Leave the suppositions you mentioned and that you had made on other investigations that do not relate specifically to this case. OK? If you already have a lead or suspects, go for it. Ask me for all the warrants you need and I’ll make sure you get them immediately, is that clear?”
Gianni Veronesi nodded and ran into his office, gesturing at Saturno and a couple of policemen to join him immediately.
What the Procurator had been referring to were his personal suspects that the individual who was terrorising the Friuli area with his bombs was an retired ex army officer expert in explosives.
He dropped the subject.
He sprawled on his chair, sinking into it; the very little sleep he had had underlined by the shadows under his eyes.
“We have to search the Barone’s house and office, open the safe where he may have kept cheques he got from their debtors. Maybe there is an explanation to be found. In the meantime send a car to keep an eye on that Cavasso, the antiques dealer. At the moment he’s all we have and he is bound to be connected to this couple of …”
“Loan sharks..?” Saturno finished his sentence smiling, while the other agent left the office.
“Saturno, I don’t know how to take you. You are either pretending or you..?
“I know what everyone knows. This city may be a little .. gossipy.. we’re not in Sicily! ”
“I should think not, thank goodness. But tell me one thing, while you are feeling in the mood for revelations, what do they say about me? That I never share my theories, that I’m not a team player? That I should have retired long ago?”
“Sir.. You are a highly respected man who perhaps did not reach the heights he expected because he did not want to leave his wife alone in this nest of vipers. They say that once you were really strict, too strict, but that lately, in my opinion, you have lost a little of your shine.”
Veronesi screwed up his nose at Saturno’s last words, they were a photocopy of what the procurator had just said to him and he peered at him doubtfully.
Maybe he was not as stupid as he looked.
21
Gianni Veronesi headed towards the Bar Ribalta for a snack, leaving his car in a parking space opposite.
While he closed the door he glanced at the buildings which surrounded it. Inside one of these was Dr Barone’s studio.
He walked towards the main piazza which, despite the bad weather which the spring continued to bring, was always full of happy looking people which always filled him with joy.
In spite of his surname, he was not born in Verona, but came from the province of Trento.
Ever since he was a little boy he had always dreamed of living in that wonderful city where he had studied at University.
How he had loved it at the beginning, he loved walking along with roads in the town centre and especially the splendid piazzas. Before obtaining his degree he had decided to join the Police to take part in one of the various competitions organized by the Ministry of the Interior, he felt he had the profession in his blood.
He remembered the evening, a few months after his first nomination, when he returned home to his family and went to see the Aida. It was there that he first met Giorgia, his same height, but a few years younger, a cascade of brown hair framing a full, confident face featuring two penetrating green eyes.
Destiny had placed them near each other to watch one of the most inspirational operas in the world, to listen to music rendered even more fascinating by those surroundings, taking advantage of the majesty of the arena.
Their eyes met in the dark, at the exact moment when the audience held up lighters to mark the start of the opera and their love had started with the same suggestiveness. Compared to the time that passed between their engagement and a marriage made necessary by Giorgia’s pregnancy, it lasted little more than a flame.
At first Giorgia didn’t even want to get married, she wanted to complete her degree in architecture in Venice. Then, thanks to the promise made by an ancient uncle near to retirement that she would take his place as partner in a famous architectural studio, she had managed to reconcile the pregnancy with her studies which she completed later.
For the first few years things went well, but their common desire to succeed in their own fields weakened their feelings which wasted away, taking second place to their different careers.
Their dying love had toned down the strong career aspirations held by Gianni, who at first had not spared blows below the belt on his more indecisive colleagues, if it meant advancing up the ladder of responsibility.
The possibility of an immediate promotion had arisen for him, at the suggestion of moving south Giorgia’s reply had been vague and evasive, she had probably never realised what marrying a policeman meant. She had not wanted to give up her job, her world, and not least of all her friends: she wanted to carry on with the same life, her girlfriends, the discotheques..
They had ended up fighting. After the first argument others followed, until their relationship was one long, never-ending battle.
Gianni could not bring himself to leave the family for his work and had to turn down the promotion, losing important backers who had supported him until then.
After that decision something had been broken forever and the more their son grew, they more they grew apart.
Gianni even started suspecting that his wife was betraying him.
In fact, they only made love rarely.
Solely because of his position they had not separated, both accepting the solution of a compromise which still lasted.
He walked into the coffee bar he wife usually preferred, where he rarely went to avoid comments from the latest gossips.
He immediately smelled hot toast and buns being ordered by regular customers. He did the same, taking a seat at one of the most hidden tables in the inside room.
There were a lot of people, eating in a hurry, commenting audibly on the passers-by, he saw no-one he knew when, before he had the chance to bite into the roll he had ordered, someone came in and asked the barman for him. It was Domenico Saturno.
“I saw you come in here from the window in Barone’s studio. We have opened their safe of secrets using a key we found in Patrizia’s bag, the one she used to defend herself from the killer. Maybe he was looking for the same key, but when someone opened a window in the villa he had to run away. There’s something very.. interesting in that small safe” he murmured in a low voice.
The safe was in a corridor that led to Dott Barone’s private toilet. Under the eyes of one of his employees, who promptly declared they knew nothing of the contents and of the whole thing that was emerging, the DI could have a clear and squalid picture of what must have been a money lending racket conducted from that respectable commercial studio.
There were several important cheques with monthly due dates which went up to the end of the current year.
Some immediately drew the DI’s attention because of the signatures he seemed to recognise, including that of Cesare Cavasso.
Others were for larger amounts, up to 50,000 euros each, with signatures which he did not know yet and which the Procurator’s Office would have investigated, followed by the customs officer, tracing the names from the banks they came from and the account numbers up to the holders who issued them.
Naturally not all of them could have had completely illegal implications, that would have meant totally losing track… but there was one in particular, for 10,000 euros that made him freeze.
It was written in flowing handwriting that he knew very well: his wife’s!
“If you added up the list of husbands cuckolded by Ridolfi with the list of the ones being fleeced by Barone, you could fill a telephone directory.” commented sarcastically Saturno who, as an honest employee on a fixed salary could not hide his glee at discovering the sins of the high society he could not stand.
Amongst the hot cheques, the ones almost due, apart from the one of 9,000 euros from the antiques dealer, there was one of 3,000 euros, written
in childish handwriting, clipped to a slip of paper with a telephone number.
Veronesi picked it up, repeated mentally the number and his memory did not fail him: it was the same number he had tried to call unsuccessfully the day before, the same one he found on the Ridolfi’s mobile.
He should have asked the telephone company to find the name the number belonged to, but first..
First of all he had to find out from Giorgia what a post-dated cheque with her signature on was doing in that safe!
Angrier than ever, he left his colleagues and ran to his car.
22
Veronesi stormed into the studio where his wife worked, and where he had not set foot for a long time.
Giorgia’s colleagues recognised him and he did not need to ask many questions before he discovered where she was, spotting her immediately behind opaque glass.
He walked in without knocking.
She was with a client, showing off her cleavage more than the plans she was demonstrating with her usual sensuality.
“Excuse me, I must speak to my wife immediately!” he said, stressing the word my and showing the innocent buyer to the door.
The client, together with all the staff in the office, followed the furious argument that started between the two from behind the glass.
Veronesi waved a menacing finger at her, while she stood up to him furiously.
“Tell me what you have to do with that couple of.. I can’t even begin to put a name to.. and why they have, or had, a cheque of yours. Is the money I give you and what you earn not enough for you?”
She stared at him, shaking with rage.
With a trembling hand she lit a cigarette, inhaled nervously and blew the smoke right into his face.
“No!”
“And the overdraft on your current account?” he insisted.
“That’s dried up too” Giorgia replied in a nonchalant tone.
It was at that moment that Gianni Veronesi forgot his manners and his job as a civil servant.
He slapped her with the full force of his open hand.
He took her by surprise and she burst into hysterical tears.
“I gambled the money! In Venice, with Laura, seeing as I don’t know where to spend my evenings and you have completely abandoned me, you haven’t been interested in me for years!”
“How many cheques have you still got outstanding?” he demanded, as if it was the only aspect he was interested in.
“That was the last one!”
“And how would you have paid it tomorrow morning?”
“With part of the commission I earned from Cesare Cavasso selling the false painting to Mauro.” she confessed in a quiet voice. Then she raised her face in challenge.
“I see, you were going to dupe your wonderful friend as well, or maybe you’d already done it before? A prostitute like you really can’t be trusted” he shouted, no longer able to hide his disappointment.
He slammed out of the room, straight into Laura’s flaming eyes, his wife’s best friend and inseparable colleague.
Tall, with short black hair, elegant in fraying blue jeans and a V necked jumper and a simple coloured jacket, she stared at him with her eyes as cold and dark as the night; he never had seen her smile. Her breasts heaved nervously under her sweater; a bra must always have been an optional for her.
He looked at her with disgust, pointed a finger at her and spat out “ Sooner or later you and I will have this out, you filthy lesbian snake!”
She clenched her jaw as if accepting his challenge and turned her head to one side, and ran to help Giorgia who was in tears in her office.
Gianni Veronesi left without shutting the door, beside himself with rage, leaving the few unlucky customers and his wife’s colleagues astounded.
23
It was daylight.
Diego was walking along a side street, keeping close to the walls of the houses.
He was wearing a pair of dark glasses to hide at least a part of his disfigured face, continuously pulling up the lapel of his raincoat with his left hand which he then put back into his pocket, while the palm of his right hand slipped inside his coat, stroking and massaging his left pectoral muscle.
He stopped for a moment at a traffic light attracted by a toy shop window displaying miniature helicopters, tanks, jeeps and plastic weapons for children.
He though about war, real war.
He had fought many, even in the name of the ideals of others…
In daylight, in the heat of the African savannah for some sinister war lord, or at night, amongst the cold mountains of the Balkans, in the name of freedom for someone, it made no difference to him.
There were no rules, apart from money and survival; he fought more out of instinct than for reason. The division between man and animal was already lost in him.
When he was in the Police force he learned how to defend himself, he could not attack but had to learn to control his instinct, but afterwards, in the profession he found for himself, it was different and violence became one of life’s necessities.
The massacres he had perpetrated had produced irreparable effects on his personality, without control the adrenalin had entered into his circulation permanently, even if something resisted it within him, according to his strange personal moral.
He looked at his left hand where only the skeleton of the articulations had been saved.
The memory of that moment still made him shiver.
It happened in Bosnia.
They were trying to attack a Serbian stationing where they could not break through the defensive links.
The enemy camp was marked out by a series of defensive fences protected by canals and all around it was full of mines, they had lost a few men already, the weakest point was the central door, the entrance to an antique construction in which they had barricaded themselves.
They all said that the end of the fight was close, but they kept on fighting back particularly violently.
The group Diego belonged to had thought it would have been easy to get rid of that station and had attacked without waiting for reinforcements, but things went badly straight away.
The first attack had failed and at the moment of retreat Diego, at the wheel of a lorry, had been left without cover.
The enemy fire concentrated on him, the most exposed target.
If he reversed he would have risked overturning, there was no choice and little time to decide.
Diego gave a quick glance in agreement with his companion sitting beside him, aimed towards the target and shot into gear at full speed in what could have been his last race, with an animal-like war cry, while his companion opened fire against everything they found in front of them.
The lorry smashed into a heap of stands and fences, causing a pair of soldiers to escape by leaping sideways.
Diego only had the time to hear the metallic sound of something hitting the front, under the nose of his vehicle.
The grenade exploded on his right, blowing up the fuel tank.
The door flew off, his companion was thrown out, staggered up, but a spray of bullets felled him to the ground.
Diego’s hands had stayed so tightly gripped to the steering wheel during that brief insane drive that the next flame after the enemy bomb exploded left his hands stuck to it, carbonized.
His legs did not have the strength or the agility to allow him to jump out of the truck before it completely exploded.
His cry of pain wiped out his previous battle cry and that of the Bosnian soldiers who, having stopped mid-retreat following his desperate action, immediately counter-attacked, running past his truck, shooting in all directions in a successful attempt to annihilate the enemy.
In the hospital where he was admitted to the severe burns department the pain was never-ending.
Flames had reached his neck and left their deepest scars on his chest, reducing it to a mass of raw flesh. Despite being filled with tranquillisers he felt as if he was underneath a burning sun making
him continuously twist in unending pain.
His hands hurt even more.
They appeared to swell up on the exposed nerve ends and then deflate, they twisted as if in a wave of pain that came and went without ceasing.
Only the needle of the nurse who injected a few extra milligrams of artificial paradise into his flesh gave any longed for momentary relief.
It lasted for more than a year, no-one knew he was there, no-one went to visit him, his companions were all dead, solitude was his companion, together with the odd book on techniques to bear pain, which he couldn’t even flick through.
In that period, in that place, where the winners’ thanks had allowed him to survive, there was very little equipment for plastic surgery and Diego did not even worry about it.
The scars of war he had gone through would never be cancelled, he would bear them forever.
The fresh breeze blowing along the edge of the Adige region brought him back to the present. He touched his hands where his levels of sensitivity had increased to the same as the antenna of an arthropod.
He crossed the river, checking the address written on a slip of paper, spotted the antiques shop and headed towards it.
He pushed open the glass door, causing the automatic bell to ring.
Cesare Cavasso was cleaning some objects in his back room when, hearing the door bell ring, he took off his glasses and hurried in to serve the new customer, muttering smoothly:
“One moment, I’m coming…”
His welcoming smile froze at the sight of his new visitor and his throat dried up.
The black, grim shadow, wearing dark glasses and a hat, who had appeared in his shop gave a quick glance around. His glance took in furniture and then stopped on the antique weapons displayed in the corner.
He spoke in an aphonic tone, almost without moving his lips, slowly, in the tone of one who is not willing to ask questions twice.
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