Michael Dibdin: Cabal

Unfortunately Grimaldi was unable to savour this exceptional honour as fully as it deserved, since he was preoccupied with the delicate question of deciding exactly how much of the truth to reveal. The aim was no longer simply to disguise his own incompetence. There was more at stake than that. Once the initial shock of the horror he had witnessed had worn off, Grimaldi had dimly begun to perceive possibilities of personal advantage which took precedence even over his innate desire to impress his superiors. He wasn’t quite sure whether he was going to exploit them, never mind how, but in the meantime he wanted to keep all his options open, and that meant not giving too much away.

In the event, his performance seemed to have gone down quite well. Sanchez-Valdes had accepted that Grimaldi’s inability to keep track of Ruspanti’s movements had been due to circumstances beyond his control, namely the press of tourists in the dome of St Peter’s that day. No attempt had been made to reprimand or punish him. Grimaldi was just congratulating himself on his success, when he was called back from the antechamber where he had been sent to kick his heels and introduced to a newcomer, a man he had never seen before. Slightly taller even than Lamboglia, he had fine, slightly wavy hair and a face stretched as tautly over its bones as a drum. His angular nose and square, protuberant chin might have looked strong, but the mouth was weak and indecisive, as were the opaque grey eyes. Or so Grimaldi thought, until they turned towards him. It only lasted a moment, but he felt as though he had never been looked at before.

‘This is Dottor Aurelio Zen, a specialist investigator dispatched by the Italian authorities in response to an urgent request conveyed by the apostolic nuncio,’ Sanchez-Valdes announced. ‘He is lending us the benefit of his experience and expertise to ensure that no possible doubt remains concerning this tragic event. You are to accompany him wherever he wishes to go and to see that he is accorded total cooperation in carrying out his duties.’

Zen shook hands with Sanchez-Valdes, and was accompanied to the door by Monsignor Lamboglia. Grimaldi was about to follow when the archbishop called him back.

‘You need say nothing about the other business,’ he murmured sotto voce.

‘The surveillance?’

Sanchez-Valdes nodded.

‘Or the whereabouts of the deceased prior to today’s events. As far as our guest is concerned, Ruspanti appeared from nowhere to obliterate himself on the floor of St Peter’s. Descendit de caelis, as you might say.’

Grimaldi blushed, shocked by the levity of the reference. The archbishop flapped his right hand rapidly, urging him to join the others.

Lamboglia led Zen and Grimaldi out of the Apostolic Palace by a circuitous route which brought them out directly in St Peter’s. In the nave, workmen were shifting benches into position in readiness for Saturday’s papal Mass, but the area beyond the crossing was still sealed off by plastic tape and patrolled by two uniformed Vigilanza officials.

‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ Lamboglia told Zen, and strode off. After a brief word with the uniformed guards, Grimaldi led Zen over the tape and round the baldacchino. The body had been covered in a tarpaulin borrowed from the sampietrini, the workers responsible for maintaining the fabric of St Peter’s. Once the identity of the illustrious corpse had been established, the ambulance men from Santo Spirito hospital and the cleaning crew had been hurriedly dismissed until further notice. No one was to approach the body and nothing was to be removed or otherwise disturbed without an explicit order to that effect from the office of the Cardinal Secretary of State.

Grimaldi looked away as Zen lifted the tarpaulin to view the tangle of broken bone, unsupported flesh and extruded innards that constituted the remains of Prince Ludovico Ruspanti. He certainly didn’t appear bothered by such things, Grimaldi noted, risking a quick glimpse. Indeed, he seemed almost indecently unimpressed, this hot-shot from the Interior Ministry, squatting over the corpse like a child over a box of hand-me-down toys, lifting the odd item which looked as though it might be of interest, bending down to sniff the blood-drenched clothing and inspect the victim’s shoes.

‘Looks like he thought about slashing his wrists first,’ Zen murmured, indicating the thin red weals on the victim’s wrists. Deliberately unfocusing his eyes, Grimaldi turned his head towards the horror.

‘Preliminary cuts,’ Zen explained. ‘But he didn’t have the nerve to go through with it, so he decided to jump instead.’

Grimaldi nodded, though he could see nothing but a merciful blur.

‘We’re going to have do something about these shoes,’ added Zen.

The offending items, cheap brown suede slip-ons with an elastic vent, stood side by side on the marble flooring. Both were spotlessly clean, as was the stocking covering the victim’s left foot. The other sock was covered in rust-red bloodstains.

Grimaldi was on the point of saying something, but then he remembered that the shoes had been Scarpione’s idea. The Vigilanza boss had appeared at the scene before any of the clerics could get there. ‘Save trouble all round,’ he’d said, giving the necessary orders. Apparently he’d been wrong, but Grimaldi knew better than to get involved.

‘What about them?’ he asked.

Zen looked at him sharply, then shrugged.

‘Very well, I’ll raise it with Monsignor Lamboglia.’

The lift had been shut down for the night, so they had to walk all the way up to the roof of the basilica. They climbed the shallow steps of the spiral staircase in silence. Zen had no small-talk, and Grimaldi had decided to volunteer no information. This official from the Interior Ministry, despite his lethargic manner, might not be as easy to fool as Archbishop Sanchez-Valdes.

They found Antonio Cecchi, chief of the sampietrini maintenance men, in one of a cluster of sheds and workshops perched on the undulating roof of the basilica like a lost corner of old Rome. Cecchi was a compact, muscular man of about fifty with the face of a gargoyle: thin, splayed ears protruding prominently from a bulbous skull topped by a shock of short wavy hair like white flames. Grimaldi explained the situation. With a sigh, Cecchi picked up a torch and led them up a short flight of steps on the outside of the dome. As they waited for Cecchi to find the right key on the huge bunch he produced from the pouch of his blue overalls, Zen studied a large crack in the wall. A number of marble strips had been bridged across it to keep track of its progress, the earliest being dated August 1835. He was not reassured to note that all the tell-tales were broken.

Inside the door, a ramp led up to a door opening on to the internal gallery at the base of the drum. The roof outside gave such a strong illusion of being at ground level, with its alleys and piazzas, its washing lines and open casements, that it was a shock to realize just how high they were. Zen peered through the safety fence at the patterned marble floor over a hundred and fifty feet below. The fence ran inside the original railings, all the way from the floor to a point higher than Zen’s head, closing off the half of the gallery which was open to the public.

‘This is supposed to stop jumpers,’ Cecchi explained, shaking the mesh with his powerful fingers.

‘This one went off the other side,’ put in Grimaldi.

He pointed across the circular abyss to a door set in the wall of the drum opposite, giving on to a section of the gallery that was not open to the public, and hence was protected only by the original railings.

‘The stairs leading down from the top of the dome pass by that door,’ Grimaldi explained. ‘The door’s kept locked, but he somehow got hold of a key.’