The Year of the Mantis

by P J Mann

“Sir, I don’t believe it was a coincidence that she was there visiting him.” Senior officer Milani intervened.

  “Neither do I, but I need more proof, and I need to have her here before accusing her formally of the murder, or the participation in the murder of Claudio Calvani.” Maurizio grabbed a pen from the table. “Meantime, Igor Leonov has disappeared from the face of the earth, as none of the border police in neighboring countries had recorded him. He’s searched internationally, but so far so bad, and I’m not expecting to see him any time soon.” He dropped the pen on the table with an angry grin, twisting his face.

  “What could be the reason for the girl to kill or to take part in the murder of her mother’s boyfriend, who’s also her boyfriend’s father? She cannot have such a strong bond with her father to agree and make two dear ones suffer.” Officer Silvani mumbled, lowering his head.

  “Never underestimate the reason of a psychopath,” Maurizio lectured. “Besides, let’s assume ad absurdum that she is the killer. This would have brought her to enter the Italian territory eluding the border control. She also would have needed a scapegoat, and who would have been better than her father? A man who had all the reasons to get rid of Mr. Calvani. She knows the place where his victim lives and has access to it, being the girlfriend of his son.” He stood from his chair and started to pace the room. “She had all the accessibilities to get to know the garage area, and that there would be a maintenance gap, where the cameras weren’t on. She had the spare keys to the garage, so Luciano didn’t have to go downstairs and open it for her when she arrived in the garage area.

  “Still ad absurdum, let’s consider she had this plan since before engaging in the relationship with Luciano, and got access inside the apartment of his victim. She knew many things, because her mother would have talked to her about this man, and perhaps her father would have added other details to the picture...”

  “But, then where’s the father? Where’s Igor Leonov?” Officer Silvani asked. “What would have been the reason for her to kill Mr. Calvani? Jealousy? Was she helping her father in getting revenge?”

  “Money!” Leonardo smirked. “Don’t forget the life insurance the mother would have gotten, in case of death.”

  “Her mother— not her!” Officer Silvani grimaced scratching his forehead. “Besides, it seems like she had no idea about the insurance...”

  “What if all the three would have come to an agreement to get rid of him and split the money? I don’t believe the fact that Madlen wasn’t aware of the insurance. If Mr. Calvani trusted so much to stipulate a life insurance, he would have let her know,” Senior officer Milani intervened.

  A pause of silence allowed them to consider what had been said about the case and about the people involved. Yet, something was missing.

  Maurizio was sure the details they were missing were right there in front of their noses teasing them by being so evident nobody could have seen it.

  “Let’s return to the original ad absurdum assumption,” Maurizio turned his glance at Officer Silvani. “You were asking where Mr. Leonov is, which is indeed a great question, because I believe he was involved in the crime, but as an accomplice. He would have been the man who provided the alibi, the gun and the way out for Irina. What if she also killed him? She could have pretended to sympathize with his cause of jealousy, fueling it to get rid of the man who had been psychologically harassing her mother. She intended to get rid of those who would have harmed the people she cared for. So, in her sick mind, Igor was to be eliminated to rescue her mother from a long-time stalker. She killed Mr. Calvani, who constantly ignored the attention Luciano was requesting.”

  “So, you’re saying she was the one who called Mr. Calvani that night forcing him to reach the garage. There, she waited for him and killed him with the pistol of her father,” Leonardo suggested, rubbing his chin.

  “Precisely,” Maurizio turned, pointing a finger against him. “This justifies the presence of the pistol still in the house. She wanted us to find it, so we would have thought he was the killer.”

  “That would also explain the weakness of the touch DNA on the pistol. If she cleaned it of all the traces, before making sure he would have touched it, even for a few seconds, the amount of DNA material would be consistent with the small amount we’ve found...” Leonardo muttered with a lower tone of voice as if talking to himself.

  “You know what?” Senior officer Milani rubbed her hands together as a grin brightened her face. “This would also bring to light the strange behavior of the captain of the— what was the name of the ship—right! The Sea Rider. They might have had a part in the fleeing and perhaps murder of Igor!”

  “Ten points to Milani!” Maurizio cheered. “That’s a brilliant observation, but who was the trafficker who smuggled her to the French coast? You know what we can do? We’ll bring her here and ask her a few questions about her father. Then, we might bring in the captain and see the reaction of both of them when brought together in the same room. I don’t expect a Greek tragedy, but neither a complete indifferent behavior. One of them has to be weaker and crack.”

  “So, now all that we need is having Irina here,” Officer Silvani considered.

  “Chief Commissioner Angelini has forwarded a European arrest warrant to the Judiciary; they will start the process immediately. The only thing I’m afraid of is the timeframe. The Hungarian Magistrate will have a time limit of 60 days to get consideration and eventually accept or reject our request,” he grinned, glancing at the calendar. “This means that at the latest in June, we will have the chance to have Irina as a guest here. In this case, we need to have all the recording of her telephone calls, either to Luciano or her mother—at least one of the two. I’m expecting her to get in touch, either for help or for advice.”

  Turning to Officer Silvani and Senior officer Milani, he continued. “Make sure that the surveillance on these two people is intensified; we don’t want to lose one single word between them.”

  “Yes, sir!” they replied in chorus, before leaving the room together with Romizi.

  Alone in the room, silence overwhelmed him. The muffled noise coming from outside his door, the movement on the corridor he could see from the window resembled the memory of a dream, seen through the fog of his own thoughts.

  This wasn’t the first murder he had to solve in his career; there had been, sadly, many others, which, although they found justice, didn’t come back to life. The grief they caused to loved ones wasn’t solved with justice, and nothing would have given any sort of comfort.

  His mind returned to his family, and particularly to his wife and daughter as he wondered whether something like that could ever happen to him.

  I’m sure Mr. Calvani didn’t for a second conceive the idea of being murdered; this is not something people figure out as possible. Although we all know it might happen, we still discard it when there isn’t any reasonable hint of any such possibility.

  He grabbed the dossier once again in his hands and visually went through the entire documentation.

  He wasn’t a politician; he wasn’t a magistrate investigating on the high ranks of the organized criminality’s business. He was a successful businessman like there are many others. He didn’t have enemies, or at least so he thought. An unpredictable enemy like a jealous ex-husband can be very dangerous, but I’m afraid there are far darker details than simply jealousy in this murder.

  He smoothed his hair back with his hands, holding his head as if to keep it from exploding. The case could have been almost closed in virtue of the fact that the assassin seemed to be clear.

  Igor Leonov killed Claudio Calvani; the motive was jealousy.

  He wrote on a piece of paper.

  “But was this all? We can’t say much of anything until Interpol can give us a hint of this man’s location,” he said aloud, grabbing a pen and spinning it around his finger. “The last location we can pinpoint the man is the Civitavecchia Harbor, where he left the car. There, he was traveling with Irina
, but as she reached Paris a few days after, he simply disappeared.”

  “They both had been smuggled through the borders, and I’m wondering whether it’s so and the captain of the Sea Rider, has something to do with it. Some fishermen had been caught by the coastal guards smuggling goods, overfishing, polluting or other similar crimes. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were Irina’s contact to enter the Italian territory illegally.”

  He slammed the pen on the table and stood up, losing his temper. He knew there was something right there in front of his eyes. The elephant in the room was laughing at him, and yet, he couldn’t see it.

  For the umpteenth time, he grabbed the dossier and turned the pages to the forensic report. “Those traces of DNA seem... Hold on!” Struck by an idea, Maurizio dashed outside the room, rushing to the lab at the Forensic Department, where he was sure Leonardo had returned.

  “Do we have any previous record about Igor’s DNA?” He feverishly panted as he reached him.

  “Yes, we do, and that’s why we could determine that it was him who was holding the gun— but why?” Leonardo wondered, turning his chair toward Maurizio.

  “Were those traces gathered on a crime scene or were samples obtained as a routine when he got imprisoned?”

  Leonardo grimaced and stood from the chair. “I believe they were taken as a sample when he was in jail, but I need to check on our archives.” He headed to his desk and reached his computer. “So, let’s see what we have here.”

  “Igor Leonov...” Leonardo muttered as he browsed the archives. “Here, we have only one when he got arrested for drug dealing.”

  “What about the traces collected on the car steering wheel? You said he was the driver, so there must have also been a record about it,” Maurizio’s voice flickered as his heart started to race.

  Raising a finger mid-air, Leonardo turned to get the phone. “Miro took care of the collecting and reporting of those traces. I’ll ask him right away where it is.”

  That said, he called his colleague, and as he ended the call, he looked to Maurizio, impatiently waiting for any response. “He said he saved the temporary report on another folder. I’m getting it—here it is!” he cheered opening the folder.

  Silence fell between them as Leonardo stared at the screen.

  “What’s there?” Maurizio urged, his hands trembling.

  “There are the traces of DNA recovered from the steering wheel, and also those on other parts of the car. Generally, the ones on the outer parts, like the trunk, the doors and handles, are easily deteriorated, either by the wash, rain or other agents that can weaken with the time said traces.” Leonardo pointed the finger at Maurizio. “Nevertheless, they were still clear.”

  Maurizio mentally returned to the dossier he was reading, trying to find the missing piece that would have made sense to the big mystery.

  Narrowing his eyes, Leonardo kept his gaze on him, trying to figure out his thoughts.

  It took at least a few minutes of silence, when suddenly a wide grin opened up on Maurizio’s face. “THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!” he yelled.

  “What do you mean?” Leonardo asked, taken aback by the sudden reaction of Maurizio.

  With a sudden move, Maurizio opened up the dossier of the previous report he carried in his hands. Frantically flipping the pages, he reached the part where the traces were described.

  As he reached the point, he slammed the folder on the desk with a loud smack that resounded in the room. “Now explain to me the reason why the traces of DNA in the car were clear and, in the pistol where you also confirmed they should have been evident were, instead, weak!”

  Leonardo tensed his shoulders, trying to find a plausible reason for the differences in traces. Indeed, considering the emotional state, his hands would have probably sweated, and it would make sense to have more DNA material on the pistol, rather than in any of the parts of the car, particularly on the outside frame, where it’s easier to have them weakened. Yet, they were clearly stronger there. He didn’t dare make any suggestion to Maurizio, knowing him, and recognizing the crazed expression in his eyes, he was expecting a solution from his coworker.

  “I tell you what it means!” Maurizio thundered. “That man had nothing to do with the murder of Mr. Calvani,” he pointed his finger outside the door as if to point in the direction of Igor, to slam it furiously on the desk immediately after.

  He searched around in hopes of finding whatever object that could prove his point. His eyes met a cardboard box where a few test tubes destined to be brought to the adjacent room of the laboratory were waiting. He grabbed a couple of latex gloves and unpacked one of the test tubes.

  With a swift move he returned to Leonardo and grabbed his hand resting on the mouse and laid it for a few seconds on the test tube immediately after. “Now tell me, where do you think I will find more genetic material, on the mouse or on the test tube?”

  He was panting, barely breathing correctly from excitement, and once again didn’t let Leonardo speak. “I tell you, where—on the mouse, because you’ve touched it and actually used it. The test tube was just recently placed in your hands, where some sweat might have still been present and thus your own DNA. My version of the story is this: Irina, killed Mr. Calvani. She needed a scapegoat, and framed her father, who had a perfect motive.” He collapsed on the chair, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, trying to take deep breaths to help his heartbeat slow down its rapid pace.

  Leonardo didn’t look convinced, and rubbing his nose, he shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would she kill Mr. Calvani? What would have been her gain in the murder? She hardly knew him.” There was something that didn’t fit in Leonardo’s mind. It was true that the theory would have perfectly fit the difference in DNA material collected. Yet why?

  “I don’t know. This is something I need to find out, and perhaps given the right pressure, the captain of the Sea Rider, might offer us some information about it. In the meantime, I need to have another chat with Senior officer Milani and Officer Silvani about the team following Ms. Fazekas and Mr. Calvani, whether they have some news to share, some strange and suspicious moves or some peculiar telephone call.

  Without waiting for any reply from Leonardo, he turned and walked away. Shaking his head, Leonardo watched him leaving, heading to the door; with a light click closed behind Maurizio, keeping all the unanswered questions inside the room for Leonardo to digest. A sense of urgency in finding out what went on that night and the reason for murdering a person like Claudio Calvani grabbed his soul, impeding him to move from his position.

  CHAPTER 23

  Four months were passed from the crime, and he was eagerly expecting the answer from the Hungarian Magistrate, hoping it was positive. There was also the wait for any news from Interpol about the location of Igor Leonov, or whatever information that could have given him proof of him still being alive.

  His impatient temper made him believe that something was slowing the investigation to the point of being unable to make any progress.

  “I’m wondering whether the communication from the Magistrate arrived directly to Chief Commissioner Angelini and he forgot to mention it to me.” Shaking his head, he knew there was only one way to find out— and that was going to his office.

  Cringing at the thought, he armed himself with all the positive thoughts he could gather in his soul and marched toward Angelini’s Office.

  He knocked on the door, already regretting his decision, recalling his chattering nature.

  “Come in...” The usual busy voice of his supervisor replied.

  Pursing his lips, he opened the door and dashed in, closing it behind himself.

  “Good morning, sir...” Maurizio commenced.

  “Oh, Detective Scala, I was thinking about you,” he cheered, inviting him with a full gesture of his arm to take a seat in front of his desk. “Once you said you have some relatives living in Aosta, haven’t you?”

  “Y… yes, my grandmother is sti
ll living there— she’s alone though, and...” Maurizio was dumbfounded at that question.

  “Maybe we can help each other. You see, my son is going to study at the University of Aosta, and he’s looking for a place to stay, even for a short period until he doesn’t get acquainted with the environment and the services. I was wondering whether your grandmother needs a young man to help her out in exchange for a place to stay,” he explained with a large smile on his face. “Of course, there aren’t any obligations and if she doesn’t feel like she wants to host him, that would be perfectly fine.”

  Maurizio thought about it for a moment. Recalling his grandmother, Bruna, he’d feel sorry for Angelini’s son, as she was the perfect antithesis of the image of a kind and weak old lady. Regardless of the venerable age of 82 years, she could still keep an entire army of wild kids at bay, being herself the terror of his neighborhood.

  A wide grin flashed on Maurizio’s face at that thought.

  “I don’t know….” He glanced back at Angelini. “It’s been some time since I’ve visited her. It’s not like we dislike each other, but the distances, sometimes become overwhelming.”

  Angelini pursed his lips, nodding thoughtfully, “I understand, but I would appreciate it if you could ask her.”

  The tone of his voice turned insistent, and Maurizio understood he didn’t have to deal anymore with a kind request—rather it was an order.

  Narrowing his eyelids, knowing that perhaps he deserved to get his wish granted, Maurizio smiled. “I will call her this evening, and will ask her if she could help your son.”

  “That’s fantastic! I appreciate your help. So how did your holiday go?”

  “Sir, I would love to entertain myself in a casual chat, but this wasn’t the reason why I came to your office.” Maurizio looked at his wristwatch. “Moreover, I have a meeting with my team soon, and I needed to have some information about the arrest warrant you have forwarded to the Magistrate. Do we have any news coming from them?”

  With an almost imperceptible pout, Angelini turned his glance to the computer and scrutinized the content of his mailbox. With a nervous movement, he went through the pile of documents he received by post, wondering whether there was something about it, but it got submerged by other, equally important notifications.