The Lost Girls of Rome (12 page)

‘It may have looked like a frenzied attack, but the killers did a clean job.’

Even if they hadn’t, Marcus thought, the murders had happened at a time when forensics still used outdated methods and DNA analysis was not in general use. In addition, the crime scene had been contaminated by the presence of the child for forty-eight hours, and then wiped out forever. He thought again of the replica that Raffaele Altieri had constructed in the hope of finding an answer.

‘There was a third line of inquiry, wasn’t there?’

Marcus was guessing: why else would
they
have shown an interest in the case? He didn’t understand why his friend had not mentioned it. And in fact, Clemente immediately tried to change the subject. ‘What has this got to do with Jeremiah Smith and Lara’s disappearance?’

‘I don’t know yet. Raffaele Altieri was in Lara’s apartment last night. Someone sent him a letter telling him to go there.’

‘Who?’

‘I have no idea, but in the apartment I found a Bible among the cookery books. It was an anomaly I hadn’t spotted during the first inspection. Sometimes you need darkness to see things better: that’s why I went back to the apartment last night. I wanted to reproduce the same conditions in which Jeremiah had acted.’

‘A Bible?’ Clemente echoed, uncomprehending.

‘There was a bookmark indicating St Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalonians: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night …” If it wasn’t absurd, I’d say someone put that message there for us, specifically so that we should meet Raffaele Altieri.’

Clemente stiffened. ‘Nobody knows about us.’

‘Of course not,’ Marcus said. Nobody, he repeated to himself bitterly.

‘We don’t have much time to save Lara, you know that.’

‘You told me I’m the only person who can find her, and that I should follow my instincts. That’s what I’m doing.’ Marcus had no intention of letting go. ‘Now tell me about that other line of inquiry. At the crime scene, apart from the word “Evil”, there were also three circular marks in the pool of blood, arranged in the shape of a triangle.’

Clemente turned towards the bronze archangel, almost as if to invoke its protection. ‘It’s an occult symbol.’

It was hardly surprising that the police had decided to omit that detail from the files, Marcus thought. The police were practical people, they didn’t like cases that touched on the world of the occult. It wasn’t an easy subject to bring up in a court of law, and could easily give a defendant the chance to claim mental illness. Not to mention the fact that it could make the police look bad.

But Clemente clearly took the matter seriously. ‘According to some,’ he said, ‘a ritual was celebrated in that bedroom.’

Crimes linked to the occult were precisely the kind of anomalies
they
dealt with. While waiting for Clemente to procure the file on the Altieri case from the archive, Marcus was anxious to understand the meaning of the triangular symbol, so he had gone to the one place where he might find the answer.

The Biblioteca Angelica was located in a former Augustine monastery in the Piazza Sant’Agostino. The monks had been collecting, cataloguing and preserving since the seventeenth century, amassing some two hundred thousand precious volumes that had formed the basis of the first ever public library in Europe.

Marcus was sitting at one of the tables in the reading room – known as the Salone Vanvitelliano, after the architect who had renovated the complex in the eighteenth century – surrounded by wooden shelves crammed with books. You gained access to it through a vestibule adorned by portraits of members of the Arcadian Academy. It was here that that the catalogues were kept. A little further on was the strongroom that contained the most valuable miniatures.

Over the course of centuries, the Biblioteca Angelica had been involved in various religious controversies, due to the fact that its collections contained a large number of banned texts. These were the ones that interested Marcus, who had asked to examine some volumes on symbology.

He put on a white cotton glove, because contact with acids in the skin could damage the older books. The sound of hands turning pages, a sound like the beating of a butterfly’s wings, was the only noise in the room. At the time of the Inquisition, Marcus would have paid with his life for reading these texts. In one hour of research, he managed to trace the origin of the triangular symbol.

Seen as the opposite of the Christian cross, it had quickly become the emblem of a number of Satanic cults. Its creation went back to the time of the Emperor Constantine’s conversion. The Christians
stopped being persecuted and abandoned the catacombs. The pagans, on the other hand, took refuge there.

Marcus was surprised to learn that it was from this old paganism that modern Satanism derived. Over the course of centuries, the figure of Satan had replaced the other deities, because he was the principal antagonist of the Christian God. The followers of these cults were regarded as outlaws. They met in isolated places, usually in the open air. They traced the walls of their temple on the ground with a stick, making it easy to erase them if they were discovered. The killing of innocents was used to seal pacts of blood between the followers. But, as well as possessing a ritualistic purpose, it also had a practical one.

If I make you kill someone, Marcus thought, you are bound to me for life. Anyone leaving the sect risked being denounced as a murderer.

In the catalogue he had found books that explained the historical evolution of these practices, right up to the present day. As these were recent publications, he took off the glove.

In a volume on criminology, he learned that there were many murders with a Satanic element. In most cases, though, Satanism was merely a pretext for sexual perversions. Some psychopathic killers claimed that a superior force was trying to communicate with them. Indulging in a ritual of blood was a way of responding to the call. The corpses became messengers.

The best-known case was that of David Richard Berkowitz – best known as the Son of Sam – the serial killer who had terrorised New York at the end of the 1970s. When they finally captured him, he told the police that he had been ordered to kill by a demonic presence speaking to him through his neighbour’s dog.

Marcus ruled out the idea that the murder of Valeria Altieri was a pathological crime. There had been more than one perpetrator, which suggested that the killers were in full possession of their mental capacities.

Group homicides, however, were a constant in cases of Satanism. In a group, individuals often found the courage to carry out heinous acts of which they would not otherwise have been capable. Acting in
concert helped to overcome the normal inhibitions, and when responsibility was divided there was less of a sense of guilt.

There was also so-called ‘acid Satanism’, among whose followers drug use was common. Such groups were easily recognisable by their clothes, which made extensive use of the colour black and Satanic symbols. Their inspiration came less from sacrilegious texts than from heavy metal music.

The word EVIL on the wall of Valeria Altieri’s bedroom could point to this kind of thing, Marcus thought. But it was rare for such groups to go as far as murdering human beings: they usually limited themselves to sacrificing poor animals in their imitation black masses.

True Satanism was not so overtly dramatic. It depended on total secrecy. There was no actual evidence of its existence, only deceptive and contradictory clues. There were, though, a few cases of Satanic murders not attributable to fanatics or mentally ill people, and it was here in Italy that the most famous of these had taken place: the so-called Monster of Florence case.

Marcus read a brief summary of the case. Having realised that the eight double homicides that had taken place between 1974 and 1985 were the work not of a single hand but of a group of killers, the police had arrested the culprits, but had stopped there, even though there was a suspicion that the murders had been ordered by members of some kind of unidentified sect. The theory was that the purpose of the killings was to procure human body parts to be used in rituals.

Marcus found a passage in this account that he thought might turn out useful. It was in reference to the Monster of Florence’s motive for always killing young couples. The most favourable death was that which came during orgasm, which was termed
mors justi
. The belief was that at that precise moment, certain energies were unleashed that were capable of increasing and reinforcing the effects of a malign ritual.

In some cases, the murders occurred on dates that preceded Christian festivals, with a preference for nights when there was a new moon.

Marcus checked the date of the murders of Valeria Altieri and her lover. They had occurred on the night of 24 March, the eve of the Annunciation. And it was a new moon.

The elements of a Satanic crime were all there. In the light of this information, Marcus would have to reopen an investigation that had been closed nearly twenty years before. He was convinced that someone who knew a lot had chosen to keep quiet over the years. He searched in his pocket and found the business card that he had taken from Raffaele Altieri’s desk.

He would begin with Ranieri, the private detective.

Ranieri had an office on the top floor of a small building in the Prati area. Marcus watched as the detective got out of a green Subaru. He was much older than the photograph on his agency’s website. It had struck Marcus as strange that someone doing a job based on discretion should display his own face to the world. But presumably Ranieri didn’t care.

Before following him inside the building, Marcus noticed that the parked car was spattered with mud. Despite the constant rain of the last few hours, it was unlikely that it had got that way in Rome. He deduced that the detective had been outside the city.

The doorman of the building was intent on reading a newspaper and Marcus passed him undisturbed. Ranieri had avoided the lift, maybe not wanting to wait for it. Judging by the way he was climbing the stairs, he seemed to be in a great hurry.

As he entered his office, Marcus stopped on the first floor, where there was a recess in which he could hide and wait for the man to come out again. He would then get into the office and try to find out why he was in such a rush.

While he had been carrying out his research in the library that morning, Clemente, as promised, had acquired the file on the case for him – code number
c.g. 796-74-8
. It contained a detailed dossier on all the protagonists involved in the affair. He had left it for him inside a letter box in a large block of flats. It was a place they always used for exchanging documents: that particular box was not assigned to any of the occupants of the block.

Marcus had had plenty of time to study Ranieri’s profile while waiting for the detective to arrive.

Ranieri did not have much of a reputation. But that was hardly surprising. He had been suspended from the list of licensed investigators for improper conduct. Apparently, this was not his only occupation: in the past he had taken part in various scams, and had even done time in prison for passing false cheques. His best client was Raffaele Altieri, from whom, over the years, he had managed to obtain a considerable amount of money, although their relations had broken off abruptly. The office in the wealthy Prati neighbourhood was a facade to attract unknowing clients he could exploit. He did not even have a secretary.

It was as Marcus was going over these things in his mind that a woman’s scream echoed down the stairwell. It seemed to come from the top floor.

His training was clear: in cases such as this, he should leave immediately. Once in a safe place, he would be able to alert the police. The most important thing was anonymity, which had to be preserved at all costs.

I don’t exist, he reminded himself.

He waited to see if anybody in the building had heard anything. But nobody appeared on the landings. Marcus couldn’t help it: if a woman really was in danger, he would never forgive himself for not intervening. He was about to go up to the top floor when the door of the office opened and Ranieri started down the stairs. Marcus took shelter in the recess and the man passed without noticing him. He was carrying a leather briefcase.

When Marcus was sure that Ranieri had left the building, he raced up the stairs, hoping he was still in time.

When he reached the landing, he launched a kick at the door of the office. He found himself in a narrow waiting room. At the end of the corridor was a single room. Marcus rushed in that direction. When he got to the doorway, he stopped. He could hear a knocking sound from inside. He leaned in cautiously and saw that it was just an open window banging in the wind.

No woman.

But there was a second door, which was closed. He approached cautiously. He placed his palm on the handle and opened it abruptly, sure he would be faced with some terrible scene. It was nothing but a small bathroom. And it was empty.

Where was the woman he had heard screaming?

The doctors had warned him about auditory hallucinations. A side effect of his amnesia. It had happened before. Once he had thought he heard a telephone ringing incessantly in his attic room in the Via dei Serpenti. But he didn’t have a phone. On another occasion, he had heard Devok calling him by name. He didn’t know if it was really his voice, as he couldn’t remember what it sounded like. But he had linked the sound to Devok’s face, which gave him hope that one day his memory might come back. The doctors said no, amnesia linked to brain damage is always irreversible, and his wasn’t a psychological condition. He still believed, though, that he might eventually retrieve some hidden, ancestral memories.

He took a deep breath, trying to get the woman’s scream out of his ears. He had to figure out what had happened in that room.

He went to the open window of the office and looked down: the space where Ranieri had parked his green Subaru was empty. The fact that he had taken the car meant that he wouldn’t be back soon, so Marcus had a little time.