That was where the man he hated most of all, Mauro Ridolfi, rich sole owner of a building company, lived.
He imagined him as he had seen him a couple of years ago, with his light brown hair gathered into a pony tail which tended to disguise his real age in order to mix with younger groups of people where opening his wallet generously allowed him to make interesting acquaintances with beautiful girls who crowded the most fashionable clubs.
It was raining solidly and very few people were out at that time.
He parked the car in a space further away, on the other side of the road, put on a raincoat and opened an umbrella for protection against the rain. He cautiously approached the large white marble building, where the ground floor housed a shopping area with supermarket, coffee shop, newsagent and other shops.
The elegant building was about ten floors high, more than half of which were occupied by offices of prestigious companies, professional men, doctors and business consultants.
Above these were the residential floors.
Naturally Mauro Ridolfi owned half of the top floor, the attic, one of the most beautiful and prestigious apartments in the city, which he had kept for himself as part payment for the money he was owed for the design of the building.
Lorenzo hoped, and he was almost certain, that the engineer had not come home early.
He had been studying his enemy’s habits for a while, a fifty year old viveur who seemed to want to ignore the passage of time and who could not give up attempts at courting.
He thought that that Friday evening he would not be back before 2 am.
While he pretended to look at some books in a shop window, the automatic garage door was opened by remote control by one of the tenants on their way in.
Lorenzo quickly grasped the unexpected opportunity which made his plan even easier.
Flattening himself against the wall he slipped inside without being seen.
He waited until the tenant got out of the car and walked to the lift.
A few seconds later the garage was plunged into semi-darkness once again.
Cautiously, listening for the noise of his own footsteps, Lorenzo went to check.
The engineer’s garage was empty, showing he was still out, drinking a glass of stale whisky or pawing some high class prostitute.
He was used to paying for company, even a few hundred euros, just to keep up the appearance of a successful lover.
Lorenzo hated the man as soon as he met him.
He knew he was in the building industry and with his salary he could afford a standard of living a great deal higher than average. He never married and publicly proclaimed his permanent single status, the cause of jealousy and hate from many people.
Lorenzo waited impatiently, in a dark corner, gripping the cold metal object inside his jacket.
Some time ago he had thought up the plan and the alibi he constructed for himself which he thought was perfect in every detail. Now all he had to do was wait, but deep inside his heart he did not know whether he would find the courage to act at the last minute, to complete his insane plan.
He took out the pistol he had purchased in Austria.
He would soon have to use it and this time his hand would not shake.
He had spent a lot of time on target practice, but it was one thing to aim a pistol at a target and another at a man, even if it was the man he considered guilty of ruining his life.
He was not an assassin and tried to imagine how he would feel, afterwards… he started to doubt again.
He focussed his mind on the face that he loathed so much, his jaw tightened and the hate he carried inside seemed to grow more powerful.
The sound of thunder made him jump, it was pouring outside.
He pulled his raincoat even more tightly, clenching his fists and thinking back on the milestones in his life.
5
Lorenzo’s life had been neither easy nor hard.
He always had to adapt to what fate had in store for him since he was born fifty years ago, in the province of Brescia, on the other side of Lake Garda, living an anonymous life, like so many common people.
The third son of a numerous family, as soon as he completed his diploma he found a job as clerk in a chain of food stores which had branches in the town where he lived.
As faithful and strict with himself as with others, he made a career out of the job until he gained the trust of his employers and became a director of one of the most important branches in the county town.
His natural interest in good eating and continuous contact with the many speciality foods which filled the shops he managed contributed to his robust build.
Of average height with brown eyes, he had gradually lost some of his hair thanks to ever-increasing problems in dealing with the range of goods, the staff turnover, and supplies of all types.
Just how good and meticulous his work was had been noticed and he had been headhunted by a competitor group who offered him a new position in Verona.
Apart from his family he had no particular friends or love interests in his birthplace, so he graciously accepted the offer of both a promotion and a much higher salary.
He threw himself into the new job, giving up even more of his spare time and his life, finally becoming the manager of a section of the shopping centre.
He had spent long hours in his office, on average 12 hours a day, so absorbed in his work that he probably did not even notice the years flying by.
Then he met Valeria.
Blond, slim, pretty, nothing particularly attractive about her, Valeria came from the countryside where she had worked side by side with her parents and brothers until then.
Fed up with farm work which she really did not seem to be cut out for, she went to work as a shop assistant, ending up as a cashier in the hypermarket managed by Lorenzo.
They got married a couple of years later and had a son.
Their married life was serene, normal, but then Valeria got bored and fed up with family life she demanded more freedom from her husband, and started to go out with a new group of friends. Women-only dinners on Fridays, evenings out at the discotheque…
They started to grow apart, slowly; a crisis smoldered under the embers.
They had received an invitation to dinner in a luxurious restaurant on the banks of Lake Garda. Valeria introduced him to her circle of friends, but Lorenzo felt uneasy in their company.
During the meal, which he could still clearly remember, Mauro Ridolfi was the Amphitryon of the evening, ostentatiously showing off his wealth with the complicity of the other woman, whose husband seemed to go along with the game.
If Ridolfi, an incorrigible womaniser, picked up the slightest moment of desire from any woman present he would try to make short work of the conquest, without even thinking about the effect of his actions on others.
Lorenzo could hardly miss the particular attention Ridolfi was openly showing Valeria who passively enjoyed all the attention, playing it against her husband as if to say “see, I still have lots of admirers, I am only 35 and have my whole life ahead of me”.
They had a fight in the car on the way home which ended up with him forbidding her to see those frivolous friends again, people she had nothing in common with.
Completely overwhelmed with the fumes of the evening and beside herself with rage, that night Valeria abandoned her husband in the marital bed and slept on the sofa.
From then on everything changed, Lorenzo started to detest her and she ceased to exist for him.
One evening a bouquet of roses was delivered addressed to Valeria with no card, but both of them guessed who had sent it.
In a moment of rage Lorenzo threw the flowers into the bin and they had a ferocious argument, followed by other even more serious ones which cracked their relationship to the point of unavoidable separation.
A dark period followed, during which Lorenzo had continued to build up a blind rage aimed at Valeria, who kept more and more to herself, isolating hers
elf from others.
Then..that day, that tragic evening.
Lorenzo had several reasons to hate that dandy and had checked that he was not the only person to have threatened him in public.
In fact the man was surrounded by false friends thanks to his arrogant and provocative ways which had caused arguments with several people.
He had wished him dead more than once, he had dreamed of it, had prayed he could read in the papers one day that he had driven into the side of a lorry in one of his custom-built cars…
He stroked the pistol he had inside his jacket, his hands were sweating but this time he would not leave without killing him.
Anyway, no one would cry for the man, apart from some of his particular friends and the prostitutes he kept. Lorenzo would be doing a favour for most people who knew Ridolfi well and his name would just be one more on the long list of suspects.
A rustle behind him interrupted his thoughts and made him jump.
His heart started to beat wildly, his breathing became heavier and his first instinct was to flee and give up his insane vendetta.
As soon as his heart stopped pumping in his ears he tried to hide even more, pressing himself against the car which was his cover.
The shadow stopped, as silent as a ghost….
6
The heavy metal garage gate was opening.
Preceded by the typical throb of gears being changed down, a Porsche sped quickly and safely into the garage and straight into the correct numbered space.
Disappointed at having spent a terrible evening at the end of a not exactly brilliant Friday, Ridolfi turned off the engine and leaned back into the seat.
He enjoyed the feel against his skin of his white silk shirt, worn under a jacket of the same colour, his rust coloured trousers resting on hand-made shoes.
The spring outfit was unsuitable for the wet and nasty evening that April day had ended in.
He checked the elegant Rolex watch on his wrist.
It was almost 2am, an hour at which his physique, on the verge of passing the half century, was at its lowest physically and mentally of the day nearing its end, never before midnight as usual.
He was returning from a drive in the car, directed nowhere, the same nowhere his life was heading to even though, unlike his affairs of the heart, his business affairs were prospering.
He had many diverse interests, owned many apartments and was building more.
He had money, success and… solitude.
He loved acting up for his friends, constantly surrounded by people, he loved being amongst beautiful women and pursued fun at any cost, but his love life could be considered practically a disaster.
Broken love affairs at the start of his youth and the desire to change girlfriends constantly which was rooted deeply in his own character had never allowed him to find a woman who lasted more than a month; he was always searching for something new.
He had thought briefly about leading a normal life, with a wife, children and a family.
Luckily money had filled a life made of nothing, even if many people envied him, the rich engineer Ridolfi, such a life.
He ran his fingers through his straight hair, always worn long, his face marked with age but carefully bronzed in tanning salons to a shade which clashed slightly with his teeth, stained not only by nicotine..
Inhaling the residue of the last sniff of cocaine of a few hours ago from between his finger and thumb, he opened the door with his left hand.
A loud sound echoed inside the garage.
Maybe it was the automatic gate closing…
“Who knows” he thought to himself.
He got out of the car, looking round…
The garage in the apartment block made him feel uneasy at the weekend when it emptied and the only cars left were the pool cars belonging to the companies who had offices in the prestigious building.
He should have built a garage with fewer car spaces.
It was his design and he had kept the best part for himself: the enormous attic from which he could enjoy a unique panoramic view of the city of Romeo and Juliet.
He glanced around the garage.
Silence…
The only sound was the rain which was still pouring down outside, beating on the roofs and the road, even if it was getting lighter.
He locked the car with the central locking button and started towards the lift but, patting the pocket of the black designer label overcoat he had thrown over his shoulders he realised he had left his mobile phone on the seat inside the car. He pressed a button to open the car again with a gesture of irritation.
At that moment the left hand of a shadow wearing a white rubber glove came out of nowhere, flew at him grasping him firmly under the chin and forcing his neck backwards, preparing it to receive the cold blade of a long sharp knife held in the other hand which, with a precise movement of the wrist, slit the carotid artery.
It was over in a second.
The engineer slid to the floor, his staring eyes fixed towards the ceiling of the garage, a strange expression of surprise painted on his face, without having seen the person who attacked him face to face, without having had the time to wonder why and how he existed, without being able to sum up his life, something he never thought about…
The body that guided the murdering hands moved to avoid the blood which had began to spurt from the fatal wound dealt to the victim, then moved back in to check that death had taken place, holding two fingers against the artery.
The assassin’s shoes, wisely protected by tight plastic socks, walked round the car, pausing briefly next to the well-known entrepreneur’s lifeless body.
Inside the jacket a gaping pocket showed it contained a wallet full of bank notes.
The hands checked the contents and calmly extracted anything of use.
They also picked up the mobile phone, the eyes seemed to memorise the list of numbers that moved down the screen and then it was thrown back onto the seat.
A foot stepped on the victim’s wrist, opening the limb and the hand in the white rubber glove pushed a black mask into it, forcing Mauro Ridolfi’s lifeless fingers around it.
The steps seemed to walk away, the shadow stopped for a moment, listening, as if he was thinking.
Suddenly in anger the hand struck the still body again, brandishing the long knife, slitting open the stomach…
7
Lorenzo opened the car window for a moment, directing the cool air of the last remaining April nights into his face and breathed deeply. His heart was pounding with the effects of the emotion he had just experienced.
The few cars on the road were racing to their destinations, unknowing and not caring about what had just happened, quite close by.
Nobody had sounded an alarm; no-one had seen anything.
He glanced again at the tall, elegant building, his hands locked round the steering wheel unlike his normal driving style, as he drove at top speed to reach his hotel in Austria, 350km away, before dawn.
During the return journey he thought about everything that had happened, the images running through his mind as if in a dream.
It had been much easier than he had imagined and planned for weeks, he didn’t even have to open the garage doors with the bunch of keys he had prepared.
He asked himself if he made any mistakes, but even if he had, it was done now and he had… enjoyed watching the death of the man who had ruined his life.
He could still see the hand that struck, killing, and then all that blood and the red that had spread over the hated man’s white shirt.
His eyes filled with tears and rage and memories flooded into his mind.
With painful nostalgia he recalled the first few happy years of his relationship with Valeria, their wedding, Giulio’s birth…
Long before dawn he reached the hotel.
He parked the car a short distance from the main entrance and walked towards a side entrance, for which he had a key.
He silentl
y walked up the steps in semi-darkness, without being seen, and entered his room. He turned on his personal mobile phone that he had deliberately switched off and left beside the bed, checked it for any calls and started to undress.
He opened the window and breathed in the fresh air brought to him on a gentle breeze. He loathed all the sounds of daytime and so he loved the lake. It was silent, its waters dark, slightly ruffled by the night breeze.
He admired its beauty.
The pale light of the moon barely lit it, giving it a blue tone, but he saw it turn red, a dark red, similar to the small lake of blood in which he pictured the body of Giulio, there, on the road, beside Valeria’s car.
Lorenzo had already lost both his parents, but had no idea of the immense pain of losing his own son. He relived the tremendous sensation he had felt that day, so very different to the sense of emptiness he felt each fortnight, when he had to return him to his mother.
He remembered those moments…
First total despair replaced by fury exploding inside him.
He had sworn against his wife, who was paralysed in a corner with her eyes desperate and empty. He had shouted his fury with every type of damnation against those responsible for his loss.
Ridolfi was one of them.
His life, previously upheld by that love, from that moment on was maintained only by the desire and determination to get revenge.
He shuddered with pleasure at the thought of Ridolfi’s body covered in his blood and let out a groan of despair.
Now he had to find the ruthlessness and lucidness he needed to complete his plan.
The wind whistled through the pine trees which flanked the lake, its cold breath making him shiver.
He closed the window and hurriedly changed into his pyjamas.
He went into the bathroom, swallowed a couple of his usual sleeping pills and lay down on the bed, breathing heavily.
The silence in the room was broken only by the noise of his breathing.
Darkness came at last and with it the desire to sleep, mixing rest with dreams, the present with images from the past, a time when he thought he had reached the tranquillity of a peaceful life which now he found only in dreams.
Dark Peony Page 3