The Sleeping Nymph, page 22
Parri’s hair was heavy with the droplets of water that hung suspended over the forest. He was carrying a clipboard, on which he jotted down his observations. The paper looked lumpy, its fibers saturated with moisture. Some of Parri’s notes had been reduced to smudges of blurred ink.
“Are you all right?” he asked Teresa.
She nodded, grateful for his concern. She wasn’t sure she could say the same for Marini; though there was no denying the kid was tough: no one would have guessed what state he was actually in. She’d been on the fence about bringing him along, but in the end she had decided that the only way to tear him away from the destructive thoughts that tormented him was to throw him into the murky waters of this case and hope they might awaken his survival instinct.
Parri stepped to one side for a better view of the scene, beckoning at them to join him. And it really was a spectacle—one that Teresa was sure had been set up for their benefit.
On the sign that marked the border of the district, someone had nailed a heart ripped out of an unidentified victim. The symbolism was clear; the lifeless organ carried a powerful message.
A heart for a heart, thought Teresa.
First, almost a hundred years ago, Aniza’s heart, and now this second nameless heart, appearing just as the girl’s true fate was beginning to come to light.
Teresa took out her phone and activated the voice recorder.
“Is it a human heart?” she asked Parri.
“It is. Extracted from the thorax with a double-edged blade. The incisions are clean and precise.”
“No signs of hesitation,” Teresa muttered.
Marini brought his face up close to the dead organ, peering into its bluish surface.
“When did it happen?” he asked.
“Based on the current stage of chromatic degeneration, I’d say anywhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours ago. But it’s difficult to be more precise when the weather’s this humid.” He slipped on a pair of gloves and showed them one of the incisions. “This darker coloring that you see here will spread over the superficial venous network first before it seeps deeper into the organ. As you can see here, the inner tissue retains its crimson coloring. In mild weather, the process of discoloration ordinarily begins after twenty-four hours.”
“I expect it’s too early to ask you for anything more,” said Teresa.
“Well, I can tell you now that it’s not a healthy heart. The valves are worn. The victim probably suffered from mitral insufficiency. The organ is enlarged, and not from any postmortem gaseous discharge. This wasn’t a young person’s heart.”
Teresa brought the microphone to her mouth.
“Check for reports of any local—presumed elderly—who hasn’t been seen in at least a day or two,” she noted.
She kept staring at the blackened heart. It almost looked like it was still beating, though she knew it was just her imagination, her way of forging an emotional connection with what little remained of this latest victim.
“I’ll need to take the heart to the lab for more detailed testing in order to determine whether the extraction of the organ occurred after death, or whether it was indeed the cause of death,” Parri explained. “There appears to be a fairly deep knife wound near the right atrium. I can’t yet say whether it is perimortem or postmortem.”
Teresa saw a black car arrive upon the scene. Albert Lona stepped out of the car, together with Deputy Prosecutor Gardini. Even among all the officers on guard duty, the forensics team and the local police keeping the area cordoned off, Lona spotted Teresa right away, almost as if he’d come specifically for her. Perhaps he had.
She turned back toward Parri.
“I’ve found no traces of diptera. No eggs, no larvae of any kind,” he was saying. He removed his gloves and threw them into a bag for medical waste. “Whoever did this took good care of this heart before putting it on display. Our friend has made our job a little easier: we won’t have to worry about catching flies and scooping out larvae.”
Teresa and Marini exchanged a knowing look. There was order here, an attention to detail that bordered on neurosis.
“We’ve been told you haven’t found any fingerprints yet, nor any signs of the body,” said Teresa.
Parri nodded.
“Indeed. And I’m not surprised. It fits with the picture.”
“We’ll let you get on with it, then, but I’ll come with you to the lab, if you don’t mind.”
They started to walk away and as soon as they’d slipped out from beneath the rope that marked the scene, Teresa breathed easier. She could see Gardini talking to the head of the forensics team, but there was no trace of Albert. The deputy prosecutor joined them shortly thereafter.
“So, what’s the verdict for now?” Gardini asked.
“It’s a warning,” she said decisively, rifling inside her bag in search of her notebook. “It’s a message for us, telling us there are borders we mustn’t breach.”
“If it really is a message, the killer took a huge risk to deliver it,” Marini remarked.
Teresa pondered his comment.
“Fear can make people bold, even reckless,” she said. “We got too close to something that was meant to stay buried forever. It’s still buried, in fact, though little by little it’s coming to light.”
“Nevertheless, he appears to know what he’s doing,” Gardini noted.
“Not only that, but he’s intelligent, too, and extremely careful. It’s a clean job.”
“How strong do you need to be to rip someone’s heart out of their chest?” Marini muttered.
Probably not that strong, Teresa thought. And in fact, it wasn’t the killer’s physical vigor that struck her.
“You’re thinking of physical strength. I’m more interested in mental fortitude,” she said. “How strong does a person’s will need to be to rip a beating heart out of someone’s chest?”
Gardini looked at her in surprise.
“Is there evidence to suggest that’s what happened?”
Teresa didn’t reply, but the slight tilt of her head implied that although it might be too early to know for sure, she suspected that the victim’s role in all this was central. He or she hadn’t been selected at random. The symbolism of the act was too potent, too archaic, and the risk the killer had taken was too great—the message that had been sent their way was too powerful. And she had no doubt that the victim had died as horrible a death as the warning the killer had left for them to find.
One of the officers from the forensics team called out to Gardini and the deputy prosecutor took his leave.
Marini looked at the heart hanging on the threshold of the village like a death banner. A bolt of lightning illuminated the landscape with an eerie glow.
“Maybe that shape you saw in the middle of the road yesterday wasn’t just a shadow,” he murmured.
Maybe it wasn’t. Teresa had thought it, too.
A sudden gust of wind brought a familiar scent, which caused her stomach to cramp.
She turned around and there was Albert, standing hardly an arm’s length away, watching her. She had to fight the urge to step back but, more importantly, she couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d heard Marini’s comment. His expression, which appeared entirely unmoved, seemed to indicate he’d heard nothing at all.
“Superintendent, Inspector,” said the district attorney, greeting them both.
“Good morning, Doctor Lona,” Marini replied.
Teresa had the feeling he had spoken first to relieve her of the effort. She merely nodded.
Despite the rain, the blood seeping into the earth mere steps from his expensive shoes and the mud that surrounded him, Albert retained his habitual elegance. He hadn’t brought an umbrella, instead letting the water soak his hair and flow in thin streams down the collar of his shirt. His indifference to the elements was a sign of his animalistic nature. Alberto Lona was a beast—refined and magnificent in his savagery, perhaps, but a beast nonetheless. Teresa wondered if he still lived alone, or if there was a woman waiting for him to come home so she could wash and dry his sodden clothes—the only occupation this man would ever consider befitting of her sex.
“Update me,” he told them, his casual tone masking the brusqueness of his command.
Teresa relayed the little information they’d had from Parri and took care not to give anything away about her own initial impressions.
She saw him frown, his eyes now fixed on some distant point.
“It’s not enough,” he declared—as if they could have made the killer leave more traces behind by sheer force of will.
“The lab tests might tell us more,” she said, though even to her own ears, her words sounded like a feeble stopgap.
Albert shook his head.
“It’s not enough,” he repeated, his voice hardening and his eyes now fixed firmly on hers. “I want more. There are similarities with the Imset case, do you not think?”
Teresa said nothing. The mention of Imset, the ancient Egyptian funerary deity, had failed to evoke any particular memory.
“You handled that case, Superintendent—and successfully, too, to everyone’s surprise,” Albert insisted, irritated by her prolonged silence.
Teresa ran the name over and over in her mind as if it were some flavor she had to sample and identify. She could sense both men’s eyes on her, Albert’s inquisitive, vaguely hostile stare and from Marini, a curiosity tinged with bemusement. The former left a bitter, acidic taste in her mouth; the latter something green and sour, and far too youthful.
Teresa couldn’t remember. She couldn’t retrieve that case or that name from among her memories, couldn’t recall a single face or a sliver of conversation. It was as if she’d never had anything to do with it at all. She had simply lost a piece of her life. She tightened her grip on the notebook in her pocket.
“Every case is different,” she improvised, her heart beating in her throat and feeling as if it were about to explode with fear.
“Nonsense!” he thundered. “Obviously, I was not suggesting there was a connection. But the act itself . . .”
Teresa could feel herself sinking deeper into a morass of panic, the toxic venom of doubt seeping into her mouth and stealing the oxygen from her lungs.
“I remember that case,” Marini volunteered. “I studied the file when I first arrived here. The killer extracted his victims’ internal organs, one organ from each corpse, four corpses in all. They were eventually found stored in ancient Canopic jars dating back four thousand years. In that case, the organs had been taken as trophies. Isn’t that right, Superintendent?”
He gave her an encouraging glance and Teresa nodded.
“But this is no trophy,” she managed to say. “It’s not a totem whose glow the killer privately basks in, reliving his dreams of omnipotence. He’s chosen to share it with us. It’s for us.”
Lona seemed to ponder her words but didn’t make any further comment. Later, Marini might be made to pay for having dared to question the district attorney’s thinking, but this wasn’t the moment for that.
Albert changed the subject.
“The canine unit will be here soon,” he told them. “We need to find that body. The press will not be as patient as the deputy public prosecutor has been.”
Teresa and Marini looked at each other and realized they’d had the same thought. But this time it was Teresa who took the plunge.
“I would propose we deploy an asset Ambrosini was in the process of vetting before he became indisposed. The asset is external to the force but potentially—”
“Have I not made myself clear?”
Teresa didn’t bother to finish her sentence. There was no point. Albert stalked off, leaving her seething with rage and burdened with a fear that left her shaking: the fear that she was disappearing, along with her mind. What was she without the cases she’d worked, the desperate investigations, the decisive breakthroughs, the compassion she’d felt for all the victims she had known—and occasionally rescued?
“I’m sorry,” she heard Marini say.
“Thank you,” she replied in a low voice.
“You’re welcome. He’s a dickhead.”
It was raining harder now, but the locals who’d come to watch were still there. Teresa gathered herself together, raised her hand and called out to de Carli.
“Send them away,” she ordered. “Tell them to go home.”
He hesitated.
“They’re praying, Superintendent.”
Teresa saw that beneath their hoods and their umbrellas, their heads were bowed. And then, as if called forth by Teresa’s gaze, a female voice rose in song, voicing a lament whose power silenced every other human sound.
The crowd parted, revealing a woman in a long robe, her white hair wet with rain. She was singing a song as old as the history of her people. It was the proud, majestic figure of Matriona, seemingly staring straight into Teresa’s eyes.
Teresa had never heard anything like it. It was an ancient melody from a world that had long since vanished and yet remained alive. The song mixed with the sound of wood crackling in the depths of the forest.
She remembered Francesco’s words.
It was the lullaby for the dead.
46
Massimo took another painkiller. The first pill hadn’t even made a dent in the headache that had been tormenting him for hours. The second had made it just about bearable. He hoped the third might provide enough relief to allow him to keep his eyes open and his mind focused. He took a sip from the water he’d just bought from the vending machine and vowed for the hundredth time that day that he would never, ever touch alcohol again.
Standing outside the autopsy room at the morgue wasn’t exactly helping with the nausea.
He looked at his phone. Elena still hadn’t called. In fact, she hadn’t been in touch at all except to send him a text with the address of the hotel she’d be staying at for a few days.
“Are you still with us, Marini?” he heard Superintendent Battaglia say from inside the autopsy room.
Massimo shook his head. That morning, in his apartment, he’d been on the verge of telling her everything. But now the superintendent was back to her normal surly and overbearing self.
He stepped into the autopsy room and prayed that his stomach might hold it together for at least another couple of hours. It’s only a heart, he kept telling himself as he stared at the dark, fist-sized lump on the steel table. It was a good thing there wasn’t a whole corpse there, or the stench would surely have forced him into an ignominious retreat.
Parri had begun dissecting the organ already and was soon able to confirm what he’d already surmised at the scene of the discovery: the heart had belonged to an elderly person, and it wasn’t in good health—not just because of its age, but also owing to a defect that had caused a weakening of the cardiac valves.
“Our colleagues are already searching the valley,” said the superintendent. “We’ll know soon enough who’s unaccounted for.”
“I’m extracting tissue samples for the genetics and toxicology testing,” said Parri, fiddling with a set of slides, “but I’ve already run a glycophorin test, and the result is positive.”
Superintendent Battaglia’s jaw tightened.
“If an organ reacts to glycophorin, we know it must have been removed when the victim was still alive,” she explained for Massimo’s benefit.
“Hold on a minute,” Parri interjected. “There’s something blocking the mitral valve.”
He took a pair of pointed tongs from his tool tray and switched on the headlamp on his forehead.
A few moments later, he pulled the tongs from inside the cavity and brought out a small, dark object.
Superintendent Battaglia moved closer, pushing her reading glasses farther up the bridge of her nose.
“It’s a twig,” said Massimo. “The storm must have blown it in there.”
Parri looked at him.
“It was stuck all the way inside,” he said. “The wind doesn’t have fingers.”
“Someone took good care of this heart. You said it yourself, Antonio,” the superintendent recalled. “They kept it safe from insects and larvae. They looked after it for us so that they could present it to us; they would never have allowed any dirt to get in.”
She took the tongs from Parri and began inspecting the twig from every angle, bringing it up to her nose to sniff it.
“It’s thyme,” she said, sounding surprised. “It’s a sprig of thyme woven into a ring.”
“How bizarre,” said Parri.
He glanced at the superintendent and as she returned his look, they seem to reach some kind of telepathic understanding.
Superintendent Battaglia was picking at her lips, deep in concentration.
“Thyme is a medicinal herb that’s been in use since antiquity,” she noted. “It also possesses magical properties, or so the ancients believed. The strength of its fragrance meant it was frequently employed during sacrificial cremations. My grandmother used to say that if you walked among plants of thyme at twilight, you would see the spirits of the dead.”
“So there’s a ritualistic aspect here,” Massimo muttered.
“Thymus, thymi, thymo, thymum . . . What’s the declination?” she said.
He spread his arms.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s Latin.”
“I guessed as much.”
Superintendent Battaglia scribbled something down, looked up as if emerging from a state of apnea, then immediately buried her face in her notebook again.
“Thumos, thumon. Greek,” she went on.
“I was never good at translations,” Massimo confessed.
“Me neither,” said Parri.
Superintendent Battaglia sniffed at the twig again, turning it over in her fingers.
