The Deliverance of Evil
Page 7
“We don’t know whether she was taken forcibly or went with someone of her own free will,” I objected.
Teodori gave me a funny look. “Balistreri, don’t let your imagination run wild. The violence lasted for a long time. A psycho did this. An animal who gets pleasure from making people suffer.”
“Okay, but maybe she knew this animal.”
“Sure—one of her friends from her neighborhood,” Teodori agreed. The Sordis’ working-class neighborhood was certainly a long way from Vigna Clara and Via della Camilluccia, but it was hardly a notorious breeding-ground for maniacs.
I tried to object. “Elisa’s parents say she didn’t have a boyfriend. She was always in the office or at home studying. She never went out at night. Every so often, on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon she saw Valerio Bona.”
“We have to know where Bona was on Sunday from 6:30 on.”
Of course, Bona was from a less well-off neighborhood, too, a member of the violent working class. A perfect suspect.
“We really should find out about everybody else, too,” I put in.
Teodori looked surprised. “Everybody else? Who else?”
“Everybody who lives on Via della Camilluccia, where she worked. She was extraordinarily beautiful—she could have turned anybody’s head.”
Teodori’s eyes were more yellow than usual. This line of reasoning didn’t agree with his liver. “If you’re referring to the senator, I’ve already checked the register at the ministry of the interior. Just for the record, obviously. The senator arrived at 6:50 p.m. and was with the minister from 7:00 to 7:30. From there he went straight home, where he entertained guests, and he didn’t go out again.”
“Who told you he didn’t go out again?”
Teodori shot me a look. “All the general staff of his party were guests at his home, to see the match. Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“There were a lot of people, and maybe in the heat of the excitement,” I said, to provoke him more than anything else.
He ignored me and continued talking.
“His son and his wife came home around 8:00. They watched the game, too, and then celebrated on the terrace.”
How Teodori had come to know these details was a mystery.
“But before that? I saw them going out with the count around twenty past six. What did they do between that time and eight o’clock?”
“I don’t know, and I see no reason to ask them.”
Now Teodori was acting decidedly testy, banging the stem of his pipe forcefully on his desk, staring at a spot on the floor toward which he was directing his thoughts.
“Look, Teodori, I don’t want to be a pain, but I find it hard to believe that there was a forcible kidnapping in the middle of a Roman street, even on a Sunday evening without many people around. She would have reacted. Someone would have heard her screaming.”
“Young man, no one would authorize you to question these highly respectable people just because you find something hard to believe.”
“There’s also the distance,” I added, putting a cigarette in my mouth.
“Please don’t smoke in here. What about the distance?”
I still didn’t know if he was really like this or just trying it on.
“The Tiber runs through all of Rome. The spot where her body was found is close to Via della Camilluccia.”
“Exactly. The girl leaves her office. Someone attacks her and takes her down to the river.”
“But how? By car? In broad daylight at six thirty in the evening? Rome was nearly deserted, but no one heard or saw anything?”
The phone rang and Teodori picked it up.
“No, no, I can’t come right now. Tell the medical examiner I’ll be there later.”
His whole face was yellow. We were wasting time.
“You were saying, Balistreri?”
He stroked his sparse tufts of white hair with his sweaty hands.
“My thought is the murder occurred in a different way. Someone she knew gave her a lift, and they went down there together in agreement onto the riverbank. Perhaps Elisa thought they were only going to talk. And only then, among that foliage, the fury of the assassin was revealed. We need to get authorization to question Valerio Bona and all those in Via della Camilluccia.”
Naturally Teodori decided to start with the working-class kid in the glasses.
. . . .
We tried to find Valerio Bona at his parents. They told us he’d gone to Mass, as he did every weekend, and then he had plans to go to Ostia, where he was participating in a regatta. We could try to speak to him at the sailing club at the end of the race.
It was already lunchtime, and Teodori decided he couldn’t possibly go all that way to Ostia, where he might end up stuck in a traffic jam. When I offered to go alone, he appeared relieved.
“Naturally this would be informal, without a lawyer. He could refuse to speak to us,” I explained.
“We’re investigating a murder, not a bag-snatching. If Bona makes trouble we can interrupt his weekend, and tomorrow morning he can come in for an official interrogation.”
Our wonderful justice system at work: it was already mapped out.
I called Angelo. We hadn’t seen each other since our argument in the Camilluccia complex.
“Want to grab some dinner?”
“I’m not really in the mood, Michele.”
It was time to make a move before the rift between us became permanent. I didn’t want to lose this friendship because of my stubborn pride.
“I was wrong, Angelo, and you were right.”
The only reply was silence. After a while I heard his voice, and it was more friendly.
“It’s not your fault. Even if you’d started looking for her right away . . .”
He was generously coming to my assistance. As always.
“We don’t know, Angelo. Maybe when they called us at the end of the first half Elisa was still alive. Maybe she was even alive after the game.”
He sighed. I felt his suffering over the telephone line.
I changed the subject.
“I have to go to Ostia to question Valerio Bona. We want to know where he was when Elisa left the office.”
“Michele, he’s a good kid.”
“Sometimes even good kids fuck up.”
Silence. It was his way of showing disapproval. Maybe he was thinking that I was just going after the weakest link in the chain. We said good-bye.
I could easily have taken the train to Ostia, but I didn’t feel like mingling with tourists and beachgoers. I hated public transportation. Although there was no hurry, I put the siren on the roof of my Duetto and got there in half an hour. There was a huge crowd. Cars were parked everywhere. The beach was overflowing with people, and the glistening sea was full of swimmers and boats.
If she weren’t dead, perhaps Elisa would have been there among the those who were eating ice cream, sunbathing, and swimming. Instead, her wounded body was lying in cold storage in the mortuary and her parents were looking at her empty room in a house in the suburbs.
I found the sailing club easily. The regatta was under way. I sat at a table under an umbrella on the terrace and relaxed with coffee and a cigarette. The two-man boats were Flying Dutchman class. Valerio Bona was in one of them. I deduced from this that Elisa’s death hadn’t shaken him up too much. Inexplicably, the kid had irritated me since the first time I’d laid eyes on him. And that gold crucifix round his neck. Elisa was out of his league. He was puny, and he had a small personality, too. That’s what I thought as I sat in the sun and smoked. From there the boats were white dots moving along between buoys on the blue of the sea. I asked the people at a neighboring table, who were using binoculars to watch the regatta, if they knew who Valerio was.
“Of course. He’s been sailing here since he was a child. He’s in the second position in number twenty-two.”
They lent me their binoculars. It took a while to find number twenty-two and get it i
nto focus. What I saw was a surprise. Valerio Bona, wearing a sailing cap and sunglasses, was at the helm, his crucifix gleaming in the sun. His bearing and his every gesture suggested absolute calm and command of the situation. And yet they were at the end of a close-hauling maneuver with over twenty knots of wind. I watched his features closely. Only his lips were moving as he spoke to his partner at the jib. In the stretch before the wind, number twenty-two jib bed over and over, forcing the leading boat to do the same, and in the end Bona succeeded in passing it and crossed the finish line first. Through the binoculars I saw him take off his cap and sunglasses. There was no smile on the little bastard’s face. He appeared to thank his fellow crewman.
I kept watching him as the crews came back to the marina to moor the boats. Valerio Bona was receiving compliments from all the contestants, thanking them in a serious and polite manner as he shook their calloused hands. He was confident, relaxed. Then his gaze met mine and he recognized me. I waved a hand to greet him. His face changed rapidly, and I saw once again what I had seen on the other occasions. He was ill at ease, anxious, insecure. Out of his boat, Valerio was without the shell that protected him from the world around him.
He came toward me, putting on sunglasses to cover his worried look. It would have been too easy to scare him.
“We’ve met before, Mr. Bona. I’m Captain Michele Balistreri and I’m investigating the murder of Elisa Sordi.”
I showed him my badge, but he had already stopped a few feet from my table. “What do you want?” he asked hesitantly. I decided to play bad cop.
“You should get yourself a lawyer. You need to come to the police station for formal questioning.”
His hands were trembling slightly. While he was standing there staring at me, some more sailors came by and congratulated him.
“Way to go, Valerio!” they said, clapping him on the back.
But he was no longer on the waves, he was back on land—a land that he felt was hostile and difficult. Here not even his faith was enough to calm him down and protect him from far worse weather.
“Please sit down. I’d like to ask you some questions. If you don’t feel like answering them, we can always go to the Homicide offices back in Rome.”
My authoritative tone convinced him. He sat facing the sun, staring at the sea, probably wishing he were still out there on a boat.
“When we met on Monday you said that you were a friend of Elisa Sordi’s. Were you her boyfriend?”
I deliberately chose a yes-or-no question so he’d have to answer. He shook his head.
“No, we were just good friends.”
The emphasis on just betrayed his disappointment. At the same time, having seen Elisa Sordi myself, I realized it couldn’t have been easy for a guy to be just friends with her.
“How long had you known her?”
He pointed to the sea. “We met right here, last summer. She came to see a regatta with a group of friends, and a friend of hers introduced us to each other.”
“Were you interested in her?”
I could sense the hostility behind the dark lenses. “Elisa was a lot like me. We came from similar families and we were both religious. We lived in the same neighborhood; we were practically neighbors. Most Sundays we went to Mass together.”
I’d never had any sympathy for little couples who go to Mass together, especially since adolescence. Did they go there to pray or to be seen together?
“And did you speak only of God and works of charity, or did you do other things together, Mr. Bona?”
He ignored my tone. “Elisa was curious about everything; she wanted to know all about boats, about the wind and sails. I took her out and we talked a great deal. Or rather, I talked. She asked questions and listened.”
I could just see it: he carefree and assured at the helm, she reassured by his shyness on land. Valerio Bona was the only male friend possible for a girl like Elisa Sordi. A faithful little altar boy. But perhaps she hadn’t taken into account how, in the end, a friendship like that was impossible for an eighteen-year-old. However shy or awkward he was, he was still a young man with raging hormones.
“Did you see her often after that?”
“That summer we used to come to the beach on my moped and go out in the boat almost every day. Then we’d go for a walk, and at eight I’d take her home. Elisa’s parents wanted her home for dinner. They’re old-fashioned.”
“So there was nothing between you?”
“I already told you, we were good friends. Is that really nothing?” Now his hostility was stronger than his insecurity. I could make use of that.
“A close friendship with a beautiful young woman your age. Was that enough for you, Mr. Bona?”
He twisted the cap in his hands and skirted that direct question.
“Elisa wanted to earn a little money to help out her parents, so I gave her a hand.”
“Really? How?”
“I work for Count Tommaso dei Banchi di Aglieno. I mentioned her to him, and he mentioned her to Cardinal Alessandrini, who sent her to Dioguardi.”
Quite a paper trail. “And what do you do for the count?”
“I do some filing and I type his correspondence on his computer.”
I could hear in his tone that he didn’t like the count much. It was probably the only thing we had in common. I decided this was the moment to change the subject.
“Were you here for a regatta last weekend?”
He nodded to show he was.
“But Elisa Sordi wasn’t with you, was she? She had work to do.”
He nodded again.
“While waiting I checked the regatta calendar. I saw that you won, but the Sunday regatta was in the morning.”
“Yes, there are three heats: two on Saturday and the third on Sunday morning. Last Sunday I went to early Mass on my own, because Elisa had to work. Then I came here.”
“What did you do after the regatta?”
“I went straight back to Rome. The game was that evening. I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic coming back from the beach. I’m a big soccer fan.”
“Did you go to see Elisa Sordi?” I already knew part of his reply, because I knew what Gina had said.
He was hesitant.
“I called her at work from a pay phone at about half past one, as soon as I got to Rome. I wanted to have lunch with her, but she wasn’t there. She’d already left. So I hung around Via della Camilluccia and waited until she came back.”
“Did you look for her in the cafés in the area?”
“I just waited on the corner and watched for her to come through the green gate. I didn’t want that weird guy with the binoculars or Gina to see me. When I spotted Elisa I went up to her.”
“Did you arrange a meeting for later?”
“No, Elisa said she wouldn’t be done until six at the earliest. Then she had to go home to watch the game with her parents. They didn’t want her to be late.”
“But you could have waited for her and taken her home on your moped, seeing as you were neighbors.”
It was difficult to decide how much his unease was habitual and how much was due to the question.
“No, Elisa didn’t want me to wait for her.” He was now somewhere between scared and aggressive.
“Was she upset? Did you argue?”
“I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to—”
It was time to go in for the kill.
“Maybe she was meeting someone else.”
He turned pale. I sensed his eyes were troubled behind the dark glasses, even though I couldn’t see them.
“She hadn’t arranged to meet anyone else,” he answered stubbornly, his hands now worrying the gold crucifix, as if God could help him.
“How can you be sure? Couldn’t she have been screwing around with someone without you knowing about it?”
This was too much even for someone as timid as Valerio Bona. “How can you talk like that about someone who’s just been killed?” he said,
standing up.
I stood up as well, and I towered over him. “You’re right. I meant to say she could have been having sex with someone without you knowing about it. Is that better?”
He was both indignant and scared. “Elisa wasn’t that kind of girl—”
“Give me a break,” I said, interrupting him. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard that about girls who then turn out to be total sluts?”
I hated myself a little for being so rough, but I wanted to see whether Valerio Bona was capable of attacking someone and striking them. He tried to land a punch, but I was too strong for him, and too quick. I grabbed his wrist with an iron grip.
“Don’t be stupid. I could arrest you for assaulting a public official.”
A good many people had stopped to look at us. Several sailors came menacingly close. I waved my badge.
“Keep your distance and mind your own business,” I ordered.
I was making him look bad on his home turf. I was doing it on purpose, because he was hiding something from me. I didn’t give a damn about the consequences for him—a pious little neurotic fixated on God, sailing and his computer, who locked himself in the bathroom to masturbate after talking to Elisa Sordi.
I let go of his wrist. “Now, tell me what you did last Sunday.”
Valerio Bona was shaking. “In the afternoon I went to the park in Villa Pamphili. I had an exam two days later; I had to study.”
“And you were there all afternoon?”
“Until seven forty five. The sun was going down, so I rode my moped home to watch the game with my parents and some relatives.”
“You didn’t see anyone all afternoon?”
“There weren’t many people in the park. I was completely alone with my books under a big tree.”
“And you got home just in time for the start of the game?”
“Just before. My cousins were already there.”
“And after the match you went out to celebrate?”
His face grew dark again. “They did, but I didn’t. I was worried about the exam. I wanted to get some sleep.”
“You stayed home alone? You, the big soccer fan?”