by Beate Boeker
Carlina's startled gaze flew to Garini's face. “Surely not?”
“We've learned new facts which make it necessary to conduct another interview.” He saw how she flinched at his official tone and forced himself to go on. “I have advised your mother to have a lawyer present, but--”
“But I told him that I only needed you, my dear.” Fabbiola took her daughter's arm. “After all, you know how to handle him when he's in a difficult mood.”
Carlina shook her head as if she wanted to clear her head. “Mama, if Stefano says that, I think we should heed it. Don't you want to call--?”
“Absolutely not!” Fabbiola pressed her lips together. “I want you, and I must say I'm disappointed that you seem to be so reluctant to help me.”
“But I'm here, Mama, and I'm not going anywhere.” Carlina turned a pleading gaze to Garini. “Or do I have to go?”
Their gaze locked. He couldn't bring himself to tell her to leave. He knew it was going to make his job all the more difficult if he let her stay, for it wouldn't be long before she would be taking her mother's side, but he just couldn't.
Carlina swallowed visibly. “I promise not to say a word. I promise I won't influence her. Please let me stay.”
If only she wasn't being so reasonable, then it would have been easier to insist on her leaving. Instead, he found he'd given her an infinitesimal nod without even meaning to. Before he could make any more concessions, he turned to Fabbiola again. “To repeat my question: Where did you go on Monday afternoon when you left the haberdashery?”
Surprise written all over her face, Carlina exclaimed, “But you said you'd been at home all day long, Mama!”
Fabbiola shrugged. “I wasn't. I forgot.”
Carlina's eyes widened in shock.
“Please don't interrupt again.” Garini made sure his voice didn't reflect any of the emotions he felt. “Otherwise, I will have to ask you to leave.”
“Sorry.” She gave him a surprised look.
Surprised that he was so cool and strict with her. Surprised at the sudden distance between them. Her look chilled him to the core. “Fabbiola? Can you please answer my question now?”
“I didn't go anywhere,” Fabbiola said. “I went home.”
“You went straight home?”
She hesitated. “Sort of. I wandered around a bit. It was a nice day.”
“But it was pouring with rain,” Carlina exclaimed. Then she bit her lower lip and hunched her shoulders. “Sorry.”
“I put it to you that you went to the tower San Niccolò. I put it to you that you went up the tower to meet Olga.” His voice was like steel.
Fabbiola jumped in her seat. “I didn't go to meet Olga!”
“So you admit that you went to the Tower?”
She pursed her lips. “That question was a trap!”
Garini forced himself to remain calm. “Do you wish to postpone the interview until your lawyer is present?”
Fabbiola's eyes flashed. “Will you please stop mentioning that stupid lawyer? No! I keep telling you, a thousand times no! Who would I call? I don't have a lawyer. I don't need one! Nobody can say that I killed Olga! Yes, it's true that I went to the tower. When I came up onto the last level, I heard a scream. I ran over to look down, and I saw her lying on the ground. I recognized her purple coat immediately. But I didn't go anywhere near her! Why, I wouldn't touch her with a bargepole! She jumped all by herself!”
Carlina made a small gasping sound and covered her mouth with her hand.
Stefano forced himself to concentrate on Fabbiola only. “You saw Olga lying on the ground when you looked down?”
“Yes.” Fabbiola's voice sounded sullen. “I recognized that purple coat immediately. A man was bending over her.”
“What did you do then?”
Fabbiola swallowed. “I left.”
“You didn't stop to see if you could help?”
“Of course not. You can't help someone who jumps from a Tower that's hundreds of meters high.”
“Sixty.”
“What's that?”
“It's sixty meters high.”
She made an impatient move with her hand. “Whatever. It was clear she had to be dead. I can tell you, I was furious! She has used me to the end. She only wanted to create trouble, always, always! So I left as fast as I could.”
“How did she use you?”
“Why, in sending me that letter!”
Garini bent forward. “What letter?”
Fabbiola hissed in an impatient breath. “On Monday morning, I found a letter in my box. It said I should come to a meeting at the Tower San Niccolò at five o'clock this same day.”
“Who signed it?”
“Nobody.”
“Was it inside an envelope?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Can you remember if the envelope had a stamp?”
Fabbiola shook her head. “It didn't have a stamp. I think it was delivered by hand.”
“But why did you go to a meeting with someone who didn't even bother to sign his name?”
“I thought that someone from my knitting group had sent me that letter. We had discussed if we should knit a huge bow to put all around the tower San Niccolò - in light-blue, of all the stupid baby colors - and some were in favor of it, but I preferred to cover the Ponte Vecchio in burgundy, so in the end, that's the project we chose. I thought that someone wanted to change our decision again and had called a meeting, clandestinely. There's a woman in our group who always wants to be the one to decide everything. Her name is Bruna. She's a snake if you ever saw one. I thought that maybe I had not been officially invited but that one loyal member had informed me, not wishing her name to be known. I was furious, of course. After all, we had already settled the issue, and I felt that it was stupid to bring it all up again.”
“Didn't you think that the tower was a strange meeting place? After all, you have to pay an entrance fee.”
Fabbiola shook her head. “No. Bruna's husband had something to do with the renovation, and she could have given us free access. She said so when she wanted us to do the blue bow. That's why I believed in the letter.”
“Can I please see it?”
Fabbiola looked at her hands. “I don't have it anymore.”
“You don't have it anymore?” His voice was sharp. “Why not?”
“Because it said that I should eat it right after having read it. And the envelope, too.”
“You should eat the letter?” Garini couldn't keep the incredulity from his voice. “Why on earth should you do that?”
Fabbiola shrugged. “I don't know. I thought maybe the member who had secretly informed me of the mutiny didn't want to leave any proof that she had informed me.”
Carlina stared at her mother as if she had never seen her before. “Did you really eat that letter, Mama?”
“No.” Fabbiola shook her head. “It was thick paper, and I didn't want to chew on it for ages. I put a match to it.”
Garini leaned back. “You burned that letter!”
“Yes. And the envelope.”
“When did you do that?”
“Right after I'd received it. I felt good doing that. And I went out to buy the burgundy wool for the bridge, so the others in the team couldn't insist on starting with the bow in light-blue instead. I created facts that would have been difficult to reverse.” Her voice sounded satisfied as she remembered her strategy. “But when I saw Olga with her stupid raincoat lying on the ground, I realized that it had been her all along. She had used me!” Her face turned hard.
“Was anybody else up at the Tower while you were there?”
“No.” Fabbiola shook her head. “It was just me.”
“So you think that Olga jumped of her own free will the second you appeared at the top of the stairs?”
Fabbiola hesitated. “I guess so.”
“That's not very likely, though, is it?”
“Why?”
“Olga had everything going f
or her. A budding new romance, a successful job . . . She wasn't the type to kill herself. She had no reason to do so.”
Fabbiola shrugged. “Who knows what she took into her head. Perhaps the devil got hold of her and drove her to jump.” Fabbiola put her head to the side. “Or an angel nudged her over the edge, to save us from her devious plans. Yes, I think I like that explanation better.”
Garini clenched his teeth and decided to be brutal. “Fabbiola, are you aware that you are the prime suspect for the murder of Olga Ottima?”
Fabbiola reared back and stared at him. “What? Me? No!”
Carlina took her mother's hand and held it in a comforting clasp. Her anxious gaze didn't leave Garini's for one second.
Garini bent forward. “Why did you hate each other so much?”
“I didn't hate Olga.” Fabbiola said with dignity. “She hated me.”
Garini's gaze met Carlina's for one pregnant moment and suppressed a sigh. How can she delude herself like that? Or is it all an act? “All right,” he said. “Then tell me why Olga hated you.”
Fabbiola shrugged with impatience. “She exaggerated.”
Garini clenched his teeth. “Just tell me what happened.”
“She overreacted.”
“Fabbiola--”
“Mama--”
They both spoke at once and broke off.
Then Carlina continued. “Please tell Stefano what happened, Mama. It's important.”
Fabbiola lifted her gaze to the ceiling as if exasperated, then sighed and shrugged. “Oh, well. It was in the last year of school. Olga was in the same class I was, and she was steadily going out with Nico.”
“Nico?” Carlina asked.
Fabbiola nodded. “Yes. Nico de Niro. We all liked him. He had charm. But we couldn't understand why he was going out with Olga, who had no charm at all - she never did. But then, men are blind, aren't they?” She looked at Garini as if expecting him to agree.
He didn't bat an eyelid.
“Anyway.” Fabbiola made a move with her arm as if to wipe away the blindness of men. “Suddenly, on a Friday morning, the very last day of school, Nico came to me and asked if I wanted to go out dancing with him that night. I was speechless. Everybody knew that he was Olga's boyfriend. So I asked him what Olga thought about this idea. He told me it was over.”
“And was it really over?” Carlina asked. “If yes, why didn't you know?”
Fabbiola shrugged. “I figured that he had to know best. Besides, I liked him. He was too good for her, we all agreed on that. And I wanted to go out. So I said yes. But that night, at the dance, Olga appeared. She was livid with rage. She jumped onto my back and pulled me down. I defended myself. Others tried to pull us apart, but she was like a wolf, a raving maniac.”
“What did Nico do?” Carlina asked.
“Nothing. He stood at the side and watched us. They say he had a really strange look on his face. As if he was scared of something. I can't tell because I never had the time to see his face – I was too busy protecting myself. Finally, people managed to get Olga under control. I'll never forget how she stood there, held back by several strong men, and how she hurled curses at us. She said I had destroyed her life. She said she would never forgive me. I hardly knew what was happening to me. My best dress was torn, and she had scratched me so hard that I was bleeding. I had done nothing, nothing at all to wean Nico away from her, but Olga didn't listen.” She fell silent and looked at her hands.
Carlina bent forward. “What happened then?”
“The next morning, Nico disappeared. Nobody knew where he had gone. His mother came to me and told me I had destroyed her son's life. Olga spread rumors everywhere that she would get back at me. Everybody was talking, and they all said that I must have done something terrible. That I stole Nico from Olga. It was a dreadful time.”
Garini leaned back. “But this was decades ago. I find it hard to believe that these happenings, as harrowing as they were, would still influence anyone today.”
Fabbiola narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “That's because you are so unemotional. You have no passion.”
Carlina lifted her eyebrows and dropped her mother's hand.
Fabbiola didn't seem to notice. “You have to understand that this was only the beginning of the story. Olga became very strange afterwards. She got to know an older man who was quite rich, and within three months, she married him. It was an unhappy marriage, at least that's what her mother kept telling me whenever I met her at the market. I believe that Olga wanted to take a sort of revenge on Nico, by marrying so quickly out of spite. But it backfired. When he heard – how, we don't know – that Olga had gotten married, he came back. But he was married, too. His wife was ravishing, a true beauty, and clever to boot. Olga was spitting nails. She did everything to make life difficult for the young couple. Then her husband died, not long after the birth of their son Ugo. It was a heart attack.” Fabbiola smiled a little. “We all said that he preferred death to being married to Olga.”
“Still, this all happened a long time ago.” Garini wanted her to agree, wanted her to confirm that the hard feelings had vanished. If she did that, she would have a weaker motive. Didn't she see that?
“It may have happened a long time ago, but Olga was like an elephant. She never forgot an insult. When she appeared at Teo's birthday party – and I'm sure she wasn't invited! - I immediately knew that this was part of a big plan of revenge.”
Garini clenched his teeth. “More than thirty years later? That sounds highly unlikely.”
Fabbiola bent forward. “Not at all! She liked to destroy the people who didn't work with her. I know thousands of stories that confirm it! Take Carlina's friend Francesca, for example. She almost ruined the family when she reported their holiday home.”
“But that was her job, Fabbiola. She worked for the Finanza.”
Fabbiola nodded. “True. She worked for the devil.”
Garini had trouble to keep his temper. “The state isn't the devil, Fabbiola.”
“Ptschah.” Fabbiola clicked her tongue. “That's what you say. You work for them, too.”
Chapter 9
I
The next morning at the police station, Cervi threw open the door to Garini's office and beamed at him. “Well done.”
Stefano blinked. Well done? He couldn't remember the last time his boss had complimented him on anything. And what on earth was Cervi talking about? He was still busy typing the report.
“Piedro told me everything.” Cervi bounced into the room, his artificially black hair fluttering in little waves on his head. “What a great piece of luck. Good work. But that's what I always say – if you persevere and do your homework, you will have success!” He rubbed his hands. “Such a quick arrest is good for our reputation.”
Garini cleared his throat. “Arrest? I haven't arrested anybody.”
Cervi's jaw fell. “What? You haven't arrested her? Why on earth not? She'll have left the country by now! Maybe she killed someone else! Don't tell me you hesitated because of your personal connection.” He puffed out his chest and put his arms akimbo. “No, no, that is not worthy of you. I expected professionalism. I expected true dedication to your job, to the ethics that--”
“I'm not convinced of her guilt.”
“Not convinced?” Cervi slammed his hands flat onto the desk and towered over Garini. “What else does it take to convince you? Is the missing knitting needle too obvious a clue for you? She had a motive; she was right on the spot at the crucial time; she had the weapon and left it inside the body . . . What else do you want? Twenty people who watched her as she hauled the victim over the battlement? Besides, have you forgotten that we already have a complaint against her on file? Olga Ottima personally put on record that Fabbiola Mantoni-Ashley pushed her down the stairs some days ago and that she sprained her wrist as a consequence. Signora Ottima herself asked us to treat it as attempted murder. In view of what happened next, we can safely assume that she was right. If
we had believed Signora Ottima, she might still be alive today. We can't risk any more mistakes, Garini! I'm asking you one more time, what else are you waiting for?”
Garini got up, went around the desk and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Now he could look down at Cervi. He was not going to be intimidated by his boss. “Fabbiola Mantoni-Ashley claims that she was called to the tower by an anonymous letter.”
“Yes, that famous letter!” Cervi snorted. “It is laughable – totally laughable! You know very well that she lied at first, and only when you confronted her with the truth, she came up with a cooked up story that not even a child would believe. Piedro told me all about it. A letter that she should eat! It's ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! I wonder from which movie she took that idea.”
“I'm aware that everything speaks against her.” Garini clenched his teeth. “But I'm still not convinced.”
At that, Cervi threw up both hands, balled his fists and shook them against the ceiling. “Not convinced, he says! Not convinced. And pray, why not, my dear Super-Commissario? Why are you still not convinced in spite of all the proofs to the contrary?”
Garini shook his head. “It's merely my knowledge of her. She doesn't fit.”
“Ha!” Cervi pointed at Garini. “Your knowledge of her! How many people do we truly know? Who is capable of murder if goaded beyond the limited? You'd be astonished if you made a test!”
“She is much too disorganized to set up such a complicated murder.”
“But it's not a complicated murder! She asks her victim to go to a tower for a secret meeting and is stupid enough to go shopping five minutes earlier. That's not complicated. That's sheer stupidity. Women! Always they go shopping, unable to stop themselves, unable--”
“But don't you see that this is exactly why she might be innocent?” Stefano insisted. “She may be disorganized, but she's not that daft.”
Cervi shrugged. “So maybe she did it on the spur of the moment. I don't care. But I'm convinced that she's the murderess. There's no doubt about it.”
