by Aidan Conway
“Do you know why she might have been there?” Carrara asked. Luzi shook his head but glanced downwards for a fraction of a second before resetting his attention on Carrara.
“Perhaps just to make a phone call, to check on her mother – she’s got Alzheimer’s. She always pulled over to call – never at the wheel. Or maybe just to think; she did that sometimes. She said she liked the peace. Dealing with her mother was hard and she bore the brunt of most of it. She’s in a home now.”
“Might there have been some other reason?” Carrara asked, sensing in his reaction the slightest sign of a crack in his composure.
“Well, the engine had started playing up of late,” he began, too calm for Carrara’s liking.
“But given the manner of her attire?” Carrara probed, recalling from the scene-of-crime photos the short skirt, the suspenders, and high heels which, while not vulgar, at least suggested a possible erotic agenda.
“Well, I can’t believe there was any other reason, if that’s what you’re saying?” Luzi said, as if, in his innocence, only then realizing what Carrara was now driving at. “Is that what you’re saying?” his voice finally breaking into something resembling real anger. “That she was having an affair? In a car park?”
So he was human, after all, Carrara thought. He had infringed on the sacred memory of his wife and the reaction was, if not textbook in an innocent man, at least more reassuring.
“We have to stop the murders, Dottor Luzi,” he replied. “I have to ask you these questions if we are to have any chance of doing that.”
Carrara looked again at the ordinary, proper man before him. He hadn’t flinched in holding his gaze, but… But… Was there still something?
“Oh, by the way,” Carrara continued, changing pace like a bowler to see if Luzi would deal with the delivery, “do you record your running route, Dottor Luzi, on your phone, with GPS?”
“No,” Luzi replied, his tone still hard. “I’m kind of old-fashioned on that score.”
He raised his left arm. “Just my wristwatch and then later I sometimes measure the route on a maps app on the PC.”
Carrara nodded and made a note. Well they could track that down anyway, if they had to, or check whether he’d left the phone at home, he thought, noticing then that it was his own mobile now that was buzzing.
“Excuse me,” he said. “This could be important … yes. Carrara.”
It was Rossi and it was important. He had struck again.
Seven
With the third victim, the killer was set to acquire a nickname. The headlines in the following day’s Messenger would proclaim that ‘The Carpenter’, due to his apparent preference for a hammer and nails, had indeed killed again. They would not be publishing anything about the notes, however, for though there were now two to consider, Rossi had asked his contacts not to reveal that particular detail. Not yet. In return, he had promised to keep them informed and to give them what he could. He needed the press on his side and still had some people he hoped he could consider friends, though who was a friend in a murder investigation was anybody’s guess. There was meat on the menu and it was not going to be easy persuading hardened carnivores to pass up a meal.
“And I thought we might have finished for the day,” said Carrara who had cut short his informal chat with Luzi to pick up Rossi. He was motoring towards the scene while Rossi, a sheaf of papers in one hand, had an ear cocked to the radio as the excited officer who’d been first on the scene recounted what he had found. The victim had been ambushed in an underground car park on the Via Tuscolana. Her face had been beaten to a pulp, so they’d have to wait for a positive ID, especially as they had no personal effects to go on, no keys, no handbag, no ring. Nothing.
“OK, OK,” said Rossi. “We’ll be there in five.”
When they arrived, only the preliminaries were already underway. No forensics yet. No magistrate had arrived, so had likely already been informed and had thus delegated the investigation directly to the RSCS in line with the usual but not exclusive practice.
“Is it too much to ask that they not touch anything?” said Rossi, running an irritated hand through his hair and giving a protracted sigh.
“Parking problems, sir,” said a hassled-looking traffic cop. “We’re getting all sorts of earache from them that’ve got their wheels in the car park and those that want to get theirs in. There’s the match later, you know?”
Rossi turned his eyes heavenwards.
“There’s a murder in their backyard and they want to see the match?”
The officer looked down at his own shoes then sneaked a glimpse at his watch. Him too.
“Let’s just hope they haven’t destroyed key evidence this time. Hasn’t anybody learned from Perugia?”
It had been late afternoon or early evening as far as the young female pathologist, whom Rossi had never seen before, was prepared to venture. Like the health service, thought Rossi. Never get the same doctor twice. Was a bit of continuity out of the question too? The excited officer he had spoken to over the phone was now filling him in but in person. Once again, there had been no one else around. A suburban area without CCTV.
“Personally, I dislike the ever brasher intrusions of Big Brother into daily life,” Rossi lamented, “but in cases like this we could have used it.” No. This wasn’t London where your every move was filmed. There was still something that resembled freedom here, strange as it was to hear himself saying it. Yes. Here you could quite easily get away with murder.
By the time forensics had arrived, it was plain to see they had an identical situation. A woman, head smashed in, and now another note for them to ponder. The same enthusiastic-looking officer had handed it to Rossi in an evidence bag. He’ll be studying law in his spare time, thought Rossi. God help us if he becomes a magistrate. The note read: THE DARK MATTER.
“An answer to our riddle, then?” proffered Rossi.
“Could be,” Carrara replied, “but I wouldn’t count on it being that simple. Would you?”
Rossi stared at the note and then looked up and took Carrara by the arm.
“See those trails of blood, mixed in with the oil stains? Assuming nobody else has moved the body, what does it say?”
“She wasn’t killed there.”
“Maybe finished off, yes, but moved. Get them to work out which car she might have been in without compromising the integrity of the crime scene. If there’s a print, a footprint, or a fingerprint, I want it. Have we got the lights up and the ultraviolet? Who’s doing that? Who’s shadowing the forensics?” Rossi clapped his hands together to get the attention of a cluster of dozier-looking uniforms. “And run checks on all the cars within a twenty-five metre radius. Any warm engines, for example. Has anyone got on to the vehicles yet?” he shouted above Carrara’s head to everyone and no one in particular.
Eight
Rossi threw into the boot the remaining profiles of perverts, murderers, and violent stalkers released from prison in the last ten years, as well as those of similarly inclined suspects still walking the streets. Another day of paperwork, computer-screens, and head-scratching. And now this. The workload was doubling every 24 hours. And they were getting no nearer an answer. It was like a blank crossword staring back at him. After knocking the lads into shape on the crime scene he’d managed to carve out enough time to keep a planned appointment at the hospital of legal medicine to see what they could get on the second, more detailed autopsy on Paola Gentili. Nothing particularly useful had come out of the trip except the discovery that she’d had the beginnings of a particularly aggressive cancer in her right lung. And she didn’t even smoke.
“Bitch of a life,” said Rossi as they left the building to be greeted by a blast of the now customary wintery air. Carrara was musing in his own world. The place had that effect on you. Leaving its confines wasn’t like leaving any normal hospital where you had that feeling of relief that you weren’t in there yourself mixed with lingering concern for the person who was. Here
was different. This coldly modern, austere, imposing building concealed within its walls real-life horror stories and tragedies in equal measure. And then there was the final ignominy of being carved up by experience-hardened doctors-cum-butchers to see how you had been dispatched from this mortal coil. A necessary evil, Rossi managed to convince himself, if they were going to stop this beast. Yet another necessary evil.
They decided to leave the car and take a stroll past the Verano cemetery. They ventured across the tramlines gleaming like blades that carved up the piazza and on which the number three passed then swept away into the dank concrete tube of the railway tunnel leading to San Lorenzo. ‘Red’ San Lorenzo, as it was known. Historically, solidly working-class and the cradle of Rome’s Communist and Anarchist communities, it was now becoming like another sort of Trastevere, a nascent mini Covent Garden with bistros, boutiques and wine bars sprouting on every corner.
But Rossi wanted to think, and he thought best when he had eaten, but not in the police canteen or the other cop haunts within walking distance of the Questura, and away, too, from the usual press-frequented places in the centre.
“Formula One?”
“Sounds good to me,” replied Carrara appearing to perk up. Many’s the time Rossi had put everyday concerns aside there, as a child, with both his parents, and back in his Roman high-school days. All that before the Erasmus experience. Before, for better or for worse, everything had changed in his love life and in the professional direction he would finally choose to take in life.
The pizzeria’s busy evening was almost coming to a close. Waiters dawdled with the look of men counting the minutes until they could knock off. But it was open. They took a table with a view of the street and ordered stuffed, fried pumpkin flowers as starters and half-litre tankards of Moretti.
“So here we are again,” said Rossi. “We’re talking serial, or spree?” he proffered without raising his eyes from the plate.
“Looks that way,” Carrara replied, busy with his own.
“And Rome’s never had a serial killer.”
“Not like this.”
“And he’s leaving notes. In English.”
“He could be English. Or American.”
“He could be anyone, a freak, full stop. And the psychologist’s report? Are they building a profile?”
“Too early to say.”
Rossi looked up, knife and fork gripped. “What? We need a few more dead women first and then there’ll be something to go on? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that it’s not that helpful. It’s the usual kind of thing. Nothing that really narrows the circle. Woman-hater. Egocentric. Low self-esteem. Absence of sexual relations. Abuse victim himself, possibly. Certainly above-average intelligence, though. Won’t let himself get caught, but leaves clues and likes playing games.”
“But he’s killing ordinary women, not prostitutes or foreigners. He’s not going for marginalized targets, outsiders. It goes against type.”
“True.”
“And now he’s giving us the answers?”
The waiter passed, and Rossi added two more beers to their pizza order.
“Right,” said Rossi. “Inside a black hole there’s dark matter. But what does that tell us?”
Carrara gave a shrug.
“Of course, there’s always time,” said Rossi, appearing to drift off with his thoughts.
“Time?” Carrara replied. “Time for what?”
“The black hole, Gigi. Bends time, doesn’t it? Einstein’s theory.”
“O-kay.” His friend was trying to keep up with him.
“It takes us back. Outside of time, even.”
“Meaning?”
Two pizzas as big as cartwheels sustained by a white-shirted waiter’s arms were flying across the restaurant high above the heads of the engrossed diners.
“Capricciosa?” the waiter boomed making some nearby foreign tourists start from their chairs.
“For me, said Rossi.”
“And Margherita?”
Carrara raised a hand in distracted acknowledgement.
“Meaning, I don’t know,” said Rossi. “But it could be significant.”
“And in the meantime? Every woman in Rome needs to stay at home. We bring in Sharia law? Or they’d all better get themselves a gun, or what?” said Carrara.
Rossi was already carving into his tomato base, spread with slices of cured ham, artichoke hearts, black olives, and all topped off with halves of boiled egg. A meal for lunch- and dinner-skippers; a policeman’s meal. He reached for his beer. It was icy-sharp, clean, and lightly hoppy. Already he was feeling it and the food’s anaesthetising, calming effect on his stomach and, as a consequence, on his mind. As he lowered the glass, making more room on the cluttered table-for-two, his eyes were drawn to that portion of the menu where the names of the dishes were translated into something resembling English for the convenience of tourists. They usually got it right, to be fair, but sometimes the renderings were comical. One word, which should perhaps have been platter, had become instead plater.
“Or maybe not all women,” said Rossi.
Carrara lowered his fork.
“Do you know something I don’t?”
Rossi took another large draught.
“And if, say, it wasn’t matter but mater?”
“As in ‘mother’, in Latin? You think he’s killing mothers?”
“I don’t know. Or it could be symbolic. The Mother Church even. Sancta Mater Ecclesia. Our Holy Mother the Church. Remember your catechism? Might need to check if they were practising Catholics.”
Rossi’s phone, for once occupying prime table space, began to vibrate.
“You’d better answer that,” said Carrara.
Nine
It wasn’t the phone call they had both feared and even in some way almost willed, yet it afforded them some relief. They needed time to think. But they also needed evidence and the killer was giving little away, aside from the sick notes. Sick notes. Rossi dwelt on the irony as he ate. Maybe there was something in that. For being excused, from games, from school. A sick note for life. I don’t belong to you and your moral order and here’s my little note that says why. He remembered how such boys had often been treated with open contempt by some teachers, at least at the school he’d attended in England for those few years. Pilloried and humiliated in the gymnasium and the changing room for their perceived weakness, cowardice, their lack of male vigour. Could they grow up to wreak such terrible revenge on society? Ridiculed outsiders wielding their new-found power and enjoying it. Repeating it. Needing it.
It was someone with a very big axe to grind. Someone hard done by and conscious of it, not like those wretched creatures who strangled and knifed but could never articulate the reason why. Maybe they never even knew themselves. They didn’t have the mental apparatus, the support system, to process their feelings and frustrations or even put a name to them. But kill they did. Often without warning or without apparent motive.
He shared some of his thoughts with Carrara as they both leant back, satisfied and contemplating dessert. There were also factors that pointed towards a clean skin, someone with no record of violence, at least in Italy. The foreigner theory couldn’t be discounted, though Rossi winced at such politically populist apportioning of blame. Or even the smouldering suggestion of an Islamic plot. Was it someone who hadn’t killed before? They had as yet unearthed no particular similarities with unsolved crimes. There was no clear motive. Unless this killer had been long-incubated, a slow burner, and had chosen a propitious moment to hatch from his dark cocoon.
“Look, we’re not fucking magicians, Michael,” Carrara concluded, tipsy now and a little the worse for wear from tiredness. Rossi glanced up from his plate.
“Kid been keeping you up?” he enquired. “Or is it the enforced abstinence?”
Carrara returned a forced smile.
They both opted for crème caramel, and Rossi asked for the limoncello, te
lling the waiter not to bring coffee until he asked for it. He wanted time, time to savour and time to think. Carrara declined the liqueur.
“You can leave the bottle,” said Rossi. The gruff waiter shot him a look askance, his hopes of an early finish dwindling.
“We definitely won’t be getting a smile out of Mr Happy tonight,” concluded Rossi.
They split the bill, alla Romana, each paying an equal share irrespective of what they had consumed, and decided to walk a little and drop in at a bar on their way home. They stopped at a news stand with international papers for Rossi to pick up Le Monde and El País. He liked to keep abreast of European events, finding their coverage superior to that of many of the Italian papers, obsessed as they were with internecine politics and endless wrangling and the labyrinthine complexities of one financial scandal on the heels of another.
A bill-sticker smothered in a hat and scarf was slathering election posters onto the wall next to the tunnel. Here we go again, thought Rossi. It was one constant election campaign. Governments forming, falling, then getting into bed together (literally and figuratively) in bizarre, mutually convenient coalitions. The brush-wielder slapped on more of the acrid adhesive and a rancid, hypocritical ghoul now loomed over the street. He held a pen in one hand, ostensibly symbolizing bureaucratic ability, saper fare, and, perhaps for the many less well-educated voters, simply his ability to read and write. His other hand was positioned on his knee, the wedding ring to the fore. Family man, and good for his word.
It repulsed Rossi, all the public money sliding down into the abyss of corruption, interests, and rampant, unashamed nepotism. Yet, it did now seem that they were living in more interesting times. No one had really believed that the MPD would actually start to threaten the big boys, but they had. They’d harnessed the Internet, seeing its potential earlier than anyone else, and had begun raking in huge consensus among the young, the underpaid, the unemployed, and students who saw no future. Now a power block was ominously taking shape, threatening the sclerotic party system and its cynical and systematic carving up of the country’s resources.
