The Whisperer

by Donato Carrisi

  Goran turned to look into her eyes. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because it’s from darkness that I come. And to darkness that I must, from time to time, return.”

  36.

  S he is leaning against the wall, with her hands behind her back, in the shadows. How long has she been there, staring at her?

  Then she decides to call her. “Gloria…”

  And she comes over.

  She has the usual curiosity in her face, but this time there’s something different. A doubt.

  “I’ve remembered one thing…I used to have a cat,” says Gloria.

  “I’ve got one too: he’s called Houdini.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “He’s mean.” But she immediately knows that that’s not the answer the little girl wants from her, and corrects herself: “Yes. He has white and brown fur, he’s always sleeping and he’s always hungry.”

  Gloria thinks about that for a moment, then asks again: “Why do you think I’d forgotten mine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought…if I forgot him, I’ll forget lots of other things as well. Maybe even my real name.”

  “I like ‘Gloria,’” she says encouragingly, thinking of her reaction when she told her that her real name was Linda Brown.

  “Gloria…”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you tell me about Steve?”

  “Steve loves us. And soon you’ll come to love him too.”

  “Why do you say he saved us?”

  “Because it’s true. He did.”

  “I didn’t need to be saved by him.”

  “You didn’t know, but you were in danger.”

  “Is Frankie the danger?”

  Gloria is afraid of the name. She’s undecided. She doesn’t know whether to speak or not. She weighs up the situation, then comes closer to the bed and speaks in a very low voice.

  “Frankie wants to hurt us. He’s looking for us. That’s why we have to stay hidden here.”

  “I don’t know who Frankie is, or why he’s angry with me.”

  “He isn’t angry with us, he’s angry with our parents.”

  “With mine? Why?”

  She can’t believe it, it sounds like a ridiculous story. But Gloria is very convinced.

  “Our parents swindled him, something to do with money.”

  Once again she sounds like she’s saying something borrowed from someone else, and passively learned by heart.

  “My parents don’t owe money to anybody.”

  “My mother and father are dead. Frankie killed them. Now he’s after me to finish the job. But Steve is sure that he won’t find me if I stay here.”

  “Gloria, listen to me…”

  Every now and again Gloria wanders off, and she has to go and get her from wherever she has ended up in her thoughts.

  “Gloria, I’m talking to you…”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Your parents are alive. I remembered seeing you on TV a while ago: they were on a talk show and they were talking about you. They were wishing you a happy birthday.”

  She doesn’t look surprised by the revelation. But now she starts considering the possibility that it’s all true.

  “I can’t see the TV. Only the tapes Steve gives me.”

  “Steve. Steve is the bad man, Gloria. Frankie doesn’t exist. He’s only an invention of Steve’s to keep you prisoner here.”

  “He exists.”

  “Think about it: have you ever seen him?”

  She thinks about it. “No.”

  “So why do you believe in him?”

  Even if Gloria is the same age as her, she seems much younger than her twelve years. It’s as if her brain had stopped growing when she was nine. When, that is, Steve had kidnapped Linda Brown. That’s why she always needs to think about things a bit.

  “Steve loves me,” she repeats, more to convince herself than anything else.

  “No, Gloria. He doesn’t love you.”

  “So you’re saying that if I try and leave here, Frankie won’t kill me?”

  “It’ll never happen. And we’re going to leave together, you won’t be alone.”

  “Will you be with me?”

  “Yes. But we have to find a way to escape Steve.”

  “But you’re ill.”

  “I know. And I can’t move my arm.”

  “It’s broken.”

  “How did that happen? I don’t remember…”

  “You fell down the stairs together when Steve brought you here. He’s very angry about it: he doesn’t want you to die. And then he won’t be able to teach you how to love him. That’s very important, do you know that?”

  “I’ll never love him.”

  Gloria takes a couple of seconds. “I like the name Linda.”

  “I’m glad you like it, because it’s your real name.”

  “So you can call me that…”

  “All right, Linda.” She articulates it clearly, and she smiles at her. “So now we’re friends.”

  “Really?”

  “When you swap names you become friends, didn’t anyone tell you that?”

  “I already knew your name…you’re Maria Eléna.”

  “Yes, but all my friends call me Mila.”

  37.

  The bastard’s name was Steve, Steve Smitty.”

  Mila uttered the name with contempt, as Goran held her hand on the three-quarter-sized hotel bed.

  “He was just an idiot who’d never done anything with his life. He moved from one stupid job to another, and couldn’t hold one down for as much as a month. Most of the time he was unemployed. When his parents died he had inherited a house—the one in which he kept us prisoner—and the money from a life insurance policy. Not much, but enough to let us bring his ‘grand plan’ to life at last!”

  She said it with exaggerated emphasis. Then she shook her head on the pillow, thinking of the absurdity of the story.

  “Steve liked girls, but he didn’t dare to approach them because his penis was the size of a little finger and he was afraid they’d laugh at him.” A mocking, vindictive smile brightened her features for a moment. “So he started taking an interest in children, sure that he’d have more success with them.”

  “I remember the Linda Brown case,” said Goran. “I’d just been given my first chair at university. I thought the police had made a few mistakes.”

  “Mistakes? They made a complete mess of it! Steve was an unskilled slob, he’d left a trail of clues and witnesses behind! They couldn’t find him straightaway, so they said he was clever. When in fact he was a complete fool! A very lucky fool…”

  “But he had managed to convince Linda…”

  “He had tortured her, exploiting her fear. He had invented this evil character—Frankie—and given him the role of the bad guy, so that he could set himself up as the good one, the ‘savior.’ That imbecile hadn’t even had much imagination: he’d called him Frankie because it was the name of a turtle he had when he was a child!”

  “It worked.”

  Mila calmed down. “With a child who was terrified and distressed. It’s easy to lose your sense of reality in those conditions. All along I thought I was in some damned basement, and called it the ‘belly of the monster.’ But there was a house above me, and the house was in a suburban area with a lot of other houses around it, all the same, all normal. People walked by and didn’t know I was down there. The worst thing about it was that Linda—or Gloria, as he had rechristened her, giving her the name of the first girl who had rejected him—could move freely. But she didn’t even think of going outside, even though the front door was practically always open. He didn’t lock it even when he went out for a walk, he was so sure that the story of Frankie would work!”

  “You were lucky to get out alive.”

  “My arm was almost in a state of necrosis. For a long time the doctors despaired of saving it. And I was starving, too. The bastard gave me baby food and tr
eated me with out-of-date medicine that he stole from a pharmacy dump. He didn’t need to drug me: my blood was so poisoned by that filth that it was a real miracle that I was conscious!”

  The rain outside was pelting down, washing the streets of leftover snow. Sudden gusts of wind shook the blinds.

  “Once I woke from that kind of coma because I’d heard someone say my name. I’d also tried to attract attention, but Linda had appeared and persuaded me to stop. So I’d bartered my safety for the small happiness of not being alone. But I hadn’t been mistaken: up above me there really had been two police officers scouring the area. They were still looking for me! If I had called out more loudly, perhaps they would have heard me. Basically we were separated only by a thin wooden floor. There was a woman with them, and she had been the one who called my name. But she hadn’t done it with her voice, just her mind.”

  “It was Nicla Papakidis, wasn’t it? That’s how you met her…”

  “Yes, it was. But even though I didn’t reply, she had still heard something. So she had come back over the next few days, she’d walked around outside the house in the hope of hearing me again…”

  “So it wasn’t Linda who saved you…”

  Mila snorted. “Her? She always went and told Steve everything. She was his small and involuntary accomplice by now. For three years he had been her whole world. As far as she knew, Steve was the last adult left on earth. And children always trust adults. But Steve had already thought of getting rid of me. He was sure that I would die soon, so he had prepared a hole in the shed behind the house.”

  The photographs in the newspapers of that hole had struck her more than anything else.

  “When I left that house I was more dead than alive. I didn’t notice the paramedics carrying me away on the stretcher, up the same stairs that that klutz Steve had dropped me down when he’d been carrying me to the basement. I couldn’t see the dozens of policemen gathering around the house. I didn’t hear the applause of the crowd that had collected there to celebrate my freedom. But I was accompanied by Nicla’s voice, which was still describing everything to me and telling me not to go towards the light…”

  “What light?” Goran asked curiously.

  Mila smiled. “She was convinced that there was one. Perhaps because of her faith, she believed that when we die we become detached from our bodies, and after we have gone quickly down a tunnel, a beautiful light appears to us…I’ve never told her that I didn’t see anything. Just darkness. I didn’t want to disappoint her.”

  Goran leaned over her and kissed her on the shoulder. “It must have been terrible.”

  “I was lucky,” she said. And her thoughts ran suddenly to Sandra, girl number six. “I should have saved her. But I didn’t. What chance did she have of surviving?”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Mila drew herself up, still sitting on the edge of the bed. Goran stretched an arm out towards her again. But he could no longer touch her. His caress touched her skin but couldn’t reach her, because she was far away again.

  He noticed, and let her go. “I’m going to have a shower,” he said. “I have to go home, Tommy needs me.”

  She stayed there motionless, still naked, until she heard the water running in the bathroom. She wanted to empty her mind of those horrible memories, to have a white void to fill with the weightless thoughts that children have, a privilege that had been torn from her.

  The hole in the tool shed behind Steve’s house had not been left empty. Her ability to feel empathy had ended up in there.

  She stretched out a hand to the bedside table and picked up the television remote. She turned it on in the hope that, like the water of Goran’s shower, meaningless chatter and images would wash away the remains of all the pain in her head.

  On the screen a woman was clutching a microphone as wind and rain tried to carry her away. To her right was the logo of a television news program. Below her, the scrolling text of breaking news. In the background, a long way away, a house surrounded by dozens of police cars, their flashing lights splitting the night.

  “…and in an hour Chief Inspector Roche will issue an official statement. Meanwhile I can confirm that the news is real: the maniac who has been terrorizing the country by kidnapping and killing innocent little girls has been identified…”

  Mila couldn’t move, her eyes were fixed on the screen.

  “…he is the offender, released on probation, who this morning opened fire on two correction officers who had visited his house for a routine check…”

  Mila couldn’t believe it.

  “…following the death in hospital of the wounded correction officer, the special units sent to the site decided to break in. It was only after killing the offender and entering the house, they made the unexpected and surprising discovery…”

  “The little girl, tell me about the little girl!”

  “…for the benefit of viewers who have just joined us: the name of the offender was Vincent Clarisso…”

  “Albert,” Mila corrected her in her head.

  “…Department inform us that the sixth child is still in the house behind me: we believe she is receiving first aid from a medical support team. We have no confirmation, but it would seem that little Sandra is still alive.”

  Electronic surveillance report n° 7

  23 December

  3.25 a.m.

  Duration: 1 min. 35 sec.

  Prisoner RK-357/9:

  …know, be ready, be prepared [followed by words incomprehensible to the transcriber]…deserving of our rage…do something…trust above all…[incomprehensible phrase] too good, condescending…must not be tricked…know, be ready, be prepared [incomprehensible word] there’s always someone who will take advantage of us…the necessary punishment…serve our sentence…it isn’t enough to understand things, sometimes you have to act consistently…know, be ready, be prepared [incomprehensible word]…kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

  38.

  Department of Behavioral Sciences,

  25 February

  Vincent Clarisso was Albert. Or was he?

  He had been out of jail for less than two months, after serving the remainder of a sentence for armed robbery.

  Once he was free, he had started his plan.

  No record of violent crime. No symptom of mental illness. Nothing to mark him out as a potential serial killer.

  The armed robbery had been a “setback,” according to the lawyers who had defended Vincent in that trial. The stupidity of a young man with a serious codeine dependency. Clarisso came from a good bourgeois family, his father was a lawyer and his mother a teacher. He had studied, graduating as a nurse. He had worked for a while in a hospital, as a theater nurse. It was probably there that he had acquired the knowledge necessary to keep Sandra alive after amputating her arm.

  Gavila’s team’s hypothesis that Albert might be a doctor was not far from the truth.

  Vincent Clarisso had allowed all those experiences to settle in an embryonic layer of his personality, before going on to become a monster.

  But Mila didn’t believe it.

  “It’s not him,” she went on repeating to herself as her taxi reached the Federal Police building.

  After learning the news from the TV, Goran had spent about twenty minutes on the phone to Stern, who had told him of the latest developments. The criminologist had paced up and down the hotel room, beneath Mila’s anxious gaze. Then they had parted. He had called Mrs. Runa to ask her to stay with Tommy that night, and had immediately hurried to the place where Sandra had been found. Mila would have liked to go with him, but her presence would no longer have been justifiable. So they had arranged to meet later, at the Department of Behavioral Sciences.

  It was after midnight, but the city was one big snarl-up. People were pouring into the streets, heedless of the rain, to celebrate the end of a nightmare. It was like the middle of a New
Year’s party, with car horns sounding and everyone hugging everyone else. To complicate the traffic situation there were roadblocks to intercept any possible fleeing accomplices of Clarisso, but also to keep onlookers away from the area where the story’s epilogue had taken place.

  As the taxi proceeded at a walking pace, Mila was able to hear a new report on the radio. Terence Mosca was the man of the hour. Solving the case had been a stroke of luck. But, as often happened, the only one to benefit directly had been the man in charge of operations.

  Tired of waiting for the line of cars to move, she decided to confront the pelting rain and got out of the taxi. The Federal Police building was a few blocks away, so she had pulled up the hood of her parka and continued on foot, immersed in her reflections.

  The figure of Vincent Clarisso didn’t coincide with the profile of Albert drawn up by Gavila.

  According to the criminologist, their man had used the corpses of the six little girls as a kind of pointer. He had put them in specific places to reveal horrors that had never come to light, but of which he himself was aware. They had hypothesized that he was a secret associate of those criminals, and that they had all met him in the course of their lives.

  They’re wolves. And wolves often hunt in packs. Every pack has a chief. And Albert is telling us this: he’s their leader, Goran had asserted.

  Mila had become even more convinced that Vincent wasn’t Albert when she had heard the serial killer’s age: thirty. Too young to have known Ronald Dermis as a boy in the orphanage, or indeed Joseph B. Rockford—in fact she and the team had deduced that he must be between the ages of fifty and sixty. And nor did he resemble the description given by Nicla after she saw him in the mind of the billionaire.

  And, as she walked through the rain, Mila found something else that justified her skepticism: Clarisso was in jail when Feldher was slaughtering Yvonne Gress and her children in the villa in Capo Alto, so he couldn’t have witnessed the massacre, leaving his outline in blood on the wall!

  It’s not him, they’re making a mistake. But Goran will have noticed, and he’s bound to be explaining it to them now.