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THREE

Via del Gesù, Rome 17th March - 5.44 p.m.

Ignoring her phone’s shrill call, Allegra Damico grabbed the double espresso off the counter, threw down some change and stepped back outside into the fading light. Answering it wouldn’t make her get there any quicker. And if they wanted her to make any sense after the day she’d just had, she needed the caffeine more than they needed her to be on time. Shrugging with a faint hint of indignation, she walked down the Via del Gesù then turned right on to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, cupping the coffee in both hands and blowing on it, her reflection catching in the shop windows.

She owed her athletic frame to her father, an architect who had met her mother when he was working as a tour guide in Naples and she, a Danish student, was backpacking across Europe. As a result, Allegra had contrived to inherit both his olive skin and quick temper and her mother’s high cheekbones and the sort of curling strawberry blonde hair that the rich housewives who stalked the Via dei Condotti spent hundreds of euros trying to conjure from a bottle. Nowhere was this genetic compromise more arrestingly reflected than in her mismatched eyes - one crystal blue, the other an earthy brown.

Lifting her nose from the cup she frowned, suddenly aware that despite the time of day, dawn seemed to be breaking ahead of her, its golden glow bronzing the sky. Sighing, she quickened her pace, taking this unnatural event and the growing wail of sirens as an ominous portent of what lay in wait.

Her instincts were soon proved right. The Largo di Torre Argentina, a large rectangular square that had once formed part of the Campo Marzio, had been barricaded off, a disco frenzy of blue and red lights dancing across the walls of the surrounding buildings. A swollen, curious crowd had gathered on one side of the metal railings, straining to see into the middle of the square, some holding their mobile phones over their heads to film what they could. On the other side loomed a determined cordon of state police, some barking at people to stay back and go home, a few braving the baying masses in a valiant attempt to redirect the backed-up traffic along the Via dei Cestari. A police helicopter circled overhead, the bass chop of its blades mingling with the sirens’ shrill treble to form a deafening and discordant choir. A single searchlight shone down from its belly, its celestial beam picking out a spot that Allegra couldn’t yet see.

Her phone rang again. This time she answered it.

‘Pronto. Yes sir, I’m here… I’m sorry, but I came as soon as I could…Well, I’m here now… Okay, then tell him I’ll meet him at the north-east corner in three minutes… Ciao.’

She extracted her badge from her rear jeans pocket and, taking a deep breath, plunged into the crowd and elbowed her way to the front, flashing it apologetically in the vague direction of the muffled curses and angry stares thrown her way. Once there, she identified herself and an officer unhooked one of the barriers, the weight of the crowd spitting her through the gap before immediately closing up behind her.

Catching her breath and pulling her jacket straight, she picked her way through a maze of haphazardly parked squad cars and headed towards the fenced-off sunken area that dominated the middle of the square. She could see now that this was the epicentre of the synthetic dawn she had witnessed earlier, a series of large mobile floodlights having been wheeled into place along its perimeter, the helicopter frozen overhead.

‘Lieutenant Damico?’

A man had appeared at the top of a makeshift set of steps that led down to the large sunken tract of land. She nodded and held out her ID by way of introduction.

‘You’re a woman.’

‘Unless you know something I don’t.’

‘I know you’re late,’ he snapped.

About six foot three, he must have weighed seventeen stone, most of it muscle. He was wearing dark blue trousers, a grey jacket and a garish tie that could only have been a gift from his children at Christmas. She guessed he was in his late fifties; his once square face rounding softly at the edges, black hair swept across his scalp to mask his baldness and almost totally grey over his ears. A scar cut across his thick black moustache, dividing it into two unevenly sized islands separated by a raised white ribbon of skin, like a path snaking through a forest.

For a moment she thought of arguing it out with him. Not the fact that she was late, of course: she was. Which, to be honest, she always was. Rather that she had an in-tray full of reasons to be late. But for once she held back, suspecting from his manner that he wouldn’t be interested in her excuses. If anything, his anxious tone and the nervous twitch of his left eye suggested that he was wasn’t so much angry, as afraid.

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

‘Major Enrico Salvatore -’ he grudgingly shook her hand - ‘Sorry about… we don’t see too many women in the GICO.’

She just about managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. GICO - properly known as the Gruppo di Investigazione Criminalità Organizzata - the special corps of the Guardia di Finanza that dealt with organised crime. And by reputation an old-school unit that frequented the same strip joints as the people they were supposedly trying to lock up.

‘So what’s the deal?’ she asked. Her boss hadn’t told her anything. Just that he owed someone a favour and that she should get down here as soon as she could.

‘You know this place?’ he asked, gesturing anxiously at the sunken area behind him.

‘Of course.’ She shrugged, slightly annoyed to even be asked. Presumably they knew her background. Why else would they have asked for her? ‘It’s the “Area Sacra”.’

‘Go on.’

‘It contains the remains of four Roman temples unearthed during an excavation project ordered by Mussolini in the 1920s,’ she continued. ‘They were built between the fourth and second centuries BC. Each one has a different design, with…’

‘Fine, fine…’ He held his hands up for her to stop, his relieved tone giving her the impression that she had just successfully passed some sort of audition without entirely being sure what role she was being considered for. He turned to make his way back down the steps. ‘Save the rest for the boss.’

The large site was enclosed by an elegant series of brick archways that formed a retaining wall for the streets some fifteen or so feet above. Bleached white by the floodlights’ desert glare, a forensic search team was strung out across it, inching their way forward on their hands and knees.

Immediately to her right, Allegra knew, was the Temple of Juturna - a shallow flight of brick steps leading up to a rectangular area edged by a row of travertine Corinthian columns of differing heights, like trees that had been randomly felled by a storm. They were all strangely shadowless in the artificial light. Further along the paved walkway was the Aedes Fortunae Huiusce Diei, a circular temple where only six tufa stone Corinthian columns remained standing, a few surviving bases and mid-sections from the other missing pillars poking up like rotting teeth.

But Salvatore steered her past both of these, turning instead between the second and third temples and making his way over rough ground scattered with loose bits of stone and half-formed brick walls that looked like they had been spat out of the earth. Here and there cats, strays from the animal shelter located in the far corner of the Area Sacra, glanced up with disdainful disinterest or picked their way languidly between the ruins, meowing hopefully for food.

With a curious frown, Allegra realised that Salvatore was leading her towards a large semipermanent structure made of scaffolding, covered in white plastic sheeting.

Wedged into the space between the rear of the second and third temples and the retaining wall, she immediately recognised it as the sort of makeshift shelter that was often erected by archaeologists to protect an area of a site that they were excavating or restoring.

‘I’d stay out of the way until the colonel calls you over,’ Salvatore suggested as he paused on the threshold to the shelter, although from his tone it sounded more like an order.

‘The colonel?’

‘Colonel Gallo. The head of GICO,’ Salvatore explained in a hushed tone.

She recognised the name. From what she remembered reading at the time, Gallo had been parachuted in last year from the AISI, the Italian internal security service, after his predecessor had been implicated in the Mancini corruption scandal.

‘He’ll call you over when he’s ready.’

‘Great.’ She nodded, her tight smile masking a desperate urge to make some pointed observation about the irony of having been harried halfway across the city only to now be kept waiting.

‘And I’d lose that if I were you, too,’ he muttered, nodding at her cup. ‘It’s probably better he doesn’t know you stopped off for a coffee.’

Taking a deep breath, she theatrically placed the cup on the ground, then looked up with a forced smile. It wasn’t Salvatore’s fault, she knew. Gallo clearly orbited his waking hours like a small moon, the gravitational pull off his shifting favour governing the ebb and flow of Salvatore’s emotions. But that didn’t make him any less annoying.

‘Happy now?’

‘Ecstatic.’

Greeting the two uniformed men guarding the entrance with a nod, Salvatore held a plastic flap in the sidewall open and they stepped inside. It revealed a long, narrow space, the scaffolding forming a sturdily symmetrical endoskeleton over which the white sheeting had been draped and then fixed into place. In one place some of the ties had come loose, the wind catching the sheet’s edges and snapping it against the metal frame, causing it to chime like a halyard striking a mast.

Salvatore motioned at a crumbling pediment, his gesture suggesting that he wanted her to sit there until she was called forward, then made his way towards a small group of people standing in a semi-circle fifteen or so feet in front of her - all men, she noted with a resigned sigh. Making a point of remaining standing, she counted the minutes as they ticked past - first one, then three, then five. Nothing. In fact no one had even turned round to acknowledge that she was there. Pursing her lips, she decided to give it another few minutes and then, when these too had passed, she made an angry clicking noise with her tongue and set off towards them. Busy was one thing, rude was another. She had better things to do than sit around until Gallo deigned to beckon her over like some sort of performing dog. Besides, she wanted to see for herself whatever it was they were and discussing so intently.

Seeing her approaching, Salvatore frantically signalled at her to stay back. She ignored him, but then stopped anyway, the colour draining from her face as a sudden gap revealed what they had been shielding from view.

It was a corpse. A man. A half-naked man. Arms spread-eagled, legs pinned together, he had been lashed to a makeshift wooden cross with steel wire. Allegra glanced away, horrified, but almost immediately looked back, the gruesome scene exercising a strange, magnetic pull. For as if drawn from some cursed, demonic ritual, the cross had been inverted.

He had been crucified upside down.