Flowers over the Inferno, page 4
The deputy prosecutor let out a worried sigh.
“He left no clues about a possible motive,” he said quietly.
“He didn’t want to leave any,” Teresa pointed out. “I doubt it was an accidental omission. He prepared the scene meticulously; he must have fantasized about it at length. He left it exactly as he wanted us to find it. Think of those traps he set up. He’s a perfectionist.”
“So he led us all the way to a specific point, but then decided to hide his true thoughts from us.”
Teresa nodded.
“I wonder if the absence of a nose might be some subconscious obfuscation,” she said. “A more sensual organ than the eyes, and closely connected to libido . . .”
“If that were the case, what would you think it means?”
Teresa rubbed at her eyes. They weren’t just asking her for an opinion; she was often expected to make daring predictions, to reveal intuitions that could eventually lead to a conviction. At worst—as in that moment—she was made to choose which path to take at a crossroads.
“Any inference would be premature,” she said.
But Gardini wouldn’t let it go.
“Just tell me what you’re thinking,” he insisted, speaking more forcefully now.
“I wouldn’t want to rule out any leads at this stage,” she replied, her tone unchanged, and her eyes elsewhere.
The deputy prosecutor leaned closer to her ear.
“It won’t happen,” he assured her. “We’ll investigate every possibility until you deem it necessary to narrow the scope.”
“I’m not a clairvoyant,” Teresa hissed, not wanting the rest of the room to hear her.
“Nobody’s suggesting that,” the chief of police cut in. “But you always get it right. Almost. That’s why we’re pushing you.”
Teresa sighed. They would never understand the burden their questions placed on her.
“I can only see a rough picture so far,” she said. “If it is indeed true that the suppression of the sense organs is not accidental, that would indicate a particularly repressed personality and elements of sexual deviance. But it’s too early to say for sure,” she reiterated.
The next slides showed details of the victim’s wristwatch: it was strapped to the branch that served as the effigy’s wrist, but it was the wrong way around, so the display faced the wood. Teresa had no idea whether that had any meaning.
“And the victim’s eyes?” the chief of police whispered. His fingers, which he had been wringing restlessly, were now interlocked in front of his greying mustache.
“We couldn’t find them,” she replied. “Maybe the birds got them. Or perhaps the killer kept them as a trophy. Their symbolic significance is considerable. Our eyes discover, observe, and measure the world,” she explained, motioning with her hands. “They look and they lust—perhaps after what’s forbidden? They say the eyes are windows to the soul; there must be some truth in that, given how often murderers cover their victims’ eyes so that they won’t feel judged, so that they won’t falter in their intent to kill.”
Gardini turned to look at her. Teresa could sense his uncertainty.
“Trophies? Symbols? We’re not dealing with a serial killer here,” he noted.
Teresa shrugged, her eyes fixed on the slide show.
“There’s a pathological element to this murder,” she observed. “It suggests to me that the usual motives don’t apply.”
“Well, we can all agree there is an element of psychosis involved, but—”
“It’s not just that.”
“Then what?”
Teresa didn’t want to say anything just yet, but if psychosis played such a crucial role—as the nature of the attack suggested—it was still difficult to explain the level of methodical organization implied by all the other evidence they had found.
Either you’re completely insane, or you’re a cold, careful manipulator. “We’ll know more after we have the coroner’s report,” she said out loud. “I’ll take the new guy, the inspector.”
The chief nodded.
“Are you going to torture him?” he asked her in a low voice, the shadow of a smile quickly suppressed.
Teresa glanced at their new recruit through narrowed eyes. Marini was still standing, leaning against the wall. He’d tried to clean himself up, but he was going to need a lot more than soap and water to look anything close to presentable again.
“Not too much,” she answered, looking away. “Just enough.”
-7-
The Institute for Forensic Sciences was the kind of place that made an impression, especially if you entered it at night, when all the lights were dimmed and there was no one inside but a doctor and a couple of orderlies. During the day it looked like an ordinary hospital wing, with the usual hubbub of crowded hallways and rooms full of medical interns, but at night it showed its bleaker side. The silence revealed the true nature of the place: a final, solitary destination. It exuded a sense of melancholy, as if the families’ despair had stuck to the bodies preserved in the morgue, and their tears had been absorbed by the walls.
Death needs soil, not concrete, thought Teresa, walking past rooms immersed in darkness where everything that would have moved in the outside world seemed infected by an eerie stillness: no windows to let light or air in, and the equipment, switched off for the night, had no vital signs to monitor. These rooms were not meant for the living.
The sovereign of that deserted kingdom was Antonio Parri.
Teresa and Marini found him in one of the teaching rooms, preparing the next day’s lessons.
The superintendent knocked on the open door, surprised as she always was by the boyishness of that little man with his dishevelled mop of white hair. Gangly and awkward, he watched the world with his blue eyes wide open behind his spectacles. His curiosity was boundless, and his mind razor sharp. He was often the first person to hear Teresa’s theories about a new case.
“You have me working overtime, Superintendent,” he reproached her, with a mischievous frown that quickly dissolved into a smile. Setting aside the papers he’d been hunched over, he motioned for her to come in. Seeing Marini, he nodded in acknowledgment. Though he’d only had a few seconds to study him, he could have easily described all his features; it was his job after all, and he did it with the living as much as with the dead.
“I wanted you on this,” was all Teresa said, and already those few words revealed so much: the complexity of this case, the peculiarities that bothered her, and her need to confer with an analytical mind capable of seeing what she saw.
“Let’s go,” said the coroner. “He’s waiting for us.”
The body was laid out on a steel bed and covered with a white sheet that smelled of soap. Parri always treated his guests with respect and consideration. Teresa had once seen him request a fresh sheet to replace a stained one; the corpse wouldn’t have minded either way, but Antonio knew the relatives cared. He didn’t just know; he understood, which was even more important. His presence made the place seem less oppressive, and he dignified it with his humanity.
The victim’s widow had identified the body a few hours earlier while it was still inside a body bag deep in the woods. They knew his name now, but not his story or anything about its untimely ending.
“We’ve done all the usual tests,” Parri explained. “Blood tests, swabs, fingernail scrapes . . . Now there’s just the autopsy left to conduct while we wait for the results.”
He uncovered the body.
Teresa nodded, gazing at the corpse. There were strips of gauze covering the eye sockets. Another act of mercy.
“No signs of sexual activity prior to death. The facial wounds are deep and point to a violent, brutal motion. My view is that there was no weapon involved. He did it with his bare hands, and even left some fingerprints.”
Teresa saw Marini shudder. He’d been standing back, craning his neck every now and then to take a closer look at the body.
“It won’t bite,” she said. “Come here and take a proper look.”
Inspector Marini obeyed, but he moved stiffly, and evidently had no idea how to behave—Teresa could tell from the way the young officer seemed suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin. He didn’t know where to place his hands, how to move his feet, what to do with himself.
“I’m not familiar with this sort of thing,” he confessed. “I won’t be of much help.”
“You’re not familiar with murder? Then you’d better find yourself a new job, or start learning.” Teresa shifted her attention back to Parri. “Do you mean to say he carved the eyes out with his fingers?”
“I believe so. Judging by the clotting in the capillaries here, the victim did not die immediately, but after a few hours. We will have to wait for the full autopsy to establish a definitive cause of death. In any event, it happened on the day he disappeared. I would rule out strangulation; the trachea appears undamaged and there are no bruises on the neck.”
“Wouldn’t wounds like those kill you anyway?”
The question had come from Marini.
“Is he new?” Parri asked Teresa.
“Indeed.”
“No, wounds like these wouldn’t kill you, young man.”
“If it took a few hours, the perpetrator will have stayed behind to watch over the dying victim,” Teresa murmured, lost in her conjectures. “Or perhaps he came back later to rearrange the body and set up the scene he’d planned in his head.”
“We found a fingernail fragment in one of the eye sockets,” the coroner resumed. “I’ve already sent it off to the lab for DNA testing.”
Teresa felt uneasy, and Parri noticed.
“What is it that bothers you?” he asked her.
“Everything. Nothing. I don’t know . . .” Teresa removed her glasses and used her sleeve to wipe furiously at the lenses. “It’s as if the murder was committed by two different people. One of them is lucid, methodical, and positioned the body carefully to send a message—though what message?—laying out traps to ensure it would remain intact until we found it, but hiding the car so that we wouldn’t find it too soon. The other one is completely disorganized, almost animalistic . . . the way he killed so close to a footpath, unconcerned about being seen, without using ropes or weapons, as if the murder were the result of a moment of uncontrollable fury . . . He left prints everywhere, failing to take even the most basic precautions.”
They resumed their examination of the corpse.
“No bite marks anywhere,” said Teresa.
“I noticed that too.”
“When an attack is motivated by sadistic intent, it is not unusual to find bite marks on the body,” Superintendent Battaglia explained for Marini’s benefit. “The killer loses control and surrenders to his most brutal instincts. But here we have no marks of that kind. Not even a scratch. He left the rest of the body untouched, as if the face were all he cared about.”
“That’s another thing that bothers you,” Parri guessed.
Teresa nodded.
“I can’t figure him out, and that’s never happened before. I can’t work out who it is I’m dealing with.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Marini interrupted. “Having no predetermined idea, I mean. It’s a little early to know what kind of guy the killer might be.”
Teresa looked at him. He’d had the same expression when he had arrived at the crime scene that morning: at once embattled and defiant. She couldn’t quite believe anybody could be this naive.
“You really have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I believe I do.”
“That wasn’t a question, Inspector.”
“The profile?” asked Parri, interrupting their confrontation.
Teresa hesitated.
“Go on,” the doctor insisted. “I can tell you have something in mind.”
“We only have a single murder, Antonio. Profiles are for something else altogether.”
“But that’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it? There’s a ritualistic element, you saw that straight away, and ritualism leads to repetition. That’s how it works, that’s how serial killers are born.”
Teresa chewed on her glasses. She was tired, hungry, and unsettled. Parri knew her too well, and she felt utterly transparent around him.
Finally, she relented. “Twenty-five to thirty years old. Lives alone. An ectomorph by build, but far stronger than his appearance would suggest; the victim was no weakling. Disorganized, but showing flashes of lucid reasoning. There is method behind his vigor. He is intelligent, but his psychosis has held him back. He probably struggled through school, and if he has a job, it isn’t one that he finds fulfilling. An introvert. No partner. I suspect he’s never known how to approach women. He may suffer from some form of sexual dysfunction.”
Marini sighed, an unconscious reflex that, Teresa had noticed, betrayed his frustration.
“Perhaps you disagree?” she said.
He threw up his hands.
“And what if I did?” he said. “Or did you think I was only here to tag along? Obviously I’d like to discuss things and exchange views and maybe even argue about the case if it helps—but over real, tangible facts.”
Teresa smiled. She was used to this kind of reaction.
“You’re right,” she conceded. “Death is real, here in this place. You can smell it, can’t you?”
His eyes blazed.
“I can. Can you?” he replied defiantly.
Parri made as if to speak, but Teresa silenced him with a glance. She wasn’t troubled by the insubordination. At last the boy was showing there was more to him than an expensive suit and the pout on his pretty face. Perhaps beneath all that he had a backbone after all.
“Do you want to know how I can be so sure?” she said, moving closer. “It’s down to experience. But it’s also down to statistics. It’s down to hundreds of profiles of people like him who’ve committed certain kinds of murders. This kind of murder. It’s not magic. It’s not guesswork. I do my homework. So should you.”
The night air was bitter and cleansing. Teresa breathed deeply, as if to wash off the blight of all the sorrow she’d just inhaled. She felt this way every time she left the Institute no matter how many autopsies she’d witnessed throughout her career. It was like resurfacing from a deep sea dive.
She walked briskly toward the car, and could hear the soles of Marini’s shoes treading the ground behind her, in time with her footsteps. She knew he was angry; she would have been angry, too, in his place. It was exactly what she needed from him in that moment: a healthy dose of rage and youthful zeal. Anything would do, as long as there was energy and fervor behind it.
He drew level with her.
“What have I done to you?” he asked.
Teresa feigned incomprehension.
“Why do you hate me so much? Because I was late? I’m sorry about that, but I don’t think I deserve to be humiliated for it.”
Teresa burst out laughing.
“Hate you? I wouldn’t dream of it. As for the humiliation . . . that was all your doing. You could have kept your mouth shut.”
“See what I mean? You’re doing it again! Clearly you have a problem with me,” he insisted.
Teresa slowed done and finally came to a halt. She raised her chin to study his face. He looked exhausted.
“The only thing that’s clear is the extent of your incompetence,” she said. “You don’t agree? Then prove me wrong. I’ll expect your report on everything you saw this morning. And hurry up, you’re late as it is.”
-8-
The hour of nocturnal predators had come. They emerged from their dens and took flight from their nests up in the highest, hiddenmost branches. Snow cloaked the scents of the forest, nullifying the predators’ olfactory sense, but it also muffled any background noise, so that the sound of small rodents scuttling in the undergrowth travelled clearly to their sensitive ears. The carnivores waited patiently until their prey had ventured into the open, then pounced and slashed at their victims with sharpened claws.
The forest was silent death and unequal contest.
Animals were territorial beings, just like he was. They rarely deviated from their usual routes, so he had been able to learn their ways. He followed their tracks and listened for their calls. When he had to, he hunted. He could turn into a falcon or a fox as needed, and he killed, though he preferred to use traps to limit the suffering he caused when taking a life. The sound of those creatures whimpering in pain triggered a kind of discomfort deep in his core that he could not explain. It made him feel uneasy. He had learned how to bring death: with a sharp twist of his hands, their necks gave way and their breathing stopped.
It was a bright night, an auspicious one for hunting. The clouds had cleared and frost glistened in the moonlight. He’d set up his snares in the morning while the animals still slept in their dens. Now all he had to do was to pick up their trapped, quivering bodies, the fruits of his labor. He made his way upwind toward the traps, his muscular thighs carving a path through the snow. He could distinguish, not too far from where he was, the thrashing form of a large animal caught in a trap—it was lying on its back, its long legs, slender yet powerful, kicking at the air for purchase, but all this achieved was to tighten the grip of the snare. The creature wheezed with exertion as it fought to escape its fate.
He approached cautiously, not wanting to scare the trapped deer. He placed a pacifying hand on its neck to stop it from strangling itself. He was dismayed to see that it was a doe.
He knelt by her side, and for a moment he was not sure what to do.
He knew from the volume of acorns the squirrels had already amassed in their nests that this was going to be a long and punishing winter. When the weather started to turn, he always checked on the squirrels and the hedgehogs to see what the animals expected of the coming months of cold. They were never wrong, and he knew now that in a few moons’ time he would need meat to survive the cold.
