The Girl with the Crystal Eyes (22 page)

    There
is soon more polish on her skin than on her nails, but she thinks they already
look much better.

    Yesterday
Marco ate quickly and had his shower straight after lunch. Usually he doesn't
take a shower early in the afternoon. He has one in the evening before he goes
out, or on Sunday if they have made love in the morning, to wash her smell off
his skin.

    Yesterday,
Marco was behaving strangely. He didn't even notice that she had put on her
black bangles again, the plastic ones. She has had them since she was a girl,
when she was a Madonna fan. She used to think she looked so beautiful with her
bangles. They went up almost to her elbow.

    The
made her feel good, and they hid everything.

    Because
even back then she was like she is now, but with Marco she had to stop, because
he hasn't let her wear her bangles.

    'They
look like gaskets Or something,' he would say, 'and I don't want you wearing
them. I'll buy you gold ones once I'm rich.'

    She
needed to put her bangles on again, and he hasn't even noticed.

    The
kids are spreading across the street like a multicoloured stain. They chatter
and shout as they walk along under the weight of their rucksacks. Watching
their behaviour, the way they move and communicate, you can tell which ones
have already had a tough life - as well as those who never will, the bastards
and the bimbos of tomorrow.

    Patrick
is hunched over, not looking at anyone. He walks quickly, as if he's trying to
get away from something. Or someone.

    That
someone soon catches up with him.

    'Hey,
shit face. Hey, I'm talking to you. Turn round.'

    Stefano
has a spring in his step. He still has a strong southern accent, and his lips
are always fixed in a grin. He doesn't look people in the eye when he talks to them
- not because he's shy but because he has no respect for them.

    'Hey!
I'm talking to you. Are you going to turn round, you son of a bitch, or do I
have to make you?'

    Patrick
stops. There is no escape - there never is.

    He
looks up at the boy for a second, then goes back to staring at the pavement.

    Then
someone else speaks: 'Hey, dickhead, you don't talk to my brother like that!
Don't you know he does martial arts? Don't you know that the only reason he
doesn't give you a good kicking is because he doesn't want to get suspended
just because of a dickhead like you? So shut your mouth before any more shit
comes out of it.'

    The
boy is frozen to the spot. The usual scenario, with him in charge, has been cut
short. He looks round and realises that everyone is watching him as he gets it
from this cow, blonde and slender, with ice-cold eyes and her sweatshirt hood
pulled up over her head, she clenches her fists as she stands staring at him.

    'Oh,
so you're another one -'

    Eva
is suddenly standing just an inch away from him and his words come abruptly to
a halt.

    'You
can say whatever you want about your own mother, but not ours,' she says,
lifting her chin.

    He
doesn't know what to do. Eva snatches the stiff cardboard folder from his hands
and says: 'Watch and learn.'

    A
crowd of students surrounds them. Eva moves closer to Patrick, and whispers:
'Just like in the training sessions.'

    Then
she says 'high kick' and holds up the folder.

    For a
moment Patrick doesn't move, but then, swivelling from the pelvis, he kicks the
target. She carries on, prompting him with 'low', 'middle', and he hits the
folder each time with all the force he can muster. And for once his
co-ordination is spot on. For once his kicks are direct and sharp. He's not
ploughing a field, as the coach always jokes about him.

    This
morning Patrick feels that his legs are actually part of him. He's no longer
stiff like a Playmobil figure, its legs remaining straight even when you try to
make them sit down.

    He is
a champion now, with his legs are made of flesh and bone, not wood. He's not a
puppet any more, and he kicks that fucking folder with all the strength that's
inside him.

    Soon
the sheets of paper start to fly everywhere. The folder is totally destroyed,
in tatters.

    'I've
told my brother not to worry if one of these days we get a letter from the
headmaster to say he's been suspended. Anyway, I'm old enough to be the one who
signs stuff for him. Today is the last time you ever speak to him. You hear
what I'm saying? The last time.'

    Then
Eva takes Patrick by the arm and they walk off together, leaving Stefano
surrounded by a cloud of laughter, trying to collect the sheets of paper that
are fluttering down the street.

    'I
don't believe it. I did it! You made me do it. He was speechless!' Patrick
says, incredulous.

    'I
didn't do anything. It was you that smashed that creep's folder. Just think
now, if your mother knew you could defend yourself like that, she'd be so proud
of you.'

    Patrick
believes that his mother has seen what he did, because from up there she is
always watching him, though she never says anything. She just smiles.

    Marconi
is in a bad mood today, and currently when he's in a bad mood, it's always got
something to do with the Black Widow investigation.

    The
fact is that, over the last few days, so many of his ideas seem to have been
proved right, and the profile of the murderer has started to materialise out of
the fog of clues and hunches, even if the details still aren't totally clear.

    That
murder in the Carracci area has also recently been attributed to her. It was
obviously her first time, because she had to strike the victim five times
before killing him - a savage cut to the throat with a small yellow Stanley
knife, which she left next to the body. Since then she has gradually refined
her methods, becoming more skilful - and more lethal.

    One
decisive blow, by now she never gets her hands dirty. And the choice of weapon is
never accidental. A sharp razor in the case of the lorry driver. No
fingerprints. Some sort of antique sharpened specially for the occasion. Then
the hairpin, used like a dagger.

    She
prepares her weapons in advance and goes into the city like a huntress.

    Marconi
doesn't agree with the profile drawn up by the psychologist: an extremely cold
person; someone who has developed a feeling of hatred towards a father figure,
and therefore towards all men. For him, she's not a woman who is indifferent,
rather she's determined.

    Determined
to clean up the streets, as if that's an act of revenge.

    She
goes out armed and ready, but perhaps in her heart she hopes she won't meet
anyone intent on doing evil. Yet she always does encounter someone, although her
provocative way of dressing certainly helps.

    The
description from the waitress in the service station matches what they later
told him at the nightclub: slightly over one metre sixty tall, blonde, red
lips, light-coloured eyes and sexy clothes. A girl who definitely doesn't go
unnoticed.

    But
since he talked to the weirdo selling the hairpins, everything seems to have
gone back to square one. Marconi is annoyed, confused. He's virtually certain
that the weapon was one of the guy's hairpins, that much is true. The vendor
instantly recognised the gem as one of his.

    'My
jewels are like my children,' he had said. 'I could pick them out from a whole
pile of others.'

    But
then he had added a few details about the girl which Marconi wasn't expecting.
Marconi doesn't, however, have too much confidence in what he was told - the
hippie seemed more interested in trying every possible angle to scrounge a
drink from him - but at the same time he can't get out of his mind the way the
guy described her.

    A
girl of medium height, possibly blonde, with an anonymous face, but above all
he claimed to remember her well because he had felt a violent dislike towards
her.

    'A
spoilt little bitch. You know the type - looking like there's a nasty smell
right under their nose. The sort who doesn't respect artists but buys things
just 'cause they like owning things, collecting them - perhaps even wearing
them once, if they feel like it, but never more than once.'

    And
in addition there's the information received about the pistol that fired the
shots. The bullets extracted from the corpses lead him still further away from
a solution: they turn everything upside down and bring him back to the starting
point. A pistol, properly registered, that belongs to a rich entrepreneur from
Bologna, a Signor Montanarini, esteemed member of the Rotary Club, collector of
guns, personal friend of the
questore.

    He
told them he hadn't even noticed that the pistol was missing. He keeps the guns
in his study, some hanging on the walls, some arranged in cases and some locked
up in drawers.

    'I
haven't cleaned them all for months, so it could have disappeared at any time,'
he said. No sign of a burglary. 'Perhaps I'd forgotten to close the drawer, but
at least the study door's always locked,' he explained to the
questore.
Yes, because it was the
questore
himself who insisted on asking the
questions.

    The
entrepreneur added that he often holds parties in his villa, but he rules out
the possibility of one of his illustrious guests - who often include the
questore
and his wife - having stolen it. And then there's the video
surveillance system, which captures every suspect movement, but for 'reasons of
privacy' not a single tape has made it as far as the police station. None of
the recordings that Marconi himself has seen is relates to the robbery in
question.

    No
one knows, therefore, how the pistol disappeared, and, besides, Montanarini has
already been inconvenienced enough.

    'Please,
nothing else,' Marconi blurts aloud. He's really angry about this obvious
muddying of the waters.

    He
feels a bit like a stagnant puddle of water. The rain has stopped and he's just
left there: he can't flow anywhere and soon he'll evaporate under the warmth of
the sun. He will eventually disappear - without having been too much of a
nuisance - just as the Black Widow is getting further away from him, and fading
back into the fog again.

    He
would like to call Viola. He would like to see her sad smile again.

    In the
last few days all he's had time to do is interview the various witnesses again.

    An
old lady has joined the list of them. She explains that she hasn't been in
touch before because her husband doesn't want any trouble, but, after having
seen that programme on
Raidue,
about the killer in high heels, and then
a bit of the press conference, she'd made up her mind to come in. She has sworn
that, in Via de' Castagnoli, she saw - and it was definitely the evening of the
murder - a pretty girl in a black raincoat, platinum blonde. She looked like
Marilyn Monroe, she added.

    'I
was hot. I never usually open the window because of those horrible tramps who
often sleep right under my flat, with their dogs. They're so dirty and rude.
But that evening I decided to get a breath of air. My husband was asleep, when
I opened the shutter and I saw her. She was walking along, in a hurry. I live
in Via del Guasto, just round the corner from where they found that man. The
dead man, I mean. I thought to myself: what is such a pretty girl doing out at
this time of night?'

    'Hello?'

    'Don't
you recognise my voice?'

    A
warm, enticing voice. A voice that ensnares you and won't let you rise back to
the surface. Like quicksand.

    'Who's
speaking?'

    'Have
you forgotten me already?'

    Marconi
doesn't know what to say. The inviting voice on the other end of the line seems
to reawaken his dull senses on this foggy Monday, in the middle of the
afternoon.

    'It's
Samantha. A couple of days ago I saw the programme on -'