The Devil Will Come by Glenn Cooper Page B

‘I’m doing research on a project concerning early Roman symbology. I have reason to believe this man’s tattoos bear a relationship to them but the published photos are too indistinct for me to make them out.’
    ‘What kind of symbols?’ Gunther asked, clearly fascinated.
    ‘Astrological,’ Elisabetta replied.
    ‘Then you are going to be disappointed,’ he said, picking a folder off his orderly desk. He laid out a series of color photographs, one by one, like a dealer at a casino, snapping their edges. They were all of the man’s wizened back. The first few were wide-angles and included the two that had been published in the paper. The tail was long, extending below the corpse’s buttocks. Its shriveled skin exposed the extra vertebrae underneath.
    In other shots the field tightened and the magnification increased as the photographer worked his way up to the conical tip stretched over a tiny coccygeal bone. The tail swelled in diameter at its midsection; fine white hairs covered the skin. Had they been black in the man’s youth, Elisabetta wondered?
    Then Gunther laid out the critical shots, those from the base of the spine.
    It might have been impolite to grab but Elisabetta couldn’t help herself. She snatched one of the close-ups and devoured it with her stare.
    The tattoos were numbers .
    Three concentric semicircles of numbers surrounded the base of the tail.
    63 128 99 128 51 132 162 56 70
    32 56 52 103 132 128 56 99
    99 39 63 38 120 39 70
    Micaela, not to be outdone, had gotten her hands on a similar photo. ‘What does it mean?’ she asked.
    ‘We had absolutely no idea,’ Gunther said. ‘We still don’t.’
    They both looked to Elisabetta.
    She shook her head hopelessly. ‘I have no idea, either.’ She put the photo down. ‘May we have a copy?’
    ‘Yes, certainly.’
    ‘Do you know anything else about the man?’
    ‘We have his name and his last address, that’s all.’
    ‘May we know these?’ Elisabetta asked gently.
    Gunther shrugged. ‘Ordinarily, patient confidentiality would prohibit this, but when the affair went to the police it became a matter of public record.’ He produced a data sheet from the folder. ‘One day, ladies, you must repay me by telling me the results of your inquiries. I have a feeling you’ve got something up your sleeves.’
    Micaela smiled and said, ‘My sister’s sleeves are bigger than mine.’
    The address on Fischergasse was a short distance from Ulm Münster and if the two women hadn’t been rushing to make their return flight, Elisabetta would have tried to pay a flying visit. The cathedral had begun its existence as a relatively modest Catholic building but thanks to the region’s conversion to Protestantism and a grand nineteenth-century spire added by its Church Elders, it was now the tallest cathedral in the world.
    Their driver parked outside a row of pretty half-timbered houses in the Old Town, close enough to the Danube for the wind to carry a faintly riverine smell. Number 29 was an ample four-story house with a bakery on the ground floor.
    When they arrived, Micaela was on her mobile, engaged in an overheated conversation with her boyfriend Arturo, so Elisabetta got out alone.
    ‘If you don’t get anywhere, at least bring me back some cakes,’ Micaela called after her.
    The pleasant street called out to Elisabetta. How marvelous it would be to find a bench and spend some time alone. Except for a few brief moments in the convent chapel at dawn she’d spent an entire day without prayer. She felt unhealthy and unfulfilled and she wondered darkly if her faith was being tested. And if it was, would she pass the test and emerge clean?
    A spring-loaded bell chimed her entry into the bakery. The rotund woman at the till seemed surprised to see a nun in her shop and ignored another customer in a rush to serve Elisabetta.
    ‘How can I help you today, Sister?’ she asked in German.
    ‘Ah, do you speak Italian or English?’ Elisabetta asked in