A Private Venus

by Giorgio Scerbanenco

  ‘But if I had taken her with me …’ He was almost crying.

  ‘Enough!’ Duca now pounded on the desk with his hand. ‘A normal person doesn’t bother with ifs. But you’re not normal. Here’s more proof: for a year, your father did everything he could to find out why you’d started drinking like that, why you were behaving so strangely, he nearly broke your jaw with a poker, so why didn’t you ever tell him the truth? What were you afraid of?’

  The reply came, unexpected and limpid. ‘Because he wouldn’t have understood.’

  He was right, Engineer Auseri wouldn’t have understood: depth psychology isn’t something emperors wish to engage with. Of course he didn’t tell him he was right. ‘Okay. In that case why did you tell me the truth? You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours, and I never even asked you.’ He already knew why but he wanted to see if Davide was capable of explaining it.

  ‘I hadn’t been back to the Via dei Giardini for almost a year,’ he said, looking down at the floor, ‘and this morning you took me there, you parked your car almost at the same spot where I had parked it a year ago, and you left me there while you went into Police Headquarters … And then you took me to the cemetery, you talked to me about your father, I saw all those graves …’

  Exactly: without knowing it, that morning he had put young Auseri in a position to unblock his complex, and now, in order to unblock that other, more dangerous, complex—guilt—he had managed to scare him into thinking he might be mad, and poor Michelangelo-esque Davide was trying to demonstrate to him that he wasn’t: thinking you’re mad is more painful than thinking you’re guilty of murder. But it was too unpleasant a job: selling pharmaceuticals would have been less lucrative but also less disagreeable.

  ‘That handkerchief and that other object she left in the car,’ Davide resumed, ‘I didn’t want to see them, they made me feel bad, but I couldn’t resist, I’d take them out, I’d think about when she wiped her lips and instead of taking her with me I threw her out …’

  He was a pitiful spectacle, so athletic and yet so morbidly sensitive, but at least he wasn’t closed up in himself as if inside a ball of concrete, the way he had been before.

  ‘All right, I’d like to see those things for myself. Where are they?’ Just to allow him to let off steam as much as possible, to get him to free himself, at least a little. Davide didn’t want to tell him at first, but he insisted.

  They were in his beautiful soft suitcase, in an internal pocket with a zip.

  ‘I’d have liked to throw them away and never see them again, but even thinking about where I’d throw that made me feel bad.’

  Of course, the morbid psychology of memories. On the glass surface of the little table, he now had the famous handkerchief which, in Davide’s mind, was the handkerchief of the girl he’d killed, and that little object, which looked like a tiny telephone receiver for a doll, two little wheels joined on one side by a strip of metal, no more than three centimetres in length. He barely looked at the handkerchief, but picked up this other object and held it in the palm of his hand. In a tone very different from his previous sharp, harsh one, he asked, ‘This object fell out of the girl’s handbag that day, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No. I thought it might be a sample of some kind of beauty product, but I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you tried to open it?’

  ‘I never even thought it could be opened.’

  ‘But you just said you thought it was a sample. A sample can be opened.’

  ‘I never thought too much about it. Just looking at it makes me feel bad.’

  He understood. ‘I’ll tell you what it is: it’s a Minox cartridge.’ He saw that Davide didn’t know what a Minox cartridge was, so he explained it to him. ‘Inside here is a strip of film about fifty centimetres long and less than a centimetre wide, on which you can take more than fifty photographs with a miniature camera called a Minox.’ And having finished the explanation he forgot him, as if he no longer had him there in front of him, as if Davide didn’t exist and he was alone, in the air sickly with heat, in the soft, antiquated light of that lamp, a professional’s lamp, as the shop assistant had said to his father when he bought it for him. Only him and that cartridge.

  A Minox wasn’t exactly a camera for amateurs. Little larger than a cigarette lighter, it had been used by spies during the war to photograph documents, as any reader of espionage novels knew. It could take photographs in fog and through smoke, which was why it had also been used a lot by war correspondents. But it required practice to take photographs with such a small camera, it wasn’t easy to frame the shots or keep the camera still. For an amateur, taking fifty photos with a single cartridge was too much, but for a professional it was ideal. And being so small, the film could easily be sent by post, and equally easily be hidden. He had once read a novel in which a spy had kept a Minox cartridge in his mouth when crossing a border and still managed to speak, though that could, of course, have been an exaggeration on the part of the writer—or maybe the character had a larger than average mouth.

  He still felt nervous. He didn’t like pointless, infantile fantasies, but this cartridge came from a woman’s handbag and there weren’t many women so keen on photography that they’d use a Minox. Besides, the girl wasn’t exactly a normal, home-loving individual: every now and again she went out, let herself be picked up by a man and went with him, for financial reward. Superintendent Carrua would have defined such behaviour as prostitution, which might not have been very chivalrous, but was certainly accurate. In addition, this girl, for reasons she had not wanted to reveal, had intended to kill herself, and in fact had killed herself. He didn’t want to speculate, but he would have liked to know if this film had been exposed completely or partly—it must have been through a camera because there wasn’t a strip of film between the two spools, as there would have been if it hadn’t been used—if after a year it could still provide a sufficiently clear negative and, above all, what had been photographed. Of one thing he was sure: that these wouldn’t be holiday snaps, an old lady under a beach umbrella, a woman bathing on the rocks, a group of friends on a beach playing with a large ball.

  And all these things he wanted to know immediately, he wouldn’t sleep or eat or think about anything else until he did.

  He wrapped the cartridge in the handkerchief and put it in his pocket. ‘Excuse me a moment, I’ll be right back.’ The telephone was in the hall. The kitchen door was ajar and through it he could see Lorenza knitting a winter outfit for Sara and listening to the radio. He smiled at her and gestured to her to remain seated, he didn’t need anything. He looked at his watch: nine o’clock.

  ‘Superintendent Carrua, please.’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Duca Lamberti.’

  A long wait, a few clicks, then Carrua’s voice, a little distorted. ‘Sorry, I’m yawning.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too, but I needed to talk to you urgently.’

  ‘You could have come here without phoning, I’m always ready to see you.’

  ‘I wanted to know if the photographic lab was open.’

  ‘The lab? Obviously it’s closed. They’re still doing a short week.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning.’ He couldn’t, he’d rather go and rouse some photographer from his bed.

  ‘If it’s urgent, I could have it opened and get hold of the technicians.’

  ‘It is urgent. I’ll explain when I get there.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘I’ll be bringing Auseri’s son with me.’

  Ten minutes later, he and Davide were in the Via Fatebenefratelli, and by 11:40 Carrua’s large desk was covered in photographs in 18×24 format: the enlargements from the Minox film. There were also two large bottles of Coca-Cola on the desk. Only Davide had not taken his jacket off: they had sat him down at the far end of the room, in front of the ta
ble where the typewriter was, and there he had stayed and there he was even now, while they looked at the photographs.

  ‘What are you thinking, Duca?’

  ‘I’m sorting the photographs.’

  From a puritan point of view, they were obscene images. They were extremely clear, in spite of being enlarged, and technically excellent. Against a vague background of clouds, the kind you found in old photographic studios, stood the subject, a naked woman.

  ‘There isn’t much to sort: half are of the brunette and half of the blonde.’

  That was true: there were about twenty-five photographs of the same dark-haired girl, and twenty-five or twenty-six of the blonde. It could have been claimed that these were artistic images, however daring, in fact the poses seemed to have a modicum of aspiration towards artistry, but that would have been splitting hairs. The poses of the two girls were openly alluring, it wasn’t just their nakedness, it was also the gestures of the arms, the position of the legs. In most of the photographs the girls were hiding their faces, but not in all of them. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old.

  ‘Where did you put the Radelli girl’s file?’ he asked Carrua.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s in the drawer.’ Carrua gave it to him.

  It was a large yellow folder, quite creased, the dossier on the suicide of Alberta Radelli. It contained her photograph, the death certificate issued by the pathologist, a photostat of the letter the girl had written to her sister asking forgiveness for killing herself, an officer’s report, an overall report made by the appropriate office, three or four pages summarising the interviews conducted with a number of people: the suicide’s sister, the famous cyclist Antonio Marangoni, the caretaker of the building where the dead girl lived with her sister. There were stamps, signatures, words underlined in red, and large blue seals. Duca extracted the photograph of the girl, taken from her licence, and showed it to Carrua along with one of the photographs from the Minox.

  ‘It could be,’ Carrua said.

  ‘We can soon find out. Davide, come here a moment, please.’ Davide Auseri at last stirred himself and came towards Duca, who showed him the photographs from the Minox, those of the brunette and those of the blonde, but not the photo taken from the licence. ‘Is there anyone you know here?’

  It was a nice office, large and quiet, a good place to work at night. Carrua had an apartment somewhere in the city, but even he might not have been entirely sure where it was, he only went there when he remembered the address and wanted to take a bath, but the rest of the time he preferred to sleep in the little room next to the office on the divan bed, with piles of newspapers and press releases on the floor, along with the telephone. His real home was in Sardinia, where he had been born, but he couldn’t get there more than once a year, for a few days. His other real home was this one here, his office, which was always full of things and people. Now there was this young man, looking at these photographs. Carrua was not a particularly sensitive man, but he felt sorry all the same to see Davide’s face as he looked at the photograph of the brunette.

  ‘That’s her,’ Davide said.

  ‘You mean this girl is the same one who was found in Metanopoli a year ago?’ Duca asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about the other one, the blonde? Do you know her?’

  ‘No.’

  Duca turned to Carrua. ‘Can you send for a bottle of whisky?’ he said, adding, ‘I’ll pay.’ He took Davide by the arm and walked him over to the window.

  ‘Stay there for a moment, the whisky will be here soon.’ He moved a chair close to him, as if he was an old man. ‘As soon as you don’t feel like standing, sit down.’

  ‘What brand?’ Carrua asked.

  ‘The most expensive,’ Duca said.

  A half glass of whisky gave Davide’s eyes a less remote expression. ‘Don’t be afraid. That shivering inside will soon pass. Drink some more.’

  He drank, too, quite a bit. He might end up weaning the young man off drink, but becoming an alcoholic himself. ‘And now let’s analyse these photos.’ He sat down next to Carrua. In prison you lose your own personality, he realised, you lose warmth, you become frozen, and that was why he had to drink. ‘These photographs were taken by a professional in a studio. Technically they’re perfect, aesthetically a little less so. The photographer hasn’t bothered much with the arrangement of the subject, all he’s interested in is the shutter, the speed, the light. My second observation is how strange it is to do studio photographs, and photographs of this kind, with a Minox. A Rollei or a Contax would have been better, or the usual plate cameras you get in studios. To obtain these photographs, they must have placed the Minox on a tripod, and it’s quite a problem, attaching it to a tripod, you need special nuts and bolts that aren’t easy to get hold of, because people don’t usually need to place a camera weighing fifty grams or a little more on a tripod that weighs fifteen kilos.’

  ‘When did you study photography?’ Carrua said.

  ‘I never studied it, I’m only a layman, but I had a friend who was a photographer.’ He looked at Davide, who had sat down and was looking out of the window, with his back to them. ‘My third observation is that the girls are not professional prostitutes used to this kind of work. Look at the poses: as far as looking sexy goes, they don’t know much, especially the blonde. The brunette’s a little better, she has a little more class, but she’s innocent. The blonde, on the other hand, is either very vulgar, or just clumsy.’

  Carrua was looking through a dozen photographs as he spoke. ‘A very precise analysis.’

  ‘The last thing is what you have to think about: What was the purpose of taking more than fifty photographs of this kind? That’s your job. But there’s something even more problematic, or at least something I think is serious.’ He picked up the yellow file again and took out the few sheets of paper it contained. ‘When a girl lies down in a field and slits her wrists, she has to use something sharp to do it with. Then she can do one of two things: if she has a lot of self-control and is very tidy, she puts the sharp object back in her purse, if she’s already in a state of shock, she abandons it, she drops it near her, or else keeps it in her hand. But the officer’s report doesn’t mention any sharp object found near the body. Nor was any such object found in the girl’s purse. It’s unlikely that the girl would slit her wrists with the first sharp thing she finds in the field where she’s hidden herself, for example the lid of a tin can, a thorn, a fragment of glass, but even if we admit that, the pathologist’s report contradicts it: the cuts to the veins are straight and clean. You can’t make a cut like that with a tin can or a piece of glass.’

  Carrua looked through the papers in the file. ‘Here it is: “… complete list of what was found in the place where the body of the above-mentioned Alberta Radelli was discovered …” It seems they searched, but didn’t find anything sharp. If it was a small blade it might have got lost in a field.’

  They exchanged glances. They knew each other well and couldn’t fool each other. ‘You can’t slander the Metanopoli police like that,’ Duca said. ‘If there’d been something sharp there, even within a radius of thirty metres they would have found it and put it on the list. You don’t have a very high opinion of your fellow officers.’

  ‘Your father always said that, it offended him.’

  They both smiled, wickedly. And then Carrua said, ‘I think you have something else to say.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the contents of the purse.’ He looked towards the window. Davide was there, his back turned. ‘Davide, no need to get up, just tell me how much money you gave the girl that day. Think carefully. Tell us what denominations it was in.’

  Davide turned. Compassionately, the whisky had put to sleep the vipers that were poisoning him from inside. ‘Let’s see … They were ten-thousand-lire notes …’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Let’s see … I think two, yes, two, when we were in the Corso Lodi, because she didn’t
want to come, she was afraid … Then, by the river, she said she needed fifty thousand lire, and so I gave her another three notes of ten thousand … In my wallet I only keep notes of …’ He suddenly broke off, and slowly turned back to the window.

  ‘So,’ Duca said to Carrua, ‘when Davide left the girl she had fifty thousand lire in her purse, at least fifty thousand. Now I’ll read you from the list how much there was by the time the police arrived: one ten-thousand-lire note, one thousand-lire note, three hundred-lire coins, two twenty-lire coins, four five-lire coins. If we assume the girl already had the small change before she met Davide, in other words, one thousand three hundred and sixty lire, and that the ten-thousand lire note was one of the five that Davide gave her, there are forty thousand lire missing.’

  It was obvious, but Carrua checked the dog-eared sheet of paper all the same. ‘Give me the pathologist’s statement.’ He read it carefully. ‘It says here she can’t have slit her wrists before eight o’clock, but probably after eight thirty.’

  Duca looked again towards the window, almost sadly. ‘Davide, don’t get up: What time was it when you left the girl that day?’ He saw immediately that the young man hadn’t understood, he was dazed, but not with whisky. In Metanopoli, when you told the girl to get out of the car, what time was it, more or less?’

  Davide didn’t say, ‘Let’s see.’ He said, ‘The sun had set.’

  ‘Could you still see?’

  ‘Yes. The sun had only just set.’

  ‘Given the season, it must have been seven or a little later,’ Duca said to Carrua. ‘The girl walked around for more than an hour before making up her mind, and in the meantime she could have spent forty thousand lire. Where and how I can’t imagine, because Metanopoli isn’t bursting with shops like the Via Montenapoleone.’