Flowers over the Inferno, page 5
He ran a hand over the stiff fur of the doe’s gray-brown coat. The creature’s heart beat vigorously against its broad chest. Its belly was warm and covered in thick fuzz, and its udder was swollen with milk.
He looked up between the trees and saw it: the fawn was staring at him with enormous, liquid eyes. Its nostrils flared on its thin snout, quivering frantically as it tried to work out whether he was something he should run away from. If the fawn was still beside its mother, this must be its first winter. He noticed that its velvet-lined antlers had barely begun to sprout from their base on its forehead. They would grow to their full length by summer, then fall off the following winter only to grow back once more, over and over again for the rest of its life, and longer each time, until they formed a majestic crown.
He told himself it was old enough to survive without its mother.
The doe seemed to understand what he was thinking, and sought his eyes with her own. She had stopped struggling, though her breathing was still labored. Her neck lay slack in his arms. It would require a particularly violent twist to break it. He would have to apply considerable force, but he was capable of it.
But instead of squeezing, his hands loosened the knots. The doe was disoriented by her sudden freedom; he had to nudge her to her feet. He stroked her straight, muscular back and felt all her primordial energy flowing into his own limbs.
He yelled, and the doe sprinted toward the trees in quick, elegant leaps, until she was reunited with her fawn.
He stayed where he was, still kneeling in the snow, his heart convulsing as it did every time life got the better of his predatory instincts.
Looking for dry earth, he found a patch of ground covered in fallen pine needles and sat with his back resting against a tree trunk while his empty stomach growled in protest. He took out two stained paper bags from the pocket of his sheepskin coat, retrieved a few strips of cured meat from one, and began chewing intently.
The other bag contained something entirely different.
Something precious.
-9-
The victim was called Roberto Valent. He was a civil engineer, born and raised in the valley. He’d left to go to university and lived elsewhere for a few years after graduating, but had returned with his wife and son when hiking enthusiasts and professional climbers began to discover the beauty in this corner of the world, boosting local tourism. Valent had been managing the construction site for a new ski slope.
The Valent family lived in Travenì, in a chalet made of hardwood and limestone. Their house was the size of a villa, and stood on a sloping, south-facing meadow that must have been sunnier than most during the summer months. There was no fence or wall around it, and the borders of the property were only marked by flowerbeds, currently bare because of the cold.
An old lady with a desolate air about her was taking down the Christmas decorations from the windows, as if the house itself should be dressed for mourning. She was thin and wore a black dress. When she saw the police car enter the driveway, she retreated behind the shutters.
Teresa thought she must be Valent’s mother, and knew for sure when she rang the doorbell moments later and the same lady opened the door. Her eyes were red, her eyelids swollen. She said her daughter-in-law would be receiving them in the parlor, and showed them the way, dragging her feet in their felt slippers along a parquet that smelled of beeswax. Teresa offered her condolences, to which the woman choked out a brief reply, her silver head sinking between her bony shoulders. She was the embodiment of frailty, yet she must have carried hidden reserves of strength if the loss of her son hadn’t completely broken her.
“Please take a seat. Marta will be here soon,” she said before slipping away to make coffee.
Teresa picked the couch, Marini the armchair. He’d come to work early that morning, mercifully in a pair of jeans and comfortable shoes. He hadn’t relinquished the blazer, though, or his tailored coat. Teresa, faintly amused, had thought that the transformation had already begun. They’d spent the early hours of the day at the crime scene, now cleared of the forensics team’s paraphernalia, but still cordoned off. To work out who had killed Roberto Valent, they first had to establish how he’d been killed—step by step, right up until the final act—and find the answer to a single question: Why?
Perhaps the family would provide the answer, though Teresa doubted it. She was here for the usual formalities, to allow the police to gain a better sense of the family, and to reassure those closest to the victim that they were doing everything they could to get to the truth.
The room was furnished in the alpine style, probably like the rest of the house. Honey-colored wood creaked underfoot and covered the walls and the coffered ceiling, its panels interleaved with swathes of silk brocade and other rich fabrics, as well as wool and felt. There was a charming and tasteful selection of objects on display: heart-shaped, inlaid boxes containing gingerbread and candied fruits, and old copper and pewter pots that had been repurposed as vases and filled with aromatic herbs and star anise, releasing a lingering scent into the room. The cushions were soft and embellished with handmade lace. A nativity scene whose layout and coloring suggested it was an antique had been set up on a coffee table near the entrance.
The focal point of the parlor was the stube, the traditional wall-mounted stove that took up almost an entire side of the room, and emitted a pleasant, welcoming warmth. There were upholstered benches to its left and right; this was the part of the house where families used to gather in the evenings, once they had completed their chores in the woods or in the stables.
But the family that lived in this house now had just been deprived of one of its key members. Their evenings would no longer be the same; the nights that would follow would seem unending and full of misery. Teresa was sure that nights in Travenì would have felt quiet enough to begin with—it was one of those places where the streets became deserted at the first hint of sunset. Now, to make matters worse, the town had awakened to the knowledge that a killer had been roaming its streets in the dark.
The widow appeared. Marta Valent was an attractive woman whose entrance filled the room with a quiet anguish. She shook their hands loosely, as if wanting to slip away, and accepted their stock remarks with downcast eyes. She joined Teresa on the couch but chose to perch on the opposite end, teetering on the edge of the cushion. Teresa noticed that her beauty was somewhat anonymous, a combination of regular features and fading colors; a blemish or a quirk of nature would have made her seem more interesting, but as it was, there was nothing to report. The lines of her unremarkable figure, with its long, slender bones, were traced by clothes worn with a certain weariness, as if they weighed too much. But a photograph on one of the bookshelves showed a woman with more flesh on her bones, and light in her eyes. It wasn’t an old photograph either, and Teresa wondered if perhaps she had recently suffered an illness.
Valent’s mother arrived carrying a tray, its tinkling breaking the silence that had followed the initial exchange of pleasantries. The aroma of coffee seeped through the room; the old woman handed a steaming cup each to Teresa and Marini, but her daughter-in-law’s remained on the tray, untouched.
“Nobody had anything against Roberto. He didn’t have any enemies,” their hostess said abruptly.
Teresa drained her coffee before replying.
“Well, he must have had at least the one,” she said.
“Whoever did that . . . whoever did that to him is no enemy, but a psychopath.”
“Why not both?”
Marta Valent started like a snail recoiling from a foreign touch. Teresa read the sudden movement as an indication that directness was not a welcome trait in this woman’s world, and she found herself wishing she’d been a bit more sympathetic. Marta Valent was, at least for now, a victim who’d just suffered the violent loss of her partner, the father of her son.
“What was your husband like that morning, and in the days before?” Teresa asked in a softer tone, returning to routine questions.
“Just as usual: distant.”
Teresa was surprised. She noticed a redness on the woman’s ring finger, as if she’d been picking at it, twisting her wedding band around and around.
“Distant?” she repeated.
“Sorry, I meant drained. He worked too hard, that’s what we all thought.”
“Did he usually drop your son off at school?”
The woman lowered her eyes to the fabric of her skirt, which she had been smoothing with tremulous fingers ever since she’d sat down.
“No, I usually do that,” she replied. “But I was ill that day. I suffer from terrible migraines. Roberto had left his phone at home, but I knew he’d be back for it; he can’t cope without it.”
“Because of work?”
Her eyes darted up to look at Teresa. Something inside her had been ignited.
“Yes, for work, of course,” she answered. “But he didn’t come back. After a couple of hours I began to worry and I decided to go looking for him at the construction site. But he had never made it there.”
Teresa now addressed Valent’s mother: “Did you notice anything odd in your son’s behavior?” she asked.
The old lady’s eyes were dry now, and dimmed, like worn glass marbles.
“No, there was nothing out of the ordinary. He was working too hard, that’s true, but it wasn’t to be for much longer. The project was due to be completed soon, in a few months or within a year at most. That’s what he always told me when I fretted over him.”
She took the empty coffee cups and disappeared into the kitchen, beating a hasty retreat. The clinking of crockery in the sink filtered through to the sitting room, together with the sound of quiet conversation.
Teresa knew who it might be.
“Is there someone else in there?” she asked the widow.
“The boy.”
The boy, thought Teresa. As if he were someone else’s son. A little stranger who lived in her house. Marta Valent had just made an unintended confession: that cozy, immaculate home she worked so hard to maintain was only a projection of what everyone expected of her. The truth was perhaps rather different, involving a mother who was emotionally distant from her own child.
“I would like to meet him,” said Teresa, in a tone that made clear that this was not a request.
The woman frowned.
“Is that really necessary?”
Teresa smiled, seeking to reassure her, and nodded.
Diego Valent was a dutiful child: his mother had only to call him once, and without any particular inflection in her voice, for him to appear. He emerged from the kitchen with his little face flushed from crying, his eyes carrying a world of confusion.
A meek and wounded creature, Teresa thought.
The boy approached his mother, who put her hand on his shoulder. There was no other physical contact between them.
“Hello, Diego,” Teresa said kindly. “I’m Superintendent Battaglia, but you can call me Teresa.”
He watched her wordlessly. The tremor of his sobs had passed, replaced by curiosity.
“How old are you?”
“Ten,” his mother answered in his stead, without giving him any time to decide whether or not to trust this stranger. “Diego has a stutter.”
Those words struck the boy like a curse, and Teresa saw him squirming beneath the force of his humiliation. She felt furious on his behalf and pitied this woman who seemed to live in some kind of emotional vacuum. It wasn’t a recent emptiness either; it had nothing to do with the death of her husband.
Pull your son into your arms, she thought, feeling irritated and sad. Hold him tight and kiss him. Rest his head against your breasts, that’s what they’re there for.
The inner workings of the Valent family were gradually emerging. She understood now why Diego looked like a miniature grown-up, dressed like an adult in classic navy blue trousers, a beige V-necked sweater, and a starched blue shirt. There was a little bowtie around his neck. Teresa was sure it must feel like a noose to him.
Her instinct was to set him free, ruffle his hair, throw him on the sofa and tickle him senseless. Instead, she rooted around in her pocket and offered him a licorice wheel.
Diego looked at his mother.
“He doesn’t eat sugar,” she said.
“Ah, but this is special candy,” Teresa told the boy. “It’s sweet without being sweet.”
“Sugar substitutes are no less harmful, Superintendent,” the mother insisted.
“Superintendent, yes, but you can call me Teresa,” she repeated, addressing the boy.
The woman seemed to realize she might have sounded rude.
“Forgive me,” she said. “My husband was very strict about this kind of thing.” She gestured at the bowls teeming with sweet treats. “Diego knows he mustn’t take any.”
Teresa wondered at the discipline they must have imposed on him. That’s how you raise a rebellious teenager and an emasculated adult, she thought.
The boy’s lips parted as she placed the licorice wheel back in her pocket. He was desperate for that piece of candy, so meager compared to the delicacies displayed in that house, yet so much more meaningful.
He was wringing his hands, mimicking his mother, and Teresa noticed that there was some dirt under his fingernails. She allowed herself a hopeful smile at the sight of that small flaw in the midst of so much perfection. There was life in him yet, a salutary trace of subversion. The boy noticed, too, and hid his hands behind his back. Teresa winked at him in wholehearted approval.
She stood up, and Marini copied her. Though the inspector had kept quiet throughout—was he finally learning?—he hadn’t missed any of the drama that had just unfolded. The look on his face spoke volumes: he was rooting for Diego just as much as Teresa was.
On the way out, the two police officers had a last routine exchange with Valent’s widow.
“We’ll be in touch soon,” said Teresa. “If you have any questions or doubts, we are always available. And if you remember anything that you think might be useful, even if it seems trivial, call us immediately.”
“Thank you,” said the widow. “I know you will do everything you can to find whoever did this.”
An emboldened Diego stood close to Teresa with his head tilted upwards, not wanting to miss anything about this policewoman who must have appeared so strange to his eyes.
Before they left, she stroked his head—perhaps for a fraction too long. She noticed Marini looking at her hand, and quickly pulled away.
Let it go, she told herself.
Back in the car, Teresa found it hard to tear her gaze away from the Valent family home; she kept her eyes on the outline of the house until it disappeared from sight. The pointed roof turning opaque in the sunlight, the dark windows, the shadows she pictured moving behind the glass . . . there was a sense of expectation, as if the house were waiting for something to come and repair the lives of its inhabitants.
She thought of the youngest of them all, the little trooper with dirty fingernails. She was sure he was doing the same right now, staring after her as she was leaving. Diego was a curious, spirited boy, with a spark his parents had sought to stifle with senseless prohibitions and empty tests—all those sweets displayed in full view but kept beyond reach.
He was used to being surrounded by the objects of his desires every day without ever being able to reach out and touch them. Could there be anything more detrimental to a child’s psychology than that?
Yes. A mother as cold as marble.
Teresa wondered whether the father had been emotionally reticent toward his son as well. She was inclined to think he must have been, given what Marta Valent had revealed: she’d described her husband as “strict,” she’d even unwittingly called him “distant.”
Distant enough that he might have been considered pathologically unemotional?
She told herself it was none of her business, but then quickly dismissed her own reservations; as far as she was concerned children were everyone’s collective responsibility.
She looked for a sweet in her pocket and was astonished to realize that the licorice had disappeared.
After a moment’s bewilderment, she started laughing.
She’d underestimated him. The Valent boy knew how to survive.
-10-
The days were getting shorter. Lucia noticed it because she spent so many afternoons shut in her room. Once she’d finished singing all the nursery rhymes she knew, the only interesting thing left to do was to look outside her window at the woods beyond the lawn.
She knew every single branch and the shapes of their shadows on the grass. She would watch them grow longer by the hour and inch closer to the house every day.
She knew why it happened: it had to do with the way the earth whirled around the sun. Even though she didn’t always understand everything, she paid attention to the teacher’s lessons in school and used her imagination to fill in the gaps. Lucia was aware that she wasn’t as clever as the other kids, but she knew how those shadows moved and that they were due to get shorter again soon. She had always been entranced by the eternal battle between light and dark, but these days her fascination was mixed with the more pressing need to see the end of the winter (though it had barely begun), and with it the end of these premature evenings.
She stared into the woods. The wind had picked up and the tops of the fir trees were swaying; a few dry leaves that had fallen off the oak trees spun around in frenzied eddies. It was afternoon still, but already the light looked different; in another couple of hours the world would begin to descend into gloom until it finally slipped into total darkness.
