His cell phone rang someplace, who knows where, in his heavy jacket. After repeatedly looking for it in the wrong pocket, he finally managed to find it and bring it to his ear.
“Capuzzo.”
From the other end came the voice of the director of the crime lab. They all called it that, though Asti’s police department lacked the adequate equipment to perform sophisticated analyses, for which they had to rely on other labs.
“Commissioner?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Bertone. We did the computations you asked for and I think your theory is more than plausible.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that the depth of the footprints is excessive for a man of that weight. We are still verifying the data and I can’t be more precise than that, but I think your observation was correct.”
There was enough embarrassment in that voice to be in itself synonymous with atonement. The Commissioner did not consider it necessary to hit a man when he was down.
“All right. Let me know as soon as possible.”
He had the impression that Bertone was ending that conversation with a certain relief.
“I will.”
With an interior smile that was not without some satisfaction, Commissioner Capuzzo put the phone back in his pocket. He thought back to the words of the Superintendent. Now that it was no longer necessary to imagine a career as a script writer, he was curious to find out what life and his fellow man would propose as an alternative.
If, as it seemed, his theory wasn’t based on thin air, there had been another man in the car with Lucio Bertolino the evening before. A man strong enough to carry him on his back from the car to the tree. That man certainly could not be Savelli, who definitely did not have the physique to accomplish such an endeavor. He was a rather thin man, with a delicate look: pale skin and slender fingers that gave the impression they might fracture at any moment. Much more suited to gliding along the keyboard of a piano than to tying a rope around a man’s neck. Besides which, he could certainly not be described as being in his prime.
Capuzzo really couldn’t see him performing such a strenuous task.
Of course, he might have hired a hit man to do it for him. But those were people in the trade, professionals, men with no scruples and no refinement. Maximum results with a minimum of effort. They show up, fire a shot to the head and off they go, making no concession to a creativity that they certainly do not possess. Then too, experience had taught him that when ordinary individuals get mixed up with certain people, they act so badly that they leave traces that are more obvious than a plane’s vapor trail in the sky. They would investigate Savelli along those lines, though without a valid motive to substantiate this theory, Capuzzo was certain that nothing would come of it.
He joined Lombardo, who seeing him coming opened the door and got behind the wheel.
He waited for Capuzzo to get in beside him before speaking.
“I just talked to Bussi. There are new developments.”
“What kind of developments?”
“They searched the Sloth’s house.”
“Who?”
“That Bertolino. A pal told us that they pinned that nickname on him in jail.
Thinking about those features, the receding chin and protruding eyes, Capuzzo decided that whoever had given him that nickname must be someone who had a good sense of humor. Evidently Lombardo was insensible to such considerations. He went on with his account of the facts.
“They found hash and heroin, concealed in a waterproof box in the toilet tank.”
“Our friend must have decided to join the big leagues.”
“Seems so.”
“Okay. Then I’d say that to find out who killed him, we have to look in that direction.”
Without any hurry …
The Commissioner added this mental note for his own benefit.
As the car went around the monument in the center of the piazza, Capuzzo fastened his seat belt and looked up at the balcony of Savelli’s apartment. He thought he saw him standing behind the glass door, watching the car as it drove away. Then the sun’s reflection turned the window into a luminous splotch and the Commissioner wondered if it hadn’t been just his impression.
He found himself thinking that, without dragging the Lord into it, life sometimes closes its accounts in mysterious ways. In the case of banker Mario Savelli and his son Paolo, who died through no fault of his own except for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, justice had been done.
Abel had had his vengeance.
7
From above Mario Savelli watched the police car leave the piazza and then moved away from the window. He liked that man, Commissioner Capuzzo. He was a policeman but he was also a human being. He had understood that at the time of their first meeting when the Commissioner came to his house and informed him that his son Paolo was dead. That earlier impression had been confirmed by what had just taken place.
He loved his job of course but he was not possessed by it. He was a fair, sensitive man. Savelli knew all too well how much such a man was needed given the period that rotten world was going through.
“I am going now, Mr Savelli.”
Ghita’s voice surprised him from behind. He turned and saw her standing in the corridor, in front of the kitchen door. She was wearing her coat and scarf and was ready to leave.
“Of course. See you tomorrow.”
His housekeeper had asked for the afternoon off to go and see a fellow countrywoman who was visiting relatives in Alessandria; they had all emigrated to Italy where they had found work and were trying to build a life.
He had willingly given her the time off. It was Saturday and the thought of being alone in the house was a pleasant one.
“I left you something to eat in the refrigerator. If you decide to eat at home, all you have to do is heat it up. Good afternoon, Mr Savelli.”
She was a woman who was no longer young but had the shy smile of a young girl. She had been with him for several years and Savelli had never had any reason to regret hiring her. He watched her as she went to the door at the end of the hall, opened it and left the apartment. He waited for the sound of the elevator reaching their floor and only when he heard it go back down did he go toward his study.
There was no reason to be relieved by temporarily being the complete master of his house. Ghita was an invisible, discreet presence, and besides, all he had to do was lock himself in his study to have all the privacy he felt he needed.
Nevertheless, today was a special day.
An unusual circumstance for an equally unusual occasion.
He reached the room which many years earlier he had chosen as his personal domain, before the requirements of Paolo’s studies grew to the point that he had to share it with him. From that time on it had become “their” study, something that bound them over and above affection, consanguinity and cohabitation. A place where each of them could find traces of the other, when one of them occupied it.
Now it was his personal study again. Mario Savelli had always thought that this would happen one day, when his son got married or left home to build a life of his own. But that room had become his exclusive property again in the most terrible way. And he had paid for it with days of tears and nights with eyes wide open in the dark, waiting for sleep which never came.
He went determinedly towards a painting depicting a still life, hanging opposite the door.
He turned it on lateral hinges and revealed the hidden safe.
They had laughed about it, at the time, he and his wife. They had joked for days about the predictability of disguising a safe with a painting. They had spent hours going over various alternatives but, all the same, in the end they were unable to come up with a better solution.
And the painting had remained.
As he dialed the combination, he could visualize Lorenza’s face. Her smiling face as a young girl and the racked face of an ailing woman. How much pain he had e
xperienced, attending her day after day during the course of the tumor that literally devoured her in six months. And how much he had envied her afterwards.
Because she had been fortunate enough to die without having to suffer the agony of outliving her son …
He opened the door of the safe and took out a dark oilskin box. He went and placed it on top of the desk and sat down. He turned on the table lamp and when he lifted the lid, he found before him an object wrapped in a beige cloth. He took it out, moved the box aside and laid the bundle on the leather desktop in front of him.
He unwrapped it gently and revealed its contents to the light. As if seeing it for the first time, he stood staring a moment at a splendid example of a Luger, the pistol issued to German officers during the Second World War.
It had belonged to his father, who had never revealed how and under what circumstances he had obtained it. He had shown it to him when he was old enough to understand the sinister importance of that object. Mario knew that it had not been reported, that the pistol was kept in a particularly unlawful way, since apart from everything else it was a weapon of war. Nevertheless, it had remained in the house, a little secret to be shared between father and son, the sole incursion into misconduct on the part of a family of adamantine honesty.
His father had taught him to disassemble and reassemble it, he had taught him the right way to oil it and maintain it in perfect working order. And in all those years he had continued to do so, more out of tradition than necessity. And he would have taught his son Paolo to do so as well, if what happened had not happened. He didn’t know when the pistol had last been fired. But now it was about to be fired again and Mario Savelli was certain that it would not betray him.
He began disassembling the firearm, calmly and deftly. As he did so, his hands moved of their own accord, guided by the threads of experience. He had time to go over that strange story, in his memory, from the beginning to what would soon be its end.
8
It had begun two years before.
He had gone to Capri for an important Credit Institutions conference. A lot of smoke and mirrors, but, in the end, the usual things. Training seminars for young executives and managers, prominent speakers on this or that subject, positioning in new and old markets, indications of new and old strategies.
And only on the last day a meeting of high-level European managers, concerning one of those extremely secret interbank agreements, the kind that are discussed behind closed doors, which the public is unaware of but which determine the future of a segment of the economy, the one linked to disbursement and the cost of money.
Savelli had gone there as a promotion, his first real prestigious assignment, his official entry into the world of high finance. Then that Tower of Babel had found the common language of food and drink and everyone assembled for the traditional endof-conference reception, in the banquet room of what was one of the most sumptuous hotels on the island. A five-star deluxe convention center large enough to accommodate everyone, with a splendid view of the sea. But no room was luxurious enough to make him forget that it was still a hotel room.
And that he was occupying it alone.
Mario Savelli left the reception hall and went outside. He was able to take part in everything that concerned his work, but he had always had a kind of idiosyncratic aversion to forced cheerfulness, for what in his own mind he called “The New Year’s eve syndrome”, being sentenced to prescribed merriment.
He walked along the pool and was leaning against the wall that surrounded it, captivated by the eternal spectacle of the full moon on the sea.
The sound of a match, the spark of a flame and the smoke of a cigarette signaled a presence at his side. Then the man leaned against the wall a few yards away from him, the red glow of his cigarette occasionally interrupting the silver gleam of the moon.
For a time they remained that way without speaking, as if mesmerized by the panorama.
Then the man broke the silence, speaking in a very low voice, almost as if fearful that too loud a tone might break the spell.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Exquisite.”
The man approached and held out his hand. Standing with his back almost against the balustrade, his face was hidden in shadow.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Alberto Medori.”
Savelli too held out his hand.
“My pleasure. “I’m …”
“Mario Savelli” the other man concluded for him. “I know who you are, I know all about you.”
He gazed back toward the sea and his profile turned to silver again.
“And not just about your professional skills. This is, after all, a small circle. Successes, as well as failures, get around. And apparently you have had very few of the latter.”
Savelli observed the man more closely: strong build, taller than he, with slightly coarse features outlined in the moonlight as if by the stroke of a pen. The man went on speaking, giving him the strange impression that he had prepared his speech at length.
“You and I have something tragic in common, Mr Savelli. Something that just as tragically keeps our hands tied. And if you agree, we can untie them for one another. And find some peace. If you’ll allow me a few minutes I will explain what I’m referring to …”
9
Mario Savelli finished reassembling the pistol. He wiped off the non-existent dust for the umpteenth time, dabbed away the excess oil, checked the release on the safety lock, and inserted the cartridges in the magazine. Then he slid it into the gun butt and heard it click into place with a sharp, metallic sound. That was the pistol’s voice, it was a mechanical and impersonal way for the weapon to confirm to him “I’m ready”.
He wrapped the Luger in the cloth again, placed it back in the box and went to lock it up in the safe.
That evening two years ago, when he sat down at a well-lit table with Alberto Medori and was able to get a good look at his face, he recognized the man immediately. Barely a year earlier he had appeared on the various news broadcasts a number of times, the unwilling protagonist of a tragic news item. For a time it was a popular face, he had been a guest numerous times on several talk shows, a symbol of a justice that is not fully attainable. Then gradually he was hidden away by the media in that limbo where little by little everything becomes naught.
The event that had brought him celebrity was tragically similar to Savelli’s.
His mother and his eight-year-old daughter had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Salerno, where he lived. The story had a certain scathing, chilling predictability. The driver had decided to get behind the wheel of his car after having one too many and smoking a number of joints with his buddies. He hit the woman and girl who were walking on the side of the road, panicked and fled.
After a brief investigation, he was identified and arrested. Afterward, the course of events was very similar to that which attended the judicial proceedings of Lucio Bertolino.
Essentially, he would get off with little time. Savelli recalled the expression on Medori’s face perfectly.
“There are things that come and go, because we’re human and we manage to forget. There are others that never fade. For the same reason. Because we’re human and don’t want to forget.”
At that moment Mario Savelli realized that it was like that for him too. Despite the passing of time, the pain and anger had not diminished. The pain was disguised by throwing himself headlong into his work. The anger was an inexhaustible fuel that kept him going day to day, more so than the food he ate and the water he drank.
Alberto Medori had looked into his eyes as he uttered the words that would bind them together for all time.
“I know your story, Mr Savelli. I know that you are a decent man. And so am I. However, there are cases where this can and should be of secondary consideration, compared to the enormity of lives shattered without reparation. I know that no act of justice can bring my mother and daughter back to me. Just as nothing can bring
back your son. Still, there might be some relief in knowing that everything was resolved in accordance with the rules that distinguish the innocent from the guilty.”
He paused. Then he went on in his faint accent that recalled the inflection of the south. His eyes were brimming with tears.
“And I, if I can’t have justice, am prepared to settle for vengeance.”
For a moment silence descended upon them with the same effect as the moonlight. Then they talked throughout the night, and in the end they made a pact. Savelli had been amazed at his own readiness, as if that encounter had suddenly yanked off a blanket that was too short, revealing his restless sleep. He had been amazed at the serenity with which he had found it all quite natural, just as he had found it natural a short time before to slide a magazine of bullets into the butt of an old pistol.
Since that time, he and Alberto Medori had not seen or talked to each other again. Their only communications took place the old-fashioned way, by letters written strictly by hand and immediately destroyed upon being read. No e-mails, no cell phones, no computers: all things which left behind traces as obvious as a snail trail.
They had made careful preparations, and when Savelli learned of the death of Lucio Bertolino, he understood that the other man had kept his promise, his part of the bargain. He knew that Medori had gone to Asti by train and that he had left there by train without staying in a hotel or taking a taxi. Undoubtedly he had gotten around using public transportation, an anonymous face among so many others. He had arrived and departed the same way, leaving behind vengeance after having tried in vain to obtain justice.
Exactly what he would do, once he got to Salerno.
A crime for a crime, he told himself.
Just as Hitchcock, and a shared passion for films, had taught them. If at times reality became a film, this time a film would become reality …
He left the study and walked through a house flooded by the sunlight of that strangely warm autumn. Its luminosity was one of the reasons why he and his wife had chosen this apartment. He felt a pang in his heart remembering that Lorenza, citing Quasimodo, had described it as being “impaled upon a ray of sun”.
The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 5