home, his thoughts revolving around a dog with the ability to discover the presence of death in places nobody else could see, the blind girl who followed him in total, reverent silence and the mysterious designs Teresa Battaglia had in store for her team.
Elena’s text had reached him a few hours earlier, but he’d only read it now, while waiting at a red light.
The light turned green, but he didn’t move.
He’d forgotten about the check-up he was meant to attend with her.
He’d forgotten about his baby before it was even born.
The horror he felt was so overwhelming that he couldn’t move. Only when the honking behind him became relentless, and a car trying to overtake him nearly crashed into a van coming down the other lane, did he manage to pull himself together.
He shifted into first gear and drove home, his weakness leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
I’m such an idiot.
Massimo’s throat was dry and he felt like screaming. Yet again, he’d managed to ruin everything—perhaps irreparably this time. He had hurt Elena too often to hope she might forgive him. And that reckless, pure and peerless love he’d felt for her seemed to have disappeared, as if her body had absorbed every drop of it the moment it had opened up to the new life growing inside it.
He drove around in circles for half an hour before finally turning into the lane that led to his building. He parked, then looked up at the third floor. The French windows on the terrace were open. Elena was back.
For a brief moment, he was tempted to turn around and leave, postpone the inevitable confrontation. Instead, he took out his keys and went upstairs.
Her scent was everywhere. It enveloped Massimo the moment he set foot through his front door. She had only been here a few days, and yet Elena’s essence seemed to have seeped into every object and every fold of his life. It wasn’t some artificial industrial concoction, an expensive fragrance to spray over one’s skin and clothes. It was more complex than that: an invisible scaffolding that had been erected almost overnight, a mark of territorial possession that signaled the presence of the woman who ruled over that realm. It was a fragrance pyramid composed of the smell of the books Elena had brought with her and that he kept finding scattered across the various rooms of the house; of sprigs of lavender she had stuffed into pouches of organza and buried among her clothes. It carried traces of her favorite soap, which smelled like the sea, of the candles she lit up in the evenings as if every night were a romantic occasion, of her honey-scented shampoo, the only kind that didn’t spoil her hair, and of the cake she’d baked the day before—Massimo’s favorite. The essence of vanilla and sugar still lingered in the air.
Sometimes Elena’s scent was reassuringly maternal; sometimes it was sensual and sometimes joyful. But it was, in all its forms, the element that turned those four walls into a home.
He found her lying with her eyes closed on a sun lounger on the terrace, a glass of mint-infused water in her hand. Her other hand stroked her abdomen over and over again, caressing the unborn creature within, cradling it already.
Massimo stood at the door, trying to find the right words to break the silence without breaking the peace.
“Don’t say anything,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I’m not interested.”
He swallowed.
“How are you?” he asked.
Elena finally looked at him.
He could see in her eyes that she had been crying, but Massimo wasn’t sure he was the cause of it. Her emotion seemed to have stemmed not from sadness or despair, but from an overwhelming love that had shaken her to the core and that—for the first time since he’d met her—wasn’t directed at him.
Elena had been crying tears of joy.
“We’re all right,” she replied. “You?”
Massimo sat beside her. Elena put the glass down on a small table, right next to an envelope. Massimo’s first thought when he saw it was that she must have left him a letter. His stomach churned.
“I don’t recognize myself anymore,” he whispered without looking at her. “It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth.”
“I know.”
“I don’t like myself, Elena. I hate the person I’ve become. But I can’t spend my whole life pretending, either. I—”
“Don’t say it,” she interjected. “Don’t say things you’ll end up regretting.”
Massimo fell silent. He really had been on the verge of admitting that he didn’t want the child. He had no idea why Elena was still wasting her time with him. He couldn’t understand her. Even he was sickened by his own behavior.
He realized then that the quality in her that he’d had previously identified as meekness was actually a form of powerful determination: Elena wanted him by her side, and she didn’t mind that he was weak; instead, she would encourage him to overcome his flaws and claim the place in her life that she was saving for him. Now that she was pregnant, the strength of her will shone with every look she gave him.
“Elena . . .” he murmured.
She stood up, took a couple of steps away, then changed her mind and leaned over to embrace him from behind his back.
“You’re not like him, Massimo. You’re not like your father,” she whispered, her warm cheek resting against his.
Massimo froze, his breath hitching.
“Who told you?” he asked, though he already knew the answer: his mother.
Elena loosened her embrace.
“The envelope’s for you. Open it. Do it now.”
She left him alone and all of a sudden, the breeze seemed a little less warm.
His heart felt like a battering ram beating against his ribcage, threatening to open old wounds that had never properly healed.
So Elena knew. He was stunned by the discovery, wondered what she might be thinking, whether or not his mother had told her everything, every awful detail. Somehow, he didn’t think so; surely Elena wouldn’t have stayed if she’d known.
He picked up the envelope and prepared for the worst, but what he found inside wasn’t the letter of farewell he had expected. As he stared at the black-and-white photos inside, he found he was having trouble formulating any kind of coherent thought. The pictures from the ultrasound fluttered in his hands like the banners of a gentle army laying siege to the wall of indifference he had constructed to shield his retreat. The commander of the invading forces was no longer than an inch and looked like a kidney bean.
It was his son.
27
Teresa finished her entry for that day and closed her notebook before switching off all the lights in her home. One by one, following the trail of her footsteps, the rooms that contained her life fell into darkness.
There were nights when in her desolation, Teresa yearned for the pain, let it overcome her, and was grateful for its presence, knowing that her grief never came unaccompanied. In the darkness, the silence, the solitude of those nights, she could almost feel the embrace of the child she had never had.
Some evenings were so desperate that Teresa felt like she was the one shattering. She had been broken one night thirty years ago in that operating theater from which she had emerged alone. But motherhood is an irreversible condition. One day there are two of you and afterwards, no matter what happens, you can never go back to being just one.
Only when the pain was too much to bear, so terrible that she felt she might die, did her baby come to her. His nearness was inscrutable yet tangible.
Teresa would start to cry then.
She lay in bed. Her scar had stopped stinging, for her son was with her now. He was in that room, near the music box whose melody he had never had the chance to hear, near a mother who had never had the chance to cradle him. Their bond had never been severed and their love had outlasted death. Her baby had come to tell her that she was and would always be his mother.
Teresa reached out into the heavy darkness and it felt like he was right there.
“Forgive me,” she whispered.
28
Visions of the Sleeping Nymph and of his own unborn child raced through Massimo’s mind, the city unspooling behind them like the painted backdrop of a silent film. Different, yet similar too, the two images had become his companions during sleepless nights and anxious days: on one side a dead woman and on the other a new life, which would soon force him to face his greatest fear.
The soles of his running shoes pounded the tarmac in a smooth, rapid rhythm. It wasn’t even seven in the morning and he’d already run ten miles.
Neither his mind nor his body were at ease.
Elena had allowed him to sleep beside her that night, but they hadn’t talked things through. He hadn’t been able to find the words to ask the one question that had been plaguing him since the moment she had mentioned his father. She seemed calm; she hadn’t pulled away when he’d embraced her—and that was already more than what Massimo could have legitimately hoped for. He’d felt her slipping into sleep, her breathing growing lighter. That was when he’d allowed himself to rest his hand over her stomach.
Later, he would try to work out how he’d felt in that moment but fail to come up with a clear answer. He hadn’t experienced the instant revulsion he’d initially feared, but he hadn’t felt the beginnings of a visceral and transcendental bond, either. If anything, it had been something of a truce, an opportunity to lay down arms and study the enemy. Except that the enemy showed no signs of aggression. It bided its time in the recesses of its mother’s womb, preparing to upend the lives of those who had brought it into being. Massimo had drawn his hand back, feeling foolish.
