The Monster of Florence (36 page)

“No, no … That’s not true. You knew exactly what you were afraid of. It’s a natural reaction.”

“D’you think so?”

“I know it is. I once had a phone call that made me think my son had been kidnapped. I was completely wrong, but in the first few seconds I’d gone over the whole procedure, from roadblocks to ransom. If you think back, you’ll find it probably happened the same when she was out on her moped. Didn’t you imagine dealing with a road accident?”

The father fixed his lightless eyes on the Marshal in the hope of some relief from his misery, however small.

“You’re right … I used to imagine her on the stretcher in place of some poor youngster I was wheeling into the hospital. And you think that’s normal?”

“It’s perfectly normal. When you love people you’re always frightened, for them and for yourself having to cope with losing them. We all have those imaginings and then when things turn out right we forget. Only, they so often don’t turn out all right, as I know because of my job and you know because of yours. That’s what makes us more likely than most people to imagine the worst. We see it too often.”

The father sat silent for a moment, gazing at the photograph, the ash on his cigarette falling unnoticed to the floor. Then his taut shoulders relaxed just a little.

“Thank you. I can’t tell you how much it’s bothered me all these years.”

“You’ve enough grief to cope with without inventing problems for yourself. All parents are much the same. Any of your friends could have reassured you.”

“Maybe they could, only I never told anybody. I felt a bit ashamed. I don’t know why I told you.”

“Sometimes it’s easier when it’s a stranger.” The Marshal ventured to take a small package from his greatcoat pocket. “I wonder if it might be best if you looked at these things. If you happen to recognize them it might save your wife the upset.”

He accepted the package. “The things they told me about over the phone?” He gazed at the contents of the polythene bag, shaking his head. “I don’t know … She always wore the gold necklace we bought her for her first Communion. She did have some coloured bangles and bits she wore in summer but … No, you’ll have to ask the wife. I’m sorry about this. I did tell her but she doesn’t remember things like she used to and with its being Saturday … She goes down there, you see, with a few flowers. I wish she wouldn’t because it only seems to upset her, but there it is. I draw the line at her being down there in the dark, so at this time I usually walk down and bring her home. I did tell her you were coming —”

“Don’t worry. If you walk there it can’t be far?”

“Five minutes.”

“Then I’ll walk with you. It’s only a question of my showing her these things.” He took back the little package and slipped it into his pocket. “I won’t keep her more than a minute. I wouldn’t want to upset her.”

“I don’t think you will. She doesn’t take a lot of notice these days. I’ll get my coat.”

The grey winter afternoon was fading into evening and metal shutters were rolling up one after the other as the shopkeepers opened up and turned on their lights. As they came out of the street door a greengrocer carried out a crate of oranges with shiny leaves and set it on his stand outside the shop window. When he saw his
neighbour, together with the Marshal, he paused to ask, “Is it true, then? Have they really caught the right man this time?”

The Marshal didn’t answer and the man beside him only shrugged. He hadn’t even bothered to ask about that himself. After so many years and so many failures he must have given up hope.

The Marshal’s driver started up his engine as he saw them approach.

“No, no … We’re not leaving yet. I’ll be half an hour, or so.”

“It’s this way …”

They left the village by a sloping tarmac road which petered out after fifty yards and became a country lane with a stream running along one side. Within a very few minutes they were looking down to their right where a marble cross marked the scene of the murder and where the Marshal had stood not so long ago in the pouring rain looking up at the bleak, bandit-ridden mountain that was now at their backs.

He didn’t see the mother at once because she was standing so still in the gloom. Then he realized she was standing behind the cross with her head bent, perhaps even with her forehead resting on it.

“You’d better go down there by yourself,” her husband suggested. “If I’m there she’ll just look to me to answer anything you ask her. If you look up when you’re finished I’ll come for her.”

The Marshal started down the slope between the rows of dead vines. She must have thought he was her husband and without looking up, she asked, “Is it time?”

“Signora?”

She raised her head slowly and looked at him. “Oh.” She made no other comment on his presence. She clearly only registered him by his uniform as one more person who would ask her a lot of questions to which there were no answers. Her gaze wandered beyond him.

“Your husband will be here in just a moment. I’m sorry to disturb you like this but—”

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“I … Your husband said you liked to bring a few flowers.”

“Did he? Is that what he tells people?”

There were no flowers.

“He worries … But we all have to cope as best we can. I have to come here. He doesn’t understand that. He thinks I should go to the cemetery. Flowers!” She pulled her wool coat tighter over her chest. “It’s cold …

“He was here, you know, my husband, that night. He could have done something. They wouldn’t let me near. I made him bring me as far as where he’s standing now. Then they stopped me. They kept hold of me. Why did they do that? Why? Why didn’t anybody understand and give her back to me, my little girl? For hours they left her lying in the dirt, taking photographs, measuring—and even then, after all that, they wouldn’t let me near her.” She came at the Marshal with a sudden burst of energy and clutched his arm. “Nobody should be allowed to do that to anyone, do you understand? Nobody! Men are so stupid … They hid her from me, hid her wounds as if that way I wouldn’t suffer. Where do they get these ideas about women? We’re the ones who bring you into the world, nurse you in your sicknesses and lay out the dead. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it should be. How dare they steal my child from me! It was for me to lift her head from the dirt and hold her. I needed to comb her beautiful hair and clean her poor little body. Why can’t you understand what you did to me, you people?”

She pulled at his arm, her devastated face staring up at his, and he felt foolish and ashamed of thinking, as he had, that he hoped she hadn’t seen her child’s body. Because she was right, though he could offer her no solution to the problem.

“That evil creature ripped her apart and then she was dragged about and manhandled by other men, strangers … I saw them … I saw them from up there, I saw them turn her over … Oh, God help me, I knew I’d lost her. I promise you, I accepted that. If she had been taken from us, I accepted it, only I begged them please, please, let me hold her! Let me wash and comfort her poor young limbs, let me say goodbye. Let her mother’s hands be the last to touch her as they were the first, but they took her away from me. They took her away and left her in a fridge. It’s not natural and it’s
not right—and what good did it do? They never found him. He went on killing and I’m condemned to come here every Saturday night for the rest of my life. I can’t mourn for her because I was never allowed to do what had to be done. I can’t let go because she still needs me, her poor abused body needs me. I want to hold her! I want to hold her just once and heal all that hurt!”

Her grip on the Marshal’s arm loosened and she turned back to touch the little porcelain photograph of her daughter attached to the marble cross beside that of her lover. It was the picture the Marshal had seen in the sitting room.

“He’d prefer me to go to the cemetery with bunches of chrysanthemums, or go to church and pray, but I won’t go near, I’ll never set foot in there again. The last time was the funeral and I knelt there looking at the statue of the Virgin with the dead Christ and I couldn’t stand it. Whatever she went through they gave him back to her and she could hold him. She wasn’t condemned to climb Calvary over and over because she hadn’t done a mother’s duty. I don’t believe there’s a man on this earth who’s capable of understanding that. Look at him up there. He doesn’t understand, he thinks I’m losing my mind. Well, we’ve neither of us long to live because we’ve nothing left to live for. We’ll soon be gone and there’ll be an end of it.”

“It’s getting dark,” the Marshal reminded her gently. “I think you should come home.”

Only then did she notice that he had come down for her instead of her husband. “Why are you here?”

“I need to show you some bits of jewellery we found, in case you think they might have come from your—from Sara’s handbag.”

“Show me, then. You needn’t worry. I won’t get hysterical or anything of that sort.”

“No, no … It’s just that you can’t see so well here by now. Perhaps back at the house …”

But out from the big pocket of her coat she pulled a torch. She must have had her way about staying down here in the dark more than once, then. She shone it on the package of coloured bracelets.

“Those are not my Sara’s. Is there anything else?”

“No, nothing else.”

“In that case, will you give me your arm up to the road? My legs seem to swell up a lot these days and I’ve trouble getting my breath.”

He gave her his arm and when they reached the top of the slope her husband supported her on the other side until they reached home.

“I won’t come in,” the Marshal said. “There’s no need to disturb you any further.”

The mother went in without a word when her husband opened up for her. Holding the banister with both hands, she began to climb the stairs slowly, towards the empty flat.

The father watched her go and then turned. “I’d best follow her. She has trouble with the stairs. I thought we’d be a comfort to one another, but … I miss her …”

“Yes.” The Marshal understood that he wasn’t referring to his dead daughter. The door closed and he turned away.

“We’re wasting our time. What’s the point? Who needs it?”

Well, now he had his answer. It might help them. It might not. It was all he had to offer.

In silence he got back in his car. In silence they took the road back to Florence. They were almost there when the Marshal was roused from his private thoughts by the driver.

“Shall I go straight there?”

“What? Where?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“No …” He had been aware of the radio communication without paying attention to what was said. “I’m sorry, I was miles away. What is it?”

“Captain Maestrangelo wants to see you. I was saying do you want me to drive straight there or do you want to go to Pitti first?”

“Pitti.” Not that putting it off for half an hour would help. “Did he say it was urgent—? Oh, yes …” It had slipped his mind. He’d said he’d go and explain about the anonymous letter. Well, that wasn’t so much urgent as too late, and he’d had enough for today.

In that case putting it off would help. You can have enough upset wished on you for one day without going looking for more. He felt a real need to be by himself, though goodness knows, he thought ruefully, I haven’t much choice there. He’d go over to see the Captain tomorrow. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil …”

But the day wasn’t over, not by a long chalk. As they drove in under the archway, his driver peered forward and said, “That’s a police car. What’s it doing here?”

The Marshal’s stomach lurched as a bulky figure got out of the strange car and came forward. They pulled up and the young driver leaped from his seat and went round to let the Marshal out. He was too late. The waiting figure had moved heavily forward and opened the car door. Even in the darkness the Marshal had recognized his stance. It was Di Maira.

“Guarnaccia? Can I have a word?”

They faced each other across the desk in the little office, but the Marshal, avoiding the other man’s gaze, stared at the map of his quarter on the opposite wall, waiting for whatever was going to befall him next. Whatever it might be he knew in advance that he was too tired and overwrought to deal with it. Whatever wave hit him now would carry him away without so much as a word of protest. Presumably the worst thing that could happen would be a transfer to some godforsaken place and he’d just have to put up with it. Nobody, after all, had obliged him to make the enquiries he had made. Ferrini had had the good sense to pack it in before it was too late, and he hadn’t. Of course, it would be Teresa and, even more, the boys who would suffer: changing schools, losing their friends, another upheaval when they’d just settled down. How could he have let himself in for this? How could he have barged ahead so selfishly, never thinking of his family? It was unforgivable.
“I’d rather spend time with my family …”

Ferrini was right. Anybody in their right mind would feel the same.

“I’m not like you. When you get your teeth into something …”

Why didn’t the blasted man speak? Let’s get it over with. I’ve
made a fool of myself and I’ll take what’s coming to me. Just get on with it.

But Di Maira didn’t get on with it. He looked far from happy, when the Marshal finally dragged his gaze from the map to meet the other’s. The steely eyes glanced off those of the Marshal uncertainly. It was incredible. The man was waiting for help. Well, by this time, what did it matter? The Marshal made his last effort of the day.

“I’m not surprised to see you,” he offered. “I noticed right from the start that you were watching me.”

“You did?” The big man leant forward, elbows on his knees, hands dangling, and scanned the Marshal’s face doubtfully. “Well, I wasn’t sure if I was right. If I wasn’t, just say so and send me packing. There’s no excuse for getting you into trouble unnecessarily. It’s the sort of thing … Well, it happened to me once and it’s not the sort of thing I’d wish on anybody. I suppose what started the confusion was that rumour going round at the beginning that the carabinieri put on this case were going to be spare wheels that nobody needed elsewhere. But then Esposito remembered that transsexual case and we began to have doubts right away about you and Ferrini. Then, just the other day, Simonetti recalled some case you were on. It seems you messed things up for him. He doesn’t much care for that sort of initiative.”