15
The guard outside the hospital room is the first to notice that the prisoner is out of bed and moving around.
He can see her through a slit of unfrosted glass, shuffling close to the wall.
The young man is about to call the nursing station when the night sister appears. ‘She’s out of bed,’ he announces in a worried tone.
‘I know.’ Sister Elizabetta Erio is a slightly overweight forty-year-old. ‘She pulled the emergency cord. Let’s see how she is.’
They enter the room together and find the prisoner-cum-patient sitting on the floor in the corner adjacent to the bed. Her hands are wrapped tightly around her drawn-up knees. She looks like a small, terrified child.
‘Come on, young lady,’ says Sister firmly. ‘You shouldn’t be down there. Let’s get you back into bed and make you comfortable.’
The guard bends down to help her, but this makes the woman cower even more. He guesses she’s afraid of the uniform and the white-holstered gun on his belt.
Elizabetta steps forward, takes her by the elbow and helps her to her feet in a no-nonsense way. ‘You’re going to freeze down there. Now let’s get you tucked up again.’
The prisoner allows herself to be moved back to the high metal bed. Her eyes never leave the guard.
Sister Erio quickly adjusts the patient’s faded hospital nightgown and covers her up. She’s read the woman’s case notes and knows she needs to stay alert. While the patient looks as meek as a mouse, and hasn’t spoken since admission, the huge bruise on her forehead is a reminder that there’s a constant chance of sudden and unexpected violence. ‘Does your head hurt, honey? That’s quite a bump you’ve got there.’
The woman scowls and tentatively puts her fingers to the patch of purple and black skin.
‘I’ll get you some painkillers. Would you like me to bring you a drink as well? Some nice cool water?’ She looks for a confirmatory nod.
‘ Si. Grazie.’
Elizabetta’s shocked. She stares disbelieving at the prisoner’s lips. ‘Okay. It’s good that you’re talking. Give me a minute, I’ll go and get some for you.’
On the way out, she pulls the guard aside. ‘Watch her. Watch her closely. I’ll be back in no time.’
Elizabetta phones the night doctor and grabs 400 mg of ibuprofen. She takes a plastic cup from the cooler in the corridor, fills it with chilled water and is back in the room within a minute.
The patient pops the tablets and drains all the water. ‘ Grazie.’
‘ Prego.’ Elizabetta sits on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m going to take your pulse and your blood pressure. Is that all right?’
The woman nods nervously. ‘Where am I? Why am I here?’
‘You really don’t know?’
The fear in her eyes says she doesn’t. ‘I have no idea.’ She bites at an already well-chewed thumbnail and looks around. ‘Was I hurt? Was I in some kind of accident?’
Elizabetta glances towards the guard. ‘The Carabinieri brought you here. They’ll probably want to talk to you, tell you about everything.’ She gives her a kindly smile. ‘Don’t worry about things; we’re going to look after you. Can you tell me what your name is?’
‘Suzanna.’
Elizabetta looks pleased.
‘ Va bene.’ She reaches for the clipboard at the end of the bed and writes on some notes. ‘And your last name, Suzanna, what’s your last name?’
‘Grecoraci. Suzanna Grecoraci.’
‘Excellent. That’s a good start.’
The patient looks puzzled. ‘You didn’t know who I was?’
‘No. No, we didn’t.’
Suzanna dips her head; when she raises it again, she looks ashamed. ‘Was someone else here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sometimes the others come. They come and take my body without me knowing. Then they do things that I don’t know about. Bad things.’
16
It’s a long time before Valentina and Tom make it to her bedroom, and even longer before they return to the kitchen for a much-delayed dinner.
Valentina throws on a black jogging suit, not at all what she’d imagined she’d wear for their date, but it seems suitable when she clambers out of her wrecked bed.
They work side by side in the kitchen, cooking, chatting, sharing wine as though they’ve been a couple for years rather than minutes. She gets old white plates out of a top cupboard beside the cooker where he’s working. ‘You’ve changed a lot since we first met.’
The comment amuses him, ‘How so?’
‘More confident. More worldly.’ She puts down the plates and sits up on the work counter so she can see his face while he cooks. ‘Was that what living with Tina did for you?’
Tom feels uncomfortable for the first time. ‘I suppose.’
‘You don’t want to talk about her?’
‘Not really.’ He drops chopped onions into the heavy heated skillet to make a base for a sauce and begins to crush a garlic clove while musing on how much more he’s prepared to tell her. ‘It’s just over a year since we split up. I guess it was inevitable. You remember Tina, she was a professional woman determined to build a career and have a settled life. Me, I was an ex-priest determined to drift a bit and certainly not keen to have any responsibility after what happened in LA and Venice.’
Valentina remembers how she and Tom first met, how she was shocked at discovering that he’d accidentally killed two street thugs in LA who were attacking a woman near his old church. She remembers too the case in Venice she got him involved in and how they both nearly died solving it. She picks up her glass of wine and wonders whether it was the fact that they’d nearly died together that led to this moment when they slept together. She watches him chopping tomatoes while browning onions and somehow the picture of domesticity prompts her to ask a question she never thought she’d ask. ‘You loved Tina, didn’t you?’
He doesn’t look up from the sizzling onions. ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘You think so?’
‘I tried to. I wanted to.’ He slides the tomatoes into the pan, stirs with a wooden spatula and adds spices. ‘We both tried to, we both wanted to. You have to remember that Tina was my first relationship since leaving the priesthood. The first person I’d ever… you know. Certainly the only woman I’ve ever lived with.’
Valentina is surprised. ‘She was?’
‘Yes, she was.’ He smiles at her. ‘Despite what you read in the papers, most of the Catholic clergy don’t have active sex lives.’
She laughs. ‘Didn’t you – you know – have sex before you went into the priesthood?’
He seasons two substantial tuna steaks, adds them to the skillet and covers them in the rich tomato sauce. ‘I feel like you’re interviewing me again. Any second now your old boss Vito is going to walk in, and the two of you are going to give me the third degree all over again. Only this time it won’t be about a body in a canal; it’ll be about my sex life as a teenager.’
She leans towards him, not confrontationally, just enough to catch his eye and make sure he understands she’s playing with him, merely digging around a little to get to know him better. ‘If I were interviewing you, I’d be suspicious, Tom Shaman, because you just avoided answering my question.’
‘And I, Captain Morassi, would be asking for my lawyer and saying no comment. But as you seem determined to have a straight answer, no, I didn’t have a full sexual relationship with anyone before I became a priest.’
‘Aah, a President Clinton answer.’ She fakes a deep American voice, ‘ I did not have a full sexual relationship with that woman.’ She leans on his shoulder. ‘But maybe there was a bit of fooling around, yes?’
He can’t believe she’s doing this to him. ‘Maybe. Now, can we change the subject? Or else I’m going to burn your food.’
‘Okay.’ Valentina knows she’ll have other opportunities to open him up. She swings herself down from the worktop and wanders across the apartment.
Tom tries to concentrate on the cooking. The whole process is a wonderfully therapeutic ceremony and one he fell in love with while in France.