Daughter of Ashes, page 13
Elvira Pace spun her watch around her wrist, nails ticking against metal, a bouquet of sweet, spicy perfume wafting through the air.
“I am not exactly pleased, but I can see no other solution than to postpone the meeting until Doctor Parri decides to show up.”
Teresa couldn’t resist.
“Doctor Parri is one of the leading lights of this institution.”
Albert stifled a laugh, as did Pace’s assistant. The coroner’s alcohol problem wasn’t exactly a secret. The forensics department was situated in the basement of the city hospital, a microcosm in which everyone seemed to know everything about one another, and where interdepartmental dinners were rife with quips about the state in which Parri would show up for work sometimes—so much so that the same jokes had taken hold in the offices of the police headquarters and down the corridors of the courthouse.
Prosecutor Pace gave Teresa a brief glance.
“Doctor Parri’s expertise is not in question, Inspector Battaglia. That is why we will wait for him.”
Everyone looked serious again. Elvira the Witch had restored order without even having to raise her voice. In the commanding silence that she wielded, the only sound was that of her heels clicking as she made her exit.
Before he followed her out, Albert paused for a moment to glance at Teresa.
“You look awful. Are you all right?”
She nodded, her mouth full of saliva.
He left as well. Teresa looked around in a panic. She couldn’t remember where the bathrooms were. For several interminable minutes now, she had been fighting back nausea, but it wasn’t just a feeling this time. When she finally managed to find the staff toilets, she sprinted inside, belly heaving as she crouched over a toilet bowl.
She did not experience the relief she had expected. She continued to retch even though her stomach was empty. She felt hot and cold, sweat beading on her skin, legs trembling. She would have fallen to her knees if not for a cool hand against her forehead. Behind her, someone who smelled of hospital-grade soap, the only scent in the world that seemed, in that moment, to have the power to calm her, and not turn her whole body inside out.
“Take a deep breath. It’ll pass.”
It was a man. Teresa pressed her hands against her thighs to steady herself, finding a position in which she was able to resist the nausea.
Eventually it seemed to go away. She gingerly straightened her back.
He let go of her forehead. Teresa heard him tear some paper towel from the automated roll, and open and close a tap.
He returned to her side and wiped her face in the manner of a person used to taking care of other people’s bodies—his gestures functional, efficient, and as swift as possible.
He had one of those deceptive faces whose age is hard to pinpoint, light and golden, with smooth features. Nothing like Sebastiano’s menacing beauty. He could have been twenty, or just as easily thirty. His reddish hair, spiky with gel, and his smooth, freckled arms, emerging from the short sleeves of his hospital uniform, all emphasized his youthful appearance, but his expression and build were those of a grown man.
Teresa held her forehead in her hands. She’d felt dizzy all of a sudden, as if she had gone for a ride on some infernal rollercoaster and was now back on the ground. When it was over, she smiled at him.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” He smiled, too, throwing the paper towel in the trash. “Are you new? I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I don’t work in the forensics department. I had to use the staff toilets because . . . well, you saw why.”
He crossed his arms over his chest.
“It happens. It’s nothing shocking.”
Teresa ran a hand through her hair, which must have been a mess. She caught sight of her reflection in her mirror. The makeup around her eyes was smudged, and the fluorescent lights shining from the ceiling accentuated the regrowth of the lighter roots from her scalp. Venetian blond, just like the young man’s hair. She looked away.
“I was searching for Doctor Parri. We had an appointment, but he’s late. Do you know where I might find him?”
“At his usual bar, I suppose.” He pointed his thumb at a small window near the ceiling. Down there, light only filtered through the ground-level basement windows. “It’s across the road.”
He spoke without judgment or scorn, merely reporting the facts.
Teresa instinctively warmed to the transparent clarity in his words. She picked up her bag, which she had previously dropped in her haste.
“I’ll be off, then. Thanks again.”
He called after her. He put a hand in the pocket of his trousers, and offered her a packet of fruit-flavored sweets.
“My mother always said they helped with nausea. Here, have some.”
Teresa was about to refuse, and he must have realized it, for he replied to the objection she hadn’t even uttered.
“Go on, take them. I’m a nurse, even though we don’t exactly heal patients down here.” In the end he just took her hand and placed the pack in her palm. “Did you know that sometimes the people you meet can turn out to be all right?”
19
Today
THE ICE CREAM HAD already melted in the bowls. Neither of them had spared it another thought.
Massimo was still holding her in his arms, so that she wouldn’t run away. Teresa was a little girl curled up against his chest, a frantic heart whose fluttering he could feel through her skin, as if that skin were somehow his own—a blood tie, a connecting thread of imagined kinship.
He wanted to tell her that people don’t always get close just so they can use and abuse you, and he wanted to ask her what had happened to convince her of the contrary, but instead he just kept quiet. He had no intention of opening old wounds just so that he could peer inside.
She was the first to break the silence.
“Has anyone noticed?”
“No, I swear they haven’t. I would have heard something otherwise.”
Massimo asked her the question he had been pondering for some time now.
“Who else knows, apart from me?”
“Parri and Blue.”
He nearly burst out laughing.
“As usual, I’m the last to find out. Why am I even surprised?”
She gave his knee a gentle pat.
“It’s not a competition, Marini.”
“I could say the same to you. You don’t always have to appear indestructible, you know.”
“I should have retired months ago, when I would look at you and have no idea who you were, and you would talk, and talk, and talk . . . But instead I’ve gotten to the stage where I’m touching evidence with my bare hands. Had you already figured it out?”
Massimo felt a lump in his throat.
“I’ve had my suspicions.”
“Since when?”
“A while.”
“Anyone else . . . ?”
“No, I told you. Just me.”
She pulled herself up into a sitting position. Massimo loosened his grip, giving her the space she needed.
“You need to concentrate on the case, Marini, not waste time with me.”
“I disagree, Superintendent.”
“When will you ever learn to just say yes and not protest for a change?”
When she decided to trust him completely. Then that yes would be unconditional, both from his side and from hers.
“There’s something I’d like to show you. Give me a minute.”
He watched her disappear into the room that served as library.
They had all the time in the world, he told himself. And if time decided to be fickle and tried to take her away from him sooner than planned, he would find a way to reel it back. He quickly dried his eyes.
Teresa walked back in, leafing through a thick tome.
“Something’s off. The timeline is just too neat. How did the man who presented him with his latest victim even know Giacomo? How did he find him?”
“Are we really going to talk about the case right now?”
She peered at him over the top of her glasses.
“I might forget by tomorrow, Marini.”
“Do you have to keep saying things like that?”
She put the tome down on the coffee table.
“It’s actually quite liberating. Who would have thought.”
Massimo leaned over to examine the book.
“I know this might be heresy, but what if Lona is right? What if Mainardi’s stories are just the fabrications of a twisted mind? Maybe there is no mystery caller. Maybe the caller is Mainardi’s own psychosis.”
He turned a few pages; she flipped them back to where she had placed her bookmark.
“No, Marini, no. You haven’t understood.”
“Of course not. When do I ever.”
“Whoever picked Giacomo’s victim for him had already been following his work. They were aware of the things he had done and knew not just who he is, but what he is, too. They knew exactly which strings to pull to get what they wanted from him. But even that’s not enough. I think it’s important that we ask ourselves this: How much mental strength is needed to bend another person’s will like that? No coercion. Just the pure and subtle art of persuasion. Is that what’s happened here?”
“In theory, anything is possible, but in practice, how many cases of this kind are we aware of?”
Teresa pointed at the pages she had opened the book to.
“Very few. They are rare. And you’ll find them all in here. The first we know of involved Sigvard Thurneman, a Swedish psychiatrist. He would use hypnosis to induce his patients to commit homicides. And there’s another case you must have heard of: Charles Manson.”
Massimo saw the underlined passages, the notes penciled in along the margins.
“Mainardi is a serial killer who has confessed to his crimes. I can’t imagine he would need much convincing to kill again.”
“And you’d be wrong. Giacomo may be a serial killer, but he’s not a hitman. He’s not merely interested in killing. He’s interested in killing a specific victim in a specific way. Yet according to what he has told us, all it took was a single conversation for him to welcome a new participant into his own personal liturgy. I’ve never seen that happen before. But something just doesn’t add up. A mind as sharp as his, beaten so easily at his own game . . .”
“How did Giacomo not suspect a trap? What guarantee could this person or these people have given him?”
He watched her ponder the question, brow furrowed and with the temples of her glasses between her teeth, as always. There were bite marks on the plastic.
“I doubt there were any guarantees on offer, Marini. That kind of reasoning doesn’t tend to feature too prominently in the mental processes of a serial killer. In fact for the more experienced ones—Giacomo among them—the presence of risk adds to the excitement.”
“But Mainardi seemed afraid.”
“I think he must be a pawn in a much bigger game, and I think the caller must have offered him an opportunity he knew Giacomo could never pass up. Something deeply pertinent to the iconography of Giacomo’s inner world, which must have paved the way for the most potent and unspeakable of his fantasies.”
“He’s told us that already: they presented him with the perfect victim.”
“But he could have easily found one himself, no? Maybe this was the perfect target for reasons that go beyond the match with his usual victim profile. Perhaps there were other reasons—reasons even Giacomo himself hadn’t considered, until that moment.”
They spoke in unison: “He knew the victim.”
Teresa stood up, took a few steps around the room, then sat back down. She was obviously agitated.
“He said he didn’t.”
Massimo had no choice but to correct her.
“That’s not the question you asked him. You said: Can you give me a name?”
She looked stunned.
“Really? Is that what I said?”
“I remember it well because I thought it was odd. It’s not like you.”
“Not like the old me. How sloppy. That’s all the opening people like Giacomo need.”
“Even so, would you go so far as to rule out the possibility that he might just have lied to you?”
She took a moment to reply.
“No, but for manipulators like him, these little games and omissions are not the same as lying. That is how they absolve themselves.”
“So what are we waiting for? Let’s go and talk to him.”
“It’s not that easy. Evil doesn’t just cooperate; you have to go and catch it.”
“He won’t tell us?”
“He won’t tell us.”
“He’s toying with us.”
“It’s his fantasy, and now we’re in it.”
“Doesn’t he scare you?”
“Who, Giacomo?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, Marini. No, I suppose he doesn’t. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t believe he would ever do anything to hurt me.”
“How can you be sure?”
She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut, as if she’d silenced herself with a slap to the cheek.
“I am much more concerned about the person who led him to it. A dangerous individual, capable of orchestrating a campaign of secret conditioning even Giacomo himself is unlikely to be fully aware of. A person of formidable power, mental and organizational, and with an overarching vision that is lucid and rational. And if he really did manage to infiltrate the prison to kill Giacomo’s cellmate . . . well, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands than we think we do.”
“What you’re describing is a power with pervasive reach.”
“You can’t rule it out.”
There was a silence. Teresa closed the book and offered it to him. Massimo took it, but not without stating his conditions.
“I will study this, Superintendent, but that doesn’t mean I am willing to forgo your involvement in this investigation.”
“You’ll have to accept it eventually. Go home now. We both need our rest.”
Massimo helped her lie down, and placed a cushion under her feet.
“You know I’m not going anywhere.”
“Antonio will be back in a few hours.”
“Then I’ll go in a few hours. But . . .”
“But?”
“But there’s two other people you should talk to about this, don’t you think? You always tell us we’re your boys, and the bane of your existence. Your affection is amply reciprocated. Don’t you want to see them?”
She didn’t respond.
“You should do it now, right away. It’ll be easier than you think.”
Her chest heaved with a sigh. She nodded.
Massimo sent Parisi and de Carli a message, and texted Elena so that she wouldn’t worry. Then he took care of Teresa. He placed a plaid shawl over her, dimmed the lights, and put a new CD in the hi-fi. He sat back down among the cushions.
“You and Doctor Parri are good friends.”
“Are you jealous?”
“No, just relieved. I’m glad he’s part of your life. How did you meet?”
She turned to lie on her side, one hand under her cheek. She closed her eyes.
“Like all best friends do. We were both in some deep shit. We helped clean each other up.”
20
Twenty-seven years ago
THE BAR WAS CROWDED. Late breakfasts mixed with early aperitifs, warmed-up croissants jostled with pints of beer turning lukewarm in front of the television. The screen showed a splash of green and lots of tiny, harried-looking figures running around the pitch.
Teresa waded through a variety of scents, some syrupy, others more sour. She recognized him right away, huddled over the counter. She quickened her step and plucked the glass out of his hand.
Antonio Parri glared at her.
“What do you want now?”
“I’ll keep taking these away until you stop.”
“Why even bother?”
“Because you’re the best we have, and together, we can stop him.”
He tried to take his glass back.
“The best we have? Fuck off, Inspector.”
“I think he is refining his methods in an attempt to arrive at . . . something.”
“Interesting. Completely meaningless, of course, but interesting.”
Teresa grabbed a stool and placed it next to his. She climbed onto it, her jeans pulling at her legs.
“He’s learning.”
“What exactly is he learning?”
“That’s what we need to figure out. Together.”
“Sounds like you’ve reckoned without your host. That’s me, by the way. And I’m thirsty.”
He reached for the glass, but Teresa moved it away again.
“Any first-time jitters have faded now. He knows he can do it, and the second attempt went much more smoothly. Soon, he’ll have another go. But there’s one detail I can’t explain. The modus operandi can vary at the beginning, and will gradually settle into a tried and tested routine—but the signature never changes. It’s connected to the killer’s personality. So why take the phalanges from the victim’s hand on one occasion, and from the feet on the other?”
“At least it’s seven bones in both cases.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Maybe it’s the number that matters.”
“They’re bones. Think of the symbolism, the iconography . . . surely they must mean more than that.”
He rested his forehead in the palm of his hand, looking drained.
“You should talk to Superintendent Lona about this, not me.”
“But you actually listen to me.”
“And he doesn’t?”
“Albert doesn’t listen to anything but the sound of his own voice.”
“Have you noticed the way he looks at you?”
“The way he treats me.”
“Clumsy, perhaps, but ardent, too.”
“Misogynistic at best.”
Teresa grabbed some nuts from a bowl.
