Scamarcio watched the realisation slowly dawn. Ratsel shifted violently in his seat, looking at his lawyer pleadingly. All at once, the small interview room was rank with the man’s sweat.
‘Are you going to enlighten us, Detective?’ asked the lawyer calmly. ‘Or are you just resorting to idle threats now?’
‘No idle threat, Mr Himmel. The blood results confirm that the blood found in your client’s hotel bathroom is that of Dacian Baboescu, the boy murdered on the island two days ago.’
‘Mr Scamarcio …’ Scamarcio knew that the lawyer was about to argue that the blood could have been left by the previous guest before Ratsel, could have been left anytime; indeed, on such a small sample, that argument might hold its weight in court. But it was a strategic mistake because, instead of concentrating on Scamarcio, the lawyer should have been keeping his client under control, making sure he kept quiet before it was too late. Instead, Ratsel was rocking in his chair, breathing rapidly now. The words tumbled out of him, like coins stolen from a till: ‘He just said it was a small job — a free holiday for me if I helped him sort out a problem. I didn’t know it would end up like this. I had no idea.’
The lawyer barked something at Ratsel in German, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘He said this boy working for him had turned traitor — killed an associate and stolen some merchandise. He wanted me to sort it out by talking to the boy, finding out what he’d done with the goods.’
‘Talking to him?’
‘Just interrogating him, threatening him — there was no mention of murder or anything like that.’
‘And these goods, what were they?’
‘He never said. He just called it “the merchandise”.’
‘So if you were just supposed to talk to the boy, why was his blood in your bathroom?’
The lawyer had risen from his chair and was practically screaming at his client. Ratsel gave out an exhausted sigh and used his last strength to gesture at him to sit down again. He looked like a man defeated.
‘He came at me with a knife. I had no choice but to defend myself.’ He had his head in his hands now. ‘What a bloody mess. All I wanted was a free holiday.’
46
THE LAWYER HAD ASKED for a five-minute break. But Scamarcio, while desperate for a coffee, didn’t want to leave him alone with his client. He needed to keep Ratsel in full flow.
‘So, this merchandise — you never discovered what it was?’
‘He said I’d find out once I was on the island, but I never got the chance to talk to the boy. He attacked me from the off.’ He paused a moment. ‘I think he was scared — someone or something had got to him.’
‘And who is this “he” you keep talking about? Who was it who sent you here?’
‘I met him online.’ He began to falter. ‘In a chatroom.’
The lawyer was gripping his client’s arm for dear life now. Scamarcio’s German was basic, but he thought he understood Don’t go there.
‘What kind of chatroom?’
Ratsel just shook his head. ‘He went by the name of Mr Yellow; that’s all I can tell you. He wired me a lot of money for this trip — much more than it would actually cost.’
Mr Yellow, Mr Y, thought Scamarcio. ‘Payment for the job?’
‘Payment for the job.’
‘And how did you communicate? By phone, email?’
‘No, it was always in the chatroom. He insisted on that.’
‘And you don’t have a phone number, an email address, any way to contact him?’
‘No. We’d just arrange what times to talk in the chatroom. I was to let him know when I’d spoken to the boy.’
‘How did he know where to wire the money?’
‘I gave him my details online.’
‘Any sense of where the money had come from?’
‘I think it was a bank in the Netherlands, but I’d need to check my statement.’
‘And what made him think you were right for this particular job?’
‘No idea.’ He was shaking his head tightly, and Scamarcio knew that this wasn’t the half of it — there was a reason, but he wasn’t going to hear it now. Ratsel was clamming up on him; he’d had his moment.
‘So you have no idea who this guy is?’
‘Like I say, we’d never met. It was all done in the chatroom.’
‘If you tell me the name of that chatroom, you will do a lot to reduce your sentence.’
The lawyer had grabbed him by the arm now, and was repeating ‘Nein, nein, nein’, and this time Ratsel appeared to listen. ‘I’m saying no more, Detective. That’s it.’ Then his strength seemed to desert him and he appeared to crumple in on himself, collapsing into the chair. He started sobbing softly, and Scamarcio decided it was finally time for that coffee.
When he re-entered the room, the stench of stale sweat was overwhelming.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Stacey Baker.’
‘He wasn’t even on the island,’ repeated the lawyer.
‘I’d like to hear it from him,’ countered Scamarcio.
Ratsel sighed, sinking even lower in the plastic chair. ‘Honestly, as God is my witness, I know nothing about that girl.’
‘Bullshit!’ Scamarcio slammed his fist into the desk. The men on the other side of the table shrank back. So he did it again. ‘Bull. Shit!’
Ratsel looked down and then up, as if invoking the Lord. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I swear to you, I know nothing about it — only what I read in the paper. I absolutely swear that’s the truth.’
‘You can improve your sentence.’
‘I know, but I don’t have anything for you. If I did, I’d tell you. You’ve got to believe me.’ The words were shrill, pleading.
‘Why should I believe anything you tell me?’
Ratsel looked pitiful. He’d never seen a man more desperate. ‘You have no reason to trust me, I know. I’m just telling you that I wasn’t involved. Please, I don’t know anything about it. Really, I don’t.’ He threw out his hands.
Depressingly, Scamarcio knew he was telling the truth this time.
47
RATSEL MIGHT NOT KNOW anything about Stacey Baker, but Scamarcio’s hunch that Mr Y’s ‘merchandise’ might refer to the American girl was growing stronger by the minute. He tapped on Genovesi’s door.
‘Come in.’ It was an exhausted sigh rather than the usual bark.
The Elba chief looked tired. Scamarcio sensed he’d had the world and his wife on the phone from Florence, lamenting the slow progress of this case.
‘Scamarcio, what fresh misery do you have for me?’
‘Ratsel confessed to killing the boy Dacian. In self-defence, apparently.’
‘All well and good, but how does that help us with Stacey Baker?’
Scamarcio filled him in on the rest. When he was done, Genovesi said: ‘But how can we be sure that Ratsel’s merchandise and Stacey Baker are one and the same?’
‘We can’t, but for now we need to proceed as if they are. I want to do two things: trace this Mr Y online, and see what we can find out about him and, two, organise a thorough search of the camp and surrounding woods asap.’
Genovesi leaned back in his leather seat, drumming his fingers against his chin. ‘That’s going to send out a very bad message to the media: again, the gypsies are to blame.’
Scamarcio was surprised that he was actually sensitive to this stuff. ‘Genovesi, there’s no time for this bullshit political correctness right now. We’ve got to get results, be seen to be moving.’ He knew this would chime with him.
Genovesi looked down at his desk for a moment and then nodded slowly. ‘At this point we need to pull men in from Piombino. If we’re going to do a fingertip search, that is.’
‘I don’t think we have a
choice, Sir. Dacian Baboescu is implicated — he’s supposedly made off with Mr Y’s merchandise, and if he’s hidden it anywhere it’s going to be in or around that camp, where he could keep an eye on it.’
The reinforcements had come in from Piombino on the 3.00pm boat, accompanied by the police chief from Florence. Genovesi was there to meet them at the port. Scamarcio had stayed well out of it, knowing there would be a big media presence filming their arrival.
At the camp, Pety was pacing up and down. ‘You know what this will do to us? To our life on this island?’
Scamarcio knew all too well, but couldn’t stop it. That train was already in motion.
‘We’ve worked so hard to keep our noses clean, lead an honest life. That has not been easy, I assure you. People were not happy when we showed up.’
Scamarcio pulled out a cigarette, and offered him one. Pety took it, and waved it in the air unlit. ‘They will push us off here in days, I guarantee it. That bastard mayor of Porto Azzurro has had us in his sights for years.’
‘Listen, Pety, calm down. We search; if we find nothing, we move on. Then we search somewhere else, and the attention moves there. It will all be forgotten about in a few days.’
‘You know that’s not true. No smoke without fire, is what they’ll say. Our lives on this island will become a hell.’
Scamarcio lit up for him. He watched him take a long drag, grateful for the momentary silence.
‘Pety, just what are you so afraid of?’
‘I’ve just told you.’
Scamarcio sat down on a log. ‘I’m not sure it’s so simple.’
Off to their right, silent columns of police were turning over the camp. Women were shouting, toddlers crying, dogs yelping. The search team had been at it for nearly three hours now. The light was draining from the sky, and they’d soon have to call it a day.
He was about to press Pety further when there was a shout from one of the rows of police working to the left of the camp, where it met the woods. The shout was repeated several times. It was the call to say they’d found something. Scamarcio stubbed out his cigarette and headed over, with Pety in close pursuit.
There was very little daylight left in the woods, but Scamarcio could make out a cluster of policemen huddled over a pile of something whitish and glistening. His stomach turned over, and he hoped against hope that it wasn’t a girl’s clothing. But when he drew closer he saw that it was actually something more troubling, if that were at all possible: stacked tightly inside a hole in the ground were what looked like tens, maybe hundreds, of kilo bags of white powder. Genovesi, who had panted up alongside him, immediately knelt down and tore open one of the bags, sweeping his finger through the powder and bringing it to his lips. He tasted it on his tongue for several seconds before confirming to the hushed crowd: ‘It’s coke, no doubt about it.’
Then he turned to Scamarcio, his eyes alive with bitterness. ‘There’s your merchandise, Scamarcio. Happy now?’
48
SCAMARCIO SENSED A HUNDRED eyes upon him, including those of the chief of police from Florence, a man he’d heard very little about previously but who was now making his presence very much felt.
‘Do you have any idea how much it has cost to pull these men out of Piombino today?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The world’s media are watching our every move — we simply can’t afford these kinds of mistakes. It’s all very nice to have a drugs bust, but Chief Genovesi convinced me that this would take us to the girl. It seems that you have been pursuing the wrong path right from the start.’
Scamarcio didn’t know what to say, but there was no need, as the Tuscan chief was in full flow, addressing both Scamarcio and Genovesi now. ‘It’s clear to me that you haven’t got the faintest idea where this little girl is. We have the eyes of the world upon us, and we don’t have a clue. I’m going to send you some of my best men from Florence, the crème de la crème. There must be no more mistakes now. No more time wasted.’
With that, he turned on his heel and barked something at one of his Piombino officers. Genovesi hurried after him — no doubt to lament the fact that Scamarcio had been thrust upon him against his will, and that he’d never really gone along with this whole theory.
Scamarcio felt a crushing tiredness overwhelm him. He had indeed fucked up; there was no doubt about that. It was a dud hunch, and he’d probably have to take the hit career-wise. Case-wise, once the Tuscan chief got onto Garramone down in Rome, he’d probably be pulled off. Stacey Baker’s disappearance was becoming political, and when the Americans got onto the PM, he’d be feeling the heat on that, too, and would want to get things done right. Scamarcio’s time on Elba would soon be over.
He trudged back to the Cinquecento, his limbs heavy and his head pounding. Yet, despite the tiredness, one thought kept circling, coming back at him like a hungry shark: Ratsel said Dacian had killed an associate, and that associate could well have been Ella — would have to have been Ella, surely? Indeed, if the stab wounds on Ella matched the stab wounds on Dacian, he’d tried to use the same knife to kill Ratsel as well. Hadn’t Barrabino said the knives were similar? He needed to ask Ratsel about the knife. Was it his or Dacian’s? And returning to the nub of it all: Ella had child porn on his computer and Stacey Baker’s bite-marks on his arm. Those drugs were an unintentional red herring — they had to be. Or was Mr Y simply running two parallel operations? It wasn’t unheard of. His own father had had his finger in so many different pies. But how to prove that Mr Y was linked to Stacey Baker? How to pin down this elusive online presence — for now, nothing more than an avatar? After today, persuading Genovesi and the chiefs that there was more to it than the drugs seemed impossible. It felt like his chance with them had gone forever.
His mobile buzzed in his pocket, and he was surprised to see it was Cepparo from Milan calling. He couldn’t think what he’d have to say to him, now that Ella was dead and the Milan case was closed.
‘Scamarcio, is now a good time?’
‘You’re a welcome distraction from my troubles, Cepparo.’
‘Sounds bad. Listen, I’m not sure it’s of interest, but we’ve got some sad cases up here in our tech department. So much so that they have nothing better to do in their spare time than take their work home with them, regardless of whether the case is open or shut, it seems. Tragic, really.’
Scamarcio felt a quickening in his chest. ‘Go on …’
‘They were so challenged by that guy Ella’s computer that they took a bet on it. The first one to crack those emails gets a new piece of software or some such sad shit.’
‘And?’
‘Well, they got in. I’ve got those emails, if you still need them.’
‘You’re kidding me. Anything interesting?’
‘I haven’t taken a look, to be honest.’
‘Cepparo, this could not have come at a better time. I could kiss your guy up in Milan.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Scamarcio. He’s butt-ugly.’
Cepparo said he’d forward the emails to Scamarcio’s address, and now he lounged on the bed in his hotel room, scanning the inbox on his laptop. Cepparo’s colleague had managed to get around 1,000 emails dating back one year, but they all seemed to be from Ella’s inbox rather than his outbox. There was one contact, a Leka Ymeri, who piqued Scamarcio’s interest — if only for the simple reason that he was the only person whose surname started with a Y. As far as he could see, there were around ten emails sent between him and Fabio Ella, their correspondence beginning six months before.
In the first, Mr Ymeri wrote: ‘My clients are discerning, they are prepared to pay above the odds for a second-to-none service. If you wished to get involved in our supply chain I can guarantee rich rewards both of a financial and personal nature.’
The second email from Ymeri, sent a few days la
ter, was even more cryptic. Scamarcio could not find Ella’s response to the first, although he later saw it was contained in the body of Ymeri’s reply. Ymeri wrote: ‘I don’t think you should concern yourself too much with the risks. This operation is well under the radar and has been for a very long time. Remember that these clients are highly influential so it is unlikely that we would ever be subject to “outside interference”.’
Ella’s original reply beneath read: ‘I can confirm that I am very interested. I only wish to check with you that this operation is watertight. I am a family man with a business in Milan and cannot afford complications.’
Another email from Ymeri came in two days later: ‘I am pleased to have you on board. I will be in touch soon with some more detailed information.’ Ella’s original email below had said that, on reflection, he was now up for the job in hand.
Then there seemed to be a month’s hiatus in their communications, until Ymeri wrote: ‘We have been asked to procure a specific set of goods and I’m wondering whether this might be the right order for you to cut your teeth on. Stand by for further details.’
Two days later, Ymeri brought him up to speed: ‘You will be required to travel to some of your popular tourist beaches when the summer months arrive. I will leave it to you to choose the resort, I only ask that it not be too far from Rome …’ For the first time, Scamarcio sensed that this might possibly be about something other than drugs, and his pulse quickened. Ymeri pressed on: ‘The preference this season is for blonde and blue eyes, female, no more than nine, minimum fuss, minimum hassle. Our clients do not want street riff-raff or runaways, they want premium. Clear?’
Scamarcio felt his stomach turn over: a mixture of queasiness, disgust, and excitement that he might finally be on to something. In the next email, Ella had written underneath that he understood and Ymeri had replied that he would be wiring him his agreed fee in advance. There was no mention of the sum.
One month later, Ymeri wrote: ‘Our clients are ever more demanding, any chance you could get down there earlier?’ Scamarcio had the sense that other emails may have been exchanged that for some reason had not been retrieved. The next email from Ymeri contained Ella’s reply: ‘I need to wait for the good weather otherwise the tourists won’t be there.’
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