Daughter of Ashes, page 8
“We may be surrounded by marble, but History is made of glass. I beg you once again to take the greatest possible care.”
Finally, she pushed the door open, letting out a sigh that hinted at her conflicting emotions. The breath of cold air that greeted them, heavy with mineral scents, promised not a leap back into History, but something closer to a descent.
The crypt was a treasure chest, enclosed between the looming presence of a modern black ceiling and the pavement, whose astonishingly three-dimensional quality was emphasized by the spotlights positioned throughout the chamber.
The director led the way, walking a few steps ahead of them.
“You will note that there are three visible layers. The deepest dates back to the imperial public buildings and domus of the first century. The second layer is a floor made from opus signinum, which may be what survives of a Gnostic sacellum leading to the main hall. And in the third layer, you can admire mosaics from the era of Theodore I.”
Teresa was picking up a low drone, a kind of background noise that was making her already heightened senses thrum in response. If this was where the bone fragments really were, it meant the killer had wanted to take her along with him into the depths of human history. But why?
“Is something wrong, Superintendent?”
As always, the ever-vigilant Marini was standing right by her side, head tilted toward her. Teresa tugged at his jacket, her eyes firmly fixed on the myriad figures depicted by the mosaic tiles that lay just a few meters from where they stood. She hadn’t yet moved a muscle.
“Don’t let Blue out of your sight, not even for a moment.”
Marini took note.
“What do you think we’ll find down there?”
Teresa kept staring ahead, wondering what it was that her intuition had detected.
“I’m not sure. Probably nothing that would be of any immediate danger, but if Giacomo brought us here, it wasn’t to show us how beautiful the mosaics are, or merely to lead us to where we might find a few pieces of the victim’s body. There has to be a deeper message hidden somewhere within what he’s told us and what he’s done. But there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to understand it. I certainly won’t.”
“But you’re the only one who . . .”
Teresa let go of his jacket and looked at him.
“It’s your turn now, Inspector.”
A tremor passed over his face.
“No. We’re doing this together. Just like last time.”
Blanca and Smoky caught up with them. The dog sat still while his human used her cane to measure out the walkway.
Marini offered her his arm.
“We’re on a suspended walkway,” he explained. “It runs along the wall that marks the perimeter of the basilica. Underneath us are some spectacular mosaics which I pray to God you and Smoky won’t mess up, as well as the ruins of various ancient buildings. Want me to step down with you?”
“Nope.”
“All right, no need to get tetchy.”
The seeker of blood and bones zipped her sweatshirt up and pulled her hood over the waves of her indigo hair. The bracelets she wore on her wrists tinkled at the motion.
“I’m sorry, but you would just end up confusing Smoky. There’d be too many false traces to sift through.”
The director joined them.
“The mosaic is interrupted by the foundations of the belfry. They were not exactly careful, back in the eleventh century. The tower’s stairs cut into tiles, and part of the mosaic is confined within its walls. I do hope,” she said, taking a deep breath, “that whatever you’re looking for isn’t in there.”
Teresa stroked Blanca’s back. She could almost feel the tension there.
“I doubt it, Professor.”
The director stepped aside, handing over that most fragile and invaluable of legacies.
Marini helped Blanca off the walkway and onto the mosaic pavement. When he picked Smoky up, the dog bared his teeth at him and growled.
“Will he ever get used to me?”
Teresa ruffled Smoky’s fur.
“He’s already used to you.”
Within moments, the girl and her search dog had gone off to scour the depths of the crypt.
Teresa and Marini followed their slow progress from the walkway, an inverted L that ended behind the foundations of the belfry.
Having spent fifteen long centuries shielded from any sources of light, the colors of the mosaics in the crypt were more vivid compared to those inside the basilica. The figures they depicted looked like they were raring to go, leaping and growling before Teresa and Marini’s eyes. The tale unfolding beneath their feet was a convoluted one, without the clear, linear narrative they had been able to admire in the basilica’s depiction of the earthly paradise and of the story of Jonah.
Marini leaned over the balustrade.
“Slightly unusual decorations, for a Christian church. What does it all mean?”
Teresa trawled through her memories of the school trips that every child born in this region had made to this basilica, but failed to retrieve anything of substance. Had it all been too long ago? Was her illness progressing? The answer was yes to both questions, though nowadays the past seemed to loom closer by the minute, while the future crumbled like a vanishing mirage. It was often easier for her to remember the particulars of some event from way back in time than it was to recall something that had happened the day before.
But there was one thing she was sure of.
“They’re not just decorations. Decorations don’t require interpretation. These are not simple ornaments. Not in a place this holy. Not when you consider the sheer amount of wealth embedded within them. Look closer. There tiles are made of lapis lazuli. They would have cost a fortune, at the time. And it’s not just about color, but workmanship, too: these mosaics are far more elaborate and sophisticated than the ones we saw earlier. I do remember one thing about them: it’s almost certain that the craftsmen were from the Middle East.” Her gaze took in the whole of the underground chamber. “Something of great significance was celebrated inside this hall, and these mosaics are telling us its story.”
“Yes, but how?”
Teresa gestured toward a raring goat.
“Look, it’s wearing episcopal vestments.”
“You seem well-informed, Superintendent.”
There was more: a black donkey up on its hind legs, black corvids, the eight-pointed star, a lobster, and a billy goat perched on what looked like palm trees, a ray fish, and Solomon’s knots everywhere, symbolizing eternal life but also the orthodoxy of the one true faith.
They reached a corner of the bell tower. Marini pointed at an image of a rooster and a turtle locked in combat.
“I would have thought there’d be more crosses and less fauna.”
“The turtle is an archaic symbol, a denizen of Tartarus—the underworld. It lives in darkness, while the rooster heralds the dawn of a new day.”
“What does it say in the image next to it, just above the ram?”
They bent down to peer at the writing.
“CYRIACE VIBAS. ‘Long live Cyriac,’ or something like that.”
Smoky barked. A single note. They both stood bolt upright; they knew what the signal meant.
Blanca turned toward them.
“He’s found something.”
The dog lay on the floor, waiting. His stance spoke for him: What you’re looking for is right here, on the floor.
Marini climbed gingerly over the railing.
“Are we insured for any possible damage to the priceless archaeological treasure I’m about to jump onto?”
“No. Don’t jump.”
“I thought so.”
He slowly lowered himself into the crypt. Blanca stood to one side while Marini crouched down to examine the spot. Smoky could be astonishingly precise. Leaning further over the walkway railing than seemed physically possible, Teresa hoped that Smoky’s olfactory gifts had once again provided the solution to the enigma they were dealing with.
When Marini looked up toward her, the expression in his face gave her the answer she needed. There among that handful of mosaic tiles, bathed in a pool of white light that cut through the shadows, was what had been severed from the victim’s body.
“I have to see!”
Teresa dropped her bag to the floor, removed her shoes, and took her jacket off, as if she were about to dive into the darkness of Giacomo’s mind. He had brought her here; he had wanted her here. She had to be the first to pore over the message he had left there—for as she had once learned and never forgotten, the placement of the victim’s body or of any of its parts is a profoundly intimate act, and always a function of the killer’s most private needs.
“What are you doing?”
Marini lunged forward and grabbed her just as she was about to throw herself over the railing, her aches and the weight of her own body all but forgotten. He managed to catch her, though he nearly fell over in the process.
“Have you lost your mind?”
Perhaps she had, her illness stripping her of all reason and allowing some kind of savage impulse to take over in its stead.
Barefoot and beyond embarrassment, Teresa approached the pool of light and managed with some effort to lower herself onto her knees.
The tiles chiseled from the victim’s bones had been inserted into the figure of a white hare with red eyes, surrounded by a perfect octagon situated right where the massive steps that led to the belfry began to eat away at the mosaic floor. Some of the original tiles had been removed from the animal’s snout and replaced by those made of human bone to form the Greek letter Tau, just like the one on the brow of the ram they had seen earlier.
But it wasn’t just those seven tiles cut from bone that Giacomo had put there. Right at the center of the Tau, there was a tooth.
Teresa was confused. She muttered a few stuttering words even she couldn’t understand. She counted the tiles again, filled with growing disbelief.
The killer’s signature had changed. It was a detail that might have seemed irrelevant to the uninitiated.
“The signature stays the same because the personality remains unchanged. The signature stays the same.”
She felt Marini place his arm gently around her shoulders.
“Come on, Superintendent.”
His voice was shaking. She grabbed hold of his jacket, ignoring Blanca’s worried interjection and the alarm voiced by the director, who had just rushed over to see what was going on.
“The signature has changed. No longer seven tiles made of bone, but eight.”
“We need to get out of here and bring the forensics team in.”
Teresa stretched out her hand, and he wasn’t quick enough to stop her.
A rookie mistake she was only half aware of, stirred by some ineffable, slippery sense of urgency that had tipped her over the edge.
She touched the tooth and the bone fragments with her bare hands.
12
Today
GIACOMO’S HANDS WERE AS adept at fashioning beauty as they were death. He considered himself a craftsman, and saw the realms of his imagination reflected in the mosaics he created. He would hammer methodically at his tiles until he had shaped them into hexagons, the structure deemed by Nature herself to be most resilient. The engineers, architects, and builders who had erected humanity’s greatest creations had all copied her.
“Even soap bubbles will group together in hexagonal patterns.”
The guard who had come to check on him did not respond.
Giacomo looked up from his work.
“Though I bet someone right now is taking a great interest in octagons, too.” His expression soured. He felt genuinely sorry for Teresa, but this was his language, the alphabet naturally suited to creatures like him.
“You’re insane.”
The guard looked impassive, but by now Giacomo had become proficient at spotting that frisson of head-to-toe terror that petrified everyone who came face-to-face with him. He could almost feel the shallow, quickened breathing of their terrified little lives blowing onto his cheeks. Every one of his senses was attuned to that kind of reaction.
He paused his work.
“I’m insane? Because of the things I say? Because of the things I can do with these hands that you can’t?”
He jerked his arms up. The cable ties that bound them to the table went taut, scattering tiles and tools around. The guard flinched. Giacomo quieted down, talking now as if he were catching up with an old friend, when all he wanted to do was to tear the man’s chest open and do what needed to be done. “Or do you think I’m insane because I came back? I’m exactly where I want to be. You, on the other hand, are wishing you could run as far away from me as possible.”
The guard took a step forward and spat on the mosaic, then turned around and walked away, the haste and awkwardness in his movements betraying the fear he had tried to disguise as daring.
Giacomo picked up a cloth and wiped the mosaic in circular motions. Half of his work surface was still blank paper, without even a sketch to guide his hand; the picture was fully formed in his mind, as was the order in which every tile must be set into the cement mortar, in keeping with the ancient Greek and Roman traditions.
He breathed in the smell of the paste and picked up a piece of travertine—so pale, so hallowed—with worshipful care, using a pair of tongs to place it beside its peers by gradation. The pieces had all arrived together with red Pettery marble and pasta vitrea in a shipment from the Mosaic School of Spilimbergo—an institution that was unique in the world, and trained artisans like him. Except that Giacomo was an autodidact, his expertise fueled by obsession. He had also asked for river stones from the bed of the Tagliamento, whose clear, frigid waters imbued rocks with a specific shade of green that Giacomo had looked for elsewhere to no avail. But he knew that the school used river stones sometimes, and its director had heeded Giacomo’s request.
Such was Teresa’s power over people. The power of those who can see beyond the surface, of those who understand. There was nothing for anyone else to do but to follow her lead.
Giacomo kept working, stimulated by the smell that rose from the tiles.
“One day we will meet outside of here,” he vowed.
But in the meantime, his retinae had caught signs of furtive movement at the edges of his field of vision. There was someone in the corridor. Someone without the heavy tread of the guards. Someone who was only a gray smudge silhouetted against the wall.
Once upon a time, Giacomo used to be monster; now he was the prey, already encaged.
Gripping the hammer in one hand and the tongs in the other, he began to beat his fists on the table.
He did not say a word; the only sound was that beat. Rhythmic, ancient, full of belligerent power. Come and watch me rip your heart out. Come and see how even these cable ties can’t keep you safe.
He looked at the shadow, and the shadow stared back. Then, it vanished.
13
Today
PARRI WAS SWABBING THE inside of Teresa’s mouth, rubbing the pad clockwise over her tongue, mucus membrane, and palate.
“Nearly done now.”
They had to isolate her DNA as soon as possible so that they could separate it from the biological traces found on the tooth and bone fragments, all of which had already been tagged as evidence. It was a painstaking and unexpected task that would needlessly divert time and resources from the investigation. Teresa felt herself burning with shame. Her face, her chest, her viscera, every part of her blazed in sympathy, a fire without flames—not particularly glorious, and not at all heroic. One backward somersault and she had returned to being the rookie she’d been thirty years ago, the one who made life harder for her colleagues, the one you always had to keep an eye on if you wanted to avert major disasters. The one who needed restraining.
As she sat there, head tilted to the sky and mouth wide open, Teresa imagined that she was screaming.
Above her, a white ceiling, spiky fluorescent lights, and a distant god.
“Done. I’ll check your insulin pump while I’m at it.” He lifted the hem of her shirt and felt around for a few seconds. “All good. You’re fit for service.”
Teresa’s gaze was like a frightened bird, constantly crashing into objects and faces until it finally plummeted to the gray floor and into a pair of well-worn shoes, down where a defeated human sat—Teresa herself.
She could hardly even hear what Parri was saying. He was doing it on purpose, dazing her with idle chatter and stories that might not even be true. He knew, and he was trying to pick her up and put her somewhere safe.
Marini was sitting by the wall opposite her. He hadn’t left her side for a moment, even though Teresa had tried to send him away. He hadn’t requested an explanation, either, nor had he tried to minimize what had happened. He had acted with the maximum efficiency, limiting the damage and initiating the chain of custody process for her DNA that had first alerted their colleagues in the forensics department and brought her here to the coroner’s office. He had behaved impeccably.
Teresa looked toward him. He was watching her. See me, she would have liked to say, really see me. Let your eyes bore through me.
He seemed so serious. It was the first time since they’d met that the somberness on his face did not seem out of place. Massimo was growing up, while she was reverting to a small and fragile form.
“Are you two listening to me?” Parri intervened. “I expect to be done with the fingerprint analysis by tomorrow morning, and to have some initial samples ready for genetic analysis.”
Teresa tried to muster the concentration she needed for this case. There were instructions that needed issuing.
Marini beat her to it.
“Come on, Doctor Parri, we know there’s a lot more you can tell us.”
Parri removed his lab coat and began turning the lights off.
“Based on my initial observations, I am confident that the bone the fragments did not belong to someone young. It is difficult to go much further, though, and we cannot know for sure which specific bone is involved. In fact it is practically impossible to establish that right now, as I still need to scrape much of the cement mortar off. But what I can say is that the tissue is porous and fragile. One sample still has pieces of cartilage attached to it. I am far from certain about its origins, and I cannot say more than that. As for the tooth, I will need to perform a transillumination and take a caliper measurement.”
