The Sleeping Nymph, page 6
“You two make a cute couple,” he chuckled.
“Go on, Antonio.”
“We’ve just had the results back from our initial tests on the Nymph. The blood doesn’t match Andrian’s. I know you already suspected as much, but now you can be sure. Basically, I compared the results with those his nephew provided from a recent medical check-up. All very unexciting, really, but anyway, it turns out it’s two different blood types.”
She nodded.
“I’m not surprised, but it’s important to have it confirmed,” she said.
“The DNA testing will take longer, but there’s something I can tell you unofficially.”
The note of satisfaction in his tone told Teresa that the information would be fundamental to their investigations.
“The blood belonged to a woman.”
Teresa’s eyes shifted away from the coroner’s face and back to the painting.
“I think this is more than just a painting,” she heard Parri say. “I think it’s a portrait of the victim. The Sleeping Nymph was real, and she died on April 20th, 1945.”
“A compelling theory, but not one based on any facts,” Teresa muttered.
She looked into Marini’s eyes: he, too, thought the Sleeping Nymph had really existed.
“It may be just a theory, but you wouldn’t dismiss it, would you?” asked Parri.
Teresa took a deep breath.
“This changes everything,” she said.
It changed the direction of their inquiry, gave it new force, and changed Teresa’s approach to the case. Now, she had the victim’s face in front of her. She could hear her last breath. She could see her in her last moments as the life ebbed out of her.
He struck her, then he painted her as she lay dying. He steeped his fingers in her heart.
She slipped on a latex glove and ran a finger over the Nymph, feeling a shiver along the back of her neck.
The nymph’s eyes were closed, but Teresa knew what she would have seen in them if they had been open: the heavy shadow of death over life. And she knew what those lips would have whispered to her, if paper could have turned into flesh.
Find me.
Teresa would find her.
Help me.
Teresa would help her.
She felt Marini approach from behind her.
“A wartime murder,” she remarked. “She probably disappeared one day and the body was never found, or if it was, her fate was blamed on some enemy soldier. It’s unlikely anyone would have reported her disappearance. All people thought about back then was how to survive and hide from the Germans.”
“Yes, I don’t think it’s likely we’ll find any traces of old police paperwork on a case that was never opened in the first place,” he concurred. “And even if they existed, they’d be in a museum by now. We could try looking in the newspapers from around that time.”
Teresa covered the painting with a protective sleeve and removed the glove.
“I did wonder about that,” she replied, “but we’re talking about a sparsely populated mountainous district, not a city. The Nazis were furious about the way the war was going and preparing for a bloody retreat. They were shooting at people’s homes, aiming for shadows at the windows. I can’t see how any journalist would have bothered writing about this. People disappeared and died every day.”
“Then why do you think Judge Crespi wants to clear this up?” Parri asked.
“Because the main suspect is still alive and a renowned painter. Because he went mad after painting a portrait out of the blood of an unknown victim—and as it happens, that portrait is his best and most sought-after work. The press will have a field day when they find out. Crespi couldn’t shelve this even if he wanted to.”
“I did wonder if that might be the case when I heard that the deputy public prosecutor had summoned you—as if it were an urgent case.”
Teresa wiped the lenses of her glasses with the hem of her T-shirt.
“You know Gardini puts a lot of stock on my instincts,” she said. “Whenever he has a case on his hands that seems to be going nowhere, he can’t think of anyone else to call.”
In truth, “instinct” wasn’t what the deputy public prosecutor called it in his private conversations with Teresa. What Gardini counted on was a kind of mysterious empathy she possessed. The dead thrummed inside Teresa’s mind. They were her companions on sleepless nights. They pushed her to keep going, to find the solution to their end.
“I need to speak to the district attorney,” she told Marini. “Now.”
“You didn’t hear?” Parri exclaimed.
The look on his face sent a shiver through her.
“Paolo had a heart attack, Teresa. He was hospitalized this morning.”
11
Teresa had exhausted every flyer and bulletin board in the waiting room of the cardiology ward. She couldn’t remember a word of what she’d read, but that was the least of her worries right now.
Paolo Ambrosini wasn’t just her superior in rank. He was a friend she’d almost lost, a friend she perhaps hadn’t watched over as well as she should have. She felt guilty for underestimating his illness earlier: Paolo wasn’t the kind to miss an appointment without good reason. But, she thought contritely, I was so absorbed in my own problems that I didn’t even thought about it.
By sheer luck, Ambrosini had pulled through and had already been transferred out of the intensive care unit.
“Coffee?” Marini asked.
“No.”
“Water?”
“No.”
“My scalp?”
Teresa finally looked at him.
“Why don’t you just go away?” she demanded.
“I’m surprised. Normally you would have said, ‘Just fuck off.’”
Teresa cursed him under her breath and riffled through her shoulder bag in search of a sweet. All she found were dozens of empty wrappers. She swore again.
Marini sat next to her, crossed his legs and produced a packet of fruit gums from his pocket. He waved it under her nose, but when Teresa tried to grab it, he pulled his hand away.
She closed her eyes.
“For God’s sake, what do you want?” she asked.
“Your forgiveness.”
“Are you serious? I’m not your mother. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You didn’t even ask me why I was late.”
“Marini, I haven’t cared to know a thing about you since your first day.”
“Bullshit. You’re always breathing down my neck.”
She stood up and grabbed the sweets off him when he wasn’t looking.
“So, aren’t you going to ask?” he persisted.
“Why would I do that? To put you in a position where you have to lie to your superior?”
He stayed quiet. Teresa opened the packet and popped a sweet in her mouth.
“There’s something eating away at you, Inspector,” she said as she chewed on the sweet. “It has been for weeks. It’s making you nervous and evasive, making you check your phone a little too often when you’re at work.”
“I’ve never neglected my job.”
“Except for this morning. I think it must be something from your past, something unresolved. It’s the same thing that made you run away and hide out here, but whether you like it or not, it’s always there in the background.”
Marini didn’t attempt a riposte.
“So, Inspector,” Teresa goaded him, “are you still sure you want to talk about it?”
He leapt to his feet.
“Why don’t we talk about you, Superintendent?” he snapped.
“Me?”
“Yes, you and the totally unprofessional way in which you run this entire team, as if you owned each and every one of us. Or maybe we should talk about your secret—or did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Teresa couldn’t believe the audacity.
“And the diary? Let’s talk about your compulsive note-taking in that goddamned diary. What the hell are you writing in it?”
Teresa allowed him to vent. He was so tense and so furious that he looked like he was about to cry. When he fell quiet, she spoke again, calmly.
“I write about how stupid you are, Marini.”
A nurse drew their attention with a small cough.
“The patient is waiting for you, ma’am,” she said.
Teresa studied her friend as he lay on the hospital bed, his chest dotted with an array of medical sensors. He looked ashen and shriveled. Like an old man inside a hospital gown.
She sat next to the bed and reached for his hand. He squeezed it back immediately.
“Teresa, thank God you’re here. I need to talk to you . . .”
“Where else would I be? You could have warned me you were planning on croaking. You know I can’t run very fast.”
“It’s only a small thing, but these people say they want me to do months of rehab. Months! Can you imagine?”
“And you’ll do it. Everything else can wait.”
He motioned at her to lean toward him.
“There was something I’d been meaning to tell you today,” he said. “There’s a new asset. You must meet them this afternoon. It’s important.”
“An asset? What, a new agent?”
“No.”
“Some kind of consultant?”
“Not quite . . .”
“Paolo, I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s not exactly by the book. Gardini knows; he’ll fill you in.”
Teresa desisted. “As long as it’s not by the book, you can count me in,” she joked.
Ambrosini’s hand pressed hers harder.
“There’s something else. They’ve appointed my stand-in.”
She nodded.
“Santi,” she said, referring to the deputy district attorney.
“No. It’s someone else.”
The way he said it, the worry in his eyes—it was alarming. And in a way, perhaps she had always known this day would come; perhaps she had been waiting for that return all her life. She felt the skin on her face tighten over the bones, her body withdrawing, ready to flee.
“Who is it?” she breathed.
“I’m sorry, Teresa. It’s Albert.”
12
Albert Lona.
Two words that Teresa hadn’t uttered, not even inside her mind, in what felt like a lifetime.
She strode through the bowels of the hospital, feeling nauseous. She was just about conscious of Marini’s presence behind her, and though she would have liked to dismiss him for the day, or give him some other task to do—anything to avoid that inquisitive look of his—she might as well come to terms with the truth: she felt safer with him beside her.
She couldn’t drive anymore unless she was prepared to risk getting caught by a spell of confusion and causing chaos. Even navigating the city by public transport could be dangerous if she was alone and she blacked out—not only for her, but for others, too. She hated this. She hated being dependent on others.
And now Albert was back in her life.
The nausea almost made her retch. Teresa stopped walking and took a deep breath, but the air inside the ward, saturated with disinfectant, didn’t do her much good. She felt her head spin, a flash of vertigo rising through her legs.
“Superintendent?”
Marini’s voice seemed distant.
Teresa closed her eyes, then opened them again.
The corridors all looked the same. She had no idea which way to turn nor which way she’d come from. She couldn’t even remember where she had wanted to go.
She spun slowly on her axis as if seeing the world around her for the first time.
“Superintendent!”
Teresa lifted her arm and saw that her hand was shaking. Her silver bangle glittered on her wrist, a reminder of her name. Yes, she remembered her name. It was everything else that had lost meaning, and all this while terrifyingly vivid images from her past battered her like physical blows. Beneath her thin shirt, the scar on her abdomen seemed to awaken from its slumber and began to burn as if it were fresh.
An emergency exit sign caught her eye. Teresa lunged toward it and pushed the door open with both hands, ending up in the park that bordered the hospital.
The sun, the scent of the flowering linden trees and the chirping thrushes all helped her to breathe again. She rummaged in her bag for her diary and quickly riffled through it until she had found what she was looking for.
She read the note, mouthing the words over and over again like a mantra.
“I’m going to call for help,” she heard Marini say.
She placed a hand on his arm to stop him.
“The police are preparing to break into a house to arrest a criminal,” she read out. “The only clue they have is his name: Adamo. When they enter the house, they find a mechanic, a firefighter, a doctor and a plumber, all playing cards. Without a moment’s hesitation, and without saying a word, they arrest the mechanic. Why?”
Marini stared at her as if she’d gone mad.
“If you were trying to scare me, you’ve succeeded,” he said.
Teresa focused on the riddle.
Calm your breathing. Be methodical. Defeat the void.
Her hand gripped Marini’s arm like a vice.
“Ouch!”
“Why?” she urged him, and it was as if she were urging herself. “Why do they go straight to him?”
Marini rolled his eyes.
“I don’t know! They must have had some other clue.”
“No other clues. No information beyond what I’ve already told you.”
He huffed.
“Did he have an X marked on his forehead?” he asked sarcastically.
Teresa let go of his arm and took a few steps away to deliberate until finally her face broke into a relieved smile.
“Oh yes, he really did have an X all over his face. Or an XY, to be precise.”
“You realize you’re raving, don’t you?”
Teresa burst out laughing.
“The mechanic was the only man at the table, Marini, that’s why they knew straight away that ‘Adamo’ had to be him.”
Marini looked taken aback.
Teresa patted his shoulder.
“You really have trouble imagining a woman being independent, don’t you?”
The memory of their first meeting and the mistake he’d made still tickled her caustic sense of humor.
She sat down on a bench. Marini joined her.
“What happened in there?” he asked her eventually. He received no response. “I gather Ambrosini’s condition is serious. I’m sorry; I know you’ve been friends for a long time.”
Teresa straightened her back. Her friend wasn’t doing too badly, actually, but if the crisis that had tripped up her mind earlier could pass as concern for her friend, then perhaps it was best to trick poor Marini into thinking that.
She nodded.
“I suppose it would be pointless to ask you for more information,” he continued.
“Let’s just hope for the best,” Teresa remarked. “There’s a new district attorney now, and it’s not Deputy Santi.”
“Yes, I just found out. De Carli says Lona wants to see you immediately.”
Teresa let out a bitter laugh.
“So, he’s already here. Of course,” she replied but stayed put.
Marini studied her and finally understood.
“Oh no. No,” he said. “I don’t like that look.”
Teresa stood up.
“I’m afraid Lona will have to wait. We have things to do.”
“Let me get this straight: Are you saying you don’t intend to report to the new district attorney?”
“Not for the time being.”
“May I ask why? It’s my concern too, don’t you think? You’re asking me to ignore a direct superior.”
Teresa scoffed.
“Good God, Marini, you’re so annoying.”
He rubbed at his eyes.
“Where do you plan on going now?” he asked.
“We have a case to solve.”
“Well, we’re going to need a stroke of luck, then. It’s an impossible case,” he muttered in his usual melodramatic way.
In response, Teresa popped another fruit gum into her mouth.
“Maybe there was no murder,” Marini resumed. “Maybe it was an accident.”
Teresa gave him a sideways glance.
“And Andrian, struck by sudden inspiration but tragically out of paint, thought he might as well use her blood instead. Of course! Who wouldn’t do the same?” she said.
“You don’t think it’s possible?”
“No, Marini. I don’t.” She waved a hand through the air. “It’s the blood that tells me so. Blood flowing out of a heart. Is there any image more powerful than that?”
“You can’t possibly think we’ll find the solution?” Marini persisted.
She pretended to think about it.
“It sounds like a challenge, Inspector. Yes, now that you’ve said it, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
He shook his head.
“Get up. We’re going to see the only person who knows what happened on April 20th, 1945.”
Marini’s eyebrows shot up.
“Alessio Andrian? He can’t talk.”
Teresa grimaced.
“Even the dead have much to say,” she murmured. “And if I’m capable of intuiting what they might tell me, maybe I can do the same with Andrian.”
13
The Andrian home was situated outside the walls of an ancient town on a cluster of hills embroidered with rows of grapevines, where farming estates alternated with groves of fragrant acacias and centennial linden. Legend had it that the settlement had been founded by Julius Caesar, whose statue now towered over the main square. The imperator’s toned bronze lorica and the drapes of his paludamentum were flecked with verdigris all the way down to his thick knees and the caligae wrapped around his feet and heels. Archivolts, capitals and mullioned windows carved out of Istrian rock surrounded the monument, architectural vestiges of the Longobard era that had followed the Roman and now glimmered in the heavy afternoon sun as it fell sideways onto the stonework.
“Go on, Antonio.”
“We’ve just had the results back from our initial tests on the Nymph. The blood doesn’t match Andrian’s. I know you already suspected as much, but now you can be sure. Basically, I compared the results with those his nephew provided from a recent medical check-up. All very unexciting, really, but anyway, it turns out it’s two different blood types.”
She nodded.
“I’m not surprised, but it’s important to have it confirmed,” she said.
“The DNA testing will take longer, but there’s something I can tell you unofficially.”
The note of satisfaction in his tone told Teresa that the information would be fundamental to their investigations.
“The blood belonged to a woman.”
Teresa’s eyes shifted away from the coroner’s face and back to the painting.
“I think this is more than just a painting,” she heard Parri say. “I think it’s a portrait of the victim. The Sleeping Nymph was real, and she died on April 20th, 1945.”
“A compelling theory, but not one based on any facts,” Teresa muttered.
She looked into Marini’s eyes: he, too, thought the Sleeping Nymph had really existed.
“It may be just a theory, but you wouldn’t dismiss it, would you?” asked Parri.
Teresa took a deep breath.
“This changes everything,” she said.
It changed the direction of their inquiry, gave it new force, and changed Teresa’s approach to the case. Now, she had the victim’s face in front of her. She could hear her last breath. She could see her in her last moments as the life ebbed out of her.
He struck her, then he painted her as she lay dying. He steeped his fingers in her heart.
She slipped on a latex glove and ran a finger over the Nymph, feeling a shiver along the back of her neck.
The nymph’s eyes were closed, but Teresa knew what she would have seen in them if they had been open: the heavy shadow of death over life. And she knew what those lips would have whispered to her, if paper could have turned into flesh.
Find me.
Teresa would find her.
Help me.
Teresa would help her.
She felt Marini approach from behind her.
“A wartime murder,” she remarked. “She probably disappeared one day and the body was never found, or if it was, her fate was blamed on some enemy soldier. It’s unlikely anyone would have reported her disappearance. All people thought about back then was how to survive and hide from the Germans.”
“Yes, I don’t think it’s likely we’ll find any traces of old police paperwork on a case that was never opened in the first place,” he concurred. “And even if they existed, they’d be in a museum by now. We could try looking in the newspapers from around that time.”
Teresa covered the painting with a protective sleeve and removed the glove.
“I did wonder about that,” she replied, “but we’re talking about a sparsely populated mountainous district, not a city. The Nazis were furious about the way the war was going and preparing for a bloody retreat. They were shooting at people’s homes, aiming for shadows at the windows. I can’t see how any journalist would have bothered writing about this. People disappeared and died every day.”
“Then why do you think Judge Crespi wants to clear this up?” Parri asked.
“Because the main suspect is still alive and a renowned painter. Because he went mad after painting a portrait out of the blood of an unknown victim—and as it happens, that portrait is his best and most sought-after work. The press will have a field day when they find out. Crespi couldn’t shelve this even if he wanted to.”
“I did wonder if that might be the case when I heard that the deputy public prosecutor had summoned you—as if it were an urgent case.”
Teresa wiped the lenses of her glasses with the hem of her T-shirt.
“You know Gardini puts a lot of stock on my instincts,” she said. “Whenever he has a case on his hands that seems to be going nowhere, he can’t think of anyone else to call.”
In truth, “instinct” wasn’t what the deputy public prosecutor called it in his private conversations with Teresa. What Gardini counted on was a kind of mysterious empathy she possessed. The dead thrummed inside Teresa’s mind. They were her companions on sleepless nights. They pushed her to keep going, to find the solution to their end.
“I need to speak to the district attorney,” she told Marini. “Now.”
“You didn’t hear?” Parri exclaimed.
The look on his face sent a shiver through her.
“Paolo had a heart attack, Teresa. He was hospitalized this morning.”
11
Teresa had exhausted every flyer and bulletin board in the waiting room of the cardiology ward. She couldn’t remember a word of what she’d read, but that was the least of her worries right now.
Paolo Ambrosini wasn’t just her superior in rank. He was a friend she’d almost lost, a friend she perhaps hadn’t watched over as well as she should have. She felt guilty for underestimating his illness earlier: Paolo wasn’t the kind to miss an appointment without good reason. But, she thought contritely, I was so absorbed in my own problems that I didn’t even thought about it.
By sheer luck, Ambrosini had pulled through and had already been transferred out of the intensive care unit.
“Coffee?” Marini asked.
“No.”
“Water?”
“No.”
“My scalp?”
Teresa finally looked at him.
“Why don’t you just go away?” she demanded.
“I’m surprised. Normally you would have said, ‘Just fuck off.’”
Teresa cursed him under her breath and riffled through her shoulder bag in search of a sweet. All she found were dozens of empty wrappers. She swore again.
Marini sat next to her, crossed his legs and produced a packet of fruit gums from his pocket. He waved it under her nose, but when Teresa tried to grab it, he pulled his hand away.
She closed her eyes.
“For God’s sake, what do you want?” she asked.
“Your forgiveness.”
“Are you serious? I’m not your mother. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“You didn’t even ask me why I was late.”
“Marini, I haven’t cared to know a thing about you since your first day.”
“Bullshit. You’re always breathing down my neck.”
She stood up and grabbed the sweets off him when he wasn’t looking.
“So, aren’t you going to ask?” he persisted.
“Why would I do that? To put you in a position where you have to lie to your superior?”
He stayed quiet. Teresa opened the packet and popped a sweet in her mouth.
“There’s something eating away at you, Inspector,” she said as she chewed on the sweet. “It has been for weeks. It’s making you nervous and evasive, making you check your phone a little too often when you’re at work.”
“I’ve never neglected my job.”
“Except for this morning. I think it must be something from your past, something unresolved. It’s the same thing that made you run away and hide out here, but whether you like it or not, it’s always there in the background.”
Marini didn’t attempt a riposte.
“So, Inspector,” Teresa goaded him, “are you still sure you want to talk about it?”
He leapt to his feet.
“Why don’t we talk about you, Superintendent?” he snapped.
“Me?”
“Yes, you and the totally unprofessional way in which you run this entire team, as if you owned each and every one of us. Or maybe we should talk about your secret—or did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Teresa couldn’t believe the audacity.
“And the diary? Let’s talk about your compulsive note-taking in that goddamned diary. What the hell are you writing in it?”
Teresa allowed him to vent. He was so tense and so furious that he looked like he was about to cry. When he fell quiet, she spoke again, calmly.
“I write about how stupid you are, Marini.”
A nurse drew their attention with a small cough.
“The patient is waiting for you, ma’am,” she said.
Teresa studied her friend as he lay on the hospital bed, his chest dotted with an array of medical sensors. He looked ashen and shriveled. Like an old man inside a hospital gown.
She sat next to the bed and reached for his hand. He squeezed it back immediately.
“Teresa, thank God you’re here. I need to talk to you . . .”
“Where else would I be? You could have warned me you were planning on croaking. You know I can’t run very fast.”
“It’s only a small thing, but these people say they want me to do months of rehab. Months! Can you imagine?”
“And you’ll do it. Everything else can wait.”
He motioned at her to lean toward him.
“There was something I’d been meaning to tell you today,” he said. “There’s a new asset. You must meet them this afternoon. It’s important.”
“An asset? What, a new agent?”
“No.”
“Some kind of consultant?”
“Not quite . . .”
“Paolo, I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s not exactly by the book. Gardini knows; he’ll fill you in.”
Teresa desisted. “As long as it’s not by the book, you can count me in,” she joked.
Ambrosini’s hand pressed hers harder.
“There’s something else. They’ve appointed my stand-in.”
She nodded.
“Santi,” she said, referring to the deputy district attorney.
“No. It’s someone else.”
The way he said it, the worry in his eyes—it was alarming. And in a way, perhaps she had always known this day would come; perhaps she had been waiting for that return all her life. She felt the skin on her face tighten over the bones, her body withdrawing, ready to flee.
“Who is it?” she breathed.
“I’m sorry, Teresa. It’s Albert.”
12
Albert Lona.
Two words that Teresa hadn’t uttered, not even inside her mind, in what felt like a lifetime.
She strode through the bowels of the hospital, feeling nauseous. She was just about conscious of Marini’s presence behind her, and though she would have liked to dismiss him for the day, or give him some other task to do—anything to avoid that inquisitive look of his—she might as well come to terms with the truth: she felt safer with him beside her.
She couldn’t drive anymore unless she was prepared to risk getting caught by a spell of confusion and causing chaos. Even navigating the city by public transport could be dangerous if she was alone and she blacked out—not only for her, but for others, too. She hated this. She hated being dependent on others.
And now Albert was back in her life.
The nausea almost made her retch. Teresa stopped walking and took a deep breath, but the air inside the ward, saturated with disinfectant, didn’t do her much good. She felt her head spin, a flash of vertigo rising through her legs.
“Superintendent?”
Marini’s voice seemed distant.
Teresa closed her eyes, then opened them again.
The corridors all looked the same. She had no idea which way to turn nor which way she’d come from. She couldn’t even remember where she had wanted to go.
She spun slowly on her axis as if seeing the world around her for the first time.
“Superintendent!”
Teresa lifted her arm and saw that her hand was shaking. Her silver bangle glittered on her wrist, a reminder of her name. Yes, she remembered her name. It was everything else that had lost meaning, and all this while terrifyingly vivid images from her past battered her like physical blows. Beneath her thin shirt, the scar on her abdomen seemed to awaken from its slumber and began to burn as if it were fresh.
An emergency exit sign caught her eye. Teresa lunged toward it and pushed the door open with both hands, ending up in the park that bordered the hospital.
The sun, the scent of the flowering linden trees and the chirping thrushes all helped her to breathe again. She rummaged in her bag for her diary and quickly riffled through it until she had found what she was looking for.
She read the note, mouthing the words over and over again like a mantra.
“I’m going to call for help,” she heard Marini say.
She placed a hand on his arm to stop him.
“The police are preparing to break into a house to arrest a criminal,” she read out. “The only clue they have is his name: Adamo. When they enter the house, they find a mechanic, a firefighter, a doctor and a plumber, all playing cards. Without a moment’s hesitation, and without saying a word, they arrest the mechanic. Why?”
Marini stared at her as if she’d gone mad.
“If you were trying to scare me, you’ve succeeded,” he said.
Teresa focused on the riddle.
Calm your breathing. Be methodical. Defeat the void.
Her hand gripped Marini’s arm like a vice.
“Ouch!”
“Why?” she urged him, and it was as if she were urging herself. “Why do they go straight to him?”
Marini rolled his eyes.
“I don’t know! They must have had some other clue.”
“No other clues. No information beyond what I’ve already told you.”
He huffed.
“Did he have an X marked on his forehead?” he asked sarcastically.
Teresa let go of his arm and took a few steps away to deliberate until finally her face broke into a relieved smile.
“Oh yes, he really did have an X all over his face. Or an XY, to be precise.”
“You realize you’re raving, don’t you?”
Teresa burst out laughing.
“The mechanic was the only man at the table, Marini, that’s why they knew straight away that ‘Adamo’ had to be him.”
Marini looked taken aback.
Teresa patted his shoulder.
“You really have trouble imagining a woman being independent, don’t you?”
The memory of their first meeting and the mistake he’d made still tickled her caustic sense of humor.
She sat down on a bench. Marini joined her.
“What happened in there?” he asked her eventually. He received no response. “I gather Ambrosini’s condition is serious. I’m sorry; I know you’ve been friends for a long time.”
Teresa straightened her back. Her friend wasn’t doing too badly, actually, but if the crisis that had tripped up her mind earlier could pass as concern for her friend, then perhaps it was best to trick poor Marini into thinking that.
She nodded.
“I suppose it would be pointless to ask you for more information,” he continued.
“Let’s just hope for the best,” Teresa remarked. “There’s a new district attorney now, and it’s not Deputy Santi.”
“Yes, I just found out. De Carli says Lona wants to see you immediately.”
Teresa let out a bitter laugh.
“So, he’s already here. Of course,” she replied but stayed put.
Marini studied her and finally understood.
“Oh no. No,” he said. “I don’t like that look.”
Teresa stood up.
“I’m afraid Lona will have to wait. We have things to do.”
“Let me get this straight: Are you saying you don’t intend to report to the new district attorney?”
“Not for the time being.”
“May I ask why? It’s my concern too, don’t you think? You’re asking me to ignore a direct superior.”
Teresa scoffed.
“Good God, Marini, you’re so annoying.”
He rubbed at his eyes.
“Where do you plan on going now?” he asked.
“We have a case to solve.”
“Well, we’re going to need a stroke of luck, then. It’s an impossible case,” he muttered in his usual melodramatic way.
In response, Teresa popped another fruit gum into her mouth.
“Maybe there was no murder,” Marini resumed. “Maybe it was an accident.”
Teresa gave him a sideways glance.
“And Andrian, struck by sudden inspiration but tragically out of paint, thought he might as well use her blood instead. Of course! Who wouldn’t do the same?” she said.
“You don’t think it’s possible?”
“No, Marini. I don’t.” She waved a hand through the air. “It’s the blood that tells me so. Blood flowing out of a heart. Is there any image more powerful than that?”
“You can’t possibly think we’ll find the solution?” Marini persisted.
She pretended to think about it.
“It sounds like a challenge, Inspector. Yes, now that you’ve said it, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
He shook his head.
“Get up. We’re going to see the only person who knows what happened on April 20th, 1945.”
Marini’s eyebrows shot up.
“Alessio Andrian? He can’t talk.”
Teresa grimaced.
“Even the dead have much to say,” she murmured. “And if I’m capable of intuiting what they might tell me, maybe I can do the same with Andrian.”
13
The Andrian home was situated outside the walls of an ancient town on a cluster of hills embroidered with rows of grapevines, where farming estates alternated with groves of fragrant acacias and centennial linden. Legend had it that the settlement had been founded by Julius Caesar, whose statue now towered over the main square. The imperator’s toned bronze lorica and the drapes of his paludamentum were flecked with verdigris all the way down to his thick knees and the caligae wrapped around his feet and heels. Archivolts, capitals and mullioned windows carved out of Istrian rock surrounded the monument, architectural vestiges of the Longobard era that had followed the Roman and now glimmered in the heavy afternoon sun as it fell sideways onto the stonework.
