The Monster of Florence

by Magdalen Nabb

  Checking began on every contradictory element of his latest statement.

  6.4. SILVANO VARGIUS IN 1968

  Silvano’s alibi for the night of 22 August, 1968 had presumably been checked verbally but there was no written record of this. Silvano claimed to have been playing billiards that night with a young man called Salvatore Angius. Angius, a homeless Sardinian labourer, was indebted to Silvano for a number of reasons. He had employed him on building jobs and found him places to live. Most of the people questioned seemed to regard the younger man as having been treated as an adopted son. Angius was still living in Tuscany and working as a builder. On being questioned in 1984, he said he had often played billiards with Silvano but had never been sure about the exact day they’d played that week, but nobody had brought the matter up again and then Sergio was convicted. He was still in touch with Silvano but he wasn’t working for him now. Silvano, he said, had an emergency house call firm now, the sort you call if you lock yourself out or your pipes burst.

  The employees of Silvano’s firm “Domestic Emergencies” were questioned in the spring of 1984. Two disturbing facts emerged about Silvano’s 1968 alibi: the first was that the relationship between him and the much younger Angius was a homosexual one. The second was that the address given by Angius when asked to confirm Silvano’s alibi in ’68 was that of his brother. Salvatore Angius had used his brother’s address for years as his official place of residence but had never lived there. In August 1968 he was actually living on the Pistoia road at number 156 on the stretch known as Via Torrente. That is, he was living next door to the Rossini house where Nicolino had been left that night, in the peasant’s cottage which Sergio had mistakenly described as the Rossini house.

  6.5. SILVANO VARGIUS IN 1984–5

  Two new lines of enquiry were now opened. In Florence an extensive and detailed report was made by the carabinieri of Silvano Vargius’s way of life, medical and social history and, in particular, sexual habits. In Sardinia, magistrates reopened the enquiry into the death of Silvano’s wife in 1960, which had been treated as suicide at the time.

  Silvano’s second wife had left him in 1981. She was traced and questioned as to his sexual habits, as was his present partner. Both women testified that they had been forced into group sex, organized by Silvano, in which he sometimes participated, sometimes not. His wife also described homo-heterosexual encounters which Silvano organized with certain couples of their acquaintance and stated that she had left Silvano because of his unacceptable sexual habits. This was confirmed on examination of documents relating to their separation. Silvano denounced his wife for abandoning the conjugal roof (Civil Code para. 146 absolves the husband of supporting his separated or divorced wife if she abandons her home and refuses to return). Although this was patently the case here, judgement was in favour of the wife because of his violence and sexual practices. His wife also revealed that Silvano had been in a psychiatric hospital during 1981.

  At this point the ambiguity of Sergio Muscas as regards Silvano becomes explicable. Confronted with the above information, Sergio admitted that Silvano had sexual relations not only with Belinda but with Sergio himself. He confessed that while Belinda enjoyed her relationship with Silvano and all that it entailed, she also enjoyed herself with her other lovers, including Flavio, but Sergio himself was totally dominated by Silvano. It was true that at his request Sergio brought home other men for his wife, to satisfy Silvano’s taste for group sex and voyeurism, and that his remark about Flavio’s “screwing my wife in front of my eyes” was to be taken literally and in truth referred to Silvano more than Flavio. He recounted now that Silvano would organize group sex with other men for Belinda in the Cascine park and that on these occasions it was his habit to take along both Sergio and the child Nicolino.

  Two things were now clear: Sergio was so dominated by Silvano that, even to save himself, he hadn’t had the courage to accuse him to his face but fell to his knees crying and begging for forgiveness, and that the other principal reason for his reticence was shame. In the culture he belonged to, homosexuality was something so shameful and disgusting that its existence was not even acknowledged. It is notable, also, that though Sergio was too weak to react against his wife’s behaviour, he was the one to separate the lovers’ bodies after the murder so that they were not discovered in the lovemaking position.

  Unfortunately, at this stage Sergio’s subservience to Silvano, and his overpowering shame, meant that he would still not make a clear unequivocal statement regarding the ’68 murder so as to facilitate the investigation of the later crimes.

  6.6. 1960

  In 1960 Silvano was still living in his native village in Sardinia. He was married with a one-year-old son, Amelio. When his wife was found dead with an unlit gas canister turned on in the room, she was presumed to have committed suicide. The little boy, in his cot nearby, was saved. The case exhibited such strong analogies with the ’68 murder—especially given the new information that Nicolino was also Silvano’s son—that the case was reopened and the wife’s body exhumed.

  However, the results of an autopsy had only a negative value. A body exhumed after twenty-five years was obviously not in a condition to provide accurate positive information.

  Enquiries as to the likelihood of the woman’s wishing to commit suicide revealed that she had decided to leave Silvano because of his violence and had obtained a position as a residential housekeeper at an orphanage in another village. She was to leave and take up this position on the morning after she was found dead. It was likely, according to the information received, that Silvano, with the help of his wife’s brother, smothered her with a pillow to prevent her leaving and damaging Silvano’s pride and her own family’s respectability. Again, this could in judicial terms have only a negative value, i.e., there was evidence against the likelihood of the woman’s having wanted to commit suicide, but no real proof of Silvano’s guilt.

  6.7. THE BERETTA 22 L.R.

  Ever since it was established that the Beretta 22 used in the double homicides was the same one used in ’68, efforts to trace its provenance were intensified. Of the guns of this type, regularly licensed but reported missing by their legitimate owners, was one belonging to a Sardinian emigrant worker, returned home after many years working in Belgium. He had died some years before in his native village and the gun had never been found. It was the same village where Silvano Vargius was born and which he left after his wife’s “suicide” in 1960. The gun disappeared at the same time as he did. The owner of the gun was the uncle of Silvano’s wife.

  6.8. 1985 SILVANO’S MOVEMENTS

  From this point on, all of Silvano’s movements, habits and activities were checked on. The following points were established:

  1. Given the type of job he did, Silvano had no fixed hours. He was frequently absent during the night responding to emergency calls, and such absences were not notable.

  2. For obvious reasons, he kept, and was expert in using, both knives and awls such as were used on the female victims.

  3. He also owned a miner’s lamp to be attached to the head and which must have been necessary to a killer working on the bodies in total darkness.

  4. Silvano was unable to furnish alibis for any of the double homicides when required to do so, except for the ’83 murder of the German boys. He claimed that he had been called out to an emergency in the centre of Florence at the house of a known prostitute. A singular but not necessarily helpful circumstance was that a receipt from Silvano’s firm was indeed found in the prostitute’s house, but it was dated 1982 not 1983 and it was discovered because the house was being searched after she had been murdered in 1984.

  An attempt was made to follow Silvano, particularly on the darkest night of the month, but this was extremely difficult to achieve in the country without being seen by him and on most occasions he eluded his followers. This was the case on the 29th July 1984. On that night Carlo Salvini and Patrizia Renzetti were murdered in their car at Vicchio.r />
  The following morning a search of Silvano’s house revealed the presence of a bloodstained rag. The blood on the rag was of two distinct groups and further analyses revealed the presence of gunpowder.

  “But why didn’t they arrest him?” The Marshal had resisted ringing Ferrini in the middle of the night—the minute he finished reading about the missing page—but even though almost twenty-four hours had passed and they were seated together in his office, he still felt stunned.

  “I mean, the Prosecutor working with Romola, to have taken the enquiry that far, must have been on his side?”

  “Does he name him? Remember, I haven’t read the thing.”

  “No. No, he doesn’t …”

  “Mm. A small point but an important one. The Prosecutor running the enquiry was suddenly, when it came to the crunch, put on another case and someone else took his place. Ask me who.”

  “Who?”

  “Simonetti.”

  “Dear God.”

  “All he had to do was lie doggo. It’s not the Instructing Judge’s job to prosecute. He signs the warrants but the Prosecutor has to request him to do it. He didn’t. And now he’s got his reward. Fame and fortune will be his.”

  “If he carries it off. He did try and prosecute, Romola, whether it was his job or not. This …” The document lay on the Marshal’s desk between them. “It’s supposed to be an acquittal but it isn’t. You say you didn’t read it …”

  “I had no reason to. I knew all along what was going on. Anybody who didn’t know wouldn’t be interested. An abandoned enquiry is hardly news.”

  “I know … I’m not so good at explaining myself but it’s not just what’s in it … it’s the way it’s written. I’ve not read much of this sort of thing. Our job’s over long before a case gets to this stage so I admit I’m no expert …”

  The Marshal had been staring sightlessly at the map of his quarter on the wall, as he so often did when musing, but now he turned his big troubled eyes on Ferrini. “Whatever this document pretends to be it’s really an accusation. In a funny sort of way it reminded me, the way he accused Silvano, of the way Sergio Muscas accused him. ‘Silvano’s wife died in Sardinia and the kid was saved that time, too. I’m not making any allusions. Silvano Vargius had a car …’ It’s like that, you see. What the judge really means is what Sergio meant: I’m not accusing him but he did it. And then there’s so much anger in it. He’s very bitter.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know because I don’t understand why. Why should they have done that?”

  Ferrini shrugged. “I only know the gossip that was going around at the time. That they didn’t want Romola’s Monster just because he was Romola’s. Some ambitious soul I won’t name didn’t want him taking the credit, so he opened a completely new line of enquiry. That was when Flavio was in prison and—oops! Wrong again—the two Germans were killed. Then the fight for the evidence started. They had that camper removed with the bodies inside it before you could say Jack Robinson. And before any external measurements had been taken, presumably to get it out of the clutches of Romola and the carabinieri and into the custody of Simonetti and the police.”

  “I just can’t believe it …”

  “You can’t? Well, I was there. It was before I came to work in the city. I was out there in charge of the local station and I found the bodies.”

  “You were?”

  “You bet I was. I saw them drive the camper away and I knew the measurements hadn’t been taken. So, what do you expect to happen if you drive a van along a country lane and it’s got bullet holes through the windows?”

  “The glass shattered, I suppose.”

  “You suppose right. There were bullet holes through the metal body, too, of course, but since they hadn’t been measured from the ground … The whole thing was a shambles.”

  “But it’s not … When I said I couldn’t believe it I didn’t mean anything so specific, I just meant I couldn’t believe that even the most ambitious person … a case as serious as this …”

  “For a really ambitious person, nothing’s more serious than his own career. Listen, I’ve managed without a smoke for an hour so as not to fog up your office but I can’t hold out any longer, d’you mind?”

  The Marshal didn’t answer. He was staring at the map again.

  “I’ll take your silence for consent. Where’s Bacci got to? I thought he was bringing us some stuff?”

  “He’ll be here. He had to go home and get it. I told him after that bullet episode that he shouldn’t go about openly with those books. I’ve noticed what’s-his-name giving him odd looks … What is he called?”

  “Esposito?”

  “No, no, the other one. Esposito’s the one with the scar.”

  “You’re right. You mean Di Maira, then.”

  “Di Maira, yes. I always get the impression he’s watching us more than he’s watching the Suspect—this’ll be Bacci now.”

  The Marshal got up when the bell rang and went through the darkened waiting room to look through the spy hole and open the door.

  Ferrini grinned when he saw Bacci hesitate before the cloud of cigarette smoke that was rapidly filling the tiny office.

  “Oh, come on in, Bacci. I won’t say ‘it won’t kill you’ because along with all the car fumes in this town it probably will. Come and give us a few subtitles on this FBI stuff of yours.”

  If anyone had asked the Marshal for an explanation of why he was going where he was going, he’d have been hard put to find one. As it was, nobody asked him because nobody knew. They’d been given half a day’s freedom after all the fuss of the search, and if the Marshal had been himself he’d have done a trip to the supermarket and given his quarters a good sweep out. But he wasn’t himself, and it was difficult enough to keep his mind on his driving. He hadn’t been on this road for years, not since being involved in that case out in the potteries. The landscape had changed. There were factories, service stations, new blocks of flats, an ugly, raw-looking sprawl. The traffic was heavy, but then it always had been … He should be coming up to where he had to make a right turn. There. Lastra a Signa. He couldn’t have said why he hadn’t told anybody, at least, not precisely why. There were some things he didn’t tell Ferrini when he might have done, perhaps because Ferrini sometimes seemed to be laughing at him. He was so cynical. Not telling Bacci anything—well, they’d agreed on that without really having to say it. There was really no point in burdening him with more doubts than he had already.

  They had let him talk on without ever mentioning the document still lying on the desk.

  “You see, I’ve been through all the available statistics on this type of crime and, even without taking anything else into consideration, he’s just too old. Serial killers, lust killers, they really get into their stride in their twenties, so whoever did these murders should only be in his thirties now. I did find one exception, but even he started in his thirties and that was because his mother kept him practically chained up in the house until she died. He’d have started earlier if he’d been free. Apart from him the only exceptions to the rule are those who started unusually early. This boy here killed his first victim at twelve years old, this one at fourteen and this one at fifteen had already killed four. Accusing a man in his sixties makes no sense.”

  But that wasn’t all that made no sense. There was that FBI profile Simonetti had read to them in abbreviated form so as not to “bore them with a jot of jargon.” He’d taken care not to bore them with a lot of facts, either. Cruelty to the weak, such as children and animals, he’d said, and the Suspect hit his dog with a stick. It was a far cry from the children in the FBI case notes, those who did such things as cutting off a cat’s paws and tail and then burying it alive, or dousing a horse’s tail in petrol and setting light to it. They set fire to buildings, too. Schools, for instance, when they thought they’d been ill-treated or unfairly punished, their own homes before running away, cars in the street. They robbed
and burned and tortured, and when they were big enough and strong enough and had the means, they killed. The Suspect was just a foul-tempered, dirty old man like hundreds of others. He bore no relation at all to those young men in the photographs Bacci had shown them. Some were crazed and pitiful creatures, others terrifying, cold-blooded young men shown laughing as they were led into court, totally isolated from the rest of humanity which they had loathed and derided. But all of them were young, all of them came from poor backgrounds, all of them were cut off from human affection. They had, for the most part, been beaten senseless until their brains were irreparably damaged, starved, raped. Some had been tortured by their mothers, forced to watch them perform as prostitutes. Others had been orphaned as tiny children and left in the hands of people who despised and ill-treated them.