Di Girolamo burst out laughing. "I love it. Great. That explains a lot to me. Who is his father?"
"Well he's an English psycho, sorry, psychoanalyst or psychologist; I don’t know what the difference is. He married a girl from here, gave her eight children, and as far as I can see she nest-makes, while he flits around all over the place giving lectures. He's written a few books, quite popular, you know, psychology for the laymen, mainly about bringing up children. He reckons he's an expert, having eight of them. They live in that big Villa you know, Villa Guelfi, about a kilometre out of town, going eastwards. You must have seen it. They've got horses and about fifteen dogs, and a monkey. They love animals, eat vegetarian, and always seem to have a lot of peculiar visitors, chaps with dresses on, well, not dresses, those Indian things."
"I must go and have a look one day. O.K, send in the boys, and let's see what they've got for me."
Two uniformed policeman came in carrying large black plastic bags of stuff. One of them, speaking with the soft accent of the south, said, "His wife was very helpful sir, seemed only too pleased to give us the stuff. I thought she was too helpful at first, if you know what I mean. She wasn't very happy though when I wanted to search everywhere, but the house is small, two up, two down, no loft, a small cellar, so there wasn't anything else. The rabbits were in a small out-house, but there was nothing there, and the garden shed, was full of tools and a grass cutter. The whole house was spick and span and tidy, and he openly kept all this stuff in one room. She called it his room, and I gather he'd more or less told her not to go in there, but she knew what was there alright, and like I said, seemed glad to get rid off it."
"Well done. Right let's have a look. Mmm, pretty much what you'd expect." He looked through the videos they had poured out onto a table. "Here give me the photos, let's see if there's anyone we know. Did he have a camera?"
"Yes sir, I brought that too. There's a film in it."
"Right, we'll have that developed A.S.A.P please. Well done. Off you go."
He started going through the photographs, passing them on to the Maresciallo , who huffed and sighed, as he looked at them. "I don't know, this is disgusting, I mean, look at that one!"
"Yes, charming isn't it. These all look pretty professional. I mean, he must have bought them. See if there are any home photos." Maresciallo Biagioni thrust his arm into another plastic bag, and rummaged, among the magazines, his hand finally emerging with a small white envelope, bulging with photos, which he passed over to Di Girolamo.
"I wonder who developed them," he remarked as he looked through them. "Look, these are taken through people's windows." He passed a photograph of a middle-aged woman, whose pendulous breasts swung forwards as she bent in the act of removing her knickers. The photo was taken from above, so maybe he had climbed up to a small bathroom window to take it.
"Oh my God! That's Signora Maria from the flower shop!" gasped Biagioni, horror-stricken.
"Are you sure?"
"Look at her hair, she's the only person left in Borgo who does her hair like that."
"So he comes up here to take his snapshots. See if you know anyone else." He passed the remaining photos over, and the man hurriedly looked through them, "Look!" he exclaimed passing one over. It was the photo of a blonde rather plump young man, who was looking at himself in a mirror and sporting an erection. "It's Antonio Valdese."
"Judging from this, the man was behind the curtain. See this line here at the side, so maybe he even goes into people's houses."
"My God. We'd better pass these around the other police in the area, and see if they can identify these people."
"Not yet. I can get him for these, but I'd rather get him for something bigger, and save these poor people the embarrassment of knowing he took these photos."
"Yes, I see what you mean. If Signora Maria knew about this, well if she knew we'd seen it…It doesn't bear thinking about."
Di Girolamo carried on leafing through the bulky pile, and then stopped and held one up to the light. It showed a girl being mounted by a boy whose long ringlets hid his face and that of the girl. Another boy was holding the girl's arms down, and was turned away from the camera as though talking to someone over his shoulder. The girl's legs were splayed, and her aggressor was riding her, bare-buttocked, with his jeans rolled down to his knees. The ground was tarmac, and the wheels of cars visible behind the girl’s head made him think it could be a car park. He passed it to the other man, saying, "I want it enlarged, as much as they can. I want to know who these youths are."
The other man examined carefully. "Rape?" he asked.
"Possibly."
Isabelle had tidied the house, and set the table for her evening meal. Her plans were for an early night; a shower, and then to bed by nine thirty with a book, so that hopefully she would be up early, and not be a complete wreck by the time she left for the airport. Somehow she got so immersed in her detective story, that before she realised it, the evening had flown by, the fire was threatening to go out, and it was midnight.
"Damn" she muttered. She had no wood left to bank up the fire for the night. Annoyed with herself, she realised she would have to go and get some despite the cold, so she put on her sheepskin coat, a hat, warm gloves, and boots, grabbed her torch and the wood basket, then opened the door to the silent icy world outside. Her little torch led the way to the woodshed, with its brave beam, where she loaded her basket as full as she could carry. Then she turned and set off back towards the house. Her foot slipped on a little patch of icy grass, and the beam of light from the torch shot upwards illuminating the pitch black countryside around. As she brought it back to the path, a flash of white caught her eye, and she played the beam back again over the grassy terraces. Yes, there it was, something white, it was moving…her scalp crawled, as she thought it looked like a ghost, but as the light hit its eyes, an arm went up to fend it off, something that surely no ghost would ever do. She took courage from this and called boldly, "Chi è?" Who is it?
"Aiuto," came the answer.
Aiuto meant help, she remembered, so the person needed help, and no wonder, she thought as she drew nearer, and realised it was a woman in a night-dress. It must be some demented old lady escaped from her keepers. Who else would be out there in her night-clothes in the freezing cold? She hurried towards the woman, who had fallen to the ground, and as she got to her side saw to her horror that the white clothing was stained with blood, and it was a girl's face, white and still, that looked at her. Two hands shot up and clasped her jacket as the girl began to babble, "Aiutami a trovare il mio bambino, aiutami." The tone was hysterical, but Isabelle only understood that she wanted help. "Io vado, a prendere aiuto," she said clearly, and firmly, but the girl got more frantic, "No. No, aiutami ti prego." She wept, but Isabelle heard nothing more, as she felt a blow to her head, and spinning in a ghastly black vortex, lost consciousness and fell to the ground, beside the girl.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hilary finished mixing the aubergine sauce into the corkscrew shaped fresh pasta of the type made in Puglia. She poured chopped up mozzarella into it, and mixed again.
"It's ready Ruggero."
"Good, I'm starving."
They sat facing each other at the small chestnut wood table in the kitchen. She passed him the 'nduja' a marvellous hot mixture of chopped chilli peppers and prosciutto crudo placed into a leathery prosciutto skin. A friend had bought it as a present from Calabria, and they had become addicted to it. A teaspoonful mixed into the pasta was sufficient to bring tears to most people’s eyes, but they were used to it.
He sighed with contentment as he ate. The kitchen was warm, and cheerful.
"God, this is good," he said wiping his mouth with a paper serviette. He drank some red wine, and said, "I'm so glad that I made it back for supper. Mealtimes have been very erratic lately."
"How's it going?"
"Awful, not a clue. The press is all over us, and the television. We’re attacked by microphones every time
we show our noses. It couldn't be worse."
"Oh, I see. Well, forget about it for now, and enjoy your pasta."
"I am enjoying it. I love it."
They ate in silence for a while, then Ruggero asked her, "Do you know a boy called Krishna Hope?"
"Who doesn't? Why?"
"Nothing really, except he is a bit hard to take."
"I suppose you know that he was a friend of the dead boys."
"Yes, that's why I saw him. He was with the group on the evening of the thirteenth, and left for Pisa the next morning. I was only asking the usual questions, trying to find out where Giovanni Lazzerini went that evening. Krishna seemed to think he might be meeting a woman."
"Maybe she was a married woman, and the husband killed him in a fit of jealousy."
"And the second boy?"
"How should I know? Maybe a woman lures them to their death, but a man actually does the deed."
"Maybe. Tell me about the Hope family."
"I hardly know where to start. Let me see, Constantine Hope came here about twenty-five years ago, on holiday, rented a house where he stayed for six months while he wrote his first book, which was an instant success, 'Children and Parenting: A Guide.' I've got a copy here. Anyway, while he was here, he met Anita, a local girl, who'd been brought up in Scotland, you do know about the link between Borgo San Cristoforo and Scotland I suppose?" He nodded." She’d finished Art School, and was doing some quite interesting work, I saw an exhibition of her work once, but only once, because after he married her, and they had eight children and brought them up the way Hope wanted, she stopped working, and devoted herself to wifely duties. He was quite well off, and so was she, the Villa Guelfi belonged to her family, so they moved in, and he wrote lots more books, and became world famous. He flits about all over the place, while she goes in for natural childbirth, breastfeeds forever, and is always there for them all."
"Do you know them; I mean are they friends?"
"Sort of friends. I go there sometimes, and one of their children, Primo, is a friend of Alex."
"But you never mentioned them."
"I'm sure I did, but you didn't take it in. I had the feeling you were a bit fed up with my English friends."
"Not true, well maybe a little true. Do you like them? I mean they don't really sound your sort of people."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, vegetarian animal lovers, with oriental overtones, and I don't think you brought your children up the way they did, at least if Krishna is anything to go by."
"True, but don't get the wrong idea about Krishna, he may be irritating, but he's brilliant you know, but then all their children are. I believe it's compulsory."
"So you don't really like them."
"Well, only in small doses."
"I wonder what it will be like for me, to be a parent I mean."
"Well, we'll soon find out. I would think you'll be indulgent, and at the same time you'll expect a lot of him."
"Good heavens, he's only a few months old."
"I know, but not for long. It will be strange to have a baby in the house again. I'm sure I've forgotten how to parent, perhaps I'll reread Hope's book."
"Dear God, don't do that. I don't want to have a little Krishna on my hands, or even worse, find myself dealing with a big Krishna when I'm well over sixty."
Hilary burst out laughing, but all the same the thought of a turbulent adolescent to handle when one was over sixty, was not what she had ever anticipated. "We'll manage, somehow," she said, and actually managed to sound reassuring. "Will you be free to go and see Cosimo on the twenty-second?" she asked.
"No matter what happens, we go to Florence then. That has priority, besides what's an afternoon off, in a case like this. It could go on for ages. We have very few leads, and unless something breaks, I foresee a lengthy and probably fruitless enquiry, with the press hounding us to death. My prestige will be below zero, so I'll be sent to a remote Sardinian area, and never be heard of again."
"Really?"
"Probably."
"Do you think it's a serial killer?"
"No. I think there's a reason why two boys from the same group have been killed, and the method, which is extremely sadistic, to me smacks of punishment, possibly for some crime, perhaps concerning a homosexual. He doesn't just kill them, he tortures them, and there are sexual overtones in the method he chooses."
"A punishment! I think it's a bit much to murder people to pay them back for something nasty they may have done to you."
"What about if the group got hold of a homosexual, and beat him up, or if they humiliated him publicly. These small towns are not very tolerant about anyone who is different. Suppose they did something so terrible to him that his mind snapped. It can happen to anyone. I'll give you an example. Yesterday, near Milan, the bouncers at a disco manhandled a sixteen year old, who went home and told his father. Did you read about it?"
"No."
"Well, the father picked up his hand gun, and trotted off to the disco where he killed the two bouncers."
"Good God!"
"Obviously, this is a different sort of thing, as the man who killed these boys is a psychopath, but maybe some such incident set him off, and now he's lost it, who knows when he'll stop."
"Oh my God, you mean you think he'll do it again."
"It's possible. I hope not, but it could happen."
"What about the others in the group, they must know the reason. Why don't they say something?"
"I think that they do know something, or one of them does. It's only a feeling, I can't be sure, but he seems to be hiding something. Of course it could be something quite different, drugs for example, but whatever it is, he is ill at ease with me, more than the others."
"Alternatively, whatever they did was so serious that he would risk imprisonment, so he would rather take the chance of being killed than tell you," said Hilary thoughtfully.
"Perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps it is a serial killer, and perhaps it is by chance that the two boys were both from the same group. The other thing that they have in common is their age, they were both sixteen, and they both went to the same school of course, perhaps that is the common factor."
"A mad custodian, or a teacher?"
"We have investigated the teaching and auxiliary staff, but they are all clean as whistles."
They cleared the table, and Ruggero made them coffee, which they took into the sitting room.
"Where did you lunch?" he asked.
"With Isabelle. She's feeling threatened and lonely up there, and wanted me to say it was a good idea she should go to England for Christmas, so I did."
"It probably is a good idea, really."
"Why? You don't think she's a potential victim do you?"
"No, of course not, but a man who has murdered for whatever reason, would have few scruples in killing off any potential witnesses."
"Well, she's hardly that."
"No, but these things happened on her land, so she is a little too close for comfort."
"But, she's totally out of it." Hilary protested.
"No she isn't, she found the first body, also ask yourself how you would feel about being alone up there."
"Mmm, well I wouldn't really ever like it, so I can't tell, but yes, I suppose I would feel a little uneasy. I'm glad I encouraged her to go anyway."
They watched an old Margaret Rutherford film on television, a murder mystery, which made detecting seem something within the scope of a rather nosy spinster.
"I wish it was fun like that, but it isn't you know" sighed Ruggero.
"I know. I think one enjoys these things because they are so removed from reality, not because they attempt to be realistic. It's like a game."
"Murder is never a game."
Isabelle lay still and silent in a small hollow nearly at the bottom of a gully. She was unaware of the cold, or of anything else, and as the temperature went down during the night, she became paler, and stiller. When the first ray
s of sunlight passed inquisitively over her, she was like a waxen figure, frozen by the harsh wind and the ice of the night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The cold wind whistled round the house all night and, in the moonlight, ice glistened on the roads. The next morning, there was a brilliant blue sky with a clear orange sun, which did little to mitigate the cold wind. It blew down chimneys, so that puffs of smoke would suddenly invade a room; it blew into jackets that were not tightly anchored, and fingers were numb inside woollen gloves.
Everyone seems to be wearing a hat this morning, thought Hilary, as she pulled hers well down over her ears. She was braving it, going out early, because she had to buy some Christmas presents, and order a tree. As usual, she had left it rather late, and the best trees had all gone; some people had actually bought theirs at the beginning of the month.
The shops were all decorated with Christmas paraphernalia; some had flashing lights that wished you a 'Buon Natale,’ others had the same thing written in what was supposed to resemble snow. Holly berries abounded, and the town council had set little Christmas trees here and there, though the wind had already ripped some of the decorations from them.
In stark contrast to this festive jollity were the black-bordered death notices that plastered the billboards around town. They proclaimed the deaths of the two boys, and had been put there by the immediate families, by their school friends, by other more distant relatives, by friends of the parents, by the teaching staff, and the council. The mourning was collective, the condolences public, the dead boys were claimed as the 'son of', 'the friend of' and so on. The most moving part was their age, 16 years, 'cut down in the flower of their youth' read one, and beside the previous announcements which concerned deceased of 87, and 93 years, this seemed all the more horrific. People lived long in this area, and Hilary had often heard men described at their death, as young, only to find their age to have been 70 or more.
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