In the silent darkness of a hospital overlooking Lake Como, Andrea enters an autopsy room that seems to have been reopened against his will. Before him are not just two bodies, but a staging that demands to be interpreted as a symbol. The autopsy thus becomes an act of rational resistance against spectacular horror, an exercise in precision to separate fact from noise.
Every anatomical detail belies the evidence, every absence weighs more heavily than a wound. While the public narrative clings to religious madness, another hypothesis emerges: someone has been thinking, calculating, and measuring. The arrival of new investigative figures opens a broader front, where chemistry, psychology, and power intertwine. In this chapter, death ceases to be a mystical enigma and becomes a language. A cold, controlled, and terribly human language.
Autopsies, misdirection, and criminal intelligence: when a crime is constructed to deceive those who investigate
Detective novel. The Secrets of Piona Abbey. Chapter 8: The Cross as a Mask
Andrea arrived in Colico while it was still dark, and the lake looked like a sheet of black glass stretched between the mountains. He hadn’t slept—or perhaps he’d slept badly: that kind of sleep that seems like rest but leaves a deeper fatigue clinging to you. The hospital parking lot was almost empty. A streetlamp flickered, as if even the light hesitated to stay.
At the entrance an elderly nurse was waiting for him, one of those who don’t ask questions when they sense that every word is out of place.
“Doctor… are you the one for the autopsy?”
Andrea nodded. “That’s me.”
“The judge said that…”
“I know.” Andrea cut him off gently, almost to spare them both. “Please, take me there.”
The former autopsy room had been reopened in a hurry. The smell was the typical one of places that have stopped being used and then are called back into service against their will: disinfectant, metal, a hint of mold that no detergent can ever erase. Andrea put on his gown and washed his hands longer than necessary. It was a ritual, yes, but also a way of buying time. Of preparing himself.
When he walked in, he saw the white sheet spread over the steel table and a second sheet folded on a gurney to the side. Two presences. One certain, one waiting.
“Is it the friar?” Andrea asked.
The nurse looked away. “Yes. The one… the one on the wall.”
Andrea inhaled slowly. He didn’t want images in his head. He wanted data. He wanted flesh and marks.
He approached the table and, with a slow gesture, uncovered the body.
Friar Leone’s face had that unreal color of cold death: not bruised, but a waxy pallor, as if the blood had decided to withdraw in silence.
His eyes were closed. His mouth slightly open. Andrea fixed on that detail more than the others. Sometimes the mouth tells the last struggle.The nails were gone, of course. They had been removed to detach the body from the wall. The holes remained, clean, almost geometric. Andrea lowered his head and examined the wrists. Then the feet. Then the hands again, as if he were searching for a confirmation he still didn’t want to grant himself.
“Who took the first photos?” he asked.
“The carabinieri… and the on-duty doctor.”....
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