A Known Evil

by Aidan Conway

  Due to the plume of ash, all flights into and out of Catania have been suspended.

  Then a shot of diggers advancing and reversing with snowplough-like attachments seeking to clear what must have been several inches of volcanic ash enveloping the runway like silver-grey snow.

  What now? The taxi could come when it wanted. He’d just have to go to Palermo even if the backlog would be horrendous. The only other option was to hire a car, perhaps in Catania, then get to Messina and take the ferry to Reggio Calabria. Still, he thought, he’d never seen Palermo and chances were there’d be less demand on cars. If no flight was forthcoming then he’d go for the long drive up the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway and finally, at Naples, onto the so-called Autostrada del Sole. It was the road that brought Romans and Northerners, and returning exiles out of their grey, monotonous, but remunerated lives in the big cities and back into the sun-drenched South, the Mezzogiorno.

  A problem lay in the Salerno-Reggio Calabria’s also being one of the most accident-plagued, ill-planned stretches of motorway in Europe, still unfinished after twenty or thirty years. Iannelli didn’t enjoy driving at the best of times. He’d go to Palermo. If he was lucky, he could be back in Rome for the early hours of the next day. If he was lucky. And with a muntagna calling the shots there was no guarantee of that. But he had to get moving. He took out his phone and called the office. Lisa, the secretary was there, early as usual.

  “Lisa, buongiorno. Iannelli here.”

  “Dottore, how can I help?”

  “Stuck in Sicily. Etna’s gone up.”

  “Ah. So you’ll be needing to fly from Palermo?”

  “Any chance?”

  “One moment,” she replied, and there followed a rapid clatter of computer keys.

  “Dottore?”

  “Yes.”

  “All lines engaged and the site’s down. Probably best to go straight there and see what you can find.”

  It was not what he had wanted to hear.

  He finished his coffee and went to see if the papers had come in.

  Only the local ones. Sicily first, then “the continent”. That was how it worked here. The owner was leaning across the desk making minimal gestures with his eyes and head up towards the TV screen and the 24-hour news channel spooling out the same images again. “A muntagna,” he said. “E’arrabbiata.” The mountain. She’s angry.

  Iannelli sat down and scanned the flimsy unfamiliar sheets until he found something of moderate interest. The police had closed a bridge on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria that had partially collapsed. The authorities were investigating the company involved in its construction for suspected mafia involvement and use of sub-standard materials, believed to have led to a workman’s being fatally injured. It wasn’t heartening reading but, as he reasoned, after a disaster is generally the safest of times.

  “Taxi!”

  Early for once. At the door there stood a tanned, middle-aged man in clothes decidedly ten years too young for him. That was one of the benefits of unpredictability. Sometimes the surprise was in your favour. Iannelli raised a hand in acknowledgement then bid farewell to the still slouched proprietor who stirred slowly into action to return the salutation.

  “Arrivederla, Dottore.”

  The formal term of address, of course, for they were in the South and there could be no intimacy in this relationship. The use of the title “doctor” conveying respect, or near humble subalternity, could also shield a multitude of unstated opinions, thus implying disrespect. It masked hidden thoughts or the low regard in which a person was held while allowing one to avoid the direct insult. It could, in short, be a pure front, una facciata, supreme hypocrisy.

  The proprietor looked back to the TV screen and, concurring with the tight little grouping of men in the corner, whose eyes all seemed to be intent on the scene, he pronounced again,

  “E’arrabbiata sul serio, a muntagna. Sul serio.”

  The mountain is angry. Angry for real. They nodded their agreement and as the door of the guest house closed behind the journalist, these very same men then began to talk of other, equally serious but very different matters.

  Forty-Nine

  Mott Borrego logged-off from his computer, put on his hat and made his way out of the main university building. He turned down the narrow cobbled street past the mechanic’s and the bakery which led to Viale Trastevere and headed towards the corner bar where he was to meet with an old friend. He had been intrigued to read the e-mail the previous day in his hotel room in Zurich not least because it had been so long since he’d heard from this particular alumnus but also because he was well aware of his general aversion to electronic mail. Why was it called “mail”? He’d have to look that etymology up and he made some educated guesses at the word’s probable origins to pass the time as he walked, well, limped now really, if he was honest, towards the bar. He laughed to himself as he remembered the time a pigeon had landed on his head. He’d been walking that slow!

  There, at a quiet corner table, Inspector Michael Rossi was waiting. He had matured a little since the last time they had met but still looked ever the younger protégée, the thesis-bearing undergraduate he’d first had the pleasure to meet, when was it? Twenty or so years ago? Mottram had been at the other university at the time, full of American zest and ambition until the realities of Italian academic life had kicked in, that merit did not always ensure career progression. A glance through the staff lists showed an uncanny preponderance of the same family name across departments and faculties, in academic and non-academic posts. So, he had pretty quickly thrown his lot in with the IAUR, The International American University of Rome. There at least you had the impression of getting somewhere and things worked! They even had staff to put paper in the photocopiers and you knew what courses you’d be teaching six months in advance.

  His field was social and criminal psychology but he had a side interest in all things Latin and Classical, not to mention words and word play, puzzles, and rebuses. His hobbies and his professional interests really respected no distinct boundaries, a Renaissance man if ever there was one.

  “How is she?” he said gripping Rossi’s hand. It was heartfelt but with that hint of perennial US optimism detectable nonetheless. “Any change?”

  Rossi shook his head.

  “Stable. Critical. Or was it critical but stable? Is there a difference, do you think?”

  “Ah,” growled Borrego, “she’ll pull through! I know she will! Just gotta hang in there, Michael! Right?”

  Rossi smiled. Mott’s enthusiasm was always a bonus.

  “In the meantime, let’s see what you’ve got there. These the originals?”

  Rossi nodded.

  “May I?” he said reaching out for the as yet unopened blue Manila folder on Rossi’s side of the table.

  The file contained the notes found at the various crime scenes as well as outlines of some of Rossi’s own scribbled and crossed-out attempts at finding a possible underlying logic or message behind them. He had forwarded copies of some of the notes to Borrego prior to their meeting to give him a head-start. The professor gave the occasional little nod of what might have been approval or agreement as he pored over the pages through his small round spectacles.

  “So, I see you’ve been going down the Latin road, thus far.”

  Rossi didn’t know if it was a question, or something else.

  “Seems to be the natural way to go, doesn’t it?” he continued.

  “If there is a message in all this and not just a goose chase,” said Rossi.

  “Oh, there’s a message all right,” the professor nodded and looked up at his friend. “And I think there are a number of reasons why.”

  Rossi was warming to the prospect of the professor now delivering an elegant exegesis to make the burden of his multiple worries feel just that little bit lighter. Even if he was wrong, it was always a pleasure to listen to the prof setting out his theories, like in the old days when he’d amble in ten minutes
late to a seminar, then keep them all spellbound as he set in motion his great machine of thought.

  “I think you’ve got a killer working to a plan but my inkling is that this plan is not all his, and a he it is for sure. Likely an outsider, could be an intellectual, of sorts, and the notes are his way of expressing a certain autonomy, an aloofness. The way he kills is manual, but he expresses his intellect through the notes. So, as a serial killer – more spree than serial, though – he displays the characteristic well above-average to high intelligence. The fact he doesn’t get caught and that his murders are in rapid succession suggests, however, he may be an assassin, meaning he mustn’t get caught until he has reached his objective or objectives. So, he may well be working for someone but doesn’t like working for anyone. He’s a user, an opportunist. And this possible Latin motif – matter, mater – could be interesting. It’s dualistic. Latin underpins the Italian language, many European languages for that matter, as well as the legal systems, the law itself. Not to mention the Church of Rome. It could even be something linked with a form of cultural nostalgia. The Roman Empire and so forth.”

  Rossi was intrigued but he felt the analysis, fascinating though it was, could perhaps be running away with itself.

  “OK,” he said, “wait a minute, Mott. Isn’t this all a bit too intuition based?”

  Mott put up a hand.

  “Just a minute, I’m getting there. I haven’t mentioned the last clue, or the latest clue, I should say, I’m afraid. The one that could clinch it.”

  Rossi sat back and waited.

  “Now, Michael, does the name Erasmus mean anything to you?”

  “Erasmus. The best year of my youth, in Spain. Well, apart from a few relationship issues.”

  “OK. Starter for ten. Who was Erasmus?”

  Rossi was on the spot now.

  “The Dutch medieval scholar.”

  “From where?”

  “Rotterdam?”

  “Rotterdam! Exactly. Ring a bell?” said Borrego pushing the page under Rossi’s gaze. Of course! An anagram!

  “Damn you rotters. Rotter dam! But what does it all mean?”

  “Well,” said the pleased-looking prof, “it is said that Erasmus of Rotterdam claimed to be the last person who spoke Latin as his first language.”

  “And?”

  “A gesture of defiance? Superiority?”

  “Could be.”

  “But there’s more, as I see it. Where do you live?”

  “Via Latina!”

  “And an anagram of Erasmus?”

  Rossi started scribbling. “With all the letters?”

  “That would be an anagram.”

  “The only one I can see is ‘masseur’.”

  “And where does Yana work? In a health centre.”

  “Where she works as a masseuse?”

  Rossi dropped the pen and looked at his friend.

  “So this is not all coincidence?”

  “It’s what I see, and I don’t think there’s anything else. So, it looks as though this might just be personal.”

  Rossi’s thoughts were racing now. Erasmus. Latin. Spain. They were all pointing in the same direction. To the murder of Rosa Garcia, his first love, and to his rival: the psychopathic, criminal-minded, once thought to be long-gone from his world, Giuseppe Bonaventura.

  “Are we getting somewhere?”

  “Why didn’t I see it before!” Rossi exclaimed. “Why didn’t I see it before!”

  “So you think we’ve got something?” Mott said, trying to pin down what it was had made his friend so suddenly ecstatic.

  “Well,” said Rossi, “if it means what I think it does then we have a name to go on and maybe a face to go with it.”

  He couldn’t tell Borrego everything, but he let him in on where his reasoning was now heading. The consonance between Borrego’s theory and Rossi’s subsequent hypothesis left them both stunned but exultant.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Michael!” he said, slamming the table and sending a spoon skittering off a saucer and on to the floor, much to a passing waiter’s silent but evident displeasure. “Now, you’ve really got something to get your teeth into,” he continued, growling with delight.

  Rossi had thanked Mott Borrego for the depth and detail of his insights and when they had caught up a little with each other’s lives, Mott left for an “unavoidable but totally pointless meeting,” as he put it, enjoining Rossi not to let so much time pass again before their next encounter.

  “Life is short, Michael,” he said, “and though life often gets in the way, one must carve out time for one’s friends.”

  Looking back, it was clear now that Giuseppe could have grown to be a killer, so had it all started there, in Spain? And how had he come into contact with the Italian Secret Services? Through some high-level contact? Or just as a convenient assassin. One of many hired hands ready to put a bullet or knife wherever for whoever’s paying.

  And which branch of the services? He began to go over the lexicon like a dogged ploughman turning over the fallow sod. He’d had to reprise his own understanding before for the benefit of others but now it served as a stimulus for his own reasoning. The legitimate services, then the renegade services or servizi deviati, with their parallel agendas, bodies supposedly answering to a secret authority claiming legitimacy within the state itself. Who such operatives pledged their loyalty to was the stuff of Russian Dolls. Money. Power. Those were high on the list. Of course, they always came into it, into everything.

  The problem was distinguishing between the two sides when they were both wearing the same strip. Who had put a bomb in Bologna station in 1980? Was it fascists or communists or the services trying to lay the blame at their door? But Rossi didn’t want to go there. That wasn’t police work, that was politics. Più pulita la rogna. The mange was cleaner, as the saying went.

  His job was to find a way to get Carrara and himself out of the hole they were in, but the harder he tried, the deeper it got. If he could speak to Spinelli again? Maybe he could shed some more light on things, give him some reassurance. He was still inside, officially, because of the risk he might flee the country or interfere with evidence. Innocent as hell as far as Rossi was concerned but conveniently still inside for some.

  So, was it to be believed that Giuseppe Bonaventura was carrying out vile femicides in the name of some twisted ideological conspiracy that sought to unite a personal vendetta with the warped logic of the servizi deviati? Rossi had always resisted the temptation to find a unifying script behind the horrors he encountered on a regular basis in his line of work. He had always tried to see beyond that. But. But.

  A passing waiter swept a damp cloth across the table. Rossi’s eyes were drawn to a ray of sunlight striking the shiny laminated surface. Years of passing clients had left myriad tiny scratches, and in the yellowish light, the fleck-like lines formed into a series of concentric circles, as if the work of some grand designer. He recalled Dorothea in Middlemarch seeing a similar such image and having her epiphany. The lines and the scratches, going in all directions, were totally random. However, it was only the effect of the light, a particular perspective or an angle, that gave the impression of an order present therein. The events were as senseless and random as the scratches but the instinct was always to see an order, to privilege the narrative over the casual, to find some comfort through closure.

  Should he give credit to the grim narrative forming itself before his very eyes? But who exactly was weaving the plot? Was Giuseppe architect or tool? Or a patsy. The old Lee Harvey Oswald trick. Rope someone in who can fit the bill, ideologically or pathologically, feed them the right kind of information, spin them a believable story in which they are wittingly and unwittingly protagonists. Except that they can be written into or out of the self-same story at the drop of a hat, on the whim of whoever’s holding the pen.

  The tools of the trade. The Carpenter and his hammer. But hadn’t Mott missed something there? The name itself, Giuseppe, the
carpenter. Joseph, in English, the biblical Joseph. Were the methods meant to lead him or someone else to draw their own conclusions? Torrini’s Messenger had come up with the name but surely he couldn’t be anymore than the mouthpiece, cajoling and caressing public opinion in the right direction. Femicide, or Islamists, an attack on the very core of Italian society – the mother.

  The only other logic to the killer’s strike pattern was the modus operandi and the signature. For a face, they could try going down memory lane to dig up the old albums. He could contact schools but they didn’t always have organized photographic records for pupils, as far as he could recall. They had the artist’s impression coming and Carrara and his IT pals on the ageing process. If Marta’s description matched Marini’s it would be a result. But that tape going missing piled more wood onto the conspiracy-theory fire now growing in intensity even in Rossi’s cynical imagination.

  *

  Rossi looked up at the office clock. A bit more work then the hospital. He’d pick up some fresh flowers on the way. He had got into the habit now, even if he had always found it difficult not to associate cut flowers with departing this world rather than remaining in it. Not like ambling through a field or a meadow where the flowers were all beauty in his eye. But that clutched thing, the bouquet, was more like a badge of resignation. His father? The funeral? Must have been. Still, they’d said it would brighten up the place, the nurses, and when nurses were involved Rossi did what he was told.

  His phone buzzed. It was Maria. Hadn’t he told her not to call him?

  “Yes,” said Rossi.

  “Inspector. I want to speak to you. Can we meet at San Giovanni?”

  The voice was softer. Needy even.

  “I’m going to see Yana, in an hour or so. Can it wait?”