The Sleeping Nymph by Ilaria Tuti

Author:Ilaria Tuti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2020-06-21T18:59:05+00:00

46

Massimo took another painkiller. The first pill hadn’t even made a dent in the headache that had been tormenting him for hours. The second had made it just about bearable. He hoped the third might provide enough relief to allow him to keep his eyes open and his mind focused. He took a sip from the water he’d just bought from the vending machine and vowed for the hundredth time that day that he would never, ever touch alcohol again.

Standing outside the autopsy room at the morgue wasn’t exactly helping with the nausea.

He looked at his phone. Elena still hadn’t called. In fact, she hadn’t been in touch at all except to send him a text with the address of the hotel she’d be staying at for a few days.

“Are you still with us, Marini?” he heard Superintendent Battaglia say from inside the autopsy room.

Massimo shook his head. That morning, in his apartment, he’d been on the verge of telling her everything. But now the superintendent was back to her normal surly and overbearing self.

He stepped into the autopsy room and prayed that his stomach might hold it together for at least another couple of hours. It’s only a heart, he kept telling himself as he stared at the dark, fist-sized lump on the steel table. It was a good thing there wasn’t a whole corpse there, or the stench would surely have forced him into an ignominious retreat.

Parri had begun dissecting the organ already and was soon able to confirm what he’d already surmised at the scene of the discovery: the heart had belonged to an elderly person, and it wasn’t in good health—not just because of its age, but also owing to a defect that had caused a weakening of the cardiac valves.

“Our colleagues are already searching the valley,” said the superintendent. “We’ll know soon enough who’s unaccounted for.”

“I’m extracting tissue samples for the genetics and toxicology testing,” said Parri, fiddling with a set of slides, “but I’ve already run a glycophorin test, and the result is positive.”

Superintendent Battaglia’s jaw tightened.

“If an organ reacts to glycophorin, we know it must have been removed when the victim was still alive,” she explained for Massimo’s benefit.

“Hold on a minute,” Parri interjected. “There’s something blocking the mitral valve.”

He took a pair of pointed tongs from his tool tray and switched on the headlamp on his forehead.

A few moments later, he pulled the tongs from inside the cavity and brought out a small, dark object.

Superintendent Battaglia moved closer, pushing her reading glasses farther up the bridge of her nose.

“It’s a twig,” said Massimo. “The storm must have blown it in there.”

Parri looked at him.

“It was stuck all the way inside,” he said. “The wind doesn’t have fingers.”

“Someone took good care of this heart. You said it yourself, Antonio,” the superintendent recalled. “They kept it safe from insects and larvae. They looked after it for us so that they could present it to us; they would never have allowed any dirt to get in.

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