"Home!" she sounded alarmed.
"Yes, to your home, your lovely little house. I went there on Christmas Day and aired it out for you. It's super, really," said Miranda trying to change the direction of her mother's thoughts.
"Yes, isn't it. I'm so glad I bought it, despite everything." She closed her eyes and went back to sleep, but this time it was the restorative sleep of convalescence.
The search at Alessio Pinucci's home had turned up a lot of ropes, and a square hammer, which were taken away for analyses. His mother wept into her apron, her work-reddened hands clutching desperately at the material.
"Maresciallo, he's a good boy. I don't understand nothing. My boy wouldn't do nothing, Maresciallo, you know that."
"Signora, if Alessio has done nothing then he’s got nothing to worry about, and you mustn't worry either."
"I don't know what his Dad will say when he gets back. He needs them ropes; they're for the cow when she calves and she's due any minute now, and the vet'll need em. What am I going to tell him?"
"I'm sorry. If you need ropes I'm sure a friend can lend them to you. Come Signora, it'll soon be over. Look at it this way, when we have finished our work we can be certain that Alessio has done nothing wrong. We have to be as certain as you are. Do you understand?"
"Oh, the shame of it, how will I be able to hold my head up. We're respectable folks, and you know it."
"Yes, I do. As I said, the sooner we know for certain that your boy has done nothing wrong, the better. We need to eliminate him as a suspect. Do you understand?"
"Yes. If you say so."
Francesco Orsi and Michele Rinucci were called back along with others who had been at the disco on the evening that Giovanni Lazzerini disappeared. They all confirmed that Alessio Pinucci had been there, but none could swear that he hadn't left at some point during the evening.
Antonio Valdese's mother was brought back to confirm that her son had been at home on the evenings of the first two murders. She swore dramatically on oath, having requested a Holy Bible to do so.
"I think she really does believe he was in the house."
"Yes, but she couldn't know if he slipped out when she went to bed," commented di Girolamo.
The press commented favourably on the fact that two men were helping the police with their enquiries, and they were hoping for a speedy closure of the case. This one was becoming stale, and new stories were waiting for them. In the last couple of days the case had slipped down on the list of news, now it was way after international and national news headlines on the television. In the newspapers a small paragraph on the first page led to a larger article several pages into the newspaper. Unless di Girolamo solved the case, it was old news, and yet another example of police inefficiency.
Baby Lucia was doing well, and still held public interest. The only photographs allowed were of a distant incubator, but several doctors had allowed themselves to be interviewed, and a couple of nurses confessed to the general public, that the baby was absolutely beautiful.
When Ruggero came home to eat, he had little appetite because he felt so discouraged. His favourite suspect was probably innocent, and the idea of accusing a simpleton didn't go down too well with him. He kept thinking that that sort of harmless boy would never have the emotional intensity necessary to commit a crime like the first two. It seemed to him that in these crimes, there was not just perversion but hatred. Alessio might well have thrown Pietro off the Duomo wall, if he had been seen by him engaging in a sexual act with Mad Maria, and jeered at, but that would have been a spur of the moment rage, not this premeditated methodical murder, and a second one with exactly the same ritual. As to the mutilation of Italo Franchini, which Ruggero had managed to keep under wraps, Alessio, he thought, would be incapable of doing something like that. It didn't fit his sort of personality, but then Ruggero had been wrong before now.
He ate without speaking as he turned things over in his mind. Hilary and the others spoke quietly in English amongst themselves, leaving him to reflect in peace. Afterwards, he and Hilary were politely left alone in the kitchen, and he asked her, "What do you think of Alessio Pinucci?"
"Harmless, wants to be liked. Er, not very bright, but amusing, a bit vulgar. Quite popular. One sees him in the bars laughing and joking. He loves telling naughty jokes."
"Can you see him as a vicious sadistic ritualistic murderer?"
"No, but then I'm not a psychologist. My reply is just gut feeling. He's the last person I can imagine doing it."
"What about Antonio Valdese?"
"Ugh!"
"Explain, does that mean you think he could be the killer?"
"Oh God, if I had to choose between the two of them, yes, otherwise, I don't know. I mean he's pretty awful, a nasty furtive sort of a creature, a fumbler and a fiddler, a secret sex maniac maybe, I mean I can see him reading disgusting porno magazines in the lavatory, but I wouldn't have thought he would be cruel. Don't listen to me though, because these are superficial impressions. Do we ever really know what our neighbours are like? I go by my instinct, and it could let me down."
"So do I, and it does."
"Do you want coffee?" she asked.
"Yes, I'll make it," he replied.
He began his meticulous preparation, smoothing the finely ground coffee until it was evenly distributed, checking the level of the water until it was precisely as he wanted it, and then tightly screwing the two halves of the coffee pot together. He lit a fairly small gas ring, and then prepared the coffee cups. "What about the others? Will they all want coffee" he asked.
"Not Amanda, she's not been sleeping very well lately and now she thinks coffee must be bad for the baby, but the men will have it."
She called them and they all filed back into the kitchen. Alex got out the rum bottle and poured a generous splash of it into his coffee, the others declined.
Amanda anxious not to talk about the murders in front of Ruggero, asked her mother if Miranda had said when Isabelle was coming home.
"Soon, she said, "apparently Isabelle's doing very well, but Miranda's worried about this dream that Isabelle insists is real. If she can't separate reality from a dream, then something is wrong."
"Could it be an hallucination, they are supposed to be very difficult to differentiate from reality?" asked James seriously
"I've no idea."
"What is this dream?" asked Alex.
"Well it's quite complicated, but it can't be true, I mean it just doesn't make sense."
"What is it for goodness sake?" asked Amanda.
"Well she says that when she went to get the wood that night, that she saw a young girl in a bloodstained night-dress."
"A girl in night-dress, outside on a freezing cold dark night!" exclaimed Amanda.
"I told you it was ridiculous."
."Is that all?" asked Ruggero.
"No, she said that while she was talking to her, someone hit her over the head."
"Good heavens. Maybe she short-circuited something when she fractured her skull." said Amanda
"Did the girl say anything to her?" asked Ruggero
"Yes, she says the girl was desperate, weeping and asking for help, and the only other word Isabelle could understand was bambino, so she thought the girl was out looking for a lost child, and somehow hurt herself, as she had blood on her night-dress. It sounds very surreal doesn't it?"
"Like a horror film. Maybe she had just killed her lover," suggested Alex.
"Or maybe she was a vampire!" said Amanda
Ruggero looked at his watch. It was ten thirty. "If you will excuse me, I'm sorry but I have to go out again."
"Oh dear," said Hilary in a resigned tone. She walked to the hall with him.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I need to check something. I'll be back soon."
But Hilary was asleep by the time he came back, and the next morning he left before she woke up. A note on her bedside table read, "See you this evening. I love you."
Ruggero was excited. The night before, he was certain he had found the way to solve one of his cases, and this morning he would have to find the means of proving he was right. Last night he had run his eyes down lists of names, and finally found the one he wanted. He had telephoned Maresciallo Biagioni at midnight, for some local information about the person he was interested in, and this morning he would put into action the plan that they had worked out then. It was a little risky, but his instinct was that he was right.
While he waited in his car hidden a short distance away, with a good view of the house, Maresciallo Biagioni was putting the first part of the plan into action now. The policeman had been in the house for over ten minutes now. ‘Had something gone wrong?’ Ruggero asked himself. At the same moment he saw the policeman come out escorting a man and a woman into the police vehicle. He watched it leave. Then his phone rang. He answered it, "Yes."
"Confirmation," said the older man's voice. Ruggero said nothing and the phone went dead.
He started the car's engine and drove slowly to the house, which was quiet and still, and empty according to the phone call.
The daughter of the house had not been seen for nearly three weeks, since the eleventh of December, the last day that she had attended school. She was nearly sixteen and was a student at the Platone teacher’s training college, in the same class as two murdered boys. Her parents had told the school, and friends, that she was ill. Then school had broken up for the Christmas holidays, and still no one had seen her, but given the sort of parents she had, no one expected to see her much. The father was a taciturn man, and his wife never left the house if she could help it.
"They keep themselves to themselves, like many country folk," said Maresciallo Biagioni.
This morning Maresciallo Biagioni had gone to the house, saying he needed to interview the daughter for information regarding the murders of the four boys, as she had not been at school when everyone else had been questioned. He had taken the parents down to the police station in Borgo. The code phrase told De Girolamo that his assumption was correct, and that the parents had said the daughter was not in the house.
He got out of the car, and looked up at the shuttered house. The rooms on the top floor had bars on the windows. Then he pulled a number of large keys out of his pocket and tried them in the front door, a typical, heavy old farmhouse door. At last one clicked in the large lock. He pushed the door open, and entered the house quietly wiping his feet with great care. He pulled on a pair of fine rubber gloves, and quickly inspected the main living area of the house; it was empty. Then he walked quietly up the wooden stairs to the bedrooms. Two doors opened at once when he tried the handles. There was no one there and the rooms were perfectly clean and tidy. In the master bedroom, a garish doll sat resplendent in the centre of a frilly pink bedspread, flanked by two heart-shaped cushions. The third room had a key in the locked door. He turned the key and opened the door.
It had been the conversation the evening before that had given him a vital clue for this other crime that he had an open file on; the baby abandoned in a plastic bag; little Lucia whose recovery had been amply covered by the media. Ruggero had immediately reasoned thus; if Isabelle had not been dreaming, and had really seen a girl in a bloodstained night-dress asking for help and talking about a baby, then she could be the young mother he was seeking. Furthermore, she must surely live fairly near to Isabelle, and he had rushed off to look up families in the area, with women of childbearing age. A phone call this morning to the home of school's director had elicited the information that the girl in question had not been seen since the eleventh of December. Another phone call was made to the girl's form teacher. She said the parents had phoned to say the girl was ill. Other students in the form would have no further information she said, because Grazia, the girl, had no close friends. The parents were known to be strict and old- fashioned. They had no friends and tried to discourage their daughter from having any too.
Now he stood in the doorway of a small stuffy room. The windows had been nailed shut. On a bed in the corner, a girl lay pale and still. He walked quietly over to the bed, and touched his fingers to her neck. There was a pulse. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called for an ambulance. The girl moaned and half opened her eyes, but didn't seem to be aware of him.
He phoned Maresciallo Biagioni, and said, "Hold them, I'll be down shortly. The girl was in a locked room, and is very ill, and possibly sedated. I'm sending her straight to hospital, and we'll see what the doctors have to say, but I’d say she's the one."
The ambulance set off, sirens wailing, and Ruggero followed down the winding road behind it. Once they reached the town, he turned off towards the police station, parked the car and entered, walking briskly to avoid the press who were always present, and like crouched vultures would rise and flap their wings every time they saw him. "What was the ambulance?" "Is there another dead boy?" "Have you arrested anyone?" a Babel of voices which he ignored.
Maresciallo Biagioni came to meet him, "The parents are saying she ran away from home, and they were so ashamed that they said she was ill. I told them they must come down and make a formal statement, declaring their daughter as a missing person, because she’s a minor. They made a fuss, but I was very firm, and now they are sitting in there," he pointed to the room they always used for interrogations, "filling in forms."
"Send for a cappuccino and a brioche for me, would you, I'll see them after I've eaten. What else is new?"
"Nothing."
"Oh great, are they doing Pinucci's hammer?"
"Now."
"Thank God for small mercies. I want to see that pathetic slob, Valdese, again today, please. I don't want him thinking I've forgotten him."
"Oh I'm sure he doesn't think that."
"Well, I'll get this case closed, and then hopefully we can sort out Pinucci and Valdese, and conclude the other case as well.
The two people in the room looked up as Ruggero came in. They looked frightened, as well they might, he thought angrily.
"Buongiorno. I am Dottor Ruggero di Girolamo. Please remain seated." he put out a hand to stop them rising from their places.
"Buon giorno," they murmured in unison. The man, short and stocky with dark hair, was dressed in work clothes, and wore a woollen hat. His wife, a plump greying blonde, had put on an elderly black woollen overcoat, which smelt strongly of mothballs, and was shiny in places from over energetic ironing. She had a fading green bruise on one cheekbone.
"Now then, have you finished filling in the forms?" asked Di Girolamo, not unpleasantly.
"Yes," said the man pushing them across the table to him.
He took them and looked at them, a cursory glance, taking in the large laboriously written words, which denoted writing as an unfamiliar task.
"Now when exactly did your daughter go missing?"
"I wrote it, December eleventh."
"You're quite sure?"
"She went to school that morning, and she never came back. She left a note, saying she was going," said the man decisively.
"Did you look for her?"
They both nodded. "Well you didn't look very hard for her, because she was in her bedroom, and as the room was locked from the outside, I presume one of you locked it."
The woman burst into tears. Her husband clasped his callused hands together and looked at the floor in silence.
"On the eleventh of December," Ruggero added. The woman nodded, and her husband shot her a silencing glance.
"Did you know it is a criminal offence to deprive anyone of their freedom of movement?"
"A father has the right to keep his daughter out of trouble," stated the man.
"So you have done nothing wrong."
"Not to my way of thinking, no. She's a whore. I did it for her own good. I'm her father, it's my right."
"So it was you that decided to lock her in her room."
"Yes."
"Matteo Rossi, I
am afraid I am going to have to arrest you, for imprisoning your daughter, Grazia Rossi."
"You're what! You can't do that."
"I can. Apart from anything else, your daughter is a minor. Furthermore, I believe that when the medical report comes through you may well be charged with other things."
He opened the door, called for a man in uniform and said, "Take him down."
The woman sat in terrified silence watching as her husband was escorted from the room, then she looked up at Di Girolamo anxiously.
He said kindly, "Have you anything you want to tell me?"
"No."
"Matteo's going to be away for a long time, so he can't do anything to you. Did he give you that bruise?"
She put her hand up to her cheek, but she wouldn't betray him.
"Think carefully about what you say to me and remember that your daughter is being seen by a doctor, at this very minute, so I will soon know everything there is to know. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes," she whispered it, and her eyes filled up with tears again. "I told him not to, but he hit me, not just here," she touched her face, "but everywhere. I thought he was going to kill me. I couldn't stop him."
"So you helped him."
"I had to." She was weeping openly now. "Holy Mother of God, I'm so sorry, but I couldn't do anything. He was mad with rage. I had to let him… "
"Say it."
"I can't."
"Say it." His voice was hard.
"Alright! Alright!" she shrieked. "He took the baby, now are you satisfied? He took the baby, and he locked my daughter up, and I couldn't do anything to stop him. He would have killed me. He would have killed us both."
The medical report confirmed that Grazia Rossi had recently given birth to a baby, and had a uterine infection. She had been heavily sedated, and had bruising on her arms, and all over her body.
Di Girolamo clenched his teeth with rage. How could anyone do this to their only child? What kind of primitive reasoning lay behind this sort of behaviour? It was something he found so abhorrent that he had to wait until he had managed to calm himself down before having the man brought up to face him again.
The Tuscan Mystery Trilogy Page 67
