Never More Than Twice

by Claudio Ruggeri

  “Not yet, should I?”

  “I don’t know, maybe I'm getting senile ... I want to rid myself of this doubt, however, so go to the archives and bring me the dossiers for the last five suicides that we investigated, then I'll explain. In the meantime, I'll go get myself a coffee and ... we’ll meet here again in ten minutes.”

  “Ok Vincent.”

  His visit to the café kept the chief busy for more than a quarter of an hour. In fact, in addition to his desire for a good coffee, he also added something sweet to eat.

  On his return he found inspector Parisi there in his office, already waiting for some minutes, this time in his usual chair.

  “Here they are Vincent, I brought you six since the last two were pretty close together.”

  “Good.”

  “The first was called ...”

  “Wait, just show me the photographs.”

  After a couple of minutes and a careful analysis in absolute silence, a slight smile appeared on the chief’s face, but not one of those about to break out into boisterous laughter, but rather a bitter laugh, typical of those who find out they were right when they would have preferred not to be.

  “Look, Angelo ... look at how the bodies are positioned in an ordinary case of suicide, and then take a look at the body of Laura Rocca.”

  Inspector Parisi rose from his chair and walked behind the chief, and then began to evaluate the photos while leaning on the shoulder of his superior.

  “Actually, Vincent ...”

  “Tell me, tell me.”

  “It seems as though Mrs. Rocca had been laid there on the asphalt, yet ...”

  “Actually all those blood splatters around her would by themselves already reveal the truth.”

  “So therefore what Vincent? If this is not a clever set up ...”

  “I’m afraid that’s what it is, unfortunately, but perhaps it began slightly before than when you might think. Look again at the photos of Laura Rocca’s body. Isn’t there something missing?”

  “I don’t see anything, Vincent....”

  “Exactly, you only see policemen. When did you ever go to the scene of a crime and be able to work in peace? Without any relative or friend of the victim there to ask you continuous questions?”

  “Never.”

  “Who called 113 that day to report the incident, Angelo?”

  “I think it was the gardener, but wait and I’ll get that file ...”

  After a few seconds they found out for certain that Attilio Mari, the villa gardener, had called the police while seeming to be in the grips of hysteria.

  Germano then asked his friend Parisi to go back to the archive and find the audio recording of that phone call, because all of a sudden, the chief had a very strong desire to listen to it.

  While Parisi, taking mental note of what he had to do, left Germano’s office and headed for the archive, the chief returned to the photos of the suicide of Mrs. Rocca. Still observing the body, he drew a further conclusion, one he reminded himself to share with Parisi as soon as he returned.

  Alone with his thoughts, Germano began fiddling with the notebook he always carried in his pocket. Reflecting on the situation, he had to admit to himself that the investigation was worth continuing. There was work for them to do, although he was not yet quite sure if that message in the bottle had any connection to this strange suicide.

  The return of the inspector into his superior’s office was so sudden that Germano, deep in thought, almost fell off his chair.

  “Here it is, Vincent. Let's listen to it.”

  “Hello Police.”

  “She's dead! She's dead!.”

  “Wait, where are you right now? Try to calm down ...”

  “The mistress is dead, hurry! An ambulance ... but maybe ...”

  “Tell me the address, please ...”

  The phone call ended with the voice of the gardener dictating the address of the villa to the officer that was listening.

  “That wasn’t much ...”

  “That’s all there is, Vincent.”

  “I suppose he was questioned, at least later, this gardener ...”

  “Sure, I thought you’d ask me that, so I brought you his and the other interrogations of the people present at that time at the villa.”

  Parisi first handed him Attilio Mari’s interrogation and then the other two, those of the butler and the cleaning lady.

  Germano, trying to figure out who of the three people interviewed could have provided the most important details, began sketching the inside of the villa, thanks to the descriptions that were provided by all three. He also tried to place them in their exact positions when they heard the dull thud when the woman fell.

  The aforementioned Attilio Mari was watering a hedge about twenty meters from the villa, in a position that was directly in front of the main entrance door.

  The cleaning lady was on the ground floor, cleaning the glass of the big window, as she called it, which illuminated the dining room by letting in the outside light.

  The butler was on the first floor, very busy preparing a dish with French wine.

  Both of these last two claimed to have been alerted only when they heard the cries of the gardener, not before.

  Mrs. Rocca jumped from her room on the third floor of the east wing of the villa, in utter silence, without making even the faintest of sounds.

  Watching him so busy sketching, Parisi thought he’d ask Germano why he was being so enthusiastic with his pencil.

  “You’re curious, huh, Angelo? How much did Mrs. Rocca weigh?”

  “According to the file ... about a hundred and ten pounds.”

  “I think so, too. Now look at those photos again ... there is an item that you haven’t noticed, but I can’t blame you, since you don’t have any children ...”

  The inspector again took the photo of the body and stared at it for a long time.

  “Were you referring to the woman’s legs, Vincent? In fact, they are ... they seem almost in a fetal position.”

  “Exactly, just like a kid when you take him to bed after he’s fallen asleep on the couch ...”

  “So how do we proceed?”

  “Has the case involving the woman’s suicide been closed?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, then I see no reason to do it now. Call all the others and bring them back here. By the way ... how are our dear colleagues finding their new life at the monastery?”

  “I think in a few more days they’ll have gone crazy, Vincent!”

  “Ah ... just as a curiosity, in the end how did you all agree to communicate?”

  “Nothing special, they’re supposed to throw a marked envelope into the recycling, the one for paper, of course, then the refuse operator who comes by to gather it, who already has an agreement with us, would call to let us inspect the bags once they had driven the truck a certain distance from the convent.”

  “Wow, that’s an ingenious method ...”

  Having finished off these last items, inspector Parisi headed toward his office with the order to return with his colleagues. This all could be accomplished with a few phone calls, one to the director at the country club and the other to the Mother Superior of the convent.

  In the latter case the unsuspecting nun, perhaps eager for a bit of excitement, proposed a nocturnal escape of his colleagues to the inspector as the only viable solution.

  Parisi wanted to point out that, actually, there was no reason why Pennino and Fiorini should have to leave the convent in any manner different from that in which they had entered, that is during the day and after their departure had been announced, but he chose to remain silent.

  Germano, once advised of this minor inconvenience, however, preferred to fix the briefing with his colleagues for that night around midnight, and then to give everyone the morning off.

  The cool of the evening and the scent of jasmine accompanied the chief on his way to the office. After supper, in fact, he had asked his wife to take him t
o the police station and, with the excuse of not letting Arianna block up that dead end road because it was difficult to maneuver, he got out a few hundred meters away in order to take a walk.

  It was only a few minutes to midnight when, pleasantly surprised, the chief found his colleagues already in the office waiting for him.

  After greeting them and having given a wry smile to his two female colleagues, he briefed all those present on the latest, unexpected developments.

  Needing to be analyzed, again and even more carefully, were the depositions of the three who were present at the time of the suicide, those of the gardener, the butler and that of the cleaning lady. This task was entrusted to inspector Di Girolamo.

  Inspector Parisi, instead, would have to review all the phone records of the Rocca couple starting from the previous eight to ten months; Germano instructed him to pay particular attention to the days immediately before and after December 2 and May 20, that is, the dates in which, respectively, the two were found dead.

  Fiorini and Pennino were to check on the body of Mrs. Laura Rocca, which in fact had almost immediately been made available to the family for the funeral.

  Inspector Gianni Piazza and Venditti were given the job of investigating the other body, that of the husband. They would have to find out where he was buried and to determine, as indeed their colleagues should do with the body of his wife, whether there was any cause for requesting exhumation.

  Germano exempted the latter, however, from having a chat with the doctors who certified the death of Mr. Rocca. This task, in fact, he planned to undertake himself the next morning.

  Chapter 5

  The hot sun of early June, alternating with some clouds that weren’t too threatening, was waiting for the chief outside his front door. On leaving, Germano checked inside his pockets to make sure he’d brought along the note on which he had written the name and address of the first doctor that he would visit.

  The name, Fausto Laudati, didn’t reveal much. With the limited information he had been able to gather, he appeared to be the owner of a clinic near Frascati. Thanks to the light traffic and the short distance, it didn’t take more than ten minutes for Germano to arrive at Dr Laudati’s office.

  A gate about one meter and a half high, which led to an alleyway that was reachable only on foot, was the chief’s destination.

  Germano was let in and seated by Laudati’s smiling secretary. When she asked if he had come for a prescription, he immediately showed his police ID to the woman, who then began smiling a little bit less.

  As soon as the doctor’s current patient had left, the doctor signaled to Germano to enter, to the disapproving glares of the others still waiting their turn.

  Fausto Laudati appeared to be an old and soft-spoken family doctor who was close to retirement. He unsuccessfully tried to conceal his surprise at finding a police chief showing up in his office in the early morning.

  “What can I do for you ...”

  “First I want to clarify that the investigation that I am conducting is in no way related to you personally.”

  “That’s certainly a relief.”

  “Yes ... on the other hand, I’m interested in one of your patients, a certain Ferdinando Rocca.”

  “Ferdinando Rocca you said?”

  “Yes ... a rather tall man around sixty-five.”

  “Oh God, at this moment ...”

  “Wait, I'm asking you because Mr. Rocca’s death certificate has your signature on it, therefore I concluded that ...”

  “Yes, it almost certainly will have been a death that I attended, however ... look chief, we family doctors have hundreds of patients that maybe we’ll see once a year, it’s almost impossible to remember them all.”

  “I realize that.”

  “However, if you wanted to wait a second, I could ask my secretary and have her bring me this Rocca’s file, whatever there is...”

  “Take all the time you need, doctor.”

  After calling his assistant with the intercom phone, she showed up in Dr. Laudati’s office with a few sheets of paper in her hands, placing them immediately in front of the doctor and then left.

  After putting on his reading glasses and having scrutinized the papers in solemn silence, Laudati winced.

  “That's why I could not remember him! Rocca had changed family doctor a month before his death, preferring to come to me rather than Dr. Padorni.”

  “Is this is something that happens often?”

  “Honestly, no, usually it only happens when your doctor dies or is transferred but ...”

  “But?”

  “Padorni is still in practice after twenty years of service and then above all ... he’s still alive.”

  “I don’t know, maybe he’s impolite or not very professional ...”

  “Padorni? But you must be kidding, chief! He’s much better than me, both professionally and with regard to politeness.”

  After a quick raising of his eyebrows, Germano resumed their conversation.

  “On the certificate it’s written that Ferdinando Rocca died between the hours 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm, so do you remember what time you went there?

  “Certainly not until the next morning. I don’t remember ever being away from home after supper because of my work, at least not lately.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “My wife has been in a wheelchair for five years now; I don’t ever go out in the evening.”

  From the tone of that last response, the chief understood that Dr. Laudati considered that the conversation was now closed. He shook his hand, thanked him, and wished him a good day.

  At this point, so as not to lose too much time, Germano called the coroner, Dr. Mastroianni, in advance in order to let him know he was coming.

  Upon getting there, a female colleague of the doctor led the chief directly to Mastroianni’s office through a back door.

  This time there was much less need for talk since the coroner had before him a folder showing his movements on the day when Ferdinando Rocca died. He’d arrived at the house two hours after Dr. Laudati, the family doctor, and did nothing more than draw up a death certificate confirming his predecessor’s perceptions. He thus confirmed both the time of death as well as it being brought on by natural causes.

  Coming out of the coroner's office and noting that he still had a few minutes available, Germano convinced himself that it was time for another coffee, and that the café that he found in front of him seemed like the ideal place.

  Just when he was preparing to order, the phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi chief, this is Piazza.”

  “Hi Piazza, what is it?”

  “We found out where Ferdinando Rocca was buried and we went to the site. In fact I'm calling right now from the cemetery. The only problem is that the body was cremated.”

  “Cremated?”

  “Right chief.”

  “I understand, Ok, that’s all, you can come back.”

  “Ok.”

  “Only one thing, Piazza ... find out who gave the authorization for cremation.”

  “Already did it, it was his wife.”

  “I got it ... I'll see you in the office in a couple of hours then.”

  “See you later chief.”

  Germano then had to get back in line to order his coffee. While waiting he took out his notebook and updated it based on the latest information.

  He had just signaled to the café attendant when the sound of his phone interrupted him again.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello chief, it’s Fiorini.”

  “Hi, any news?”

  “We tracked down where Mrs. Rocca was buried. Since it was a grave in the Prima Porta cemetery, here in Rome, we went there right away and we found it.”

  “Let me guess ... was she cremated?”

  “But how did ...?”

  “Just a lucky guess; previously Piazza also phoned me, only he didn’t say which cemetery he was in, any chance he’s
around there as well?”

  “No, chief, we spoke before and he was headed to the Verano cemetery. In fact it seemed a strange thing that a husband and wife were buried in different cemeteries ...”

  “Um ... did you already find out who authorized the cremation of the lady?”

  “Not yet, we're going now to ask that here in the office.”

  “Well, I'll see you at the office in a couple of hours.”

  “OK, see you later.”

  Before he could finally enjoy his coffee, Germano still had one more thing to do.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi Piazza, this is Vincent.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Before you come back, run over to the Verano cemetery offices, ask them and find out everything you can about why Ms. Rocca was not buried with her husband.”

  “It will be done.”

  “Good.”

  Germano, estimating with a quick glance at his watch that he still had time, decided to make a short inspection at the villa, or rather former villa, of the Rocca couple; so he started the car and left.

  The asphalt came right up to the huge gate that marked the entrance of the property, making it a fairly easy walk for the chief.

  The villa appeared extremely sad, with the blinds down and with dust that rose at every breath of the typical June sirocco wind, joining its whistle to that of the tree branches.

  A man who was quite old, with a cap on his head to protect himself from the sun, was engaged in carrying some black bags outside the property; walking through the main gate and then standing a few meters from him, the chief decided to have a chat.

  “Hello.”

  “No need for realtors, the house has already been sold.”

  “Actually, I ...”

  “In this way I also lost my job ...”

  Germano recognized the man in front of him as the gardener he had already listened to some time ago, so he decided to get to the point.

  He showed him his badge, and it was then that the old gardener began to stare at the chief with inquiring eyes.

  “Don’t worry, I'm not here to get further statements or anything like that.”

  The man didn’t seem at all convinced, so Germano tried again.

  “Even with a suicide there are, unfortunately, procedures that must be carried out ... it doesn’t matter if there is a culprit to be arrested or not.”