Dawn found him worn out from thinking, smoking, and drinking. His eyes were red, his beard unshaven, his clothes even more disheveled. All caused by his twin obsessions: Linda Nardi and the Invisible Man.
A serial killer who carves letters on his victims, or a plot by my former colleagues in the secret intelligence service? Who am I chasing? Two shadowy figures, one on top of the other, which then split in two. Or was there only one?
From a good, sensible policeman, albeit one who was a little depressed, he was turning into someone disturbed; halfway between an alcoholic and a homeless vagrant. Corvu and Piccolo defended him strenuously against the cruel comments going around the special team office. The special team had never been accepted by the other divisions, and now its much talked-about boss, who was unpopular with both suspicious politicians and jealous colleagues, was on his knees.
Pasquali was also defending him strenuously, as was Floris, the chief of police. There had been three days of hellish media frenzy. Fortunately not a single journalist had a spark of illumination to link the discovery of Selina Belhrouz’s body with Pasquali’s house in the country. But Balistreri, who knew Pasquali well, was aware that he was eaten up by the possibility.
Information about the letters carved on the victims didn’t reach the media. Even the “Deep Throats” on the force were keeping quiet on account of reprisals threatened by Floris and Pasquali.
In this way, no one saw any link between the two crimes. Selina Belhrouz’s murder was likened to Nadia’s because of the way in which the body was found, although no one questioned the guilt of Vasile, locked away in prison. The most strident criticisms were about Ornella Corona’s death. A beautiful Italian woman killed like that in her seaside home, probably by an ordinary thief—surprised in the garden—who had also tried unsuccessfully to rape her. Moreover, some witnesses had seen and heard a man, probably a Romanian, speaking in an East European language into his cell phone, wandering around outside the villa after dinnertime.
The first reports from Forensics and the pathologist on the two cases were clear enough. In both cases there were no fingerprints, nor were there traces of any organic material. This already spoke volumes about the theory of the thief surprised by Ornella Corona. Whoever went into a house wearing surgical gloves and a ski mask so as not to let a hair fall had something far worse than a robbery in mind. There was no sign of sexual violence at all in either case, but there were significant differences.
Selina Belhrouz had been taken off to an isolated place and stripped, bound, and tortured. But she hadn’t been raped. The bag with her personal effects and cell phone had disappeared. It didn’t really look like a robbery. There were fractures, bruises, cigarette burns. An act of sadism or an interrogation? She had already fainted by the time she was strangled.
After coming back from the beach, Ornella Corona had engaged in seemingly consensual sex shortly before being killed. She had gone out into the yard, perhaps drawn there by a noise, and there she’d been attacked and strangled. The winking wristwatch had disappeared, but if it was a robbery it was an ineffective one. The leggings had probably been pulled down immediately after death in order to carve the letter I. The car was unlocked because it was parked inside the villa’s gate. It was clear the murderer knew there was little time. The pathologist had calculated the time of death as falling between eleven and midnight.
Once again, the movement against Casilino 900 and the other camps exploded, this time more violently than ever, and the city council was again in a jam. The opposition had launched a vicious attack and the Catholic Church alone was trying to defend the Roma from generic and total condemnation. In the outlying suburbs patrols of young Italians began throwing Romanians out of bars, then chasing after and assaulting them. When the police tried to arrest one such juvenile for making mincemeat of his grandfather’s Romanian nurse, after having accused her of theft, they found themselves facing the entire neighborhood opposing the arrest and praising the boy for having taken the law into his own hands. The police were drawn up in force to protect Casilino 900 and the other camps, but the idea of leaving it up to the crowd was beginning to circulate among them. In July’s torrid heat the peace created by the World Cup win was swept away by the latest murders, and by now it needed little for the situation to become explosive, much to the joy of those who were expecting that very thing.
Balistreri hadn’t seen Linda Nardi at the press conferences. She hadn’t even published an article on the matter, until that morning.
Sitting in Pasquali’s office at eight o’clock were Floris, Balistreri, and Pasquali.
“This is terrible,” Floris moaned, looking at the newspaper.
The headline read, FOUR DOTS TO CONNECT? The official police versions of the murders of Samantha Rossi, Nadia, Selina Belhrouz, and Ornella Corona were offered. Linda Nardi made no comment in that part of the article; she simply repeated what official sources had stated.
But at the end there was a question: If there is a common element among these four crimes and the investigators are aware of it, do they have the right to remain silent about it so as not to compromise their investigation, or should they tell us how things really stand?
Pasquali was his usual cool self. “Linda Nardi is posing a question to us. We can either ignore her or reply. I say we should consider the pros and cons.”
“If you want an investigative analysis rather than a political one, let’s bring in Corvu and Piccolo.”
Pasquali looked at the chief of police. “We need to make an investigative analysis to use as the basis for a political decision.”
Corvu and Piccolo were summoned. Corvu was a little intimidated by the chief of police, but not Piccolo.
“Balistreri,” said Floris, “would you guide us through this minefield?”
“Linda Nardi’s asking if we have the right to keep quiet about a common thread among these four cases. I’d like to dispel any doubt about one thing. In the past, as Pasquali knows, I’ve used Linda Nardi as a channel for investigative purposes, but I never mentioned the letters in the first two crimes, nor have I seen her since July 11.”
“All right,” Pasquali said. “There are no doubts about Balistreri’s discretion. Let’s continue.”
“We have four letters, probably carved using the same instrument: a scalpel or a sharp knife. An R, an E, a V, and an I. And they come in that order, assuming that the order and the letters mean something. This is the one common thread among the four murders,” Balistreri said. “And we can no longer consider it a coincidence,” he added, addressing Pasquali.
“There may be more letters to come,” Piccolo said.
Balistreri saw the chief of police touch the wood of his chair in an automatic superstitious gesture.
“Agreed,” Pasquali said. “So I propose we shelve the letters, for a moment only, and ask ourselves if there are any other common elements among the four cases.”
Corvu raised his hand to speak. “Actually, there are five cases. There’s Camarà as well, and that’s leaving aside the deaths on the hillside. If we want to analyze the deaths of the four women, we have to remember that Nadia’s death is linked to Camarà’s.”
“And the last two murders could be connected more closely to Camarà’s death than to those of Nadia and Samantha,” Balistreri said.
“Necessary killings,” Pasquali observed.
“Exactly. The first two crimes were preceded by sexual attacks and concern two females chosen at random. But the last two victims are not random at all. They’re two women linked in some way to the investigation into Nadia’s death, and the motive could be the same as in Camarà’s case: getting rid of an inconvenient witness. It could all be disguised as part of a sequence. The letters could simply be a cover-up.”
Pasquali said, “So you’re suggesting that we’re not dealing with a sadistic serial killer who attacks, kills, and carves letters into his victims, but with a premeditated murder that in turn causes more murders by one or more
other murderers?”
It’s as if the Invisible Man had two personalities and two faces. But the same hand does the killing.
“If you’ll permit me, sir,” Corvu said, nodding toward Pasquali, “I’d like to pick up on your question about any other similarities among the four cases.” Corvu looked at Balistreri as if to ask his permission, then said, “The Invisible Man comes into play here.”
The chief of police stared vacantly at him. “What invisible man?” he asked, looking from Corvu to Balistreri to Pasquali.
“In the case of Samantha,” Corvu continued, “the three Roma say there was a fourth man—who later disappeared—who got them drunk, gave them drugs, and was the first to attack the girl. In the case of Nadia, according to Vasile, there was a man who telephoned, and in exchange for the loan of the Giulia GT brought him Nadia and two bottles of whiskey.”
“But there’s nothing of the kind in the other two cases,” Floris protested.
“If you’ll permit me to speak, sir,” Corvu replied obsequiously to the chief of police, “there was an anonymous phone call that led us to Selina Belhrouz’s body in the well, and a suspicious individual who was speaking on his cell phone in Romanian near Ornella Corona’s villa. Furthermore, there’s a motorcyclist involved in Camarà’s case.”
And there’s the phantom who announced Colajacono’s death and killed him in cold blood.
“Help me to understand here,” Pasquali said. “Let’s suppose—for a moment only—that the murders were all committed by the same hand and that the perpetrator is this Invisible Man, as you call him. You’re saying that the choice of the first two victims was random or in some way different from the last two, who were chosen by necessity. I can buy that Camarà was killed because he’d seen someone at the Bella Blu he wasn’t supposed to see, but I don’t understand where Selina Belhrouz and Ornella Corona come into all this. What did they see?”
“It’s not what they saw but what they heard—a certain voice on the telephone,” Balistreri blurted out.
They all stared at him. Pasquali in particular seemed to drill right through him with his eyes. Balistreri felt as if he were being X-rayed.
The fear I see in your eyes worries me more than anything else.
At last Pasquali heaved a sigh. “I’m telling you right now that if you have any more cards up your sleeve you’d better pull them out now. There isn’t much time left. Tell us about this voice.”
“One day Ornella Corona received a phone call at home. The person on the other end said that her husband’s cell phone was off and asked her to find him and tell him he had to go to Monte Carlo that evening. When she protested that it was already five o’clock in the afternoon, the man told her in no uncertain terms that this was why they had a private plane. Then he hung up.”
A long silence. The dark shadow of ENT was again falling across the murders.
“This ENT . . .” Floris began feebly.
“I beg your pardon, Chief,” Pasquali said, interrupting him. “I’d like Balistreri to finish his explanation with regard to Selina Belhrouz as well.”
“In Dubai, just before the accident in which Selina Belhrouz’s brother lost his life, he told us that during one of her visits to Italy, his sister accidentally answered a call on his cell phone. According to him, this was a problem because Selina heard a voice she wasn’t supposed to hear.”
Pasquali had turned very pale. He made a single note in his diary. “All right,” he said, taking charge of the meeting again, “let’s leave ENT aside for now. We have two women chosen at random and killed, then Camarà and two other women eliminated because they were inconvenient witnesses, and the letters are only a red herring to put us off. Is that it more or less?”
“No,” Piccolo said without requesting permission to speak. The others turned to her. “We can argue about Samantha, but Nadia wasn’t chosen at random. They twisted the arms of Colajacono and Tatò and got them involved, and they went ahead with Nadia even after Camarà saw them, at the cost of killing him and getting Bella Blu and ENT involved. They could easily have dropped her and chosen another victim. But they wanted Nadia. For some reason, she had to be the victim.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Floris said. “A poor young Romanian prostitute. Why her?”
“Maybe she’d discovered something she shouldn’t have,” Corvu suggested.
“But that’s absurd,” Pasquali said. “They would have shot her and thrown her down a well. End of story. Instead of this whole charade with the trip to Bella Blu, the motocross bike, the Giulia GT, Vasile.”
Balistreri knew Pasquali was correct. But Piccolo was, too: Nadia hadn’t been chosen at random, but for a particular reason. He just couldn’t figure out what that was.
“And where does Elisa Sordi come into all this?” asked the chief of police, ever more confused and worried. “Pasquali told me you went to question Count Tommaso dei Banchi di Aglieno and Cardinal Alessandrini.”
“Friendly chats, not interrogations. And neither of them was upset. They thought I was there to reopen the Elisa Sordi case after her mother’s recent suicide, but I was actually there for another reason. Everything starts with Alina Hagi, who at that time was at San Valente. Her best friend was Samantha Rossi’s mother, who was then dating Mr. Ajello, who today is an ENT shareholder and linked in some way to Ornella Corona.”
“This is like a soap opera. These coincidences are unbelievable,” the chief of police said.
Balistreri shook his head. “Exactly, unbelievable. If they were coincidences.”
It was Pasquali, as ever, who drew the conclusion.
“Let’s go back to the beginning, to Linda Nardi’s question about the investigators having something to link the four murders. Yes, we do. Do we have reasons for not revealing it? Yes, we do. If we said there was a serial killer going around carving letters of the alphabet into his victims, panic would ensue. Can we keep this a secret indefinitely? I would say no. Certainly, a fifth murder with another letter would be totally unacceptable.”
“Then what do you propose?” the chief of police asked.
Balistreri could see that Pasquali had made a decision. The news of the voice heard by Ornella Corona and Selina Belhrouz had had its intended effect.
“Balistreri, you now have forty-eight hours to arrest the murderer. Once the perpetrator’s in prison, we can tell the press part of the truth and they’ll forgive us for hiding it.”
Pasquali’s voice was cool, calm, and decisive. There was no room for any doubt or objection.
Floris stared at him incredulously. “I’m sorry, Captain Pasquali, but who would this perpetrator be that you’re speaking about?”
Pasquali wasn’t in the mood to mince words. “He wields enormous influence over the entire Romanian community. He never has an alibi. He speaks both Romanian and Italian. He could have used Adrian’s bike to go up the hill to Vasile. Samantha’s mother was his wife’s friend in 1982. Nadia lived in an apartment he owned. The four men who killed three policemen and almost killed Balistreri were his henchmen.”
“But we have no proof,” Floris said.
Pasquali looked at Balistreri. “Find proof, Michele. Tomorrow morning you can see Vasile and the three Roma who murdered Samantha. By Friday I want you to nail Marius Hagi on a multiple murder charge.”
Balistreri left the meeting with the uncomfortable feeling of having revealed too many things to Pasquali, and with regret for not having told him about the most dangerous thing he knew.
. . . .
“I imagine you have a very good reason for calling me.” His voice was calm, but not encouraging.
“We have to meet,” Pasquali whispered.
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ve gone too far, and on my own doorstep!” Pasquali was trying to keep the rage in his voice in check.
“Merely a fortuitous coincidence.”
“We have to stop this, right now,” Pasquali muttered in desperation.
>
“On that we’re in agreement. I’ll see to it. Prepare yourself for tomorrow.”
Pasquali hung up. He turned to the crucifix and began to pray. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
He felt Christ’s gaze on his head. He’d made a terrible mistake, and now the game was out of his control. Or perhaps it had never been in his control.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”
. . . .
Balistreri was aware that speaking with ENT’s sole known shareholder was a final act of defiance toward whomever had warned and advised him in every possible way to keep his distance.
But Giovanna Sordi’s suicide had unleashed instincts in him that time and regret had gradually tamped down. His antidepressants were no longer any use, nor were his acid reflux pills. Cutting down on smoking and drinking had no effect, and getting into bed with a good book no longer did the trick for him. He could no longer put off the uncertain encounter with God, no use waiting for or fearing His judgment. The only thing that was any use at all was what he had sought ever since he was a boy, no matter what it cost—the truth. Without any compromises, with whatever force necessary, even at the risk of his own destruction.
Francesco Ajello appeared relaxed. Balistreri and Corvu caught up with him mid-morning at his golf club, where he had just finished playing a round with his son, Fabio. The four of them sat down at a table in the shade.
“It’s so hot,” Ajello complained, wiping away perspiration with a face towel while his son finished off a soda. “It’s only 10:30 and it’s already unbearable.”
“Aren’t you working today, sir?” Corvu asked.
Ajello brushed away the idea with an irritated gesture. “I work at night, as you know. But I was home yesterday, so this morning Fabio and I were playing the first hole by 7:00.”
Balistreri kept stealing glances at the son, who appeared totally disinterested in the conversation and was fiddling with a brand new BlackBerry.
“To what do we owe this visit? Have you found the man on the bike?” Ajello asked, lighting a cigarette.
The Deliverance of Evil Page 43
