“There’s a black Golf parked almost in front of the bus stop, at least four of the people who were at the bus stop noticed it. When the council workmen arrived, both Ami and the car had disappeared.”
“No black Golf has been recorded on CCTV at the town entrance,” Sensi concluded. “It came from out of town to stop at the parking lot of a shopping centre and it went out of town again before the shops opened.”
The public prosecutor sat up in his chair.
“It could have been parked there since the previous evening.”
“No,” Fuggiano broke in. “When cars are left overnight, they’re full of dew in the morning… if not, a layer of ice. All of the witnesses agree – the Golf looked fairly clean, it clearly hadn’t been there for long.”
“It might be just a coincidence,” Sensi continued. “Anyway, our agents and street police are stopping every black Golf within a fifty kilometre radius. It’s been thirty-six hours now and it could be anywhere, but it’s still worth trying. We’re also working to get a list of the owners of this type of car, we’ve investigated residents from Ami’s town and the neighbouring villages and we’ll extend our investigation if necessary.”
“You think it’s a coincidence? This one car in the parking area of a shopping centre still closed… right before the girl disappeared? A car that vanishes at the same time that Ami disappears? It might be, but it’s the only thread that we can follow right now. Let’s try to find that Golf and we’ll evaluate whether or not it was a coincidence.” The magistrate paused thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. “Now, let’s suppose that it’s a case of premeditated kidnapping – vendetta, feud, paedophilia, you name it. Would you ever go and do anything like that in your own car, Mr Sensi?”
“We’re verifying all missing car reports and, just to be certain, the car rental companies.”
“Let’s find this car.”
*
Outside the public prosecutor’s office, Sensi addressed Maiezza. “Go and get some sleep, you look exhausted.”
“What do you think about this case?”
“I don’t have a lot to think about – I just know that a girl’s disappeared and that we have to do our best to find her.”
“A paedophile?”
The knot in the stomach, again.
It was almost thirty-six hours since Ami had disappeared; after forty-eight hours, the chances of finding her statistically dropped down to three per cent.
“Go and get some sleep, Maiezza. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”
*
Elaji squinted as the beam of light was pointed at his face; Rama, at his side but half a step behind him, didn’t have to squint – she was keeping her eyes down to the ground. After the morning visit, more journalists and cameramen had turned up in the evening, this time in large numbers.
Elaji and Rama were outside their house – they were surrounded by a flock of people who had been arranged meticulously by the interviewer by mixing roughly equal numbers of black and white people.
It was the evening newscast of the most popular national news show.
A red light turned on next to the camera and the journalist began to speak into the microphone.
What you see in the background is the small, humble house where Ami lived with her family – her parents Elaji and Rama and her sister Alissa. As you know, Ami disappeared yesterday morning as she was going to school. The investigation hasn’t been successful so far, but the police are using all their means and are getting support from several volunteers.
The journalist spoke to Elaji.
Mr Demba, I know that your wife doesn’t want to speak – would you like to tell us anything about Ami?
Elaji grabbed the microphone. He held it so tightly that he was almost crushing it. His strength equalled his anger, which in turn equalled his pain. After a moment of hesitation, he found the courage to speak.
Ami’s good, she’s a good girl, she brings joy into people’s hearts. She has to be found.
The journalist took back the microphone.
Everybody knows Ami here in town and, as you can see, they’re all around the Demba family as a sign of support…
The journalist made a gesture to indicate the crowd near her and the Demba family, then she continued.
…without hesitation. In the meantime, the police are carrying out investigations in every direction. We have some breaking news, it’s a detail that might turn out to be extremely important in this case – some witnesses noticed a black Golf where Ami was last seen; this car vanished soon afterwards. The police are trying to trace the car owner, if anybody has any information they can call the free number that you can see on the screen. That’s it for now, we hope to be able to interview little Ami with her family very soon.
The lights were turned off.
Rama broke into tears.
The previous day.
The grey of the sky mirrored the grey of the asphalt.
At 7:30 a.m, the darkness had slowly dissolved but the sun was only a cold, distant circle, as it often was during those cold winter days in northern Italy.
The black Golf had been parked for a few minutes already at the edge of the town – its outline was barely visible in the floating fog that morning. The bell tower emerged from the mist and stretched itself above the brown house roofs.
The man sitting inside the car turned on the engine and then, nervously, the windscreen wipers, to clear the condensation that his breath had formed on the windscreen. It had been the third time that he had inadvertently switched the wipers on; but that wasn’t his problem. If anything, this weather was perfect for what he had in mind… he couldn’t have wished for any better. He had been there for about ten minutes – same time, same place every day. He often waited at that isolated parking area, which was out of the range of any CCTV from the nearby shopping centre. At that time in the morning, the shopping centre was still closed. The bus stop was about thirty metres away from him, on the other side of the road. The bus route which linked the town with Crema passed there. The man couldn’t stop staring at the bus stop.
One more sudden windscreen wipe.
The time had almost come.
He breathed in deeply.
He had learned to recognise the handful of people who gathered every cold weekday morning at that stand, waiting for the bus to Crema. There were three or four adults, most likely office workers and shop assistants… and maybe a nurse, he guessed. The rest of them – and they were who he focused on – were school kids. Only one of them was really of interest to him.
She still hadn’t turned up that morning…
It had been an unwise decision to choose her, perhaps even a mistake.
He had planned everything and that had to be the day – she had to turn up.
The man adjusted his heavy-framed glasses with a clumsy gesture; in the meantime, the bus had appeared from around the corner. He finally saw her – she was far away, she was later than usual and out of breath. Her heavy blue coat almost hid her completely and her school bag bounced on her back.
Najla – he had decided to call her Najla.
She was clearly struggling to walk fast with her heavy bag on her back. Her breath condensed in the air every time she breathed out. She was wearing a multi-coloured wool hat; she hid her hair under the hat – he was sure that he had noticed her hairstyle before. He kept his eyes on her.
Najla.
She went to a secondary school in Crema. She had to be fourteen, fifteen years old, but she looked way younger than that. She was a petite girl and her facial features and her movements were still child-like.
Najla.
Her dark skin.
Her sweet face.
He’d chosen her the first time that he saw her.
The bus stopped and the people began to get on board. The girl had started to run but she was too late, it was obvious that she wouldn’t make it. When the bus door closed and it pulled back into the road with a burst of black sm
oke, the girl was still about twenty metres away from the bus stop.
The man in the car sat up straight in his seat. He had planned everything – he knew what he would have done in Crema and now everything was going pear shaped because the girl was late. He didn’t have much time. That day… it had to be that day.
The girl was still, she was panting, she was staring at the bus while it was driving away.
The man looked around – the road was deserted, the bus had taken everybody with it.
Maybe…
Maybe he shouldn’t act instinctively and without a plan.
Najla…
He had to get her.
The man turned on the engine and selected a low gear. The car moved slowly away from the parking area.
*
Professor Trevis had woken up reasonably early on that cold November morning. As usual, he had gone to the bar for breakfast before 8 a.m. and, as he did every morning, he had gone to the same bar. It was this same bar where, twenty years earlier, when he was still a lecturer in psychology at the University of Milan, he had met someone. With this person, he had also encountered the nightmare that would change his life forever.
Maybe it was his way to fight the memories that took over his inner self every now and then. They were vivid and sorrowful, despite the long period of time which had passed, and they crept up suddenly, without warning. That morning was no different – he sat at a table al fresco, enjoying his coffee whilst looking at the first light of dawn illuminating Follonica.
The sea was as flat as a pancake.
Trevis resisted the temptation to stretch, then began to read the newspaper.
*
The bus had disappeared down the road. The girl was near the bus stop, on the verge of crying. She hadn’t noticed the black Golf that pulled out next to her.
The man didn’t open the door – it wouldn’t have been a good move; he half-lowered the window from the passenger side.
He leaned over wearing a friendly smile. “‘Scuse me, do you know if this is the right direction to get to Crema?”
Najla. He’d never seen her that close before.
The girl lifted her eyes to him, they were big and moist. She nodded shyly.
“Thank goodness, I was afraid I was lost.” Another friendly smile. “You’re crying, what happened?”
“Nothing…”
“Nothing? You look distressed. I think I know the answer – you had to go to school and you didn’t do your homework.”
Najla. Her eyes were incredibly big compared to her slim, small face.
A wave of excitement and desire overwhelmed the man, but he kept the kind, reassuring smile on his face.
“I can’t go to school, I missed the bus.” The little girl put her hands on her face and began to sob quietly.
“Will your mum be angry with you?”
The little girl nodded; he glanced at the rear view mirror – still nobody around.
“Was it the bus to Crema that you missed? Do you go to school there?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop crying, I’ll take you there. I’m going to Crema.”
The little girl stood in silence, she took her hands away from her face.
“We’ll get there before the bus, you’ll get to school on time and your mum won’t be angry with you.”
Again, the little girl stood still, in silence. She stopped crying.
The man glanced at the rear view mirror again.
That was the right time for him to open the door – the man leaned over a little more to pull the door handle. The cold air of the morning touched his face.
“I’ll give you a sweet and a lovely orange juice too. Is your name Najla?”
After a short moment of hesitation, the little girl got into the car.
Nobody had seen anything.
“My name’s Ami.”
*
Trevis folded up the newspaper carefully and took his mobile phone from his coat pocket with a lazy gesture. He intended to reply to a text that he had received the previous night.
‘Have a safe journey. Yr doing a gig in Siena 2moro. I’ll be there 4 work. Will come 2 gig, we can talk later about person you care about’. Trevis typed in the addressee, it was listed under the name of ‘bench’.
A few moments later, a message of notification confirmed that his text had been successfully delivered.
*
About twenty minutes after Ami had got in, the black Golf reached an isolated, detached house in the district of Milan. The man had rented the house for three months a few weeks earlier. He’d found the house on the Internet, on a property rental website. It was a two-storey house, which had definitely seen better days. The living room and the kitchen were downstairs, the bathroom and two bedrooms upstairs. A wild garden surrounded the building, there was a large cellar in the basement and there were no other houses within a two hundred metre radius. It was ideal.
Ami was still unconscious when the man laid her on a bed covered in cellophane.
He locked the girl in the room and then went to the bathroom.
His movements were slow and precise, they were the result of rigid discipline. In reality, he felt a ravenous fire burn inside him, his skin was burning.
First of all, he took his glasses off – the frame was so heavy that it had hidden some of his facial traits; his blue eyes had gazed through clear lenses… which were not corrective lenses, despite looking like them. They were just plain glass. With a few quick movements, the man took out his coloured contact lenses and uncovered a much more common pair of brown eyes. He took off his ginger wig and moustache – and saw his real face in the mirror again. The friendly face had disappeared now. The mirror reflected the image of a man with a rough face and a feverish light in his eyes.
*
The night had overtaken the last few rays of dusk. Trevis was walking slowly to the chess club meeting in town. The promenade was practically deserted at 9 p.m. on a cold November day; in the summer, the same place would have been packed with people.
He enjoyed his weekly chess club meetings – which had been a habit ever since he moved to Follonica a few years earlier. He knew his opponent for that night very well and he was sure that he would attempt to win the match with his queen; consequently, he had decided to lure him into the insidious territory of the Benko gambit – he would let him take one of his pawns on the queen’s wing so as to have a more open, aggressive match.
Trevis liked using gambits, he had learned enough to allow for any kind of opening into the enemy’s army – he liked Benko and Morra, the king and the woman gambits. He knew that his way of playing chess wasn’t just pure strategy, it was a way for him to express his anxiety to force a situation, to rapidly get to a fierce battle which ended the match in one way or the other.
Was it a mark, a legacy, a scar left by events in the past?
Inevitably, even though he was used to sweeping away those thoughts, his mind began to zone off and wander through his long-lost memories…
The young face of Denise emerged in his memory.
“What would she be like today? He surprised himself by asking.
“How old would she be, fifty-two, fifty-three?”
He didn’t love her enough.
He didn’t protect her enough. He didn’t help her enough.
He couldn’t save her.
*
The man began to breathe more slowly.
His body was still shivering, however.
He was sitting on the floor, naked, leaning against the wall.
He didn’t know how long he’d been in that position.
He was staring at Ami, who was laid on the bed.
His mind was almost free of any thoughts and it had been like this for the last few hours.
He began to stand up slowly.
He still had work to do…
*
When the chess club meeting ended, Trevis wrapped himself up into his large coat, ready to face th
e cold air outside.
The Benko gambit had revealed itself to be a disaster – it had made the match very long and he hadn’t been able to make use of the advantage he thought he would have by sacrificing one of his pawns. It had been a slow defeat, like being strangled. Now, the sense of fatigue was still hanging over him.
He walked the short distance to his house slowly; he had finished much later than he anticipated and he would have to travel to Siena early in the morning. He had been invited to a conference – the day would be intense and he would meet Bench in the evening. He had to talk to him in person. He wouldn’t be able to get back ‘til late at night. Trevis cursed himself for having agreed to such an onerous day.
On the promenade, the air felt colder than ever on that moonless night.
A fisherman had planted his rod on the beach near the water’s edge and was waiting patiently for the glowing bait to attract his prey. Trevis observed him for a while, and, without warning, his mind filled with fresh memories.
Denise…
*
The night was dark and veiled by the mist.
The man ensured for the last time that everything was in order.
Ami was in the car.
The man was wearing his glasses and wig again, trying to control the slight tremor in his hands.
He had done everything that had to be done.
There was only one thing left.
The black Golf disappeared down the road.
3
Only three black Golfs were registered on rental company books for the whole region of Lombardy. Two of them were still rented out and the third one had been returned to the Hertz depot in Malpensa the previous morning. The local police squad at the airport had been asked to investigate that car. Police Commissioner Fuggiano received a call a few minutes after 10 a.m.
“The car was hired by a British citizen six days ago, he returned it yesterday morning as agreed.”
“Did you inspect the vehicle?”
“Yes, I’d say there’s nothing suspicious – the car has been washed after the last client however.”
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