The Devil Will Come Read Free Page A

distance. Someone called out from a high-rise balcony half a block away.
    The telephone-booth man approached and knelt deliberately beside Elisabetta. His stony face was blank. He raised his knife hand over his head.
    There was another shout, closer by, someone yelling, ‘Hey!’
    The man swung round toward the call.
    In the seconds before he turned back to Elisabetta and crashed his fist against her chest, just before she lost consciousness, she noticed a strange, disturbing detail.
    She couldn’t be sure – she would never be sure – but she thought she saw something protruding from the man’s back just above his loosened trousers.
    It was something that didn’t belong there, something thick, fleshy and repulsive, rising out of a swarm of small black tattoos.

TWO
    The Vatican, present day
    PAIN WAS HIS constant companion, his personal tormentor, and because it had become so intertwined with his mind and body, in a perverse way it had also become his friend.
    When it gripped him hard, causing his spine to stiffen in agony, he had to stop himself from involuntarily uttering the oaths of his youth, the street language of Naples. He had a button he could push which would release a pulse of morphine into his veins but beyond occasional lapses of weakness, usually in the middle of the night when sleep seemed so dear, he avoided its use. Would Christ have availed himself of morphine to ease his suffering on the cross?
    But when the worst of the present spasm receded, its passing left a pleasurable void. He was grateful for the teaching the pain imparted: that normalcy was a dear thing and a simplicity to be cherished. He wished he’d been more cognizant of this notion during his long life.
    There was a gentle rap on his door and he responded in as strong a voice as he could muster.
    A Silesian nun shuffled into the high-ceilinged room, her gray habit nearly brushing the floor. ‘Holiness,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
    ‘Much the same as an hour ago,’ the Pope said, attempting a smile.
    Sister Emilia, a woman not much younger than the elderly pontiff, approached and began fussing with the items on his bedside table. ‘You didn’t drink your orange juice,’ she chided. ‘Would you prefer apple?’
    ‘I’d prefer to be young and healthy.’
    She shook her head and carried on with her business. ‘Let me raise you a little.’
    His bed had been replaced with a motorized hospital model. Sister Emilia used the controls to elevate his head and when he was safely upright she held the drinking straw to his dry lips and stared sternly until he relented and took a couple of gulps.
    ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Zarilli is waiting to see you.’
    ‘What if I don’t want to see him?’ The Pope knew that the old nun lacked even a rudimentary sense of humor so he let her silence last for only a few seconds and then told her that his visitor was welcome.
    Dr Zarilli, the pontiff’s private physician, was waiting in an anteroom outside the third-floor papal apartment with another doctor from the Gemelli Hospital. Sister Emilia ushered them into the bedroom and parted the long cream curtains over the Piazza St Pietro to let in the waning sunlight of a fine spring day.
    The Pope raised his arm weakly and gave the men a small official wave. He was wearing plain white pajamas . His last therapy had left him bald so for warmth he wore a woolen cap which had been knitted by the aunt of one of his private secretaries.
    ‘Your Holiness,’ Zarilli said. ‘You remember Dr Paciolla.’
    ‘How could I forget?’ the Pope replied wryly. ‘His examination of my person was very thorough. Come closer, gentlemen. Can Sister Emilia get you some coffee?’
    ‘No, no, please,’ Zarilli said. ‘Dr Paciolla has the results of your last scans at the clinic.’
    The two men with their black suits and grim faces resembled undertakers more than doctors and the Pope made light of their appearance. ‘Have you come to advise me or bury