Flowers over the Inferno, page 11
“What are you doing here?” he barked. “Go back to your room.”
“There’s a man outside, Dad . . .” she tried to tell him, but he paid her no heed, and ushered her back into her room.
“Your mother must have forgotten her keys again.”
Lucia saw him leaning on the wall as he made for the door, his arms flailing as he searched for something to hold on to and help him keep his balance. She hid behind her bedroom door and watched him. He thought she was odd because she believed in ghosts, and recently he’d begun spending even less time with her than usual. But the ghost who wanted to come into their home was real.
The doorbell went off again with a short, imperious ring.
Her father turned the doorknob just as the neighbor’s rooster crowed. The animal was like a living clock: every day, no matter what, it crowed at exactly four in the morning. But if it was four o’clock, Lucia thought, surely her mother should have been back by now.
The door opened, and she saw the stranger’s bulk filling up the doorframe. Covered in a coat that reached all the way to his feet, he looked like some kind of giant. His hood hung low over his face, and all they could see was a long beard.
“What is it? Do you need help?” said Lucia’s father.
The ghost lifted his head. His face was white, like that of a dead person.
Lucia closed the door to her room and ran to hide under her bedcovers, but quickly changed her mind and tiptoed back to the door to stick her head out and watch.
She was scared, but she was also intrigued by the stranger. Gathering her courage, she took a few tentative steps down the corridor. The ghost raised his hand, and she saw there was something hanging from his fingers. He said something, but it sounded like gibberish.
“I don’t understand. Do you need help?” her father repeated. He could barely stand upright.
The stranger observed him, his head cocked to one side.
“Do-you-need-help?” he mimicked, as if he were playing a game.
Lucia’s father swore and tried to shut the door, but the ghost blocked it. The sound of his fist slamming into the wood startled Lucia. Time seemed to freeze for a moment as her father focused on the thing in the ghost’s hand. Lucia squinted; it looked like a necklace.
Then the spectre retreated, returning to the fog from which it had emerged. Lucia’s father could finally close the door.
When he turned around, she saw that he was trembling.
-27-
Teresa was studying the light in her room. Not the way it fell on a specific object or reflected off a surface, but the light itself. In the past few hours, she had come to understand its true nature: it was a pulsating force that filled the air, changed color, spread over walls and objects, lapping at their edges, then receding. Darkness was nothing but black light, a rippling of waves, a tide.
There was darkness inside her now.
She hadn’t slept. She’d spent the night thinking, clutching at her memories with an urgency that was new to her.
“May twentieth, 1958,” she said to herself.
The day it had all begun. Her first day on earth. Had she known then what she knew now, would she still have smiled as she came into the world? It was a story her mother had told her over and over again. Teresa hadn’t wailed in the midwife’s arms; she had merely opened her eyes and smiled, a toothless grin in a tiny, wrinkled face. It was probably nothing more than a reflex, a reaction to the entirely novel sensation of air on her skin.
But Teresa’s mother liked to think that her daughter had been blessed at birth with innate joy. She had named her Teresa thinking that the name meant “treasure.” What it actually meant was “huntress,” though Teresa had never told her that—and in the end, Teresa had become a huntress of a kind.
Oh Mother, if you could see me today . . .
Laying down her weapons, she had taken refuge in her den that night, nursing wounds that would never really heal. They were deeper than anyone could imagine.
She was used to feeling betrayed by her body and to betraying it herself. She had learned to come to terms with its changing shape, its increasing weight, its downward stretch; with her lined face which no longer caught men’s eyes; with her diabetes and the swings in her blood pressure, the hunger and tiredness that sometimes besieged her from the moment she woke up; with how her legs would start to ache in the middle of a shift, and how her eyesight was growing more blurry every year; and even with the scar that marked her abdomen, reminding her every day of what had been taken away from her.
All of that, she could endure—but this was the ultimate betrayal, and she didn’t have the strength to shoulder its burden on her own.
She had spent the night curled up in the fetal position, yearning for somebody to comfort her, and wishing she could be a daughter once again and summon her mother back. She longed for a hand to caress her swollen face and her hair damp with tears. She asked herself how long it had been since anyone had given her a kiss. She couldn’t even remember.
It was almost dawn now.
The light was changing. Darkness was taking its leave and once again, Teresa had to muster the strength to banish it from inside herself, too. It would have been easier if she’d had a companion beside her. She had never been a romantic, but after a few dozen years spent coping on her own, she was beginning to find the idea of a savior quite appealing.
Her mobile phone vibrated on the bedside table. She had to look at the name on the screen repeatedly before her eyes could focus properly. She lifted herself into a sitting position and cleared her throat to speak.
“You’re not quite the person I had in mind,” she said.
“That’s what you ladies always say, but then you inevitably change your minds.”
At least Marini was quick with a joke.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s about the Valent case. I’ll come and pick you up.”
-28-
The police station in Travenì was bustling with activity; a suspect had been taken into custody and was waiting to be charged. They had caught him trying to open the front door of the Valent home. He hadn’t known he was being followed. His name was Cristian Lusar and he was one of the three people who had been accused of setting fire to the construction site that Valent used to run.
Teresa realized that of the three suspects, he was also the likeliest match for the killer. The others were a diminutive woman who would never have been able to overpower Valent, and a middle-aged man who suffered from multiple sclerosis.
Once again, Hugo Knauss had withheld information that would have been crucial to the investigation. When Teresa had first inquired about the three suspects, he had failed to mention that it was physically impossible for two of the three to be the killer; what she couldn’t figure out was whether his behavior was down to pure carelessness or if it was a worrying symptom of the obstructionism she could expect from that small mountain community. Either way, Teresa was no longer prepared to tolerate it.
Thirty-five-year-old Lusar’s physique had been honed by years of rock climbing and off-piste skiing. His body was wiry, chiselled by exertion, sweat, and mountain air. His curly, cinnamon-colored hair framed a squared face with blue eyes and a guarded expression. He did not seem scared.
The door to the room where he had been told to wait was ajar, and Teresa was watching him through the gap. No one had told him yet why he’d been detained, but she was sure he could guess.
He was an arsonist who had been spotted loitering outside the victim’s home. He had the hands of a climber, broad and lined with veins that hinted at their extraordinary strength. He seemed like the perfect suspect, yet Teresa was sure that his fingerprints would not match those they had found on Valent’s body—which had indeed turned out to be the same as those left on the walls of the Kravina home. That didn’t mean that he was innocent, only that he hadn’t been the one to physically kill the victim.
“Lead him out,” she told Marini.
He looked at her in surprise.
“Why?” he asked.
“Lead him out and take him into the room where Marta Valent is waiting. Then bring her to me, but make sure they see each other first.”
“I suppose an explanation would be too much to ask for?”
“If you still don’t get it, I’ll tell you a third time: lead him out.”
Marini finally obeyed while Teresa went into Hugo Knauss’s office with De Carli and Parisi. There was a monitor connected to a camera filming Valent’s widow as she paced back and forth, biting her fingernails. She must be worried that somebody—a man who had previously threatened her husband—had been trying to break into her home. Or perhaps she wasn’t worried about that at all.
The monitor showed the door being opened. Marini walked in, followed closely by Cristian Lusar. The woman’s face immediately became even more tense, almost frightened. She averted her gaze and lowered her eyes when Marini invited her to leave the room. She walked past Lusar without looking at him, her hands crossed over her chest as if guarding herself against something. Lusar stuffed his hands in his pockets and seemed rather nervous.
He doesn’t know where else to put them without giving himself away.
Lusar looked at Marta Valent, then turned to face the wall. Parisi leaned on the back of Teresa’s chair.
“Did you see that, Superintendent?” he whispered.
Teresa lifted her hand to invoke his silence. She had indeed noticed that gesture, but the answer to her question lay elsewhere.
“Proxemics,” she told the two agents, pointing at the screen. “The science that allows us to interpret the distance people put between themselves and others. There is always a significance to the length of that distance, and this is certainly no exception.”
She continued to observe them.
“Though they maintain otherwise, Marta Valent and Cristian Lusar are no strangers to each other.”
That was what the distance between them had revealed. Their bodies had been separated by no more than a few inches, and even that space had been reduced briefly to nothing when they had brushed against each other in a seemingly involuntary gesture. It wasn’t a proximity imposed by the circumstances they found themselves in, but a consequence of the trajectory they had unconsciously chosen as they switched positions inside the room. It was a distance that could be considered intimate, reserved to people we know and trust—not to nighttime intruders, or potential killers. It was the distance of embraces and shared breaths.
When Teresa had first met Valent’s widow in her home, the woman had been fidgeting obsessively with the wedding band on her ring finger. Teresa could see now how that wedding band represented a union that existed in name only.
Marini led Marta Valent into the room where Teresa was waiting. He walked back out with Parisi and De Carli and shut the door.
“The two of you are lovers, aren’t you?” Teresa asked point blank.
The woman opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it again.
“Don’t make things worse,” Teresa warned her. “I already know.”
Teresa finally understood why the photograph she had seen in Marta Valent’s house depicted a glowing, cheerful young woman, and why that same woman now looked like a shadow of her former self. At first Teresa had ascribed the change to sickness. But now she understood: it was guilt.
The woman’s eyes shone with tears.
“Cristian didn’t do it,” she said, crying. “And neither did I.”
“And why should I trust you? You’ve lied to me before.”
“What did you expect me to say, with my son and my mother-in-law in the house?”
“You had plenty of other chances to speak; you only had to make your mind up. You could have called me at any point over the past few days.”
The woman’s hands were fussing with a tissue that she’d reduced to shreds. Teresa handed her a fresh one and waited for the tears to subside. When they finally did, the woman looked at Teresa with resignation.
“Will everyone find out now?” she asked. “I’m worried about the child.”
Teresa hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“I’m the only one who knows, for now,” she said, though she wasn’t sure why she was even bothering to reassure this woman.
“Will you keep me in here?”
“I’m going to need your full statement, and I’ll have to ask you to tell me everything about your affair. I mean anything that might be relevant to the case, of course.”
“We didn’t kill him!”
“I’m not suggesting that you did, Marta, but I must also rule out the possibility that you got someone else to do it for you.”
“Oh God!”
“One of my colleagues will be with you shortly to ask you a few questions.”
“What about Diego? My son will need picking up from school soon.”
“I thought they’d closed it for a few days.”
“The teachers and students organized a memorial service for Diego’s father. He’ll expect me to be waiting for him when he comes out.”
Teresa remembered the little licorice thief.
“I’ll go,” she said. “And I’ll be discreet.”
-29-
The traffic jam outside the primary school in Travenì was like rush hour in a big city. Cars jostled for the parking spaces closest to the main gates, spraying dirty slush all over those particularly apprehensive parents who had gotten out of their vehicles to wait, umbrellas aloft, for their children.
Teresa couldn’t tell whether it was fear triggering all this enhanced attentiveness, or the terrible weather. The temperature had risen by a few degrees, and a mixture of rain and tentative snow had begun to fall from the grey sky.
Teresa was among those milling about by the gate. Marini was with her, holding an umbrella as black as his mood. Teresa kept her hands in her pockets, bringing them out every now and then to unwrap a sweet and pop it into her mouth with great deliberation, while Marini looked on in disapproval. Clearly the young man was a health fanatic, as well as a total bore. He was quieter than usual that day, which meant Teresa couldn’t even enjoy picking on him.
“It looks like you have lost your primary function,” she told him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Forget it.”
The children emerged like a herd of wild animals bursting with vital energy. They chased after each other, skipping and shouting, oblivious to the rain and the greyish slop that covered the road. Already they’d forgotten why they had even gone to school that morning: the mass they had just attended for their classmate’s late father was nothing but a distant memory.
Children could be ruthless—it was all down to their remarkable urge to live. It sounded like a paradox, but to Teresa it made perfect sense; they savored each moment as if it were an exhilarating adventure and couldn’t afford to waste time adhering to meaningless formalities they didn’t even understand. They were alive, so what else could they do but live?
Diego Valent was one of the last to come out of the school, walking alongside a younger boy who looked emaciated. They were whispering to each other as they walked, and when it was time to say goodbye, Teresa saw Diego stroke the other boy’s cheek. It was unusual to see this kind of gesture between friends at that age; it suggested that young Valent harbored a strong protective instinct toward his friend. When he spotted Teresa, Diego hesitated, then finally came to a stop.
Teresa walked toward him, followed by Marini who was trying to keep her dry under the umbrella.
“Hello, Diego,” she said in greeting. “Do you remember me?”
The boy didn’t reply, but his fretful eyes looked silently at them. He seemed scared, and he began to shiver. Teresa squatted beside him so that they would be the same height.
“Don’t worry, nothing bad has happened,” she told him. “We’ve come to pick you up and take you home. Your mom had to run an errand and she asked us if we could help. Is that all right with you?”
Diego looked at her in astonishment.
“Y-you’re n-not h-here about the s-s-sweet?” he asked. The stammer was exacerbated by his nervousness. Teresa wanted to hug him.
“That licorice was meant for you,” she said. “I’m glad you took it.”
Diego smiled—only the slightest of smiles, but more than what Teresa had hoped for.
She held out her hand and he took it.
“What was wrong with your friend?” she asked as they headed toward the car. “He seemed sad.”
“O-Oliver often c-cries in s-s-school.”
“He doesn’t like it?”
“The j-j-j-janitor is m-m-mean to him.”
Teresa stopped. Glancing over at Marini, she saw that he, too, had been surprised by this unexpected declaration. It looked like Diego was used to seeing his friend in that state—which, in turn, suggested it was something that happened frequently.
“Mean how?” she asked, but instantly wished she hadn’t. It was the kind of cold, cynical question only a grown-up would ask. If the boy was unhappy, did it really matter how the janitor was being mean to him?
Diego slowly loosened his grip on her hand, his trust in her slipping away. He didn’t answer Teresa’s question, and she knew he wouldn’t tell her anything else either, at least not that day.
A black SUV careened toward them and stopped just short of knocking over a little girl and her mother on the zebra crossing. From the vehicle came the sounds of loud music and wild cackling: it was a group of boys who looked not much older than eighteen. They had decorated the hood of the car and each of its doors with the picture of a white skull.
