The Girl with the Crystal Eyes (19 page)

    'I'm
sorry for Eva. She's new, and to build up her confidence I wanted her to have
this opportunity, but there's no comparison is there, Guidetti? The second is
much more immediate, more colourful, funny, right for young people and for the
next Christmas campaign,' she concludes, articulating her words clearly.

    'You
have a look too, Giulia, seeing as you're here.'

    Giulia
doesn't even pretend to look at the two proposals and immediately says: 'The
second one's much better. On a different level altogether. That girl in the
Jacuzzi talking on her mobile is completely wrong.'

    At
that, Roberto's expression, darkens. He jumps imperceptibly in his chair, and,
unable to stop himself, fixes Eva with a stare that is somewhere between
questioning and threatening.

    She
turns away while he thinks:
Don't say anything, just don't.
But she
does.

    'There
must have been a mistake when the proposals were labelled. Look for yourselves:
on the back of the design with the mobile phone snowboarding past the older
models there's my signature. I don't know how it happened, but the two folders
must have got mixed up. And now, as they say, give us youngsters a chance!'

    Everyone
looks at her - stunned - and she starts to talk to Guidetti, explaining her
ideas in detail and the message she wanted to convey. No one can take it away
from her now: the advertising campaign is hers. Soon she'll see her posters
around Bologna, as she had dreamed, and every time she sees one she will
imagine Roberto's face.

     The
shouting coming from Mariangela's office provides background noise during the
last hour of the working day.

    'That
bitch. That fucking cunt. You shouldn't have let it happen!'

    Then
Mariangela speaks - no one can hear what she's saying - then Roberto again:
'Fuck. Fuck!'

    Then
nothing again.

    'She
swapped them, the bitch! I can't believe it. Fuck, I can't believe it.'
Silence, then the sound of something crashing on to the floor.

    Eva
is enjoying it. She's loving every moment. A real orgasm of pleasure, like you
get from chocolate, the same rush when you eat something that's so good you
lick your lips and the taste fills you up and you try to stop it melting away.

    Mariangela,
however, won't be having any orgasms for a long time. He's very touchy is
Roberto.

    ''Tommasi,
today's Friday and we're going to check out the market at Montagnola.'

    'I
thought the council did that sort of boring job.'

    'We're
trying to find the weapon used in the last murder, and we'll have a look
round.'

    'What?
We're looking for an antique pistol at Montagnola?'

    'No,
I mean the hairpin used to spear the man's eye.' Marconi doesn't explain any
further.

    'OK,'
is all Tommasi replies. Something crops up every time his boss says 'we'll have
a look round', and they both know it.

    Last
time he said it, they found themselves in the middle of a shoot-out between a
Ukrainian prostitute's pimp and a rather particular client: an ex- security
guard who had got it into his head to take her off the street and marry her.
They were there, just having a look round, in the area where the tobacco
factory used to be. The shooting had started, and the woman - in a micro-skirt
and high heels - was screaming. Her fingers were in her ears, and she was
running backwards and forwards, unsure whether to side with her client or her
pimp.

    At
Montagnola, Marconi makes sure he studies each and every stall, even though
they all look much the same to him. And he doesn't like the smell of incense,
either. It stings his nose and makes him sneeze. Tommasi follows a step behind,
as it's so crowded that they can't walk side by side.

    Every
time Marconi halts, because he thinks he has just seen something that looks
like a metal hairpin, without fail Tommasi bumps into him and says: 'Sorry,
Inspector.' And Marconi replies, without fail: 'Don't call me inspector when
we're undercover, you idiot.'

    Sometimes
they're just like a pair of comedians.

    Marconi
isn't very good at scanning the stalls - his eyes are too well trained in
spotting criminality. He notices the actions of the Moroccan who is pretending
to shake the rather dazed-looking Rastafarian's hand, but in fact is passing
him a spliff. He sees the little punk who is walking too close to a boy with a
rucksack, so he can open the zip a bit more every time the boy slows down. He
would like to do something but then he remembers that it's not his business,
that he's here to look for something very specific, something that perhaps will
be able to provide some answers regarding the mysterious girl who goes round
Bologna killing predatory men.

    He is
studying a stall that belongs to an Indian, where there are ebony hairpins
decorated with perfect, tiny inlaid animals.

    'Do
you have any metal ones?'

    'No,
they look much nicer in wood, and they're more valuable.' The young man with
hair so black and glossy it looks blue tries to persuade him to buy something.

    'Do
you know if anyone here sells metal hairpins?'

    Just
as he's asking the question, a girl shouts 'My bag!', and a gust of wind rushes
past him like in a Roadrunner cartoon.

    Marconi
doesn't think; he just starts running, and slams into a short woman with curly
hair who is admiring the faded top she has just bought. He roughly pushes her
to one side. 'Sorry,' he shouts, and carries on racing after the thief who has
now got further ahead of him.

    Fifth
year, the end-of-year sports day and by now struggling for breath. Antonio,
repeating a year, and therefore two years older than him, was alone in front
and sure of victory. Marconi had started to think that if he lost now, he would
always lose in life, so he sped up, moving so fast that he caught and then
overtook Antonio a few paces from the finishing line.

    
Keep
trying. You can do it.
And he thinks that it will be a bad omen - really
bad - if he isn't able to catch the shit now running in front of him.

    So he
speeds up, trying not to lose sight of the orange fleece up ahead, trying to
anticipate the movements of the people in his way so he can avoid them.

    His
spleen hurts. He pays no attention. He takes deeper breaths and carries on
running. He runs and thinks that it will be a bad omen if he fails, and that
he'll catch up like he did that time in the fifth year.

    The
boy turns a corner. Marconi speeds up. He can do this.

    He
skids round the corner, grabbing on to the wall for balance. The boy is nowhere
to be seen. Marconi, all on his own, has just conjured up a mountain of bad
omens for himself.

    He
stops. He struggles to breathe. His liver seems to have exploded inside him and
his leg hurts.

    Fuck
me and my stupid superstitious games.

    He
notices that it is already starting to get dark, and there's still no sign of
jewelled hairpins.

    'Hi.
What are
you
doing here?'

    He
straightens up and sees her. Boots up to her thighs, low-cut top and leather
miniskirt, big earrings and eyes like a cat.

    The
girl from the club.

    'Hi,'
he manages to gasp, with difficulty.

    'But
what have you been up to?' she says. Her friends are watching him and burst out
laughing.

    'My
dog,' he says, still panting.

    'Your
dog?'

    Marconi
hates it when someone repeats what he has just said, as if suggesting the most idiotic
nonsense has just come out of his mouth.

    'Yes.'
He is still trying to get his breath back.

    'So,
are you going to tell me what happened to your dog, or do I have to worm it out
of you?' Her friends all laugh again.

    'I
had him on his lead… he pulled on it… he ran off… I ran after him but… too
fast.'

    'You're
worrying me gasping like that. Get your breath back!'

    
But
can't those idiots do anything but laugh
? And he gives them a severe look
to make them be quiet.

    Samantha
is a step in front of them. She's the leader of the group, and it's clear that
they all think she's the most beautiful.

    'You
don't know my good news. I've been really lucky… try and guess.' She pauses,
then adds in a triumphant tone of voice: 'I found it!'

    'What
did you find?'

    'What
do you mean,
what
? A hairpin, just like your ex-girlfriend's - or at
least I assume you've broken up with her by now.'

    'Of
course I have. But where? How did you find it?'

    'There,
right opposite. In a line of stalls parallel with Via Indipendenza there's Deco
Mela, the craft market. A really sweet boy makes them. Look.'

    She
opens a yellow bag made of recycled paper and pulls out two hairpins, each one
surmounted by two small glass spheres.

    Marconi
decides that women must possess a real skill, in being able to find what
they're looking for among the chaos of all these stalls. Perhaps the bag
snatcher wasn't such a bad omen after all.

    'Can
I?' he asks, holding out his hand.

    'Take
it,' she replies, suggestively.

    It is
about fifteen centimetres long, three millimetres in diameter, metal, therefore
easy to sharpen. A little knife for the hair, in fact.

    'It's
lovely. It'll look really nice on you.' Marconi always feels slightly
embarrassed around women.

    She
takes it from him, brushing her fingers against his hands, then asks him to
wait a second before handing him a card on which she has already written
'Samantha' and a mobile phone number, with a little heart drawn after the last
digit.

    She
kisses him on the cheek and starts to head off. 'Call me this evening and I'll
let you know if I've found a poor old dog wandering all by himself round the
city streets. You know, animals really like me. He'd happily follow me home.'

    
Shit,
thinks Marconi as he goes to find his colleague. But at least I know where to
find the hairpins.

    If he
asks her anything, she'll deny it. But it's not as if he won't ask her
anything, anyway. She is sure of that. She has put the shirt back in the wardrobe,
but first she left it hanging on the door for a couple of hours and smelled it,
occasionally.

    She
didn't think it still smelled of her, but Marco has an acute sense of smell, so
she squirted some of his aftershave on it. Now it's in the wardrobe, exactly as
before.

    She
has moved the packet it contained several times. First she hid it in the new
box of crackers. She made a small hole and pushed it in. Then she thought that
Marco is often hungry when he gets home late at night, and he wouldn't bother
finishing the old box of crackers before starting a new one. So she moved the
packet to her wardrobe, stowing it in her underwear drawer. Under the white
knickers, the ones she never wears, as she prefers black.

    
And
what if Marco has brings a present - a new
pair of panties - and he goes
to hide it with the others? So she moved the incriminating object again.

    She
fetched a chair and, standing on tiptoe, hid it on the top of the shelving unit
in the living room. No, Marco once used to keep films up there, the banned
ones, and she had discovered them.
Why didn't I remember that before?

    She
put the chair back underneath, and she is standing there with the packet still
in her hand. The door opens. She moves her hands as quickly as if what she's
holding is red hot. She instinctively pulls at the waist of her trousers and
slips it into her knickers.