The Devil

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The Devil Page 20

by Nadia Dalbuono


  ‘Don’t you have his number?’

  ‘We do, but we need to double-check it with you, and we need the provider — do you know it off the top of your head?’

  ‘I think it’s TIM, same as me, but I’ll find a bill so I’m sure.’

  ‘Good. Once we have that information, we’ll triangulate his phone — that means we’ll try to identify the phone masts his cell most recently checked in with.’

  ‘OK.’

  Scamarcio thought for a moment, then said, ‘I’m going to stop by your place. It might be best not to buzz anyone in until I arrive.’

  ‘You think I’m at risk?’

  ‘No, but it costs nothing to take a few precautions. There’s something I need to do first — I should be with you in about an hour.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be waiting.’

  Scamarcio hung up and exited the fetid alleyway. He was sorely tempted to ditch the trip to the burger bar, but he knew there’d be hell to pay if he did. He hurried up Via Venti Settembre, pushing past groups of confused-looking tourists, then swung a right onto Via Goito towards Termini, where he knew there was a McDonald’s.

  His heart sank when he saw the queue inside. Desperate times: he pulled out his badge and pushed his way to the front.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked an acne-ridden boy on the till.

  ‘We think an armed criminal might have come in here — you seen anyone acting strangely?’

  The boy looked terrified and started scanning the faces in the queue. ‘No, I mean, I don’t think so, but you know …’

  ‘Listen, stay calm — we don’t want to worry the customers. Just let me stand here a moment so I can survey the scene. To make things less conspicuous, could you fetch me a double cheeseburger and extra-large fries — I don’t want to be noticed.’

  ‘Sure, got you.’ The boy hurried off, and Scamarcio saw him whisper something to a tall guy with a headset. He was wearing a shirt and tie and looked like the manager. After a moment, they both glanced furtively in Scamarcio’s direction. Scamarcio turned away and cast his gaze around the restaurant, pulling out his mobile as he did so.

  The boy was soon back with the food, the manager beside him. Scamarcio produced his wallet, half-expecting trouble.

  ‘No, officer — it’s on the house. Thank you for your service. We greatly appreciate it,’ said the manager, handing him the big brown bag.

  ‘That’s kind.’ Scamarcio waved the bag in the air. ‘I’ll remember this. The place is secure — he must have headed somewhere else. Sorry for the inconvenience.’

  ‘No, we’re just glad you checked.’

  Scamarcio threw them a wave and hurried out, ignoring the angry stares from the other customers.

  The strange thing was that, as he headed home, he thought he spotted a figure, or the shadow of a figure, darting down a side street: a ghost gone as quickly as it had appeared. Once again, he felt a chill hit his spine — it was almost as if his armed criminal had become real and was on his tail.

  32

  ‘GENNARO’S ALWAYS BEEN A hothead,’ said Katia Borghese as she took a sip of something clear from a grubby tumbler. ‘To be honest, that’s what attracted me to him in the first place. Another guy tried to chat me up on one of our early dates, and Gennaro practically obliterated him.’

  ‘You liked that?’

  ‘What’s not to like — a woman needs to know a man will defend her.’ She shrugged a beat too late, and Scamarcio realised that she was drunk.

  ‘How long will it take your colleagues to find him?’

  ‘The phone companies are usually efficient when it comes to helping the police. I’m sure we’ll get an idea in the next half-hour or so. Of course, if he’s turned his phone off, it’s another story.’

  ‘No way to trace him?’

  ‘We’d only be able to see roughly where he was when he turned it off.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘Try not to worry.’

  They fell into a semi-comfortable silence, and Scamarcio decided to chance it. ‘Katia, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while: why weren’t you home that afternoon? Cardinal Amato said he called you to let you know they were leaving and you said you were on your way back. Did you get stuck in traffic?’

  ‘My father, he …’

  ‘Yes … I know he’d been taken ill.’

  ‘Yes, he … Oh, to hell with it.’ She took a long drink and then set the glass on the coffee table, precariously near the edge. ‘My dad was fine to leave. He was comfortable by then, and his carer had already arrived — a lovely Filipina girl, two kids back home. You have no idea of the hardships those …’

  ‘Katia, please.’

  ‘Oh yeah, sorry.’ She waved a hand through the air. ‘You don’t need to know all that.’ She rubbed at the corner of her eye, her movements slow and uncoordinated. ‘The truth is, there’s no good reason why I wasn’t home when my boy was murdered.’ She was pale-faced with grief. She paused, lowered her head, and seemed to be trying not to cry. ‘I’d had a very stressful morning, and I felt on edge: the business with my father just made it worse.’ She stopped, took another drink, but held onto the glass and cradled it. ‘I couldn’t face going home. Andrea was often very calm, much better than usual, after the exorcisms, so I thought he could be by himself for an hour or so, until Gennaro got back. So I went to the park near my dad’s and just sat on a bench for a while. I just wanted a few moments of peace. Some time for myself.’ She hung her head, miserable.

  Scamarcio leaned forward on the sofa. ‘I think that’s perfectly reasonable. Anyone would understand you need a break sometimes.’ But what he was really wondering was what in particular had upset her that morning. He wanted to ask, but at the same time he didn’t want to scare her into silence.

  ‘Yeah, but if I’d been home like I was supposed to, Andrea wouldn’t have been killed, would he?’ Her voice fractured into a thousand pieces, and she broke into long powerful sobs.

  Scamarcio waited, then said, ‘Katia, you can’t think like that. It’s destructive — how were you to guess what would happen?’

  ‘I know, but I feel like I always let him down — from start to finish.’ The last words were lost to tears.

  Scamarcio let out a long sigh. ‘If you ask me, guilt is the ruin of us all.’

  She looked up slowly, still sniffling. ‘Catholic guilt?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to give it a name.’

  She wiped her eyes and face with her sleeve, then picked up a piece of plain paper from the coffee table and started folding and refolding it. Scamarcio wondered what it would become.

  ‘I think my faith is starting to shake. Something like this, well —’

  Scamarcio’s phone rang, and he glanced at her apologetically. He fished the mobile from his pocket, taking the opportunity to pull out his depleted pack of fags at the same time. He answered the call as he walked out into the hallway.

  ‘We’ve placed him somewhere near Frascati, then the picture becomes a little blurry,’ said Sartori, a low hum of excitement in his voice.

  ‘What do you mean “blurry”?’

  ‘His cell checks in with a few masts, then drops off the grid, then pings back in again three hours later.’

  ‘Pings back in again where?’

  ‘Frascati still.’

  ‘What the fuck is he doing?’

  ‘If you’re with the wife, you should ask her if he has friends there, or family maybe.’

  ‘Should I, Sartori? Thanks for the steer.’

  ‘No need to get shirty, we’re all tired.’

  ‘I’m tireder than most.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Sartori fell silent for a beat. ‘Seems to me that while I’m with the phone people and can get my hands on Gennaro’s call history, we should take a look.’
>
  ‘Yeah,’ said Scamarcio quietly, trying to sound reasonable now. ‘Do that. Run reverse searches on any numbers that stand out for frequency.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Call me as soon as you’ve got anything.’

  ‘Shall we alert Frascati?’

  ‘Yeah, get his picture over to them. I’ll stay with Katia and see if I can learn more.’

  ‘Katia now, is it?’

  ‘Fuck off, Sartori.’

  33

  SCAMARCIO WAS ON HIS way to the squad room, morning birdsong in the trees, when a little voice in his head told him to take a detour via the Vatican. Borghese, it seemed, was in Frascati, but if his wife was right, and her husband was planning some kind of revenge, it seemed sensible to alert Cafaro to the possibility. Scamarcio very much doubted that Borghese would try to harm an aged cardinal, but the threat provided a useful pretext for asking Cafaro about his work history. Scamarcio still needed to know whether his time at the Vatican had ever overlapped with the case of the missing girl Martina Cherubini.

  When Scamarcio arrived at the gendarmerie barracks, the young policeman on desk duty threw him a look of disdain. Scamarcio ignored it and asked if the boss was around. The youth examined his badge for a few seconds longer than seemed necessary, then rose and muttered, ‘Wait a minute.’

  Scamarcio studied the walls and noticed a line of pictures of the gendarmerie corps with different popes throughout the years. He thought he spotted a young Cafaro with Pope John Paul II, which would mean he must have been in the corps at the time of the Cherubini disappearance. Scamarcio was about to scan through the list of names beneath the picture when a booming voice behind him made him jump.

  ‘Scamarcio!’

  He turned and saw Cafaro standing in the doorway to his office. It was as good an opportunity as any. Scamarcio pointed to the picture. ‘This you?’

  Cafaro frowned then walked over to the wall.

  ‘Well spotted. I must have been about twenty-four at the time.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pope John Paul.’

  Cafaro’s frown deepened. ‘Er, yes. He was a good man — decent, kind.’

  ‘And Ratzinger?’

  Cafaro turned to Scamarcio. ‘I’m finding your behaviour a little odd this morning. For once, you don’t try to slope in unannounced, and now you’re asking for gossip about the popes.’

  Scamarcio smiled. ‘Can we step into your office for a moment?’

  Cafaro nodded, his face marked with distrust. Scamarcio noticed that the desk officer was observing them both closely.

  When they were seated either side of Cafaro’s immaculate desk, Scamarcio said, ‘This is a courtesy visit, really.’

  ‘A what?’

  Scamarcio cleared his throat and crossed his legs. He spotted a red-wine stain on his beige cords that he hadn’t noticed when he was getting dressed. Cafaro, as usual, was pristine in his perfectly pressed uniform.

  ‘Gennaro Borghese has gone AWOL, and his wife thinks he might have hatched some kind of plan to take revenge on his son’s killer.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Gennaro blames the church, blames Amato. I don’t quite follow the logic myself, but if the man is unhinged by grief, who knows where it might lead him.’

  Cafaro pouted and scratched beneath his starched collar. ‘Really, you think so?’

  ‘I don’t know. In my heart of hearts, I doubt it, but I thought you should know. Plan for the worst and all that.’

  Cafaro picked up a round glass paperweight and weighed it in his palm. ‘This is a fucking weird one.’

  Scamarcio snorted. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear, Cafaro.’

  Cafaro ignored him and shook his head, thinking. ‘I mean, there’s no way Amato did it: he’s in his seventies … he’s a good man. None of it makes any sense.’

  ‘I dunno, either, Cafaro. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t struggling.’

  Given the surprising first hints of camaraderie, Scamarcio took the plunge: ‘Talking about weird cases, were you here when the Cherubini disappearance happened?’

  Cafaro carefully laid down the paperweight and stared at his empty blotter. Scamarcio wondered if he was trying to recompose his expression. If he was, he’d failed, because when he finally looked up, there was a new darkness in his eyes. Sorrow or fear — Scamarcio couldn’t tell.

  ‘That was a terrible thing. I can’t imagine how her family have lived all these years with no answers. No closure.’

  Scamarcio was taken aback by the humanity, by Cafaro’s empathy. He knew Cafaro probably wasn’t as much of a dick as he pretended, but this was more than he’d expected.

  ‘Yes, it must have been dreadful for them.’ What Scamarcio really wanted to say was ‘You haven’t answered my question’, but he knew he just had to sit back and wait now.

  A few moments of silence followed, before Cafaro said, ‘I’d only been with the gendarmerie a year, and I was as low down the pecking order as you can get, but there were rumours …’ He broke off and looked up, and Scamarcio cocked an eyebrow. ‘This off the record?’

  Scamarcio nodded vigorously.

  Cafaro sighed. ‘Our boss back then — Filippo Battaglia — word was that he was into some nasty stuff. They said he organised parties for the diplomatic corps and that Cherubini may have been taken for one of those.’

  ‘He’d taken her?’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t really clear. He may have ordered someone else to take her, or he may have helped in the cover-up after.’

  ‘Cardinal Amato commented on it, you know — to the media. I came across it when I was going through his press.’

  Cafaro sighed again. ‘I did know that. People here weren’t happy. The thinking was that Amato should have kept his mouth shut — Vatican laundry should not be aired in public.’

  ‘God, a child disappeared. There was a duty to speak out, surely?’

  Cafaro frowned, seemingly perplexed. ‘I’m just telling you what was said — I don’t necessarily agree with it.’

  ‘So, Filippo Battaglia …’ Scamarcio stopped. He hadn’t heard a knock at the door, but now realised that a massively tall, extremely broad man in uniform had entered the room.

  ‘Ah, Battaglia,’ boomed the hulk. ‘Cafaro here was his protégé. Quite the golden child.’

  Cafaro remained quite still, but Scamarcio could feel the air leave the room. A look of consternation crossed the stranger’s face. He extended a hand to Scamarcio, more hesitant now. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Alessandro Giuliani — Cafaro’s deputy.’ He turned to Cafaro. ‘I heard you had the detective in here, but I needed to tell you that a security meeting has been summoned for 10.00 am.’

  ‘Why?’ There was colour in Cafaro’s cheeks.

  ‘Call from Interpol apparently — some new intel just in. It’s the terror threat. Again.’

  ‘If we respond to every terror threat that comes in, we’ll spend our lives in security meetings.’

  ‘Don’t we already?’

  ‘It’s probably worth listening to. I was caught up in the siege last summer, and it was no joke, I can tell you,’ offered Scamarcio, trying to ease the tension in the room.

  ‘Yes,’ said the stranger decisively, as if a puzzle had just been solved. ‘I remember. Didn’t they give you the medal of honour?’

  ‘They did,’ confirmed Scamarcio, ashamed.

  ‘Blimey,’ said the hulk. ‘That must have been intense.’

  Scamarcio tried not to remember. It still gave him nightmares. ‘Not something I ever want to repeat.’ He rose from the chair. ‘You’re busy, Cafaro, so I won’t take up any more of your time. I just wanted to give you that heads-up.’

  Cafaro finally looked at him, his cheeks still flushed, then rose
to shake his hand. He stared at Scamarcio, as if he was unfinished business — inconvenient business. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. Instead, he murmured, ‘I appreciate it, Detective. I’ll put a guard on Amato’s room — as you say, no harm in being prepared.’

  His deputy’s face formed a question, but Cafaro ignored it. ‘Stay in touch, Scamarcio. Seems to me that you and I could work together better if we tried.’

  Scamarcio smiled. ‘I thought you might say that.’

  Back at his desk, Scamarcio studied the highlighted telephone numbers on the sheets Sartori had given him. It would have been helpful if Sartori could have coded them for frequency: a sea of fluorescent yellow didn’t mean much after a while. Scamarcio wondered if they could get the phone records in digital form and then ask Negruzzo to run them through a pattern-finding programme, but all that took time. It was probably simplest to just go the old-fashioned route for now.

  Sartori had managed to supply a list of the numbers of frequently dialled friends and family — mother, wife, son, work, mistress, Gennaro’s twin brother, who, despite daily attempts, they still hadn’t been able to reach. Eliminating all these was painstaking work, and Scamarcio cursed himself for letting Sartori and Lovoti head out to Frascati. He could have been there, enjoying the views, while they sifted through the minutiae.

  After thirty minutes of scoring through digits with a pen and ruler, Scamarcio glanced out at the windswept vista beyond his window. The trees were bare and scarred, the pavements black and cold. Summer felt like an ever-fading figment of his imagination.

  ‘Battaglia’s golden boy.’ The words had been chasing each other around his head ever since his meeting with Cafaro. Did it mean that Cafaro could have been involved in the Cherubini case? Did it mean Cardinal Amato knew that? Or did it mean nothing at all? Cafaro might have been a favourite of the boss, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he would have taken part in Battaglia’s extracurricular activities. Scamarcio almost wished he hadn’t found out about the link. It didn’t feel helpful.

  He rolled his head and tried to click out the stubborn knot in his neck. When he glanced back down at the papers, the figures had finally stopped swimming. Once relatives, mistresses, and the rest had been eliminated, he was just left with four highlighted numbers. The simplest option seemed to be to call them. He tried the first.

 

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