Lone Wolf

by Michael Gregorio

  Coming through the front door was like stepping out of a distant past into a distant future. With the aid of plasterboard moulding and suffused neon lighting, the reception area had been transformed into an oval model of startling design with multiple mirrors which gave a sense of infinite vastness.

  ‘It looks better than the most exclusive spas in the south of France,’ Lucia Grossi said.

  ‘The sanitation regulations are very demanding, as I’m sure you know. It was easier to totally renovate the interior than to patch up what was here before. This monastery was a total ruin before we took it over. Now, of course, everything conforms to the very highest medical standards.’

  ‘Could you show us quickly?’ Lucia Grossi cut him off in full flow. ‘We won’t take much of your time. It’s just … well,’ she laughed, and patted the breast of her uniform jacket, ‘you never know in this bloody job. Stodgy food, irregular hours, sitting around all day in the most uncomfortable cars and rickety office chairs. I may be back for a bit of a lift myself before you know it.’

  Cangio had to admire her pluck. She was ready to play down her authority and belittle her looks if it helped her to find what she was looking for.

  The man gave a weak smile, but he buckled.

  ‘Well, I … I can’t show you much,’ he said, waving his hand to the corridor behind him. ‘The surgical wing and the spa are strictly off-limits for obvious reasons. Outside clothes carry germs …’

  ‘What about the medical staff?’ Cangio put in.

  ‘We work with top consultants in the field,’ the man said. ‘Top-class patients, too. You know, film stars, TV personalities, people like that.’

  ‘Is there anyone that we would know?’ Grossi asked him with an innocent smile.

  The man looked startled. ‘I … well, I can’t really mention names. It’s more than my job is worth. You know, privacy, professional standards. Whenever we have a patient list, we call in specialist nursing and technical staff …’

  ‘So you’re a sort of caretaker, are you?’ Lucia Grossi asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Alfredo,’ the man replied. ‘Alfredo del Buono.’

  ‘We won’t waste any more of your time, Signor del Buono. As I told you, we’re looking for a missing person, and it’s obvious that he isn’t here.’ She turned to Cangio. ‘Next stop, the hospital in Norcia.’

  Wasn’t she getting out of there a bit too quickly? Cangio wondered. All they’d seen was an empty reception area, and a long corridor studded with closed doors to rooms that were off-limits.

  She took his arm, and turned towards the exit.

  ‘Many thanks for your help, Signor del Buono.’

  The door closed behind them when they were halfway across the car park.

  ‘Did you notice, Seb? There was no one else in the reception area. There’s a smart desk, computers and monitors, an intercom for speaking to whoever rings the bell. Mr Don’t-Know-A-Thing looks after that massive place all by himself.’

  Instead of heading for the car, she suddenly cut left off the gravel and onto the grass.

  ‘Let’s see what’s around the back,’ she said.

  It was a long walk in the cold shadows beneath the high walls of the monastery.

  ‘There must have been a hundred monks living here once …’

  She caught him by the arm, and held him back as they reached the corner. She peeped out from the wall, then stepped back into the shadows. ‘Signor del Buono isn’t all alone,’ she said. ‘You’re the ranger, Cangio, what do you make of this?’

  Cangio edged beyond the wall.

  There was a fourth section to the convent, a large arched doorway in the centre, twenty or thirty windows set high in the ancient stone wall. Close to the door was an area which had been fenced off with wire mesh over two metres high. Inside the compound a large man was made to look even larger by the blue padded body-armour he was wearing on his arms and legs.

  Three dogs lay stretched out on the grass in front of him.

  They were full-grown Rottweilers, each one weighing up to forty kilos or more.

  ‘Attack!’ the man cried, and the three dogs bounded at him, two of them grabbing hold of his padded legs, while the third one sank its teeth into his padded right arm.

  ‘Stay!’ he shouted, and the dogs let go of him, and returned immediately to their positions of repose.

  ‘What are the guard dogs for?’ Cangio murmured.

  ‘Protecting property, seeing off thieves? I bet they have some valuable equipment.’

  ‘Well-heeled patients, too,’ he said, pointing to the empty helicopter landing pad.

  ‘Film stars with fat bums? Let’s put a question mark next to this place.’

  She turned and walked away quickly, saying, ‘It’s time to check out that list of yours, Cangio. I’d like to see where the ordinary mortals sleep in Valnerina.’

  Scheggino, Valnerina

  ‘Is this what you people do?’

  Lucia Grossi pulled the ledger across the desk, and stared at it.

  ‘Three one-week rentals, and spring just around the corner? What would you call it, Cangio? Cooking the books?’

  Cangio remembered drinking coffee one day with Diego Rabitti in the company of Marzio Diamante, the senior ranger, who had known the rental agent a long time.

  Rabitti was staring hard at Cangio now, a question burning in his eyes.

  How dangerous is this woman?

  Lucia Grossi had let Rabitti talk, spinning them a line about hard times, then she’d poleaxed him, and the casual conversation had suddenly flipped into a full-scale interrogation. Diego Rabitti, owner of Long & Short Term Lets, was walking on a bed of rusty nails.

  ‘That isn’t what I meant, signora …’

  ‘Captain,’ Lucia Grossi clarified. ‘Captain Grossi of the SCS.’

  ‘What’s the SCS?’ Rabitti asked her.

  ‘The Special Crimes Squad.’

  Cangio would have sworn that Rabitti’s face changed colour, trying to blend in with the pale-yellow wallpaper at his back. Grossi noticed his discomfort, and pressed on mercilessly. ‘Doesn’t anyone in Valnerina keep honest accounts?’

  ‘Your business doesn’t concern us, Signor Rabitti,’ Cangio put in, trying to pick up the pieces. ‘We’re simply trying to find the two men who appear in that photograph that we showed you. Any help in that respect would be appreciated.’

  Rabitti ignored the peace offering

  ‘Those names are all I’ve got,’ he protested. ‘There aren’t that many holidaymakers about …’ His face lit up like an exhausted swimmer who had spotted a life-raft. ‘And the ones who are … you should try the hotels. Their prices are ridiculously low at this time of year. We can’t compete, believe me. Madonna santa! I’d love to know how they get away with it.’

  Rabitti was grabbing at sodden straws. He wasn’t worried about a park ranger who kept a tab on newborn lambs and rampaging foxes. You could always spread a bit of dirt about the two-faced bastard in the valley. The problem was the female carabiniere. OK, a woman, but a senior one. She could get you into a cartload of trouble.

  ‘Forget the hotels,’ Lucia Grossi said. ‘We’ve covered those already. Only the bigger ones are open this early in the holiday season. No sweat there, but no results, either.’

  She sat back in her seat, and threaded her fingers into a mace, her thumb on her lower lip, the way she had done with Cangio six months before in Perugia, fully convinced that he had fired the twin-barrelled twelve-bore that had taken off Marzio Diamante’s head.

  Now she turned that stone-cold stare on Diego Rabitti.

  ‘Did you rent a house or a flat to two English visitors last week?’

  She seemed to give off sparks, seemed poised to slam a warrant down on the agent’s desk and cart him off to serve a mandatory life sentence.

  Rabitti was sweating, though the question had been innocent enough.

  She hadn’
t asked him if he had murdered one or both of them.

  She sat back in her seat and let out a loud sigh.

  ‘If you are playing games with me, Rabitti, I swear to God, you’ll never rent so much as a pigsty to a homeless pig for the rest of your life.’

  ‘I’ve never seen them, I swear!’

  ‘This is an important investigation,’ Cangio said, trying to take the edge off Grossi’s ire.

  ‘If you didn’t rent them a place,’ Grossi insisted, ‘then someone did. And you know who. You can help us, and help yourself at the same time.’

  Rabitti looked from him to her, then he grabbed a pen, tore a sheet of paper from the Samsung printer on his desk, and wrote something. He folded the paper, folded it again, then let it fall on the desk in front of Lucia Grossi like a retriever dropping a dead pheasant at its master’s feet.

  ‘Keep my name out of it,’ he said.

  Jealousy and rivalry in Valnerina was working to their advantage, Cangio thought, first the restaurants and their claims to fame regarding truffles and cheese, now the letting agencies. Everyone had a knife out for someone else, and they were ready to use it.

  Five minutes later in the car, Lucia Grossi latched her safety belt.

  ‘Only one name, Seb. What do you think? Should I go back in and frighten him some more?’

  ‘Why make him cry?’ Cangio said. ‘You got what you wanted.’

  Luigino’s All-In-One was further up the valley near Borgo Cerreto.

  Carla Brunori was in her mid-forties, Cangio guessed. She was attractive, plump, and probably efficient. She ran the accommodation side of the business, she said. Her husband, Luigino, rented cars and minibuses out of a garage close to the railway station in Perugia. Anyone who fancied spending time in the national park could hire a car and rent a self-catering apartment without having to shop around too much.

  She seemed ready to help, though she wasn’t helping at all.

  ‘I’ve never seen either of them,’ the woman said, laying the photo face down on the table, pushing it back to Lucia Grossi as if she were dealing out cards in a casino. ‘They didn’t come to me, not even asking for information.’

  ‘I think you’re lying,’ Lucia Grossi said, going straight for the jugular.

  She’d been following the same line she had used with Diego Rabitti. She had told Carla Brunori about the two Englishmen, shown her the photo, asked the same questions, cranking up the pressure as denial followed denial.

  ‘We are not the only agency in the valley,’ the woman said, barely managing to keep her temper under wraps. ‘We’re smaller than the others,’ she added, looking around the dusty room, taking in the shoddy desk, the aged computer, the sagging shelves behind her stacked with faded paper folders and file boxes. ‘Our biggest competitor is Diego Rabitti down the road in Scheggino. Believe me, the competition’s stiff …’

  ‘I bet it is. And so you cut corners.’

  Cangio sat back as Lucia Grossi lobbed in another hand grenade.

  ‘Is all your business above board, Signora Brunori?’

  ‘Of course it …’

  ‘All I have to do is phone the Finance Police. They’d tear this place apart in minutes.’

  The woman glared at her. ‘It’s that Rabitti, isn’t it? He sent you …’

  ‘No one sent us,’ Lucia Grossi snapped. Then she put her elbow on the desk, and rested her cheek in the palm of her hand. Woman to woman, as if Cangio was nowhere to be seen. ‘You’ve got a bad name, that’s all.’ There was nothing nasty about the way she said it. It was a fact, and it was useless to deny it.

  When Lucia Grossi let herself off the leash, she was like a pit bull in the ring.

  Carla Brunori stared back at her, then she stood up.

  ‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ she said. ‘I need to get the register for this month.’

  She came back with a folder containing plastic envelopes.

  ‘These are still pending,’ she said.

  Lucia Grossi pulled a sheet of paper from the top envelope. ‘They haven’t been registered. Isn’t that what you mean?’

  Carla Brunori nodded.

  ‘You aren’t paying tax on … what? Sixty, seventy per cent of the rentals?’

  ‘You won’t find the people you’re looking for there,’ the woman said. ‘Those are long-term lets. It’s still too early for the tourists.’

  Cangio looked away.

  There were photograph frames standing on the shelves, pictures of the Brunori family. One had been taken at the beach showing Carla and her husband, a teenage girl, and a little boy who was seven or eight years old.

  Cangio recognised the tousled fringe of hair on his forehead. He was smiling in the picture, but there was no mistaking the look in his eye, shy but determined, the kid who told stories.

  ‘Is that Sergio?’ Cangio asked the woman, pointing to the photo.

  Carla Brunori looked at him in surprise. ‘My youngest. Do you know him?’

  ‘I was talking to his class about the wolves in the national park a few days ago. Your son’s a gifted storyteller, Signora Brunori.’

  ‘He’s bit of a handful at the moment …’

  ‘He told us a story about a werewolf.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, and let out a sigh. ‘He’s frightening the other kids. His teacher’s not too happy …’

  ‘Werewolves in Valnerina?’ Lucia Grossi asked, a smile pulling at her lips.

  ‘The place is overrun with them, if you believe Sergio,’ Carla Brunori said. ‘If he hears a noise at night, he’s petrified. Still, last week … I must admit, we all heard that one. Me and Luigino heard it, too.’

  ‘What noise was that?’ Cangio asked her.

  ‘A scream,’ Carla Brunori said. ‘Real blood-curdling, it was. On and on it went. Sergio came charging into our room, and dived in bed between us. Trembling like a leaf, he was. We both heard it, of course. It frightened me, I can tell you that … Luigino went out to have a look around the garden. He took his shotgun with him. There was something moving in the dark, he said …’

  ‘In the garden?’

  Carla Brunori looked at Grossi and shook her head. ‘No, no. It was further up the hill. There’s an empty farmhouse up there. That’s where the screams were coming from.’

  Was that the scream that had frightened Dino De Angelis? Cangio wondered.

  ‘Did anyone else hear it?’ Cangio asked her.

  ‘The neighbours did. Said they did, anyway.’

  Carla Brunori sat back, as if that was the end of the story.

  ‘Had there been an accident or something?’ Lucia Grossi asked.

  Carla Brunori shrugged. ‘Who can say? It’s so dark up there. There are no lights at the Argenti house. It’s empty, like I was saying …’

  ‘I’m sorry, what is this Argenti house?’

  ‘It’s an old farmhouse,’ the woman told Grossi. ‘It’s in a really pretty spot, what with the woods and the view, but it’s been abandoned for years. We tried to rent it for the agency. Luigino wanted to do the place up, then let it out as holiday flats, but we couldn’t trace the owners.’

  ‘And that’s where the screams were coming from?’

  Carla Brunori nodded. ‘A gang of kids, that’s what we thought. You know what teenagers are like these days. What do they call them, rave parties? Drink and drugs, and who knows what.’

  ‘And Sergio thought it was a werewolf,’ Cangio concluded.

  The woman let out a rasp with her lips. ‘That’s his grandad talking. He was in the Resistance during the war. Dead Germans, their bodies torn to bits by a werewolf near the Argenti house. That’s what he always said. When his grandad died, Sergio started telling tales of werewolves all over the place.’

  Lucia Grossi glanced at her watch, then nodded at Cangio. A signal, and an order.

  Time to go.

  ‘Thank you for your help, Signora Brunori,’ she said.

  ‘No trouble at all,’ the woman said. ‘Things are quiet aroun
d here until Easter.’

  Apart from the screams of werewolves, Cangio thought, though he knew that Easter was when the tourist season started up after the winter lay-off.

  Lucia Grossi was silent, concentrating on her driving as they headed south on the SS 209. It was a dangerous road, full of blind bends and occasional lumbering farm traffic, the only road in the valley that followed the meandering course of the River Nera.

  ‘Hey, Cangio,’ she said. ‘What’s your take on werewolves?’

  ‘What do you think?’ he replied with a chuckle.

  ‘Yet they all heard screams coming from that farmhouse.’

  Cangio turned to look at her. ‘Are we hunting for werewolves now?’

  She accelerated hard. ‘I don’t know … but we can’t just ignore it. Those two men were not tourists, Seb. They were here for a reason. And whatever it was, it led to the murder of one of them when he went back to England.’ She braked hard, slewing the car into a sharp bend. ‘If they didn’t stay in a hotel, or rent a flat, where did they stay?’

  She dropped him off at the car park where he had left the Land Rover.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting later in Perugia,’ she said as he climbed out of the Alpha. ‘But … I’d really like to take a closer look at that old farmhouse. Can you be here again tonight at midnight?’

  He thought of Lori, and hesitated before replying.

  ‘Well, if you can’t come,’ she was saying, as if she sensed his reluctance, ‘I’ll go there on my own.’

  ‘No, no, that’s OK,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll be here waiting for you.’

  She accelerated out of the car park and left him standing there.

  He heard her siren blaring as she disappeared into the Sant’Anatolia tunnel.

  ‘Midnight?’ he said out loud.

  Did she have a ghoulish sense of humour, or didn’t she?

  SEVENTEEN

  Borgo Cerreto, Valnerina

  It was twenty minutes after midnight.

  Away to the left, the farmhouse glimmered in the moonlight.

  Cangio and Lucia Grossi were sitting side by side in the Land Rover.