David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

‘The last part is the easiest.’ The Commissioner rose from his desk and selected a thick file from his shelves. ‘You’d be surprised how often we have contact with other police forces. Runaway children, stolen jewels, thieves believed to have fled their country of origin. We keep records of all the policemen we have to deal with. And I am sure they keep records of our own officers.

‘Padua, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, Perugia. Here we are. Perugia. The man you want is called Ferrante, Captain Domenico Ferrante. He speaks very good English. I shall cable him that you are coming and that we request him to assist you in your inquiries.

‘You ask about hiring killers like you would hire a cab. It is very easy, far too easy. But I don’t think British assassins would happily operate outside these shores. Maybe Captain Ferrante could help you with the Italian end of your business. And I presume you would like us to listen at the doorways and find out if any of these killers have been approached in the last few weeks? Weeks or months, would you say?’

‘Weeks,’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Definitely weeks. In the last ten days to be precise.’

Mountainous terrain, my lord. Leith’s phrase came back to Powerscourt as his express toiled its way through the tunnels towards Perugia. Down there on his right he saw a great expanse of water, Lake Trasimene with its three islands and the olive slopes above. Hannibal, over a thousand miles from home, his elephants trampling across the Apennines, had waited there for the Roman army in the mist and fog of an early morning. Fifteen thousand Roman soldiers were slaughtered between the hills and the lake, the carnage going on for hours. The little river flowing into Lake Trasimene was named the Sanguinetto in memory of the blood it carried two thousand years before.

A very young Italian policeman greeted Powerscourt at Perugia station. He drew himself up to his full height and gave his best salute. His jacket was at least two sizes too big for him, only the tips of his fingers visible at the bottom of the sleeves. The trousers, freshly pressed, drooped over his shoes. His mother thinks he’s not finished growing yet, Powerscourt suspected. No point in wasting good money on a uniform that’ll only last a year. Even a policeman’s uniform.

‘Lord Powerscourt? Welcome to Perugia, sir. I am to send your bags to the hotel. I take you to Capitano Ferrante, sir.’

The Capitano was in a little cafe, drinking coffee and staring moodily at a long report on his table. More coffee, strong and black, arrived as Powerscourt sat down.

‘Lord Powerscourt, how very nice to meet you. I have the long message from the Commissioner about your visit. How is the Commissioner?’

‘He is well. He looked tired the last time I saw him in London.’

‘Everywhere the policemen are tired, I think. There is too much crime, there are too many of the criminals. Not enough time to catch them all.’

Captain Ferrante was a well-built man in his early forties. His hair was greying at the temples. He looked cheerful, in spite of the prevalence of crime.

‘This Commissioner and I, we work together, three or four years ago. The English milord, a very stupid young man, he steal a painting from one of the churches in the city. Maybe he think he hang it on the walls of his palazzo back in England. I have to go and bring the painting back to Perugia. The Commissioner, he is very helpful. He is fond of paintings, I think, the Commissioner. Yes?’

‘He is. He is.’ Powerscourt remembered the reports of gruesome watercolours of the Thames, painted in his spare time.

‘We bring back the painting. The Commissioner says that if it was painted to hang on the walls of San Pietro in Perugia, that is where it belongs, that is where it must live. But come, Lord Powerscourt. I believe you think you may be able to identify the body in the fountain? Bodies without names, they are so difficult. Our procedures for the dead people, they are very proper, very respectful, but they all assume that we know who they are.

‘We have our coffee here, because the body is in that building over there.’ Ferrante pointed to a large imposing building across the street. ‘That is the hospital. The morgue is at the far corner of the hospital. That is where the body is. The nuns, you know, the nuns who found him by the fountain, they insisted on washing the body, cleaning it up, all that sort of thing. The Mother Superior, she insists.’

The Deposition of Lord Edward Gresham, thought Powerscourt, a companion piece to all those earlier depositions, weeping women removing a limp body from a bloodied cross under threatening clouds, the air thick with meaning.

‘Come,’ said Ferrante. ‘We can have some more coffee when we come back. Then I will take you to the fountain.’

They made their way across the street and into the hospital. Sick patients were being wheeled along the corridors for their operations. Legs in plaster, arms in plaster made their first experimental journeys out of the surgeries and tottered on to the main thoroughfare. Doctors checked their notes as they went from ward to ward.

‘It is down these stairs. Down quite a lot of stairs.’

Their boots echoed back up the stairwell. The walls were an antiseptic pale green, adorned at regular intervals with paintings of the Virgin. Two men, dressed in black, undertakers of Perugia, passed them going the other way, their faces locked in the piety of their profession.

‘I must find the attendant. He has the key.’ Ferrante disappeared through a side door.

There was no natural light at all down here, just the flickering of the lamps. Powerscourt wondered if he had come to the end of his journey, watched over by a beatific Madonna, fifty feet underground.

‘This way, please.’ The huge door creaked slightly. Ferrante and the attendant made the sign of the cross.

The room was very cold. There were no windows. The walls were white. A couple of lamps threw long shadows of the living against the walls of the dead. The morgue was about fifteen feet square with tiers of bunks reaching up towards the ceiling. But they weren’t really bunks, Powerscourt noticed. They were shelves. On each shelf lay a corpse.

‘ Questo. Si, questo. Per favore ,’ Ferrante whispered to the attendant. This one. This one please.

The attendant pulled the second shelf on his right out from the wall. The body in its box came out slowly, as if it didn’t want to be recognized.

It was the cravat he noticed first, the same cravat he had worn that last morning in Venice. A silk cravat. A bloodstained silk cravat marked the presence of Lord Edward Gresham. His face was calm, in spite of the great cut running across the throat. The nuns had cleaned him up well, Powerscourt thought, prayers washing the blood away from Gresham’s wounded face. He saw the marks on the hands, the knife forced in and twisted round with great force. He noticed the thick dried blood all the way down his jacket. Maybe they weren’t allowed to clean that up until the body had a name. Something in Gresham’s face reminded Powerscourt of those earlier Greshams, hanging on the wall of the Gresham family home, maybe even something of his mother. Aristocrats embrace their ancestors, even in death. Especially in death.

Ferrante coughed very quietly. ‘Lord Powerscourt, do you know this man?’

‘I do.’

‘You are certain? You must swear that you are certain. We have to fill in the forms. For the authorities, you understand.’

‘I am certain,’ said Powerscourt, and whispered a last farewell to Gresham as the body slid back into the wall. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.

‘When did you last see him?’