The Monster of Florence

by Magdalen Nabb

  That’s who it was, then. He’d got the glass eye later. Even so, it wasn’t his face, battered and crazy, that he’d seen in his dream. It was a younger man.

  The Marshal flicked through the photos at the centre of the book, but this man wasn’t there. The only other book was a series of essays. No photographs in that, only tables and graphs and maps. Bacci had taken one or two notes and transferred them in Italian on to one folded sheet of typing paper slotted in at the back. It looked drier, less disturbing reading and it might be better to stick to that until he could get off to sleep again.

  Background dimensions

  Social class

  Family background

  Peer group associations

  Contact with defining agencies

  Definitional dimensions

  Offence behaviour

  Interactional setting

  Self-concept

  Attitudes

  Recall of events

  It was dry stuff, all right, and should send him off to sleep in no time at all.

  Each of Bacci’s underlinings was numbered so that you could easily find the corresponding translation on the loose sheet. It was all done in pencil.

  “Ouff!” The Marshal began flicking through the book faster, his eyelids drooping. An underlining in red ink stopped him. Oddly enough it wasn’t numbered. In the margin where the numbershould have been was written in Italian “Is this us?” Next to that a large exclamation mark. So why hadn’t he translated it, if it was so important? The Marshal stared at the original text, vainly trying to make something of it. It was about Special Investigation Forces, he could manage that much, but what they were saying about them he had no hope of deciphering. He closed his eyes and rested his head back on the pillow. Sleep. He needed to go to sleep.

  “No! That’s a lie!”

  “Refrain from making comments. Answer the question.”

  “What question? You’re not asking me a question, you’re telling me a lie.”

  Simonetti glanced at the Suspect’s lawyer, who laid a restraining hand on his client’s shoulder and whispered urgently to him.

  “No, I can’t. I can’t listen to him. He just wants to crucify me. How can I keep calm?”

  “The couple on this occasion lived near your village and already knew what you looked like before we showed them your photograph. You were lying on the bonnet of their car and when the young man looked up at the conclusion of their activities he found your face staring straight into his. Two more witnesses who had parked in the San Casciano area on a Saturday night in July of that same year saw you standing near their car holding a metallic object which they are sure was a gun. They started their car and drove away at once. The third couple saw you in broad daylight when they were out walking. You were standing near a hedge peering through it into a field, a clearing which was frequently used by couples at night. Your scooter, described as grey with a broken saddle and a spoke twisted and hanging from the wheel, was leaning against the gate into the field.”

  “That’s a lie! I haven’t got a grey scooter, I’ve never had a grey scooter!”

  “You have a scooter with a damaged saddle.”

  “But it’s red!”

  “Please don’t raise your voice. We have examined your scooter and removed a small sample of paint. There were traces of other colours underneath, including grey.”

  “I bought it used. It was red when I bought it. You can ask the mechanic in the village. I bought it from him.”

  “We checked with the mechanic. He’s not sure what colour it was when he sold it to you. He thinks that you might have painted it red.”

  “The bastard—he’s lying. He’s got it in for me because of a deal I made with some spare parts that he—”

  “Please answer my questions without making comments. Also bear in mind that we have questioned all the other members of the band of Peeping Toms—”

  “I’m not a Peeping Tom and they won’t tell you any different.”

  And that was true, thought the Marshal, who, together with Ferrini and the two police detectives, was watching this scene in silence. They hadn’t really questioned all the band, only two of them, but they admitted to nothing. The first of them, shaking with fear, hadn’t even got in the door before he burst out, “I used to have a snack with him now and then. That’s all. I hardly know him. He’s not even a friend. We’d have a coffee and a sandwich in the bar, like you do. Just if we happened to be there at the same time—”

  “Please sit down and give us your full name and address.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down and be quiet. We haven’t asked you anything yet.”

  But the man, who must have been about sixty, was so terrified that though he allowed them to push him into a chair he couldn’t listen to or understand anything they said to him. He just stared sightlessly at each of them in turn, repeating, “Just a snack, that’s all. I never went anywhere with him. I hardly know him. We used to have coffee and a sandwich …”

  The other one was more in possession of his wits and told exactly the same story.

  But why? That’s what the Marshal couldn’t understand as he watched the Suspect’s red face crumple and the tears begin to flow. To deny everything and anything was, of course, standard practice for men like the Suspect and his friends, and it all sounded logical enough on the surface. The Monster was a Peeping Tom so deny being a Peeping Tom. The Suspect was accused so deny knowing the Suspect. It was natural enough for them to be frightened. But something was wrong. After all, given the stage things had reached, the Suspect would surely be wiser to admit his voyeuristic vice which would explain his presence in certain places at night. There were hundreds of these men about. It didn’t make them murderers. Were they frightened of something else? It all slid out of your grasp. The Marshal had no doubt that the Suspect really was a Peeping Tom, even allowing for half this stuff Simonetti was coming up with being invented.

  It was the same feeling he’d had about the business of the daughter. He didn’t disbelieve that the Suspect had abused her. And she was still lying.

  Simonetti never tired of tormenting the Suspect.

  “Why don’t you tell the truth?”

  That was it exactly. Why didn’t he? If you considered the fact that Simonetti’s accusations were false then that meant the last thing he wanted to hear was the truth. The truth, in this case, was what would help the Suspect. But he was lying. This whole drama which should have been a battle for the truth was really a battle of lies, a fight to get one set of lies believed rather than another. The truth, evidently, would serve the purpose of neither side.

  “This note in your sketch book here: it’s a car licence number after which you’ve written ‘couple.’ Would you like to explain that, as a non-Peeping Tom?”

  “I didn’t write it, it’s not my writing.”

  “It’s not your writing? Whose writing is it, then? It’s your book. It was in your house. Whose writing is it, come on!”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it is mine. I can’t remember every little thing I scribble down.”

  “In that case, let’s assume you scribbled down this car number with the word ‘couple’ next to it. What does it mean?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “But you did write it.”

  “You’re trying to trick me! You’re persecuting an innocent lamb!”

  Under cover of a lot of howling, sniffing and handkerchief flourishing, the Suspect had a brief whispered consultation with his lawyer, who patted him on the arm and then looked at Simonetti.

  “He thinks he might have remembered.”

  “We await the story with bated breath.”

  The Suspect blew his nose loudly and messily and then wiped his eyes.

  “I remember seeing a couple one night parked in the lane right under my bedroom window. I think I took their number. I was intending to warn them off. There’s no cause for that right under people’s noses. I had a daughter to think of
. It’s not right.”

  “Moral indignation. You amaze me.”

  “It was for their own good. It was when there were couples being murdered. It was for their own safety and look where it’s got me!”

  “Where indeed. Let’s come now to these little trinkets here.” He held out his hand without looking behind him and Esposito, the detective with the scarred hand, passed him the soapdish full of cheap necklaces and bracelets.

  “What about these?”

  “What about them?”

  “What story can you tell me about these? You needn’t tell us that they’re not yours. We’ll take it as read that you don’t wear girls’ jewellery. Well?”

  The Suspect was silent. He seemed not to know what to make of this at all. He fixed the soapdish with one pig-like eye, his face turned a little away from it.

  “I told you …” he began uncertainly. “I told you when you took them that they were my daughter’s—If it’s the stuff you took …”

  This time at least the Marshal understood. When they’d removed this stuff from the Suspect’s house, he’d told them that. Now he was quite clearly worried that these trinkets weren’t the same trinkets and that he had no way of proving it. They must have been listed on the search report but how detailed would the description be? If it came to that, all girls wore this pretty, worthless stuff, on sale in every department store. Nothing easier than for the mother of one of the victims to claim one of these pieces as her daughter’s.

  “We’re waiting.”

  “I … the stuff you took away was my daughter’s, I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Do you still say the same?”

  “It all looks alike to me, it’s just plastic stuff. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I shall. I want your answer now. These trinkets were found on your property. What explanation do you give for their presence there?”

  The lawyer, too, looked worried now. He excused himself and gave a lengthy sotto voce piece of advice to his sniffing client, deciding, in the end, to speak for him.

  “My client stated in good faith that the trinkets removed from his house belonged to his daughter. He can’t be sure of recognizing those things now since they are not his personal property and he has never had occasion to examine them closely.”

  At which Simonetti shrugged his shoulders and passed the soapdish back to Esposito.

  “Tell me about your gun.”

  “I have no gun! I’ve only ever had a blank pistol, the sort you use for keeping dogs away from your chickens.”

  “The bullet found in your garden wasn’t a blank.”

  “No! Because you put that bullet there! You did it!”

  He was on his feet, raging, his face purple. The Marshal was sure that if this went on he’d have some sort of attack. In fact, almost at once, he fell back into the chair, breathing with difficulty. His colour drained away and his skin became clammy and greyish with a tinge of blue around his lips.

  The lawyer got up. “You have to stop. He needs to take his medicine. He needs a doctor.”

  “We’ll stop for an hour.”

  In the end it was almost two hours before the doctor would consider letting them continue. In the meantime they went out for a coffee and Simonetti received the journalists who were hanging about on the steps when they returned.

  “He certainly doesn’t waste a minute,” muttered Ferrini. “By the way, what became of your young friend Bacci?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Ferrini shrugged. “Could have been his day off, I suppose.”

  “No, no … I talked to him last night and asked him to bring me a list I need. He said nothing about not being here today. Can we go in if you’ve finished your cigarette? I wanted to ask you a couple of things before everybody gets back.”

  They sat down at the table facing the Suspect’s chair. The smell of his sweaty fear was still in the room, a physical presence.

  “Poor bugger,” Ferrini remarked. “I doubt he could get more than he deserves, but poor bugger, even so.”

  “I was thinking,” the Marshal said, struggling to organize the disjointed images in his head into some sort of comprehensible verbal form, “this is the second interrogation since the search ended …”

  “And?”

  “If I’d been asking the questions, I think I’d have wanted to know where all that money came from.”

  “An interesting point, but I’ve a feeling nobody will ask.”

  “But why?”

  Ferrini shrugged. “Why? It’s all the same. You don’t earn money from killing strangers. You could steal it, I suppose, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suppose any of those kids had money, and what bit they did have was left intact.”

  “Yes … But … What I’m trying to say is, he’s not the killer, is he? So—”

  “So he might be a bank robber. I think I understand what you mean but the point is, nobody needs a bank robber, do they? They need a Monster, so nobody’s got time to waste on anything that doesn’t help with that.”

  “You’re right, of course. It was a lot of money, though.”

  “You don’t give up, do you? I’ll tell you something. If I were on the wrong side of the law I wouldn’t care to have you after me. You’re like a bulldog that won’t let go of a bone. Don’t waste your energy! You won’t get paid for it and in this particular case you won’t get thanked for it, either.”

  “You’re right, of course …”

  “So you keep saying, but you don’t let go of the bone, anyway.”

  “It was a lot of money.”

  “Oh God.”

  “And that’s a decent little house he’s got. Nice bit of land with it. Then there’s the flat near the square he bought for the girl. I don’t own a house or a flat. It’s a worry how we’ll manage when I retire.”

  Ferrini sat and looked at him. Then he resigned himself. “All right. Let’s hear it all.”

  “It’s a worry,” repeated the Marshal, oblivious of Ferrini’s irony. “I often think of it … He keeps chickens.”

  “Eh? How did chickens get into the conversation?”

  “The Suspect. He keeps chickens and a few rabbits. He grows vegetables. He makes his own wine and oil. He’s been an agricultural labourer practically all his life—”

  “As he tells us every time we see him.”

  “Yes. Yes, he does. It’s important to listen to what people tell you. Sometimes when you least expect it, they’re telling you the truth. The other thing he keeps telling us is that he’s always been careful, always put something away for a rainy day, like his father taught him. His father was a peasant.”

  “Well, so he’ll have ripped off the landowner all his life and stuffed the proceeds in the mattress.”

  “Yes …”

  “All right, all right … We add it up and we don’t get two houses, a drawer full of millions and a sizeable block of shares. Add to that we don’t think he’s the Monster, but what do you want to do about it? What’s the use of answering questions nobody’s asking?”

  The Marshal didn’t even answer. His face was dark and set.

  “Oh Christ Almighty, I remember that face. You got like this on that transsexual case and there was no getting a sensible word out of you until it was over.”

  “And”—the Marshal prodded the table—“she said she was threatened with prison.”

  “And if that doesn’t prove my point … Who was threatened with prison?”

  But before he could get an answer, assuming there would have been an answer forthcoming, the door to the conference room burst open and a flustered young man appeared.

  “Prosecutor Simonetti?”

  “I think he’s talking to the press. Is something wrong?”

  The young man came in. He was carrying a thick packet which he placed on the table.

  “He’s going to have my guts for garters, that’s all …”

  He sat down and looked at them both. “List
en, you must know him better than I do. I’ll throw myself on your mercy. What I did was stupid, I know that, but what I don’t know is how badly I’ve screwed up. I mean, how much will the delay matter and can we keep it from the press—that’s all he cares about, everybody says.”

  “They’re probably right.” Ferrini was as amused as he was baffled. “How about telling us what you’re talking about, starting with who you are.”

  “Police lab,” the Marshal said. “You were there that day in the rain when they took the rubbish skips away.”

  “And made a complete fool of myself.”

  “That,” the Marshal said, “makes two of us.”

  “You mean you know?”

  “I don’t know anything, except that I was there and I was too slow. I should have caught him with whatever it was still in his hand. I didn’t.”

  Without a word, the young man pushed the packet across the table to him. It was a padded envelope, unsealed.