The Mentor

by Monticelli, Rita Carla Francesca

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

  Translation copyright © 2015 Aaron Maines

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Il mentore by the author via the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform in Italy in 2014. Translated from Italian by Aaron Maines. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503947375

  ISBN-10: 1503947378

  Cover design by Scott Barrie

  CONTENTS

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  From Mina’s Blog

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  From Mina’s Blog

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  From Mina’s Blog

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  From Mina’s Blog

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Although I included real and accurate information about the organization of police forces in London, I nevertheless took full artistic license concerning professional positions of numerous employees, as well as the logistics and procedures utilized by the Forensic Science Service Laboratory (an investigative unit of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, the police department headquartered in New Scotland Yard) in order to better adapt them to the plot.

  CHAPTER 1

  1994

  A jet of my mother’s blood struck me in the face. She was clutching her neck, staring at me with imploring eyes. She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth, little more than a gurgling sound came out.

  I was standing next to her, petrified.

  As much as she tried to stop it, blood ran between her fingers, staining the sky-blue bedcovers. The blood had created a dark, threatening stain on the bed that was constantly expanding.

  I didn’t understand.

  She continued to wave her other hand fitfully. She kept pointing down.

  When I’d first heard the shouting in the living room, I had run to my parents’ bedroom and hidden beneath their bed. A few minutes later, someone came in. I recognized my mother’s feet, but she wasn’t alone. A man whispered to her, warning her to behave. If she did everything they wanted her to do, they wouldn’t kill her.

  I heard my mother whimpering.

  Then there was a dull thud on the bed, and my mother’s feet disappeared from view.

  “Good, that’s good,” said the stranger. After that, I didn’t see his feet anymore either.

  I heard her shout and cry while the bed started moving the way it did when my brother jumped around on it to scare me, knowing that I was hiding underneath.

  That movement went on for a little while, then it stopped.

  The man released a deep sigh. “Did you like that? Tell the truth.” I could hear the breathlessness in his voice.

  My mother said nothing.

  “Tell me you liked it, bitch!”

  “I . . . liked it,” she murmured at last.

  Coarse laughter, then a sharp cry. After that, nothing but silence.

  The man left the bedroom, and that’s when I decided to leave my hiding place.

  “Did you hurt yourself, Mama?”

  I could feel my eyes fill with tears. I wanted to run into her arms and hug her, but I was afraid of all that blood.

  Her body trembled. Once, twice, three times. Then her arm stopped moving and fell down to her side. Her eyes were empty, staring at nothing.

  My teeth started chattering. I couldn’t stop them. Shaking, I walked to the door and looked out into the hallway. Paul was lying on the floor, his face in the carpet. He wasn’t moving either. There were bloodstains on the back of his pajama shirt.

  For a moment I considered going out to shake him awake, but deep inside I knew that he couldn’t help me anymore.

  My father started screaming, and I turned toward the living room.

  “No . . . please . . . !”

  “No, please!” said a man. It was a new voice, different from the man in the bedroom. He was mimicking my father in a singsong tone. “Is that the best you can come up with?”

  “I’ll give you whatever you want; just leave my family alone,” my father’s voice cried out again.

  I heard loud laughter, which stopped almost as quickly as it had started.

  As if dragged forward by an inescapable force, I slowly walked, one foot after the next, toward the living room. When I reached the entry, I saw three men standing with their backs to me. They were tall, dressed in black. I immediately recognized the sneakers of the man who had killed my mother.

  I felt light-headed, short of breath. I backed up immediately, hiding behind the half-closed door. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I wanted to understand.

  One of the strangers moved, allowing me to see my father. He was tied to a chair, one of the nice ones my mother never let me put my feet on. Blood was everywhere.

  “Where is the safe?” asked one of the three. His voice seemed gentle, tender.

  My father shook his head. “There’s no safe—I swear to God!”

  He’d barely finished the sentence before the man grabbed a bottle from the table and smashed him in the face with it. The glass shattered, sprinkling shards everywhere, and wine gushed out over my father’s shirt.

  “Don’t lie to me!” shouted the voice. It didn’t sound as nice now. “I know goddamned well you have a safe. Tell me where it is, and open it!”

  “I swear I don’t have a safe,” said my father, begging. Blood ran from a gash on his head, and from another cut at the corner of his mouth.

  The third man pointed a pistol at his temple. “Let’s just kill this guy.”

  “Slow down. We need him alive. Otherwise, how d’you think we’re gonna get that fucking safe open?”

  The third man’s face twisted into a grimace. He took the pistol away from my father’s head and aimed it lower.

  There was a gunshot, followed by more screams.

  “Oh yeah? Now you’re screaming, huh?” the third man said. “If you don’t tell me where that safe is, I’ll shoot your other foot too.”

  A fourth man walked in from the kitchen. “I have a better idea,” he said. He was tall, and there was fire in his eyes. He was carrying an enormous knife in one hand. “I wanted to try this out on his wife, then on his son, but seeing as somebody had the brilliant idea of killing them without asking my permission . . .” He cast a disgusted look at the other three, all of whom moved away. There was an air about him, and he seemed like the leader of the gang, even though he was little more than a boy.

  My father was frozen, waiting for his torturer to make his move.

  “I’ll just have to cut off this son of a bitch’s fingers one by one until he t
ells me where the jewelry is.”

  For a fleeting moment I thought I saw a look of relief cross my father’s face. At the time I didn’t understand, but now I think he was thinking of me. My father must have realized they hadn’t mentioned me, that maybe I was still alive. Maybe they didn’t even know I existed.

  “I’m not lying to you,” said my father, speaking now with deliberate firmness. “I don’t own a single piece of valuable jewelry. My wife has a few things in our room.” He nodded toward the bedroom. “But they’re not worth much. I’m just a regular guy with a regular job. You’ve got the wrong person.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” ordered the leader. “I know full goddamned well who you are, and if you really don’t have anything valuable here, well, we’ll find out soon enough!”

  He motioned to the man next to him with one hand. The others went over to my father and grabbed his right wrist. They placed his hand on the table next to the chair and pulled his pinkie finger out, forcing him to close the other fingers into a fist.

  “No, please, you’re making a mistake!”

  The leader raised the knife over his head, then brought it down. There was a dull sound as the knife chopped through bone and stuck into the wood tabletop, but it was drowned out by cries of pain.

  I never imagined my father was capable of making those sounds.

  I backed up, a constricting feeling clutching my chest.

  “I swear to God!” my father cried out.

  I recognized the sound that came next, even though I couldn’t see what was happening. I ran away, back into my parents’ bedroom. My mother was still there, her eyes wide open, her body covered with blood. I didn’t want to look at her, so I turned off the light before sliding under the bed again.

  There were more screams from my father. They kept coming, unending. They continued for a long time—I don’t know how long. I put my fingers in my ears and pushed as hard as I could until I couldn’t hear anything anymore.

  I stayed where I was, curled up in the darkness. Without realizing it, I slipped into a peaceful sleep, dreaming I was still in my bed and that all the horror was nothing more than a nightmare, that my mother would come and wake me and tell me to get ready for school.

  But when I awoke I was still there, curled up on the rug beneath the bed, my hands aching from pressing them against my ears. When I uncovered my ears and listened, no sound came to meet them. Silence. Only the sound of the wind whistling through an open window. I opened my eyes. There was light. It was morning. Swirls of dust spun in front of me, illuminated by rays of sunlight. I sneezed.

  There was a dull thud, and the wind stopped whistling.

  “Goddamn it!” exclaimed a man’s voice, authoritative. “Be careful, or you’ll contaminate the scene.”

  Then footsteps came down the hall, followed by the clicking noise of a camera and the high-pitched whine of a flash recharging.

  “Maybe the wind blew a window closed,” suggested another male voice. This one sounded younger. “I’ll go take a look.”

  Footsteps drew closer until I saw a pair of black shoes walk into the bedroom.

  A sigh. “Fuck me,” mumbled the new arrival. Then, speaking out loud, he added, “There’s another victim in here!”

  Another click with the camera. The man stooped lower. I could see his knees. He put something that looked like a ruler on the floor and then took another picture.

  He seemed about to get back up again, but suddenly he stopped. He pointed his little flashlight at the floor and moved it around slowly, as if he was following something. My eyes were burning and my nose was running. I couldn’t help myself. I sneezed again.

  His face appeared immediately underneath the bed. The flashlight was in my eyes, blinding me. “Jesus Christ!” He turned off the light. I could see again. “Hey, sweetheart, are you okay?”

  I stared at him, uncertain. Part of me wanted to respond to the tender, kind tone of his voice, but something held me back. A sense of mistrust, a sense of fear.

  “Chief!” yelled the man, turning toward the door. “There’s a little girl down here. She’s alive! Call the paramedics.” Then his face appeared back under the bed. “What’s your name?”

  I moved my lips, but no sound came out.

  The man pointed his flashlight at a metal badge he wore on a cord around his neck. “I’m with the police. You don’t have to be afraid. Come on, I’ll bring you out of here.” He stretched out his hand toward me. “My name is Eric. What’s your name?”

  I held out both arms to him. There was something reassuring in the sound of his voice. Or maybe it was his name. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of there, and he was going to help me.

  Eric dropped the flashlight and took my hands in his. “Promise me you’ll keep your eyes closed until I tell you it’s all right to open them, okay?”

  I nodded and did as he told.

  I felt myself being pulled out from under the bed, then picked up and held. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my head in his chest. I could feel the heat coming from his body as he took long, quick steps through the house.

  “Christ, a little girl . . .” said a woman’s voice.

  “Is the ambulance outside?” asked Eric.

  “Yes. Take her there,” said the authoritative voice I’d heard earlier.

  We started moving again, and I held on with all my strength. I could smell chemicals in the fabric of his shirt, but it wasn’t unpleasant. A calm started to come over me. His hand caressed my head tenderly, and each time he touched me I felt a little more protected, a little safer.

  Finally I could feel the wind blowing my nightshirt and sense sunlight on my arms.

  “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

  I lifted up my head and opened them just a crack. The sunlight was strong, too strong, and I had to lift one hand to my face to shield my eyes. Then, little by little, I got used to it. I could see clearly the man who was holding me.

  Eric smiled. It seemed like the most beautiful smile in the world—larger than his mouth. It was his whole face that smiled, even his eyes, which were a deep blue like the sea.

  “Now will you tell me your name?” he asked.

  I could feel my lips moving.

  “Mina.”

  CHAPTER 2

  TWENTY YEARS LATER

  When Miriam Leroux hit the table hard with her hands, the man winced. She leaned in so close that their heads almost touched. A curl of chestnut-brown hair slid across her face. “We know it was you,” she whispered. “And we can prove it. You’re going to rot in jail for the rest of your life.”

  “There’s no way you have any proof!” the suspect burst out.

  She stood back up straight. “Oh no? Why not?”

  “Because . . .” The suspect paused for a moment. “Because I’m innocent.”

  Detective Leroux started laughing. “Did you hear that? He says he’s innocent,” she said, and turned to Eric with a smile on her face.

  Eric hadn’t said a word during the entire interrogation. He’d stood there, impassive, while his colleague worked the suspect over. They’d refined their approach over time. He, head of the scientific investigations department, stood to one side, paging through a file and looking at them from time to time, apparently disinterested. The only signs he gave were occasional nods; then he’d smile faintly and go back to reading his file. Sometimes he might frown in faint annoyance and shake his head a little.

  “We have proof that it was you, Johnson. This time you’re finished.” Miriam was serious again.

  The suspect seemed a little disoriented. Perhaps because he’d been sure he hadn’t left any proof of his involvement in the crime? Eric smiled to himself.

  They’d been following this man for months. In every homicide that resembled an execution, his name came up. There was a suspicion that he w
as a hired assassin. He’d been seen near the victims’ houses prior to the actual crimes, and Eric and Miriam were convinced it was no coincidence. He was a killer, but they couldn’t establish a motive, so they had to base the investigation entirely on physical proof.

  In each case they’d found the murder weapon: a gun, abandoned at the scene of the crime. The serial numbers were always removed, and ballistics had nothing to add. There were never any fingerprints on the guns, or anywhere else at the crime scene. The door locks were always intact. Everything pointed to a suicide, except for the fact that the same thing had happened twelve different times. Twelve people had taken their own lives at home, each using an untraceable firearm. Not one of them left behind a suicide note or displayed warning signs that they were about to take their own lives. Each victim had a number of known enemies, although it was impossible to connect any of them with the deaths. Alibis were ironclad and abundant.

  A killer for hire. It hadn’t taken long for the detective who ran the scientific investigations department and his young colleague of the Scotland Yard investigative team who was handling the twelve cases to arrive at this conclusion. With this theory in mind, gathering evidence from various video cameras located around the victims’ homes, they’d identified Damien Johnson—an ex-soldier on leave who worked as a private security guard—in film from ten of the twelve cases. Digging into Johnson, they discovered he appeared to live beyond his modest means.

  Johnson’s sunken eyeballs stared out at Miriam, challenging her. “You don’t have any proof,” he said calmly, his thin face contracting slightly. “And this little game of good cop, bad cop won’t work with me. I came here of my own free will, but I don’t have to stay here unless you have a formal charge to bring against me.”

  Miriam kept watching him, an expression of detached curiosity on her face.

  “Otherwise, you’re going to be hearing from my lawyer,” he added.

  Without lifting his eyes from the folder, Eric took out a picture and put it on the table in front of Johnson. The man froze. “What’s that supposed to be?” he asked.

  “Those are your fingerprints,” said Eric, finally breaking his long silence. “We found them on the murder weapon.”