The Year of the Mantis

by P J Mann

  Swallowing the tears welling to his eyes, Aldo growled. “For fuck sake, stop it! I know it’s wrong, but I can’t turn back, and you know better than me.”

  He didn’t believe a word of what he said, but at that moment, as he felt the engine of the boat slowing the power, he realized the time had come, and there wouldn’t be a second to waste.

  Holding the harpoon tightly in his hand, with tears filling his eyes, and thousands of thoughts fogging his mind, he reached the room and without any further hesitation he attacked Igor who was seated with his back toward the door. A loud scream coming from Aldo’s mouth shook the silent sea. Igor didn’t have the time to realize he was drawing his last breath as the spear pierced through his heart. His life ended abruptly without the time to say goodbye, or at least a last prayer to ask forgiveness for all his sins.

  Aldo fell on his knees, sobbing for his life and his soul. He wasn’t a man who had a firm belief. What he believed was the sea, it was his religion, his church— his heaven.

  Through the blurred sight of Igor’s body, that same heaven became his hell, and he promised himself that his life would remain bound to the sea. He wouldn’t return to the mainland ever again. From that moment on, he would belong to the tide, to the place where for the first and last time, he killed another man.

  The harpoon fell from his hands lying beside him on the rocking floor of the boat. Wiping his eyes from the tears he looked over at Irina, whose trembling lips revealed a pleased smirk at the amount of blood covering the floor and the table.

  “Curse you,” he whispered. “Curse you!” he yelled once again. Standing from his position he ran out, needing to puke away the dread and remorse he knew would accompany him for the rest of his life.

  The crew, unable to speak, silently gathered to the room, ready to clean the mess and prepare the body for its eternal resting place.

  Wobbling, like drunk on fear, Aldo reached the command deck, where Mario was petrified; his eyes staring at the darkness in front of him.

  “You can go and help the others. I will resume the navigation,” his voice a broken whisper.

  Turning to Aldo, Mario didn’t reply, releasing the grip on the boat’s wheel.

  Muted by sheer terror, Mario left the cabin as if he was sleepwalking, as if he were still in a nightmare waiting for the morning sun to release him, reassuring it was a dream. No murder had ever happened, and he was still in his bed.

  Aldo remained alone; his shirt still marred with Igor’s blood. What am I doing? I can’t keep these clothes dirty; I need to clean up everything, including myself.

  Sobering up from the shock, considering that at least he had to keep himself out of jail, and delete any connection with the crime, he walked to have a shower. Cleaning the clothes was the most challenging part, as he needed to delete any trace of DNA. He’d watched enough crime movies to understand this would have been the first thing he had to get rid of. Therefore, he brought on board a good amount of oxygen bleach to clean not only clothes, but also the surfaces from every DNA residue. The boat required to be cleaned, and the corpse had to be safely concealed at the bottom of the sea.

  The spot they chose to get rid of the body was far enough from the route they would have taken during a regular fishing campaign. That was also away from every other fishing route because of the less favorable condition and fish availability.

  The crew worked incessantly and hard for three hours, when they could finally resume their journey. All the lights and signals should be turned off, relying only on a maritime compass; nobody else had to spot their presence, nor the fact that they were returning from an unusual route.

  At half past four in the morning, they reached Alec’s motorboat, and never before had Aldo been more relieved, as that marked the last time he would ever have to see Irina again.

  “So, this is the time to greet each other,” Irina’s voice was grave as if he never heard her before, as she handed the due money for the service. “We will be in touch if I need your services to reach Italy.”

  Shaking his head, knowing the gazes of the rest of the crew were upon him, he replied, “Alec can find you another contact from now on. We’ll all resume our old fishing activity. This money is not enough for the nightmares we all will continue to have for the rest of our lives, and we would prefer to keep ourselves far from each other.”

  Flaring her nostrils in anger, she wished to also kill Aldo. Nevertheless, she understood that it was the time she had to accept a defeat and get on with her life. After all, after this one, I won’t need him anymore, she considered.

  Trying to keep the beast at bay, she smiled. “So it shall be, this is then a goodbye. It is a pity, though.”

  Without waiting for any reply, she turned and walked away, climbing down from their boat to Alec’s motorboat, which would safely smuggle her inside the French territory from where she entered regularly. He knew perfectly how to avoid the national coastal guard, and also in the unfavorable case of being spotted, he had all the cards to avoid troubles.

  ***

  It was a fair March morning, when Luciano was awakened by the ringing of his mobile phone. In his half-sleep, almost mechanically, he grabbed the phone lying on his bedside table, and without caring to check who was calling him, his eyes still closed, he answered.

  “Hello,” his voice hardly a mumble.

  “Bonjour!” the chirping voice of Irina reached his ears, causing him to fully wake and sit up in bed.

  “Well, I thought you weren’t supposed to call me for some time,” surprise filled his voice, as his eyes made contact with the alarm clock.

  “I know, but we were able to reach the coast of Corsica a couple of days ago. From there, I could arrive in Paris yesterday evening, so according to the immigration, I haven’t moved from here since I arrived in December. I’m calling you from a telephone in a cafeteria. The owner was very kind, when I told him my mobile went off and I needed to make an emergency call. This also means I might call you again, but our conversations need to be very casual from now on,” she warned, glancing around her, to make sure there weren’t other indiscreet ears listening to what she was saying.

  A smile brightened his face and like a stone that fell from his heart, he stood from his bed like he had no more weight. “I love you, Irina, and I can’t wait until the time comes when we can live together. Soon we’ll be free to live our lives the way we always wanted to, no interferences from anyone— just you and me.”

  “I love you too. It has been a difficult period, but we will go over it. I promise. I will call you once again from my mobile whenever possible. I plan to return back to Hungary and remain there until the situation is cleared; then we will plan our life in more detail,” she proposed.

  A sigh, followed by a long pause alerted Irina, as she sensed some troubles were still on their horizon— the kind of trouble she wasn’t hoping for. “Is there anything wrong? Why, all of a sudden have you become silent?”

  As his attention focused on the reflection of the sunrays, filtering through the shutters against the wall, he tried to recollect his thoughts and find a good way to explain his concerns. “I went back to the apartment.” His voice turned lower as if he didn’t want to be heard by anyone.

  “Did they give you back the keys? Is the data collection over?” She wondered, glancing around to check whether someone was coming to the little room where the landline telephone was located.

  “No, not yet. The problem was more connected to a doubt I had,” he began to explain, hoping there was nothing to be afraid for. “As you know, last week, Detective Scala and one of his coworkers from the forensic department came to ask some questions about us. They were supposed to return the keys by the end of this week. Yet, when they left, a thousand thoughts started swirling in my mind, and the doubts of having left something important there started to become more and more obsessive. I tried to think about every possibility until one thing came to my mind. That was perhaps the most important one and I cou
ldn’t recall whether it was destroyed, if I brought it with me, or I gave it to you.”

  “Stop changing the topic. You’re driving me crazy!” she hissed. “What the fuck did you forget there?”

  At her sharp change of tone, Luciano backed up on his bed. The hair stood up on the back of his neck at the swift shiver crawling along his spine, as if to retract from an attack that could have come through the telephone.

  “I’m talking about the prepaid sim-card I used to communicate with you previously. That was supposed to be destroyed, but I couldn’t remember when or whether it happened.” His voice started to shake. He closed his eyes, trying to get a grip on his emotions. His right hand clenched into a fist, grabbing the sheets of the bed. His heartbeat started to increase, his chest tight, as he knew perfectly well what she was capable of.

  “You fool! Don’t you remember? You gave it to me to be destroyed! How could you forget this detail?” Releasing the tension from her toughened expression, she almost felt like laughing at his zeal and worries.

  “I couldn’t call you and ascertain this detail, so I needed to find a way to find out. I reached the apartment using one copy of the key nobody knew I had.” His fist released the sheet, and stood from the bed, pacing around the room. “That was one of the copies my father and I used when we forgot the keys inside. Of course, I made sure to wear gloves, not to leave any trace. However, our neighbor might have called the police, as she might have heard some noises coming from the apartment. I have no idea how she always knew about every move we made. It’s like she’d been spying on our family since ever.” He narrowed his eyes at the thought of Berenice nosing once again in matters that didn’t concern her at all.

  “So? Did they find you there?” Her tone was alarming, but on the other hand his presence in his own apartment at the end of the data collection, wasn’t something that worried her too much.

  “No, as I noticed the police car parking in front of the building, I ran to my room and got out of it using the ladder for maintaining the roof. There wasn’t any chance to be spotted, because there aren’t balconies, or neighboring windows. I seriously doubt anyone has seen me coming out from there, and even so, my face was covered, so it could have been a thief, knowing the apartment was empty.”

  A long pause allowed them both to recollect their thoughts and consider the situation.

  “Call the police and ask when you can get your keys back. They will tell you if there had been an intrusion in your apartment or whether they had spotted something suspicious. If they will return you the keys without any mention about it, there’s a good possibility they didn’t find anything relevant. Otherwise, if they suspect something, they’ll call you in for further interrogation. In that case, I suggest you find a good alibi.” She was still shaken, but she knew his intrusion wasn’t confirmed by any proof.

  They still have nothing against us. “Don’t you worry, everything will be solved; you should have recalled that detail, so you wouldn’t have to reach the apartment one more time. The only thing now is to stay calm to avoid raising any suspicion. I made sure the weapon will be found in Igor’s house, hidden in one of the drawers. There are only his fingerprints, and I believe they will be more than satisfied with that outcome. They have the assassin, and they have the motive. What else they could need?” A broad grin opened up her face.

  “Sure,” Luciano muttered still shaken for a mistake that could cause him some unnecessary headaches. A grin twisted his face as there was nothing connecting him to the crime.

  As he ended the call with Irina, he walked to the window and lifted the shutters. The light filtering through them, forecasting a fair day, and that promise got confirmed as the bright sunlight forced him to narrow his eyes.

  Yet, it was brighter, with the knowledge that everything would have turned for the best. Irina’s father was probably already dead, otherwise he couldn’t explain her happy tone of voice, nor the fact that she was in Paris.

  Nothing in the world could have ever disrupted the inner peace he was experiencing in that precise moment, not even the nosy Detective Scala would have been able to get the truth out of that story.

  With a loud yawn, he walked away from the window, and decided to call the Police Department. They were supposed to return the keys by the end of the week, but so far, he didn’t receive any news.

  The thought of having to talk again to Detective Scala wasn’t appealing to him; he felt always tensed when he heard his voice, and wondered whether he could have simply talked to the call center or information desk to deliver his message.

  CHAPTER 17

  Maurizio was in his office. Time seemed to have stopped as he worked on his computer. His hand slid across the table’s surface, searching for his cup of coffee.

  “Nothing conclusive has come out from any of the clues we’ve collected,” he said slowly bringing the cup to the mouth. With his right hand on the mouse and his eyes steady on the computer’s screen, his senses still looked forward to the hot coffee to give some relief to his thoughts.

  A disgusted grimace contorted his face as the coffee, already cold, reached his mouth, bringing him back to his office and to reality. “Shit!” he exclaimed.

  Shaking his head, he stood from his chair and walked to the common room to threw away that evil liquid.

  Oh, well, if I want a perfect coffee, I need to go to the bar downstairs.

  Likened by his enlightened thought, he threw the cup and the coffee away and foretasted the fine aroma of the espresso served at the cafeteria. Maurizio left with a broad smile on his face.

  On his way back from the main corridor he noticed senior officer, Sandra Milani, coming from his office, holding some sheets of paper in her hands. Rushing his steps, in order to reach her, he called out, “Milani!”

  At his call, she turned herself in the direction of Maurizio’s voice, and opening up into a bright smile she paced toward him. Her eyes shone with excitement as if she was burning from the need to tell what she’d found out.

  “I have some very interesting news for you, but let’s go to your office, we need some space,” she raised mid-air the bundle of papers she carried.

  “Fantastic, because after a great coffee at the cafeteria, I’m not ready for bad news,” Maurizio replied as they kept walking toward his room.

  Closing the door behind him, he gestured for Senior officer Milani to take a seat at the table he had in the middle of the room, where he generally hosted brainstorming sessions with his team.

  “So, tell me what you got. I’m all ears and eyes,” he commenced as they were both seated at the table. Carefully placing the papers on the desk, her hands spread the sheets like the cards of a fortune teller, and with a grin, she took a deep breath before starting to explain.

  “I have two different pieces of news, and all of them are very interesting. Let’s start with the one you asked a while back. I have been searching the call log of Luciano Calvani for the last six months. Like every young man, he has quite a long list of friends. However, I focused on two particular numbers, which I presume they belong to the same person.”

  Taking a pause to let her words sink in, she turned one of the sheets closer to Maurizio. “You see, this is a Hungarian mobile telephone number, belonging to his girlfriend, Ms. Fazekas’ daughter. If we check the frequency they call each other, we can immediately notice there are periods where those calls have a break.” Her finger moving through the log to the places she’d been marked with a red pen. “During those periods, he received and called this prepaid number. Does it ring a bell to you?”

  She watched Maurizio carefully as he was staring at the sheets she gave him. Like under the effect of a hypnotic order, he froze for a second and slowly raised a finger to the air as if that call log had something familiar.

  He stood from his chair and went to his computer, checking another call log he had saved and selecting a part of it, he sent it to print. With the printed sheet, followed by the curious glance of Senior office
r Milani, he reached the table and compared the two papers.

  “It just doesn’t ring a bell—it’s like the whole damn St. Peter’s belltower complex on Christmas Eve. The same prepaid number called lately also Ms. Fazekas, but not before.” Maurizio’s heart started to race as his adrenaline pumped in high gear.

  He grabbed one pen from the pen tray at the center of the table and swung it before landing on the paper. “This is the telephone number of Irina, even without the need of asking for any confirmation. I don’t have any proof about it yet, but I bet ten years of my life, that it was hers.”

  Senior officer Milani giggled at his expression, “Be careful what you bet on!”

  “If this was hers, we need to find out from where exactly she was calling from. This is simply a call log displaying telephone numbers. I need to understand which operator was connected to for the roaming. Was it an Italian one? Was it Hungarian or whatever other country? We cannot get the name of the person who owned the sim card, but we can find it out in many other ways.”

  Maurizio stood from the chair once again and paced the room, keeping the paper in his hand. “If this was her number, and she was in Italy this means she was here in October for a week; in December before Christmas for another week. What strikes me as odd, is why Luciano told me he hadn’t seen her since October?”

  “Another question is, why didn’t he receive any calls from any of her numbers during January and February? Did she use another telephone number? Did they both use other foreign prepaid cards during that period? Did they keep silent? Why? Two months of not speaking to each other is quite strange for two young lovers...” Senior officer Milani commented still following Maurizio in his walk.

  At her remark, Maurizio stopped abruptly as if an imaginary wall materialized in front of him. “What about the emails? Did you check the messages through their email? We need them. Let’s ask Leonardo. He should have a copy of the hard drive of Luciano’s computer, and they should still be on that log.”