The Monster of Florence

by Magdalen Nabb

  “Camera!” It was Simonetti and something in the urgency of his voice stopped the Suspect in mid-curse.

  “What’s he doing?” He started to run back. “That bag of shit! What’s he doing?”

  “He must have found something,” the Marshal said, throwing down the spade. “Let’s take a look.”

  “Don’t!” Bacci’s voice was even more urgent than Simonetti’s. “Stay away.” His fingers clutched the Marshal’s arm. “Stay here.”

  “How did you know?”

  Ferrini grinned. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’m going to bring us a bottle of very special grappa. Blows the top off your head but good, really good. I imagine you need it.”

  The Marshal sat down in a big armchair and stared across the highly polished floor to a glass-fronted cabinet against the opposite wall. It contained lead models of carabinieri in historic uniforms. Ferrini’s wife and children were in the kitchen nearby. He could hear the television and their chatter.

  “Here you are.” Instead of being colourless, the grappa in its tall very thin bottle was faintly tinged with green because of the bunch of basil leaves that appeared to grow inside it. Ferrini filled two tiny glasses.

  “Tell me all.” He settled in a chair opposite the Marshal.

  “How did you know?” he insisted.

  “You’re exaggerating. I didn’t know what they’d find.”

  “But you knew it would be planted.”

  “Guarnaccia! That anonymous letter.”

  “But you didn’t even see it.”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No … I see what you mean …”

  “So it was a bullet?”

  “A twenty-two. It has been loaded and unloaded and it’s the right brand, of course.”

  “Even so, you need hardly worry that it’s been loaded in that twenty-two. We’ve got—what? Something like fifty-three recovered bullets. Anyway, however many there are, if this was one of them the defence would suss it out. They wouldn’t dare go that far. Too easily checked. No, this is purely for the benefit of Joe Public. The newspapers and telly will have a good time of it without overdoing the details of the ballistics report. You’ll see that on the day that becomes available to the press they’ll be given something better to distract them. I suppose there’ll be a break in the film somewhere before it, but that won’t sell any papers, will it? I’m sorry to have missed the show really, but there are times when it’s wiser not to be among those present. Let’s hear the details then.”

  “I wasn’t nearby when they actually found it—”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “I suppose you’re right. And that’s why Bacci would have been with me. Anyway, they’d laid those wooden supports down across this puddle and it was jammed quite deeply into the surface inside one of those holes where the support wires pass through.”

  “The obvious place to store your bullets. So how did he explain finding it if it was so embedded?”

  “It had rained a lot. He said he saw the exposed surface glinting.”

  “Do me a favour! I thought he was brighter than that. Anyway, that proves to you that it’s only for Joe Public. Nobody else would swallow that. It’s young Bacci I feel sorry for. It was a rotten trick to choose him instead of one of his own cronies.”

  “He knows how urgently Bacci needs his promotion.”

  “Still, it was a squalid trick. Everybody’s pulled tricks on suspects in their time. I know I have. But if it had gone wrong and the suspect had turned out to be innocent rather than confessing then I’d have been the only one to pay for my mistake. What did he want him to do, anyway? Be the one to spot it glinting?”

  “No, no … It was a quite different set-up. He started chatting to Bacci this morning when the camera was being reloaded. They were walking about near the vegetable garden. I remember seeing them and thinking … Anyway, it seems Simonetti was making small talk about the weather and the amount of mud around and how difficult it was making the job.”

  “My feet got soaked yesterday. All in a day’s work, of course, but I can’t afford to be ill just now.”

  “No, sir, I suppose not.”

  “We’re not issued with those wonderful amphibians they give to you carabinieri so I bought myself these. What do you think?”

  “They look pretty robust.”

  “They’re quite similar to yours, though I don’t know whether the tread’s quite as deep. I forget what make they are, now … It’s written underneath but with all this mud …”

  Ferrini roared with laughter: “Don’t tell me! He washed off the mud and there was the twenty-two bullet glinting!”

  “Wedged between the treads.”

  “He’s a bigger imbecile than I thought. And what was poor Bacci’s role in all this?”

  “Simonetti pointed out it was unfortunate that the camera was switched off and that he expected Bacci to repeat their conversation for a written report and then later at a press conference.”

  “And he had the courage to refuse?”

  “He didn’t actually refuse, thank God. As far as I can gather he didn’t say anything much at all.”

  “Too gob-smacked to speak?”

  “I suppose so. Luckily, our Suspect decided to interrupt them with a fit of hysterics just at that point. Then the camera was on again and the moment had passed. Even so, Simonetti must have worked it out for himself, if not that Bacci was unwilling, that he was too nervous for the job. However good his innocent young face might look in front of the telecameras, it wouldn’t do to have him stammering and blushing and giving the game away. At any rate, he slipped the bullet into his pocket and presumably stuck it in the vine support later in the day.”

  “Let’s hope for the best, then—for Bacci, that is.”

  “He’d been intending to talk to me about it this evening. He looked as sick as a dog and I even wondered if he was going down with something, like you. That’s when I remembered you telling me never waste the flu because there was always a strategic moment for having it.”

  “That’s right. I’ve worked my balls off with forty degrees of fever in my time so as not to miss the right moment for being ill. Incidentally, I called you last night to warn you but you didn’t answer.”

  “I went to bed very early.”

  “You’re lucky you can sleep through the phone. I never can.”

  “Oh, I can’t, that’s why I—”

  “What?”

  “I turned the bell off the other morning. I must have forgotten.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Will you have another drop?”

  “No, no …” Teresa! She would have rung him, too. The phone had been turned off for two days and a night and here he was at Borgo Ognissanti in Ferrini’s quarters when she’d surely be trying again.

  “I must get home.”

  “Suit yourself. Listen, you’re not going to make a tragedy out of this, I hope? It means nothing in the long run and he’s not worth risking your job for. He’s a killer, anyway, and as for what he did to his daughter …”

  “I know …” He’d wanted to talk to Ferrini about that but he really must get back. Poor Teresa would be in a state of panic.

  “Wait. There’s something I’d better give you. I’ve been having a look through this myself while having my flu.”

  “What is it?” The Marshal’s heart sank as a thick sheaf of papers was put into his hand.

  “You’ll see for yourself. Better forewarned than surprised. When you’ve read it, make up your mind that’s the way it went and there’s nobody involved worth taking any risks for. Take my advice on that.”

  The Marshal was willing to take any amount of advice but he wished, as he plodded the long dark corridors of the barracks, that people wouldn’t give him so much to read. Patrol cars were starting up noisily in the echoing cloister below him to the right. On his left, the doors of all the offices, which had once been monks’ cells, were closed and locked. It was late and Teresa woul
d be worried.

  She was worried. She was also furious. He’d have done better just to say he’d been working all hours and leave out the bit about having turned the phone off. He never did think on before letting himself in for this sort of thing. He waited for her to wind down so they could have a bit of a chat. He was in no hurry to get back to the stuff he was supposed to be reading. He’d read only the premise—it was a judge’s report on the release of some earlier Monster suspects—and the thought of a hundred and sixty pages of legal jargon was not encouraging.

  “You’re not ill or anything, are you?”

  “No, no … I’m all right.”

  “You’re not. You’re overtired. It’s the sort of thing you do all the time when you’re overtired, forgetting things like that. Have you been eating properly?”

  She’d forgiven him. They had a nice long chat which meant Teresa did all the chatting and he—as she often said—intoned the responses. He said good night to her reluctantly and then made a decision. He’d take the wretched thing to bed, and if he fell asleep over it that was too bad. Legal jargon was as effective as any sleeping pill and at least his conscience would be clear. He’d have done his best.

  He was quite wrong. First of all, it wasn’t written in legal jargon but in forceful and impassioned prose. Secondly, far from sending him to sleep it kept him awake the entire night. And when he did fall asleep at dawn with the papers scattered all ways on the floor beside his bed, it was to dream the same images that his reading had conjured up. That was something which often happened to him when he was distressed by some case he was working on. This story happened over twenty years ago but the distress it had caused the author of the report vibrated in every line. His frustration and anger were alive because they had found no release.

  Nine

  THE INSTRUCTING JUDGE, TRIBUNAL OF FLORENCE

  PART 1

  -1968-

  1.1. DISCOVERY OF A DOUBLE HOMICIDE

  At two in the morning of 22 August 1968, Renzo Rossini hears his doorbell ringing repeatedly in Via Torrente 154A at San Felice, a stretch of the trunk road between Florence and Pistoia, part of the municipality of Campi Bisenzio. He goes downstairs and, leaning out of the ground-floor window, sees a little boy of about six or seven who says: “Let me in because I’m tired out and my dad’s poorly in bed. And will you take me home? Because my mum and uncle are dead in the car.”

  Having got over his surprise, Rossini brings the boy inside and asks his name. He says he’s called Nicolino and that he lives in Lastra a Signa. Then he repeats his first statement and adds that the car is down the lane across the road from Rossini’s house and that there’s a light winking on and off. Nicolino is dressed in shorts and T-shirt. He has socks on but no shoes. Rossini drives to the nearest carabinieri station and brings back the carabiniere on duty. Together the three of them set out in the car down the lane that crosses the fields facing Rossini’s house and leads towards Signa.

  They don’t get very far because they soon find the road blocked by boulders and before too long they have to give up and turn back.

  They take the main road into Signa (the Pistoia road) and then, following the child’s directions, try to get into the lane from the other end. “We went to the pictures and it was in the war and a house went on fire and then we went up there past the cemetery.”

  Not far beyond the cemetery, the road forks and a few yards further on, a stony track leads off the main road to the right and follows the Vingone torrent which itself is to the right of the lane and screened from it at this season by giant reeds. Later investigation will demonstrate that this lane does, in fact, after one or two deviations, come out on the Pistoia road exactly opposite Rossini’s house.

  About fifty yards along the lane they see the back of a white car with its right indicator flashing.

  On shining the torch into the vehicle they see the dead bodies of a man and a woman.

  There is no light at the scene, not even moonlight.

  1.2. SCENE OF CRIME AND PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION OF VICTIMS

  On arrival at the scene, the carabinieri of Signa establish that the right rear door of the car is ajar, the front left window open a few inches and the right one halfway down.

  When they open the driver’s (left) door, a man’s shoe falls out. On the right, between the door frame and the passenger seat where the man lies, they find a woman’s handbag and a handkerchief.

  The man’s corpse is supine because the seat has been let down to the level of the back seat. His hands are holding his trousers together. They are unbuttoned and his belt is undone. There is blood on his left shoulder and knee.

  The woman is leaning back in the driver’s seat with her head drooping towards the left and her arms dangling at her sides. Her body is bared up to the groin. Her shoes are under the other seat. On her partly bared breast, bullet wounds can be clearly seen. There is blood around the area of the navel. The gold chain round her neck is broken in two places and the intermediate fragment is stuck to her skin with sweat.

  Behind the right front seat they find a calibre-22 L.R. bullet. Three cartridges with an H on the base, of the same calibre, are found in the left side of the car. Later on they will find two more cartridges wedged down the back of the rear seat and another among the woman’s clothing. Three bullets are in her body and one in the man’s.

  On the floor between the front and back seats there is a pair of children’s shoes, assumed to belong to Nicolino.

  A local doctor is called in and certifies that the couple both died from haemorrhage caused by gunshot wounds. The autopsy will reveal some months later that each victim was hit four times and that the entry wounds on both are very close together, with the exception of one shot fired into the woman’s arm. This, and the different trajectory suggest either that the woman moved after the bullet hit her arm first or that the shots were fired from two different positions, which could also imply two attackers. The question is open to discussion.

  The position of the woman’s body is explained in an account of the murder given two days later by her husband, Sergio Muscas, who also described how the man lost his shoe and why the indicator was on. He offered no explanation, however, of the man’s attempt to pull up his trousers at the moment of his death. He does say that, before the shots were fired, his wife was lying on top of the man. Consequently, it may be that he could have spotted someone approaching and instinctively tried to cover himself.

  The woman’s handbag was found to contain 27 thousand lire, which does not seem to have interested the killer. Both bodies are found to have been moved after death. Muscas, in confessing to the murder of his wife and her lover, says he was the one to pull his wife’s body off the man’s. With reference to what happened immediately after the murder it is Nicolino who tells the carabinieri: “My mum had put her money under the seat in the car and Uncle Fabio looked in my mum’s bag and then he felt round in the glove compartment and then he went away.” There was no way of knowing at this date whether the child’s story was credible, but it is apparently accepted at face value at the time.

  1.3. ANALYSIS OF NICOLINO’S BEHAVIOUR

  A further observation is necessary in this generic description of the crime. First of all, we can assume with certainty that Nicolino was in the car when the crime took place, not only because he appeared about an hour later, knowing all about his mother’s death, in a house an hour’s walk away, and because his shoes were still in the car, but also because he was capable of indicating two possible routes for reaching the scene of the crime.

  He must have seen the murder take place since, even if he was asleep, the first shots must have awakened him. (Experts established that no silencer was used.) But this does not mean that he must have seen and recognized the person or persons who fired the shots. He would have seen the bodies being moved, i.e., unless he was removed from the car himself before this occurred. This brings us to the manner of his arrival at the Rossini house at two in the morning. />
  It cannot be absolutely excluded that Nicolino reached the Pistoia road by himself but it does seem highly unlikely. The distance from the murder vehicle to the Rossini house is about a mile and can be covered on foot in a minimum of thirty and a maximum of sixty minutes. The lane runs in a more or less straight line, except near the end where it turns to the right and a little bridge over the Vingone torrent (little more than a dry ditch in summer) connects it to another lane. There, turning left and continuing in the original direction, one gets a head-on view of the Pistoia road and the Rossini house. The house is very noticeable, even at night. It is large and white and has a floodlight attached to it just below the roof (as have a number of houses along this road, which is otherwise unlit). To reach the house, Nicolino had then to cross the main road. It was, at the time of the murder, impossible to make this journey even on a moped or bicycle, and it was difficult even on foot with stout shoes. (The local Marshal tried it out with the child the following day.)

  But Nicolino made the journey in total darkness and stockinged feet, and his socks were neither torn nor dirty. Finally, along the lane there are a number of cottages and a number of forks in the road, not to mention the fact that it would have been easier for the child to leave the lane by the same way he’d entered it in the car. He would have reached the road to Signa in about one minute and there was a house right there on the corner where he could have asked for help.

  Unless the child was accompanied by an adult who knew the way perfectly in the dark and had good reason for choosing it, his journey makes no sense.

  Nicolino’s overall behaviour makes no sense, unless, likewise, directed by an adult. His first words on being admitted by Rossini seem rehearsed and carefully chosen. He must know his own surname but admits only to Nicolino. He refuses to give a more specific address than Lastra a Signa. He tells of his father being ill in bed before mentioning that his mother has just been murdered. Being ill in bed is Sergio Muscas’s alibi until he confesses. In all this he expresses no emotion. He doesn’t cry. He is sufficiently calm and in possession of himself to offer them not one but two ways of reaching the scene of the crime. It is almost impossible not to believe that Nicolino was accompanied to the Rossini house and told to ring there and recite only the information he has been given. As a consequence, there is considerable delay in the identification of the victims and, inevitably, in the arrival of the carabinieri at the home of Sergio Muscas.