by Aidan Conway
One day, perhaps, she would tell Michael too but, in the beginning, she had not even thought of burdening him with the news. He had done enough for her and even if she had known in her heart that it would never have driven him away – the idea that she might have been seeking some insurance policy for both her and her daughter’s futures – she had chosen to conceal it. She provided for Elena, working hard, and sending all she could to give her the best start in life. Besides, at that time, even before she had met Michael, it was already a matter that had been closed. Back then, Yana’s own life, in contrast, had spiralled out of control as her stubborn-willed plans had foundered on realities nothing could have prepared her for. She shuddered despite the warm water enveloping her whole body. The memories of being imprisoned against her will and forced into virtual slavery would never leave her but that was long over now. Gone. She had moved on become successful and free. She was never going back.
Four
He had been surprised, at first, at Maroni’s eagerness to let him head up the investigation, bemused even, but, all in all, happy enough. Once the scene-of-crime magistrate, Cannavaro, had established the facts, he hadn’t delayed in assigning investigative duties to Maroni and the RSCS – when someone’s had their head smashed in there’s clearly a case to answer. Cannavaro was old school at heart and despite some memorable forays on a few cases, he tended to keep his nose out of investigative affairs. Maroni had given Rossi some spiel first about how he himself was far too tied up with any number of other investigations that seemed infinitely more intricate and sensitive. But there were other reasons. There were always other reasons.
“So, I’m giving this one to you, Rossi, and the Colombo job. I’ve had to move Silvestre off, for operational reasons.”
“‘Operational reasons’?” said Rossi.
“Yes, operational,” Maroni replied then glancing up at the unmoved Rossi and sensing his perennial need for detail added, “for ClearTech. They need secondments from all divisions. First I knew about it, and Silvestre’s name went forward.”
“Ah,” said Rossi. “So that’s all going ahead as planned.”
“It’s a miraculous system, Rossi. Saves us time, manpower, resources, you name it.”
“But it’s privatizing investigations.”
“It’s just a holding, Rossi, within the Interior Ministry. It’s not for profit. It makes perfect sense. Let the eggheads get on with it, I say. They’re just crunching the numbers anyway.”
Centralized Liaison Electronic Analysis and Reports. CLEAR. Being in English, of course, gave it a little something extra, didn’t it? That was the system, and though he’d dozed through the seminars this much at least he had remembered. But he knew what he thought it meant. Another layer of management bureaucracy and cut-price solutions to complex and important problems, making someone else a buck along the line. Not to mention the rest. The other reasons.
“Anyway, be a more straightforward job for you,” Maroni went on. “What do you think? Given your recent record, that is.”
Record, thought Rossi. Nice euphemism.
“Well, I’d better get down to work, hadn’t I?”
It was just after midnight when Rossi left the Questura, deciding to leave the car and walk. It would help him to think, he told himself. He pulled his collar up against the bitterly chill wind now blowing from the North and his footsteps beat their rhythm on the cobblestones as he turned over the day’s findings.
The initial autopsy and forensics had revealed nothing particularly noteworthy other than the confirmation that the murder weapon had been heavy, probably a large hammer, and that several blows had been delivered to the victim’s head by a male of around 5’10”. The nail had punctured the victim’s left atrium, although cardiac failure due to trauma and blood loss had likely already occurred. There were no DNA traces to follow up on as yet, except to exclude those of family members and pets. There were no closed-circuit cameras in the area and no reliable witnesses, only the usual freaks who had been plaguing the understaffed switchboard with hoax calls.
Rossi had put available officers on door-to-door enquiries, to see if any of the early-bird shopkeepers might have seen passers-by acting suspiciously. But the area was largely residential and it had soon become clear that there was little hope of any useful leads emerging. Given the apparent absence of any sentimental motive, he doubted the killer was going to be the type to give himself away easily. He would have followed at a safe distance, hooded, probably, in easily disposable clothes. He would have made sure he was alone, knowing that, in winter, balconies were not frequented except for quick or furtive cigarettes. Then he would have struck and dragged the poor woman through the open gate and into the doorway, where he finished his work. She wouldn’t have even had time to scream.
There would have been blood on his hands, and he’d have had to wash, perhaps at one of the fountains that so usefully and civilly featured on Roman street corners. Check fountains for DNA? A long shot and it had rained too since then. So, until something else came in, they had only the note to go on and any similarities between this case and the last one. He’d got Bianco looking into the work side of things but, again, there was no office gossip to go on, no particular career jealousies, no career. Just a regular working lady. So, they would have to be lucky or wait and see if he would strike again.
His thoughts turned for a moment to Maroni. He annoyed Rossi, it was true, but he wasn’t a bad man, certainly not the worst, and to his credit he hadn’t given him anymore bullshit than was necessary when they’d met. As it was nothing to do with anything organized, nothing to do with narcos or vice rackets, Maroni and his superiors probably thought it would keep Rossi out of their hair. Not that they were all involved but somebody always knew somebody who got the nod from someone else and all the filth trickled down. Favours were owed and the people that had got to where they now were, often with minimal effort, were always put there at a price. Then those same favours got called in, sooner or later, by those who had granted them, and someone would be picking up the phone and giving it, “what the fuck’s your man doing down there? Do you know who he’s messing with. Does he know? Get him off our backs or there’ll be hell to pay!”
So many times he had got close to the big boys, the guys who never got their hands dirty, i mandanti. The shadowy figures behind the scenes, “those who sent” others to do their bidding but who, blood-sucking vampires that they were, never emerged into the daylight. He rolled the word around in his head as he walked. Then there was the note: LOOK INTO THE BLACK HOLE. He had been thinking in Italian but he sometimes did his best thinking in English. Now it was looking like he might have to.
Of course, the reasons for transferring him or relieving him of his duties were always dressed up as something quite innocuous or easily explained away. There was the ubiquitous issue of stress, brought up as a kind of panacea for all their concerns. “You need a break. We’re giving you a week to get yourself together.” Or they felt his cover was weak. They’d had tip-offs suggesting it would be safer to try a change of tack. Or they needed his expertise to crack a stubborn cold case. Either that or they’d feed him red herrings for as long as was necessary for their own man to cover his tracks or evaporate completely. That was an exact science in Italy, not taught at Police Academy but which was widely and well-practised. Depistaggio. Sending you off the trail, off-piste, if you like, if skiing was your thing, which, for Rossi, it wasn’t.
And then there was disciplinary action. Some character would come in spouting accusations about foul play, being roughed up. There’d be talk about his having flouted the usual procedures or taken a bribe. Hard to prove, hard to disprove. Mud sticks, doesn’t it? And he’d be “encouraged” to take the easy way out, though, of course, everyone knew he was innocent. Exemplary officer. Blah, blah, blah.
Still, despite all that, the way it was going and the way it looked so far, at least, for now, he felt he’d have a pretty free hand. Be thankful for small me
rcies? The public were shocked, afraid even. They hadn’t stopped talking about this one and the Colombo killing in the bars over their cappuccinos and morning cornetti. It even seemed to be supplanting the political chatter, giving them a break from all the election talk, the stunning emergence of the Movement for People’s Democracy, the MPD, which was rocking the establishment, maybe even to the foundations.
This was not one of the drugs-war killings that sometimes stunned the seedier parts of the city. Neither was it any vendetta. The feeling was growing that he – and a he it surely was – could well strike again. The press would love it, and Rossi knew he’d be shoved into the public eye, under pressure, and then it would all come to a head and that’s when he’d be expected to deliver the goods. Hah! Rossi laughed to himself. Of course, that’s why he was being gifted the case. Sure, if he got his man, great! And there’d be slaps on the back all round and everyone basking in his reflected glory. But if he didn’t, it was his fault. Tough shit, Michael. That’s what the people pay you for. You’re on your own. Bye, bye. Ciao, bello, ciao!
He crossed Via Labicana and came to Via Tasso. It would bring him to San Giovanni Square avoiding the busier roads. On his right, the shining tramlines led away towards the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. This, though, was a humble, anonymous street that saw little of the usual tourist crowds. Yet, it was somewhere he would often stop to reflect, for it was here, during the Nazi occupation, that the Gestapo had set up its headquarters and its interrogation centre. In this very building the Bosch had had its torture chambers and, within those walls, many patriots had given their lives for what they believed in: a better, free Italy, without dictatorship, without hatred and division. Could that be the black hole? he wondered, with a spurt of unexpected enthusiasm. The black-shirted fascists who’d aided the Nazis in their massacres and whose modern-day heirs were getting a new lease of life of late? Their graffiti seemed to greet him on every other whitewashed wall these days. Forza Nuova. Italia per gli Italiani. Italy for the Italians. And they’d never really let go, had they? Indeed, that was their very motto, that the flame still burned.
But it could be anything. And nothing. A distraction to tease them with while the killer got his sick kicks. Or perhaps it was a financial reference, but again he reminded himself the victim had no apparent links with the banks or big institutions. She was a cleaner, even though the ministry where she worked was the Treasury. But how many Romans worked in ministries? Thousands. He could put someone on to it in the morning, just in case, but he didn’t place much store in it as a real lead. Tomorrow they would have to get to work on the note.
He put a hand to his jacket pocket. It was nearly one o’clock and in the sudden quiet of the side street he realized his phone was buzzing. He had forgotten to turn the ringtone back on and had accumulated a message and four unanswered calls.
WHY DO YOU NEVER ANSWER YOUR F******G PHONE? GONE TO BED. GOODNIGHT.
One too many asterisks there, he noted. It wasn’t signed. No need. There were no kisses. It was Yana.
Five
“C’mon,” said Rossi, glancing at his watch as they strolled back to the car. “Talk about a wasted day but I reckon we’ve still got time to get over to the Colombo scene before dark and run some office checks before we go to the mortuary. Let’s see what Silvestre failed to pick up on there.”
The best part of a day spent trawling through past cases and suspects vaguely fitting a broad possible profile had produced nothing of note and had succeeded only in giving Rossi a thumping headache and more lower-back pain.
“Have you got the case notes?”
“There,” said Carrara as he opened the driver’s door and jerked his head to indicate a thin folder on the back seat.
Rossi got in and turned to look at the meagre offering.
“Been busy has he then, Silvestre? Lazy sod. Have to do that one from scratch, won’t we?”
“It’s actually off the Colombo,” said Rossi, leafing again through the scant inherited offering. A modest car park by a school on Via Grotta Perfetta. Road of the perfect cave. This certainly had given it a twist of the grotesque too. But in Rome, sordid murder locations were soon enough forgotten when the media coverage dried up. They were rubbed out by the eraser of the daily city grind and few victims got epitaphs. Serial or no serial. Carrara turned left off the Via Cristoforo Colombo’s zipping dual carriageway, driving slowly then until Rossi had picked out the turning.
“Tucked away, isn’t it? Easy to miss, wouldn’t you say?”
A sloping slip road led up to the smallish car park, which, in turn, gave onto grass and play areas that formed part of the long extension of the Caffarella Valley Park, a precious green lung in the midst of south-east Rome. It was empty and unremarkable. Broken glass, cigarette packets, and in the corner where the vehicle and the body had been found, the usual discarded tissues, wet wipes, and prophylactic paraphernalia could be seen.
“A lovers’ lane then,” Rossi concluded. “Not much lighting at night. Ideal for trysts.” He shuffled through the scene-of-crime photos showing the victim sprawled next to the front wheel on the passenger’s side. Blood was smeared across the bonnet.
“Do we have the car still?”
“Dunno,” said Carrara.
“Well, it’s clear enough she was outside the vehicle when he hit her, isn’t it? And no lovers? Nothing?”
Carrara checked the notes.
“Luzi’s statement says he was training for a marathon – and he does actually run marathons – while she was at a yoga class.”
“Any phone calls? Any calls to men?”
“The care worker looking after Anna Luzi’s mother – lives, lived with them – got a call from her but her phone wasn’t found at the scene. Could be important, if someone didn’t want it to be found.”
Rossi let out a sigh.
“We’ll have to get onto the telephone company to get transcripts. Can you do that? All her calls. We’ll have to check everything. Or does that have to go through ClearTech too? Was there an address book, by chance? I know no one uses them anymore but …”
Carrara shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”
“OK,” said Rossi.
“Shall I pencil in another chat with Mr Luzi?”
“Yes, you could pay him a visit,” said Rossi. “And check his movements again. See if you can find a witness for that running story. A flower seller, a petrol-pump attendant or something. And see if his wife really went to the yoga class, what time it was, and what time he went running and for how long. See if he wears one of those armband thingies, for measuring his calorific output. They all have them, don’t they?”
“You think he might have done it?”
“Why not? Husbands kill wives. How many times have we seen it?”
“He just doesn’t seem the type. Very Christian and all. You know he’s treasurer of The Speranza Foundation?”
“Perfect cover.”
“Sure you don’t want to come?”
Rossi shook his head.
“Where shall I drop you?”
“The bloody Questura,” said Rossi, “may as well keep working through the case files. See what comes up.”
Six
An array of stacked leaflets and promotional material for The Speranza Foundation – bringing hope to the hopeless and light where darkness rules – were the most striking feature of Luzi’s fourth floor executive’s office in Italian State Railways. Carrara had gone back to the beginning and, so far, could find nothing suggesting obvious foul play on the part of the slim, fit blue-suited man he now had before him. His sportsman’s physique did little to hide that he was now a shell of a man. Dark rings were scored under his eyes. In his vacant, defeated face Carrara detected some shadow of the departed – the confident manager Luzi had once been, just like the others shuttling between high-power meetings, phones glued to their ears, dispatching secretaries with alpha-male authority. That was all gone. He still went through the motions, wh
ich was enough, for the time being, at least, but bereavement by vicious unexplained murder had left him in the darkest of places.
Carrara had put his sympathies to one side and was looking for any sign of guilt in that void Luzi now occupied. Perhaps it was still the effects of shock or some ingrained sense of duty and propriety, but he answered all Carrara’s questions with remarkable steadiness. Not once did his emotions overcome him. Carrara could only conclude that it had to be a defence mechanism. He had to be postponing the reaction, only deferring collapse. Luzi couldn’t come up with any hard, fast witness for his own 20k run that evening, he was able to provide the name of the gym where his wife had been, as every week, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. for her class.
“I would normally go for my run around 8.30 p.m. and finish about 10 p.m., depending how long it was. It’s late but it’s a quieter time for traffic. She would usually meet up with a friend after her class and we’d see each other at home before going to bed. I’d have my training meal and watch TV or deal with correspondence for the foundation until she returned. Except, that night, well, she didn’t, did she?”
Carrara had seen other men break down at points like this. Luzi’s mouth twitched slightly, at the corner. Nothing more.
Carrara’s impression was that they had been as happily married as any other young middle-aged couple could have been. No affairs on her part – though he did admit to having had what he called “an infatuation” with a colleague, which was long over. “I did my time for that,” he tried to joke, “and we’d been back on track, for years. We had a good balance, with our own interests and jobs. And then. Just like that. Gone. You never expect it. You can’t plan for it.”
