“Now!” Sensi ordered.
Three men from the squad jumped over the fence and ran silently towards the back door. They broke the lock in a few moments with barely a sound and sneaked inside.
Another endless pause.
Sensi realized that all of his muscles were taut.
He tried to picture the three men – he hoped that sooner or later one of them would shout into the walkie-talkie that they’d found Ami alive.
“Nobody.” One of them shouted, suddenly. “Nobody around. It’s empty here.”
*
An hour later, the forensics department were analysing the house in order to find any helpful hints or traces. Sensi walked around the rooms wearing plastic over-shoes and being careful not to touch anything. Everything seemed perfect – like a hotel room ready for the next guest.
“Did you bring her here, son of a bitch? Where the fuck are you now? Where’s Ami?”
His phone vibrated.
“I’ll get you, son of a bitch, I’ll come and get you… it’s just a matter of time,’ Sensi thought, as he picked up the call.
“He’s in London.” The public prosecutor was a man of few words. “Scotland Yard informed us that they found Philip Beattie. An English judge will approve his arrest tomorrow and then he’ll be with us.”
A wave of shivers ran through Sensi’s spine.
“Was he interrogated? Did he say anything? Where’s Ami?”
“We only know that Mr Beattie was found in London. I assume that our Scotland Yard colleagues will ask him a few questions soon. We’ll have to wait – the English procedures are very strict, the case has to be considered at the Magistrates' Court in Bow Street – they will have to approve the arrest and okay the extradition procedures.”
“Fuck, when are we going to be able to interrogate him?”
“It’ll take a few days for the extradition, but I think we’ll be able to ask him questions as soon as the arrest is approved. Get ready to fly to the United Kingdom.”
*
The TV show had been one of the most popular in the last few years. It was broadcast weekly on one of the national channels and dealt with missing people. That night’s episode was all about Ami.
The show began with a live broadcast from the Demba family’s neighbourhood – they had organized a march and almost everybody had taken part in it. Elaji and Rama had preferred to avoid the cameras and to remain at home with little Alissa. They followed the march from their small TV.
The journalist began to summarise the whole story – she emphasised some details, including the black Golf… then all of a sudden she received a call on the desk telephone. “I’m sorry,” she said as she interrupted a conversation between two of the guests. She drew the camera back to herself. “I’m sorry for interrupting you, we have some breaking news – somebody has been arrested.”
Elaji thought that his heart had stopped for a moment. Rama brought little Alissa, who was fast asleep, closer to her chest without realising that she had done so.
“In London,” the journalist continued. “A British citizen was arrested after the man hunt had officially been made international. Investigators currently believe that this man was involved in the kidnapping.”
Rama began to cry uncontrollably, Elaji’s heart filled with hatred – he would have never imagined that he was capable of this feeling. For the first time in his life, he wanted to kill somebody with his own hands.
5
The morning had been very stressful due to the intrusion of the media. Together with the arrest of Mr Beattie in England, some journalists had discovered that the police had entered the house where the Englishman had been staying in Italy. The journalists seemed to pop up from every corner and pestered everyone in town with questions. The public prosecutor eventually decided to request a news blackout during such a delicate point in the investigation.
The search in the house had been carried out all through the night – all the latest technological equipment had been used. The results, however, had been fairly disappointing – it almost seemed as though a professional cleaning team had tidied up every corner of every room. There were no fingerprints, no organic material, no hairs. Nothing at all. On one of the stairs that led from the first floor to the ground floor, microscopic traces of blood had been found. The traces were so small that it would be very difficult to recover a full DNA profile from them.
At the first light of dawn, the search along the river had also resumed.
Sensi was in his office together with Maiezza – they were both pacing impatiently as they waited for permission from London to carry on with their investigation. Beattie had organized every detail well in advance, nothing had been left to chance. When he felt that it was the right time, he had rented an isolated house from the Internet, a house that guaranteed him some privacy. He had rented the black Golf at the airport, pretending to be a tourist who had just arrived in Italy and had taken Ami in that same car.
Little Ami. He had to know her daily routine – he had taken her early in the morning while she was on her way to school. He had taken her to the house.
Then… Sensi closed his eyes.
He must have put her in the boot at night and then taken her to the river.
The following morning he had returned the black Golf and made his way back to London. He would have felt that he was safe over a thousand miles from trouble… or at least he thought he was.
“Son of a bitch,” Sensi cursed him, almost talking to himself.
“How did he return home if there’s no trace of him on any flights departing from Italy?” Maiezza asked.
“Probably by train.” Sensi put his hands on his tired face. “He could have taken a shuttle from Malpensa to the Central Station in Milan and then another train to London.”
“He might have left a second car in the airport parking area as he was using the Golf.” Maiezza tried to hypothesize. “Considering what he was planning to do, he must have thought it would be safer to return to his homeland in a car that nobody had seen on the morning of the kidnapping.”
“It sounds complicated – it would have to be another rented car, considering that he arrived in Italy by plane. Anyway we’ll soon know everything.”
*
Elaji had decided to return to work. He felt that he couldn’t stay at home any longer – he was tired of waiting for the phone to ring, and it was painful to see Rama crying and praying.
He was currently working as an ironsmith in a small business with four other people. That day, he had furiously hammered the white-hot iron non-stop to make a huge tractor plough share. That job would have been exhausting for anyone else.
But not him.
The night before, when he heard the news that Beattie was being held by the police, he had run to the police station in town.
“Was it him?” he had shouted. “Does he have Ami with him? Where did he hide her?”
“Elaji, I can’t tell you much,” Corbi had said to him. “We were ordered to keep quiet about the investigation, but we’re hoping that this man will lead us to Ami. We’ll be able to question him in a few hours. Trust us, Elaji.”
Elaji lifted up a two metre iron bar as easily as if it was made of straw and laid it under the trip hammer.
When the head fell violently on the bar, Elaji promised himself that if Ami didn’t make it back home, he wouldn’t rest until he had killed the kidnapper with an equivalent amount of force.
*
The south-west wind hadn’t let up overnight; and it had wiped the clouds away from the sky and blown the sand from the beach onto the roads. Trevis hadn’t had a wink of sleep, he had been tormented by the memories and the anguish from years ago.
He had accepted Elisa as a patient, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of emotion.
Denise was the name of her sister.
Another Denise, another tragedy.
Why had he agreed to help her?
Why had he read a sign of destiny in that name?
; Why did he think that, by helping this patient, he could redeem himself for not having saved Denise?
Whatever the answer, it had been a mistake.
But now Elisa was sitting in front of him.
They were alone in his office. Her father had accompanied her hand in hand into the office and helped her to sit down in the armchair.
Elisa was thin and tiny. Her facial traits were very gentle, her face looked vaguely baby-like despite her being twenty years old. Her thin blonde hair hung loose on her shoulders, she sat with her fingers intertwined and rested her hands on her stomach.
“Elisa?” Trevis repeated.
He waited for a whole minute before asking again.
Elisa’s face was expressionless, her eyes were of a light colour but looked lifeless and stared at an imaginary spot somewhere beyond the walls of Trevis’ office.
She was wearing a simple dress, which looked somehow old-fashioned – and the style and colour were more appropriate for a girl in her early teens. Her father took care of her – Trevis thought that dress represented the child-like image her father had still of her.
“Elisa?”
For a few seconds, there was no apparent response. Then Trevis noticed a tiny, almost imperceptible change – she squinted a little.
Trevis heard a noise. He leaned over his desk a little to see better. Elisa was peeing.
*
“I don’t have any good news, unfortunately.”
The beginning of the call from the magistrate froze Sensi.
“The London Magistrates Court has released Beattie – they didn’t approve the arrest and there won’t be any extradition.”
“How’s that possible?” The police commissioner was astounded.
“And that’s not the bad news – Philip Beattie is hemiplegic and dozens of witnesses can confirm that he hasn’t left his home for months.”
“Hemiplegic?” Sensi couldn’t believe his ears.
“He had a stroke months ago, his intellectual abilities are compromised and he needs assistance at home. He’s not our man.”
“Fuck! Maybe they got the wrong person – how many Philip Beatties are there in London?”
“No mistake unfortunately, the driving licence recorded at Hertz was his.”
“For fuck’s sake!”
“They obviously stole it from him, but he never reported losing it simply because he never noticed. Since he had the stroke, he’s been unable to drive.”
Sensi leaned back in his armchair; he felt as though his strength had suddenly abandoned him.
“Yeah, if he’d reported it, we would have found his file number on our database immediately.”
“And we would have avoided this misunderstanding.”
The magistrate paused for a few seconds, then spoke again. “The kidnapper isn’t called Philip Beattie.”
6
Three months later
The sky of that bitterly cold March day was surprisingly clear. The clearing was about three hundred metres away from the river bank, no further than that. Two men holding trowels were gently and carefully removing a clump of soil. They had been working for three hours already. At the end of the clearing there was a woman – she also had a trowel in her hand, and was drinking water from a bottle.
Then, one of the two men froze for a moment, before resuming working at a frantic pace.
“Cristina, Cristina!” He shouted excitedly, without stopping to stare at the soil.
The woman strode towards him. She dropped the water bottle on the ground.
“Look, Cristina.” The man spoke when she reached him. “Look at the cut!”
PART TWO
Sensi and Claps remained silent for a long period of time.
“You found… little Ami… eventually.”
Sensi hesitated, he glanced to a spot far away beyond Claps.
“It took us three months. We found her four days ago, near the river Adda. We’d spent such a long time inspecting the area where the Golf sighting had been reported.”
“Three months,” Claps repeated.
“The area was large, we carried on searching for so many weeks, we must have walked over her many times. We used dogs that were trained to search out bodies, with no results. Eventually, we decided to ask for the support of the Institute of Medical Investigation.”
“The LAFoD.”
“The Laboratory of Anthropology and Forensic Dentistry.” Sensi nodded. “They took aerial photos and spotted six areas where the soil may have been moved.”
“They star-ted… to…” Claps had to focus to utter the word that he had in mind. “Peel off.”
“Yes, peel off – they began to gently remove the first five inches of soil from the six spots.”
“To find a… cut.”
“Yes, the edge between a filled pit and the unscathed neighbouring soil.”
“A cut is visible for… long… years. Many.”
“That’s what I was told – the soil’s consistency, the colour; in a nutshell, it’s possible to easily identify the perimeter of any pit dug even months before if one peels off the first layer of soil. They began to work on the nearest site, which was easier to reach by car.”
“Yes… a body… heavy. It’s… difficult.” This time, Claps lowered his eyes, then he spoke again. “But Ami was… light.”
“Yes. They found a cut on the last site, they had lost any hope by then. It was the furthest away, right near the forest.”
Sensi took a sip of water.
“They dug almost half a metre down,” he said. Then he paused again. He was struggling to carry on talking. “Ami was there. She was wrapped in cellophane.”
Claps imagined the scene – he could almost smell the damp soil… the odour of decomposition wafting from Ami’s body. For a moment, everything around him disappeared and he fell prey to the all too familiar vertigo.
“We still don’t know much, Claps. Ever since we discovered that Philip Beattie is the wrong man, we’ve made no progress. The man who stole his identity is like a ghost.”
“Driving licence… how?”
“Beattie was a university lecturer in History of Art, this was a sabbatical year. He arrived in Italy at the end of June and travelled around. One day, somebody stole his driving licence. Or maybe they just took it off him. We don’t know when it happened. The reason he never realized is because during all that time he never needed it. He used public transport to move around. Rome, Naples, Venice, Florence… then he suffered a stroke at the beginning of September. Once he had recovered enough to travel, he was sent back home on a Europe Assistance flight, which is why he wasn’t listed on any of the regular flights. We looked for him in Italy. When he returned to his homeland, his driving licence remained here, in the hands of somebody who was up to no good.”
“The house – given?”
“Rented? Through the Internet.”
“How – paid?”
“It would have been great if he had used a credit card,” Sensi smiled bitterly. “He booked it from an internet site, then he went to the offices in person. He paid cash. We interviewed the person that spoke to him and basically he described someone who looked like Beattie. We inspected his house but found no trace, only hair from a wig. The ghost dressed up to look like Beattie. Or better, to look like Beattie’s photo on his driving licence. He’s much bigger than Beattie, he’s nearly two metres tall according to the car rental assistant.”
“The cellophane… anything?”
“Nothing that can be used to identify the DNA of that motherfucker, if that’s what you were trying to say.”
Claps wrote something down on his notepad – he was very quick. Then he spoke, glancing at what he had written. “This… ghost… has an organized pattern of behaviour, evidently. He planned everything well. He probably had chosen Ami… before. He paid attention not to leave… traces. He was cau-tious. He must feel… very proud… of himself. He could do it… again. He’s a tall man… between thirty and for
ty years old. He was in touch with… Beattie… even for just a little while. You know this… already.”
Claps lifted his eyes. He stared into Sensi’s eyes. “Why did you want to speak… about it all… with me?”
“Well, there’s something that you still don’t know. Something about Ami’s body.”
The police commissioner had to swallow down another sip of water. Then he carried on talking. “She was missing a finger. The little finger of her left hand. It was chopped off.”
Sensi remained silent.
After a few seconds, Claps understood.
“It’s not a… one-off, right?”
Sensi nodded gravely. “The first time was three years ago, then the remains of two children were found last year – they were both buried in the forest. They found them by pure chance, they were both missing their left little fingers.”
Claps struggled to ask more precise questions. “More… tell me more.”
“The bodies were not identified. They were African girls of about eleven or twelve years old. Nobody ever reported them as missing. The investigators believe that they were from families of illegal immigrants who were afraid to report their disappearance.”
“That’s ab-surd, they would have received… permission… after report… for tragedies like this. Nobody would have… expelled.”
“They don’t know our laws, Claps. Don’t forget that many of them are desperate and often terrorised.”
Claps remained silent for a few seconds. “That… sad… carry on… talking.”
“The three bodies were all found in Tuscany, the first one was found three years ago as I said. Two young guys who were looking for mushrooms in a forest found them by chance. The pit originally had to have been quite shallow and it had rained so much that some of the soil had been washed off. That’s how they noticed something on the ground. The girl had to have been dead for three or four months already. The body was in very bad conditions, but the flesh was still there, except for…”
“The little… finger.”
Sensi nodded. “The second body was found a year ago. Again, it was found in a forest. The body had almost no flesh left, it was basically just a skeleton. Some wild boar had unearthed the lower part of the body and it had been eaten away. The skull and the upper part of the body, including the bones of the arms, were found intact a few inches underground. The little finger was missing, though.
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