In the Caribbean things didn’t work out between them straight away, she couldn’t get used to the environment, I don’t know if they even slept together, I never asked Mauro.
When she got back her husband had put her suitcases outside the door.
The accountant was very hard, and I think he got a legal separation with joint custody or something similar. And to think that the trip to the Caribbean did not lead to anything much, because the story between Mauro and Valeria didn’t continue.
But her husband never forgave Mauro for organizing that holiday. One evening he even confronted him in the middle of the street, at the door of his studio, swearing that he would make him pay…
And Mauro had left them alone, maybe he did not even imagine what he had done, but unknowingly he had ruined a family.
Then last year there was a tragedy.”
“A tragedy? What happened?” Veronesi’s tone immediately became more attentive.
“Don’t you remember? Gianni?” Suzy instinctively covered her breasts, which seemed unable to stay inside the silk robe.
“There was an accident last year. Valeria was driving her car, her son was with her, she lost control, perhaps she was speeding and.. the boy died.
After that she closeted herself away at home and I think she lives alone, full of guilt. It’s best forgotten.” And she drained the glass. The DI started to think.
“Shall we have another one?” she asked, pointing at their empty glasses.
DI Veronesi, nodded, deep in thought.
27
With her usual sinuous movements Suzy went back to the bar and bent over to pour the drink into the two glasses, without managing to stop one of her breasts falling out of her silk shirt.
Then, with her magnificent shape boldly uncovered, she walked back smiling her white teeth, placing her lips on the glass, sure of the effect her gestures were having on the DI.
He took the glass and downed it in one, choking back a groan at the immediate heartburn. Susanna did not miss his gesture and, sure of the effect she had provoked in him, urged him further.
“Hmm! I must have some effect on you, dear DI, maybe you’re one of those men who got hard just watching me walk up the road, ten years ago, when I was in my prime..”
She had put down the glass of whisky and her hands rested on his shoulders, moving down to caress his skin, just underneath his shirt.
He was perplexed at first, not expecting the feline aggressiveness Suzy was displaying so naturally. Smiling, he weakly rejected her first approach, but Suzy wrapped one arm round his neck, while with the other hand she started to squeeze the area of his trousers where he hid his penis.
DI Gianni Veronesi was forgetting who he was and why he was there, but there was nothing he could do to try and resist such charm. The sensations soon won and, completely losing his self-control, he started to comply with her wishes.
Suzy, having beaten any resistance, did not hold back, she leant against him, letting him feel every inch of her body, starting to kiss him passionately, alternating small strokes of her tongue with other longer strokes, exploring his palate.
Suzy’s fingers had started the skilled game of a lover accustomed to all types of men.
“How long has it been since you had a woman? Your thing is about to explode.. so its true what they’ve been saying - that your wife hasn’t given you anything for a long time?”
Suzy was trying to provoke him, she knew too much, but her last phrase and the memory of Giorgia’s reaction in the studio that afternoon only increased his libido.
Instead of coming to his senses, the DI responded to her provocation by wrapping his hands round her body while his mouth nibbled its way towards her breasts, tormenting her nipples.
A small groan of pleasure escaped from her lips, revealing a part of her nature.
“I like it, when you hurt me. Follow me, let’s go upstairs!”
Suzy’s malicious eyes issued an order rather than an invitation; her hands controlled the stereo, playing hot Latin American music at whispered volume.
The interrogation had now taken a completely unexpected turn, possibly a form of desire deep in some part of the DI, who, after tasting the sweetness of Suzy’s body, could do nothing but follow her up the stairs to the upper floor.
It was an elegant attic, dominated by one large round bed in the middle of the room.
After giving him a light kiss, Suzy pushed him on to the bed and, taking off her now useless top, slid on top of him, unbuttoning first his shirt and then his trousers with calculated moves while Gianni had started to caress her impatiently.
She took his member in her right hand starting to masturbate him slowly and marvelling at its size.
“You know sir that you are a very big, not like your friend the engineer. Poor man, his was this size” and with her left hand she raised her little finger.
“That’s why his women never stayed for long, but the parts he couldn’t reach with that, he reached with money”.
The DI was stunned, and he would have wanted to interrupt the game played by Suzy, who acted as naturally as a royal courtesan.
“And yet.. he used to boast that he was a great lover and that he tried it on with all the women..” he panted, helpless slave to Suzy’s game of pleasure.
“Yes, even with your wife!”
“Yes, I know, it was an old story, from when they were young, before she knew me, but she always said that Mauro was a friend that she could not lose..”
“Yeah, I think they really were just friends. Your wife has such a gift from God at her beck and call, she would have lost out in the exchange.”
“Listen Susanna, let’s stop this!” Veronesi made a move to get up, he felt unable to enter her licentious world, even if it was not the first time he came across a prostitute..
“It seems senseless to me and I can’t allow…..”
Susanna stopped him, planting her perfectly manicured nails into his chest erotically and stopping him mid-sentence.
“Sssh quiet. Darling, I never receive clients in my own house. Only friends come here, I thought we were making friends.. this is not work, now it’s what I want. You excite me, I like you, I like men like you, the ones with money and the ones who have power over other men!”
She paused to think and then suddenly burst into loud laughter “And then, I’ve got hold of you”.
She licked her lips, smiling at the anticipated pleasure, looked at what she was still holding delicately in her hand and placed it in her mouth.
The DI, excited by the new stimulations, clawed the sheet into his fists, he seemed to be at his limit, but he resisted, sinking into absolute pleasure.. When Susanna realised he was close to reaching an orgasm she stopped, licked him with a last flick of her tongue and stared at him.
She dropped her trousers on the floor and pushed him off the bed. Pervaded by a sudden flash of libido in her eyes, she looked at him with a mixture of perversion and animal desire which no man could have resisted.
He watched, completely slave to her game, while Suzy went to the bedside table, took out a condom, ripped open the packet and placed it in her open mouth, holding the ring rigid with her tongue. She moved up to him, started to caress his body with her hands and slowly, kneeling in front of him, slipped it on with consummate skill.
After completing the operation with amazing professionalism, with one hand she drew a pair of scarves out of the open drawer and handed them to him.
“Tie me up!” she ordered, excited, stretching out face down on the bed, preparing to receive him.
Veronesi, his mind lost in the game which could have ruined him, no longer reasoned, obeyed mechanically.
He spread out her arms and tied her wrists to the edges of the bed, biting and stroking her back, obeying orders from Suzy who had started to twist, simulating a state of submission in which she controlled the game.
“Come on, rape me, hurt me, law man! I’m your slave and you can do anything to me
!”
He was on her, she showed him the part of her body where she preferred to receive pleasure and the DI, grasping her buttocks, started to sodomize her.
Susanna gave a suffocated groan of pleasure, starting to move her hips, pretending to resist while she guided him inside her, twisting her hands with gasps and cries in the ties which held her on the bed, as if she wanted to be released from the position that she herself had desired.
In that position, in an act which was not usual for him, Gianni felt trapped by her desire and had to crush her violently, as if he had to impose that male superiority which she herself had requested.
The action did not last long and at the end, exhausted, Veronesi slumped on top of her, with a hoarse cry, while Susanna sank her teeth into the sheet, groaning and panting with pleasure as she felt him unload inside her..
At that exact moment they heard the Mozart ring tone of his phone, which he had abandoned on the sofa in the room downstairs.
Veronesi came to his senses, jumped up, removed the condom placing it hurriedly on the edge of the bed, picked up his trousers and went downstairs.
Susanna stayed on the bed in the same position, abandoned, a little dazed but conscious..
She heard him rummaging with something and then saying “see you” which Susanna did not know whether was directed at her or someone he was talking to on the telephone, then she heard the door shut.
“Shit, just like all men, after he got what he wanted he leaves me here like a…. “
She didn’t even try to undo the ties, she was in no hurry, her face was relaxed in a vague smile of satisfaction; she was pleased with herself.
She stayed in the same position, re-living every moment of the pleasure she had just received, moving her body slowly on the sheet, forcing it to relax after the previous tension to enjoy the moments of peace that the greatest pleasure gave her.
A few minutes passed then she heard someone coming up the stairs with a light step.
“Hmm “ her moan anticipated a repeat performance.
“Are you back already ? Who was it? Your office?”
Silence again.
On her stomach, straining her ears to catch every possible sound, she tried to move slowly and placed her mouth next to the scarf tied round her left wrist to undo it.
The DI’s scarf started to caress her back, going from the buttocks upwards, up again towards her neck.
“Are you here already, where were you?” she tried to turn as from where she was she could only see partially.
“It’s you! You know, I really enjoyed myself..”
The person behind her, who Susanna evidently knew, wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled it tighter.
“A new game?” she burst out laughing.
“I know almost all the games now, careful not to squeeze too tightly, you could ruin my ski…”
She didn’t finish the phrase, the last syllable stuck in her throat, the black velvet covered hands had suddenly accelerated the tightening..
They squeezed strongly, Suzy’s hands could not come to help her thin neck, and her suffocated groan lasted a few seconds, while her tongue protruded from her mouth in a horrendous grimace, rendering her beautiful face ugly.
The killer stopped for a moment to complete the macabre work with a long, curved knife.
The killer lifted her left thigh at the groin and slit the femoral artery, then, still not satisfied, they sadistically checked the perfection of the sharp blade by stabbing the victim’s beautiful bronzed back, drawing precise lines of blood.
28
It was ten in the morning and Veronesi was drinking his second cup of the day that had just begun, while trying to analyse everything he had learnt from Suzy.
Yes, Suzy..
He had left her like that!
But how on earth did he end up playing her little game?
And yet he could not deny that he had enjoyed the experience.
He had thought about it all night, especially since his wife had not come home at all.
He had tried to call her, but her phone just rang and rang, she obviously did not want to answer him.
Saturno was right, something was weakening inside him or perhaps..
He pulled his thoughts back to the investigation. Now things were starting to add up.
The killer knew his victims quite well, he knew when and how to strike. Even if the walk the Barone couple took after the cinema no doubt helped him, he must have studied their movements.
He was good. He had left no evidence, but he had left a message, but for who?
It could simply have been a form of signature.
Someone who kills with a precise motive wants to be known with a name, killing is not enough; he often wants to become famous and attract the interest the media.
Money must be only a part of the murders and the investigators were not dealing with a psychopathic mind.
Was Patrizia Barone blackmailing someone in particular, perhaps together with Mauro Ridolfi?
The mask had something to do with revenge.
Yes, the motive was certainly revenge, at which point the list of probable killers included many, or few names.
This was not a killer who struck randomly, who hit in the crowd, but he wasn’t even a thief who wanted to be clever and put the police off the track.
After an hour of reasoning and scribbling his notes on scraps of paper, Veronesi realised that even though he was not right back where he started from, he had come to a dead end.
He belonged to the old guard and, like the majority of fifty year olds, did not have much love for the computer, preferring the old method of using a blackboard, it helped him think better.
He wrote down the name Ridolfi and circled it, then beside it on the left he wrote Cavasso and on the right Patrizia, with her husband’s name beside hers.
Further to the right and lower down he drew various circles containing question marks.
He drew several random circles and inside two of these he wrote the names of Lorenzo and Valeria Anselmi.
He put other question marks on a few other names of people who had been involved in purchasing apartments from the Engineer’s construction company which did not conform, where some heavy insults had followed, a few weak threats..
His instinct told him to discard those theories and concentrate on a few suspects.
The figure of Lorenzo Anselmi, the manager of the supermarket near to the building where Ridolfi lived, was not clear.
He connected Valeria’s name with an arrow to Ridolfi’s name and then with another arrow to that of Patrizia Barone and her husband.
He thought about Cavasso, an antiques shop full of swords and knives and a motive for removing someone who had become uncomfortable, given that he could have slandered his name in public by going round telling people he sold counterfeit paintings.
He also had a few more reasons for killing Dr. Barone who was holding his cheques due in payment for thousands of euros in his safe. The evening of the crime he was, however, in his usual bar. In fact there was someone willing to swear having seen him go back and forth to the toilet due to a sudden bout of sickness.
But why did the killer mutilate Patrizia’s body the most?
He stood up and went to open Saturno’s office door.
“Have we any news on the antique dealer’s movements?” he asked.
“No! Apart from the intervals when he goes to the bar he never leaves the shop, it looks like he sleeps there too. Maybe he’s doing a stock-take” the officer replied.
“Good, that simplifies matters. Come with me, we’re going shopping to the supermarket.”
29
Once inside the huge hypermarket surrounded by stalls displaying hundreds of products, Saturno asked the first assistant they met where they could find Anselmi.
She showed them the offices with open windows which were at the back, opposite the entrance.
While they walked past the shelves displaying th
e goods for sale, in a corner with reduced prices, dedicated to fluffy animals and toys for children, hanging from some metal hooks the DI spotted a bundle of black masks of the type usually worn at carnival. He pointed them out with a smile to his collaborator, sure that he was on the right track. He knocked and entered the office of the man he was looking for, shook his hand and looked him in the face, then he screwed up his nose. This was certainly not the type of man he expected to find.
Over fifty, of average height, more fat than just overweight, with a wobbly stomach more suited to sitting at a desk than training in the gym he never had time for, encroaching baldness, a short black beard, brown eyes, the kind eyes of someone who wanted a peaceful life, even if it meant having to work overtime every single day..
It is true that everybody has a killer instinct hidden within, but if this man had, he certainly hid it deep in the gorges of his character. He introduced himself.
“Anselmi, how can I help you?”
“I‘m DI Veronesi and this is Agent Saturno. I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you.
The overly confident look with which Anselmi greeted this request immediately changed his mind. It looked as if he had prepared an answer.
He replied that on Fridays he went to Carinzia, near Worthersee Lake, and stayed there all weekend to relax and think of nothing. If there were any problems the office could call him on his mobile, the Police could check that the mobile was in Austria last weekend. He took the hotel receipt he had kept out of a drawer.
And then, he added “There’s also the toll receipt which shows each time I passed. I arrived in Austria at 8pm on Friday and returned to Verona on Sunday afternoon to take some flowers to my son’s grave”.
“Did you know Mauro Ridolfi?”
At this Anselmi was less sure than when he had replied about his alibi.
“Yes, I did come across him once or twice and I didn’t like him”.
“Is it true you once threatened to kill him?”
“You say lots of things when you’re angry, but you don’t actually do them. But if you’re asking me if I’m sorry he’s dead, I can tell you l’m not! Ask anyone, they’ll all say the same. In fact, to tell the truth I’m glad and I’m not even sorry that his ruffian friend Patrizia Barone is dead either. I met her once at dinner.
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