In the centre is a four-wheel-drive Mercedes Unimog, the size of a small barn. It’s stacked with equipment and stands ready to tow vehicles away, bulldoze down walls and perform all manner of muscular tasks.
Several Iveco armoured vans have already been loaded with prisoners. A soldier slaps the side of one and it heads off down the dirt road, flanked by BMW R85 motorcyclists, blue lights flashing.
Up above, an Augusta-Bell helicopter keeps constant watch as the prisoners are taken down the Appian Way and back towards Rome.
Tom sits on a stone trough and draws breath.
He watches Valentina’s heart breaking as she says goodbye to Sweetheart. The child is being taken away by social workers, and the parting seems to be hurting her every bit as much as it’s hurting the kid.
She joins him at the trough, puts her left hand on his thigh and her head on his shoulder.
He takes her hand. ‘Is she all right?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s even in the same postal code as all right.’
He squeezes her fingers. ‘There’s no more you can do. You have to leave her to the experts now.’
She looks up at him. There are no tears in her eyes; just disbelief and disgust. ‘Silvestri says they freed almost a dozen kids. Some are even younger than that little girl.’
‘How many of the cult have they arrested?’
‘A dozen men. All guards, by the look of it.’ She glances towards the front of the farm. Mater is being lifted on a gurney into an ambulance. ‘Along with the old witch, they’ve taken four women of about her age and another two or three who seem to be in their forties.’
Tom wipes rain from his forehead. ‘The tip of the iceberg.’
Valentina knows what he means. ‘Under interview, some of the old birds will start singing. They won’t want to spend the rest of their lives in prison and should give up a good number of the other members.’
Tom turns further towards her. ‘Down in the place where the lion killed Anna’s friend, we discovered a secret chamber, a columbarium.’
‘One of those old Roman resting places for the poor?’
He nods. ‘We found a stack of books in there, all marked with the number X. They’re being lifted out by your forensics people.’
She’s intrigued. ‘Do you know what they are?’
He thinks he does. ‘The one on top was the most recent one. It was like a cross between an address book and a diary. On the left were telephone numbers and email addresses. No names. On the right were descriptions of the rituals they’d performed with children and names and descriptions of the children. I saw several pages talking about new arrivals and the initiation ceremonies they had to endure.’
Valentina drops her head and feels sick.
Tom puts his hand on her shoulder and rubs it. ‘The books go back years, maybe even centuries. The Tenth Book has nothing to do with wisdom or prophecies; it’s a never-ending paedophile directory and diary, that’s all.’
Valentina looks up and her face is hardened by anger. ‘You’re wrong, Tom. Wrong because it contains the greatest knowledge of alclass="underline" information on how to find these sick animals, and probably enough evidence to get convictions and send them to their own damned cells.’
EPILOGUE
Three days later
Valentina and Tom are shown through to Lorenzo Silvestri’s office.
Neither of them is sure why they are there.
Lorenzo called and said they were to come. Valentina hardly questioned it. She’s learned the painful way that it’s best not to disobey the orders of a Carabinieri major.
The time of the meeting is seven p.m., and that gives her a clue. That and the fact that Lorenzo said they should both look smart. She thinks he’s a good guy, and is guessing that she and Tom are being invited along to share a glass of wine with the troops, get a slap on the back and hopefully an update on the case.
Lorenzo greets them both with a smile as broad as the Tiber. ‘Capitano Morassi.’ He spreads his arms wide. ‘You look even more magnificent than in Vanity Fair.’
She almost blushes. ‘You saw those shots?’
‘Valentina, everyone saw those shots.’ He embraces her warmly. ‘And Signor Shaman.’ He pretends to stand back and admire him. ‘Take away that sling and you look the perfect companion for our capitano.’ He extends his hand and shakes Tom’s firmly before pulling him close and kissing both cheeks. ‘Sit down, please sit down.’ He gestures to two black plastic chairs on the other side of his unassuming glass desk.
Lorenzo sits and folds his arms contentedly. ‘So – I have much to tell you. Where should I begin?’
Valentina helps him out. ‘How’s the little girl we found in the cells?’
He nods. ‘She’s very well. She’s called Cristiana, is eleven years old and has written a letter for you.’ He searches the top of his desk. ‘I’m sorry; I thought I had it here.’ He reads the disappointment in Valentina’s eyes. ‘I’ll find it later, don’t worry.’
He picks a manila file off a stack of three trays. ‘First, let’s tidy up some loose ends.’
Both Tom and Valentina note his change of tone. Perhaps this isn’t going to be any kind of celebration after all.
Lorenzo pulls out a black and white photograph and spins it round for them to see. ‘Not pleasant, I’m afraid.’
And it isn’t.
The picture shows the corpse of a woman in a shallow grave.
Her hand is missing.
Valentina picks it up. Her mind races back to Cosmedin and the time she stood in the bloodstained portico with Federico. This was the start of it all. She looks towards Lorenzo for an explanation.
‘We found the corpse inside the underground complex. The pathologist thinks she was buried alive.’
‘Dear God.’ Valentina returns the photograph to the major. ‘Scientists at the RaCIS told us that the blood from the severed hand came from Anna’s sister, Cloelia. Is that correct? Is this body that of her sister?’
‘It is.’ He waits for the news to sink in. ‘Forensics also found DNA that links the killing to one of the men we arrested. Blood from Anna’s sister was on this man’s robes, and his DNA was found on her, so we have a strong evidential chain.’ He puts the photograph back in the file. Sombrely he produces another picture and puts it down for them to see. ‘This one you know. Anna Fratelli.’
They both look at it and feel a pang of sadness.
She could have been so much more.
Lorenzo rubs his chin thoughtfully. He dips into the file again, produces two more photographs and puts them either side of Anna’s.
The first is a picture of the amphora that Tom discovered in the columbarium; the second is a mug shot of a woman in her sixties. The woman Valentina fired shots at in the underground temple.
Lorenzo taps Anna’s picture. ‘This is her genealogical table.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Valentina, although a part of her actually does, and she simply doesn’t want to accept what she’s hearing.
The major touches the mug shot. ‘This is the woman they all call Mater. Her real name is Sibilia Cassandra Savina Andreotti.’ He looks towards Tom. ‘She claims to be a divine descendant of the goddess Cybele. I don’t believe in goddesses.’ He glances at Valentina. ‘At least not that kind. But what I can substantiate is that she is Anna Fratelli’s mother, and they both share the DNA of whoever was cremated and put in this pot centuries ago.’
The air seems to have been sucked out of the room. Tom and Valentina are speechless.
Tom clears his throat and sits forward in his chair.
Lorenzo looks towards him expectantly.
‘There’s something I should say.’
Valentina looks surprised. She and Tom have barely spoken about the case in the last few days. They’ve been trying to forget it.
‘The man who took me into the tunnels.’
Lorenzo names him. ‘Guilio Brygus Angelis.’
‘Guilio…’ Tom says it almost reverently. ‘He told me what had happened at Chiesa Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The sect members had recaptured Anna and taken her to the Bocca to frighten her and to find out if she’d told anyone about the temple and the rituals. They cut off her sister’s hand and said they would kill her and then do the same to Anna if she didn’t tell them the truth.’ Tom takes a breath to make sure he recounts things accurately. ‘Guilio appeared as Anna was screaming, and fought with the guards. During the fight, Anna picked up one of the ceremonial swords and killed the man who’d injured her sister.’