No mention whatever was made of Giraldi, whose brother reported his disappearance a full two weeks later, by which time everybody had already given up worrying about Antonina. The delay in reporting Giraldi’s disappearance was justified by the firm belief that he’d gone to Germany to search for his wife, and it wasn’t until the companies for which Giraldi worked as a rep began to complain of his absence that Ettore Giraldi became concerned. All it then took was a quick phone call to Helena’s family in Germany to establish that neither of them had turned up there.
Press and TV treated Giraldi’s disappearance with their customary indifference. As a news item, it soon sank without trace, and it never occurred to anybody to link the two disappearances. Besides, loads of people disappear every day in Italy and a fair percentage of them are never seen again. Max researched the issue thoroughly on the Internet and discovered that unless a child is involved or there is a well-founded suspicion of foul play, investigations into disappearances never go much beyond routine procedures.
Nothing much out of the ordinary happened at the club, except that a couple of Albanians turned up asking for protection money. Old Rossini went and had a word with their boss and the matter was resolved without anyone getting hurt. From the evidence, we were convinced that Master Mariano and his Barbie Slave had been eliminated. As far as we were concerned, the case of Helena’s kidnapping was now closed. We had been paid handsomely and had done very little to earn it. Out of a sense of professional thoroughness, Max sent a message to Docile Woman.
‘We are aware that you are a victim of the Master of Knots. As you will know, he and his gang are responsible for the disappearance of three people. We believe that you too may be in danger. We can help you.’
That afternoon the heat was particularly oppressive. I was stretched out on the sofa with the shutters closed and the air-conditioning turned up high, thinking about Virna. She had been back for several days now but hadn’t wanted to see me. We’d had a pretty stormy phone conversation during which she had said that our relationship wasn’t going to work. Each of us was too grown-up just to fit in around the other’s needs. I had seen it coming but was upset anyway. I needed a woman. I needed her. And I was dying for a fuck. I hadn’t said anything about it to my associates, and I wasn’t planning to. They’d have morphed into a pair of attentive mother hens, burying me in kindnesses and counseling, without of course missing the opportunity to say, ‘We told you so.’ Max rapped at the door.
‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘No. I was just pondering my prolonged period of sexual inactivity.’
‘A great topic for daytime TV,’ Max said sympathetically. ‘Listen. There’s a development in the Helena Heintze case.’
‘Go on.’
‘Docile Woman has replied to our message and wants to meet us. Tomorrow, 5:30 in the afternoon, at Milan Central Station, opposite the pharmacy.’
‘And how will we recognize her?’
‘She’ll approach us.’
‘What, the newspaper-under-the-arm routine?’
‘An interior-design glossy, actually. If she feels in any way uneasy, she’ll turn on her heels and we’ll never spot her.’
‘We’d better hope she likes the look of us.’
‘Heard from Rossini?’
‘He’s on his way over to Croatia with the stolen yacht and won’t be back for a couple of days.’
‘Right. So we’ll go tomorrow, just the two of us.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not a trap.’
‘There’s no risk of that. That time of day the place is heaving. Docile Woman has chosen it in compliance with the security guidelines that S and M sites recommend.’
Max went off to yet another one of his fair-trade association meetings and I dumped myself back on the couch. Johnny Winter welcomed me, singing, ‘Don’t take advantage of me.’ I stopped contemplating my broken heart and focused instead on the unforeseen development in the case. Docile Woman had decided to take up our suggestion. Her situation must have become unbearable. I fell asleep thinking about Antonina Gattuso. Her husband was the only one still looking for her. Every week he made an appeal on the missing-persons slot on TV. He addressed his wife directly. He suspected she had run away from him and from their little girl, from their rented flat and their Saturdays at the shopping mall. If he’d had any inkling of the double life his beloved Antonina had been leading, he wouldn’t have wasted his breath.
We left for Milan in the late morning, not wanting to run the risk of arriving late. The temperature hadn’t dropped a single degree. I’d left my Skoda in the sun and Max, the moment his backside touched the scalding seat, unleashed a torrent of unkind comments regarding my mental faculties. He’d stopped at a newsagents and, as well as the interior-design magazine, he’d bought several newspapers. He started to flick through them, commenting on the stories as he went.
‘On the twentieth of July, in Genoa, there’s going to be a summit meeting of “the world’s most powerful leaders.” Did you know that?’
‘Yeah. It seems they’re throwing a ring of steel round the city to stop your lot from busting everyone’s balls.’
‘Right. Well, I was just considering the possibility of going on the demonstration.’
‘The heat must have melted your brain, Max. You know you’re living on a razor’s edge. All you’ve got to do is sneeze at a cop and you’ll be straight back behind bars.’
‘There are going to be tens of thousands of people there. Besides, I’d stick with the fair-trade contingent. They’re total pacifists.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about? One group of protesters has announced on TV that it aims to invade the prohibited zone.’
‘The red zone.’
‘Whatever. So there are bound to be clashes with the police.’
‘But I’ll be in the other section of the demonstration.’
‘Have you forgotten what happened in March, at the last summit, in Naples?’ I spluttered. ‘The cops broke the heads of everyone who came within striking range; they didn’t stop to ask which part of the movement you belonged to. And that was when we had a Center-Left government. Just think what’ll happen now the Right’s back in power.’
‘The Genoa Social Forum has asked for assurances and is in talks with the Ministry of the Interior. There’s not going to be any trouble.’
‘You’re not going to fall for that bullshit, I hope. Why don’t you just say you’ve already made your mind up?’
‘I said I’m thinking about it.’
‘Do what the fuck you like, Max, just don’t ask for my blessing.’
Silence fell, heavy with tension. After a little while, Fat Max started commenting on the news items again. Then he folded the paper and shoved an article in front of me. ‘Take a look at this.’
‘I’m driving, for Christ’s sake.’
‘“Silent crimes,”’ Max read. ‘“Failing prison health care kills inmates . . .”’
‘Max, for God’s sake, don’t start going on about prison again.’
‘The list’s quite short. Just those who’ve died this year. A fifty-nine-year-old, in Enna city prison. He croaked on the very morning they informed him he was going to be released on health grounds. In Milan prison, a chronically sick prisoner died from an embolism. He had applied to be transferred to an external unit. In Palermo, another poor bastard died after an operation performed in the prison hospital. They’d left a tube in his guts . . .’
‘That doesn’t only happen in prison,’ I butted in.
‘Anyway, he died . . . Then at Prato a nurse is under investigation. It’s alleged she failed to assist a Spanish prisoner who was having a heart attack. He was forty-five. In Vigevano, a sixty-year-old prisoner died, again, of an embolism. The prison doctors hadn’t arranged for him to be hospitalized.’
‘Cut it out, Max.’
‘Listen to this. In Padova, prison doctors thought a detainee had faked a heart attack until he had a second one, which killed him. Again in Padova, a North African prisoner died following a hunger strike. He had lost twenty kilos but nobody took the trouble to provide him with the obligatory health care that the judge had ordered. I’ll spare you the suicides, which are on the increase. Still, there is one piece of good news. The government has earmarked 830 billion lire for the construction of twenty-two new prisons.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Yes, I have. How many people did we see die inside?’
‘People don’t give a shit about what happens in prison.’
‘Not even you.’
‘Not much, no. When you’re behind bars, all you think about is how to get out as fast as you can, without too much damage. And once you’re free, all you want to do is forget. You don’t give a fuck about the others. Everyone looks out for number one.’
‘I don’t want to forget.’
‘More fool you. It makes no difference anyway; prison conditions in Italy can only get worse.’
‘That’s not a reason.’
‘I’ll tell you a story, Max. One day a child rapist was brought in, and they placed him in isolation till the public prosecutor was ready to question him. He was scared out of his wits because the carabinieri had explained what happens in prison to people like him. The screws went to work on him, too, and in the end he ripped up a sheet to make himself a length of rope, tied one end to the bars of his window and placed the noose around his neck. Thing is, he didn’t have the guts to jump off the stool. So two guards opened his cell door and went inside to help him hang himself. One kicked the stool away and the other grabbed hold of his legs and yanked.’
‘How do you know that’s what happened?’
‘Because I saw the whole thing. I was in the cell opposite his. When I was questioned about it, I said that when the two screws opened the guy’s cell door, he was already swinging from the bars.’
‘Fuck it, Marco. How could you?’
‘What would you have had me do? Nobody would have believed me, and every screw in every fucking jail in Italy would have felt duty-bound to bust my ass.’
‘What you’ve described was an execution, goddamn it, and they got away with it . . .’ Max stuttered, indignant.
‘Same as they always do. Now get off my case, will you?’
Docile Woman had chosen the right place to meet. At five-thirty in the afternoon, Milan Central Station was far too crowded for us to see if anyone had us under surveillance. Max went and stood outside the pharmacy and pretended to read his interior-design magazine. I went and stood over by a huge newsagent’s and pretended to be interested in the magazines. I couldn’t help noticing the vast array of stuff aimed at collectors. Every week, you could buy miniature soldiers, statuettes for your Christmas crib, toy cars, and a whole lot of other exclusively plastic knickknacks with which to fill your lounge. ‘People really are going out of their minds,’ I said to myself as I shifted my gaze to the porn section. There was even one exclusively devoted to asses. I hoped Docile Woman wouldn’t take too long.
Fortunately, having looked Max up and down for a good ten minutes, she decided to trust him and stepped forward. Max shook hands with her and then gestured in my direction. I walked over and she greeted me with a nod of her head. ‘Follow me,’ she said, as she walked over to the down escalator. On reaching street level, she walked out of the station, turned left, crossed the road, and entered a bar.
We sat in a small, empty room and ordered drinks. She was in her early forties, slim and elegant-looking, and her face was interesting rather than pretty, with large, hazel eyes. She must have been loaded, because her suit, bag, and sandals were all designer. She was wearing diamond-and-white-gold earrings and had a wedding ring on her finger.
‘No names,’ she said straight away.
‘Agreed.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘We hacked into Barbie Slave’s inbox and read the messages you sent each other.’
I pulled the rope flower out of my pocket and she looked at it. ‘The Master of Knots,’ she whispered, looking around.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Giraldi found it in the hotel room where Helena was kidnapped.’
‘And now he’s disappeared too. Everybody’s disappeared,’ she said, clearly distressed. Her face contracted to a grimace. She was on the verge of breaking down but managed to control herself, taking a couple of deep breaths. ‘You can’t imagine what I’ve been through.’
‘It might be an idea if you told us the whole story, right from the start,’ Max said by way of encouragement.
She took a sip of cold coffee and began to speak. She had met Helena through her work in the fashion industry and had been attracted to her at once. Till then, she had never had the courage to confront her bisexuality, but the German woman had unleashed in her the longing to make love to a woman. Helena was happy to have an admirer. One evening, after a fashion show, Helena and her husband had invited her out to dinner. Giraldi started talking about S and M and then invited her to follow them home. After a moment’s initial embarrassment, she told them she wasn’t interested either in being dominated or in having sex with a couple. Giraldi then offered to train her as a mistress. He would restrict himself to watching. She was of two minds, but Helena kept looking at her longingly, so she accepted the offer.
That was the first and last time she made love to the German woman. Giraldi introduced her to Antonina Gattuso, and so it was with Antonina that Docile Woman learned the art of domination. Barbie Slave, however, was not nearly as attractive as Helena, so Docile Woman placed an ad at a website that Giraldi recommended. Quite a number of women replied. She met them all but had (rather unsatisfactory) sex with just one of them. Then she met Cristiana, a twenty-four-year-old who exuded sensuality from every pore. They met three times, in three different hotels in Milan.
At their fourth appointment, instead of Cristiana, a tall, dark, dodgy-looking man in his fifties turned up. To persuade her to enter the hotel room, he told her he was Cristiana’s father. He took a videotape out of his jacket, insisted she watch it, and then talked of blackmail. He showed her a list of people who would receive copies of the video showing her dominating Cristiana, and the first name on the list was her husband’s. Then came her close family, work colleagues, and, finally, her neighbors. She felt lost. Not giving in to blackmail would have meant total ruin, so she asked the man how much money he wanted. He shook his head and said that a person’s reputation was without price. Then he told her what she had to do to buy his silence. She felt crushed, and racked her brains for some other way out but was forced to surrender. She had no other choice. Just like Cristiana, who had fallen victim to the same loathsome blackmail.
The blackmailer made a phone call, and a little later two men knocked on the door. One was young and had a gym-sculpted body, and the other was older and skinny. The skinny one took a video camera out of a bag while the younger one took his clothes off. They made her wear a leather mask, tied her to the bed, and that was how she made her first S and M video. All this had happened a year and a half ago. Since then she had met the rest of the Bang Gang, as they liked to call themselves. There were six of them altogether. She had never seen the gang leader’s face, as he never turned up until she had been blindfolded. The others referred to him respectfully as the Master of Knots since, as they explained to her, he was a follower of Chimuo Nureki, the Sensei of Kinbiken, the ancient Japanese art of bondage. It was the Master of Knots who took personal charge of tying her up and who directed the filming.
The other participants varied according to the plot of the film. She had become their slave, in the true sense of the word. They could do whatever they liked with her, even if they always took great care to guarantee her anonymity, making her wear a mask,
and not overstepping the limits. They forced her to invite Antonina Gattuso to a hotel room, where there was a hidden camera. Antonina had showed up with Giraldi. Then, once Giraldi had also fallen victim to blackmail, they forced him to involve his wife.
‘So, when Helena was kidnapped, did Giraldi realize he was going to meet the Master of Knots and his gang?’
‘I don’t know. It must have been a first appointment, given that it was at a hotel. Usually the gang picked me up from a bus stop in Corso Sempione. They made me wear a pair of glasses with painted lenses and took me to a specially kitted-out basement room in some villa or apartment building.’
‘Here in Milan?’
‘Yes. The journey took fifteen to twenty minutes.’
‘If I’ve understood you correctly, the gang uses blackmail to force women into taking part in pornographic films for the illegal market.’
‘Yes. But the way they see it, it’s not just business—those pigs get off on it. As for the Master of Knots, he’s a kind of spiritual leader to them. He never stops talking about the principles of Japanese sadomasochism and his Sensei.’
‘Could you explain that?’
‘In Japan, sadomasochism isn’t about mutual pleasure. It’s about power, absolute domination over women who, according to these bastards, nowadays possess far too much power within society.’
‘How many women were involved?’
‘I have no idea. I only made videos with Cristiana and Antonina.’
‘Why do you think they kidnapped Helena?’
She took a cigarette from my packet. ‘I don’t know. But I’ve thought about this so much that I’ve developed a hunch.’
The Master of Knots Page 7