LITMIR.BIZ

       THIRTEEN

       The Pantheon, Rome

       18th March - 7.41 a.m.

      Allegra was sheltering in the portico, grateful for the coffee Salvatore had conjured up for her and for the fresh air - there had been a strange, curdled atmosphere inside that she had been glad to escape.

      The storm had now tethered itself directly overhead, rain lashing the square, lightning cleaving the stygian sky only for the clouds to crash thunderously back together. But it was the more powerful storm brewing on the other side of the barricades that worried her now. Rising out of the warm waters of political scandal and feeding on the lurid details of these murders, it would quickly spin out of control, blowing them violently towards the rocks until either the media lost interest or they had all been dashed into pieces, whichever came sooner. She wondered if Gallo’s men all knew this, and whether what she could sense inside, what she could almost taste, was their fearful anticipation of the hurricane that lay ahead.

      ‘So it’s the same coin?’ Gallo had materialised at her side, lighting a cigarette.

      ‘I thought you’d given up?’

      ‘So did I.’

      She was reassured that she wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure.

      ‘It’s the same.’ She nodded, not bothering to repeat that it wasn’t a coin but a lead disc.

      ‘So it’s the same killer?’

      ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

      ‘I’m asking.’ As earlier, the hint of a smile was playing around his lips, as if she somehow amused him.

      ‘There are some obvious similarities,’ she began hesitantly, surprised that Gallo even cared what she thought. ‘The lead discs. The proximity of the two murder scenes. The pagan temples. The connection to Caesar. But…’

      ‘But what?’

      ‘It’s…the way they were killed. I’m not a profiler, but there’s no consistency between the two murders. They look different. They feel different.’

      ‘I agree. Two murders. Two killers.’ Gallo held up photographs of the two crime scenes side by side as if to prove his point.

      Allegra glanced at the photos and jumped. There was something in the crime scenes, something she’d not noticed before, but which, when framed within the photographs’ white borders, was now glaringly obvious.

      ‘Where’s your car?’

      ‘Over there -’ He pointed out a dark blue BMW.

      ‘Come on!’ She stepped out into the rain, then turned and motioned impatiently at him to follow when she realised he hadn’t moved.

      ‘Where to?’

      ‘The Palazzo Barberini,’ she called back, her hair darkening. ‘There’s something there you need to see.’

      A few moments later, Gallo gunned out of the square down the Via del Seminario, the Carabinieri clearing a path for him through the crowd, Allegra shielding her face as the photographers and TV crews pressed their lenses up against their windows. As soon as they were clear, he accelerated through the Piazza San Ignacio and out on to the busy Via del Corso, his siren blazing as he carved his way through the rush-hour traffic. Reaching the Via del Tritone he turned right, racing down to where the palazzo loomed imposingly over the Piazza Barberini and then cutting up a side street to the main entrance at the top of the hill. The drive was chained off, although the museum was clearly open, those foreign tourists still able to swallow the euro’s inexorable climb over the past few months already filtering through the gates.

      ‘Damn these peasants,’ Gallo muttered, leaning on his horn, until a guard appeared and let them through.

      They lurched forward, the gravel spitting out from under their tyres as they shot round to the far side of the fountain.

      ‘First floor,’ Allegra called as she jumped out and headed through the arched entrance, not pausing on this occasion to admire the monumental Bernini staircase that led up to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, the museum that now occupied this former papal residence.

      ‘Police,’ Gallo called, waving his badge at the astonished museum staff as they burst through the entrance and bypassed the queue waiting patiently at the ticket desk.

      Allegra sprinted through first one room, then another, her eyes skipping over the paintings, not entirely sure where it was, but knowing it was here somewhere. Filippo Lippi, Piero de Cosimo…no, not here. Next room. Tintoretto, Bronzino…still nothing. Carry on through. Guercino …

      ‘There,’ she called triumphantly, pointing at the wall.

      ‘Ammàzza!’ Gallo swore, stepping past her for a closer look.

      The large painting showed a bearded man being decapitated by a woman, a sword in her right hand, his hair firmly gripped in her left. He was naked, his face contorted into an inhuman scream, his body convulsed by pain, the blood spurting on to a white sheet. Next to the woman stood an old woman, her wrinkled face hungrily absorbing the man’s death, her hands gripping the hem of her mistress’s dress to keep it clear of the blood.

      Gallo held the photograph of the Pantheon crime scene up next to it. There was no question it had been staged to mirror the painting’s composition.

      ‘It’s the same.’

      ‘Judith and Holofernes,’ Allegra said slowly. ‘It was only when I saw the photos that I made the connection.’

      ‘And Ricci?’

      ‘The Crucifixion of Saint Peter in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo,’ she confirmed. ‘That’s what links your two murders, Colonel. The killers are re-enacting scenes from Caravaggio paintings.’