by Franco Marks
Of the four women, Angela was the intellectual. She taught history and literature: an interesting, slender, well-built woman, she never wore a bra under her sweaters and you could sense her small, perfect breasts with their exuberant nipples. Heavily made-up eyes, lively and a touch perverse. Well spoken, the most middle-class, the least beautiful, she had hooked the playboy – Arturo the pharmacist. He looked like he’d stepped out of a TV show, with his splendid white windbreaker, a red cross on his chest, almond shaped eyes, tall and thin with a fleeting scent of Vicks VapoRub.
Impossible to imagine that all four, happy to love for fun or for passion, had decided to kill themselves. To stop the future like this, for no reason at all.
5
Antonello Soprani, the big boss, entered the room, slamming the door of apartment twelve of the Bucaneve behind him.
Six feet tall, black suit, black hat, black tie, his dreamlike face twitched. The nose was long and thin, he had little hair and an enigmatic, colourless face like a poker player’s that almost never expressed emotion. He always tried to confuse people, a habit he had acquired after years of investigations. He was impassive at the words ‘murder’ and ‘suicide’, at ‘kitchen’ his face moved violently, at ‘autopsy’ it became an arid and uncultivated landscape, at the word ‘window’ he curled up his mouth like a tomato. He had been Marzio’s superior officer, and Marzio had given him a lot of skiing lessons. A certain rapport existed between the two, though Santoni made sure that he never looked into that elastic face because it always bewildered him. With frozen eyes he made his appearance at the crime scene.
“Dear Marzio Santoni, this time there’s a problem to solve and it’ll be a job getting out of it unscathed.”
“A nasty business.”
“Murder, suicide, accident?”
Marzio was about to explain his thoughts but Soprani leaned against the window. He took on some colour from the light outside, and produced a hint of a smile. It looked as though a pair of scissors had cut a mouth in his face.
“These four girls chose the perfect time to die. Without the snow we’re all less anxious. We don’t hear it calling us to go skiing.”
Marzio tried to add a few syllables but was again cut off by Soprani.
“As soon as the snow arrives you need to teach me how to do double poling. I want to win the police championships this year.”
He walked from one of the girl’s bodies to the next as though he were playing Four Corners. He stopped in the middle. Motionless, he spoke, as inexpressive as a post box. He smelled of a croissant eaten quickly on top of cappuccino foam, and digested badly.
“My dear Inspector, it can only be a suicide or an accident. Why would someone kill four beautiful girls or why would four beautiful girls be killed by someone? They chose of their own free will to run away from life – they played Russian roulette, turned on the gas and abandoned themselves to a destiny that none would be able to prevent. Suicide or tragic accident. Let us continue to investigate conscientiously, but that verdict will be confirmed.”
There were many symbols of tension and worry in his little speech, but it was clear that he had only one thing in mind: that this case was to be closed as soon as possible.
Marzio wanted to ask him a lot of questions, but he chose the most urgent.
“One of the girls, the blonde, Elisabetta, looks very upset and has a haematoma on her wrist. What do you think?”
Soprani had stopped in front of a pair of skis propped up near the window of apartment twelve of the Bucaneve while he ran his thumbs along them to feel how sharp they were. He looked at Marzio for a long time then said, “Death is frightening. The blonde must have looked it in the face.”
“And the haematoma on her wrist?”
“You investigate, Marzio. You know what you’re doing.” Soprani held a ski with one hand and twanged the top with the other to see how flexible it was. “I know you were Elisabetta’s lover. It was the first thing they told me. But I trust you, Santoni. You’re an irreproachable person who won’t allow himself to be led astray by emotions. One of our best detectives. Or you were, perhaps. There’ll be a bit of rust in your brain, but the way you conduct your inquiries like some urban Redskin will be very helpful us. If you hadn’t lost your girlfriend, I’d say you were lucky to be coming back to the business with such an extraordinary case. Anyway, you tell me if you want to carry out the investigation yourself or let someone else do it. It’s up to you.”
Marzio responded impulsively.
“Honestly speaking, I think I can do my job. I want to get to the bottom of it, understand what happened and discover the truth.”
The big boss looked at him with a certain amusement.
“Dear Marzio, the truth isn’t there to be discovered. All we must do is try to hide the opprobrium, the delusions, the treacherous mechanisms that guide the human mind. The only thing involved in this case is the foolish hand of those who wanted to take life away from themselves and from others.”
He ran his hand over the base of the ski. It gave off a smell of plastic and wax.
“You’ll see, we’ll soon have the chance to do a bit of skiing on some fresh snow. Anyway, do a good job, as usual, and call me if there are any problems.”
“I would like to be as autonomous as I was in the city. I’d rather be independent.”
“Just don’t do any damage, White Wolf. I’ll give the appropriate orders to allow you to work as you see fit.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you need any other assistance?”
“Kristal is all I need.”
“Kristal’s a twig – he’ll blow away at the first gust of wind.”
“I need someone I trust.”
“Very well, White Wolf.” Soprani made to go but stopped at the door, his eyes shining, full of misunderstanding. “Man to man: did you fuck Elisabetta with handcuffs on? That blue mark on her left wrist speaks volumes. There’s nothing wrong with it, I’ve done it too sometimes. Cop kinks.” Soprani closed the door and left behind him an odour of creased clothes in the night.
6
“Instead of going back to Vissone tomorrow, let’s all commit suicide tonight. All four of us.”
Giordano, the barman of the Pino Rosso where the girls had decided to have a farewell drink to celebrate the end of their holiday, confirmed to Inspector Santoni that they had said those words several times, even during the numerous toasts they had made. “We’ll go out with a bang tonight. We’ll blow everyone’s minds.”
“But wasn’t it just a joke? Just drunken talk?”
“I don’t know, Inspector. I mean, they were blind drunk. But why did they make such a big deal out of announcing something that they actually did? Otherwise they would all be alive today. Don’t you think, Inspector?”
Giordano stank of Ginpin. He was shaken by emotion, certainly, but also by the alcohol.
“Listen Giordano, concentrate, this phrase is fundamental: are you sure you heard them saying that they wanted to do something shocking? Are you sure you heard the word ‘suicide’? Are you sure they didn’t add anything else? Maybe you were serving at the bar and misheard them – was there anybody else here who could confirm it?”
Giordano – skinny with red hair and always dressed as a waiter in a white jacket with a black bow tie – became irritated. He grimaced.
“Come with me, you’ll see that I’m not talking bollocks.”
He led him behind the bar to a small desk from which the room’s various pieces of equipment were controlled – there was the lighting panel, the audio console and an instrument that looked like a decoder.
“It’s all recorded in there, video and audio, everything from last night, and you’ll see that I’m neither deaf nor losing my marbles.”
“You’ve got a closed circuit video surveillance system?”
“Yes, it’s been running for a year. It’s for security. Six cameras filming the room from different angles. When the gangs of schoolkids arriv
e for their skiing holidays they make a right mess. Stealing stuff. We had it put in for you lot, the police. Of course I never thought it would turn out to be useful for something as shocking as this.”
“Let me see.”
“I don’t know if I can, what with the privacy law. Don’t you need a warrant?”
“Play it. Get a move on.”
Giordano felt like an idiot. He’d had plenty of time to wipe the tape or pretend it was broken. As they studied each individual frame, the detectives would discover thousands of offences committed on his premises. On Saturday night he’d taken payments without putting them through the till and the girls had left without receipts. He’d probably end up under investigation for tax evasion, health and safety, music licensing fees…
“Come on, play it, press play.”
The screen was split into six parts, each camera offering a different perspective. When the first images appeared, Marzio felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like entering people’s private lives, snooping, analysing, discovering their everyday petty crimes. It felt invasive. Like looking through a keyhole, a lack of respect for the memory of the four girls. But unfortunately it was necessary.
The video was already positioned at the moment the girls entered the bar. Giordano had already checked it, he’d been through it earlier.
“Have you already seen it all?”
Giordano began to sweat – that was the first policeman question he’d been asked. He automatically felt guilty, the way you do when the police interrogate you. And they look at you like you’ve done something wrong, even if you haven’t done anything.
“Yes. I just had a quick look to see if there was anything odd.”
“And what oddities could there have been? Have you anything to add or anything to declare?”
The morning was starting badly for Giordano, trapped in the corner between the coffee machine and the video recorder.
“Inspector, I haven’t committed any crime, I just wound back the recording because I wanted to help.”
Marzio ignored the stammering of the barman. In the video, there was something unusual: there were not four women but three – Elisabetta was missing. Where was she? Flaminia, Angela and Stefania had come in loaded down with parcels and packages, probably gifts they had bought in the afternoon; they were walking strangely, as if they weren’t completely in control of their movements. The images weren’t perfect, but they were good enough to be able to see and hear, and they accentuated how shaky on their feet the women were. They were clearly drunk. Marzio noted the timecode: 7 p.m..
“Is that time accurate?”
“I think so. Let me see, Inspector – three of them came in at seven, but the blonde arrived at eight. I remember because I was hoping they’d go away. There’s never usually any customers at that time, so I have a snack.”
Why, when she’d left Marzio’s house at six thirty, had Elisabetta said that she was meeting her friends at seven, and instead she’d entered the bar at eight? An empty hour and a half during which they didn’t know what could have happened. Marzio remembered Elisabetta’s words perfectly.
“I have to shoot. They’re expecting me at seven at the Pino Rosso. I don’t want to be late, it’s our last night.”
From seven to eight, the three women in the video had laughed a lot, drunk, danced. They were practically staggering, and in the end they’d collapsed onto the sofas. At ten to eight, Elisabetta had arrived. Dishevelled and with hesitant steps, as though she had suffered a shock, she had thrown herself down into a chair and had placed a rather voluminous paper bag on the floor next to her.
“Stop the video on camera one. Can you isolate that and zoom in on the bag next to Elisabetta?”
Marzio was concentrating so hard that it felt like he was back in the days of the flying squad. It didn’t occur to him that Giordano was just a bartender.
“I’m not a police technician, Inspector.”
“Can you at least put it on full screen?”
“Sure, but I can’t zoom it, unfortunately.”
“Run it through a few times.” Marzio examined the sequence carefully. The bag Elisabetta had with her was made of rough paper. There was no writing on it that might identify it. It couldn’t be a gift bought in Valdiluce. That kind of paper didn’t look common. Elisabetta had left Marzio’s house empty handed, and now she turned up carrying that bag. It contained something dangerous, abnormal – where the hell had she got it? It was very similar to the bag that Marzio had found among the waste paper in apartment twelve. That had smelled of fish. Maybe food bought before going to the Pino Rosso. But where? All the grocery shops closed at six thirty.
From the video you could see that Elisabetta was frightened. Even her features, always softened by a smile, had lost their vigour. She was as spare as a pale fruit.
“Give me a drink, girls, I really need one.”
“How did it go?”
“Terrible, fucking terrible, I can’t stand any more of it.”
All four had started talking loudly and the audio had become incomprehensible, then Angela, the literature teacher, thin and tense, with that perverse charm of hers, her tight sweater showing her small breasts, her lips greasy with lipstick, heavily made-up smoky eyes, long legs in black leggings, she had silenced them all and made the proclamation.
“Instead of going home, let’s commit suicide. All four of us.”
“Stop, rewind it, let me see it again. On camera three.”
The image was clear, the movement of the lips obvious, without subterfuge, the sound was perfect, no distortion. The ‘let’s commit suicide’ was loud. Spoken in a situation that the alcohol had made indecent, those words took on disproportionate importance. The video became an irreproachable historical document, something concrete for the investigation. Difficult to disprove. He might as well close up shop. It was a sentence without appeal. And what was more, Elisabetta, Stefania and Flaminia had responded to the provocation and had given Angela’s epic proposal enthusiastic support.
“Let’s go out with a bang!”
“We’ve got to do something totally mental!”
Angela had expressed her feelings in no uncertain terms.
“Enough of this shitty world!”
Marzio’s eyes focused on Elisabetta. She was the most absent seeming, uneasy, extremely agitated, with dark rings under her eyes. When they raised their glasses for the toast, the glass of Ginpin trembled in her hand.
“Go to camera four.”
Even Elisabetta repeated the phrase.
“Suicide. Suicide. Mass suicide!”
Obsessively. Almost as if it were a political slogan. Only the autopsy would reveal anything certain. Marzio paused on that word: autopsy. He hadn’t used it for a long time and it sounded alien, but it suggested the limits of the situation to him. Four women killed by gas, who would be autopsied.
The video continued with Stefania, Elisabetta, Flaminia and Angela staggering around, clearly drunk, hugging each other and trying to keep their balance. Confused words. A raucous, allusive chant.
“Agostino. Agostinooo! We’re coming. All for you!”
“Go to camera five, the one outside the bar.”
Agostino Uberti, the custodian of the Bucaneve, was waiting for them in the square with the minibus to drive them back to the place. He was as unkempt as always, dressed in the worn uniform of an ex-ski instructor. The four girls hugged him as if he were a teddy bear, and he looked very uncomfortable and tried to free himself from their effusions. He reacted with rudeness and an unhappy expression that only confirmed his reputation as the town weirdo.
“They’re teasing him because they know he’s harmless,” commented Giordano. “With a real man, someone like me, they’d have had something to get their teeth into.”
“Giordano, please – keep that kind of nonsense to yourself.”
White Wolf checked the couches, the armchairs where the previous evening the women had clinked their glasses. Under a cushion
he felt something small, metallic. He took it out: it was a golden earring: his own, the one he had given to Elisabetta along with the woollen socks.
*
“I want to see what you look like. Put your earring on.”
“I can’t, I’m a policeman. It’s a keepsake from a long time ago.”
Elisabetta had held it up against Marzio’s ear. As soon as they touched there was a strange, delicate current between them.
“It looks good. You look handsome.”
She put it in and when he moved his face to hide it, that touch of transgression amplified his blue eyes, his soft mouth, his shy way. It brought out Marzio’s chaste beauty.
