He zoomed in and enlarged the picture from various angles.
It could not have been a woman. It was a man, not very big, medium height… could it have been Anselmi if he had not been sleeping in a hotel room in Velden that night? Time was running out, very soon he would have to give himself up to the magistrates or .. run away.
Sweat was running down his back.
He was behaving as though he was the guilty party; from the hunter spider he had now become the prey.
The DI ran out of the station, he jumped back into his car not really knowing where to go. He tried calling Valeria Anselmi. Her telephone was off the hook as usual; maybe she was already in bed. He headed to her house.
He rang the bell several times. She was out. He waited, staring into space, his eyes as desolate as the neglected garden full of small green wild plants. Someone moved a curtain in the next house to watch him. He suddenly had an idea. The town cemetery must be somewhere nearby, he might find Valeria there and would in any case be able to satisfy his curiosity about something he had not thought of before.
The gate was open, but there was no one there at the time.
It didn’t take him long to find little Giulio Anselmi’s grave, a white headstone with small plants he recognised immediately, very different to the flowers normally found in graveyards. They were the same type as the ones in the garden he had just left. He remembered the little plants, they were peonies, his mother was fond of them but she always complained that the beautiful flowers lasted ten days at the most and then the petals fell off everywhere. He looked at the photo of the child. It showed Giulio Anselmi at the age of six or seven. He was overcome with a great feeling of sadness looking at it, even though it confirmed his theories.
The child was wearing a carnival costume, and he was holding a mask belonging to his favourite hero, Zorro. His instinct had not let him down. Now he had to check the alibi supplied by Lorenzo Anselmi, which at first sight looked so perfect for that night. He left the small cemetery in a hurry, after quickly crossing himself.
He did not notice while he was leaving that a shadow wearing a dark raincoat followed his every move. A blue Fiat Bravo parked a little way away caught his attention. He got the impression he could have been followed.
He got into the car, and started to adjust his rear view mirror, looking over his shoulder. He started the engine and drove slowly towards the city, but the other car followed him. At the first traffic lights he came across he suddenly turned right without signalling, accelerating, looking in his rear view mirror, but after a few meters he spotted the blue Fiat behind him again, a couple of cars away.
The DI had to accept the fact that he had been followed since he left the station. They no longer trusted him and he himself no longer knew who he could trust. Domenico Saturno? He was sure that he had already betrayed him. He felt a sense of frightening depression in feeling like a common criminal wanted by the Police. He headed towards the town centre, mingling with the traffic with the other car behind him all the way. After circling aimlessly a couple of times he accelerated towards the centre. The car following him also had to accelerate. When he was near the pedestrian area, spotting a road on his left he suddenly stopped, on the pavement. The car following him could not avoid overtaking him, followed by other cars whose drivers started to get agitated, sounding their horns. Gianni Veronesi grasped his chance to drive up the side street with squealing tyres disappearing from the view of his tail, leaving them to deal with the mad traffic.
His hands tightened round the steering wheel as he drove towards the motorway, heading for Venice and the Italian-Austrian border at Tarvisio.
40
It was just after four on Wednesday afternoon when he walked into the hall of the hotel in Velden where Anselmi had stayed the night of the murder.
He headed straight for the reception desk, showed his badge and asked to see the registry.
He checked the times, asked the porters to testify, everything matched.
He did note the confusion which reigned in the hotel reception area, Anselmi could have come downstairs unseen, remove the telepass card from his car, drive to Verona, kill Ridolfi and return without being noticed.
Encouraged by this theory he interrogated the receptionist again, but she assured him that Anselmi’s car did not move all night from where he parked it, as his keys had stayed in safe keeping at the reception desk.
It seemed that Anselmi really could not have killed Ridolfi.
He left the hotel disappointed, he had lost, his theory was a castle built of suppositions, now he had to return to Italy so that he did not make his own situation worse.
He started to pace nervously, searching for new ideas.
While he was walking he rubbed his eyebrows and his glance fell on a Rent A Car sign. At first it meant nothing, but then his face lit up. He returned to his car and drove to the car rental office.
He introduced himself in his official role and asked for the list of people who had rented a car the night of the crime. He consulted the list, starting from Friday morning and immediately noticed a name he knew so well. He pointed to the name and showed it to the clerk “This Anselmo Laurenti – do you know him?”
“Yes, he’s become practically a regular customer for the past couple of months. He comes here in his diesel and rents a fast two-seater, sometimes an Audi, sometimes a BMW. He says he likes to race around our narrow mountain roads and with his slow Ford.. “
The DI smiled for the first time in days and asked “Could you describe him to me?”
“That’s not necessary; we should have a photocopy of his ID card.”
He went to look for it and handed it to the DI.
“But this is Lorenzo Anselmi “ exclaimed Veronesi with satisfaction, recognising Anselmi’s face and small beard.
“No” insisted the clerk, and with laconic Austrian precision and a German accent he repeated “ Anselmo Laurenti”.
Gianni Veronesi paid no attention to his words and exclaimed “You clever thing, you’re mine, got you at last! You tried to confuse me with the names, but this time I’ve nailed you!”
And he left the office.
41
While he ran back to his car he formed the number for HQ and asked for agent Saturno. “DI. Where are you? The chief is looking for you. The procurator is asking for you. You were meant to be available, you were meant to stay in Verona but you turned off your phone!”
“I know. But while you were wasting time following me, I have discovered who did it! I checked the alibi supplied by that angel-faced Anselmi. It’s completely false, he thought he could fool me and, I don’t know how, he even framed me!”
“But Sir…”
“Listen, I want you to do something. Get a warrant and take another agent and go and arrest him, or at least control him and try to keep him in HQ”
“Really, sir, I really don’t think that Anselmi is the culprit, he’s …”
“Christ! You don’t understand and never will. Go to hell, you’ll never get promoted, I can guarantee that!” and he ended the conversation without hearing or even listening to Saturno’s last words “.. he’s sitting in front of me!”
Saturno shrugged and spread his arms in front of the calm and distended face of Anselmi, who was sitting in front of him. He had just confessed to having been told by some neighbours of a probable relationship between his wife Valeria and a man answering to the description of DI Gianni Veronesi.
42
While a few glimpses of a sun very close to setting started to appear from behind the clouds which had dominated the panorama for the last few days, on the way back to Verona the DI started to put together the links of the chain, connecting them and reasoning through each one.
Therefore, Friday evening Lorenzo Anselmi, who had set up everything, constructed his alibi. He had probably been studying Ridolfi’s moves and habits for some time.
He had hidden inside the garage, waiting for him, and then killed hi
m.
Sunday evening, after going home, he went to the cinema and by chance he went to the same screen where he spotted Barone and his wife. Overcome by a sort of bloodthirsty demon, convinced he had been successful the first time, he had decided to complete his vendetta.
Who kills once can kill a second time and so on..
He left the cinema before the end and went to wait for the Barone couple in their own garden.
Then..
The DI’s answers stopped there, with nowhere to go.
It could have gone like that, Anselmi did have a motive, everything worked out for the first murders… but who had killed Suzy?
Anybody could have got to know her, they just needed to pay.
The murder weapon was too distinct, and so similar to something he possessed, even if it was fairly easy to obtain, thanks to daily news and the cinema.
But what if it really was an antique, then Cavasso came back into the picture and moreover that would bring back in his wife and her inseparable friend?
Had someone, maybe Giorgia, taken it out of its sheath and then put it back in place?
Perhaps, but why?
Precision in the execution?
Everything was possible, but his mind still thought it was not typical of an accountant working in a supermarket.
Each of us is a potential murderer and using a sharp blade to cut the throat of someone who is not expecting it is not that difficult.
Suzy’s murderer was someone who knew her and her secrets.
Perhaps they had gone to see her, had recognised the DI’s car in front of her house, had felt lost, had wanted to eliminate a probable witness of the motive and at the same time had managed to involve him by finding her there, still in that position.
There was no premeditation in framing him; he was the one who had ended up there by chance.
Yeah, chance, always by chance.
It was not part of his logical reasoning.
He suddenly thought maybe the killer did not act alone.
He thought about Giorgia. Although he didn’t want to believe it there was something disturbing about her recently, about her behaviour.
He tried to call her. The number rang but nobody answered.
Maybe she had left her phone somewhere, or maybe she was refusing to answer him.
Thinking about it his wife was also in that photo taken on holiday that he had seen in Ridolfi’s apartment. He thought back to the circles he had drawn on the board in his office.
The killer had not finished yet; he had to kill again but if he was right in his theory about Anselmi, he was in a hurry, he must have felt that the time left to him was running out, the net would soon be closing around him.
One murder often remains unpunished, but a chain breaks at a certain point.
If the castle he was building was based on logic, after Ridolfi, Patrizia Barone and her husband, and Suzy, who would be Lorenzo Anselmi’s next victim?
Very soon, if he hadn’t already done so, he would go to kill Valeria, the main cause, even if unintentional, of the death of his son.
Angry at himself and with the whole world he sounded the horn against the car in front which hesitated to give way and with his right hand picked up his mobile and called Mrs Anselmi again.
At the second attempt she answered.
“Hello” a voice which appeared calm but with the sleepy tone of someone who had chosen drugs and something else as their constant diet, answered him.
“Listen Valeria, its Gianni Veronesi. Do not open the door to anyone, especially not your husband. I’m on my way, I need you to testify. I have a strong suspicion that he is responsible for this chain of murders, in fact I think he wants to kill you too.”
A silent calm was the only reaction to his excited speech.
“Did you hear me?” the DI insisted.
“Yes” said the woman in a whisper, immediately ending the call.
He tried his wife’s phone again.
It rang and rang, God knows where she was.
At least he had managed to talk to Valeria Anselmi, she was still alive and could be a valid element in incriminating her husband and therefore saving him.
There was nothing else he could do, he could not contact HQ to inform them of the latest developments in his investigations, he had to go straight to her.
43
Valeria Anselmi moved the phone away from her ear after listening to the DI’s last words and placed it on the sofa.
She stood up and started to pace around like a soul in torment, trapped between the walls of what had once been her pleasant home.
She remembered that she had furnished it with the help of Giorgia Veronesi, one of the most highly acclaimed interior decorators of the city whose intervention signified quality, a guarantee of good taste.
She had dreamt of having a nice house and when Lorenzo asked her to marry him she had hesitated only a few brief seconds before accepting, but had immediately added that they would have to move, in prevision of the arrival of a family.
She had chosen the small town on the outskirts, where they had been able to buy a small villa in construction at a lower price than in the centre and with a low interest mortgage. Consulting all the interior decorating magazines for months on end she had studied the smallest details of the large kitchen, the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the best position for their new furniture and the open air barbecue.
At first it was a time full of serenity and with some moments of happiness. Now she had started to hate the house, but she continued to live in it. She brushed aside a tear of regret; her life could have been different, if she had not met Patrizia and her gang.
Valeria was born in the Veronese countryside forty years earlier, the third of five children in a large family.
After her mother died she had suffered under the upbringing imposed on her by an old-fashioned father and did not adapt to the hard work in the fields or the more humble task of waitress for the rest of the family. Her timid character had never allowed her to show off any of her naturally beautiful features: thick brown hair surrounding a thin but sweet face, a slender figure thanks to the physical work on the land, her pale blue eyes slightly lacking in vivacity.
After a short love relationship burnt out during her adolescence, she slowly passed from one disappointment to the next, without ever encountering true love or something really important, a relationship which could pull her out of the mediocrity she was born into and lived in, in which she felt relegated despite her beauty.
Pretty, but not striking, held back by a shyness which prevented her from forming even normal friendships, she possessed none of the malice of many of the girls of her age. It was almost a sign of destiny when she read the job announcement in the paper.
Chosen from the various candidates by Anselmi himself, she started working on the tills of the large supermarket and then became a target of cautious advances from her boss. He was not the man she had hoped to meet, he was not handsome and physically nothing like the type she was looking for; it was not love at first sight. Considering that she was not getting any younger and that she was convinced that only rich women stay beautiful forever, she accepted an offer of marriage from a man who was not rich and who did not love her, but who would offer her a less uncertain future in the house of her dreams. One year later Giulio was born, a loving child who brought joy to the family and a smile into her life, at least for a few years.
Without even realising it she had slipped into a routine of everyday life made up of nursery, school, meeting other mothers, finally free of old friendships she had a new position as the wife of a director of a large chain of supermarkets and she felt satisfied and part of the well-off social band.
Then boredom struck and family life hemmed her in. She started to hear about marital problems between other couples and applied them to her own relationship; she started to spend time with Patrizia Barone and her circle of friends, including Mauro Ridolfi.
She had known the f
ascination of a rich suitor who appeared to open the doors to another world she had always dreamed of entering without being able to.
The dream lasted a short time, but the awakening was worse than she had ever imagined.
Ridolfi and her friends who had been on the short holiday had left her to her own destiny. She had to withstand the unexpected reaction from Lorenzo, a bigot, who first threw her out of the house, an action overturned by the courts (in favour of the best living conditions for the child) who gave her the right to live in the house until Giulio reached 18. Battles with her ex-husband ensued, then he had to give way for the love of his son but hate had continued to mar all contact between them. They both declared their hate for each other. For Valeria times became even harder and her financial obligations grew despite the maintenance she received. She struggled to find another job and all the friends she thought she had made disappeared. She started to drink and may have drunken more than usual that night. That damned bend!
She had had a couple of drinks with a friend.
She could not hold her drink but went to collect Giulio anyway from a birthday party at a friend’s house.. she drove fast, too fast.. the car turned over.
Lorenzo never forgave her for emerging unscathed from the accident. Her husband’s accusations of blame against her exploded during the sombre funeral, but Valeria was so full of drugs that she didn’t even notice him.
Their hate for each other never stopped growing.
Valeria’s ill feelings were increased by new feelings towards the group of friends who had deceived her, that small band with whom she had passed the most foolish holiday of her life, the one which ruined her life.
Valeria fell into the nightmare of tranquillisers; she looked like a ghost, her beauty quickly consumed.
In a couple of months she lost her job as well and soon she would have to leave the house to its legitimate owner, her husband, who had already put it up for sale.
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