The Master of Knots

by Massimo Carlotto

  ‘They wouldn’t stop bombarding me with questions, so when one of them asked me if we’d had a falling-out, I replied that we had.’

  ‘And had you really fallen out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you meet on the S and M scene?’

  ‘No, we didn’t. I’m a sales rep for a fabrics company. I started seeing Helena when she was trying, unsuccessfully, to launch a career as a fashion model, and I soon realized what her sexual preferences were. I was already familiar with the scene so I talked her into working as an S and M model.’

  ‘Explain. I know nothing at all about the scene.’

  ‘She posed as a slave for photographs.’

  ‘Tied up and stuff like that?’

  He didn’t reply, but pulled out a photograph from his leather folder. Helena was a real beauty. Her long hair was gathered up in a perfect chignon and her face was in a slight shadow while her breasts were lit to perfection. A clothes peg was clamped to each nipple. Her hands and feet were bound by strips of leather to a wooden structure that vaguely resembled a St. Andrew’s cross.

  ‘Right. I’ve got it. She’s an S and M hooker.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong,’ Giraldi said urgently, struggling to suppress his anger. ‘Helena never had sex with her clients. Only photos.’

  I pointed to the photograph with my index finger. ‘But those pegs must hurt like hell.’

  ‘She enjoys it.’

  I took a closer look and saw he was right. The woman’s expression showed neither pain nor disgust. ‘So it’s a genuine vocation.’

  ‘Please don’t be unpleasant, I beg you.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. How did clients get in touch with her?’

  ‘On the Internet. Helena places regular ads at specialist websites.’

  ‘And where did they meet?’

  ‘Usually in hotels or in rented photographic studios.’

  ‘And you went along with her. Were you present at the sessions?’

  ‘Yes, to make sure clients didn’t get violent while she was tied up.’

  ‘So you’re a voyeur as well as a pimp?’

  He clenched his fists. ‘Can you understand why I didn’t tell the police the truth?’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘Yes, I like watching. Happy now?’

  ‘And did Helena like you to watch?’

  ‘It was a kind of game of ours.’

  ‘A game financed by Helena’s clients.’

  ‘I make good money in my work. The proceeds of the photo sessions all went to Helena.’

  ‘How much did she make per . . . session?’

  ‘It varied, but a minimum of two million lire, three or four times a month.’

  ‘And she was kidnapped in Turin?’

  ‘That’s right. But we live in Varese. Obviously we never met clients there, to avoid being recognized.’

  ‘Obviously. And did you often go to that particular hotel?’

  ‘No, it was the first time. The rule is never the same place twice.’

  ‘Who chose the venues? You or the clients?’

  ‘The clients. We didn’t want to leave any evidence we’d been there.’

  ‘So the kidnapper must have had to present some ID to rent the room.’

  ‘I guess so, yes.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask for any information at the reception desk?’

  ‘No, I just fled in a panic.’

  ‘And nobody saw you enter or leave the hotel?’

  ‘No. It was nighttime. We slipped in through an emergency exit that the client had left open for us.’

  Giraldi’s story was full of holes. ‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying.’

  ‘You don’t know the scene. We’re constantly afraid of being discovered . . .’ he tried to explain.

  ‘Okay, that I can understand. But even so, the way you behaved just isn’t credible. You get knocked unconscious, your wife is kidnapped by some sadist, and you don’t go to the police for help?’

  ‘I’ve come to you for help.’

  ‘After twenty days have elapsed.’

  Giraldi didn’t reply. He covered his face with his hands and started sniveling again. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was terrorized. Then I thought of turning to a lawyer.’

  ‘What do you think happened to your wife?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only hope she’s still alive . . . perhaps they just want to keep her at their disposal.’

  I got Rudi to bring me another glass of Calvados. Then I picked up the photograph of Helena and tried to imagine what kind of trouble she’d got herself into. I couldn’t think of anything other than murder. At the hands of a sadist. ‘It’s no easy matter kidnapping someone and then keeping her prisoner for a long time,’ I said, thinking aloud.

  ‘That’s where you’re mistaken. In the S and M scene, lots of people have their own dungeons, secret rooms specially equipped for sessions. I sense that Helena is still alive.’

  ‘Then go to the police. When it suits them, cops can investigate quickly.’

  ‘You still don’t understand. I can’t. Besides, the lawyer told me that now I might be a suspect myself.’

  ‘Bonotto is right about that, but sometimes you have to run risks. It strikes me you’re more concerned about your reputation than about finding your wife.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Do you love her?’ I asked point-blank.

  ‘You can’t possibly imagine how much.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. Is there anything else I should know?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything. So, will you accept the case?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to talk it over with my associates. Come back tomorrow evening.’

  Giraldi got up. I motioned to him to wait while I wrote a number on a paper napkin. ‘Plus expenses, obviously. Is it within your means?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  He held out his hand. I pretended I hadn’t noticed and asked Rudy to bring me a third Calvados. Giraldi walked towards the door, leaving on my table the rope rose and the photograph of his wife.

  She’ll be long dead by now. We’d just be wasting time,’ Old Rossini said, examining the strange rope flower.

  Max poured himself a grappa. ‘The story her husband fed you is really pretty incredible. If someone kidnaps the woman you love from right under your nose, you do whatever it takes to get her back and you certainly don’t start thinking about the consequences for your reputation.’

  I lit a cigarette. I had foreseen my associates’ resistance and, deep down, I was none too sure about taking the case either. ‘Giraldi is willing to pay well and it would be a police-free investigation. As I understand it, sadomasochists go to a lot of trouble to keep the cops away from their scene.’

  Max snorted. ‘That’s just the problem. Giraldi has got our backs to the wall.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a woman in the hands of some maniac, so we can hardly pretend nothing’s wrong. We’re going to have to try and find her,’ Max replied.

  Beniamino got up from the armchair. ‘Yeah? Why? The real bastard here is her husband, who hasn’t the courage to face up to his responsibilities. It’s his problem. Fuck him.’

  Max shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t feel I can just abandon that woman to her fate. I don’t want stuff like this on my conscience,’ he said, showing Rossini the photograph of Helena.

  ‘Max is right,’ I said.

  Rossini threw his arms out wide. ‘But what’s the point of going looking for a corpse? Besides, we don’t know the scene. We can’t even be sure we’ll manage to find out anything.’

  ‘We could give ourselves a deadline. Say two months?’ I suggested.

  ‘No, a month’s enough,’ Max
said.

  ‘So you’ve really got your minds made up,’ the old gangster snarled. ‘And when we discover who kidnapped and probably killed her, what do we do? Call the police, tell her husband, or . . .’

  ‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘That’s an issue we can tackle when the time comes.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I don’t want to go chasing after maniacs.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Fat Max retorted. ‘But, like it or not, we’re already involved.’

  When Giraldi walked into the club, we were sitting at my table, drinking and smoking in silence. Old Rossini was in a foul mood, convinced he was jeopardizing his reputation as a self-respecting gangster by getting mixed up in this case. Giraldi nodded a greeting and I motioned him to take a seat. His face looked even more tired and strained than it had the previous day.

  ‘These are my associates. We have some questions for you.’

  ‘So are you taking the case?’

  ‘We’re thinking about it,’ I replied.

  ‘Tell us what happened at the hotel. We want to hear it from you,’ Max told him.

  This time Giraldi didn’t need any begging, but he added nothing of interest to what he had already told me.

  Beniamino finished his vodka and clicked his tongue to get the man’s attention. ‘So far you’ve described your wife’s kidnapping as if only one person were involved—the so-called client . . .’

  ‘Sure, Helena had an appointment with a client.’

  ‘But there’s absolutely no way that someone working on their own could have put you out of action and then carried off a woman from a hotel bedroom.’

  ‘He probably knocked out Helena as well.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that. But he couldn’t just have heaved her onto his shoulders and dumped her in his car boot all by himself. It just isn’t believable.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So your wife was kidnapped by more than one person,’ Max interjected. ‘And just maybe sadomasochism has fuck-all to do with it and you haven’t told us the whole story.’

  Rossini decided to add insult to injury. ‘Right. Maybe you bumped her off yourself, the cops are getting suspicious and now you want to cover your ass with this kidnapping story.’

  Giraldi turned white and broke out in a sweat. ‘I told you the truth, I swear it. Help me find Helena.’

  ‘Just explain to me why you think she’s still alive,’ Rossini goaded him.

  Giraldi broke down and wept. The club was full, and even though my table was out of the way a couple of people turned and looked in our direction. Giraldi seemed sincere enough but his story still stank. Rossini forced him to finish his cognac. Giraldi blew his nose and begged our forgiveness, then got up to go to the toilet.

  ‘Well?’ I asked my associates.

  ‘The man’s lying,’ Beniamino declared.

  ‘Yeah, he’s lying about something all right. But I can’t understand why. And I reckon he’s telling the truth about the kidnapping,’ Max said.

  ‘So . . . do we accept the case?’ I asked, looking at Rossini.

  ‘We’d just be wasting time.’

  ‘But not money. Anyway, don’t worry about it, Beniamino. If you don’t feel up to it, Max and I will take it on: just the two of us.’

  He gave me a filthy look. ‘You’re playing the same trick as Giraldi, boxing me in.’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah, it’s a mean trick. You know perfectly well that without you around Max and I would end up in a shitload of trouble.’

  ‘I know, I know, and you’re using it.’

  Max chuckled. ‘This way at least you can justify getting involved in the investigation.’

  Rossini snorted. ‘All right then. In any case, we won’t find a damn thing.’

  ‘Giraldi’s on his way back over,’ I warned.

  ‘Well? What have you decided?’ Giraldi asked.

  ‘We’ll take the case,’ I said. ‘But in a month’s time if we still have no leads, we’ll drop it.’

  ‘All right,’ Giraldi whispered, relieved. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘Here’s the money.’

  ‘Pass it to me under the table,’ I told him. I ripped open the seal and took a look. Crisp five-hundred-thousand-lire notes.

  Max handed Giraldi a notepad and pen. ‘Jot down the names of the websites, the nickname Helena used in her adverts, your address, the address of the hotel . . . and anything else that might be of use to us. Above all, the email address of the client who contacted your wife.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know the password my wife used to access her emails. She took personal charge of all the contacts.’

  ‘Even better,’ I grumbled.

  As Giraldi began to write, Beniamino seized hold of his hand. ‘If I find out you’ve fed us a line of bullshit I’ll make you suffer, and if you tell the police about us I’ll kill you.’ Then he got up. ‘I’ll see you guys tomorrow.’

  ‘That was valuable advice,’ I said, ‘and free of charge. If I were you, I’d keep it in mind.’

  ‘There’s no need to use these methods with me,’ Giraldi hissed.

  ‘Keep writing, Signor Giraldi. Keep writing and make quite sure you leave nothing out,’ Max said placidly.

  ‘What do you think, Max?’ I asked, as we watched Giraldi head for the door.

  ‘This rope flower gives me the creeps,’ he replied, turning it over in his fingers.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s perfect. Whoever made it is precise, imaginative, and incredibly dextrous. Have you any idea how much pain a guy like that can inflict?’

  ‘Enough to hope that death comes quickly.’

  ‘Exactly. And he wanted Helena’s husband to know it too.’

  Early the next morning, Max and I weaved our way through the market stalls in Turin’s Piazza delle Erbe and then entered the narrow streets of the ancient ghetto. We were heading for the rope store belonging to Bianchin, an authority on everything to do with ropes and knots. We had got to know him while drinking in city-center osterias. Whenever he could, he got one of his children to look after the store for him, took off his apron and repaired to the bars that ringed the square. We found him in his store, intent on serving a lady customer, half a Toscano cigar, as always, hanging extinguished from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he enquired of us in the local dialect.

  I took the rope flower from my pocket and placed it on the counter. The old shopkeeper donned a pair of glasses and observed it closely. Then, using his scissors, he cut through a single knot that formed the base of a petal and examined the rope’s cross section.

  ‘Rich people’s stuff,’ he exclaimed, bemused. ‘This cordage is hand-made. To order, no doubt, and not in Italy. Possibly in the Far East. The core is Dacron, the first sheath is Lilion, and the second sheath, the outer one, is silk.’

  ‘What else can you tell us?’

  He resettled his spectacles on his nose. ‘It’s fine but highly resistant. The silk has a purely aesthetic function. It feels softer and more pleasing in one’s grasp. Usually, this type of cordage is used in winches or snap hooks because it runs well. It has the drawback that certain knots come undone more easily, but whoever created this flower took great care to use the right knots: the Spanish hitch, the fisherman’s loop and, for the petals, a variation of the Turk’s head.’

  ‘Do you know who could have made it?’ Fat Max enquired.

  ‘Someone with a lot of time to lose,’ Bianchin replied curtly.

  The old man had worked up a thirst, so he invited us to go with him to a nearby osteria.

  I looked around. ‘You’re on your own here, aren’t you? Who’s going to look after the store?’

  ‘Nobody, but I don’t care. My children hav
e decided to sell up, so, after more than forty years here, this place is going to get turned into a shoe store.’

  As he drank his glass of Merlot, he recounted anecdotes from the old days, about Turin and its store. When he’d finished talking he said goodbye with a bitter grimace. Just another old man shoved to one side.

  ‘Bianchin’s right; this city isn’t what it was,’ I remarked, glancing at the window of a smart boutique. Until a few years earlier, it had been a trattoria that fed generations of students.

  ‘This city’s dead,’ Fat Max sighed. ‘Throttled by money and shady deals.’

  San Maurizio Canavese was only a few kilometers from Turin airport. We had arrived in the early afternoon and identified the hotel where Helena had been kidnapped. It was small, anonymous but comfortable-looking, the classic hotel for people passing through, strategically located close to a bypass. Just the place for sales reps, passing trade, and people who didn’t want to be noticed. The fire stairs led down to a car park at the back, surrounded by fields and far from any peeping eyes. The perfect place for slipping away with a kidnapped woman.

  We decided to hand the night porter some cash in exchange for the information that interested us, and, since we had no better way of killing the intervening time and escaping from the heat of the afternoon, we took ourselves to a good restaurant. Max had reserved a table for three at La Credenza, after checking that smoking was permitted. Nowadays, we always had to ask. Max had read glowing reviews of the place in a number of restaurant guides and couldn’t wait to taste for himself the cooking of Giovanni Grasso, the chef and proprietor.

  The premises were elegant and quiet, the diners chatting in low voices, focusing on pleasuring their palates. As always, faced with the menu I struggled to make up my mind and in the end followed the chef’s recommendations. Max and Beniamino ate with relish, starting with antipasti. I made do with a fillet of beef in a raisin, saffron, and lemon sauce, served on a bed of chickpea purée. I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol all day and was thirsty. Nowadays I confined my drinking to the evenings, but I still had too much. At least that was what Virna thought. Before agreeing to get back together with me, she had insisted on a sharp reduction in my blood-Calvados level. After the cheese course, my associates ordered desserts and then, to round things off, coffees and liqueurs. Determined to restrict myself to just one glass, I went outside to make a phone call.