He drew closer, pretending to observe some of the items on display.
He was standing next to her.
Somebody called her name. Djara.
Djara.
How old was she? Ten… maybe eleven?
Nobody had made him as happy as Ami had.
The man turned his head a little to look at her.
Will you be better than Ami, Djara?
*
“Claps, have you left already?”
“I’m… leaving now.” Claps said, as he opened the car door.
“Listen, Claps, where were you five years ago?”
Another one of Claps’ problems was that of being unable to identify a specific location for his distant memories. It was almost like the past had no dimension for him.
Five years earlier was an incredibly long time ago, it was back when everything was a lot easier for him.
He thought about it for a while.
“Claps?”
“The United… States… I lived there for… a year and a half… FBI… I was specializing in… the behavioural analy-sis in the… context of violent… crimes.”
“That’s why you don’t remember.”
“Remember… what?”
“Maiezza noticed it when he issued the order to identify any inhabitants who have been reported for paedophilia or violence to children within the area that you identified. The map that you showed me yesterday named only the main towns and there are a lot of suburbs and villages missing.”
“What… did you… find?”
“Niccioleta. It’s a mining town which used to be quite populated in the past; nowadays, however, the mines have closed and there are only a few hundred inhabitants. Maybe it’s only a coincidence, but a young girl was kidnapped there five years ago, it was a case of kidnapping and ransoming. She disappeared and was never found.”
“I didn’t… know.”
“It was a major piece of news back then, the media discussed the case for weeks, an investigation was carried out for a long period of time but with no results. Some journalists have recently mentioned this case, together with others, since Ami’s disappearance.”
“I guess… I should pay… more attention… to the news.”
“Niccioleta is almost at the centre of the area that you identified.”
“Was she… black?”
“No, her name was Denise Cellini, she was blonde and petite.”
“How old…?”
“Fifteen.”
“White… fifteen…”
“Yes, her characteristics don’t correspond with those of the other victims. Plus, she was kidnapped for ransoming. It sounds like a whole different story.”
“Yes… but the place… could mean something.”
“It’s possible that this first kidnapping was the trigger for the sick man to begin hunting and kidnapping young girls.”
“Yes… possible.”
Claps remained silent for a while.
“I would… like to know more.”
“I’ll send you all the documents.”
“Can you… send them to… the Massa… Marittima… police station?”
“They’ll be there before you.”
*
Ami had been his obsessions for months.
When he had seen her for the first time, he knew he could never get hold of her.
Too many risks.
She was far away from his environment, the police would begin their investigation immediately. They would use all the means at their disposal to hunt for the culprit.
He wasn’t stupid, he knew that acting outside your environment causes you to leave behind some kind of trace, no matter how careful you are. He would have to find a car and a place to be with her.
Too many risks.
Then, lady luck kissed him – the Englishman. The chance to steal his identity for a few days. If he had played it well, if he had done his research properly, everything would lead to Philip Beattie. Not him.
And well he had played indeed.
Ami.
She had been the most wonderful one. For weeks, he had believed that his unquenchable and interminable thirst, would disappear for a long time. Perhaps forever.
Instead… it was back. Perhaps stronger than ever.
Djara.
*
Claps closed the files. He had been reading the documents for hours.
It was late at night.
He leaned back in his armchair and exhaled. He reclined his head and closed his eyes. Tiredness was taking over. Claps tried to resist it.
Denise Cellini had disappeared on a September afternoon. She had gone to some kind of barbecue together with her twin sister and her father. Every now and then, her father helped his brother – the owner of a cork factory – with routine maintenance of the factory building and a few hectares of cork oaks several kilometres away from Niccioleta. As usual, his daughters had come with him that afternoon and had played in the woods while he checked the health of the trees and classified the stages of the cork on the bark of a few trees in the woods. After about an hour, the other daughter had run to him looking extremely worried – her sister had disappeared. They looked for her for at least two hours, then they went back into town and alerted the police.
The search was resumed later that day with a lot more people and much more methodically. When the sun went down, they carried on searching with torches throughout the night. The following day, the police employed dogs trained to find missing people – they had sent a specialized unit from Grosseto. The dogs found traces of Denise up to the end of the woods, near a lake that separated the cork trees from the wilderness. Scuba divers explored the lake a few hours later and the following day they began to dredge it but found nothing. The investigators found fresh traces of wheels on a dirt road nearby. The Cellini family’s telephone – which had been monitored – had remained silent. They hypothesised a family tragedy – a huge warehouse that was used for storing working tools and the cork collected was inspected by a scientific unit for traces of blood or anything else noteworthy, but with no luck. The letter arrived on the fifth day. It was a ransom for the liberation of Denise, one million euros. The letter had been sent from Siena and the message had been created with letters cut out from a newspaper, there were no identifiable fingerprints. In the envelope, together with the request for money, there was a Polaroid photo of the necklace Denise had been wearing the day she disappeared. The letter stated that further instructions would be issued once media silence had been declared and the police had ceased to investigate. But nothing arrived, there were no more messages despite the media silence and an apparently uninterested attitude from the police. During the following months, the investigation gradually ground to a halt, the investigators followed the wrong path and all hope of finding Denise Cellini was eventually lost.
Five years had passed since then.
Denise… was it really a kidnapping with the goal a ransom, as it seemed?
Claps had seen her photos, he tried to imagine her when she was alive.
That feeling of vertigo, again.
How did Denise smile? How did she move and speak?
His mind struggled to form any images.
“Was it really a kidnapping for a ransom?” he wondered again.
She was white Caucasian and fifteen years old, so different from Ami and the others. She was older than the other girls, and it was an age difference that is significant during that period of life.
And again, the decision to choose her, the confidence on the kidnapper’s part to expose themselves to the media and the police. That had been a very different approach to the one used with the other victims during that five year period.
Claps opened his eyes again.
Denise had been a very different victim, maybe too different. Perhaps it was too much to think about a link between the others and her.
He struggled to rise from the armchair in his hotel room, he was exhausted. The room was
too small, almost claustrophobic.
And yet…
The bed was only a step away. He lay on it fully dressed.
He had one last thought before he drifted away – how did Denise smile?
*
Alissa woke up in tears that night.
She had dreamed about Ami. She had told her that she was in a beautiful place, but she couldn’t be with her to play together yet.
However, Alissa’s sobs didn’t wake Elaji. He hadn’t closed his eyes all night. He had remained in bed staring at the ceiling.
He took her in his arms and tried to console her.
He began to whisper in his Wolof dialect. “Do you want me to tell you a story?”
“The word tree?”
Elaji sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. He held his arms in a circle above his head.
“Tell me about the golden city.” Alissa said. She sat down on one of her father’s knees. A tear had crossed her cheek.
“You’ve heard it many times already…”
“Again, please!”
“Timbuctu, that’s its name. Its buildings were all made of gold and shone like the sun.”
“And…?”
“It was the richest and most beautiful city in the entire empire of Mali and in the whole world.”
“And…?”
“And one of the tallest buildings had so many books in it that the entire human knowledge was stored in there.”
“More books than my school?”
“Many more, a thousand times more.”
“Who lived in the city of gold?”
“Doctors, lawyers, great warriors and many wise men.”
“Was there a king too?”
“An emperor. The great Mansa Musa.”
“Was the emperor rich?”
“He was so rich that one day he set off on a pilgrimage to Mecca, with ten thousand people and more than a thousand Arabian camels following him.
“And then?”
“During the journey he gave away so much gold in Egypt that everyone became rich.”
“Was the journey a long one?”
“It lasted many moons.”
“Weren’t his children sad because he was away?”
“Only a little, they knew he would be back.”
Elaji remained silent for a while. He lowered his arms, which had formed the foliage. The tree of stories died.
“Listen, Alissa… I will also have to set out on a journey soon.”
“As long as that of the emperor?”
“Maybe. Will you be as good as the children of Masa Musa?”
“Are you going to bring Ami back?”
“Ami is in a beautiful place, but she can’t come back.”
“Yes, you said that before. Where are you going to go, then?”
“I’m going to find the evil man who took her away.”
“What do you want to do to him?”
Elaji looked away for a moment. He didn’t want Alissa to see the hatred in his eyes.
“I will punish him.”
9
The central police station in Grosseto had investigated the case of Denise Cellini and had co-ordinated the investigation and search from the first few hours.
Claps was welcomed into the police chief’s office straight away.
“Please take a seat. I had a call from Milan about your visit and I’m at your disposal for any information regarding Denise Cellini’s kidnapping.”
Musto, the chief of police, was fifty years old and looked a little older. He had light coloured, lively eyes. Claps realized that he had a Neapolitan accent as soon as he spoke, although it wasn’t very pronounced. Or maybe he was from Avellino, not very far from Naples.
“Just some… details, thanks.”
Claps didn’t worry about sounding clumsy – he was sure that Sensi had warned Musto about Claps’ speech problems and that he was ready to face some challenges.
“A kidnapping… then a ransom demand.” Claps continued.
“The request for money sounded legit – the envelope contained a letter with a photo of the necklace that the young girl was wearing the day she disappeared. The sum of money requested was appropriate to the family’s wealth.”
“One… mi-million… euros… why’s Denise’s f… father so rich?”
“He’s not really that rich, but his brother, Denise’s uncle, is. He owns a cork factory and hectares of woods.”
“Did he intend… to pay… that sum?”
“He couldn’t have done so even if he had wanted to. The magistrate froze all of his funds and Cellini’s property as soon as the letter arrived.” The police chief remained silent for a while. “Also…”
“What…?”
“But all that glistens isn’t gold – the uncle didn’t really have a lot of cash, the factory was almost bankrupt. He may have realized that sum if he had sold everything, both the factory and the woods… or maybe it wouldn’t have been enough, considering that he was indebted to a lot of banks.”
“The kidnappers… had done the wrong… maths.”
“Not really – they didn’t know about the financial problems of the factory and, considering the apparent wealth of the family, that was a reasonable amount. If the business had been healthy, the Cellini family would have been able to find the money… perhaps they would have had to get into debt, but they would have found it. Denise was the perfect victim, she was chosen with care.”
“How did… they take… her?… it sounds… a little… improvised?”
“Improvised? Was that because the kidnapping happened during a barbecue? No way.”
Musto lit a cigarette, then carried on talking. “You see, Mr Claps, that was actually the best moment to carry out the kidnapping, perhaps even the only chance. Denise Cellini was always with somebody, whether it was her parents, her sister or some of her friends. She rarely went out by herself and when she did, it wouldn’t be at times the kidnappers could predict. Also, she would only go out in her village where anybody could have seen any attempt to kidnap her and could intervene.”
“That after… noon was also… unpredictable.”
“It was very predictable actually, that’s the thing. Let me explain – Denise’s father takes care of the maintenance of the entrance shaft to the old mine.”
Claps looked visibly intrigued.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Musto said. “The mines have been closed for years, that’s true, but the shaft has to be maintained and the main galleries have to be inspected regularly by law to prevent any accidents. That’s his official occupation – a job that gives him an awful lot of free time – but Mr Cellini is also the best cork extractor in the area.”
“Cork extractor?”
“Yes, once it’s mature, the cork is periodically extracted from the tree. It’s a very delicate job and it can only be done manually by using some kind of pruning hook. The extractor needs a lot of experience and skill to avoid damaging the membrane next to the trunk, which has to remain intact.”
“So… Denise’s fa… ther…”
“He works as a cork extractor for his brother. The cork takes years to form again and the trees have to be nurtured as they grow. Consider that the Cellini family own about five thousand cork oaks. Denise’s father visits the place every day to inspect a different area.”
“He took… his daughters… with him?”
“Only when the weather was good, not all the time. It was often easy to predict when he was going to take them with him. That’s exactly what the kidnappers wanted.
The police chief took a drag from his cigarette.
“They left their car near the lake, on a dirt road that reaches the edge of the woods. There, they waited for the girl to wander off so they could act undisturbed. A few minutes later, they were driving away with the young girl in the car.”
“Did you find… traces of… wheels?”
“Yes, unfortunately they were very common tyres, widely used on medi
um sized cars. It’s not something we could work on to track down the car.”
“Denise… was with… her sister… that day.”
“Yes, Elisa Cellini. Maybe she saw something, but we were never able to ask her anything. Or rather, once we received the authorization, she wasn’t able to talk any more. Schizophrenia, they said. Elisa wasn’t having any debilitating problems with her illness straight after Denise’s disappearance, but she was shocked and they had sedated her. The doctors didn’t allow us to ask her any questions for days, they were worried about her health. After a while, it was too late to talk to her – Elisa Cellini had retired from the world. Her father told us a few things – they had walked to the lake together; then, Denise simply vanished.”
Claps was visibly tense now. He was keeping his fists clenched and his knuckles were pale.
“Did they only… send… one letter?”
“Yeah, the kidnappers only wrote once.”
“You… lost… hope… of finding… her alive.”
“To be honest, Mr Claps, we’d never been that hopeful from the beginning.”
The police chief put the cigarette out very slowly in the ashtray. Then he raised his eyes towards Claps.
“The dogs followed the scent of Denise as far as the lake, where it disappeared. We found some blood there. The soil had absorbed it, but our feeling was that it wasn’t just a few drops. We didn’t make our concerns public, we didn’t even tell the family about it, but we thought immediately about the possibility of a kidnap.”
“Which… ended badly.”
“It also started in the worst possible way – the victim was either seriously wounded or even killed during the kidnapping. Our suspicion was confirmed by the fact that the family didn’t receive a photo of Denise together with the letter, but only of an object she carried with her.”
Claps lowered his eyes for a while, then stared into the police chief’s eyes again. “Do you… think that… the letter… was… sent… to mis… mislead the police?”
“Do you mean that it may have been something like a sexual attack rather than a kidnapping? Do you believe that the letter was sent to simulate a kidnapping?”
“Yes… not only that…”
“It would have been a useless effort, it wouldn’t have really misled the police. We were still on the hunt for one or more kidnappers, whether they had taken her for sex or for ransom. It was an all-round investigation.”
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