Blood in the Snow

by Franco Marks

  “Did Don Sergio know about your television?”

  Agostino was as immobile as a freeze-frame. Seconds passed. Then he came back to life. Now agitated.

  “It was a good thing Don Sergio died.”

  Agostino Uberti had a fierce look in his eyes.

  “Was he the one who showed you how to make the hole in the wall?”

  Opening his mouth, Agostino laughed magnificently, with a violence that made the air glow.

  “Are you crazy? You’re the crazy one, not me.”

  “Did he come to watch TV with you?”

  Agostino changed once again and suddenly started crying, unable to stop. His words came out wet, shreds of phrases like branches broken by the rain and hail.

  “It was a good thing he died. He was always punishing me and making me confess all my sins. But I never told him about the real sin. The one of the television.”

  And then Agostino turned to marble, no longer hearing or answering. There was no point pressing him. The only thing to do was wait. He had locked himself up. It would take time and patience to find out the truth. Maybe. At least Marzio had the Cagi underpants as damning evidence. They alone were worth a conviction for premeditated multiple homicide.

  25

  Kristal came in looking happy. His smile occupying a large part of his thin face, he placed a sheet of paper on Marzio’s desk.

  “Here’s the DNA, inspector. The semen that was in the Cagi underpants stuck in the boiler flue pipe belongs to Agostino Uberti. So do the seven pairs of underpants found in the forest under the beech tree, the four porno magazines – Agostino’s DNA. You were right. It was him who killed the girls.”

  Marzio reacted with a grimace. Kristal couldn’t understand why he was so surly – perhaps the inspector was tired. The truth was that Marzio Santoni was sick to death of DNA. It was like a persecution.

  “Have you done the DNA? What does the DNA say? Don Sergio’s DNA. The DNA confirms that…”

  In those American TV series, nobody did anything without the DNA. It was always the same mathematical formula: morgue + dissection of the corpse + DNA = solution of the mystery. But White Wolf maintained relations with the real world. The field of his investigations traversed houses, fields and rivers, he questioned, and didn’t waste his time watching them cut a body into pieces. A human inspector, a bio-detective. He had discovered the killer thanks to his extraordinary sense of smell.

  Dr Lanzetti always repeated to the sick, “There’s no point you doing all those tests, all I need to do is come into your bedroom, I can understand what’s wrong with you immediately from your smell.”

  Apathetically, Marzio opened up the hateful report on Agostino’s DNA as soon as it arrived from the laboratory. He noticed the strange flame like shapes in Indian ink, the crooked symbols – they looked like a drawing of some underwater algae. On the upper part, the usual series of sets of numbers like a bingo card or a calendar. He looked at it with detachment, but one detail aroused his attention – if you looked carefully, there was a similarity between the DNA of Agostino and the DNA of Don Sergio. A strange coincidence.

  He made a photocopy of the analysis, went out, got on his Vespa and set off through the forest that was beginning to bloom. He felt the heat that brooded under the earth. At home he searched among the firewood and found the envelope immediately. He opened it, took out the yellowed piece of paper that Don Sergio had given him and compared it with that of Agostino. From what he could make out, it seemed to him that there were indeed similarities. On the internet he discovered that if two of the flame like shapes coincided in all places, an attribution of paternity became probable. Was Agostino Uberti therefore the son of Don Sergio? He chose the only way to find out, the most discreet. He didn’t want his superiors getting involved in a story that might involve him in a very personal way. He took the plastic bag that the priest had given him and sent the two DNA reports – that of Don Sergio and that of Agostino – directly to Genomax, requesting a comparison. All he had to do was wait for forty-eight hours.

  *

  In the face of the beauty of the landscape, Kristal had become romantic.

  “The snow isn’t white. It takes on reflections, like the sea. It can become rosy in a sunset, blue on cold days, silver with cloudy skies.”

  There was something magical about the sun on the Sassone mountain, the scents seemed to come from the sea, and the snow was a blue expanse. Kristal had organised everything. Very excited, stopwatch in hand, he was dressed as usual like a townie – blue suit, black tie and his shoes sinking into the wet snow. Giuseppe, the best ski instructor in Valdiluce, was ready to go. It was a matter of calculating how much time it took, starting from the Sassone refuge, to ski downhill for about a mile then stop at the end of the long slope, put on the ski skins and crampons and return to the summit using ski mountaineering techniques. Under the spring sun, the conditions were different, thought Marzio. The speeds that Giuseppe would achieve with the Dynastar skis, the same model as Agostino’s, would be slower, despite the waxing. Agostino had gone down the slope with fresh snow, which was faster than the snow in the spring, but in the climb, not sinking into the snow would perhaps mean that Giuseppe would be faster. In any case, it would all balance out. Just a handful of seconds’ difference, nothing significant. Marzio wanted to show that Agostino had had time to return to the top, search for him in the fog, come flying down at him and knock him into the ravine.

  “Five, four, three, two, one, go!”

  Kristal pressed the button on the stopwatch energetically. Giuseppe set off quickly in a tight tuck, ran the first curve at high speed, skilfully took the jump, disappeared for a few seconds in the valley, then appeared at full speed on the slope. He moved smoothly, bent over his skis. At that moment he could even reach speeds of over sixty miles an hour. He disappeared around the big curve. Then he stopped, as agreed, pulled the skins and crampons out of his pack, put them under his skis and started to climb. From the Sassone mountain they began to see a black dot approaching. Giuseppe was going uphill very fast, his skis attacking the mountain slope as though they had engines. When he reached the summit, Marzio and Kristal were waiting for him.

  The stopwatch marked exactly seventeen minutes and fourteen seconds. So Agostino had had plenty of time to come back down and attack Marzio. At least thirteen minutes. To follow the ridge and the voice of White Wolf, who had repeatedly shouted the names of Piero and Paolo, lurk on the hill and then launch himself at him on his skis. Venting his anger. Eliminating every shadow of suspicion. Trying to kill Inspector Marzio Santoni. At two forty precisely. After so many agonised steps taken in his mind in search of the truth, so many numbers to be placed in certain formulas, an epic effort, part of the investigation had ended.

  Marzio was certain that Don Sergio had muddied the waters, slowed down the investigation by directing them towards false targets. The priest had known. A lot of things. Marzio wanted to discover them one by one, slowly, savouring them, and taking his revenge on him. He had a lifetime available for it. He relaxed. Finally, he saw the horizon, the maps that had occupied most of his mind, those of the forest around the Bucaneve and apartment twelve, dissolve.

  A large gap formed in his head which needed to be filled. With Ginpin. Like a gold digger with his few nuggets after months of toil in the desert sifting sand and water, he had entered the bar. To drink, to take the path of the sun, to relax his contracted muscles, to slip into the boiling blood, open his eyes to the west. The world could come down from his shoulders now. He drank to Elisabetta. She guided him, her body was still close to him. Marzio drove enthusiastically on the white Vespa to his appointment with Soprani. On the back of the scooter there was a brand new red taillight, and every time he braked, its flashes lit up the woods of Valdiluce.

  Happy and a little tipsy, he appeared before the big boss. He was expecting at least recognition of his success in the investigation. Instead Soprani welcomed him with a black look. Frowning, his head shoo
k as though it were rocked by an earthquake. He walked with long steps around Marzio’s office, seeming to measure the surface, to make calculations of how much he should raise his voice to make the room explode.

  “A perfect suicide! We had the best suicide in the world, everything in its place, as clear and bright as day. Angela had killed the three other women. And what did you decide to do? You, the fucking big-shot investigator? To find the killer. And who is the killer? A rotten apple, a poor madman. You could have done nothing, didn’t they ever teach you to keep your mouth shut? It’s worth a damn sight more than wanting to get to the bottom of unhealthy cases like this. And as if that wasn’t enough, now we have to do everything over – interrogations, statements, reconstruct the facts. If a little flame of hope had been lit, you’ve extinguished the future. Valdiluce will be permanently razed to the ground. It’ll become a place for the living dead. And you’ll be the inspector of a ghost town. A poor zombie.”

  Marzio didn’t answer. He had learned the use of silence from Soprani himself. He didn’t even attempt a sympathetic smile. An inexpressive rubber face. He left and went to the bar. He drank Ginpin until late at night, partly to celebrate, but also to forget.

  26

  The answer about the DNA came through from Genomax forty-eight hours later. Marzio opened the envelope in a flash and an instant later had the piece of paper in his hand. He read it greedily.

  Analysis report. Paternity in the sample of Agostino Uberti: as can be seen from the graph, in his genetic profile, the presumed father possesses the paternal contribution present in the child and should therefore be considered the biological father. There are a sufficient number of polymorphic loci to obtain a probability of paternity of over 99.9999%.

  Agostino was Don Sergio’s son. There was no doubt of it. It was a bit of news he’d expected and which still disoriented him. The priest had actually been licentious, then, it hadn’t just been a rumour: that document confirmed his immorality. And it added to Marzio’s anxiety. It made it more possible that his mother Elisa… But the envelope contained another answer. He couldn’t work out what it would be. He opened it with apprehension.

  Analysis report. Paternity in the sample of Marzio Santoni…

  He froze. He stopped reading. He realised that he’d seriously fucked it up. Without thinking, in the excitement of the moment, with all those envelopes and bags that made up the kit, Marzio had forgotten to remove his biological sample from the big envelope, the one he had taken a few days ago and never dared to send. Genomax had automatically compared his DNA sample with that of Don Sergio. He was falling without a safety net into an infinite abyss. The truth was close at hand. Was he too, Don Sergio’s son? Was Agostino his brother? All he had to do was read the few lines. His wild instincts – the ones that guided his life in its worst moments – came into action. Lucidly, he made a sudden gesture. He took the report of his DNA and threw it into the fire.

  The fire devoured it in an instant, producing strangely coloured flames. No regrets. For a few minutes, White World sat stunned. The fire was cleaning his past. On the other hand, he could never have torn his mother’s polka dot dress off. Seen her naked, dirty. Condemned himself to hell. The few enchanted memories of childhood he had were better tucked under the quilt. He saw Elisa illuminated by the flames that swayed in the grating of the Warm Morning stove, forming eccentric shapes that shook the rigour of his simple thoughts. It wasn’t possible to imagine her differently.

  Marzio put back together the family, his holy family. He grabbed the picture that had been taken thirty years ago. Him with the new red skis, Elisa and Alfonso, all under the Christmas tree. White Wolf was almost moved by the memory of his father as he cut the trunks of fir trees with the axe. Lean, with the fragrance of the wood, the silhouette of the flannel shirt on his tanned skin. Refined in his woodsman simplicity, Alfonso was a prince. He moved with agility, his axe glinting in the sun, like a swashbuckler he unbuttoned the trees from their bark, worked silently, stacked up geometric signs one on top of another. Then he sat in the midst of that scent of intimacy, lit his cigar, relaxed and finally allowed his body to appear, his face with the shiny black moustache, eyes shining and insightful, so sincere that Elisa could never have betrayed them. Marzio put the picture on the table and let time wash over it.

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  About Franco Marks

  FRANCO MARKS is a writer and television director who lives and works in Rome. He has written the novels La neve rossa, Il visionario (shortlisted for the 2003 Strega Prize), Festa al blu di Prussia (winner of the Procida Isola di Arturo – Elsa Morante Prize 2005), Il profumo della neve (shortlisted for the 2007 Strega Prize), Lo show della farfalla (shortlisted for the 2010 Viareggio-Repaci Prize), Il suicidio perfetto, La mossa del cartomante, Tre cadaveri sotto la neve, Lo strano caso dell’orso ucciso nel bosco, Delitto con inganno and Giallo di mezzanotte. His books have been translated in several countries.

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  Addictive Fiction

  First published as The Perfect Suicide in Italy in 2018 by Newton Compton

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Franco Marks, 2018

  Translation © Richard McKenna, 2018

  The moral right of Franco Marks to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  The moral right of Richard McKenna to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (E) 9781788548458

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