The Master of Knots

by Massimo Carlotto

  ‘We could really have done without that dickhead of a cop wasting our time,’ Rossini fumed, as we walked back to the scooter.

  ‘We gave him plenty of time to print our faces clearly in his memory.’

  ‘He won’t say a word; he has too much to lose.’

  ‘Better not take any risks. It’s time we headed back to Padova.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Beniamino remarked, pulling on his helmet. ‘My guess is that Guarnero knows a lot more than he’s letting on.’

  ‘You want to go on tailing him?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m curious to see what he has in mind.’

  Guarnero emerged from his hotel at about seven-thirty and went into a rosticceria, where he listlessly consumed a pizza slice and an orangeade of a most improbable color. Then he got back in his car and drove slowly, one eye riveted to his rear-view mirror, obviously afraid he was being followed. He went twice around the same roundabout in an effort to shake out anyone trying to tail him, but Rossini deftly avoided falling into that trap. The cop then led us to the San Saba district and parked his Punto in a position from which he could keep an eye on a modest little detached house. The area was almost deserted. Every now and then a car drove past, and of the few pedestrians about, most were walking their dogs.

  About twenty minutes later, the street was suddenly lit up by the headlights of Jacovone’s white Jaguar. It sped past the house, then turned up the first side street. Guarnero’s Punto didn’t make a move. A couple of minutes later, we noticed two people walking towards the house: one of them was Jacovone, the other was a short, thickset man. The short guy pulled out a set of keys and opened the armored front door after disarming the intruder alarm, and the two men disappeared inside. Guarnero had done us a favor. He had led us straight to the headquarters of Jacovone’s illegal porn-trafficking operation.

  Rossini walked over to Guarnero’s Fiat Punto.

  ‘Out you get.’

  Guarnero leapt out of his skin. He hadn’t been expecting to see us there. He thought he was pretty smart but was really just an ordinary guy blinded by his lust for revenge. ‘Get out of here,’ he hissed, opening his car door.

  ‘Otherwise you’ll do what, call the police?’ I said.

  ‘Hand over the gun,’ Beniamino ordered.

  ‘No way.’

  Rossini used his left hand to grab the cop by the throat and push him up against the car and his right one to relieve him of his handgun. He checked it was loaded, then tucked it into the top of his trousers, covering it with his shirt. ‘Now, let’s go and have a chat with our American friend.’

  ‘You’re both mad. Besides, it’s not him I’m interested in. I want the Master of Knots.’

  ‘And you hope to get to him by tailing this mafioso? With your innate talent, a lifetime won’t be long enough.’

  Old Rossini climbed over the gate and jumped down into the garden while I dragged the cop over to the intercom. I pressed the buzzer several times in quick succession.

  ‘Who is it?’ someone asked in a heavy Rome accent.

  ‘Police.’

  Nothing happened. After a few seconds we heard a noise like a door being kicked in. Then silence. Finally Beniamino opened the front door. As we stepped inside, I saw Jacovone and his associate lying on the floor, their hands clasped behind their heads.

  ‘I caught them out back as they were trying to run away. This “godfather” here was even armed,’ he said, displaying a short-barrelled thirty-eight-millimeter handgun.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jacovone barked in a tough-guy voice.

  Rossini gave him a kick in the ribs. The Italian-American curled up in the fetal position. ‘Fancy one, too?’ Rossini asked, glancing at Jacovone’s sidekick. The short guy shook his head. ‘We’ve come about the S and M videos,’ Rossini went on. ‘You are advised to cooperate.’

  ‘If you’re planning to steal them . . .’ Jacovone began.

  That earned him another kick in the ribs. ‘Easy,’ the little guy said. ‘If you’re not the police, we can come to some arrangement.’

  ‘Give us the goods and we’ll go,’ I lied.

  Jacovone and his sidekick led the three of us down to the cellar, through a heavy-duty bulletproof door, and into a room that, though not very spacious, was extremely neat and tidy. We used packing tape to tie Jacovone and the short guy to a couple of metal chairs. The video cassettes were lined up on some metal shelves alongside a security cupboard.

  ‘What’s inside?’ Rossini asked.

  Jacovone said nothing but his accomplice wasted no time. ‘The master copies and some cash. Jay’s got the key.’

  I searched Jacovone and found his keys on his belt. The cupboard contained roughly thirty videos. I didn’t count the money, I just stuffed everything into a sports bag I found under a table.

  ‘That’s all there is,’ Jacovone said. ‘So you can be on your way.’

  I shook my head. ‘First we need to have a little talk. We want to know who supplies you with this material.’

  ‘I know nothing about that,’ the short guy said eagerly. ‘I’m just in charge of editing the videos and making the copies.’

  ‘So you’re the artist in this outfit,’ I said.

  ‘Jay’s the one with the contacts.’

  ‘If you know nothing, there’s no point keeping you alive,’ Beniamino remarked.

  The little guy fell apart. ‘Tell them, Jay! These guys are going to ice me.’

  Rossini hit him on the nose with the gun barrel and the pain made him pass out. Rossini turned to Jacovone. ‘Who is the Master of Knots?’

  ‘Before I say anything, I want some guarantees.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘Look, we’re not in America here. And, most of all, we’re not the Feds. There’s nothing to negotiate over. You talk or you die.’

  At that moment we heard a stifled howl. Spinning round, I saw Flavio Guarnero looking at some photographs he had found in a drawer. I went over to him and recognized Helena, Antonina, and Docile Woman. They were ‘publicity’ shots, taken from videos. Guarnero was ashen-faced and his eyes were bloodshot. He was clasping a photo, which I took from him. It showed a naked woman who had been tied up and was staring at the lens despairingly.

  ‘Is that your sister?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Marisa,’ Guarnero replied in a faint voice.

  It was all over in a split second. Guarnero grabbed a pair of scissors from the table and lunged at Jacovone, stabbing him first in the chest and then in the throat. Old Rossini grabbed the cop by the shoulders and managed to pull him off the American, then slapped him a couple of times and tore the blood-streaked scissors from his hands. By this time, however, Jacovone’s body was in spasm as blood gushed from his carotid artery, and he was dead in under a minute. Beniamino and I took a good hard look at each other. It was entirely our fault: we had failed to take sufficient account of Guarnero’s emotional state.

  The cop now burst into tears. He was covered in blood, from the crown of his head to the tips of his shoes. ‘My God, what have I done?’ he was starting to mumble.

  Rossini gave him another hard slap. ‘Shut up, dickhead.’ He then approached Jacovone’s accomplice. He placed the barrel of the gun to his heart. ‘Are you sure you know nothing?’ he asked calmly.

  The little guy was too terrified to speak and just shook his head. Rossini pulled the trigger. The noise was ear-splitting. The man died at once. Rossini then pointed the Beretta into Guarnero’s face.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  ‘He’s out of his head. If we let him go, he’ll run off to his colleagues, spew out the whole story, and we’ll end up doing life.’

  Guarnero looked lost and was babbling incomprehensibly. He had no idea of the danger he was in.

  ‘Look. As soon as he’s calmed down a bit he’ll realize it’s in his interests to keep quiet. He
has a wife and children.’

  Beniamino’s arm seemed frozen. ‘It’s too dangerous. I can’t take the risk.’

  ‘Don’t kill him. At least, not yet. Let me try talking to him.’

  He shifted his focus from the sights of the Beretta and stared at me, then threw the safety catch and lowered the weapon. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes, just the time I need to build a bonfire to obliterate our fingerprints. If after that he’s still not thinking straight I’ll kill him.’

  I shoved Guarnero out of the cellar and made him climb the stairs to the ground floor, then dragged him into a long-abandoned and filthy bathroom and pushed him into the tub. Rust-colored water from the shower-head mixed with the blood washing off his face and clothes. He grabbed my arm. ‘I’ve killed a man,’ he whispered. ‘I must tell my colleagues.’

  ‘You’re going to die if you keep talking crap,’ I yelled. ‘Think of your wife and kids. And your sister, while you’re at it. If you tell anyone what happened here, the whole business with the videos will come out. You’ll destroy yourself and your family.’

  He started crying again. He was really pissing me off. Maybe a bullet in the head wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I summoned all my energy for one last try, aiming the jet of water straight into his face and taking his breath away. ‘Listen hard, Flavio,’ I said, turning off the tap. ‘What you do now is you go back to your hotel, pay the bill, join your family down in Calabria, and keep your mouth shut about this.’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ he murmured.

  ‘You should have thought about that before coming to Rome. It’s a little late now. In a couple of minutes, this building’s going to burn and the cops are going to find nothing but two carbonized corpses.’

  ‘Or maybe three,’ a voice said at my back. Rossini was holding Guarnero’s gun in his hand.

  ‘Did you hear what the man said?’ I asked Guarnero, shaking him by his shoulders. ‘Are you going to come to your senses?’

  ‘All right, all right, I won’t say a thing.’

  Beniamino walked up to him and placed the gun to his head. ‘If you change your mind and land us in the shit, I swear to God I’ll kill your wife and children.’ He then removed the magazine and handed the gun back to its rightful owner. ‘And just remember that your police-issue weapon has killed a man. The bullet’s still in the body.’

  I helped the man climb out of the tub, and a puddle of dirty water formed at his feet. ‘There’s a nice fire smouldering away in the basement,’ Rossini told us. ‘We’d better get out of here.’

  ‘Did you get their cell phones?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit. It didn’t occur to me. Well, it’s too late now.’

  As soon as we arrived back at the house, I undressed and went and took a shower. Beniamino knocked on the glass of the shower stall and handed me a glass of Calvados. ‘I don’t kill women and children,’ he said, seriously.

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  ‘I just wanted to scare him, reinforce what you’d told him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But it was still a mistake leaving him alive.’

  ‘He won’t talk.’

  ‘I don’t think he will either, but it was still a mistake. Unprofessional, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah. But I don’t give a shit.’

  ‘You saved the life of a cop.’

  ‘The life of a family man.’

  He raised his glass of iced vodka. ‘Here’s to health, then.’

  Max the Memory was expecting us around lunchtime, but the Florence-Bologna section of the autostrada, where it crosses the Appenines, was congested with trucks and cars crammed with holidaymakers, so I phoned to warn him we might arrive late. We listened to the radio news. Not much had remained of the two bodies in the cellar, given that Beniamino had built a pyre of videocassettes and laid the corpses on top. Plastic burned better than most things. The fire-fighters, however, had no doubt as to the criminal origin of the fire. It made a brief item. As a story, it just didn’t have the right ingredients to get worked up into that summer’s real-crime thriller, the kind of thing you chatter about under the beach umbrella between a dip in the sea and an ice cream.

  Beniamino switched to a station playing 1960s Italian pop hits, and we listened to Don Backy telling us a story all about a so-called easy girl, the ragazza facile of the title. For the nth time, I took a look over my shoulder at the sports bag in the backseat. It contained the S and M video masters we had found in the security cupboard. And the money—something in the region of forty million Italian lire in banknotes of various denominations. It would help finance our hunt for the Master of Knots and his gang. If that poor idiot Guarnero hadn’t carved up Jacovone, by this time we would have all the information we needed. Instead, we were back where we started. Old Rossini was hoping to find some helpful clues in the videos, but in my opinion it was a total waste of time. These guys were too smart to make any obvious mistakes.

  Once we had passed the exit for the Bologna bypass, the traffic started to free up and Beniamino decked the accelerator. After a while he suddenly punched the steering wheel and fired off some expletives.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘That was a stupid fucking mistake I made, forgetting to take those bastards’ cell phones. They could have been useful.’

  ‘You’re getting old.’

  Rossini gave me a filthy look. ‘It was just a joke,’ I said hurriedly. ‘In any case, I doubt if Jacovone would have used his cell phone to contact the Master of Knots. It was bound to be tapped.’

  Max had prepared a cold meal: smoked ham, melon, pasta salad, and, to follow, ice cream. For once I really enjoyed my food.

  ‘I went out the other evening with that woman I fancied,’ Max said.

  ‘The vegetarian?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And now you’ve gone off her?’

  ‘Let’s just say I have reservations. I don’t like the way she laughs.’

  ‘Then drop her,’ Rossini advised in a fatherly manner. ‘You can’t just talk politics after you’ve had a fuck.’

  After coffees, we moved into the study to watch the videotapes, which turned out to be the unedited masters without any soundtrack. We began with the ones in which Helena had ‘acted.’ There were six in all. In the first one she was strapped to a table and gang-raped. All of her assailants wore masks but they clearly fitted the descriptions that Docile Woman had given us. In the other five videos, she was tied to a wooden structure hanging from the ceiling, and every now and then a masked and hooded man in a white tunic pulled on some ropes, thereby operating a system of pulleys. Helena looked like a string puppet. Each new position that Helena’s body was made to assume corresponded to a new S and M fantasy and a different form of bondage. The terrified expression on Helena’s face was very different from the look she had worn in the photograph Giraldi had shown us. Her mouth was held wide open by a rubber ball and her whole face was contracted in pain and terror. The hands of the man working the ropes moved with speed and assurance. He could be none other than the Master of Knots. In the final video, Helena was suspended in midair with her legs held wide apart and horizontal. It was as though she sat dangling in space. The Master of Knots then approached her and took off his tunic. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the mistake of removing his mask. We were, however, able to observe him more closely.

  He looked about fifty. He wasn’t tall but he was powerfully built, no doubt the result of assiduous weight lifting in some gym. The tattoos covering his chest and back all depicted geisha girls tied up in a variety of ways—the kind of tattoos that Yakusas, Japanese mafiosi, generally go for. He had an erection. He penetrated Helena. Once he had withdrawn, he forced her to look at a rope flower, then he smeared his hand and forearm with a whitish cream. Helena had clearly understood what he was about to do and started to flail, but th
e ropes held her almost immobile. The Master of Knots then moved around behind her. The camera followed him, and we saw a close-up of his fingers as they insinuated their way in between her buttocks.

  Max hit the remote and the picture vanished. ‘I need a drink of something.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘That guy’s a dead man,’ Rossini announced. ‘But it won’t be a bullet that kills him.’ He knocked back the corn vodka I’d brought him in a single gulp. ‘Let’s finish seeing this shit.’

  Max’s supposition had been right: Helena’s death was a mistake. When he extracted his arm from her body, the Master of Knots was visibly annoyed with himself. Equally clearly, the deaths of Antonina Gattuso and Master Mariano were decided in advance. Giraldi was literally impaled, still conscious when the tip of the lance emerged from his shoulder. Antonina, after being savagely whipped and covered with boiling wax, was subjected to the same torture as Helena. The Master of Knots offered her a rope flower, too. According to Max, it resembled a carnation.

  We watched the rest of the videos. There was one other that showed a woman with long black hair being fist-fucked to death—the Master of Knots clearly had a predilection for that particular torture technique. The other videos contained S and M porn performances extorted by blackmail. Apart from Docile Woman and Antonina, four other women were involved.

  We remained for a long time in silence, drinking and smoking. It wasn’t easy to say anything that made sense after what we’d witnessed. We’d never seen an S and M torture video before, let alone snuff. We were deeply shocked.

  ‘What are we going to do about the families?’ Max asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We can’t make them spend the rest of their lives wondering what on earth happened to Helena, Antonina, and Giraldi. It would be cruel.’

  Rossini lit a cigarette. ‘But we can’t tell them the truth either.’

  ‘It would be a nice gesture. But it’s too dangerous.’