It had been everything to her, from the moment she first glimpsed it in the form of a line of type on an impersonal lab test result, except what it really was.
A baby. Her child. Flesh and blood, a gaze, a voice, thoughts in a mind. A hand on her face, the smell of its breath, the intensity of love. Her child.
In a feverish dream, in the pain of her own empty womb, Eleonora glimpsed him. She imagined seeing him at school, serious and responsible, his little black smock and a book bag. Playing football with grit and commitment, not especially good but fiery and stubborn. Running straight towards his grandparents, hugging them tight. And in her arms, fast asleep with a smile on his face.
In the fever and the pain of her own empty womb, Eleonora met the son whose death she had decreed. She watched him being born a thousand times; she felt the searing pain of losing him. She felt him sail away from her on the wings of her own lost love, becoming a ghost of the past like the man who, together with her, had conceived him on that very same bed, on an afternoon of dreams and caresses.
Eleonora waited for her fever to subside and then she dragged herself to the table. She picked up her pen and wrote a note to the one person who had always understood her even before she opened her mouth to speak, and she enclosed the story of the seed that had been planted in her belly. She told that person of her dreams and her illusions, describing how they had vanished into the air so that she no longer wanted to go on breathing. She described places, faces, and feelings. She included first and last names, because she wanted to be sure that none of this would be forgotten.
Most important, she described her baby, the baby that would have been: the facial features that now no one would ever see, the imaginary resemblances and the hypothetical character traits. And as she reread it, she decided that there had never been a baby as real as this one.
As she wrote, in order to ensure that all of this would be remembered, Eleonora realized that without her little angel she had no desire to go on living. Without her child’s love, without the honor and affection of her family, she knew she lacked the strength to go on. She could have overcome every obstacle, but not the absence of her baby.
As she wrote, Eleonora realized that she had striven, paid for, and pleaded for her own unappealable guilty verdict.
Eleonora has sealed the envelope. She’s written a name on the front. Someone will deliver it.
She gets up and struggles to open the window. The air—damp, muggy, and foul with smog—rushes into the room. Eleonora climbs on to the windowsill. It takes quite an effort, what with her fever, what with her empty womb.
And like the rain, like her tears, she falls.
De Matteis looks thoughtfully up at the ceiling. Then she turns to Piras.
“And there’s one more thing that I remember, now that I think about it. A few months later I went back to the university, to pay my enrollment fees, and I bumped into a classmate who told me that the girl had killed herself. Sad story, eh?”
CHAPTER 53
The old man keeps the lights off. He’s accustomed his eyes to the shadows; he can make out the silhouettes of the furniture and other objects. That’s all he requires. He has what he needs in his hands, the only object of any importance.
A pair of binoculars.
He took his time picking them out—almost twenty days of internet research. The street is twenty-five feet and five inches across: the satellite map is accurate to the twentieth of an inch. The thickness of the two walls amounts to one yard eleven inches, and it’s twenty feet from the outer wall of the property to the wall of the villa. His choice had fallen on a pair of roof-prism binoculars—an older technology but much more reliable over short and middle distances.
The old man moves cautiously over to the curtain and, without opening it, focuses his binoculars on the villa through the central opening.
There are two windows lit up, plus one that emits the pale blue brilliance of a television set. On the upper floor is the baby girl’s bedroom. He can just glimpse the bars of the crib, with the colorful butterflies turning overhead. Every so often, the baby’s hand spins the butterflies as she extends her fingertips to touch the lowest-hanging one. The little one learns quickly.
In the kitchen on the ground floor, the woman moves around, busy with countertops and utensils. Near the microwave is the room monitor, picking up the sounds in the baby’s bedroom. He’ll need to keep that in mind.
In the little living room he can glimpse, in the half-light, the silhouette of the man’s feet propped up on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Still at home, the old man thinks.
He looks at his watch—the glowing phosphorescent spheres show 9:05 P.M. He sees the small red car slow down and pull up in front of the gate. The young woman says goodbye to her boyfriend, their heads merge in the shadow for a long, lingering moment: a sweet kiss, see you later. She gets out and blows another kiss, then wiggles her fingers. Ciao, caro.
She walks up to the single-button intercom and rings. Through the kitchen window, the old man sees the woman move briskly and buzz the front gate open. She presses the lower button. So that means: top button, answer; bottom button, open gate.
The girl enters, turning one last time to look at the red car, which pulls away and vanishes down the street. Good boy, the old man thinks. Never leave a girl alone waiting to be admitted. These are dangerous times we live in.
The hall light comes on; the woman opens the door and welcomes the girl inside. Prego, come right in. Come with me to the kitchen; let me show you what I’ve prepared for the evening. You can eat some of this, and here I’ve got milk for the little one—all you have to do is heat it up.
The old man follows each movement and reconstructs snippets of the conversation. He almost has the impression that the binoculars are transmitting the audio as well as the video.
The father has risen from the sofa and climbed the stairs, perhaps to put on his jacket and overcoat. From his observation point the master bedroom is out of sight. Then the woman goes upstairs, while the girl lingers in the kitchen.
Now the girl heads upstairs too. She enters the nursery, at the top of the stairs, first door on the right. Seven seconds at a normal pace. The girl leans over the side of the crib and starts to coo at the baby; the old man can see the little hands in the air. The girl picks her up. She smiles at the little one.
The parents come in: now everyone is in the nursery. They say goodbye to their daughter. They’re all dressed up, going out for the evening. They disappear from view and fifteen seconds later they emerge from the front door and head for the garage. The old man counts, murmuring under his breath: one, two, and so on, to twenty-five. Then the garage door opens and the black Mercedes glides out silently. The automatic gate swings open, then the car pulls out and turns up the street, heading for the corner. The old man manages to glimpse the brake lights as they glow red at the junction, before pulling out into the traffic on the main road.
He turns on the desk lamp and jots down a series of numbers on a sheet of paper. Intervals, he thinks. The timing of the intervals: that’s fundamental.
Once he’s done making notes, he switches the light off again and picks up the binoculars. In the kitchen, the girl is talking animatedly on her cell phone. In the baby’s room, the little night-light glows sky-blue.
The old man moves his chair over to the window and settles in for the night.
CHAPTER 54
Piras went to see Lojacono at the San Gaetano police station so she could give him the news immediately.
The driver hadn’t even brought the car to a halt before she’d already thrown the door open and was out, racing up the stairway leading to the offices. The inspector was at his desk in the Crime Reporting Office, killing time by rereading for what seemed like the thousandth time the ballistics report and formulating theories on what make of gun had been used in the murders.
Giuffrè had told him about Letizia’s visit to the loony bin. Lojacono was sorry to hear that his only real friend i
n this city should have felt so neglected that she had begun to worry about his health, but he was also a little flattered. Maybe this evening, if he had time, he’d drop by the trattoria.
Piras burst into the room like a cyclone.
“Giuseppe, big news: De Matteis remembered something that strikes me as important.”
Giuffrè, blasted awake by Piras as he was dropping off for a nap, leapt to his feet and executed a comical rendition of a salute while at the same time trying to put on his glasses. Piras didn’t even seem to be aware that he was there.
“Really? That’s great, Laura. And what did she tell you?”
“She remembered that, when she was at the university, she gave the address of the place where Lorusso and . . .”
Just then she noticed the existence of Giuffrè, and said, “Giuseppe, maybe we should talk this over outside, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Lojacono replied, grabbing his coat.
As he followed her out of the office, Giuffrè murmured, “What now, you’re on a first-name basis? With Piras? By any chance . . .” The open-ended question was accompanied by a graphically obscene gesture.
Lojacono responded silently with another equally offensive gesture and caught up with Piras in the courtyard.
“So, you were saying?”
Piras told him briefly what De Matteis had remembered about her old classmate: how she had decided to have an abortion and then committed suicide.
Lojacono scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Then we need to get to work immediately. We need to go through the records for 1996, find out whether a girl named Eleonora, residing in this city but born elsewhere, actually killed herself. If we find her, then once we’ve determined her last name and hometown, we find out whether she has relatives, and if so, talk to them to learn whether this event can in any way be linked to these murders.”
Piras nodded. “I’ve thought of all that already. On my way over here I called my assistant and asked her to get on it right away. She’s searching through the archives as we speak. What do you think will happen now? Do you think the Crocodile might stop, now that he’s killed Rinaldi’s son?”
Lojacono squinted in thought. “It depends. We still lack the evidence to determine whether this is revenge or something else. To my mind, murdering children is too big a statement to make extortion the likely motive; and if this is vengeance, then we have no way of knowing how many people are involved.”
Piras agreed. “Well, how do you think we should proceed?”
“First of all, we need to identify the suicide as quickly as possible; only then can we try to figure out whether a family member or someone connected to her is involved.”
Piras was perplexed. “But if this is about revenge, why would he wait all this time? It’s been, what, sixteen years?”
Lojacono shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t have enough information yet. We need to keep digging. And hope for a little more luck.”
Just then Di Vincenzo hurried up, all out of breath. He didn’t give Lojacono so much as a glance and instead spoke eagerly to Piras.
“Dottoressa, they told me you were here. What’s going on? Is there any way I can be helpful?”
Piras gave him a frosty reply. “No, Captain. No more helpful than you’ve been so far, at any rate. But tell me: have there been any developments in your investigation?”
Di Vincenzo flushed bright red. “We’re in the process of checking out Ruggiero’s alibi and the alibis of his entourage. They claim that they were dining in a restaurant in Piedigrotta, and so far the waiters have all confirmed his story. Of course we won’t stop there, and—”
Piras interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “That’s fine. Draw up a nice report, in triplicate, and let me have it. Not until you’ve checked it all out, of course. Let’s go, Lojacono. We’ve got a lot to do.”
They vanished with a squeal of tires, leaving Di Vincenzo fumbling for something more to say.
CHAPTER 55
Hello?”
“Doctor Rinaldi?
“Yes? Who is this?”
“Buon giorno, Doctor. This is Marta De Matteis. We saw each other a few days ago at . . . We ran into each other a few days ago, if you remember.”
“Ah, signora. Of course. Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“First of all, let me apologize for the intrusion. I asked a mutual acquaintance for your number—perhaps the only person we both know who has a modicum of discretion—Rosy Stammati.”
“I’m at your disposal. Please tell me how I can help. Would you like to make an appointment?”
“No, Doctor, no. That’s not the reason for this phone call. Actually, I’m calling to tell you a story.”
“Signora, excuse me, I’m rather busy just now. I’m organizing . . . Well, you can imagine what I’m referring to. And I have a number of decisions to make, I have so many things to . . . Perhaps a little later in the month, in a couple of weeks, we could speak again and—”
“Doctor, please listen to what I have to say: this is the first and the last time you’re going to hear from me. But you’re going to have to show me the courtesy of hearing me out. It will only take a minute.”
“Then go ahead, have your say.”
“Yesterday, Laura Piras came to see me. You know, the assistant DA who’s working on . . . on this case. It was an informal visit. She told me that what they’re thinking, their theory, is that you and I are linked in some way. That the kids . . . that this whole thing happened because this person, the one who did these things, has a motive, and the motive is us.”
“Signora, I know, but it’s clearly completely absurd. I can’t for the life of me imagine—”
“Doctor, please. She told me that the only way, our only hope of working back to an explanation, is to establish what the connection might be between the three of us: me, you, and the Lorusso woman.”
“Signora, now I really must put a stop to this, it’s nothing but a waste of both our time. As you know perfectly well, there is no connection between us. Unfortunately they’re simply stumbling around in the dark and this theory is proof if any were needed. As soon as I have the . . . as soon as I’ve organized this . . . thing, I’m going to make my voice heard at the highest levels, I promise you that.”
“They’re right, and you know it.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know anything of the sort! This is utter nonsense and—”
“All right then, listen closely to what I have to say. I’m going to tell you a story, and we can pretend that I’m talking about other people, in a long-ago time and a faraway place. A young girl from a small town—let’s say in Irpinia, or even from the Foggia area—comes to the big city to study. She meets a boy, she falls in love, they have sex, she gets pregnant. We don’t know the details—maybe because she’s afraid to tell her parents, or else the boy doesn’t want to become a father, or maybe she doesn’t want the child herself. In any case, she decides to have an abortion. She doesn’t know how to go about it and—”
“Signora, this whole conversation is absurd. And in any case, as you know full well, it’s perfectly legal in Italy to contact a hospital and request a voluntary termination of pregnancy—”
“I know that, Doctor. And it was legal even in the years when this story takes place. Just let me finish, please, and I won’t take up any more of your time. The girl, for reasons of her own that we don’t happen to know, decides not to go to the hospital. So she asks someone she knows. This person asks around and gives her a number and an address. The girl goes to that address and there she meets with a nurse and a physician.”
“Signora, that’s quite enough! I’m not going to sit here and be—”
“Afterwards, I don’t know exactly how much time later, the girl kills herself. That’s the end of my story.”
“I’m going to hang up the phone now, signora. At the risk of seeming discourteous, I’ll ask you never to call me again. I don’t know what it
is you’re trying to insinuate—”
“You see, Doctor, I’m the someone who asked around and got this girl—whose name was Eleonora and who was a classmate I met at university—the number and the address. It was back in 1996.”
“What is this, an attempt to blackmail me? Listen, I don’t accept your insinuation. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you but—”
“Doctor, it’s a completely different matter. The Lorusso woman recognized you, and she told Piras how and why. I was able to reconstruct the role I played in this story, and that role is the only link between us.”
“Signora, once and for all—what do you want from me?”
“At police headquarters, when Piras and that Sicilian cop whose name I can’t remember mentioned this to us, I told them that I didn’t care whether or not they caught the murderer. Because my life ended with Giada’s death. And that’s certainly true; nothing will change. I still won’t have any reason to get up in the morning, get dressed, and leave the house. I won’t have any reason to eat, read, or sleep. Ever again. Any more than you will, or the Lorusso woman. But if I have some way of understanding why this thing happened, if I think that I might have prevented it from happening again, to some poor innocent child that, even as we speak, that . . . man is watching, the way he did my daughter, before killing her, or him . . . I believe, Doctor, that if something we did resulted in our children being killed, then we need to know what it is.”
“Signora, grief can drive a person crazy. I know, I’m experiencing it myself right now. I beg you, get some professional help: you’re seeing ghosts that simply don’t exist. None of what you say is true, you’ve only been influenced by the incompetence of an attorney who’s in over her head and a policeman who’s out of his mind.”
“I did my part, Doctor. I remembered the face of that poor girl; I remembered her first name. I remembered how stupid and frivolous I was, how recklessly I obtained an address for her without stopping to think or care what might happen later, or whether that poor young girl needed help, money, or even just someone to talk to. I remembered the nonchalance with which, perhaps, I put an end to my daughter’s life so many years before she was even born. I did my part. And now that I’ve told you about it, I can go back to dying in peace for all the years that it finally takes.”
The Crocodile (World Noir) Page 18