Kill the King

by Sandrone Dazieri

  Loris said something, but Colomba ignored him and grabbed her cell phone, blessing almighty providence that she hadn’t thrown it away yet. Alberti answered her as he stepped out of the squad room where everyone was watching the same scenes on the television set there. He informed her that Santini and Di Marco were in the emergency room, but that they weren’t in particularly serious condition. Still, there were twenty officers and soldiers not accounted for, as well as seven residents of the building. There was talk of a gas leak, but nobody believed it had been an accident and everyone assumed only one person could be responsible for this, though their lips remained zipped.

  Leo.

  Colomba paid for the repairs with the gestures of a zombie, and at the same lugubrious pace she headed off toward Mezzanotte behind the wheel of the Panda, which smelled of soap and Scots pine. Loris had even changed the snow chains, putting on new ones that machine-gunned less thunderously. Colomba wouldn’t have heard them anyway. She thought about Leo with his finger on the button of the bomb as he asked her to choose between life in the hill country or a quick death. What if she had given the wrong answer? Would she have had time to realize it, or would it all be over in a flash?

  Colomba had already been involved in three bombings, and she’d survived them by the narrowest of margins. A little bit like the Japanese man who had been in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped, and had survived, and had then gone to Nagasaki just in time to be there for the second one, too. If there had been a third atom bomb, maybe he wouldn’t have survived. And neither would she.

  Colomba went back into the farmhouse, and she’d just taken her boots off when she saw a column of flashing emergency lights sliding down the side of the hill toward her. Instead of simply breaking down the door as she had feared, the two Carabinieri squad cars and the two unmarked vans stopped outside the gate. The passengers got out and gathered in the little plaza: Colomba recognized Lupo and his squad. She put on her parka and stepped into the doorway, careful to keep her hands far from her body. “Am I under arrest?”

  Lupo walked over to the chain-link fence with the look on his face of someone enjoying themselves. “No, Deputy Captain. But after what happened in Milan, the danger of bombings has been raised to Alpha One”—which meant terror attack now under way. “And we’ve received the order to take charge of sensitive locations. And clear them of explosives.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re on the list of people at risk, Deputy Captain.”

  “It’s a minimal risk, we both know that.”

  “But we’d rather not run that risk. For your sake, and your neighbors’ sake.”

  “I don’t have any neighbors …”

  “The bomb-disposal squad had to travel all the way from Perugia, they did me a favor and headed out here immediately,” said Lupo, ignoring her observation. Colomba smacked the chain-link fence with her hand, and Lupo jumped backward.

  “So is that how you want to play this game, Sergeant Major?”

  “No. That’s the way you chose to play it. I begged you on bended knee to be cooperative.” He gestured to one of the bomb-disposal experts, who had already donned his jumpsuit.

  The man came over. “Lieutenant Franchini,” he said with a strong Neapolitan accent. “Is there anyone else in the house?”

  “No.”

  “It’ll take a couple of hours. If you like, you can take a walk or a drive.”

  “No, thanks. I’d rather stay and watch.”

  “From the safety area outside the perimeter, though. That’s the regulation.”

  Colomba couldn’t put up any opposition and didn’t even try.

  “You’re wasting your time, Lieutenant.”

  “I always hope I am. Do you have any explosive material in your house?”

  “Only a box of bullets in the kitchen drawer.”

  “Are the doors open?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. Please step outside,” he said, gesturing for her to go.

  Colomba stalked out of the house fuming with rage and leaned on the hood of one of the squad cars. Franchini and a younger colleague of his finished donning the protective attire that made their bodies look enormous, their limbs short, and their heads—clad in black helmets and with massive goggles—tiny. Slowly they examined the ground up to the house with two portable detectors, then the lieutenant inserted fiber-optic cables through the keyhole and checked to make sure there was nothing dangerous on the other side.

  “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little?” Colomba shouted.

  “Don’t worry, Signora, we know what we’re doing,” said Martina, who had stayed within a few steps of her to keep an eye on her.

  “Of course you do. And you can call me Deputy Captain.”

  The lieutenant carefully extracted the fiber-optic cables. “There’s too much junk in the way,” he shouted to a third bomb-disposal technician, who had remained back next to the van, without protective armor. “Send the remote-controlled robot,” he added.

  “Are you kidding me?” Colomba snapped. No one answered her, and she had the impression that everyone was working off a preconcerted, especially annoying script to make sure they plucked her every last nerve.

  The third bomb-disposal technician opened the rear hatch of the van and guided the robot with the hydraulic platform. It vaguely resembled Wall-E, with three wheels in a belted tread on either side and a series of unsettling pincers. The bomb-disposal technician set up a tripod and opened a control console atop it with a small LCD screen. He pushed a few levers and the robot’s treads began to turn, carving a path through the snow. The robot was equipped with a portable X-ray machine, an endoscope, a surface particle sniffer, and a scrambler to block outside radio commands. It was possible to equip it with a small high-pressure water cannon, but luckily they’d spared her that.

  The robot poked its video camera into the farmhouse through the open door. The officer at the monitor zoomed in on Colomba’s dirty dishes. “Nothing visible,” he said on the radio.

  The bomb-disposal technicians entered cautiously. Inside and under the furniture, they found nothing but stale scraps of food and dust. When they were done with the ground floor, the robot climbed the interior staircase, spattering the walls with mud and moaning like Godzilla. Lupo walked in behind it, and Colomba abandoned her position to run after him. “You’re not a bomb-disposal technician, Sergeant Major.”

  “I have to supervise. Lodge any complaints with headquarters, Deputy Captain.”

  “You’re taking advantage of the situation.”

  Lupo leaned toward her. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “And you have no idea how I’m enjoying it. Bruno, could you please see the deputy captain out?”

  The brigadier stepped forward to carry out the order, but one glance from Colomba froze him to the spot. He stepped back behind the screen, breathing on the neck of the third bomb-disposal technician, who pretended not to notice.

  The examination of the upper floor came to an end and everyone went downstairs again, in the same tank-tread formation. As it went past, the robot slammed into the kitchen sink, knocking a dish off. As the plate shattered on the floor, Colomba turned to complain to the operator. “Sorry,” he said with a blush.

  The robot went back out into the yard, and Lupo sat down on the front step of the house. Colomba looked around for a stone to hurl at his bald pate, but she didn’t do it because Martina came running up to her.

  “The bomb-disposal technicians have found something. We need to get away from the house, Sergeant Major.”

  “No kidding?” Lupo asked, unruffled. “Where?”

  “In the back. Next to the shed.”

  “Okay. Everyone out!”

  On the screen, the two bomb-disposal technicians were bent down in the snow beside the tool shed.

  “What is it?” Colomba asked.

  The operator showed her the metal detector’s scan. “It’s a foot and a half
deep,” he said. “Metal, and it doesn’t look like a pipe. Ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  The two bomb-disposal technicians dug with their hands, moving the dirt a thimbleful at a time. Once they got closer to the object, one of the two technicians stuck his hand decisively into the hole and pulled it out. He unfolded the pillowcase it was wrapped in.

  “All good,” he said into the radio, waving the object. “It’s just an old hammer.”

  Then he noticed that the other technician was staring at it in horror and he followed the other man’s gaze.

  On the hammer’s claw, a human ear hung, pierced through by the metal prong.

  3

  Colomba lay sprawled on the sofa in the kitchen, looking around the room as she waited, surveying the marks of muddy tank treads and boots, watching TV. The number of missing tenants of the apartment building had dropped to five, and those declared dead had risen to seven. Lupo reappeared a few minutes before one in the morning. “Melas’s corpse was missing a chunk of its ear. The medical examiner says that the piece matches and that, in the cold, it’s been preserved very nicely. So we have the murder weapon.”

  Colomba said nothing.

  “I’d have preferred to have you volunteer it, or at least allow me to search the house freely. Instead, this way, it’s all going to be much more complicated.”

  “It’s impossible that Tommy could have dug a hole without my noticing it. And if he had, I would have seen the marks in the snow.”

  “You know, Deputy Captain, that’s what I think myself. I imagine that you found it and that you hid it yourself, in an attempt to protect the boy.”

  “With all the places in the world I could have disposed of it? Try not to make me laugh. The most likely explanation is that it was someone who’s eager to wrap up the case and, just think of the coincidence, happened to show up at my house with a metal detector.”

  “Show some respect for the uniform I wear.”

  Colomba glared daggers at him. “What kind of respect were you showing for that uniform when you took those bribes?”

  Lupo clenched his jaw. “We’ll file a confiscation report tomorrow morning, along with everything else. I’ll expect you at eight sharp in my office.”

  Colomba waited for the caravan to vanish into the distance, except for the squad car assigned to annoy her, which pulled out to a point on the dirt road a few yards from her front gate. It was too dark for her to identify the person at the wheel, but she knew that whoever it was, they would sit there all night, staking out her house to make sure she didn’t go anywhere.

  Fuck you, whoever you are.

  She rummaged through her kitchen in search of something to drink. There was nothing in the fridge, but in the pantry, with an expiration date from last year, she found a six-pack of cans of premixed rum and Coke. It tasted horrible, especially at room temperature.

  She put her parka back on and dragged a chair out to the little covered porch at the back door, concealed from any prying eyes. She kicked the snow into piles, stuck the cans into it, within easy reach, and started guzzling them. By the time she got to the third can, it was cold enough to suit her. An icy wind was blowing, and the temperature had dropped below freezing. Small icicles tinkled on the tree branches. Lupo had taken his revenge, and Di Marco would be the next to make his appearance, she felt sure of it. If it hadn’t been for the explosion, maybe he’d have turned a blind eye to her interference in the investigation, but now … This might well be her last night of freedom.

  She looked at her wristwatch, a men’s model in stainless steel that had belonged to her father, with glow-in-the-dark numbers and hands.

  It was two in the morning. If this was her last night, she might as well make the best of it.

  4

  At 2:10 a.m., Martina wiped the condensation off the inside of the windshield and tucked the blanket around her. Why anyone should have left the forgotten blanket in the squad car she couldn’t say, but considering how cold it was out, she was happy to have it. She didn’t want to keep the engine running: you could hear it miles away. She hadn’t complained when Lupo had assigned her to the all-night stakeout, even though she’d long since done more than the maximum number of hours of overtime. Lupo didn’t like people who questioned his orders in any way, shape, or form: he called them labor agitators and he had cleaned house, getting rid of everyone who failed to comply with what he thought of as the proper family spirit, which was another way of saying: doing what they were told. Martina had shrugged and gone along with it, but she couldn’t wait to get out of there, to some big city or other, where the commander wasn’t constantly breathing down your neck and the deputy commander wasn’t such an idiot. Now that her objective was within view, she was beside herself with anticipation, in spite of the doubts and pangs of conscience that had tormented her.

  She plugged the earbuds into her cell phone and started the app for Radio Ananas—Pineapple Radio—so she could hear the latest news about Milan. The number of victims had risen to ten, and she continued to stare at Colomba’s silhouette. Her target had left the trees and gone back inside, moving around, backlit. Colomba had gotten on Martina’s nerves from the first time she’d laid eyes on the woman, with that know-it-all way she had about her, and even more so now that she was making her spend a sleepless night in her squad car. If they let people like her into the Mobile Squad, then Martina had made the right decision to join the Carabinieri, after all. Just think what it must be like to work with her, she thought.

  The snow started falling again, as fine as dust. The low wind made it whirl into shapes that glittered in the light of the full moon. They appeared and vanished, sliding into and out of the shadows under the trees …

  The snow sketched out the silhouette of a man, standing right in front of the car.

  Martina instinctively turned on the headlights, and the clumps of snowflakes turned into fiery phosphors that erased everything. She immediately turned the headlights back off, cursing herself for an idiot, and on her retina she could still see the ghost negative of a white road dotted with black and an evanescent silhouette. Martina blinked several times, and the silhouette faded. She checked to make sure that Colomba was still in the house, and saw her shadow moving around on the ground floor.

  Maybe it was the guy from the dog training establishment, who had gone to feed the animals, she thought. Martina could hear them barking in the darkness, calling back and forth to other dogs scattered across the valley. Who knows what the hell those dogs had to say to each other all this time. Maybe it was a canine version of WhatsApp. What did you eat today? The usual kibble? That’s right, and after that I gave my asshole a nice long licking.

  Martina snickered to herself, and then she glimpsed the evanescent shadow of the man again. It seemed to be moving now, around behind the curve of the trail. In some manner, the silhouette looked familiar to her, though she still couldn’t say why.

  She unlocked the car door and opened it slightly. A gust of wind pushing a handful of needle-sharp chunks of ice hit the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. Maybe it wasn’t worth getting out into that shitty weather simply to identify someone who probably just lived around there. Almost certainly the owner of the dogs, who was out checking to make sure they were all right.

  And yet …

  And yet the dogs kept barking, and it wasn’t the cheerful barking of dogs greeting their human friend. This was the baying of an animal catching the scent of a stranger, doing its job as a wary sentinel.

  All right, then, Martina asked herself in that split second of uncertainty, should I go see who it is, or should I pretend I didn’t see it?

  While that second ticked past, Martina made the wrong decision.

  5

  At one minute to three, Colomba finished equipping herself and slung her backpack over her shoulders. It contained a flashlight screened by duct tape, a pair of kitchen gloves, and a stubby crowbar she’d found under the sink, as well as a pai
r of wooden snowshoes from the seventies. If Leo had a pair of these, too, Colomba thought, then he’d probably used them the night he’d murdered the Melases. And for some reason, spared Tommy’s life. Just as, for some reason, he’d spared hers in Milan, instead of blowing her up with the rest of the apartment building.

  She hated that thought.

  Instead of her fur-lined parka, she put on a ski suit. She went out the back door, where whoever was staking out her house wouldn’t be able to see her. She moved as quickly as she could in the darkness, until she reached the border to the garden, under the shelter of the skeletal hazelnut trees. In the distance, nothing but the undulating darkness of the fields, separated by a steep slope, a good thirty feet down. It was almost impossible to descend that slope, on account of the thorn bushes and the crumbling terrain, but Colomba knew the route by heart.

  She got a firm grip on the lowest branches and used them to ease herself halfway down, then she let herself slide on the snow, taking care to avoid the projecting rocks. She hit bottom, knee-deep in the snow, and then fastened the snowshoes to her feet, struggling with the fasteners. She’d used snowshoes only once before, in officer training school, and those had been made of plastic: these seemed to come straight out of a World War II movie. She took a few steps, walking awkwardly like a duck, expecting to sink into the deep snow—but she didn’t. Antique wartime surplus they might be, but for whatever mysterious reasons, they worked.

  Remaining under the ridgeline so that she was invisible from the road, she headed toward the yellow lights on the hill straight across from her. It was an uphill climb the whole way, and once she’d burned through the remaining alcohol in her bloodstream, her calves and her spleen started to hurt, and then her back began to ache. She had to stop frequently to rest, and once she even had to wait until a family of wild boars stopped rutting and rummaging and moved on. She reached the outskirts of Montenigro at five in the morning, exhausted and frozen solid.