“Eh? I don’t know. We stopped at a pizzeria, I think, on the road. We always do that when we’re coming back from the sea.”
“Thank you. What sort of pizza did you choose that evening?”
“You what? What sort of fucking stupid question is that?”
“Signor Nenci—”
“Is he off his bloody head? Is he half-witted, or what? What sort of pizza did I choose some night five years ago?”
“I was just wondering. How very fortunate then that for no apparent reason you remember seeing my client pass near you in his car. After five years.”
The lawyer looked Simonetti in the eye without further comment. Simonetti only shrugged and changed the subject. He had Noferini pass a copy of the map to the lawyer and began to explain the events as described by Nenci. But in seconds the Suspect threw off the lawyer’s grip and stood up roaring.
“You creeping Jesus, you toad! You never used that road to come home from the sea! That’s not your road home—that’s not his road! Look at a real map, it’s miles out of his way!”
Simonetti cued Nenci in with a faint nod of his head.
“It’s not my usual road. I never said it was. I had to make a detour because my road was closed for repairs.”
At this point there was a slight disturbance at the end of the table. Noferini had stopped typing and stood up. Simonetti, without turning to him, sensed his movement and held up a warning hand. The boy came forward, even so, his face red, and a whispered conversation followed.
“I’m sorry … I left it on your desk … But surely they …”
The Marshal caught no more of it than that. Noferini was dismissed to his seat and returned there looking as mortified as a punished schoolboy.
“If we can continue: Signor Nenci, you are absolutely certain that it was the Suspect you saw that night?”
“I’ve said I saw him and I saw him—oh, there’s nothing in this world that’s a hundred percent certain, is there? I am as certain as you can be about anything. Put it this way: if there’s a doubt it’s not more than say fifteen, twenty percent. Let’s say twenty percent.”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning …”
Simonetti, for once, was a little nonplussed. The Suspect, on the other hand, took his meaning, whatever it was, and rose to his feet purple with rage.
“You cretinous clown! You filthy baboon! I’ll twenty percent you, you and your shitty poisonous lies! I’ll twenty percent you!”
This time nobody could stop him. He was hysterical with rage and in the end he had to be dragged forcibly from the room, still screaming. The witness was dismissed. There was no point trying to interrogate the Suspect any more. They broke for an early lunch. And it was decided that he should remain under escort and be fed in a nearby room in the hope that he would calm down sufficiently to be further questioned on the details of his alibi for that Sunday night.
“I want one of you with him, in case he should let anything slip while he’s in that state. Ferrini.”
So there went their lunch-time chat, thought the Marshal wearily. Then he remembered how little it mattered, since Teresa and the boys weren’t coming after all, and his heart sank.
They passed a cold and wearisome afternoon going over the witness’s story on the spot, taking measurements, judging distances and, when it went dark, visibility. Only once were they sufficiently out of earshot for the Marshal to say to Ferrini: “What do you make of this twenty percent story? I’d say there was something behind it. Those two were as thick as thieves but there’s been a falling out. It sounded like blackmail, but twenty percent of what?”
Ferrini only shrugged. “God knows.”
When at last the day’s work was over and they took their separate ways he said, “I was hoping Teresa and the boys wouid be home but they haven’t set off. If you want to have a bite with me we might as well eat up the stuff I bought for them. We can talk as we eat and finish a bit earlier.”
“No, I’ll get home. There’ll be something ready. I’ll give you a call later, maybe.”
No hope of an early night, then. Ferrini seemed out of sorts but he must be tired and it had been an unsatisfactory day, even for Simonetti who must surely be wondering to what extent he’d be able to control his witness in court.
To compensate for the emptiness of the flat, the Marshal left the little television in the kitchen on after putting some water to boil for pasta, and went to have a shower. He watched what was left of the news as he ate, anxious now that there might be a rail strike or some other calamity that would prevent Teresa coming home. There was no rail strike. He switched off the television and washed up meticulously before going to his office and bringing his notes and files back to the kitchen so they could talk there. That way Lorenzini wouldn’t find a smoked-out office in the morning. The kitchen had an extractor. Ferrini still hadn’t rung. It was getting late by this time and the later it got the more irritable the Marshal became. He couldn’t do with being up half the night again. If it got past a certain hour, he was going to bed. Even if Ferrini rang now he still had to get over here, and after that they wouldn’t get down to business until an hour of anecdotes and a pack of cigarettes later.
“Ouffa!” His patience exhausted he rang Ferrini himself.
“I had a few things to do, you know how it is. We’ll have a chat some other time.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, there’s nothing wrong.” His tone said clearly that something was very wrong indeed.
The Marshal thought of Di Maira’s watchful eyes and then said, “Has somebody said something to you?”
“We’ll talk about it another time.”
“Not over the phone …”
“No, no, no! I don’t give a toss if my phone’s tapped. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’m just sick of wasting my time, that’s all. There’s never going to be a proper outcome—I’m talking about a judicial outcome, am I making myself clear? With Flavio dead we’ll get nowhere unless it’s to work the thing out for our own satisfaction. And I’ll tell you straight, I’ve no interest in that. I’ve better ways in life of finding satisfaction, you know what I mean? I’d rather spend time with my family. I’m not like you, Guarnaccia. When you get your teeth into something you can’t let go but I’ve been thinking it over … Anyway, we’ll talk about it sometime …”
“Well, if you feel like that …”
“I do feel like that. This job’s hard enough to do at the best of times. Not a day goes by without asking myself why I don’t pack it in. I mean, why bother? And on top of that to be looking for trouble …”
“Something has happened. If you want to tell me about it tomorrow that’s all right.”
“No, no, no! It’s nothing like that. You’re being paranoid again. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I was left alone with him at lunch time, that’s what happened.”
“The Suspect?”
“It wasn’t for more than a few minutes. We weren’t even alone, strictly speaking. The two carabinieri were just at the door having a fag. Anyway, it just came into my head to ask him something, so I did. I said to him, listen, I said, strictly between you and me? I’m offering you a word of advice. You’ve done time for murder once, I said, but this is altogether different. If you play your cards right this could be all over in less time than you’d get for stealing a car. What you ought to do is confess the lot and plead insanity. With any luck you’ll avoid even going to trial—they can find you unfit to plead—you’ll go to some psychiatric ward somewhere for a bit with every journalist and trick cyclist in Europe coming to hear your story. Then, when the fuss has blown over, you’ll be sent quietly home because of your age and your heart condition. You want to think about it seriously because if you go to trial and defend yourself you’re a goner.”
“And did he give you an answer?”
“Not right away. He sat there looking at me sideways, dead still, like he does sometimes with that little watery eye of hi
s. He was thinking about it, you see. He was actually thinking about it as a way out!”
“But … you can’t be sure what he was thinking. Didn’t he say anything?”
“Oh, he said something all right. After a long time staring at me, all of a sudden he said, ‘And what do I tell their parents?’ Well, I don’t know what that means, do you?”
“What he said? Or that he gave the idea some thought?”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it? We’ve never given him any serious consideration, but what if it really was him?”
“But apart from anything else, his age …”
“His age, his age! There’ll be some explanation for that. All this stuff in Bacci’s books … books are all very well but that’s all foreign stuff, anyway. At the end of the day you can only rely on your own experience.”
“Yes …” the Marshal agreed slowly, “but we don’t have any.”
“Come on, a murderer’s a murderer—and this chap is a murderer, we know that. Oh, I’m not saying I’m completely convinced, I’m just saying there might be something in it, after all. I mean, however many tricks they’ve pulled on him—we’ve all pulled a few in our time—that doesn’t mean he’s innocent. Anyway, now you know. They might be right, Romola might have been right, you might be right. It’s just not our responsibility, so why bother? Our only hope was to find Flavio and he’s dead. That’s it.”
There was nothing the Marshal could say. After he’d hung up he stood where he was, wondering what to do. Then he went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He was carried forward by inertia as much as anything, and perhaps by there being nothing to stop or distract him. If Teresa had arrived as she should have, then everything might have gone differently. If the official enquiry had been more convincing …
He sat for some time without touching the papers in front of him, thinking about what Ferrini had said about his conversation with the Suspect. He could imagine that rheumy sideways stare, weighing up Ferrini, weighing up the proposition.
“And what do I tell their parents?”
He could think of one girl’s father, in particular, who wouldn’t accept such an outcome and who might well think he had nothing to lose by punishing the Suspect himself with a hunting rifle. But did his awareness of that danger mean the man was guilty? He must know by now, given the tricks that had been pulled on him, that Simonetti would stop at nothing to get a conviction and that against a false accusation there can be no true defence. The man wasn’t stupid. He knew what he was up against. He had an animal sense of danger and a peasant’s faith in lies. The path mapped out for him by Ferrini would be no less attractive because it was dishonest. Defending himself by lying, denying he was a Peeping Tom, denying, the Marshal recalled on one occasion, even the murder he’d done time for, came naturally to him. If he thought a string of lies would get him off the hook, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell them, even to his lawyer, or perhaps especially to his lawyer. Those were the rules he played by, that was the world he lived in. Lie and lie and lie, lie to your lawyer, first of all, so you’ll have someone respectable to tell your lies to the judge. But in this case there were fourteen sets of parents with ruined lives behind them and his trial before them. It was a very big risk to take. Besides which, it was his proper business to lie, but he couldn’t get his mind round the idea of Simonetti’s lying, even though the fact was staring him in the face. His rage and frustration were owed to a childlike belief that authority was there to be lied to and made a fool of but that authority must be just. However much he smelled danger and saw treachery, he was having difficulty relinquishing his traditional beliefs. Unless he did so, and adjusted his defence accordingly, he was done for. In the Marshal’s opinion, he knew that and must have seen the sense of Ferrini’s proposal. But then, Ferrini’s proposal might be a trick …
“And what do I tell their parents?”
“No, no …” The Marshal spoke aloud to the table. Whatever the Suspect’s reason for not rejecting the insanity plea faster, he couldn’t see its being guilt. What might be the problem was his having something else he needed to hide. At his age there’s a limit to how many years you can serve in prison and a sentence for something rather less drastic than fourteen murders would be enough to ensure he’d never see daylight again. That something, whatever it might be, was probably the reason for his denying being a Peeping Tom. That was not a sensible or useful lie. Being a Peeping Tom would have been an acceptable reason, a credible reason, for his presence in lonely country spots at night, even in the face of a more suitable witness than Nenci. There were hundreds of these men out there on any Saturday night and the ones like the Suspect went about their business in groups. Admitting to his vice and calling the rest of his band as witnesses could be what would save him. But he denied it; Nenci denied it. Whatever was being hidden here it seemed the Suspect thought it worth the risk of being tried as the Monster. He wasn’t the Monster and so should be acquitted since there could be no proof. The alternative, the true story that would release him from the false accusation, must be serious enough …
“Those videos …” The answer, the Marshal felt instinctively, lay in that direction but he couldn’t grasp it. “Twenty percent of what?”
“Boh …” He slapped a big hand on the table. No use breaking his head over that. Something might well come out as they went along. He opened the ’68 file and tried to concentrate his mind on his own line of enquiry. It took him half an hour to recognize the fact that it was impossible. He’d worked on his own before and, however much he’d bumbled about, written useless lists, grumbled, and lost faith in himself, it hadn’t been like this. Thinking about it now he couldn’t remember how all this had come about. In some way or other it seemed to have started and gained impetus of itself. There’d certainly never been any conscious decision on his part to start looking for the truth in this case. But however it happened, for whatever reason, Ferrini was inextricably bound up in it. Losing Bacci had been a blow because he was useful. The information, books and notes he’d provided were useful. He’d really needed the list of symptoms he’d promised to provide and still didn’t know how he’d manage without it. But Ferrini was different. It was because Ferrini wasn’t sitting in the chair opposite, lighting up his tenth cigarette and launching into one of his stories to prevent the Marshal from getting on, that he wasn’t getting on. The sheets of paper before him remained just sheets of paper, the notes just notes, the lists meaningless. The same ingredients were there but nothing was happening. The Marshal tried to remember just how they had made such progress as they had made, but he couldn’t. He remembered their meals, the stories, the clouds of smoke, Ferrini laughing at him, provoking him with cynical comments. Ferrini the devil’s advocate, forcing him to defend his position.
Well, now there was no Ferrini and he might as well pack it in and go to bed. He might not feel so wretched if he got a decent night’s sleep.
He slept, but it was a disturbed and unhappy sleep. He seemed to spend the whole night exhausting himself with the effort of trying to convince Ferrini of something or other. The few times he came to the surface and got up to wander half awake to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a drink, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what his insistent arguments had been about. Nevertheless, the minute he closed his eyes he was off again, trying and trying, but always failing, to convince Ferrini of something, whatever it was.
The worst thing was that he realized even as he dreamed that he no longer knew what he was talking about himself. The alarm went off at a quarter to seven and he opened his eyes with relief. After relief came a sinking feeling in his stomach that everything was wrong. Teresa hadn’t come home, that was the first thing that registered. Ferrini had abandoned him, that was the next. What else … Marco, he hadn’t phoned him to hear how things went. Too taken up with his own problems and perhaps reluctant to hear any more bad news … It could be a good sign, though, that Marco hadn’t phoned himself. It might mean ever
ything was all right. There was something else, something he had to do. With a sigh, he recalled that though he had the morning to himself to go through the business of his own station with Lorenzini, he had been given the task of visiting the mother of one of the murdered girls to whom the trinkets recovered from the Suspect’s house were thought to belong. Having assembled all his troubles he got up and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, adding to the list of temporary problems the permanent one of which he always felt more conscious when things were going badly: he was overweight.
An hour or so later he was feeling a little better because of the effect of sitting a while in his own chair, in his own office, talking to Lorenzini about familiar problems. He found himself thinking wistfully of some calamitous crime occurring on his doorstep so that he could be released from the special squad to deal with it. As it was, he didn’t think two snatched handbags, a fight in a bar and a missing dog offered him much hope of escape.
“Anything in the post?”
“Nothing you need bother with. How’s your business going?”
“Oh, you know …” The Marshal shrugged. It would have been comforting to confide in Lorenzini, to have someone to talk to about all the things that were disturbing him, not to feel so alone. But it wouldn’t be fair. He said nothing. Lorenzini waited a moment and then said, “I’ll get back next door.”
“No, no … Stay. I think … I’m going over to Borgo Ognissanti …” He got up from his desk and went to reach for his greatcoat. “Give them a ring, will you? Check that the Captain’s in.”
He buttoned his coat slowly, thinking of the first day when Captain Maestrangelo had sent for him. He’d been embarrassed and must have known all along that things were not as they should be. It was time they put their cards on the table; he couldn’t go on like this, not alone.
“He’s with the Colonel,” Lorenzini said, hanging up. “The usual morning meeting. It’ll be over by the time you get there. They’ll tell him you’re on your way.”
The Monster of Florence Page 28