As soon as Elaji walked out, Claps picked up his phone.
“Claps here… please keep an eye… on him.”
*
Elaji took a back road and left the old town on foot. He was heading towards the supermarket near where Mudiwa and her daughter were working. The bags full of clothes that Abedi had given Elaji had stayed with Claps at the central police station. He would have to make up a story to explain how he had been freed so quickly if somebody had seen him being taken away by the police. More lies. They were necessary, but Elaji couldn’t get used to them.
His face was beginning to reflect the lies – his beard was long, dark glasses covered his face, a large ethnic hat shadowed his forehead. He couldn’t show himself as he really was – the hunting lion had to stay hidden in the savanna. Abedi had recognised him, it could happen again.
Then he saw Djara. He followed his instinct and walked faster. He wanted Ami’s smile, he needed it. The entrance to the supermarket was very crowded. Mudiwa saw Elaji when he was still about twenty metres away from the entrance – she waved at him. Elaji had his eyes fixed on Djara and didn’t realise, as he crossed the road, that he brushed against the shoulder of a tall man with sunglasses standing facing the supermarket entrance.
*
Claps was driving to Niccioleta. From inside his car, he was oblivious to the beauty of the scenery alongside the roads that lead to the hills. These roads went through deciduous woodland and pine forests, branched off into rolling fields of wheat and sunflowers and crossed quiet dirt roads lined with endless cypress trees. The only emotion that Claps felt as he made his way through all that magnificent scenery was distress. He felt trapped in a green tunnel where the sunlight had suddenly disappeared and the scents were moist and wild.
They were the scents of the monster’s filthy hide-out.
Claps was heading into his territory – he couldn’t appreciate any beauty.
A few kilometres later, he turned left towards Niccioleta where the road wound sinuously uphill.
His destination appeared almost unexpectedly as he rounded a corner. He had expected to see a little town, a bunch of houses scattered around a church, but instead he found a square – or rather, a large open space that looked a bit like a square. The town centre hosted a small church, a monument to the soldiers who had passed away during the war, a few buildings, a small grocery shop and a large, square building from the twenties which contrasted with the other structures. It was used as a cinema, meeting place and social club. Claps slowed down – behind and beside the large open space, three-storey buildings were lined up next to each other like English terraced houses. They were all identical and looked as though they should be in an old working class area of a city rather than in a small town.
Of course, that was the mining settlement – what else could he expect? The workers would have slept in those houses during the few hours they had away from the mine; and there were also places where people could get together, buy food and pray – simply leading their miserable lives.
Claps drove slowly past the houses, the asphalt was worn and the road was full of potholes and ruts, making it difficult for anyone to drive around. The atmosphere was almost surreal – there were only a few hints that people still lived in the houses, just the occasional pedestrian and a few suspicious faces behind the windows. The houses, for the most part, looked abandoned and perhaps they actually were – because after the mines closed, there was little employment in the area.
More agitation.
Was the monster observing him behind one of those windows?
Claps drove towards a group of rather newer houses, which looked inhabited. The Cellini family and all those who still inhabited the town most likely lived there.
He saw a sign which indicated the direction of the old mines.
The road became wider and smoother – it was over shadowed by woods which dominated the left hand side; whereas on the other side, in contrast, there was little vegetation. Then, beyond the curve, the bushes on the right side gradually gave way to a large open area with the abandoned ruins of old mining structures. That was the main entrance to the mine.
Claps drove to the large open area and parked by the only building that didn’t look abandoned.
Mr Cellini walked out of it and waved to him.
“Professor Claps?” He said, as he stretched out his hand towards him, almost cautiously.
“I’m not… a Professor… no.”
“Professor Trevis told me that your help is important in treating my daughter.”
“We’ve often… collaborated… for the most… difficult… cases.”
“I’ll be honest with you – I was a little surprised, because those who suggested I seek the Professor’s help never mentioned any kind of team work.”
Claps wondered whether the expression Mr Cellini pulled was one of suspicion.
“A team… only… occasionally.”
Cellini smiled, clearly out of politeness. “I trust Professor Trevis, he’ll have my support whatever he decides to do to help my daughter.”
That morning, Trevis had told Cellini on the phone that he needed more information about Elisa’s childhood, and especially about the time when her illness had manifested itself in all its severity. It was important to gather this kind of information from those who had been around the little girl at the time – relatives, friends, acquaintances and also through photographs and videos. This type of information could appear very generic, but it could be useful for an expert in the field, such as Trevis, to understand the origins of the illness in order to know how to treat it. Trevis didn’t have the right to collect this kind of information personally, which was why he said he had asked Claps to help him. Claps had been introduced as a skilful psychotherapist.
“So, are you also an expert in curing illnesses like Elisa’s?”
“Not… directly.”
Claps feigned a disheartened expression. “My s… struggle with words… doesn’t let… me work… as I wish.”
“Yes, that’s understandable, I’m sorry.” Cellini smiled with a hint of embarrassment. “I’ll put you in touch with everyone who’s been close to Elisa.”
*
Maiezza stretched out lazily in front of the computer at his desk. He had been working for a few hours on the new search that Claps had commissioned through Sensi. He was investigating whether anyone who had lived in or near Niccioleta five years ago had rented a hotel room in the area frequented by Ami during the six months before the kidnapping.
Sensi hadn’t mentioned Claps’ suspicion that there was a link between Ami’s case and Denise Cellini’s murder. Nevertheless, Maiezza had wondered why Claps had decided that there might be a link between such different cases.
Maiezza’s search had begun with Crema, where Ami had gone to school, and her small town; then, the policeman had extended his search to the whole area near Milan. It was a laborious, difficult job and the chances of finding anything were like those of finding a needle in a haystack. The search had to be carried out for everyone on the list of suspects – he had to find out their accommodation history for the previous five years. This would have been an easy job if he had used a database and an interactive piece of software to analyse the results. However, that only happened in American thrillers – Maiezza had to note down each person’s details, collect all the information manually and find their accommodation history himself. It would take him days.
He had decided to begin his search by focusing on all those who still resided in Tuscany, and especially the provinces of Siena and Grosseto. He had been working on that for a few hours when he became more confident about a name. Shivers ran up and down his body when he read more information about that particular person.
He ran down the corridor and barged into Sensi’s office without knocking. “I have a name – he stayed at a guest house in a small town outside Milan three times, the last date was during the period of the kidnapping. At the moment, his official
home address is in Siena, but five years ago it was Niccioleta. That’s not all…”
Sensi took the file that Maiezza was handing to him and began to read it.
“You can compare his personal details from his identity card with those of the suspect.”
Sensi almost jumped out of his armchair.
“They are both the same height!”
14
“I’m… most interested… in the onset… of Elisa’s… illness.” Claps lowered his eyes, then he carried on talking. “I know it was… triggered… by a tragedy… and it’s difficult… for her… to talk about it.”
Cellini slowly lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply a few times.
“No day goes by without me feeling the shadow of that afternoon which ended our happy life with Denise, Mr Claps. It’s not going to make any difference if I talk about it.”
Cellini threw away his cigarette while it was still half unsmoked. He glanced at his watch. “I have to go to work. Come with me, Mr Claps, I’ll tell you anything you want to know while I work.”
They walked through the large open area towards a building surrounded by a metal framework.
“It’s the well’s castle,” Cellini said. “Industrial archaeology. They used to attach a winch to that metal framework to pull up the precious metals that they extracted hundreds of metres underground.”
“Mining… is difficult… and dangerous.”
“The workers risked their lives every time they went down the mine, many of them got lung cancer. There were no health checks back then and there was minimal attention to safety. Very few of those workers are still alive today.”
They walked through some kind of tunnel on the side of the building – it was a dimly lit corridor a few dozen metres long with a small rail track running along the walls.
“This is where the trolleys would come out of the mine.” Cellini explained, as he pointed to the trolleys. “The miners went down this tunnel to get to the cage.”
“The… cage?”
The air inside the tunnel was very damp and each step they took echoed several times.
“The lift that took them underground.”
Claps felt sick at the thought of it. “I would… struggle to… breathe.”
“It can’t be easy for anyone. Most of the workers didn’t have a problem with it after a while, but some of them – even some of the oldest miners – felt sick just at the thought of getting into the cage.”
Claps felt the need to breathe in deeply – he filled up his lungs with air.
“Did… any accidents… happen here?”
They had reached the end of the tunnel which opened into another yard, in front of what had to be the entrance to the building. On one side, the rail carried on towards the extraction castle; from the other side, the rail ended up in a large garage attached to the building – it was the cage, the underground lift.
“Accidents?”
Cellini froze and stared into Claps’ eyes. “Did you not notice the monument in town? Don’t you know about the Niccioleta martyrs?”
Claps shook his head.
“It wasn’t just a mine accident, it was something worse than that…”
Cellini paused to light up another cigarette and stared into the horizon.
“It was during the war. It was a fairly warm June back in 1944, the Nazis had begun to retreat towards the north without any organization. About two hundred families lived in Niccioleta back then – most of them had family members who worked in the mine. Some of them came from Mount Amiata, others resided near Prata and set out before dawn every morning, while it was still dark. They walked through the woods for five kilometres to get to the mines. Ubaldino Mori, who was the director of the mining project, was a fascist, just like most of his collaborators.” Cellini smiled bitterly. “He quickly changed his mind after the eighth of September, though. On the other hand, most of the workers, apart from a few exceptions, were against fascism but there were no partisans among them. During those difficult years, making sure that one had a job, bringing home the bacon for their family, was the highest priority.”
Cellini remained silent and took two greedy drags on his cigarette, then carried on talking. “The partisans arrived on the ninth of June and rapidly defeated the republican army. They placed signs so that the Allies would not bombard the mines; they spoke of how the Nazis were on the retreat, warned of gangs of possible saboteurs, and of the need to guard the mine constantly. They left the area on the twelfth of June and that night the Nazis arrived. They weren’t just a gang though, it was an army of angry men who wanted revenge for their sudden reversal of fortune and their imminent and final defeat.”
Another pause, another glance at the horizon.
“They made the men go out onto the streets and they penned the women and children inside their houses by barring the doors and windows. Some miners had managed to hide rifles that the partisans had left, together with a list of all the people who were supposed to be guarding the area. The Nazis didn’t take long to find the weapons and the list. All the workers were forced to gather on the large open area outside the mine. The first six miners were taken to the recreation room and beaten up. The Nazis wanted to know who amongst the miners were partisans and whether they had any other weapons hidden in the mines. But there was nothing to say – there weren’t any partisans or weapons. The six were dragged out into the open area again and they were shot in the head. A bunch of men who were over fifty were freed and sent back home. All the others, seventy-seven miners aged between the ages of twenty and forty, were loaded onto trucks and taken to Castelnuovo overnight. Seventy-seven. Half of the families had at least one of them on that truck. The following day, at sunset, they were all lined up on the road to Larderello. They were forced to march in single file for one kilometre along the road, then to turn on a dirt track leading to a large industrial area.”
Cellini lifted up his eyes towards Claps. “Have you ever been there? All the energy is channelled through underground pipes now, but back then it was all in the open air. There were dozens of geysers which blew out gas at extremely high temperatures and formed grey steam clouds that could deafen anyone. It was hell. They got to that dark place at about 7 p.m. – the howling geysers covered up anything the prisoners might have wanted to say to one another. A farmer saw everything from a distance – he said that the Nazis split the prisoners into three groups. The first one was ordered to line up by a dirt road which ran next to a pit; when the prisoners went round the corner and were out of their companions’ sight, the Nazis mowed them down with machine guns they had hidden behind the bushes. The second group met the same fate. Finally, the group made up of the youngest men were told to walk to the opposite side of the road, where they saw their friends and family in the pit, covered in blood. They attempted to run away, screaming, but they only managed to run a few steps before they, too, were mown down by the machine guns and pushed into the pit. Some fascists slid down after them and stole the few belongings the miners had in their pockets, then those who were still breathing were shot in the head.”
Cellini stopped talking. He put out the cigarette and crushed it, almost with anger, under his heel.
“Seventy-seven men plus the six killed in the large open area. Those are the eighty-three martyrs of Niccioleta.” Another pause. “It took months for those bodies to be given back to their families. To their sons. To their wives. Among these, my mother received the body of her husband. She was eighteen and she had only just got married. Both my parents were originally from Santa Fiora, on Mount Amiata. Other mines…”
“So… your father…”
“No,” Cellini shook his head. “It wasn’t my father. My mother didn’t want to leave Niccioleta and she later got married to another miner; some time later, my brother was born, and then me.”
It took some time for Cellini to shake off the negative emotions that those memories had caused him.
“Very well,” he said, as he pointed to
the cage. “Have you ever visited a mine, Mr Claps?”
*
The tall man with glasses had often changed position to observe Djara – in front of the supermarket, from one side and from the other side; sat at the bar, pretending to read a newspaper.
He was skilful and experienced, nobody would have noticed him.
He had been studying her movements for a while now, it was time to decide how to act.
Excluding market days, Djara was always there with her mother and the baby girl. She rarely went any distance away from her mother and then only a few times throughout the day. At night, she walked back to the camp by her mother’s side.
There was a moment, however, where he could probably act.
In the evening, a little before their return to the camp, when it was already dark, Djara would usually leave her mother. She would zig-zag through the parked cars near the supermarket, cross the road and enter a small shop. She would come out again a few minutes later with a couple of cartons of milk and a smile on her face. The parking lot was on one side of the supermarket, it didn’t have any lights or CCTV and it was hidden from Mudiwa’s sight and also from the supermarket entrance.
If Djara were to walk through the parking lot when nobody was around…
The tall man with glasses scratched his chin. He had to be patient and wait for the right moment.
A grin appeared on his face – there’s nothing better than the moments of anticipation before the pleasure.
*
The cage gate closed behind Claps with a metallic clang. The cage wasn’t as spacious as he had imagined, it could only hold six, maybe eight, people at most. Cellini seemed to read his mind.
“They would have had to dig out wider to build one that could hold more miners,” he said. “It would have been very expensive.”
The cage jolted off its position and began to move slowly downwards. Claps noticed the lights fading, because of the low electrical tension, and then darkness enveloped the two men underground.
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