‘He wasn’t the one who published the photos.’
‘No, but he was in them, and he was the one who had been manipulating him, extorting him, all these years.’
‘Extorting him?’
‘Giorgio had been paying him a small fortune. I saw the money leave his account every month.’
So she had known. She’d lied well at their first meeting, thought Scamarcio — very well. Instead, he said: ‘I think you may be confused there, Mrs Ganza. Your husband was being blackmailed for the photos by the man who had taken them.’
She shook her head, looked away for a moment, and bit down on her lip. ‘I’m not confused at all, Detective. I’m not talking about the last few months, but the last few years. He’s been paying that whore … that creature, that boy, for years. He bought him that flat in Trastevere. You know that? He paid for his flat.’
She barred her arms across her chest, staring him straight in the eye, uncompromising, unflinching, challenging him this time. There was none of the slow tiredness of their previous meeting.
‘So you wanted to put an end to it?’
‘It had to end. The photos were the final straw: I wanted Arthur out of our lives. I wanted an end to his games — the exaggerated vulnerability, the false portrait of the perfect companion. I know the score: I know why he went to him — I’m not stupid. So I made a plan to go to his place. But when I got there, he seemed drugged, completely out of it. And it threw me. He was so smashed I even told him what I was about to do to him, and you know how he reacted? He just laughed weirdly and said, “OK, then, do what you must.” Then he did something odd. He staggered over to his camera, smashed it against the wall, and then put it back on the shelf. After that, he just lay back on the bed and waited for me to get on with it.’
She was shaking her head again, uncomprehending. ‘It infuriated me. I had wanted him to suffer, to pay for what he’d done, and the family he’d destroyed, but in the end I don’t think he suffered at all. He just made me think I was doing him a favour.’
‘That camera — didn’t you want to take it with you?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes, because I wondered what was on it and whether it would incriminate my husband.’ She paused for a moment, sighing softly. ‘But I made a mistake: I was angry at him, just lying there like that, waiting for me to kill him, so I only thought about the implications of that camera after I’d heard the sirens. I didn’t know if they were coming for me, but I couldn’t risk it. Maybe a neighbour had heard something, and called the police? I was actually going to go get the camera, but the sirens were getting closer, and I panicked. I felt I had no choice but to get out of there. There was no time to retrieve that camera.’ She stopped for a second, searching both their faces. ‘Why, what was on there? Was it important?’
Scamarcio looked away from her, momentarily disgusted.
It was Garramone’s turn to speak. He leaned forward slightly, trying to keep his tone neutral. ‘Mrs Ganza, just why are you telling us all this? Why not let your husband take the blame? He’s confessed, after all.’
She leaned back in her seat and shifted to the side slightly, her lips stiffening into a bitter smile, contorting her beauty for a moment. ‘Two things: one, his career’s already ruined — it’s beyond help, and there’s nothing I can do about that now; two, I’ve achieved my secondary objective, which was to make him suffer.’
Garramone frowned. ‘So you wanted to punish him for what he’d done?’
She paused and nodded slowly, not speaking for a moment. Then, almost as an afterthought, she said: ‘I wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt me. He was in love with him, you see, and for me that’s a kind of death. Prison makes no difference to me now.’
63
GANZA HAD PLEADED with them, had said his wife was a manic-depressive who hadn’t been taking her lithium — he could produce a doctor’s note to prove it. She couldn’t go to prison, he insisted; she wouldn’t cope. His relentless entreaties made Scamarcio wonder whether Mrs Ganza had in fact underestimated her husband’s feelings for her; made him wonder whether it wasn’t as simple as him being ‘in love’ with Arthur. Ganza claimed to know nothing about ‘last night’s party’ or why the guests hadn’t shown, and insisted that if he did he would have given it up freely — anything that might help lessen the charges facing his wife. But when it came to the wider question of the parties themselves and their regulars, he remained tight-lipped. This was his limit, figured Scamarcio. Fear would stop him from going any further.
Scamarcio left Garramone at the station, wanting to head over to Aurelia at the morgue to run the new scenario past her. But he was aware that it wasn’t just her professional opinion he courted. The events in Sicily and Tuscany had left him wrung out, in need of some kind of emotional connection: again that sensation returned, building for several days now, that he needed someone in his life who counted, who he had to be there for and vice versa. Instinctively, he sensed that that person might be Aurelia. If he were honest with himself, he’d been quietly wondering about this for a while now.
When he walked into her office, she was resting her head on her desk, with her arms crossed above her. Somehow it disturbed him. She looked as if she might have been shot.
‘Are you all right?’
She jumped. ‘Oh, Scamarcio! I was just tired, that’s all. You caught me napping.’ She held up a finger. ‘Whatever you do, don’t say you’re sorry.’
He raised both palms. ‘Understood. May I sit down?’
‘Help yourself.’
He pulled out a dilapidated plastic chair, and took a deep breath: ‘Any chance we could be dealing with both a murder and a suicide?’
‘Your dead rentboy again?’
He nodded, and talked her through the events of that morning. When he was done, she stood up and walked towards the window, and looked out. Her hair was good in the sunlight, glossy, like something out of one of those TV ads, thought Scamarcio.
‘It’s certainly possible that he injected the morphine and then used his last moments of lucidity to position the camera before he was set upon.’
‘Would morphine do that to you? Make you so acquiescent in the face of death, would you just lie there like that and let someone stab you?’
‘Depends on the amount you’d taken, but, given his now supposedly suicidal state, I’d say, yes, it could. And there were no clear defence wounds, as I said.’
‘If Mrs Ganza hadn’t come along, what would he have done with that camera, I wonder? Just left it beside his bed to be discovered along with his body?’
‘Seems like it, yes. Was it left running when it was put on the shelf?’
‘The CSIs seem to think so, yes. It looks as if he wanted it to be seen straight away when the body was found. Maybe he hoped an inquiry would start from there.’ He checked himself; he’d said too much.
‘Why did he want it to be seen? What was on it?’
Scamarcio remembered that he’d kept the contents of the camera to himself, and had chosen not to divulge them to Aurelia. He wanted to share it with her now, but knew that it would have to keep: he had to wait until all the loose ends were tied up. ‘If you can hold on a couple of days, I’ll tell you then. Let me take you for that drink, and I’ll fill you in.’
She raised her eyebrows at him: ‘Whatever you say, Scamarcio.’
He wasn’t certain if that was a yes or a no, or whether she’d forgiven him for last time, but he smiled anyway. ‘I’ll give you a call.’
‘Sure.’
He didn’t know what to do next, so he just pushed back the chair, turned, and left the room.
As he headed home, the exhaustion felt bone deep. Now, nearly forty-eight hours after they’d first left for Gela, the sun was low in the sky once more, and he resolved to turn in as soon as he got home, to try to get some sleep and reco
ver from this, the strangest of days.
As he reflected on it now, he saw that Arthur had probably intended those photos to be seen immediately in the hope that an inquiry would start from there. Although he hadn’t considered stabbing as a suicide method, ultimately it had served his purpose in rendering his death more dramatic and triggering a police investigation. Ironically, Mrs Ganza had simply aided him in his final aim and made it more likely that her husband would face trial for his involvement with this depraved club. If she had in some ways been attempting to protect his professional reputation and financial security while dealing him a huge personal blow, she had only succeeded in the latter.
His mobile buzzed in his jacket. Garramone was on the line: the tone was flat, neutral now, from exhaustion perhaps: ‘The lawyer claims that there’s a clear case for diminished responsibility with Mrs Ganza. Doctors’ records show that she’s been in and out of private mental facilities for years. And, of course, they’re not best pleased we talked to her without a brief being present. They’re saying that, given her illness, they’ll strike her statement before it gets to court.’
‘Could they?’
‘Possibly, but we’ll just get her to say it all again with the lawyer there. She doesn’t seem to have any problem talking right now.’
‘They’ll sedate her and shut her up.’
‘No, Scamarcio, they won’t. Don’t worry, it will come good.’
‘Any news on your friend? Anyone grilling him yet about his involvement in a Mafia …’
The empty line echoed back at him.
64
SCAMARCIO OPENED THE DOOR to his apartment, half-expecting to find it turned over — for what precise reason he didn’t know, but there were surely several stacking up by now. But everything was as it should be. He went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard where he kept the spirits, and poured himself a large measure of Glenfiddich.
He took a seat at the small table and took several gulps. Then he picked up his mobile and dialled Pinnetta.
‘Long time no hear,’ said his trusty dealer.
‘Been trying the straight and narrow.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘You shouldn’t be. It’s bad for business.’
Pinnetta snorted like the fattened pig he was. ‘So what will it be? You calling to offer me a severance package?’
‘Maybe next time. For now, I’d like the usual, and as soon as you can manage it.’
‘Sounds like it’s been tough going, the straight and narrow.’
‘You could say that.’
He slumped back into the sofa, surveying the darkening sky outside. He had a fresh glass of Glenfiddich in one hand and a joint of Pinnetta’s best in the other. Finally, the world around him seemed to level out, find its balance. It had been too long. He thought about Aurelia and where he’d take her for that drink. There was a fun place in Trastevere he liked — laid-back atmosphere, not too pushy.
He took another toke. Pinnetta had excelled himself. He was the master. Maybe if he’d had a crappier dealer it would have been easier to give up. He needed to find a crappier dealer.
He pushed himself up from the sofa and eased himself into the window seat so he could get a better view of the street below and the ebbs and flows of a Friday night. In the distance, beads of car lights wound their way across the seven hills, along the river, through the parks. Behind the tiny slats of light of the apartments he imagined children watching TV, spinsters cooking their brodo, couples fighting. This beautiful hodgepodge of a city: could he really live anywhere else?
He returned his gaze to the street. A group of teenagers, all dressed in black, were heading out for the night, smoking and shouting. They used to call them Goths, but now they were known as Emos, he believed. Their faces were so pale, as though the blood had been drained out of them, and they walked as if they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Across from them on the other side of the street, the old lady from the apartment upstairs was pushing her shopping along in a little red cart, her tiny Chihuahua by her side, fretting at her heels. But something was bothering him now; he couldn’t quite identify the source of it, but just felt that something in the picture wasn’t right. Then he realised what it was: a short man in a baseball cap was on the corner, looking up, apparently directly at him, from the end of his street where it joined Via Piave. The man just kept on looking, bold as brass — he was still staring now. Scamarcio felt a surge of paranoia course through him. He sprang from the window seat and ran to the cupboard in his bedroom where he kept the Beretta 92 FS Inox his father had given him for his 16th birthday. He loaded it quickly and returned to the window. The man was still watching him, gazing in, undaunted. Scamarcio gripped the gun tighter, and brought it closer to him so he could feel the cold steel on his skin. But then, as if in response, the figure just doffed his cap, waved, and headed back into the darkness of Via Piave.
Scamarcio ran from the window, grabbing his keys from the apartment door before slamming it shut behind him. He sprinted down the two flights to the lobby, pushing open the heavy glass doors onto the street. He headed right, and ran across the road in the direction of Via Piave, dodging a braking car. He kept running, the drugs making his heart beat faster and his head pound. Cars and Vespas were everywhere on the street, taxis sounding their horns, bikers flipping the finger, and then he caught a glimpse of him between some parked bicycles at the end of the road, about to make the turn. He pushed himself on, could taste blood in his chest, faster, faster, faster until he could almost reach out and touch the man’s back and his heaving shoulders. He stretched out his right arm, grabbed him, and brought him crashing to the ground, hard.
‘Who the hell are you? What do you want?’ he gasped.
The man was fighting and kicking in the dirt beneath him. ‘Get off me. Get off me.’ The voice was younger than he’d expected, scared.
‘Why were you looking at me? How do you know where I live?’
The figure kicked again beneath him. ‘Get off me. Get off.’ He sounded petrified.
He pulled the stranger to his feet. The cap was on the ground now, and when he spun him around he saw that the man was probably no more than 25 years old. He had blue eyes, blond hair, a good-looking face. He was shaking under his grip. Scamarcio no longer felt afraid.
‘Listen, calm down, OK? Calm down. Just tell me what you’re up to, that’s all. I’ve had a difficult week. I’m tense, and I don’t like strangers staring up at me when I’m trying to relax at home in my flat.’
The young man nodded, took a gulp of air, and bent over his knees to get his breath back. After ten seconds or so, he straightened himself up and met Scamarcio’s eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, still panting. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I just came to say, “Thank you.” ’
‘ “Thank you”?’ Scamarcio’s head was spinning. ‘Why? Who are you?’
The boy had bent down again, still gasping for air. ‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘What are you thanking me for then?’
‘For your hard work,’ he panted. ‘I had hoped to lead you in the right direction, and I did.’
65
SCAMARCIO BROUGHT TWO GLASSES of Nero d’Avola over to the table. The young man had regained his composure and was leaning back against the wall, surveying the other drinkers. They were in a place that Scamarcio liked to come to when he needed to get out of the flat but didn’t want to go far. It was done up like a wine cellar with oak barrels as tables, low stone walls, and rustic lighting. The reds were good and the prices acceptable.
Scamarcio set the wine down in front of the stranger, who nodded his thanks. Scamarcio drew out a chair and sat, feeling crushed with exhaustion now that Pinnetta’s special blend was wearing off. ‘So was it you who sent me to Elba?’
The young man took a sip of his wine and nodde
d again.
‘Why?’
He sank back against the wall, ran a hand through his hair, and watched a group of girls who had just come in. ‘I thought it would help — help you to understand what was going on.’
‘But how did you know what was going on? Where do you fit in?’ Scamarcio took several large gulps of his wine.
‘It’s not that easy to explain,’ said the young man. He shifted in his seat and studied the floor awhile, seeming to be searching for some kind of strength. Finally, he returned his gaze to Scamarcio: ‘I was brought there, as a young boy. What I mean is, I was brought to the kind of place where they were taking that girl — brought for the same people.’
Scamarcio froze, unable to find any words. The man in front of him looked to be in his mid-twenties. How long had these parties been going on? ‘How old are you?’ he asked finally.
‘Twenty-one.’
He seemed older than his years, and had no doubt seen the worst of life already. ‘What age were you when you were brought there?’
‘Eight. It was a month before my ninth birthday, the first time they took me.’
‘So these parties have been going on for well over ten years?’
The young man took another sip of his wine. ‘They’ve become something of a tradition, a time-honoured club, you might say.’ Then, seemingly as an afterthought: ‘A bit like the Freemasons.’
It seemed a strange comment. Scamarcio sensed he was being thrown a hint. ‘I’d been wondering about that — wondering whether they were involved.’
‘There’s a crossover, but only with some members.’
‘How many times were you taken there?’
‘Five. After that, I was left alone.’
‘Why was that, do you think?’
‘No idea. Maybe I’d served a purpose.’
Scamarcio shifted his attention to his drink, unsure where to look. ‘How did they find you in the first place? Were you kidnapped, taken from your parents?’
The Few Page 30