She looked at herself in the mirror, not even a shadow of the once pretty girl remained; the nightmare of death could be read in her eyes. She had thought about suicide many times. Even though she kept Giulio’s bedroom closed, she saw him everywhere.
It was almost eight o’clock. Night with its fears, darkness and solitude would soon set in. She would soon have to answer to herself. She picked up her mobile and formed a number.
44
Darkness had swallowed the city and its lights were dulled by distance.
Getting out of his car in front of the house where Valeria Anselmi lived Veronesi put on his dark raincoat as protection from the rain which had started to fall. He rang the bell beside the gate and in reply to a female voice gave his details on the intercom.
He crossed the small, neglected garden and reached the door of the apartment in a few strides. The door opened, held by a chain and the pale face of Valeria Anselmi appeared behind it. The DI showed her his badge and she opened the door to let him in.
Entering he looked at her more attentively: the woman who used to be the wife of a supermarket director had the same desolate air as the garden he had just walked through.
She was wearing a short green jumper with a pair of black trousers which did nothing to liven up her appearance and did no justice to her once beautiful figure. He wondered what Ridolfi could have seen in her and what had inspired his erotic fantasies. He thought back over what Suzy had told him about the Ridolfi’s sexual problems and how a normal relationship was impossible for him. Perhaps in that apparently pliable face he had found a reason to turn her into a creature that would be faithful to him forever, seducing her with the weapon of money.
She coughed weakly, with an instinctively shy gesture and a thread of a voice she indicated the sofa in the middle of the room which doubled as a hall. “Do sit down”.
The DI walked in and sat down, taking off his raincoat and placing it on the sofa beside him, while she also sat down in one of the two armchairs in front of him, staring at him oddly and more resolutely than before.
Gianni Veronesi felt almost at unease in front of that sweet face, full of sadness which made him loathe the world which Valeria had fallen victim to, believing in the fairytales of a world she dreamed of as a child.
He tried to think of her past and what she must have suffered inside during the last few months.
“I seriously believe that your husband has sworn vendetta against the people who have been murdered recently and that he killed them” he started, going straight to the point.
Valeria answered him, her mood changing suddenly, hysterically “I don’t care about any of them, in fact if you like I can tell you that I hate them just as much as my husband. After your interrogation the other day I remembered that your wife was also on that holiday, dear Veronesi. Another bitch! And now I didn’t even want to open the door to you. What do you care if someone killed people like that, people who no-one will shed a tear over, an obvious sign they deserved to die. They may be respectable people for you, you’re paid to protect them, but not for me. You don’t care about why someone was forced to kill them, all you care about is finding the killer, whoever it is, right? And what for? For what justice? Thanks to my stupid weaknesses I lost my son and no-one can give him back to me. I did not realise, when I was listening to the flattery from that .. Mrs Barone, that I was running the risk of ruining my loved ones, but she was enjoying it. I asked her for money recently and she lent me some, but at ten percent interest per month! I didn’t have that and not knowing who to turn to I asked Mauro Ridolfi for help and he assured me he would talk to Patrizia. When I called him Friday evening he said he would come to see me, but he probably would have let me down. I’ve aged ten years in one year. As soon as I knew he was dead all I did was take a sleeping pill and I slept, as usual.
I already told you I sleep during the day when I turn off the phone and close the shutters. I stay awake at night, when it’s quieter. “
Her words astonished Veronesi who had seen a light suddenly illuminate Valeria’s dead eyes only at the thought of the hate that transpired from that sleepy gaze.
“I repeat, I don’t care if my husband wants to kill me, maybe he’s right, and I couldn’t care less about your investigations!”
She pronounced the last words in the icy voice of one who has no longer any hope in this life.
The DI sat down in the armchair, sighing deeply and spreading his arms. He thought about the strength that hate produces in people, able to keep alive even a ghost, the phantom that Valeria appeared to have become and.. that she was staring at, behind him, with her lifeless eyes, no longer lit by the dreams which had kept her alive. And ghostlike too was the light, rapid hand encased in a latex glove which had appeared at his shoulders and with lightning speed aimed a gun at his temple, taking advantage of his momentary relaxation.
45
“Yep. What do you care about a poor creature like Valeria, Mr. Gianni Veronesi? Or is this about your career? For that you should have killed your wife, a long time ago? Stand up, you fool!”
The voice seemed to belong to the body of a ghost which appeared suddenly behind him, holding a gun.
It was wearing a black jacket over a tracksuit of the same colour which he recognised, rubber boots on his feet and slung across his shoulder, from behind his neck the grip of a blade was visible, worn in the style of the antique Japanese Ninja warriors.
His tanned face was lost in the DI’s memory, plus the addition of that horrendous slash had disfigured the features. Keeping the gun on him he searched him professionally, extracting his Beretta and keeping it himself, putting his own weapon into a pocket. Diego gave one of his rare smiles.
“Don’t be afraid to look me in the face” he whispered in his aphonic voice. “Don’t you remember me?” And while he was moving round in front of him, sitting down beside Valeria, a light in the DI’s memory dispersed the fog of the past. He remembered those slanting eyes, the shape of the face, younger, which he now saw terribly disfigured by the wound.
“Maresca? Diego Maresca?”
“Small world, eh? I picked this up half an hour ago from your living room” and with his left hand he drew the short samurai sword from its sheath which was tied to his back.
“Thieves, it is not authentic!” he commented sarcastically.
“My wife?”
“She has already joined those whores of her friends and when they find her body they’ll blame you. She’s probably already dancing in the discotheques of hell!”
The DI’s hand moved instinctively to the place where he kept his gun but which was no longer there.
“Bastard!”
“Who knows? Even though you may not want to, you’ll soon join her. Don’t get agitated and you stay calm too Valeria. Don’t worry, your nightmare is coming to an end, but perhaps the DI wants an explanation.”
“Yes, it really is me” he continued in the same flat, icy voice, keeping the gun towards him “Diego Maresca, that policeman that you helped expel from the Police Force twenty years ago because I killed those two idiots who mucked about at the stop sign, remember now?”
Gianni Veronesi suddenly remembered the case.
He had been given the case to investigate inside HQ in order to get rid of a man who, according to instructions from above, should never have joined the Police.
“You’re the one charged with getting rid of me, to keep that boy’s parents quiet and who destroyed me, saying that my actions were premeditated and unjustified. You’re the one I had to hand over my gun and badge to. After that day I couldn’t even go home. You even took it out on my father who had recommended me and after a life of practically never seeing me, he refused to see or talk to me at all. So I left. To survive I carried on doing what I did best: killing. My old father, whose life ended when I had to leave the Force, could not support the dishonour of a mercenary son. He loved Japanese films, so he committed suicide their way, in front of the televisio
n in the sitting room, with a video tape on, showing the same scene over and over again. You should remember it; I was told that you were the one who closed the case. You were probably stunned by the scene, so much so that you also became passionate about Japanese martial arts. I have my informers.”
The DI was silenced by the memory.
It was true!
He had closed the enquiry following that strange suicide committed by the old officer and with orders to hurry matters up, he had watched the tape. That was the image his mind could not bring into focus that morning in front of his swords when he opened the chest of drawers.
“I found out a lot later” continued Diego “at the time they had just made you DI and head of something or other. I would have wanted to kill you straight away, but someone called me for a mission which was meant to last for a couple of months. Instead I was away for years. You are responsible for the death of my father and for what I have become. I had to wait before coming back to get my revenge, cultivating my hate in the death of others and thinking that I couldn’t simply kill you, too easy, for someone who is convinced they are always right and never make a mistake in their investigations. You really went on at me, you had picked up on how dangerous I was and you said that I could not work to serve the State. Maybe you were right, but at the time I didn’t know that and you didn’t give me a chance.”
“I met Valeria, another stray, by chance.”
“At Christmas I came to pray on my father’s grave. I looked for his headstone but it wasn’t there anymore. Due to the usual problems of space in the cemetery he had been dug up to make space for her son, a year ago. She told me her dramatic story. She needed peace, the peace that tranquilizers couldn’t give her but only revenge, just like all the defeated people. I took on her suffering and at the same time used it to reach my goal.”
“So Anselmi had nothing to do with it? “ the DI asked, stunned that the mountain he had built with his suppositions and investigations was rapidly disappearing.
“A pawn! After I met Valeria, who needed a shoulder to cry on, I went to the supermarket to meet him, without telling her. A calm man, apparently peaceful but underneath a straw dog: if you put him next to a match he could set the whole thing on fire. I saw him again the night Ridolfi was killed. He was hiding in the garage to kill him, but he wouldn’t have gone through with it, even if he did have a gun in his pocket. I had been following him and saw that he had tried the same scene several times, calculating the time needed from Velden to Verona, to construct an alibi. He bought the Zorro masks. He wanted to kill Mauro Ridolfi many times, but he never had the courage. One glance from me was enough to convince him to follow my plan instead. I made him hide in a corner of the garage, so that he could watch the live show, as if he was in the front row, something that few have the privilege of watching: the murder of the enemy, a spectacle he had always dreamt of. Then I penetrated his soul as the police psychiatrist did with me and discovered that he had the virus of the vendetta inside him. He was ready to give me a hand for the other murders. I made him into a lightning rod, the man your suspicion would lead you to. You had already decided he was guilty, you just needed anybody, even if he was found innocent, to save yourself.
But the real person behind it was Valeria. She was the one who was most full of hate towards everybody, even you, defender of this world of falsehoods. The deaths which satisfied her thirst for revenge made up the threads of my web, into which I pulled you slowly, beginning to construct my trap, even if you believed that you were the spider.
I played on your indecision; I discovered the nature of your forbidden dreams, I followed your evenings and those of your wife, always in the shadows. I gave one thousand euros to Ridolfi’s whore so that she let you screw her in that way. I had already done that before you. With this face I am used to paying for pleasure, but you? Did you really think that Suzy was in love with you?”
Noticing the reaction his last declaration had provoked in the DI, keeping his gun trained on him, Diego lowered his voice, which became even hoarser.
“It’s thanks to you and the world you serve that I have had to live a life of violence and become a wild animal without feelings, who has to kill to live and live to kill!”
“You’re insane! It’s nothing to do with me. You’ve always had the instinct of a killer. I noticed you before that night, while interrogating a couple of thieves we had arrested, you loved watching others suffer, even if they were criminals.”
The DI was trying to buy time, trying to provoke a reaction from Valeria, who was as still as if she had been bitten by a rattlesnake and was watching them hypnotised.
“Oh what rubbish! I saw you when you were younger too and you’re a hypocrite who has never hesitated to step on friends and colleagues to advance up the career ladder, but now you can stuff your career right up your arse. As an investigator, you disappoint me. You’d never have discovered the truth if I hadn’t told you. Thirty years in the investigation team and you still haven’t learnt to understand people. I am the executor, yes, but the violence and urge to kill exists in all of us, and it carries on growing inside people who have been wronged, it’s true. Not everybody has the guts to become killers. Do you know how many people would have wanted to kill Patrizia Barone and her husband? Sunday evening, when I saw them go into the cinema, after keeping an eye on their house all day, I called Lorenzo, telling him to follow them from a distance while I waited inside their garden.
It was me who told him to come to see you in HQ on Monday evening, while you were venting your low instincts with that dancer. From the very start I drew you into the trap I took a couple of days to lay. I knew you wouldn’t have been able to resist Susanna’s charms, especially since your wife became a lesbian, but I didn’t think you would have killed her!”
“What? Was it not you?”
They looked each other in the eye questioningly.
Even Diego had been shocked to find Suzy’s dead body, after checking that the DI’s car was no longer near the house.
“When I went into Susanna’s house she was already dead, even if she was still warm and you had left without paying her. I did that, completing the scene with the usual Zorro mask. “
Diego noticed the incredulous expression on the DI’s face; he narrowed his eyes and only needed a moment to photograph what could have happened, recalling the smell of blood on the blade. He let out a bitter laugh.
“There are more killers around than you can imagine. Sometimes it’s easier to find one person to blame for everything, don’t you think? Maybe I’m not the only criminal mind in this affair, but someone must have taken advantage of the situation, someone who is very close to you, seeing that I’m sure that the weapon used to kill the whore is this one” he said, looking at the wakizashi found in the DI’s apartment.
“Happens in the best of families, don’t you think? The fruit of that hypocritical world in which you’ve lived until now and you still defend, the way you defended those two druggies I killed by chance twenty years ago. They would have died anyway, in a road accident or for an overdose… I have no regrets. Revenge leaves no regrets, but it does condemn you to solitude, it has to be cultivated like a large, single bloom, even if it can sometimes wind round others, just like plants. Valeria and her husband wanted the same thing, without knowing it, without meeting, actually hating each other, blaming each other for something that was not their fault. I infiltrated their minds; I learned their secrets and granted their wishes. I managed to make both of them happy and at the same time I constructed my vendetta. They’ll blame you for everything, as the logical facts show! In fact I don’t exist anymore! After the tragedy twenty years ago my name disappeared from your files, the blot of my existence has been rubbed out, forever. Maybe they’ll do the same with yours, in a few years time!”
Veronesi stood up, silently looking into Diego’s eyes, glimpsing a cruel streak and the imminent death of one of them.
He stood but restrained any sudden m
ovement while Valeria followed their movements with wide, unaware eyes. The taste of vendetta was, for her, not as sweet as she had imagined.
The DI asked himself, he knew that his life was in balance, he could beat that individual who was nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of a life lived the wrong way, like many others, while he… he had fought for years, but for what? If he survived, even after solving a couple more murders, his future life would be blighted by the weakness he had shown that evening and about which he no longer even desired to know the derisory truth.
Diego took advantage of the uncertainty of his adversary; he was quicker than his thoughts and did not give him the time to think a moment longer.
He looked Gianni Veronesi in the eye for a second with his inexpressive face, he suddenly stood up from the sofa, faced him and in the second he was closer, fired one single fatal shot point-blank, hitting him in the heart.
“Did you perhaps think you could trick me? Some things only happen in films” he commented sarcastically while the DI’s body crumpled to the floor, falling backwards with only a small groan escaping his lips, his face with an expression of surprise painted in a death mask.
Valeria instinctively drew back, covering her face with her hands attempting to scream hysterically, while simultaneously trying to clamber out of the armchair she had slouched into.
Diego held her still, put a hand in her mouth to stop her screaming then, with a swift and unexpected move, used the DI’s wakishazi to slash her femoral artery with a cut that was as precise as it was fatal.
He immediately thrust the sword into her chest, pushing it downwards to her belly and leaving it inside to avoid being hit by the blood which had started to spray out of the first wound.
Valeria slid to the ground, on her way to a long desired sleep, almost unaware of what had happened, but at last finally free from the weight of that fragile sense of guilt she kept inside.
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