The Sleeping Nymph, page 25
“But it’ll take time . . .” Blanca murmured. “If you want us working on it, we’ll need time.”
“Time will not be an issue,” Teresa assured her.
She would be the shield between Blanca and Albert. She would absorb any abuse the district attorney decided to hurl Blanca’s way.
“The difference between an HRD dog and a cadaver dog is in the technique they use,” the girl explained. “If you’re looking for a corpse in a forest, you’ll need a dog that’s trained for a surface search, a dog that can look for miles until it finds the person you’re after—even if they’re dead. But human remains detection dogs are trained to search inch by inch, either from scratch or based on the indications they’re given, and they’re as likely to find a single, tiny drop of blood as they are to find a bigger piece of a corpse.”
“A piece as big as Mr. Skinny, say?”
Blanca nodded.
“Yes, like Mr. Skinny, or even a whole corpse. Detection dogs always need a lot more time to clear a search area, but once they’re done, you can be sure they’ve not missed anything.”
“You’ll have all the time you need,” Teresa promised. “So, is that a yes?”
Blanca stroked Smoky.
“When my colleagues and I first started practicing with placental matter, we hid a whole jar of it once. I suppose you could say it was the equivalent of a corpse, considering how much it stank. The dogs found it straight away; they could smell it in the air. I suppose it would be the same with a decomposing corpse.” She lifted her chin. “Yes. It’s a yes.”
Teresa smiled.
“Thank you, I’m glad to hear that.” She leaned forward to pick up a file from the coffee table. “I haven’t told you the whole story yet, though. The corpse you’re going to be looking for isn’t intact, though we don’t know if it’s been dismembered, either, or whether it’s been buried or left uninterred. But there will be one thing missing from it.”
She opened the file and read it out to Blanca.
“The heart,” said Blanca softly once Teresa had finished reading.
“Yes. The heart has been removed.”
Teresa gave Blanca a test tube Parri had prepared.
“I wasn’t sure what you might need, so . . .” she began.
Blanca turned the vial around in her fingers, guessing its contents instinctively.
“I’ve never held a piece of a heart before,” she said with a sigh. “Smoky doesn’t usually need samples to work from. He’s already memorized all the scents a dead body can produce: the placenta covers roughly eighty percent of them all, but he’s also been exposed to blood in various stages of ‘fermentation,’ whether it’s just been spilled or has been out for over a year, to fresh bones and old bones—and, of course, to cadaverine.”
“Well, if you don’t need it . . .”
The girl hugged the tube close to her chest.
“Oh, no! I’ll keep this, thank you. I’d love to try it out,” she enthused. “So, when do we start?”
“Very soon. Just be ready.”
There was a brief silence. Then Teresa asked Blanca to make her a promise.
“Find it,” she murmured. “Find it before the others do.”
Blanca’s eyes seemed to glow.
“We’ll find it.”
“You won’t be alone in this.”
“Neither will you.”
54
Another night had passed and a new day had dawned. Teresa felt as if she’d risen from a bed of ashes, her body weighed down with a grimy burning exhaustion and laced with the smoky tang of age—the aftermath of an unremittingly bleak chain of events.
And Marini, standing beside her now, was certainly no ray of sunshine. He looked more like some shadowy planet set on a collision course with itself.
Teresa had almost hoped he would call her to say rules and deadlines be damned, he had more urgent things to attend to that day: he was going to get his child back. But no: he was right here.
They’d just received official confirmation from headquarters of what they had already suspected: no prints had been found in the area where the heart had been discovered, nor any traces of DNA, other than the victim’s own.
“A clean job, in contrast with the recklessness, the insanity of the act itself,” Marini had remarked.
“We know he did it out of fear,” she had replied. “Now we need to ask ourselves why.”
“We know that already, don’t we? To guard a secret.”
“Not any ordinary secret, though. A sacred one. But what secret could possibly lead a person to kill for its preservation?”
Marini had taken a moment to reply.
“Love?” he’d hazarded eventually.
Teresa wasn’t entirely convinced. She suspected there might be something else involved, something fiercer. But she kept her theory to herself as they stepped into the house at the farthest edge of the Val Resia.
They’d had news a few hours ago regarding the probable identity of the victim. His name was Emmanuel Turan. He hadn’t been seen in two days, and it was highly unusual for the octogenarian to abstain from the day-to-day life of the village. A relative had called the police to report that there was no sign of him at home, either. Emmanuel had left the gate of the henhouse open and a fox had sneaked in at night and wreaked havoc. Emmanuel’s family insisted that such a lapse was entirely out of character: something must have happened to him before dark.
The house was as modest inside as it had appeared from the outside. Its state hinted at an isolated existence, either voluntary or imposed, and reflected a mind confused, as chaotic as the disorder it had produced around it: the mind of a child, incapable of fending for itself.
Teresa always felt an undertow of pity whenever she searched the home of a victim or of someone who’d gone missing. People who vanished tended to leave behind something of themselves suspended between the walls of their home, hanging over the table they would never eat at again, on the bed that would no longer cradle their tired body at night, spread across the objects of their daily life, and inside the clothes hanging in their wardrobes.
Teresa could always tell when a missing person had breathed their last breath; she would feel an unmistakable shiver, as if their essence had come back home, yearning for all the things it could no longer touch. She had never been wrong before.
It was the same with Emmanuel Turan: she knew immediately that he was no longer alive.
“If he really is our victim, it’ll take us weeks to finish searching his house,” she heard Marini say. “I’ve never seen such a mess.”
“He’s definitely our victim,” Teresa muttered as she wandered among his possessions. “And it’s not mess. It’s called ‘disposophobia.’ It’s a condition whose sufferers experience the uncontrollable urge to hoard things. It’s often associated with Diogenes syndrome, which manifests as a tendency to varying degrees of self-neglect. And that’s how you’ll end up, too, if you turn your back on your child and on the woman you love.”
“Superintendent . . .”
Teresa sat on her haunches. In a corner of the kitchen, beneath a pile of stained newspapers dating back several years, an electric cable was emitting a rather alarming hum.
“Have them cut the power off,” she ordered. “The last thing we need is a fire.”
They followed the cable to the room next door. The door was already ajar, and Marini gingerly pushed it open all the way, but there was nothing living waiting for them on the other side: only a memorial to a crippling loneliness.
A Christmas tree wrapped in fairy lights stood naked against the bare wall. Not a trace of its needles remained, not even on the floor. The red ribbon at its tip had blackened through several winters’ worth of stove smoke.
“It’s been here for years,” Marini surmised.
Teresa barely heard him. Her attention was focused on a set of framed photographs prominently displayed on the console table, the only piece of furniture in the room that was clear of any other odds and ends.
She felt a stab of icy horror as she looked at the portraits of smiling families. Every face was different. Every smile was a sham, as fake as the product it promoted. They were cutouts of old newspaper advertisements.
It was the family Emmanuel had never had.
Someone finally cut the power, and the twisted spectacle faded into darkness with the extinguished fairy lights, as if a shroud had been laid over the old man’s private torments. Suddenly, all that Teresa was left with was the anguish that overcame her every time she was made to feel she’d come too late to ward off evil.
Parisi appeared at the door, trying to catch his breath.
“We’ve found traces of blood,” he said, “right at the edge of the woods.”
Blood staining the earth, spattered over shards of broken glass, acorn shells, fragrant pinecones and the shallow indentations left by tiny animal paws.
“This must be where he did it,” said Marini. “This is where the killer struck him and took out his heart.”
Any footprints had faded in the mud, but the dark stain of blood remained.
Teresa fixed her eyes deep into the heart of the forest.
“The body can’t be far. He must have hidden it nearby.”
“Emmanuel Turan’s family told us he’s quite slight, no taller than a ten-year-old, and shrunken with age and a weakness for alcohol. He can’t have been too heavy,” Marini pointed out.
Teresa grimaced.
“But he was a dead weight, nonetheless. It’s hard to say. Get the forensics team here,” she told Parisi and de Carli. “We’ll have to alert the district attorney and update Gardini.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off that black stain. She could almost smell it.
“Maybe the killer was trying to hide the identity of the man who was with Alessio Andrian the night Aniza died,” she said. “The man who left his fingerprints on the Sleeping Nymph, but whose name we don’t know yet.”
Marini stepped toward her, his eyes also fixed on the blood-soaked earth.
“So all we need to do is find him, right?”
Teresa nodded.
“I think I know where to look. But first, there’s someone else I need you to find.”
55
It was a village tavern like any other, standing in a fertile plain dotted with farms. Teresa surveyed her surroundings: plenty of fields, very few houses and no trace of anyone on the streets.
“Are you sure this source of yours can be trusted?” she asked Marini.
“Well, yes,” he replied, “unless you’re doubting Guglielmo Mori.”
“And who’s that supposed to be?”
“Parisi’s grandfather.”
She stared at him.
“That’s your source? Your colleague’s granddad?”
“Parisi says he knows all there is to know about the Second World War and what happened next. You did say you w—”
“Fine! Fine.”
“Well, anyway, Guglielmo was sure we’d find the man you’re looking for here. It’s basically a clubhouse; it’s where this organization has its headquarters.”
Teresa sighed. She didn’t need to ask what kind of organization Marini was referring to: she could guess. If the person Marini had promised he’d find for her really was in that tavern, this was not going to be a pleasant meeting.
Inside, everything was just as Teresa had imagined it would be: old, chipped tiles, a rather dated feel to the decor, and a bar that was at least half a century old and ran all the way across the room. Dusty neon lamps hung from the ceiling and a TV with the volume turned off was showing a game of pool.
Clusters of elderly men sat at every table, playing cards. The hum of conversation faded as Teresa and Marini walked in, and stopped altogether when they asked the innkeeper for the person they were looking for.
“Are you journalists?” the man asked in response.
His tone told Teresa that the media frenzy generated by the discovery of the Sleeping Nymph must have found its way here, too; though not for the same reasons that had brought Teresa here. People were intrigued by Alessio Andrian’s past, imagining a bloodthirsty monster lying in wait up on the mountains.
“We’re not journalists,” she replied.
“So what is it you want?”
The question had come from somewhere in the depths of the tavern, more specifically from the table right at the back of the room, underneath the television. Every man in the room was now wearing an expression of suspicion bordering on hostility—and one more so than the others.
Teresa knew she’d found the witness she’d been looking for. She made straight for the old man whose voice had rung so clear across the room.
Mariano Claut, code name Merlin. Nearly ninety years old, of stocky build and, according to the information Marini had managed to glean, the last partisan alive from Andrian’s brigade. Except Andrian himself, of course, though everyone acted as if he were already dead.
Teresa walked up to him.
“Mr. Claut. Can we talk?” she began.
The man placed his cards on the table.
“Well, the right to free speech is still enshrined in the Constitution, if I’m not mistaken,” he replied.
Not a bad start. Teresa had expected more resistance. She knew that men like Claut always had lots to say, but that didn’t mean they enjoyed doing it.
Claut’s fellow card players left the table as if responding to a silent command.
“Well? Who are you?” he asked.
“Detective Superintendent Teresa Battaglia and Inspector Massimo Marini,” she replied.
“What an honor!” he said, flashing them a cherubic smile. “If you’ve come here to be a pain in my ass, the door’s over there.”
Teresa sat down.
“A little swearing won’t put me off, you know,” she told him. “I could beat you to it if I wanted to.”
“I can confirm this is true,” said Marini, nodding as he, too, sat down.
Claut appeared to be caught off guard. To anyone unfamiliar with his history, he might have seemed a textbook case of all bark and no bite. But this was a man who’d killed—and more than once.
“We’re here about the Sleeping Nymph,” Teresa told him, getting straight to the point. “I’m sure you’ve heard about it.”
Claut rolled his eyes.
“Heard about it?” he scoffed. “I’m sick of the whole thing. I’ve got journalists hounding me, asking about Andrian—but I won’t talk.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to hound you, too.”
The man pressed the tip of his index finger into the table.
“This is where the Resistance began,” he said. “Right here in these lands. You think you’ll get anything out of me? I was killing Nazis when you were still playing with your dolls, Superintendent.”
Teresa leaned forward.
“I never played with dolls,” she told him. “And I’m here to hunt evil down, not bring it back into your life.”
She could see him trying to figure her out, sniffing for lies in the air around her but finding nothing there.
“I will never reveal my comrades’ secret identities. I will not speak of them,” he said. “Some have been exposed already—like your painter, for example. But I swore that their secrets would die with me—not long to go now—as soon as the war ended and the inquest began. The inquest on us, who took up arms not as conquerors and oppressors, but only so that the horror might end sooner.”
Teresa could understand why he was so resistant: for seventy years people had doubted the sacrifices he and his comrades had made, implying that they were no less culpable than those who’d fought on the other side of the war.
“What are you still scared of?” Marini asked.
“I’m not scared of anything! I’ve lived long enough as it is. But let me tell you, I don’t like this world I’m leaving behind. You’re the ones who should be careful. I can see the signs of resurgent fascism, clear as day. We kept them at bay for fifty years, but then someone came along and gave them the all-clear. ‘There’s no danger anymore,’ they said. ‘They’re all dead now,’ they said.” He laughed a bitter laugh. “I say there’s more of them around than ever before.”
“We’re not here to judge anyone,” Teresa assured him.
Mariano’s fierce gazed pierced into hers.
“Is that so?” he snapped. “But you went to the Slavic priest first, didn’t you? Word travels fast around here. I suppose he told you how awfully mean the partisans were.”
“I’ve come to hear your truth.”
“The truth,” he echoed, spitting the words out. “Let me give you some facts: if you chose to join the Resistance, you had to leave everything behind and hide out in the mountains, to starve and suffer the cold and the heat. But if you picked the fascists, you got a uniform and three meals a day, and did rather well for yourself, all things considered. So, who do you think was really fighting for love of country?
“We were penniless, we had nothing. Our pockets and our bellies were empty, but that poverty gave us freedom, ensured that everything we did was truly in our own and in everyone else’s best interests. ‘Rebels,’ that’s what we called ourselves,” he said, chuckling. “But really we were just boys. We would have given anything to be home safe and sound. We were no devils.”
“For forty years now I’ve been following the trail of blood that violent death leaves in its wake,” Teresa replied. “And I’ve never met the devil: only people. War’s the real hell.”
He looked at her now with a different kind of light in his eyes.
“You ask me why I won’t talk,” he said. “Because I’m tired of being treated like a murderer. I lost a comrade to that war, hanged at the age of twenty. I watched another, sick with fever, betrayed to the fascists by spies in the village. They beat him, tied his neck to a railing. They cut his balls off and stuffed them in his mouth. Then they set him on fire.
