by Aidan Conway
“Gigi?”
“Yes, boss.”
“Put the press conference back to six or seven. Something’s come up. I think the judge might have been on to something all along.”
“What do you mean? Mafia?” Carrara’s voice betrayed ill-concealed incredulity.
“Something,” said Rossi. “Something that doesn’t quite fit. It could just be a feeling, but we need more on the girl first. Have you found anything?”
“Nothing special. It’s just as you said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He must have studied her movements to ascertain whether or not she was a mother, if that’s still the motive, but other than that …”
“OK,” said Rossi, “check out what exactly she did in her voluntary work. See if you can find out about her clients. Try to discover a bit about them and why she was helping them.”
“Will do,” said Carrara. “Is that all?”
Rossi thought for a moment.
“Go back to her flat, too, and seal it off if it hasn’t been done already. And while you’re there see if you can find a phone, a computer, files, clients’ lists that might be sensitive. See if anything’s missing.”
“And her ex?” said Carrara.
“Is he in Rome yet?”
“On his way apparently.”
“See if he knows anything about her activities, her private life. I’ll be at the office in half an hour.”
Fifteen
One more stroke with the whetstone and the blade was gleaming, sharp as a razor’s edge. He held it up and admired its glint in the street light filtering through the window into the rented apartment. He often sat in the dark at this time of the evening, looking down, watching, while safe in the knowledge he could not be seen. It had always been a favourite game – being the voyeur, the watcher. They, meanwhile, walked along the street, oblivious, as he imagined which of them might put up a fight, who would crumple into so much dust under the blows. Sometimes all it took was a single swing. Other times they had to be pummelled. That was messy. But he liked it like that too, if there was time, and time was of the essence.
He thrust the knife deep into the chopping board at the centre of the table, spearing the official communication that lay there, the three letters that spelled out his now particular form of mortality. The knife was for show, for fear, not for killing. Not yet. He took up the gun then, removed the magazine, and jerked the slide, ejecting the compact round from the chamber. Then he wiped the hammer; not to clean it, but ritually, as if he were a mother drying a small child, dabbing and caressing it before lapping it in its sacking. What did mother say? A good workman cleans his tools. A bad workman blames his tools. So, he was doing well. The holy trinity of hammer, blade, and bullet. And yes, the plan was established, the traps were being set, and the chase was on. But there were so many clues to reveal and so many more had to die before he could have his finale. These had been but the opening lines in the first scene of the first act of the tragedy. Or was it a comedy? Tragedy. Comedy. Tragedy. Comedy. He thought it was both. He really couldn’t quite decide.
It certainly made him laugh out loud to see how the hoi polloi now were running scared. The bars, too, were suddenly so much emptier once darkness fell, the proprietors fretting over lost revenues, cursing the killer who had made their neighbourhood a no-go-zone. Then there were the furtive looks on the frightened faces when a foreign workman threw down his bag and hefted out a hammer as he set to mending the city’s roads and broken paving stones. He knew what they were thinking now. Was one of them the Luzi killer or the Marini killer? Did he pick them up in his van, violate them, smash their skulls then dump the bodies?
He had heard the talk himself, irony of ironies, as he sipped his morning coffee and pretended to pore over the latest local gossip in the Roman Post. Perhaps he would start killing some of them too – the stranieri, the foreigners clogging up the country like the saturated fat in a sick man’s veins. Perhaps he would start slaughtering the fat men themselves, the ones he watched askance as they suckled like oversized infants at the dry, consoling teat of the sports pages in these self-same bars. Or maybe the pensioners and half cripples who fed their fistfuls of small change into the fruit machines from dawn until dusk in hopes of sudden ecstasy.
The letter stared back at him, pierced by the upright blade – night’s sundial casting its dead meridian. It complicated things? Or made everything much simpler? An existential question then – which was his stock in trade. To be or not to be. Life and death. Smell the flowers? Crush them while you can. But he would lead them a merry dance and oh how he would laugh. Laugh at them all. Them all.
Sixteen
Beware of Carrara bearing gifts, thought Rossi as the door to his office was opened by a jab of his colleague’s foot. He was balancing takeaway coffees on a stack of files and had the spritely demeanour of a cop on the verge of cornering his man.
“Cat that got the cream?” quipped Rossi from a semi-horizontal position in his office chair. Carrara gave a wryish smile and set the mini plastic cups down where there was an islet of desk space. Yet more caffeine to fuel the sluggish afternoon. “Let’s have it then.”
“Well, first up, she was working for one of the top guys in the MPD. Luca Spinelli. Legal consultancy, voluntary, by the way.”
“So she was working for a political party,” said Rossi. “Not the crime of the century, is it?”
“No, but they were also having an affair. And he’s married.”
“So, what? She was a single woman, pretty, good luck to her.”
But Carrara hadn’t finished.
“And she broke it off, much to the disappointment of aforementioned high-ranking MPD lover.”
He reached into a file and pulled out a sheaf of printed papers.
“Exhibit A: e-mails from one pissed-off politician, or should I say anti-politician, citizen. What do they call themselves?”
Rossi, graduating to an upright, seated position reached out to take Carrara’s first fruits. He scanned the pages. The content was a disturbing mix of insane affection, lust, suicidal reverie, and some degree of menace.
“Enough for a motive? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Enough to merit digging deeper, wouldn’t you say? And the method’s the same as Gentili and Luzi. He could be our man.”
“Where did you get these?” Rossi asked.
“The ex. Her ex-husband. He arrived last night, and I went over for a chat. I asked if there was anything I might need to know regarding Maria and he told me straight out about the affair. Seems she’d been trying to get things back on track. That was the initial reason she ended the relationship with Spinelli. But there were some furtive phone calls and stuff and the ex starts smelling a rat, gets a bit nosy and decides to print off her private e-mails – he just happens to be an IT security consultant – in case he might need proof for divorce proceedings and so on. Not too bothered otherwise, it seems. He confronts her, thinks she’s not playing a straight bat, but she plays the whole thing down; says your man’s all bark and no bite. But hubby’s not having any of it and they break off again and, well, the rest is history.”
“Did she go back to Spinelli?”
“Seems not, but she did continue working for the party. She was helping them with libel cases. You know how the bigs have been trying to cripple them in the courts, scare them off with huge damages actions. She might have been able to use her father’s contacts to some extent, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“And the ex is going to get custody, of the kid? You do remember, don’t you, she had a son? Do you think he wants it?”
“I doubt it. He mentioned something about his work commitments ‘not being negotiable’ and the kid’s grandparents being ‘the easiest solution’ for everyone.”
“Nice guy.”
Carrara gave a shrug.
“Haven’t you noticed how many kids get brought up by their grandparents in Rome?”
“Has Maroni got any of this then?”
said Rossi.
“It’s not his case,” said Carrara. Ever the idealist, thought Rossi.
“It’s always Maroni’s case, especially when he needs it. But does he know what you’ve got?”
“Came straight to you, Mick,” said Carrara, “but listen, there’s more.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the forensics, for one. They’ve got some DNA from her clothing and in the car and if they match with the other crime scenes we might be onto something. We could try Spinelli.”
Rossi let out a sigh.
“Are you telling me that this Spinelli guy has faked himself as a serial killer as a perfect cover, or actually became a serial killer, murdered one or two innocent women just so he can bump off his ex-lover? Sounds a bit off the wall, don’t you think?”
“Unless,” countered Carrara, “he heard about the note on the second victim, got a tip-off or something about it being a possible serial killer. Then he hatched himself a plan.”
Rossi was swinging in short, rapid, pensive arcs in his chair.
“Iannelli knows. I told him to keep it to himself, in return for tasty morsels, obviously. But it’s way off the mark.”
“But we’re still going to have to give this to Maroni, right?” said Carrara, “and then the public prosecutor might want to make a move. Impatient for an arrest and the like. You know they want to be informed.”
Rossi felt it was Carrara who was piling the pressure on now. Time to release the valve, he thought.
“I think we’d better make a little visit to Mr Spinelli first, don’t you? Just for a chat. As someone who knew the victim, he has valuable information to offer. No need to make it official. No lawyers. Routine enquiries. Can we hold off until tomorrow?”
“Possibly,” said a guarded Carrara realizing he’d have to put the champagne moment on hold.
“Any of the guys go with you to the ex?”
“Just Bianco, and he’s onside, I’m pretty sure.”
“Well tell him to keep it under his proverbial. And the press conference? We’ll have to put it back to eight o’clock now. They’re going to hate us but it might give us time to see what this crazed lover has got to say for himself.”
Carrara made a note.
“We can say we’re still waiting on some forensics. I’ll have a word with Loretta in the lab. She’ll cover up if we need her to.”
“Good,” said Rossi. “What’s his name and where can we find him?”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Rossi.
“Call from Chief Superintendent Maroni, sir,” said a uniformed female officer whose name he couldn’t remember but whose smile always brightened his day. “Says it is of the utmost urgency.”
But Rossi had already got to his feet and was gesturing to Carrara to do likewise.
“Tell him I’m not here. I’m out. No, at the dentist. Terrible toothache. Can’t even speak. Face out here,” he said miming a mild deformity of the cheek area. “He can call me on my mobile,” he said, grinning now while grabbing his coat and giving Carrara the definitive signal to move out. “And I won’t be answering that in a hurry,” he added, sotto voce, as they headed for the car.
Seventeen
Early forties, exuding a twitchy, impatient enthusiasm and an earnest if weary expression, Luca Spinelli was the new face of Italian politics. They had agreed to meet at his office where it was clear that he’d been both working and living since the break-up with Maria and the subsequent collapse of his own marriage.
“I’ve made a pretty good job of losing it all, don’t you think?” he said as he faced Rossi and Carrara across his desk. “A marriage, the woman I loved. Still have my work though,” he said with a liberal dose of acid irony.
“And we won’t be keeping you from it for long, I’m sure,” Rossi reassured him. “Just a few questions but it would be helpful if you could tell us anything you think may have aroused your suspicion in recent weeks.”
“With pleasure, Inspector,” he replied maintaining the same satirical tone.
Rossi passed the sheaf of e-mails across the desk. “You can, I presume, confirm that you wrote these? In particular, the last one, written in the early hours of the day on which Maria was later killed.”
Spinelli’s expression went from shock and embarrassment through to apparent incredulity.
“How did you get these?”
As Rossi explained, Spinelli went back to leafing through them, reliving the strange, voyeuristic dislocation that comes from seeing your own words already become a form of history. He stopped and held out one of the sheets.
“I didn’t write this,” he said. “I couldn’t have written this. I mean it’s not possible. It’s not me. It can’t be me.” He began to read out some of the more incriminating sentences: “‘If I can’t be with you then you can’t live either, you are coming with me, then we will always be together, I won’t let you get away with this so easy, if I can’t have you no one can … I’ll do myself in or both of us …’”
“It’s your e-mail account,” said Rossi, “and we can pretty quickly ascertain if it came from your own computer, in which case, if it did, it makes things, shall we say, at best, awkward for you.”
“So you’re saying that I did it, that I’m a suspect?”
“I am saying that circumstantial evidence could implicate you as a possible suspect at this point in the investigation – for the murder of Maria Marini and those of both Paola Gentili and Anna Luzi. Unless perhaps you can explain why you wrote it.”
“Or who wrote it,” he added. “Who, Inspector.”
Spinelli’s tone had turned combative, and he now had something of the cornered look in his eyes, a look Rossi had seen many times before.
“Does anyone else have access to your account?”
“No.”
“So you are the sole user.”
“That would appear to be the case.”
“And you aren’t in the habit of letting other people write e-mails for you. A secretary, an aid. Maria herself, maybe? She was helping you, I believe.”
“Oh, yes,” said Spinelli, “and I often give people the keys to my flat too and say ‘walk right in, go on, help yourself’.”
Rossi gave a partially muted sigh.
“So, when you say ‘who’ wrote it, what do you mean exactly?”
“Well,” began Spinelli, “call me an MPD conspiracy theorist, by all means, but has the thought not occurred to you that they might have hacked it, Inspector?”
Rossi never liked the way the final inspector was tagged on like a sardonic Post-it note, but he’d grown used to it. Comes with the job, he mused internally, nobody likes a cop, unless they need one, and then they’re never there, are they? Ha, ha. Come to think of it, he didn’t even like being called inspector when it wasn’t used ironically and would happily have deployed his first name but then it just wasn’t done, was it? Hi, I’m Michael and I’m here to help you. Like fuck you are. You’re here to bang me up as quick as you can and get yourself another stripe. Back to work.
“And you think there might be a reason for that.”
“To frame me, of course!” Spinelli exploded.
“But do you have reason to suspect that someone is trying to frame you, Dr Spinelli?”
Spinelli fumbled in his jacket pockets then wrenched open a desk drawer before locating his cigarettes. He lit up and smoke-whooshed a reply.
“Her ex, for starters. Or maybe just the whole political establishment,” he added with a mock-ironic flourish, standing up and beginning to pace the small office, making it look, at least to Rossi’s eyes, as if it were turning into a cell. He stopped at the window and turned around. Rossi could see he was shaping up for a confession of sorts. But which? There were those that revealed all, those that left out the awkward or shameful particulars, and those made up to take the rap for someone else.
“Look, Inspector,” he began with greater, if rather more, mannered sincerit
y, “I wrote a few things, in the heat of the moment, which I shouldn’t have. You see, I’d already been drinking, rather a lot as it happens, and since the break-up, well it had just got worse and worse.” He made a hand gesture towards the street. “I’ve been spending most of my evenings in the piano bar round the corner from here. I get something to eat and try to switch off a bit, and then I come back, sleep on the sofa and then I dust myself down and start work again in the morning. The glamorous world of politics.” He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and sat back down again. He paused to collect his thoughts, joining his hands and holding the fingertips just under his nose, as though gently drawing up through his nostrils some delicate perfume they exuded.
“That day, the day Maria was killed,” he went on, “I woke up and my mind was almost a complete blank. I was still wearing my clothes and my head was pounding. At first, I thought I must have been hitting it harder than usual and perhaps, perhaps, when I had come back the night before I logged on and just started writing that stuff, but it wasn’t me. It was someone else; I was out of my mind; I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t want to kill anyone.”
Rossi looked him in the eye.
“Did you kill her? Perhaps while, as you say, you were out of your mind? Had you gone drinking again that afternoon?”
“No.”
“Did you follow her, stalk her?”
“Stalk? No. Look, I went to her place once or twice when I was drunk, on other occasions, to talk, but that’s as far as it went. Just me leaning on the bell until the madness passed.”
“Did you want to kill her?”
“No, of course not!”
“Did you ever fantasize about killing her, for revenge, for going back to Volpini, for screwing up your marriage?”
“Do you really want me to answer that question?”