Flowers over the Inferno, page 17
Maybe Ebran was all this, but not a killer. Still, Teresa couldn’t leave any room for doubt. She hated her own intransigence sometimes, and the only way she could live with it was by constantly reminding herself that someone might be about to die and was currently going through the last few moments of their life completely unaware of how close they were to its end.
“Fine,” she said. “Give me five minutes, then call up the deputy public prosecutor. There’s something I need to sort out in the meantime.”
-45-
Teresa found Hugo Knauss in the kitchen, where he was making himself a cup of tea. The kettle was sputtering on the stove, and he had a teabag ready on the table, with a slice of lemon on a saucer.
“Put that mug down and turn around,” she growled.
He was so surprised that he did as she commanded.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. The light accentuated his features. With his darkened skin, roughened by the cold, he looked like a wooden mask carved by a sculptor with a sense of humor: the ears were too big, the nose was too small, the eyes were too close together . . .
Teresa didn’t let his affable expression fool her. She was sure there was no emergency grave enough that would wipe that impudent smirk off his face. It was his trademark, a permanent fold in the texture of his face. She had to put him in his place, and she had to do it now. She had already waited too long.
“What’s wrong? How about every single thing you’ve done since we got here,” she answered. “Lucas Ebran: does the name ring a bell?”
Knauss lowered his gaze momentarily before replying: he knew he had made a mistake. The only question now was whether he’d intended to actively disrupt the investigation.
“Ebran,” said the policeman with a sigh, turning off the stove. “He’s not our man.”
Teresa could have slapped him. He just didn’t get it.
“The problem isn’t Ebran. Not really. The problem, Chief Knauss, is that I need to know I can trust my colleagues. I need to know I can count on the eyes and ears of those who work with me as if they are my own, and I can’t say I feel that way about you. Can you guess why that might be?”
She cocked her head to one side while she waited for him to respond.
Knauss wet his lips and let his eyes roam over the room, as if he were looking for the right words to say. There weren’t any. Teresa hadn’t come there looking for an explanation or an apology. She had come to restore a hierarchy, a sense of order. It may not have been pleasant, but it was certainly necessary. Sometimes she felt like an ageing stag rutting with the younger bucks in a bid to protect its leadership of the herd. Except that she’d been born a female, and she wasn’t exactly dying to lock horns with the others. It was draining and unnecessarily tiring, but if it was going to help her do her job better, she was ready to hit harder than anybody else.
“So?” she prodded.
Knauss sighed again.
“It won’t happen again,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Teresa nodded.
“David is in the hospital right now, probably because he came face to face with the killer we’re looking for, and yet you’re still here trying to get the better of me,” she said. “Your son is alive by a stroke of luck. Remember that, next time you feel like you ought to lead the investigation in my stead, Chief.”
She saw him swallow.
“Ebran is a wretch,” said the man, “and his mother is ill.”
“And his father died, and he has no friends,” Teresa said in a sing-song voice. She took a step closer and lifted her chin to look him in the eye. “I don’t give a damn if you think that means he can’t be the man we’re looking for. I don’t give a damn if you’re incompetent. But don’t try to derail my investigation again.”
Knauss seemed to have stopped breathing.
“I never tried to derail it,” he said.
Teresa did not move a millimeter from where she stood.
“If you withhold any information ever again, or so much as put a foot wrong, I swear I’ll kick you off the case.”
-46-
There was no sound left in the world except for the subdued crackle of fresh snow falling over the old. The night had transformed those early, timid flakes into a silent blizzard. It was a formidable winter. The forest was an expanse of crystal, of creatures curled up in cozy lairs, and tree branches weighed down with a heavy whiteness they would periodically shrug off, bending all the way to the ground as they did so. A few animals were still out in search of food, their eyes gleaming in the darkness, their coats white, shards of ice sticking to their whiskers, and steam blowing from their nostrils.
From his hiding place at the foot of a centennial fir tree, he observed the forest, hugging himself for warmth, biding his time.
He was hunting for a prey he’d been stalking for weeks. He had studied its habits, its routes, its encounters with its own kin. He knew that sooner or later that night, it would pass by that spot, and he had readied his welcome accordingly. His prey was a creature of habit; even the blizzard wouldn’t change its plans.
He soon saw it approaching. The lights of the metallic vehicle on which it travelled cut into the depths of the forest, and as they came around the first bend of the road, they briefly illuminated his hideout.
He got up to follow, bending low into the undergrowth as he walked. The vehicle made slow progress. The darkness had caught it out on a particularly insidious stretch where the mountain was at its harshest, and the ice so thick that it wouldn’t melt until spring. The vehicle scrambled and lurched forward, spreading pungent fumes into the air.
His prey was nervous. He could tell even from that distance by the tension in its face. Its sunken eyes were narrowed in an attempt to recover their focus. Its lips looked as if they were being pulled into its mouth. It was agitated, and probably also scared. This was his kingdom, and his prey felt out of place in it. It was already trapped.
Just as expected, the metal vehicle stopped at the third bend. For a long moment, it stood still in the middle of the road, and nothing happened. Then, the door opened, and his prey climbed out. He watched as it emerged into the freezing air, huddling into its clothes and fussing with its hat.
In front of it lay a dark shape resting on its flank, lit up by the yellow beams from the vehicle. The snow hadn’t buried the figure yet, and its bristly fur glistened in the night.
His prey approached the carcass of the wild boar that he had earlier placed on that spot. It seemed to be deliberating how to load the boar onto its vehicle, to take it away and feast on its flesh.
Watching his prey, he prepared to pounce. He shifted until he was behind it, then walked out of the woods. The snow muffled the sound of his footsteps. It was, he thought, like walking on clouds.
His hands were itching to go. But his heart was calm. There was no rush, no urgency. Only the need to take a life, just like the winter took the life of the flowers and the grass.
He stopped just a few steps away from his foul-smelling prey. Standing in the blizzard, he waited for it to become aware of his presence and turn to face him, revealing the eyes he had recently begun to recognize, and the likes of which he had not seen in any other animal except his own species; they reminded him of dirty river water after a flood. They were murky and treacherous, and slippery, too.
His prey had been hunching over the carcass, but now straightened its back and turned its head to stare through the flurries of snow at the figure that now blocked its way back to its vehicle. It stood up. He could tell from its expression that it still hadn’t realized the truth.
It hadn’t realized that those who scorn life must forfeit their own someday.
It hadn’t realized that those who prey on the weak will sooner or later find someone on their path who is stronger than they are.
It hadn’t realized that it was already as good as dead.
-47-
How far gone am I? I feel lost, even though my mind is still working. What will become of me when the real confusion sets in? (Confusion: that’s what I’m going to call it.) I suppose the tiredness of these past few hours can only worsen my condition, instead of keeping my synapses firing, and stimulating the brain cells I’ve got left, those that aren’t already moribund. I don’t even want to think about those that have already died.
I didn’t mean for this diary to turn into some sort of litany of sorrows, but it looks like I’ve become a grouchy old lady, as well as a pain in the ass.
Anyway: where was I?
Lucas Ebran: prime suspect.
Following two days of silvery skies and early twilights, the roofs and the streets of the villages in the valley glittered that morning under the light of a radiant sun. It was as if the blizzard had cleansed the world. Gone were all traces of dirty slush at the side of the roads, of the marks the rain left on the windows, and the putrefying flora in the ditches. All was pristine and covered in rounded heaps. The world smelled of ice and of logs burning in fireplaces.
By the time Teresa and Marini reached Lucas Ebran’s house, Chief Knauss’s car was already parked in the driveway. The chief had insisted on preceding them so as not to upset Ebran’s mother, who was elderly and unwell. He was sure he’d do a better job than they could at finding the right words to explain this intrusion. He had just called Teresa’s phone to let her know in advance that Ebran wasn’t home and his mother didn’t know where he was.
When she got out of the car, Teresa glimpsed the shadow of someone looking out of the window of the neighboring house. The figure retreated immediately.
“The neighbors seem nosy,” said Marini.
Teresa avoided looking at their house again.
“They want to go back to feeling safe,” she said. “They’d be prepared to go on a witch hunt if it meant getting rid of what they fear.”
Hugo Knauss himself opened the door to let them into the Ebran home. He could hardly look at Teresa after their argument. And she didn’t trust him anymore; his reticence could prove dangerous. It was the same attitude she’d seen in Valent’s widow. The people of Travenì were protective of each other, and diffident toward outsiders. Nobody wanted to answer the police’s questions. In fact they tried to keep all interactions to a minimum, even avoiding eye contact if possible. They would rather shield a murderer than feel they were being observed and judged by people they considered foreigners. Teresa had only now realized how the community viewed tourists: as a necessary evil that had to be endured. She would never find support and collaboration from within that historic, impregnable village core forged by centuries of isolation.
So she had instructed Parisi to look more closely at the dynamics within the village, though without informing Chief Knauss. They had to find a weak link, someone who would be willing to talk, someone who—just like Teresa and her team—didn’t quite fit in, and might, out of resentment or a need for attention, be ready to disclose the sins of the village. Teresa knew what these communities were like, she had dealt with similar cases before; there was always someone who had been ostracized, who was brimming with bitterness and yearning to even the score. She had to find that person. What she wanted was a name, and a profile that matched. The killer knew the town well. Surely the town must know him, too.
Ebran’s mother was older than Teresa had expected, or perhaps she had been worn down by a difficult life. Her overweight form was squeezed into a tattered, stained armchair. Her legs, visible under the rim of her skirt, were swollen. Her uncombed hair fell over her face, and she had a dazed look about her. She seemed frightened and angry and was barely answering Knauss’s questions. She kept giving the same reply: she knew nothing, she understood nothing. She started railing at Parisi, who had been watching her.
“You come here looking for my boy, when the whole town is full of secrets! People who’ll go to church in the morning and creep into the wrong bed at night! A bunch of hypocrites! Why don’t you go and count how many bastard children there are in Travenì. Hundreds!”
Teresa looked away, partly in embarrassment, and partly to hide her morbid fascination with that struggling creature. She felt pity for her, and fear for herself, fear that she might one day turn into someone like her.
“Make her stop,” she told Marini. She sounded like she was pleading, and realizing this, she left the room.
The rest of the house was the same as the living room: neglected and stuck in a distant past. Lucas’s room was like a teenager’s: old posters with frayed corners hanging on the walls, a guitar nestling in a corner, the bed unmade, clothes scattered all over the floor.
Teresa heard Marini behind her. There was no sound coming from the living room anymore.
The inspector put on a pair of gloves and picked up a shoe.
“Size ten,” he said. “It matches the profile of the killer.”
Under the bed and in the cupboard, they found stacks of porn magazines.
“He certainly enjoys a spot of violence,” said Marini as he leafed through them.
Teresa pulled them out of his hands and threw them onto the bed.
“If it were that easy to draw up a psychological profile, even you could manage it,” she told him.
She couldn’t help but feel sorry for that mother and son who had, at some point in their lives, been cut adrift. She forced herself to remain alert and detached.
“The fact that at his age he’s still relying on photographs to satisfy his urges, rather than an actual woman—that says something,” she said. “I doubt he’s ever had a romantic relationship. He lives with a mother who is the embodiment of physical and mental breakdown. And it’s likely he doesn’t have any friends.”
“It’s been years since I last saw this kind of magazine. Doesn’t he know it’s easier and cheaper to use the internet these days?”
That was when they realized there wasn’t a single electronic device in the entire house. No computers, no mobile phones, not even a TV. It was as if they had gone back in time.
Teresa pointed out the date on one of the magazines.
“They probably belonged to his father.”
The furniture and fittings revealed a difficult financial situation. There was a shelf filled with books on the local fauna, and more of the same on the bedside table. It seemed Ebran was fascinated with wild animals. A map of the world on the wall was dotted with felt-tip pen marks. Teresa let out a melancholy sigh. “All the trips he could never afford to make,” she whispered.
She could feel Marini’s eyes on her.
“It’s almost like you feel sorry for him.”
“It’s called empathy.”
“He could be the killer.”
“Yes, he could be.”
“Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does. It means that before crossing the point of no return, every serial killer is a human being in pain. Often abused. Always lonely.”
Marini’s phone rang. After a quick conversation with the headquarters in Travenì, he hung up.
“A man has been reported missing. His name is Abramo Viesel,” he explained. “He didn’t show up at his sister’s for dinner last night, and his phone’s been unreachable for hours. The sister can’t go anywhere because of the snow, but she’s worried. She says it’s never happened before.”
Teresa parted the yellowed lace of the curtains and looked out of the window. In the garden, cutting through the snow, was a tuft of pointed leaves and crimson berries.
-48-
Abramo Viesel was a janitor at the school in Travenì. He was divorced and had no children. Once a week he went to see his sister, Caterina, for dinner; she lived with her family in a chalet just outside the village, in an isolated stretch of flat land.
Teresa and Marini had been forced to wait for a snowplow before they could drive to her place. They were following it now as it pushed at walking speed through a series of sharp, tricky turns. Marini was focused on his driving and hadn’t said a word since they had set off. Teresa observed the landscape. The moment they’d begun to climb, they had been swallowed by low clouds girding the mountain peak like a crown. The world had transformed once again, this time into a limbo of mist, ice, and fading light.
After a few hairpin turns, the snowplow stopped. The driver stuck his arm out of the open window to draw their attention. They stopped the car and got off. The air was saturated with minuscule particles of water. They were breathing clouds.
The man pointed at something in the middle of the road. About a hundred meters from where they stood, two flashing lights cut through the fog.
“Stay inside and don’t come out for any reason,” Marini told the driver, who needed no convincing.
Marini and Teresa drew their weapons and started walking. They saw a jeep with its engine still running, its exhaust fumes mixing with the mist.
They edged forward, alert to the shadows around them, jumping every time a lump of snow happened to slide off an overburdened branch.
“There’s someone inside,” said Marini.
Through the back of the vehicle, they could see the head of a man wearing a hat. The license plate matched the one they were looking for.
Marini called out Abramo Viesel’s name, but the figure in the car didn’t move.
Teresa pointed at the snow beneath the door on the driver’s side. It was red. Blood was still dripping down onto it. She closed her eyes for a moment.
Once again, we’ve come too late, she thought.
Martini opened the door and swore. The body had been placed on the driver’s seat, its hands bound to the steering wheel with string.
“The skin’s covered in blood, but the clothes are clean,” he said.
