Mind/Reader Page 22

  ‘I spoke without thinking …’ How could she!

  ‘I can’t imagine how, but if I can help …’ He let the offer trail off, invitingly.

  ‘That’s very kind.’ Claudine was too confused for a cohesive thought to form. What in the name of Christ had she done! Imagined she was doing! She, Claudine Carter, who never lost control or uttered an ill-judged word! She physically shivered, chilled by what she could only think of as a collapse.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Claudine gave an uncertain head movement. ‘I’m embarrassed,’ she admitted honestly. ‘I don’t know what …’

  Rosetti smiled, gesturing to the hovering waiter to clear the plates. ‘I’m not sure what there is to apologize for. Nothing, I think.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she repeated, her mind still not functioning properly.

  ‘It’s obviously serious? Or you think it could be?’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know.’

  ‘Which you don’t want to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that I’m the person to give it but if it’s official — legal — shouldn’t you get expert advice?’

  ‘That’s what Toomey told me to do.’

  ‘Why haven’t you?’

  ‘It would look as if Warwick did something wrong … something that has to be defended. And he didn’t.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ apologized Rosetti in advance. ‘But are you absolutely sure of that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  Claudine swallowed. ‘No.’

  ‘Get a lawyer,’ insisted the Italian bluntly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Claudine, hating the inadequacy.

  ‘I was surprised how easy you found it to watch my initial examination, at the scene.’

  Not suspecting the direction in which Rosetti was guiding the conversation - imagining, in fact, that he was trying to let her escape by changing the subject - Claudine said: ‘I don’t have a problem with medical examinations: autopsies, in fact. I can learn a lot from them.’

  ‘Just as you’re accustomed to courts and criminal investigations?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Claudine doubtfully.

  ‘But you wouldn’t try your own medical examination? Or believe your lay legal knowledge sufficient to argue a case in court?’

  ‘No,’ conceded Claudine, understanding at last.

  ‘You’re a trained criminal psychologist, Claudine: a brilliant one, from what I’ve seen. But I think you need professional help: proper guidance.’

  She couldn’t recall his having called her by her given name before. ‘Point made.’

  ‘Are you going to take it?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than you imagine.’

  Rosetti sighed, although not with exasperation. ‘If you want to talk about it again …’

  ‘I didn’t mean to talk about it tonight. Talk about it at all!’

  ‘You haven’t. Not in any way that makes sense. And just in case it worries you later, I don’t discuss what I’ve heard in confidence. Which is how I regard this conversation.’

  ‘Hardly the way to relax after a hard day’s work,’ offered Claudine, desperate to recover, hurrying her best effort at the lightness there’d been earlier.

  ‘Would you believe I’ve enjoyed it?’

  ‘It would be difficult.’

  ‘I have.’

  Even more difficult to believe was that she had, too. Despite her inexplicable collapse or giving way to weakness or mental aberration or whatever it was that had made her say what little she had, Claudine had enjoyed being with the man. Maybe, even, because of it. He’d been sympathetic and understanding and kind, accepting what she’d divulged but not pressing her an iota beyond the point at which she’d stopped. Been, in fact, the perfect psychologist. Still striving to lift the mood, she said: ‘Would you believe I have, too?’

  They had coffee back in the bar and Rosetti tried, too, managing anecdotes about medical examinations and investigations that were not macabre but funny enough to make her laugh, which was something else she couldn’t remember doing for a very long time.

  In sudden recollection Claudine said: ‘Ponzio made a remark when I arrived at the Borghese Gardens but stopped smiling at what you said to him?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Rosetti. ‘Stupid.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He said if Europol provided travelling companions like you, he was going to apply for a transfer.’

  Claudine suspected he’d cleaned the remark up. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That he should stop thinking with his trousers and listen to what you said: that you were his best chance of avoiding making himself look a fool, although fool wasn’t the word I used.’

  ‘Thanks for making it clear you weren’t sharing my bed.’

  ‘Or you mine,’ said the Italian, in a qualification Claudine didn’t understand.

  It was Rosetti who suggested they go upstairs, without any awkwardness or connived double entendre, escorting her to her door with the promise to see her for breakfast and moving on to his own room the moment she turned the key in the lock.

  Claudine didn’t go to sleep. Instead she lay with the bedside light on, staring unseeingly at the far wall, evaluating and re-evaluating what had happened, every time failing to find an explanation that satisfied her for what she’d done. It had to have been an aberrant mental collapse, a fortunately brief but understandable breakdown after all the catastrophes and pressures of the last few months. She’d been lucky it had happened with Hugo Rosetti, whom she trusted not to tittle-tattle about the episode to anyone in Europol. Even more inexplicably she actually felt relieved at having shared, however incompletely, a little of her problem with someone else.

  Claudine was still awake at 3 a.m. when Giovanni Ponzio telephoned.

  ‘Announce you’re going back!’ exclaimed Hardy. Miriam and Ann were in the kitchen, clearing away. He and Burrows had just opened the brandy.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know damned well why not!’

  ‘It could work.’

  ‘And it could get you dead.’

  ‘Not done properly.’

  ‘They’d never agree. And you’d make yourself look a goddamned fool by suggesting it. This can’t go on for ever. You’re acting like someone who’s stir-crazy.’

  ‘I am stir-crazy.’

  ‘You haven’t got to stay here, for Christ’s sake! You’re in Europe. Take a vacation. See the sights at their expense.’

  ‘I want to get involved in these European killings. It fascinates the hell out of me.’

  ‘You’ve no legal right.’

  ‘That could be gotten around.’

  ‘You suggested it?’

  ‘To the gal who’s got the job. She gave me the stiff middle finger. I thought Washington was empire-crazy. Europol makes it look like a teddy bears’ picnic.’

  Hardy looked up as the women re-entered the room. To Burrows’ wife he said: ‘I’m trying to persuade Scott to take you on a vacation.’

  ‘I know just where I want to go!’ announced Miriam. ‘A cabin in Alexandria, overlooking the Potomac.’

  Their weekend house.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  From the numerous responses to a photograph shown on late night television there was a name as well as a torso. The dead girl was not Nubian but Ethiopian. Her full name was Elia Duphade but for the modelling career she had just started she had only used her given name.

  Ponzio and the Italian pathologist were already at the Coliseum when Claudine and Rosetti arrived. The body was lying in what Ponzio immediately identified as one of the underground cages that two thousand years earlier had held the wild animals - tigers, he thought - in readiness for their fights to the death with gladiators under the Flavian emperors. Claudine, already apprehensive of the newspaper interpretation of Ponzio’s press conferences, decided the media we
ren’t going to be disappointed that day, either.

  Where the arena floor had once provided a roof, canvas sheeting had already been stretched across the surviving walls and the entire cell was whitened by arc lights rapidly creating a temperature matching that of the previous midday in the Borghese Gardens, although it was still before dawn. As they both climbed reluctantly into the sterile overalls Rosetti said: ‘So much for any feasible body temperature reading.’

  ‘It’s academic anyway,’ suggested Claudine.

  ‘It’s part of a properly conducted medical examination,’ corrected Rosetti.

  At least, reflected Claudine, there hadn’t this early been the build-up of camera-conscious carabinieri. Even Ponzio and the Rome examiner appeared to have remained outside the brick-walled enclosure, a rectangle about three metres wide by five metres long, while the overalled forensic technician completed his search: when they arrived the man was photographing indentations in the dirt floor before making his plaster cast. They waited, too, for him to lift his impression, trying to assimilate what they could from the doorway.

  The headless torso was naked and lay on its back. At the far end of the cell, close to where the head would have been, was what appeared to be a crumpled bundle of dirty grey paper. As he left the room, displaying through his clear plastic exhibit bag the clear impression of a footprint, the technician indicated the paper bundle and said something in Italian.

  ‘That’s how the body was carried in here,’ translated Rosetti, as they made their way inside.

  The left leg and the right arm remained, although the hand was missing. The body was pitted with blood-clotted stab wounds and there was too much blood for a proper count to be made at the scene of the number of slash wounds to the pubic area. There were deep cuts in what remained of the missing arm and leg and at Rosetti’s invitation Claudine crouched close to see there were other injuries apart from the stab wounds to the breasts.

  ‘Bite marks,’ identified the pathologist.

  ‘How definitive?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Trophy bites?’

  ‘I’d say so, although the left nipple has been bitten off.’

  ‘So I’m probably right,’ said Claudine.

  ‘Looks like it, unfortunately.’ He supported the weight of the body when the local pathologist turned it. The lividity was discernible on the back and buttocks, despite the natural skin colouring. There were more bite marks on the buttocks.

  There was a rapid exchange in Italian and Claudine was aware of the other pathologist and Ponzio gazing curiously at Rosetti. She did the same when he announced he was going to use the arc light generator to power the American-manufactured Luma-Lite, which he could run through a transformer. Claudine had read of the device, which showed up fingerprints, fibre and bodily fluid, particularly semen, but had never seen one in use.

  Becoming aware of her look Rosetti grinned and said: ‘It’s a useful tool. No reason why I shouldn’t have something that works, just because it’s not generally recognized in Europe,’ and Claudine decided Kurt Volker was not the only unconventional member of the team.

  The body abruptly became a neon of particles initially invisible to the naked eye but there was no semen register.

  As Rosetti picked off the traces and dropped them into individual exhibit bags Claudine said: ‘She won’t have been raped and there won’t be any vaginal deposits. And he won’t have masturbated.’ She looked for a few moments at the mutilated corpse in front of her. ‘He’s gone a long way past that: this is a hell of a deterioration. One of the worst I’ve seen.’

  ‘He might not have dismembered before,’ Rosetti reminded her. ‘There could have been murders that haven’t been linked. Maybe we’ll need Kurt.’

  ‘We’ve got him,’ said Claudine, a reminder for her part. ‘He’s just a computerlink away.’

  Rosetti cupped the feet in his hand and said: ‘Well pedicured. So the hands will be cared for. The fingernails might produce something.’

  ‘We’ve got a lot already,’ said Claudine.

  ‘And a fourth category.’

  ‘Unquestionably.’

  Rosetti continued lifting the foot, testing the rigidity of the limb, trying and failing to bend both legs at the knee. ‘Dissipating rigor, additionally affected by this heat. At a rough estimate I’d say she’s been dead thirty-six hours: forty-eight maximum.’

  ‘Which fits,’ said Claudine. ‘An up and coming model would have a wide circle of friends. There would already have been an alert if she’d been missing any longer.’

  Claudine’s face twisted at the abrupt snatch of stomach cramp she hadn’t expected for at least another two days and Rosetti said: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Claudine. ‘Nothing to do with anything here.’ The discomfort made her even hotter than she was, encased in her protective suit.

  She reached beyond the body, pulling the sack closer to where they were crouched. Lettering became visible as the heavy industrial paper was stretched out and Rosetti said: ‘It’s a cement bag.’

  From the doorway Ponzio said: ‘There’s some restoration work being carried out at the Arch of Gallienus.’

  ‘The rigor is sufficiently gone to bend the torso but not enough for it to look like a body. It would, in fact, have looked just like a sack of cement.’

  The air filter in Claudine’s face mask prevented her detecting the odour inside the sack when she opened it. The interior was gouted with blood and Claudine said at once: ‘She was put in here very soon after being killed.’

  She offered Rosetti the mouth of the sack. Surprised at her intention he took it, hauling against her as she turned the already forensically examined sack completely inside out. The effort strained her aching stomach even further. ‘Let’s try the Luma-Lite,’ she said.

  Obediently Rosetti turned on the invisible beam. The cement residue glowed iridescent but nothing else did. They returned the sack to its correct shape, minutely examining the outside. There were varying stains around the base and a concentration along one side.

  ‘Where it was laid, possibly with her inside,’ suggested Claudine. Lightly touching the heavier, black marks - several blotched white where forensic samples had been lifted — she said: ‘That will be oil.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’ll narrow the possibilities even further,’ said Rosetti, pointing to some lighter discolorations. Continuing the gesture to indicate the body, he said: ‘Do you want any special tests carried out here?’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe at the full autopsy.’

  Her discomfort was settling into a permanent dull ache and she wished she had brought some analgesics with her from the hotel. This looked like being one of the bad months.

  It was very narrow in the outer tunnels - they had to retreat into adjoining chambers for the mortuary attendants to get to the body with their collapsible trolley - and Claudine supposed the animals had been herded this way.

  Their autopsy clothing was even more elaborate than that for the scene-of-crime examination, an AIDS-preventing, internally air-conditioned space suit totally enclosing the body and face, with microphone communication and air-filtered oxygen packs.

  There was a female changing section attached to the mortuary and Claudine was able to get tampons and painkillers from wall dispensing machines before suiting up. She did so in only bra and pants, despite the air conditioning of her suit. The two pathologists were waiting when she entered the examination theatre. Giovanni Ponzio watched expressionlessly from the glassed-off observation room.

  The two pathologists shared the autopsy, dictating in Italian as they carried out their routine dissections through a link-up into overhead microphones permanently suspended above the guttered steel examination table. It was the first time she had seen Rosetti work. She was immediately aware of the care - respect even - with which he treated the body. She’d often in the past been offended by the casualness with which post-mortems were conducted, incisions made roughly and sut
ured even more haphazardly. Rosetti operated with the precision of a plastic surgeon and closed openings with matching neatness: confronted with an example, the Rome pathologist’s openings and closings visibly improved as the examination progressed.

  Claudine intruded only twice. Once was to discuss with Rosetti the emptiness of the stomach, the little contents of which were digested beyond identification. The second was specifically to establish, when Rosetti took his unproductive semen swabs, that the pubic cutting was external - a total of twenty-seven separate slash wounds - and that there had been no positive vaginal mutilation.

  ‘It’s frenzied. Manic,’ said Rosetti. ‘He stood over her, just stabbing and slashing.’

  ‘I can see,’ said Claudine.

  Rosetti was scanning the body once more with his imported Luma-Lite when the space-suited forensic orthodontist shuffled awkwardly into the operating theatre. The man was as intrigued by the device as Claudine had been at the Coliseum and there was a brief conversation about it before Rosetti guided him to the bite marks. The dental specialist studied the wounds under magnification before producing a smaller and more refined version of the cast-making equipment with which the forensic technician had worked earlier.

  Rosetti pulled away from the table and said: ‘He says it will be easy. There’s marked protrusion to the right and left centrals.’

  With no reason to remain any longer Claudine left the chamber ahead of the men and showered before getting dressed again. The painkillers appeared to be working and she swallowed two more before rejoining the beaming Giovanni Ponzio in the outer corridor. The man was burdened with newspapers that he immediately offered her. The universal preference had been the photographs of the police chief in the Borghese Gardens rather than at the second press conference. There was a wide selection on all the front and several inside pages of Elia Duphade, who had indeed been a strikingly attractive girl. There was also a wide variety of artists’ impressions, most veering towards the ghostly, of the shadow by the wall, upon several of which the artists had reimposed the girl’s head. Claudine didn’t need to know Italian to understand the frequent reference to monsters. She flicked through each newspaper, glad there was no long-range photograph of her in the Gardens.