The Monster of Florence (44 page)

“Digested all that, have you?” Ferrini asked.

“Yes … But then, all three of them …”

“I know. All three of them hated their father or father figure, all three of them lost their mother, all three of them did some thieving and were inconstant at work. What’s more, they all at some point collaborated with the investigators. And the only thing we can do now is to start all over again reading Romola’s report and pick out every single reference to each one of them until one of them emerges clearly
and the others fade out because something doesn’t add up—and added to this description are some plain facts which are more up our street. We have to show that he could have got hold of Silvano’s gun, we have to explain the gaps between sixty-eight and seventy-four and between seventy-four and eighty-one and, what’s even more difficult, understand why he stopped—I remember a case I was on once …”

The Marshal didn’t try to interrupt him. He didn’t get annoyed at his smoke-filled office. Now that Ferrini was back he could function again. He felt calm and sure. As Ferrini chattered on he divided up the Romola report between them and prepared three sheets of paper each with a name at the top. He wasn’t consciously thinking about it but somewhere inside himself he knew they were going to find the answer, however long it took.

They talked a lot as they worked that first evening, exchanging questions mostly.

“Why do you think Silvano suddenly lost his grip and put himself in a psychiatric ward?”

“Had the killer told him he’d used the sixty-eight gun to murder?”

“Could he just have been terrified of exposure as a homosexual, an exposure he’d gone to enormous lengths to avoid?”

“Did he screw up on the German murder just to get Flavio out of prison?”

By the second evening they were exchanging answers.

“There, look! He botched the shooting in seventy-four but then he worked on it—and he was smart enough not to practise with the famous Beretta or we’d have had him years ago.”

“No, we wouldn’t. Things would have gone just the way they did.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“There could have been more episodes of arson; we only know about the one that was reported.”

“And there you have his obsession. How we missed that the first time round I don’t know.”

“I do. I’m no hand at jigsaws and in this one you have to work out whether the piece belongs at all before you start looking for where.”

“Every case is like that.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“There are gaps, though,” Ferrini pointed out. “Things we don’t know.”

“But nothing that we do know that eliminates him. We’ll fill in the gaps … if we’re allowed to.”

“The thing that convinces me most,” the Marshal said, “is perhaps the only thing we can’t prove. That it was his car on the scene that night. Nobody will ever be able to prove it but I know it. The car of his fantasy world. By day he was an out-of-work labourer chugging around in a little utility car like the rest of us. But by night …”

“Clever, these FBI birds. They don’t explain the famous bloodstained rag, though.”

“I don’t think,” the Marshal said, “that anybody ever told them about it. Silvano was off the scene by then. In any case, we do know the most baffling thing: why Silvano didn’t turn a hair when they found it and why he said, ‘There might be bloodstains but there can’t be gunpowder.’ Do you remember how that left Romola perplexed? The gun had been stolen years before and that bag presumably wasn’t where he kept it when he still had it. The killer must have hidden it there after the seventy-four job and then taken it away with him. The bag obviously carried no message to Silvano in eighty-five. We’ll never get further with it than that.”

“Will we get further than that with any of it? I mean, have you thought what in God’s name we’re supposed to do next?”

The task they had just completed was the easy part. What they should do next was much more difficult to decide.

“Maestrangelo’s our best bet,” Ferrini said.

How could the Marshal tell him what he had overheard? He couldn’t. And because of that he lied.

“You may be right. As a matter of fact, he wants me to go over and see him this week. I’ll go tomorrow, drop a hint, see how he reacts.”

He had no intention of dropping any hints but he was playing for time. He’d think of some other way.

Ferrini yawned and looked at his watch. “Twenty to three … The things you get me into! My wife’ll divorce me …”

When he’d gone the Marshal gathered up the papers on his desk and locked them into a drawer. After that, he sat still a moment staring at the map, wondering at the strangeness of things.

Their checking of the document had been scrupulous, slow and precise. On the point that
“If you check, you check everything”
the Marshal was immovable. But somehow or other he must have registered all those tiny things the first time round because, however dark and tortuous the road, he’d known where it was going to come out.

“Guarnaccia! Come in, come in, take a seat.”

The Marshal, hat in hand, sat down. It wasn’t his way to let his feelings show on his face, but the Captain at once looked at him hard and asked, “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, thank you. Perhaps a little bit tired.”

“I was told you came to see me the other day—”

“Yes. Yes. You were busy with someone and I had to leave … Simonetti and so on … I’m sorry. I imagine you were wanting some information on that letter about the painting?”

“No.” The Captain seemed more embarrassed than annoyed. “It wasn’t that. I was just wondering … I heard you found some evidence yesterday …?”

“So it seems.”

The Captain’s eyes were more than usually watchful. “Another anonymous letter, I gather.”

“Another one, yes.”

It wasn’t the Marshal, but the Captain who seemed to want to test which way the wind was blowing, but what did he want? Was he trying to find out where the Marshal stood, what he believed? Was the expected reprimand to come from him, not Di Maira?

“Ferrini and I were both at the scene of the crime in Galluzzo,” the Captain said, the grey eyes still watchful.

So was he afraid the Marshal would blow the whistle? How could it be that this man he’d trusted for so many years could suddenly be so … dishonourable. Because that was the only word for it. And
hadn’t he said himself yesterday that people don’t change to that extent, not at his age?

“I shouldn’t have got you into this.” The Captain got up abruptly and went to stand at the window. With his back to the Marshal, he repeated, “Both Ferrini and I … Didn’t he say anything to you about it?”

Ferrini had said plenty, that very morning when it was announced that both the soapdish, whose contents had proved so useless, and the sketch book, whose notes had led nowhere, were in fact vital clues. According to an anonymous communication just received, these two objects had been stolen from the camper of the two young German victims at Galluzzo.

“He never set foot in the blasted camper!” raged Ferrini. “Never set foot! Simonetti’ll never get away with this—there are photographs! That van was only an improvised camper. When they had the bed down every piece of junk they had in there was under it. If he’d wanted to get at any of it, he’d have had to climb over the bodies,
move them
and lift the blasted bed up. For a soapdish! Like as if—and if he’d wanted a silly souvenir there was a suitcase full. The suitcase they’d propped the door open with to get some fresh air while they slept. It was on the ground where it fell when the killer opened the door to shoot. Not even open—and another thing: there’s the search report; I wrote it. They didn’t have so much as a pencil, a rubber, a crayon, inks, colours, sketches, nothing! So why should they have had, Jesus Christ, a sketch book? He’s got a nerve!”

“Yes,” murmured the Marshal now, “he did seem to think it a bit unlikely.”

“I’d hoped … I’d hoped that you and he might have—Listen, Guarnaccia, I shouldn’t say this but I’m going to …”

Which remark coming from the man known to all journalists as “the Tomb” was pretty startling.

“When we had to make a choice of men for this job, the Colonel had no intention of giving up his best investigators, given what I imagine you by now have understood to be the circumstances. He was right, of course, but still, I didn’t like it. I still don’t like it. We’ll be tarred with the same brush, you know, if all this blows up in their faces.”

“Yes.”

“So I came up with what you might well think was a foolish idea. The Colonel hadn’t been here long, you see.”

“No.”

“He knew all our important investigators but there was a lot he didn’t know, people he didn’t know or even notice. People who had a certain experience but whose careers didn’t really indicate it. You and Ferrini, you see, appeared to fit the Colonel’s requirements. Ferrini was pushing paper about in an office. You were over at Pitti. I’d no business to do it, of course.”

“Perhaps you should have told us.”

“No, that was out of the question. That would have meant involving you in a move that wasn’t strictly correct. I thought that, if you came round to my way of thinking on your own account, you’d have come here to see me. I hoped, when I heard you were on your way over the other day … Well, it was an unreasonable expectation. It’s just that, somehow or other, I felt sure that you were the one person who had the tenacity to get to the bottom of all this, to cut through all the hysteria and exaggerated fantasy that had built up around the case. And with Ferrini to help you and the literature I lent Bacci …”

“You did?”

“It’s all in English. I found it hard going when I was struggling with it myself in eighty-three, but Bacci’s English is excellent. Well, I was asking too much, I suppose.”

“No, no …” The Marshal stood up. “No, that’s not the problem. With your permission, I’d like to go back to my office.”

“Of course.” The Captain turned and faced him, his voice cold. “You must have a great deal to do.”

“I’ll be back, if you have time for me, in about half an hour or so. You see, we’ve found out who killed these youngsters, but now we don’t know what to do, so, if you could decide … With your permission …”

He left quietly, leaving the Captain staring after him.

He was as good as his word and returned within the half-hour to
deposit with relief his burden of papers and worries on the Captain’s desk. Then he sat in silence, gaze fixed on his big hands planted squarely on his knees, until Maestrangelo had finished reading.

“You did all this, you three?”

“No, sir. Judge Romola had already done all the work but he never had the chance or the peace to understand all its implications.”

“Even so, I don’t begin to understand how you found the time.”

“No.” And yet, thinking back on it, he could only remember Ferrini’s dinners and stories … that and all the tiring reading in the night … “Anyway, we don’t know what to do now.”

“I’ll tell you. What we shall do immediately is to send a report to the Chief Public Prosecutor with a copy to Simonetti and the Preliminary Enquiry Judge. I hope that for the moment they’ll simply ignore it as they have all other information that’s come in. I think the very connection with the Vargius family should ensure that. Then we’ll have to sit on it until your Suspect goes to trial and hope he gets off. Even so, there’s an element of risk. So, who will sign it? Do you want to?”

“I’ll do whatever you think is right.”

“You’ll be safe from risk if I sign it, but on the other hand, if we could ever get it into court …”

“Glory’s not really in my line, Captain.”

“No, I know it’s not. Still, there’s Ferrini to consider—and Bacci. I think you should talk it over and then come back to me. And whatever you decide, Guarnaccia, my compliments. I’m glad to know my trust in you was warranted.”

“Yes … So am I.” The Marshal took up his hat, correcting himself, “I mean, thank you, sir.”

“Well done. Marshal! You succeeded where I failed. Couldn’t get anywhere near.”

“I’m not surprised,” the Marshal said, offering Dr. Biondini his hand, “but I didn’t even try.” He indicated the glass of red wine he was holding. “Somebody going round with a tray gave it to me. I’m not much good in crowds.”

“And there’s certainly a crowd this evening. I’m delighted you managed to get here this time. Have you had a look at the paintings?”

“No, no … Perhaps another day my wife and I will walk up again. I was just admiring the view.”

“Isn’t it wonderful? And such a perfect evening.”

It was September and the evening sun was dissolving over the city into a lake of pink and green and misty purple.

The stone parapets of the star-shaped fort were still warm to the touch and people were pouring out across the lawns from the exhibition to sit there and marvel at the magical beauty of the city they spent most of their days complaining about. The Marshal, after losing Teresa in the crush, had been standing there for some time, listening to snatches of their gossip: the notorious stinginess of a certain marquis, the scandalous behaviour of a countess, the failure of the municipal authorities, the inaccuracy of that article in the paper …

But in the end, they all fell silent before the daily miracle of the sunset over red tiles and white marble below.

“We don’t come up here nearly as often as we should,” the Marshal said, “and each time we do I ask myself why not.”

“The answer’s all too simple, my dear Marshal,” said Biondini with a rueful smile, “we don’t get the time. But you really must come up and have a look at the exhibition on a quiet day. I’ll send you round some free tickets.”