“Okay, Mr. Bona, let’s hear what you have to say,” Balistreri said.
Valerio was now resolved, like a child who’s been persuaded to take some very bitter medicine and wants to do so quickly, to get it over with.
“I couldn’t concentrate in the park at Villa Pamphili. I was sure that Elisa was seeing someone, and I wanted her to tell me to my face. A little after five, I went to Via della Camilluccia to speak to her. I parked my moped around the corner and saw you, Captain Balistreri, with Count Tommaso, who had just arrived. It must have been around a quarter to six. You and the count spoke for less than a minute, and then he went to Building A and you went around the long way to the cardinal’s.”
Balistreri nodded. He remembered every instant well.
He wanted to go up to see her.
Valerio took a breath and continued. “I was hiding around the corner. I saw Father Paul hurrying out—you’d probably already spoken to him. He got into his Volkswagen with Gina Giansanti, who was going to Mass, and they drove off together.”
While I was looking up at that window and couldn’t make up my mind.
“The door to Building B was open. I went in. The elevator was in use—it was you going up, Captain Balistreri. I waited a minute, because I couldn’t decide what to do. Then I made up my mind and went up to the third floor on foot.”
Valerio Bona stopped. His face reflected the horror of that memory.
“I knew Elisa wouldn’t let me in, and the door to the offices was closed, but not locked. I went in and immediately noticed that it was absolutely silent. I figured she’d gone out to buy cigarettes and left the door unlocked. I paused outside her office door.”
Valerio stopped to take a breath, and in that moment, before he opened a door that had remained closed for twenty-four years, Balistreri knew that the mistake he’d made that day was far worse than he’d imagined all this time. Now the specter glimpsed while he was attacking Linda Nardi began to take shape.
“If I hadn’t gone in, my whole life would have been different. I’d have stayed with IBM and gotten married. I’d have children today. But I wanted to speak to her. I was desperate, so I went in. Elisa’s body was on the floor next to the wall. Her blouse and her bra were torn and there was blood on her breasts. She had a black eye, a cut lip, and a bruise on her cheek. I didn’t go any closer. I stood and stared at her for a moment. Then I ran out and shut the door behind me. A minute later I was on my moped, and I got out of there as fast as I could.”
The public prosecutor looked at Balistreri in disbelief, and Balistreri looked at Bona. He felt no sympathy at all for him. What he felt was fury. If only he had had eyes, ears, and a heart that day.
He shook himself out of his pointless, gloomy thoughts. He had to save Fiorella Romani. That was the only real, urgent, fundamental thing to be done. And the road was laid out—he only had to sweep aside whoever had put themselves in the way.
“There are two possibilities, Mr. Bona. The first is that you’re lying and you killed Elisa Sordi outside the office between six thirty and eight. The second is that you’re telling the truth, and if you’d told the truth at the time the perpetrator would now have been in prison for many years.”
“I know, and I’ve tortured myself over that. I didn’t say anything because I was so shocked, and later I was confused. The body was found in the Tiber. The concierge said that Elisa had left at eight that night. I thought I’d had some kind of hallucination.”
Have you confessed to this? Has a priest given you absolution? How many Our Fathers and Hail Marys? Do you think you’ve earned a spot in heaven?
All his hatred for those who had deceived him was focused on Valerio Bona, as if by destroying him he could wipe out his past.
“I hope you’re lying, Mr. Bona. I hope so for your sake, because if what you’re saying is true, your silence caused the death of four young women, a young Senegalese man, and four policemen, as well as the suicides of Manfredi’s mother and Elisa’s mother.”
Valerio looked petrified. His hands with their chewed fingernails searched desperately for the crucifix, but his eyes stared off into space.
His lawyer said, “At most, you can charge my client with making a false statement in the Elisa Sordi case. He’s not involved with anything else.”
There was no more caution, no balance, no remorse, only his carefully controlled anger and the thought of Fiorella Romani.
Balistreri said in an icy voice, “That’s the legal position. But your client is a practicing Catholic, someone who believes in heaven and in hell.”
He did what he should have done without a second thought twenty-four years earlier and had not done until Giovanna Sordi leaped from her balcony while Italy exploded over another victory.
He looked scornfully at Valerio Bona huddled on his chair. “You thought you could bury your guilt by giving up your cushy job at IBM and working with the orphans. Is that it, Mr. Bona? Would you like to see photographs of the corpses of these young women, all dead because of your cowardice?”
He caught Piccolo’s disapproving look, the lawyer’s contempt, the Prosecutor’s and Corvu’s embarrassment.
Marius Hagi. The grief you’re dishing out is endless. And I happen to be the right instrument for your vendetta.
Valerio Bona lifted his tear-streaked face, the face of an old man. “You’re right, Captain Balistreri, I can’t wipe away my guilt. But the Lord will be my judge. All I can offer you is the truth, no matter how late.”
“Tell me the whole truth then. You lost control of your boat when I asked you if Francesco Ajello had gotten Elisa into bed.”
Valerio shut his eyes. “Once when Elisa came to watch one of my regattas he got a look at her, and he begged me to introduce him to her, but I refused.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Balistreri said.
Bona nodded. “That afternoon, when I ran out of Elisa’s office and went to get on my moped, Francesco Ajello’s Porsche was parked around the corner.”
A recent abortion, an unknown lover.
Balistreri spoke to the public prosecutor. There was insufficient evidence to hold Valerio Bona. They seized his passport and let him go. The public prosecutor would try to get a warrant for Ajello from the judge that evening.
Now they had to reconstruct the journey Elisa’s body had made from her office on Via della Camilluccia to the bottom of the Tiber.
. . . .
On the telephone the count’s personal secretary said he was out of the country, but that Manfredi was home and was willing to meet with him. Balistreri went to Via della Camilluccia alone at dinnertime. The area was deserted: all the wealthy residents were away for the weekend at their villas and on their boats, or dining outside in the center of town. The residential complex was silent and almost completely dark; only the lights of Building A’s penthouse shone brightly.
The young secretary ushered him onto the terrace, where Manfredi joined him. He was silent; no smiles or pleasantries were exchanged. The atmosphere was very different than it had been a few days earlier. Balistreri decided to pick up where their last conversation had ended.
“Last Saturday you asked me to uncover the truth about Elisa Sordi. Since then many others have asked me to do the same.”
Manfredi looked at him. He had Ulla’s eyes, though they now contained his father’s cold arrogance as well.
“Did you really need encouragement, Balistreri? Aren’t you interested in the truth for its own sake?”
“You all lied in 1982.”
Balistreri could hear the rage creeping into his voice and fought to control it.
Rage is not a shortcut to the truth.
“And so? You’re the police, not us. And in 1982 you were consumed with your vices and prejudices. According to you, a disfigured young man, and a nobleman to boot, was the perfect suspect.”
“Did you kill Elisa Sordi?”
Manfredi assumed his father’s scornful tone.
“After ev
erything that’s happened, that’s all you can think to ask?”
“Of course. Either we clarify this point definitively or we go nowhere. And this time you’d better be more convincing. Another young girl’s life is in the balance. I’ve got no more time or patience for your lies.”
For some ridiculous reason Manfredi gave a half smile, then nodded.
“Good. I see you’re finally resolved, Balistreri. Will the truth about Elisa Sordi really help save this young woman?”
“Yes. Marius Hagi, the man we arrested, is demanding the truth before he’ll help us.”
I could ask if you know him, but I wouldn’t know if you were telling the truth.
Manfredi absorbed that piece of information in silence. “All right, I’ll tell you something I won’t ever repeat to anyone under any circumstances.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was very attracted to Elisa Sordi. So were you, right?”
Balistreri said nothing.
“Of course you were attracted to her. Everybody was. But all you wanted to do was get her into bed, while I was in love with her.”
Manfredi continued, “The afternoon of the World Cup final, Rome had come to a halt. It was deserted. Most people were resting up. It was as if every Italian was going to play in the final. But Elisa came to work. I saw her arrive mid-morning, then I saw her leave for lunch and come back again, followed by Valerio Bona. They were arguing. Then she left him outside the gate and went up to her office.”
“Where were your parents?”
“My father was at the Hotel Camilluccia, near here, at a party meeting. My mother had taken a sleeping pill. The two buildings were completely deserted; the only two people awake were Elisa and myself. It was the ideal moment to have a quiet word with her. What would you have done in my position?”
Balistreri didn’t reply. He was transported back to that afternoon. He was hot, half-drunk, and excited about that evening, when he wanted to be free to do whatever he wanted. He saw it all in slow motion, second by second.
I wanted to go up and see her.
Manfredi continued, “I hoped maybe she liked me at least a little. I knew she wasn’t going out with Valerio, but I suspected she was seeing someone. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was obsessed. I kept going from my room to the terrace and back. I took several showers. In the end I made up my mind.”
The truth. The truth you confessed to Cardinal Alessandrini.
“I saw Gina Giansanti go up and then leave.”
“What time was it?”
“I think it was a little after five. I went down, then crossed through the interconnecting basements so Gina Giansanti wouldn’t see me from the gatehouse. Then I went up the stairs. The door was closed. I knocked and called out to Elisa. She let me in and said she was happy to see me. She asked me for some help with her new computer. I fixed the problem she was having.”
Balistreri looked toward the window of Elisa Sordi’s office. Behind the closed blinds he saw Linda Nardi’s dark living room the previous evening. He could imagine what came next.
“Elisa kissed me on the cheek to thank me. I tried to kiss her on the mouth. She politely pushed me away. She was smiling. But then I glimpsed my own face in the mirror and thought she was laughing at me. I lost it.”
Someone who fights monsters has to be careful not to turn into a monster himself. If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss starts to stare back at you.
“I shoved her and she flew against the wall. I held her wrists with one hand and tore at her blouse and bra with the other. She offered no resistance at all; she was paralyzed with fear.”
Manfredi stopped. He didn’t appear upset at the memory. He must have gone over it thousands of times with his psychiatrist in Kenya. He was just pausing to give Balistreri a chance to take it all in.
“When she didn’t react, I turned into an animal. I punched her in the face. I think I broke her cheekbone. Her head hit the wall, hard, and she fell to the floor. I stood and watched her for a while. She was breathing softly. Eventually, I calmed down a little. I took a compact from her bag and held the mirror in front of her mouth to check whether it fogged up. She was breathing.”
“So, Elisa was alive?”
“Absolutely. But I didn’t know what to do. I was desperate. I could hear the elevator traveling to the floor above. I was shaking with fear. Then I heard Angelo Dioguardi ring the bell and say hello to Cardinal Alessandrini. So I took Elisa’s keys, which were in the door, locked the office, and hurried back here through the basement. It took me less than five minutes.”
“And you did nothing to the girl while she was passed out?”
“You want to know if I put out several cigarettes on her and suffocated her? Absolutely not.”
Balistreri decided to press on further. He could have come back at another time to carve the letter O.
“And once you were home what did you do?”
Manfredi looked at him calmly. “What would you have done?”
“I would have called my father, especially if he was a powerful man.”
“I called him immediately from the telephone by the balcony and told him everything. He ordered me to go to my room and not move from there. He said he would be home in a couple of minutes and would take care of everything. Before I went back to my room, I looked out with my binoculars and saw you, Balistreri. You were smoking a cigarette near the gatehouse, chatting with Gina Giansanti. Then I went straight to my room.”
I looked up toward the balcony of Building A. A fleeting reflection, then nothing. Manfredi was acting shy that day.
“My father sent Ulla away and gave me a sedative to calm me down. He promised me that my life would change, that our relatives in Africa would help. He would talk to Elisa and apologize; he would give her a permanent job. In those few interminable moments my life was decided. For better or worse.”
I stopped to look up at her window. It was the only one open, and this time there was a flower on the windowsill. She must have put it there when the sun was no longer as strong. I still didn’t know what to do, so I stayed there for a couple of minutes, thinking about her. Then I got into the elevator. When the doors opened on the cardinal’s landing, Angelo was standing there.
“I gave Elisa’s office keys to my father. He told me to act normal and go to the gym until the guests arrived for the game. A person he trusted would talk to Elisa while he went to his appointment with the minister of the interior.”
Balistreri remembered it clearly.
“I saw you leaving; he took the car with Ulla and you took your bike. But you didn’t go to the gym.”
Manfredi told him exactly the same version of events as the cardinal had. He was with Ulla at the cardinal’s. The count didn’t know about this part. He would rather have gone to prison than told him.
“What about the next day, when Elisa’s body couldn’t be found and the police arrived?”
Manfredi said, “My father never told me what happened. That night after the game, he told me to deny having seen Elisa Sordi that day.”
“You didn’t ask him for an explanation when they fished Elisa’s body out of the Tiber?”
“I didn’t have the courage. You don’t know my father. He told me again that I should deny having seen Elisa Sordi that day. I asked him if he believed I’d left her alive. He told me it didn’t matter. When things died down, he was going to send me to Kenya and I’d be happy there. Even as you were taking me away, he told me to hang tough and be patient and everything would be sorted out.”
“And your mother? Didn’t she suggest you use her as an alibi? You could have said you and she were together with Cardinal Alessandrini.”
“She was too upset, and then the next day she killed herself.”
“Manfredi, I need to speak to your father right away.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that until tomorrow evening. He went away three days ago. He’s with his brother, Giuliano, and
my cousin Rinaldo in Uganda; they’re sailing down the White Nile in an area that even satellite phone can’t reach. But tomorrow afternoon he’ll be in Nairobi. From there he’s flying to Frankfurt. We’re meeting there Monday morning, then I’m going back to Africa and he’s coming back to Rome. You can see him then.”
“So you maintain that you don’t know what your father did that day. And expect me to find out the truth? After twenty-four years?!” Balistreri asked, furious.
“We’ve never spoken about Elisa Sordi again. It’s as if she never existed. He never asked me if I killed her and I never asked him how she came to be killed or what happened to her body. Someone killed Elisa Sordi after I attacked her. You accused me because it was the most obvious answer. Ulla killed herself because she saw no way out.”
Balistreri looked him in the eye. “Don’t you feel any remorse for what you did to Elisa Sordi?”
Manfredi turned to look at what had been Elisa’s office window.
“I can look at that window today, Balistreri, better than you can. I still come back here, and I bet you’ve avoided walking down this street ever since. Remorse is useless. Look at what I’ve done for the poor in Africa, while you can’t even sleep at night.”
Manfredi stared at him with something worse than hate—something deeper and more painful.
“It’s time you made yourself useful, Balistreri. You look like hell. Go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, take a shower, shave, and eat a good breakfast. If your mind is in the same condition as your body, that missing girl doesn’t stand a chance.”
Balistreri got up. At the door Manfredi said good-bye without shaking his hand.
“At least try to save this girl, Balistreri, rather than your own soul.”
Evening
Balistreri returned to the office at ten, exhausted. Ajello was nowhere to be found. Corvu had checked his home, but his wife said he had left on a business trip and she didn’t know where he was. They had checked with border control, the ports, and the airports, but there was no trace of him.
The Deliverance of Evil Page 49
