The Murdered Banker

by Augusto De Angelis

  Whose dark or troubled mind will you step into next? Detective or assassin, victim or accomplice? Can you tell reality from delusion, truth from deception, when you’re spinning in the whirl of a thriller or trapped in the grip of an unsolvable mystery? You can’t trust your senses and you can’t trust anyone: you’re in the hands of the undisputed masters of crime fiction.

  Writers of some of the greatest thrillers and mysteries on earth, who inspired those who followed. Writers whose talents range far and wide—a mathematics genius, a cultural icon, a master of enigma, a legendary dream team. Their books are found on shelves in houses throughout their home countries—from Asia to Europe, and everywhere in between. Timeless books that have been devoured, adored and handed down through the decades. Iconic books that have inspired films, and demand to be read and read again.

  So step inside a dizzying world of criminal masterminds with Pushkin Vertigo. The only trouble you might have is leaving them behind.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  1. Fog

  2. Via Monforte… fort—

  3. The First Inquiries

  4. Shocking Evidence

  5. The Young Blond Man in the Attic

  6. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything!”

  7. Count Marchionni

  8. The Two Revolvers

  9. I Killed Him!

  10. A Great Love

  11. Pain Beyond Pain

  12. Darkness

  13. Trial and Error

  14. A Meeting with De Vincenzi

  Epilogue

  Available And Coming Soon From Pushkin Vertigo

  About the Publisher

  Copyright

  1

  Fog

  Piazza San Fedele was a bituminous lake of fog penetrated only by the rosy haloes of arched street lamps.

  With a muffled sound of the horn, the last car moved slowly away from the pavement outside the Manzoni Theatre. The theatre closed its great black doors.

  Ghostlike shadows were moving across the piazza. Two of them collided at the opening of via Agnello and one noticed that the other was that of a gentleman in evening dress, fur coat and top hat. For his part, the gentleman saw nothing but a black shadow. In any case, he wasn’t looking. He was walking. From the piazza he proceeded slowly through the fog along via Agnello, continuing on his way.

  As if he had recognized the gentleman he’d bumped into, the other man turned to follow him. But suddenly he stopped, uncertain, and drew out his watch. Bringing it to his eyes, he saw that it was some minutes past midnight. He hunched his shoulders and retraced his steps, hurrying towards the large door of the police station. He went in.

  “So then, sir?”

  “Ah. What do you want?”

  “Anything?”

  “Have you asked Masetti?”

  “Why? Is the squad still working at this hour?”

  “Masetti should be back… I sent him to Porta Ticinese. Go see what he’s been up to.”

  “Petty theft, De Vincenzi. And he’ll have found the fence’s three bracelets.” De Blasi’s round, apoplectic face sneered. “That’s his speciality, finding fenced bracelets.”

  “And what’s yours, De Blasi? Abstinence?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t pretend to be someone who drinks water and lemon, like you.”

  De Vincenzi shrugged and smiled. He liked this journalist, round and red as a traffic signal at a blocked junction. Despite his florid drunkard’s face, he was sharp and alert. Without a doubt, the best in the journalists’ union, and it wasn’t easy to put one over on him.

  “Everyone has his weakness, De Blasi.”

  “Mine’s not a weakness—it’s a strength. Listen…” He entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  De Vincenzi got up suddenly, hiding the book he was reading beneath a stack of files. “I’ve heard! Once you sit down, you’ll be here till tomorrow morning and I already know your theories on the molecular properties of wine.”

  De Blasi remained unperturbed. He looked at the stove and grimaced. “Don’t they ever change the stoves in here? That one over there is toxic. If you think I could put up with it… They’ve whitewashed the courtyard, changed the chief constable’s furniture upstairs. Have you seen the red sofas? A bit hard, but at the moment there’s not a speck of grease. And yet they don’t change the old stoves or the faded old wallpaper for the rest of you, eh? Are you on night shift at the moment?”

  “Look, De Blasi.” The inspector, coming round the table, approached the journalist. “You’re very agreeable company, but for the next hour or so I need to be alone. Go off and find Masetti. Go to the Pilsen, go to the Galleria.”

  “In this fog and at three below zero? You’re crazy!”

  “No, it’s warm at the Pilsen. And then you’ll warm up quickly.”

  “You were reading?”

  De Vincenzi pushed him towards the exit and as he did so, De Blasi pointed towards the stack of files on the table.

  “You’ve buried your vice under crimes and misdemeanours! How many thieves and fences are heaped on top of Pirandello?”

  “Get out of here! It’s not Pirandello.”

  “OK, I’m going. But is it true that you study psychoanalysis? Ramperti told me. One of these days you must lend me Froind—is that how you say it? Who is Froind?”

  “A gentleman who tries to excuse all your sins by saying that you dream them at night.”

  “Odd. But why did you become a policeman, De Vincenzi?”

  “In order to have the pleasure of arresting you one of these days. Being drunk and disorderly is against the law.”

  “Hmph. When have you ever seen me drunk? Are you coming to the Pilsen later? Or maybe to the Cassé at four?”

  “Yes, to the Cassé. Goodbye.”

  He closed the door, put a log in the stove and opened the damper. As for smoke… it did smoke, that stove. He looked around him. The night-duty room was squalid. On a table losing its veneer here and there, scorched by cigarettes and almost entirely covered by fliers, forms and files, the shiny new telephone seemed like a luxury item placed there by mistake. Or perhaps a surgical instrument.

  He turned and sat down, took his book out from under the stack of paper.

  It wasn’t Freud. It was Lawrence. The Plumed Serpent. The senses…

  He opened the drawer and felt for two other books: Plato’s Eros and The Epistles of St Paul.

  He leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Why had he, after all, become Commissioner for Public Safety?

  He jumped and shouted out nervously: “Come in”, hurriedly closing the drawer.

  “You! What are you doing here at this hour?”

  Tall, thin, exceptionally elegant, wearing evening dress under his fur and a top hat on his head, Giannetto Aurigi came in quickly. He took off his hat and stood in front of the table, staring at De Vincenzi.

  His eyes were shining, strangely bright, his face wan, gaunt and strained.

  He smiled, and as he did so his thin lips disappeared so that his mouth looked like a slash.

  De Vincenzi was struck by his pallor and red cheeks.

  “Cold?”

  “Fog! From Piazza della Scala you can’t see the arched lamps of the Galleria. Needles in your face and your fingers numb with cold.”

  De Vincenzi looked at him with curiosity, interested.

  “Inside La Scala, the Egyptian sun on the fans and the glory of the Pharaohs. And outside, the warden, stomping his feet.”

  He squashed the gibus he held in his hands. He looked around and went to put it down on a sort of bookshelf heaped with bound files.

  He took off his fur and hung it up on a nail. Then, slowly rubbing his long whi
te tapered hands, he went to sit down.

  “And you came to San Fedele?!”

  “Eh?” He was preoccupied and the question startled him.

  “Well, yes. It’s not the first time. I knew that you were on duty.”

  “I’m on duty every night here or there and it’s a long time since you’ve come.”

  “You’re right. But not because I’m not thinking about you. You’re dear to me, you are. The dearest of all my classmates, even if—”

  He stopped, as if slightly embarrassed, or maybe because his thoughts had changed direction. He laughed, looked around.

  “It’s depressing here.”

  “Police headquarters like any other. But you were saying: ‘even if…’ Even if I became a police functionary, right?”

  “It must be a terrible life! Well! A natural inclination. There are thieves. That’s natural too!”

  “True.” De Vincenzi mechanically touched the book in front of him. An unconscious reaction he didn’t notice made him add: “Thieves and killers.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Aurigi’s voice sounded shrill, almost false.

  “I’m just saying. You’re touchy tonight. Aida?”

  The other man laughed. “Do you think it excites one’s nerves? It’s possible.” He stretched out his long legs and rested his head on the back of the chair. His eyelids drooped.

  De Vincenzi looked at him. Why in the world was he here at this hour? And why had he come?

  They had been classmates and friends. They were certainly friendly, but not, perhaps, close. Come to think of it, where could one find closeness these days, with men all hurling themselves towards their own destinies, with their own passions, their own needs and all the vices of the human body?

  Each one of us has a secret, and the man with one he can admit to is fortunate.

  What was Aurigi’s secret? This man who, at nearly two in the morning, had felt the need to come and visit him, and who was now falling asleep there on the chair in front of him, as if he were worn out by fatigue or wakefulness or an unwholesome torpor?

  The telephone on the table rang and the sleeping man started.

  “What is it?”

  De Vincenzi smiled. “Nothing. The telephone…” He took up the receiver and replied: “Hello?” He uttered some monosyllables and replaced the receiver. He looked at the other man. “You can go on sleeping.”

  “Sorry! Verdi’s music…” He was clearly trying to pull himself together. He pointed. “That telephone there is going to be a torment, a nightmare for you.”

  De Vincenzi put his hand on the shiny black box, touching it almost lovingly. “My dear, tyrannical telephone! It’s this which, during the long hours of waiting at night, connects me to the city… I’m exaggerating. Let’s say to the world, my world as a policeman, head of the flying squad. Through it alarmed voices reach me, the first desperate pleas.”

  He smiled indulgently, as if sorry for himself. “For the most part, they are doormen awakened by the noise of burglars or the abrupt bang of a revolver or just by the din of a party of nocturnal troublemakers. Look at it! It’s chunky, black, inexpressive. For you, nothing but a black box with a silly mouthpiece and a green cord. But for me it has a thousand voices, a thousand faces, a thousand expressions. When it rings, I already know whether it’s bringing an ordinary administrative request or is about to announce some new drama, some tragic crime of passion.”

  Aurigi teased. “A mystery to crack!”

  “Go ahead and mock. You’re right. It’s so rare, a mystery case. I’d like one! But I’m not looking for one and I don’t expect one in the sense that you imagine: the detective mystery, the puzzle, a suspect to find and apprehend. No, no. Life is at one and the same time much simpler and much more complex. However, you see, there’s always a mystery to excite me: tragic, deep… The mystery of the human soul.”

  “What a poet!”

  Aurigi saw before him once again the friend of long ago. At school, too, he’d composed verses and recited them to himself, like someone possessed. “I was wondering…”

  “Why I became a policeman? You’re the second one to ask that tonight. But it’s for that very reason that I became a policeman: because I am perhaps a poet, as you say. I feel the poetry of this profession of mine, the poetry of this dusty grey room, of this shabby old table, of the poor old stove, whose every joint suffers in order to keep me warm. And the poetry of the telephone! The poetry of the nights of waiting, with the fog in the piazza coming right up into the courtyard of this old convent—now home to the police station, housing criminals in place of saints! Of nights in which nothing and everything happens, because in this huge, sleeping city, even as we speak, there are infinite dramas, even if they’re not all bloody. Actually, the worst ones don’t end in shooting or with a knife.”

  He stopped, as if a sudden idea had made him reflect. “Yes, a poet! You, for example, Giannetto.”

  Aurigi’s shock was sudden and visible. “Me? What do you mean? What drama do you want to involve me in?”

  “But no, who said anything about your drama? I was saying, Giannetto, you’re a poet like me. Isn’t it perhaps because of your love for poetry that you remembered your old school companion tonight and came here? In fact, why else would you have come, if not for that?”

  “I’ve come lots of other times and you haven’t made anything of it.”

  “True. But this evening is different.”

  “Are you investigating?”

  De Vincenzi had a brainwave. “You need me tonight, Giannetto!”

  “But of course! Aren’t you the one, perhaps, who can explain it to me? At La Scala I was overcome by a strange lethargy. I fell asleep in my box. I was gradually overwhelmed by a sweet, unhealthy weariness. Then…”

  “Were you alone?”

  “In the box? No. It’s the Marchionnis’ box. Maria Giovanna was there with her mother. Marchionni came later. I was sleeping… a scandal. My father-in-law—my future father-in-law—pulled me into the foyer with him so he could lecture me. For days he’s been looking for some excuse to do so. He says I’m gambling, that I spend my nights at the club, that I’m killing myself partying and that’s why I fall asleep whenever I find myself with my fiancée. He spoke about big losses I may have incurred. He says that on the stock market, too, I’ve ended the month with a shocking loss.”

  “Is it true?”

  “That I gamble? No.”

  “And on the stock exchange?”

  Aurigi hesitated very briefly. He stared into De Vincenzi’s eyes and shrugged.

  “Oh, textiles have crashed.”

  “Did you have many?”

  “Some. But that would if anything have been a good reason to stay awake! No, no. It’s something else. I’ve told you: I feel all washed out. I left the theatre before the end of the third act. I needed to walk. The fog… the cold… the city, almost deserted. I made it to the Galleria and turned back. I came here to you. Am I boring you?”

  “You’re worrying me.”

  “You’re joking, right? Don’t start thinking that I have something unusual, something serious to reveal to you. That would be ridiculous.”

  De Vincenzi assumed the air of an innocent who asks lots of questions out of sheer curiosity. He smiled.

  “What time does the third act of Aida finish?”

  “I don’t know, eleven… eleven-thirty… maybe later.”

  “And you were cold?”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You came here at half past one. Do the sums.”

  Aurigi shrugged.

  All at once, De Vincenzi got up and went towards the calendar hanging on the wall. He put his finger on the red number and looked at Giannetto.

  “Tomorrow is the 28th.”

  A look of terror went through Aurigi’s eyes. The strength of his façade had crumbled and he suddenly seemed deflated. He murmured convulsively: “Eh, it’s over.”

  De Vincenzi went to stand bes
ide him.

  “In it up to your neck, right? Like this?”

  Giannetto’s mouth contorted in a sinister smile.

  “But you’re joking, De Vincenzi! What are you trying to say? Simply that it’s the end of the month… And I said so myself.”

  “So you did. The end of the month and of the accounts. Textiles?”

  “They’re coming back!”

  “And you?”

  “And me? I have steel.”

  “Which is falling.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I see it written all over your face.”

  “Yes, it’s falling. It’s inexplicable, but that’s how it is. I’m having a terrible time, De Vincenzi. You said: ‘up to your neck’? It’s worse, much worse.”

  He got up and took several steps across the poky room, moving like an automaton.

  De Vincenzi watched him, unable to say at that moment whether he felt greater apprehension about the fate of his friend or a more cold-hearted desire to see him up to his neck in it and discover his hidden secret.

  “Come on, you’re a fine gambler! You have been since school. You’ll get through this, you’ll recover.”

  Aurigi then spoke hurriedly, as if to free himself by getting it all out.

  “No, I can’t sustain it. This time I can’t take any more. It was already serious last month. I had to plunder all my resources. If I told you the sum you wouldn’t believe it. This month I had to recoup and I risked everything. I dropped the textiles and bought steel… more than I could. Like a madman, or a clairvoyant, which is more or less the same thing. You won’t understand.”

  “I understand you. Go on.”

  Aurigi stiffened.

  “Why? Why are you making me speak?”

  “Isn’t that why you came here, to me?”

  “To tell you about my ruin? You’re mad! To what end? Can you give me a half a million? You? Ha ha!”

  He laughed. It was clear that he couldn’t keep from laughing at the idea.

  “Can you give me half a million?” he repeated.

  “No, obviously I can’t give you that sum. But Count Marchionni…”

  Giannetto stopped and looked at De Vincenzi, his eyes bulging, as if he didn’t understand.