The Devil Will Come (15 page)

Christopher stuffed the bloody candlestick into his shirt and began dragging the lifeless body toward the stable. It was harder work than he’d imagined but he didn’t let up until he had Martin well inside. The tethered horses shifted and whinnied and tugged at their ropes.

He dropped Martin beside a pile of hay and paused to catch his breath. Then he fished inside his shirt for the candlestick. He grasped it by its base, staining his fingers red.

With one hand he opened Martin’s mouth and with the other he shoved the stick as far down his throat as it would go and watched blood well up and fill the gaping hole.

The next day, Martin’s chair at petty school was unoccupied and Father Sweeting commented prophetically that the boy had better be dead than miss a day of studies. Christopher skipped lightly home, passing by the stables again. The stable doors were shut and no one seemed to be about. When he got home his mother and father were seated at the table talking in low tones, his sisters padding about on bare feet.

‘Did you hear?’ his father said to him. ‘Did you hear about Martin Plessington?’

Christopher shook his head.

‘Dead,’ his father said, starkly. ‘His head stoved in and a Catholic candlestick down his gullet. People are saying the Papists done it, killed a Protestant lad. They’re saying they’ll be trouble in Canterbury for sure. A right civil war. There’s talk of a couple of recusant boys already done in by Protestant gangs. What do you say about that?’

Christopher had nothing to say.

His mother piped up, ‘You wore your good shirt today. I found your other one balled up between your mattress and the wall.’ She reached down between her legs and produced it. ‘There’s blood on it.’

‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ his father demanded. ‘Tell the truth.’

Christopher smiled, showing the gap of his missing milk teeth. He actually puffed out his chest and said, ‘I did it. I killed him. I hope there is a war.’

His father rose slowly and stretched to his full height, towering over the seven-year-old. His lips quivered. ‘Good lad,’ he finally said. ‘I’m right proud of you. There’re dead Catholics today because of you and more to come, I reckon. You’re a credit. A credit to the Marlowe bloodlines.’

ELISABETTA’S FIRST INSTINCT
was to call her father but what would that accomplish beyond rousing him from his bed and upsetting him no end? Micaela, she knew, was on hospital duty. She called Zazo instead. He arrived half an hour after the Polizia and sat with Elisabetta in the kitchen while she waited to be interviewed by an officer.

She clutched her robe to her chest. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you. You’re so busy.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Zazo said. He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a sweater. ‘Did you call Papa?’

‘No.’

‘Good. So the guy was at your door?’

‘That’s what Sister Silvia said.’

‘Did you get a look at him?’

‘Only his back.’

‘It was probably an addict looking for some cash.’ Zazo said. ‘And too brain-dead to realize he was breaking into a convent. I’ve been unhappy that there’s no alarm system here.’

‘There’s never the money for that sort of thing, and anyway …’

‘Yeah, God protects,’ he finished derisively. ‘I know the man who’s in charge here, Inspector Leone. Let me speak to him.’

Elisabetta’s upper lip quivered. ‘Zazo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘I know you’re upset. I’ll be right back.’

Leone was a gruff, unpopular fellow nearing retirement. Back in Zazo’s day there’d been no love lost between them and Zazo could say with confidence that he hadn’t thought about the man once since leaving the force.

‘I remember you,’ Leone said when Zazo approached him in the residence hall. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘One of the nuns is my sister.’

‘You’re at the Vatican, right?’ Leone said it with button-pushing derision.

‘I am.’

‘That’s a good place for you.’

In his years of working with the Swiss Guards, Zazo had learned the art of restraint. He drew on it and let the remark pass. ‘So what do you have?’

‘The guy cut a hole in a ground-floor window at the back and let himself in. The Mother Superior is checking through the classrooms and offices on the first two floors but so far there’s nothing missing. He was standing in front of one of the residence rooms when one of the nuns on her way back from the toilet saw him and started screaming her head
off
. He ran away and probably made his way out a rear door.’

‘It was my sister’s room.’

Leone shrugged. ‘It had to be someone’s. Who knows what he wanted? Maybe he was a thief, maybe a rapist, maybe a junkie. Whatever he was it’s a good thing he never got to her. We’ll do our interviews, dust for prints, check the CCTV footage from surrounding buildings. You remember the drill, right, Celestino?’

‘I’m still a police officer,’ Zazo spat back.

‘Sure you are.’

Elisabetta was sipping at her coffee when Zazo returned. Nuns were busying themselves providing hot drinks for the officers. With so many men on the scene, some of the women, out of modesty, had gone back to their rooms and changed into their habits. ‘You don’t look so good,’ he told her with the bluntness of a brother.

‘Thank you.’

‘What did you mean when you said you had a bad feeling?’

‘There was something about that man.’

‘I thought you only saw his back.’

‘I know. That’s why it’s only a feeling.’ She whispered now. ‘I know it sounds crazy but I think it was the same man who attacked me that night.’

Zazo accepted a cup of coffee from one of the sisters. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It does sound crazy. I think you’re having some kind of post-trauma psychological reaction. That’s all.’

‘There’s more than that to it, Zazo. There’s more that I should tell you.’

‘Whenever you want to talk,’ he said.

Elizabetta looked scared. ‘Now.’

She took him back to her room. Zazo sprawled on her unmade bed and she sat on her reading chair and began by delivering a preamble. She knew that she had no authority to tell him these things but she felt compelled to do so. She demanded an oath of secrecy from him as her brother, as a policeman and as a Vatican employee.

Zazo agreed and listened in rapt attention as his sister told him everything about her work as a student, her flashes of memory about her attacker’s spine, the skeletons of St Callixtus, the old man in Ulm, his tattoos, the Marlowe play.

There was a knock on her partially open door. One of the nuns told her the police were ready for her.

‘You’re not going to tell them anything about this, are you?’ Zazo asked.

‘Of course not.’

He got off the bed and said gravely, ‘I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here any longer.’

When he was awoken Krek’s head was still thick from the good brandy he’d drunk earlier. Alone in his big bed he answered the phone testily, ‘Yes?’

It was Mulej. ‘I’m sorry to wake you. I have news from Italy.’

‘It had better be good.’

‘It isn’t. Vani had to abort.’

Krek couldn’t conceal his rage. ‘I’ve had it with him. I can’t tolerate this incompetence. Did he at least get away cleanly?’

‘Thankfully, yes.’

‘Tell him this, Mulej. Tell him he has one more chance. If he’s not successful he will be terminated. Tell him I will do it personally.’

It was drizzling. From Elisabetta’s seat on the bus, Rome looked drained of color and joyless. Her fellow commuters were too preoccupied with their newspapers and earphones to notice the pinched look on the nun’s pale face.

At her stop she opened her umbrella and walked the short distance to the Institute. Professor De Stefano’s assistant was waiting for her in the lobby.

‘The Professor wants you at St Callixtus immediately,’ he said. ‘Theres’ a car waiting for you.’

The St Callixtus catacombs had been closed to the public since the cave-in and the visitors’ building looked deserted and forlorn in the rain.

Gian Paolo Trapani was pacing in front of the entrance, water dripping from his long hair. He opened the car door for Elisabetta. ‘Professor De Stefano is down at the site. Please come quickly.’

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘That’s for him to tell you.’

Elisabetta almost had to run to keep up with the
long-legged
young man. The catacombs seemed particularly gloomy that morning. Despite the chilliness of the place, she was sweating and out of breath when they reached the boundary of the Liberian Area and the cave-in site.

De Stefano was at the threshold, immobile except for those hands of his, obsessively rubbing at each other. Elisabetta was alarmed by his abject look of anguish.

‘You’re the only person I know who doesn’t have a mobile phone,’ he said angrily.

‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ she answered. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Look! See for yourself what’s happened!’

He stepped aside and let her enter.

The sight was almost as shocking as the one she’d seen the first time but her emotional reaction today was more raw. She was assaulted by feelings of devastation and violation.

The chamber had been picked clean.

Where skeletons had been piled on top of one another, now there were only a few bones left in the dirt: a rib here, a humerus there, toe bones and finger bones scattered like popcorn on a cinema floor.

The fresco too was gone, but it had not been removed. It had been pulverized, certainly by hammer blows, for the plaster lay in clumps and fragments, completely annihilated.

De Stefano was mute with rage so Elisabetta looked to Trapani for help.

‘Whoever did this used our shaft,’ he said, pointing overhead. ‘There’s no sign of entry or egress through the catacomb. The night guards at the visitor center heard and saw nothing. We quit yesterday at five o’clock. They must have come when it got dark and then worked all night. Who knows what their methods were but I’d say they dug out one or two skeletons at a time and hoisted them up in crates or boxes to a truck. There are fresh tire marks running through the field. And, to top it off, they destroyed our fresco. It’s horrible.’

De Stefano found his voice at last. ‘It’s more than horrible. It’s a disaster of shocking proportions.’

‘Who could have done this?’ Elisabetta asked.

‘That’s what I want to ask
you
,’ De Stefano said, glaring at her.

She wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly. ‘Me? What could I possibly know of this?’

‘When Gian Paolo called me early this morning to inform me of what he’d found here I had my assistant check the phone logs of the few people at the Institute who had knowledge of the work here. Two days ago a call was made from your office line.’

Elisabetta searched her memory quickly before he had even finished. Had she actually used her phone to make an outgoing call? She didn’t think so.

‘The call was to
La Repubblica
. Why were you calling a newspaper, Elisabetta?’

‘I didn’t make this call, Professor. You know I wouldn’t do such a thing.’

‘A call is made to a newspaper and two days later we’re cleaned out. These are the facts!’

‘If this call was made, I insist, on God’s name, that it wasn’t me who placed it. Please believe me.’

De Stefano ignored her entreaty. ‘I have to attend an emergency meeting at the Vatican. I have to tell you, Elisabetta, that it was a mistake to involve you in this. You are dismissed. Go back to your school and your convent. I’ve spoken with Archbishop Luongo. You can’t work for me any longer.’

ELISABETTA FELT LIKE
she was on a boat that had slipped its mooring line and drifted from the protected waters of a harbor into a vast chartless sea. It was the middle of the afternoon and though she was physically in a place she knew well she found herself in an utterly strange mental and spiritual state.

The bedroom had stayed unaltered from the day when Micaela had left for university. Elisabetta’s own bed had the same pink ruffled spread and satin pillowcases, faded by years of sunlight. Her school books were still there, a precocious mix of French philosophers, theologians and serious novels. Micaela’s bookcase was, in contrast, filled with such light fare – romances, pop magazines, teen advice books – that it seemed it might float away. Over Micaela’s bed was a Bon Jovi poster. Over Elisabetta’s was a poster of a beautiful stag with giant antlers, cave art from Lascaux.

Elisabetta lay on top of her bed, fully dressed in her habit but with her shoes kicked off. She couldn’t go back to the school or the convent because Zazo had
forbidden
it and had enlisted Elisabetta’s father, Micaela and even Sister Marilena in his crusade. Elisabetta was finally convinced by the argument that she might be putting students and nuns in danger if she stayed there.

She couldn’t go back to the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology because, for the first time in her life, she’d been suspended from a job. Her skin danced with anger at the very idea that De Stefano thought she might bear some responsibility for the looting.

And she couldn’t even pray in peace without becoming distracted and getting dragged into restless thoughts.

Disgusted, Elisabetta pushed herself up off the bed and put her shoes on. Defiantly, she decided that if she couldn’t resume her teaching she would continue with her other job, whether or not she remained on De Stefano’s staff. She thrust her chin forward truculently. She would continue out of intellectual curiosity. But there was something more urgent, wasn’t there? A deep notion was forming that she
needed
to understand what had gone on in the columbarium of St Callixtus.

For her own survival.

‘God protect me,’ she said out loud, then went to the kitchen to make herself coffee before settling down in the dining room to peruse some reference works.

There was a sound of a key in the door.

She looked up from her books and heard her father calling her name.

‘I’m here, Papa, in the dining room.’

Her books and papers were strewn across the dining-room table. She had used her father’s desktop computer in the sitting room to send an email from her private account to Professor Harris in Cambridge – not to cancel their meeting but to change the venue.