The Past is a Foreign Country (13 page)

LAST NIGHT THE forty drops of Novalgin hadn’t worked. The headache had lessened, but that dull, oppressive shadow over his eye and temple had remained. That familiar sensation, which at any moment could become a throbbing, unbearable pain.

‘Can I come in, lieutenant?’

‘Of course, Cardinale.’ He gestured to him to sit down, picked up the packet of cigarettes – thinking as he did so that he probably shouldn’t smoke with a headache – and offered him one.

‘No thanks, lieutenant,’ Cardinale said. ‘I’ve quit.’

‘Oh yes, you told me. What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘I’ve been looking over the files on the assaults committed by that…maniac we’re looking for.’

Chiti took the cigarette out of his mouth, without having lit it, and leaned imperceptibly towards the sergeant. ‘Go on.’

‘Lieutenant, I think the most important thing isn’t where the assaults took place. The most important thing, in my opinion, is where the victims were coming from.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The girls were all on their way home from clubs, pubs, discos, that kind of place. Two of them worked as waitresses, four –
including
the one two days ago – had been in these places as customers.’

‘How do you know they were coming from clubs?’

‘It’s in their statements.’

He was right. It was in their statements and Chiti hadn’t even
noticed. He had read them over and over, on the lookout for similarities in the MOs, or in the meagre, practically non-existent descriptions of the attacker. He hadn’t paid any attention to what had happened before. He felt a pang of envy. Cardinale had been more intelligent than him.

‘Go on.’

‘I think the attacker goes to these clubs. He looks around, chooses his victim, maybe a girl who isn’t with anyone – I mean, not with a man, with a group of other girls – then when she leaves he follows her and…well, does his business.’

‘What about the girls who work in these places?’

‘The same thing, sir. He goes to the club or pub, maybe late in the evening, and eyes up the waitress or barmaid. He sits down, drinks, waits. When it’s closing time he leaves, follows the girl if she doesn’t have anyone to walk her home or to pick her up…’

‘…and it’s also possible he’s been to that club several times, to choose his prey, study her habits. Right. Right.’

At this point he lit his cigarette, in spite of his headache. For a few moments, he was lost in thought, caught between his admiration for Cardinale, his envy at not having thought of it himself, and his anticipation of the work they still had to do. And there was also a small but growing sense of excitement: at last, they had a lead, or at least a valid hypothesis, something to give impetus to this sluggish investigation.

‘Have the girls said which clubs they were coming from?’

‘Some have, some haven’t. We’d have to question them all again. See if they noticed anyone on the night of the attack, or the previous nights. A man on his own, that kind of thing.’

‘Right. We’ll definitely question them again. In fact let’s start with the latest one. And the two friends she said she was with. We’ll see them all straight away. They’re the ones with the freshest
memories
.’ He put out his cigarette, which he’d only half smoked. ‘Well
done, Cardinale. Well done. Let’s get them in here today. Caterina Whatshername first. We can get the details of her friends from her. Well done.’

Well done, damn it, he repeated to himself, lighting another
cigarette
, after the sergeant had left the room.

The headache was gone.

CATERINA WHATSHERNAME DIDN’T remember anything else about that night. She hadn’t noticed anyone unusual in the bar. Yes, it was a place she and her friends often went. No, they hadn’t noticed anything unusual on the previous nights and weeks either. No, she couldn’t say if she had been followed before.

Two of her friends said practically the same things.

Things didn’t get off to a much better start with the fourth girl. She was pretty, with large breasts and a mischievous but not very intelligent expression. Cardinale and Pellegrini, who were taking her statement, couldn’t take their eyes off her.

‘Now, Signorina…’

‘Call me Rossella.’

‘Ah, yes, Rossella. Could you please tell us your full name and address?’

She told them and then, for the fourth time that day, Chiti asked to hear what had happened that night. Caterina and Daniela had left first because they had classes the next day. She and Cristina had stayed a while longer, drinking and chatting.

‘All right, Rossella. Now I’d like you to concentrate on what happened earlier. I mean, before your friends left. Did you notice anything or anyone unusual in the club? A man on his own,
someone
who looked…well, different? Maybe someone you’d seen there before, another night?’  

Rossella shook her head, about to say, No, no one. And then that would just be one more idea that had led nowhere, and they’d be back where they’d started. But then the girl stopped shaking her head and seemed to concentrate, as if she’d just remembered something.

‘Well, there was this guy who came in…but no, it couldn’t be him.’

‘What do you mean? Who came in?’

‘We’d been sitting there for a while, when this guy came in and sat at the bar. He was there for ten minutes and then left. But it couldn’t be him.’

‘Why? What do you mean?’

Rossella looked him straight in the eyes, shook her head again and paused for a moment. ‘He was handsome. I can’t believe he’d attack anyone. A guy like him could have any girl he wanted. He would never have followed Caterina…’

What the girl probably meant was: Someone as handsome as him would never have attacked someone like Caterina.

‘Had you ever seen him before?’

‘No. Definitely not. I’d definitely have remembered him if I’d seen him before. But really, I don’t think…’

‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

Of course she would recognise him. From the way she said it, it was clear she would have liked to do more than just recognise him, she would have liked to get to know him.

Chiti got her to describe him – one metre eighty tall, light eyes, dark hair – took her statement, and then showed her the photograph album they had put together of all the men with records for that kind of crime. Even though he didn’t think it very likely that this Alain Delon lookalike would have a record as a sex maniac.

And of course he didn’t. With a grimace of disgust, the girl leafed quickly through that unsettling collection of faces, their features contorted either by nature, by their own inner passions, or simply by the beating-up they had received before being photographed and
filed. She closed the album, pushed it away from her with an
emphatic
reflex, and shook her head.

For a few moments, Chiti did not move, then he said, ‘Listen,
Rossella
, you say you remember this man well. Would you be able to
describe
him to our artist, so that we can put together an identikit?’

‘OK. But it couldn’t be–’

‘Yes, I realise that. You say it’s very unlikely he could be the man we’re looking for. You’re probably right, but it’s our duty not to rule out any possibility.’

As he spoke, Chiti was thinking something else. He felt strangely excited, and if he could have translated the feeling into words, he would have said,
It could be him, it could be him, somehow it fits
perfectly
with something, I don’t know what, but it fits. Perfectly
.

‘Pellegrini, please send for…what’s the name of the artist, that corporal with the moustache?’

‘His name’s Nitti, lieutenant. But he’s not here.’

‘What do you mean, he’s not here? Where is he?’

‘Convalescing, lieutenant. He had a motorcycle accident and broke his arm. The one he writes and draws with.’ He paused. ‘
Maybe
the police could lend us one of theirs. They have at least two at headquarters. Surely…’

‘So what are you saying? We just call up Police Headquarters, tell them to give us a sketch artist to help us solve the case of these sex attacks, and they immediately say yes, of course, dear carabinieri, here’s our artist, take him, and we’ll leave you alone to get on with your investigation? Is that what you think they’ll say?’

Pellegrini shrugged, pursing his lips. As if to say, We’re in a blind alley anyway, so any idea’s a good one.

But Chiti had another idea. Maybe a ridiculous one, maybe not.

In any case, it wasn’t something it was easy for him to say to his men.

Why? he wondered. Because he was a little ashamed to tell his
subordinates that he could draw and that he would try to do a
portrait
of the attacker himself.

So he simply didn’t say it, but put it into practice.

‘Cardinale, please fetch me some blank sheets of paper, a pencil and a rubber.’

The sergeant looked at him in silence, frowning and narrowing his eyes, as if he hadn’t quite understood. Which was in fact the case.

‘Well? Are you going?’

Cardinale roused himself and went out. He came back a few
minutes
later with paper, pencils, a rubber, and a pencil sharpener.

‘Now please go out and leave me with the young lady.’

That was all he said. He didn’t want to give them any
explanations
. The two men went out without a word, without even looking at each other.

He and the girl stayed there for at least an hour. When Pellegrini and Cardinale went back in, there was a portrait on the desk.

Pellegrini couldn’t stop himself saying, ‘Did you do this, lieutenant?’

For a long time Chiti said nothing, looking from the drawings to his subordinates’ faces to the girl.

‘Rossella says it looks like the man she saw twice at the club…’

The girl looked around, and was about to say something, then just nodded. She seemed very uncomfortable. There were a few more seconds of embarrassed silence.

Then Chiti thanked the girl for her time, asked her to sign the statement, and told her she could go home. If they needed her again they would call her. He himself walked her along corridors and down the stairs to the exit.

When he got back to his office, the two men were on their feet in front of the desk. They stopped talking when he came in.

‘Well?’

The same embarrassed silence as before.

‘Well? I think we have something to work on.’

Silence again. The two men just nodded.

Chiti was about to ask what the problem was. Because clearly there
was
a problem. But without knowing exactly why, he decided to say nothing. Instead, he sent the two of them to make
photocopies
of the drawing. When they came back, he told them they would have to show the photocopies to all the girls and question them again about what had happened, finding out which clubs they had been to on the nights of the assaults, checking if any of them – apart from the waitresses – had been to the same places on the previous nights. He spoke quickly, too quickly, impatient to be left alone.

‘When shall we start, lieutenant?’

‘Ten minutes ago. Thanks, that’s all.’

And he gestured to them to go. Less politely than usual, in fact not politely at all. The two men roused themselves, saluted and left. He stayed where he was, sitting at the desk.

Alone at last with the original drawing. At last able to look at it calmly.

He looked at it for a long time, while his muscles tensed
throughout
his body.

What had his men seen in it? And what did he see in it?

The face of a nameless criminal psychopath, or something very similar to a self-portrait? The more he looked at that sheet of paper, the more he had the terrifying impression that he was looking at himself in a mirror.

In the end the tension became unbearable.

So he screwed up the paper, put it in his pocket, and escaped from the office.

NONE OF THE girls recognised the face in the drawing. On the nights when the assaults had taken place, they had all been in
different
clubs. None had anything to add to their original statements.

The drawings were shown around in bars and clubs. The owner of one of them said he thought he had seen the face in the drawing before, somewhere. Probably in his bar, but he couldn’t be sure. They had kept insisting, but the man hadn’t been able to remember anything else. He thought he’d seen him, but he couldn’t say where or when. And that was it.

A few days later the seventh assault took place.

It was a Saturday night and a patrol car was sent from the
operations
room to the neighbourhood around the Polytechnic. An anonymous phone call had come in, telling them that a girl was sitting on a car, crying, with her clothes torn, in an obvious state of agitation.

The carabinieri patrol arrived a few seconds before a police car. The police had received an anonymous call, too. It was
impossible
to ascertain whether or not both calls had come from the same person.

It was the carabinieri who took the girl to casualty. Chiti arrived there almost simultaneously, accompanied by one of his men, whom he’d grabbed from among the officers on night duty in the phone tap room.

They quickly ascertained that the MO was the same. But the

assault had been more violent this time, Chiti noted, more violent and less controlled. As if the man was undergoing an evolution – maybe they should call it an
involution
– and simple assault was no longer enough for him.

The girl had been beaten for a long time before the sexual assault, and then again
after
the assault. In every other way, the sequence of events was the same. The victim was attacked from behind with a punch to the head, dragged half-conscious into the entrance hall of an old building, beaten again, forced to perform oral sex, ordered not to look up, beaten some more, ordered not to move from the spot for five minutes, and to count the seconds aloud while her
attacker
disappeared.

This one was no prettier than the others. She was quite thin, almost angular, with short hair and a stiff, rather masculine manner. They interrogated her in the office of the doctor on duty in casualty, and she kept her eyes half closed as she replied and turned over and over in her hands her thick, old-fashioned glasses, which had been broken during the attack.

She couldn’t tell them anything about her attacker’s appearance. But just like the others, she did have something to say about his voice. It was sibilant and metallic, and seemed to come from
somewhere
else. Those were her exact words: that it seemed to come
from somewhere else
and Chiti felt a kind of shiver down his spine.

What was new was that the girl wasn’t coming from a club, a pub, a wine bar, anything like that. She’d been studying at a friend’s place and was on her way home. She often went home alone. She always took the same route, and had never had any trouble. Until tonight.

‘It’s all right, signorina, thank you. We won’t bother you any
further
for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll phone you at home, and if you’re feeling better you can come to the barracks and make a formal
statement
. Try to rest and if you remember anything you haven’t already
told us, just write it down. Sometimes a small detail can be very important to the person investigating, even though it may seem
irrelevant
to the person involved. Goodnight.’

Bullshit, he thought as they were on their way back to barracks, sitting silently in the car.

Bullshit from the young detective’s manual. He’d been a good student, at the Academy and since. He’d read books, reports,
specialised
journals. But real life was different. As elusive and cruel as that piece of shit they were trying so hard to catch.

They had had an idea – to be more precise, Cardinale had had it – and it seemed as if the bastard had realised it, had known all about it. And had changed methods. No more night clubs. Now he waylaid them in the street, which made him practically impossible to find. Like a bloody wisp of smoke. Why? How had he managed to sense that they were on his trail?

Or maybe all that was bullshit, too. The man simply struck at random and after months of investigation they knew nothing.

Nothing at all.

He slowly closed his hand into a fist and hit himself on the
forehead
with his knuckles. Once, twice, three times, hurting himself.

The carabiniere who was driving the Alfa 33 looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but kept his eyes on the road.