The Monster of Florence (29 page)

“Why don’t you tell the truth?”

That was it exactly. Why didn’t he? If you considered the fact that Simonetti’s accusations were false then that meant the last thing he wanted to hear was the truth. The truth, in this case, was what would help the Suspect. But he was lying. This whole drama which should have been a battle for the truth was really a battle of lies, a fight to get one set of lies believed rather than another. The truth, evidently, would serve the purpose of neither side.

“This note in your sketch book here: it’s a car licence number after which you’ve written ‘couple.’ Would you like to explain that, as a non-Peeping Tom?”

“I didn’t write it, it’s not my writing.”

“It’s not your writing? Whose writing is it, then? It’s your book. It was in your house. Whose writing is it, come on!”

“I don’t know. Maybe it
is
mine. I can’t remember every little thing I scribble down.”

“In that case, let’s assume you scribbled down this car number with the word ‘couple’ next to it. What does it mean?”

“I can’t remember.”

“But you did write it.”

“You’re trying to trick me! You’re persecuting an innocent lamb!”

Under cover of a lot of howling, sniffing and handkerchief flourishing, the Suspect had a brief whispered consultation with his lawyer, who patted him on the arm and then looked at Simonetti.

“He thinks he might have remembered.”

“We await the story with bated breath.”

The Suspect blew his nose loudly and messily and then wiped his eyes.

“I remember seeing a couple one night parked in the lane right under my bedroom window. I think I took their number. I was intending to warn them off. There’s no cause for that right under people’s noses. I had a daughter to think of. It’s not right.”

“Moral indignation. You amaze me.”

“It was for their own good. It was when there were couples being murdered. It was for their own safety and look where it’s got me!”

“Where indeed. Let’s come now to these little trinkets here.” He held out his hand without looking behind him and Esposito, the detective with the scarred hand, passed him the soapdish full of cheap necklaces and bracelets.

“What about these?”

“What about them?”

“What story can you tell me about these? You needn’t tell us that they’re not yours. We’ll take it as read that you don’t wear girls’ jewellery. Well?”

The Suspect was silent. He seemed not to know what to make of this at all. He fixed the soapdish with one pig-like eye, his face turned a little away from it.

“I told you …” he began uncertainly. “I told you when you took them that they were my daughter’s—If it’s the stuff you took …”

This time at least the Marshal understood. When they’d removed this stuff from the Suspect’s house, he’d told them that. Now he was quite clearly worried that these trinkets weren’t the same trinkets and that he had no way of proving it. They must have been listed on the search report but how detailed would the description be? If it came to that, all girls wore this pretty, worthless stuff, on sale in every department store. Nothing easier than for the mother of one of the victims to claim one of these pieces as her daughter’s.

“We’re waiting.”

“I … the stuff you took away was my daughter’s, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Do you still say the same?”

“It all looks alike to me, it’s just plastic stuff. Why don’t you ask her?”

“I shall. I want your answer now. These trinkets were found on your property. What explanation do you give for their presence there?”

The lawyer, too, looked worried now. He excused himself and gave a lengthy sotto voce piece of advice to his sniffing client, deciding, in the end, to speak for him.

“My client stated in good faith that the trinkets removed from his house belonged to his daughter. He can’t be sure of recognizing those things now since they are not his personal property and he has never had occasion to examine them closely.”

At which Simonetti shrugged his shoulders and passed the soapdish back to Esposito.

“Tell me about your gun.”

“I have no gun! I’ve only ever had a blank pistol, the sort you use for keeping dogs away from your chickens.”

“The bullet found in your garden wasn’t a blank.”

“No! Because you put that bullet there!
You
did it!”

He was on his feet, raging, his face purple. The Marshal was sure that if this went on he’d have some sort of attack. In fact, almost at
once, he fell back into the chair, breathing with difficulty. His colour drained away and his skin became clammy and greyish with a tinge of blue around his lips.

The lawyer got up. “You have to stop. He needs to take his medicine. He needs a doctor.”

“We’ll stop for an hour.”

In the end it was almost two hours before the doctor would consider letting them continue. In the meantime they went out for a coffee and Simonetti received the journalists who were hanging about on the steps when they returned.

“He certainly doesn’t waste a minute,” muttered Ferrini. “By the way, what became of your young friend Bacci?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Ferrini shrugged. “Could have been his day off, I suppose.”

“No, no … I talked to him last night and asked him to bring me a list I need. He said nothing about not being here today. Can we go in if you’ve finished your cigarette? I wanted to ask you a couple of things before everybody gets back.”

They sat down at the table facing the Suspect’s chair. The smell of his sweaty fear was still in the room, a physical presence.

“Poor bugger,” Ferrini remarked. “I doubt he could get more than he deserves, but poor bugger, even so.”

“I was thinking,” the Marshal said, struggling to organize the disjointed images in his head into some sort of comprehensible verbal form, “this is the second interrogation since the search ended …”

“And?”

“If I’d been asking the questions, I think I’d have wanted to know where all that money came from.”

“An interesting point, but I’ve a feeling nobody will ask.”

“But why?”

Ferrini shrugged. “Why? It’s all the same. You don’t earn money from killing strangers. You could steal it, I suppose, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suppose any of those kids had money, and what bit they did have was left intact.”

“Yes … But … What I’m trying to say is, he’s not the killer, is he? So—”

“So he might be a bank robber. I think I understand what you mean but the point is, nobody needs a bank robber, do they? They need a Monster, so nobody’s got time to waste on anything that doesn’t help with that.”

“You’re right, of course. It was a lot of money, though.”

“You don’t give up, do you? I’ll tell you something. If I were on the wrong side of the law I wouldn’t care to have you after me. You’re like a bulldog that won’t let go of a bone. Don’t waste your energy! You won’t get paid for it and in this particular case you won’t get thanked for it, either.”

“You’re right, of course …”

“So you keep saying, but you don’t let go of the bone, anyway.”

“It was a lot of money.”

“Oh God.”

“And that’s a decent little house he’s got. Nice bit of land with it. Then there’s the flat near the square he bought for the girl. I don’t own a house or a flat. It’s a worry how we’ll manage when I retire.”

Ferrini sat and looked at him. Then he resigned himself. “All right. Let’s hear it all.”

“It’s a worry,” repeated the Marshal, oblivious of Ferrini’s irony. “I often think of it … He keeps chickens.”

“Eh? How did chickens get into the conversation?”

“The Suspect. He keeps chickens and a few rabbits. He grows vegetables. He makes his own wine and oil. He’s been an agricultural labourer practically all his life—”

“As he tells us every time we see him.”

“Yes. Yes, he does. It’s important to listen to what people tell you. Sometimes when you least expect it, they’re telling you the truth. The other thing he keeps telling us is that he’s always been careful, always put something away for a rainy day, like his father taught him. His father was a peasant.”

“Well, so he’ll have ripped off the landowner all his life and stuffed the proceeds in the mattress.”

“Yes …”

“All right, all right … We add it up and we don’t get two houses, a drawer full of millions and a sizeable block of shares. Add to that we don’t think he’s the Monster, but what do you want to do about it? What’s the use of answering questions nobody’s asking?”

The Marshal didn’t even answer. His face was dark and set.

“Oh Christ Almighty, I remember that face. You got like this on that transsexual case and there was no getting a sensible word out of you until it was over.”

“And”—the Marshal prodded the table—“she said she was threatened with prison.”

“And if that doesn’t prove my point … 
Who
was threatened with prison?”

But before he could get an answer, assuming there would have been an answer forthcoming, the door to the conference room burst open and a flustered young man appeared.

“Prosecutor Simonetti?”

“I think he’s talking to the press. Is something wrong?”

The young man came in. He was carrying a thick packet which he placed on the table.

“He’s going to have my guts for garters, that’s all …”

He sat down and looked at them both. “Listen, you must know him better than I do. I’ll throw myself on your mercy. What I did was stupid, I know that, but what I don’t know is how badly I’ve screwed up. I mean, how much will the delay matter and can we keep it from the press—that’s all he cares about, everybody says.”

“They’re probably right.” Ferrini was as amused as he was baffled. “How about telling us what you’re talking about, starting with who you are.”

“Police lab,” the Marshal said. “You were there that day in the rain when they took the rubbish skips away.”

“And made a complete fool of myself.”

“That,” the Marshal said, “makes two of us.”

“You mean you know?”

“I don’t know anything, except that I was there and I was too
slow. I should have caught him with whatever it was still in his hand. I didn’t.”

Without a word, the young man pushed the packet across the table to him. It was a padded envelope, unsealed.

“Go on. Open it.”

Inside the envelope was a video with a handwritten label on it saying: Walt Disney’s
Snow White
.

“We were told to throw everything away. There was nothing of interest. No useful fingerprints, no trace of gun grease.”

“And you kept this?”

“I kept all of them, the whole bagful.” He was looking at the Marshal as though expecting him to throw a life belt. “I’ve got two kids. It seemed a shame. Then, last night, they were being a bit of a pain and the wife’s got flu—I thought of these films, keep them quiet for an hour. Thank God I stayed in the room. The eldest can work the video machine himself so I could easily have let him … as it was I threw myself in front of the screen and switched off. The youngest, my little girl Giulia, was already asking, ‘What’s that man doing?’ ”

“Did you check the rest of them?”

“Of course, once they’d gone to bed.”

“And they’re all pornographic videos?”

“Home made. And the worst of it is, you don’t see much of their faces, as you can imagine, but I’m pretty sure it’s the girl.”

“His daughter.”

“Yes. You don’t look surprised.”

“How many are there?”

“Only three. A dozen copies of each. He must have been selling them. That broken video camera must have been his, too, but we can’t get that back now. If only I’d put one on that first night I took them home I could have had them here the next morning and got a pat on the head for it. But after all this delay, what’s he going to say?”

“Nothing,” the Marshal said, his face quite expressionless. “He won’t say anything. Send the lot to his office with a note. Then forget it.” He pushed the envelope back across the table and then met Ferrini’s gaze.

The latter gave a long low whistle. “Fancy that,” he said, “just when I was thinking of taking up chicken farming.”

Florence was dark, silent and cold when the Marshal took to the road next morning at 6:20, wearing civilian clothes and driving his own car. He was relying on his childhood memories of having served Mass at 6:30. At eight he had to be present at the next interrogation and he was hoping that no one would ever find out where he’d been. His face was as dark and expressionless as it had been the day before when he’d looked at the package containing the Walt Disney film. That evening he had telephoned Bacci at home.

“But … you haven’t heard? Surely something’s been said. I’ve been taken off the case.”

“Why?”

“Because of this Shawcross business. You must have heard about it.”

“This what businesss …?”

“Shawcross. The man who disappeared. It’s been in all the papers.”

“I haven’t been reading the papers.”
He had, but only to follow the case he was on.

“He was on holiday here and vanished. His wife, back in England, is making a terrible fuss and the consulate’s been in touch with us. The thing is, everybody thought he’d just left her. There’s nothing you can do in a case like that. But now it seems he’s been spotted out in the hills living wild. The monks have been leaving food out for him, but he won’t come close enough for them to speak to him. They say he’s stark naked.”

“Hmph.”

“They needed someone fluent in English.”

“I suppose so.”

“You don’t think …”

“Think what?”

“Well, I didn’t deal well with that business—”

“I—No,”
the Marshal interrupted him quickly, still paranoid.

“Am I being paranoid?”

“I don’t know. You think you’re genuinely needed on this new case?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure about that—and there isn’t anyone else available, not anyone really fluent, that I know of.”

What was the point of encouraging him to worry, after all? It sounded, anyway, like the right sort of case for Bacci. In a situation like that, with the consulate involved, the Marshal would have chosen him himself. He’d never make much of an investigator but he was ideal for public relations. He was good-looking, courteous, practically bilingual … Of course, when you came down to it, that was what Simonetti had intended to exploit, using young Bacci on camera for the bullet business.