A Florentine Death (28 page)

'It won't be easy,' she said at last. 'I can't promise anything. But I'll try to help you
...
if you help me with the dessert!'

12

'Simple, isn't it?' Mike Ross said. 'It looks quite innocuous, like some joiner's instrument.'

They were standing in front of the Judas Cradle, a wooden pyramid supported by a tripod and surmounted by an iron ring suspended on ropes above the point of the pyramid.

The prisoner would be hung by the belt with his feet tied, above this sharp point. By means of the rope that secured him to the ceiling, he would be lowered onto the point so that it penetrated his anus — or vagina in the case of a woman.

'There's also a more subtle use,' he explained, as if the illustrations and captions accompanying the object in the exhibition at the Museum of Criminology were not enough. 'The victim was hung in such a way that he was forced to stay awake, because as soon as he relaxed his muscles he would fall onto the point of the pyramid just as if he had been dropped - and with the same results! In fact, it was also known as 'the wake'. It must have been devastating, not only physically, but psychologically as well. Of all the exhibits here, this one must have been the most humiliating, don't you think''

Valentina did not reply. She was astonished at the extent of his fascination with the horrific depths to which man's cruelty

could go. The Inquisitor's Chair, a rough wooden armchair bristling with spines even on the armrests, the Heretic's Fork, two small forks facing each other that would be brought closer together at the level of the neck and the chest, the famous Virgin of Nuremberg . . . One after another, the objects paraded before her stunned eyes. In vain, she tried not to imagine the sufferings of the men and women subjected to these obscene tortures over the centuries.

The whole thing made her nauseous.

'Let's get out of here, please.'

'Hey, kid. I didn't know you were so impressionable.' 'Let's
go.'

Humouring her, he took her on a tour of the enchanting medieval town, in search of a gift that would make it up to her and show her the pleasanter side of life. He found what he was looking for in a little shop near the Piazza della Cisterna, not far from the museum.

It wasn't the usual tourist trap full of mass-produced trinkets, but a shop run by a young woman who made beautiful necklaces, bracelets and earrings interweaving stones with laces of waxed thread and flax. He bought Valentina two necklaces: one of green and purple crystals and one of large oval ivory-white Bohemian glass pearls. They were a perfect match for the clothes she had chosen for the occasion: an aubergine-coloured ribbed woollen sweater and a Turkish skirt that stopped just above the knees, with two zips at the front. One of the zips was half open, leaving part of her thigh bare.

It was midday, and Mike suggested they start back, and stop somewhere along the way for lunch.

Fifteen minutes' drive in the Porsche, with the hills gliding by and the olive groves shining like silver in the sun, cleared Valentina's head. She had lost her appetite after the visit to the museum, and had thought she wouldn't ever get it back, but now she was starting to feel hungry.

Mike Ross parked outside a somewhat anonymous seventies-style building half hidden by a petrol pump. A large round sign read
Ristorante Latini.

They went in.

There were three rooms, a large one just past the entrance, and two smaller ones, one at the back and the other to the left. The larger room was fully booked, and a waiter led them to the one on the left, which had a large window looking out on a garden.

Mike let Valentina take the seat facing the window and sat down opposite her. Are you hungry?' he asked. 'Only a little.'

'That's a pity. They say the food here is special. It's been highly recommended to me.'

Their first course, the
pappardelle al sugo,
lived up to expectation.

'Delicious,' she said, despite herself.

'I shouldn't have taken you to see that exhibition, should
I?'

'Well, it wasn't really my kind of thing . . .' She felt ill at ease. The fact was, she had been feeling uncomfortable ever since he had dampened her enthusiasm by greeting her that morning with a quick peck on the cheek. In the car, they hadn't spoken at all. He had put on Bjork's latest CD, which she liked too, and they had listened to it all the way from Florence to San Gimignano.

The grim exhibition of torture instruments had not improved her mood.

'To think I devoted a whole article to it,' he said.

'How was New York?' Valentina asked, changing the subject.

'Same as usual. Work, work and more work.'

They both fell silent, at a loss what to talk about.

'Mike . . .' Valentina said at last, trying to meet his eyes through the sunglasses. She realised that he was staring at something over her shoulder. She turned, but couldn't see anything except anonymous people having animated conversations and, beyond that, the door to the kitchen, over which there was a display of calendars and the insignia of the police, the Carabinieri and the anti-Mafia brigade.

'What is this?' Mike asked the waiter bringing their second course. 'A police canteen?'

'Oh, those?' the waiter replied. 'It's just that they often come in here to eat. In fact, the famous Superintendent Ferrara is here today'

'I see,' was all Mike said in reply, emphasising his American accent.

'This is a great opportunity for you,' Valentina said eagerly, once the waiter had gone.

'To do what?' Mike asked.

'To meet him. Maybe interview him. A journalist from a big foreign newspaper - he's bound to be flattered. It could be material for your book.'

'What book?'

'The one about the Monster of Florence. Didn't you want to write one for the American public?'

'Like hell I did! That was just something I said. Why should the American public care about some insignificant Italian provincial policeman? I don't even care about it myself. Nasty stories about uncivilised people. I'm an aesthete - if there's no art involved I'm not interested.'

It was clear he had no desire to talk any more about the subject. Again, Valentina felt ill at ease.

On the way out, she spotted the famous Ferrara sitting at a table in the corner next to the wine cabinet with a striking blonde woman of about fifty. She thought he looked more interesting in real life than on TV.

She felt uncomfortable again when, on the way back to Florence, he said, 'That friend of yours . . . the one in Bologna 'Cinzia?'

'Yes, that's the one.'

What did Cinzia have to do with anything? She had tried not to think about her since coming back to Florence. She had wanted to concentrate only on him. She was making a desperate effort to dispel the ambiguity of the situation in which she found herself. She wanted to be free of the past, to see things clearly. She had even pulled the zip of her skirt higher than before, leaving her left thigh completely uncovered, and now here he was, dragging her back to the very thing she wanted to forget.

'What about her?' she said, a bit too abruptly.

'Are you very . . . close?'

'We've known each other since we were children.' 'That's not what I meant.' 'What
do
you mean?'

'The other day, when I came to Bologna
...
I got the impression you

'What? Why don't you just come out with it?'

But he didn't reply. He was driving fast, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

So that was what was eating him. He'd understood, he'd seen them together, he'd caught them just after they'd got out of bed, at midday. Oh, God!

'Is there . . . anything between you?' he asked at last, hesitantly.

'What are you talking about? We're friends, I told you. We rented the apartment together. Actually, it was our parents who rented it for us. They know each other. We've all known each other for years.'

He said nothing, clearly unsatisfied with her answer.

'What do you want to know?' she went on in exasperation. 'If Cinzia and I sleep together? Well, what if we do? It's none of your business. Anyway it's different between girls. It happens sometimes, but it doesn't mean anything.'

'I'm sure it never happened to my mother,' Mike declared unexpectedly.

'What the hell has your mother got to do with it?'

He fell silent again, and stayed that way all the rest of the journey.

The Porsche rumbled along the drive and stopped outside the front door.

'Tell me the truth,' he said, standing beside the car. Are you a lesbian?'

Valentina had got out of the car, too. She looked at him angrily, on the verge of tears. 'Fuck you, Mike Ross!' She turned and ran towards the door, repeating in her mind,
Fuck you! Fuck you!

That night, the noises on the floor below returned, insistently.

She slept restlessly, and dreamed of Mike and Cinzia changing roles constantly, but always mocking her, humiliating her, excluding her. She even saw them fucking, but couldn't figure out which of them was the woman and which the man. They each seemed to play both roles. Sometimes, they fucked like women in heat, and sometimes like effeminate men. Every scene, every shameless, obscene image was accompanied by moans and groans.

She woke up with a splitting headache.

She didn't want to go downstairs. She waited until she heard the sound of the Porsche driving away, and only then left her apartment and went down.

She knocked at the door on the ground floor and asked Nenita to make her a cup of coffee.

'Strong,' she said. 'Very strong. I have a headache.'

She didn't continue, as it was clear Nenita didn't understand a word.

They were in the kitchen again, and Valentina's eyes fell on the key rack. Maybe, she thought, that was why she'd come down here . . .

She went closer. There it was, the smallest key, with a sign next to it that said
First Floor.

When the coffee maker emitted its triumphant gurgle, she quickly grabbed it.

Nenita was busy taking the coffee pot off the hob.

When Nenita finished her half day and left, Valentina found an excuse to phone Mike on his mobile and make sure he would not be back soon. Then she went down to the first floor and slipped the little key in the padlock, which opened immediately.

The door swung on its hinges. It was well-oiled, and didn't squeak at all.

Valentina went in.

The door closed slowly behind her and she was swallowed by the darkness.

Darkness.

When her eyes had become accustomed to it, she could just about make out half-crumbling, smoke-blackened walls in the gloom. There was a smell of old, damp ashes, like the smell of a fireplace in a house that has not been inhabited for a while.

She groped for a switch next to the door and found it. Nothing happened.

Light filtered from behind the closed windows, outlining the shutters with pale, ghostly haloes.

Driven by an irresistible impulse that overcame any residual hesitation or fear, Valentina moved forward.

She walked in short steps, careful not to trip over the heaps of rubble that lay here and there. She was moving along what seemed a long corridor. She passed the remains of two bedrooms, a room with a large, almost completely charred wooden bookcase, two bathrooms with their pipes uncovered, other rooms, other corridors.

The whole floor covered a huge space, made even larger by the ravages of the fire. Her cautious steps made a sinister echo, forcing her to stop every now and again, her heart in her throat. Then an unnatural silence would fall again over everything, and she would resume her careful walk.

At last she came to a door. The only door still intact. It was closed.

After a few seconds, which seemed to last an eternity, she pushed down the handle and went in.

A new, thicker darkness greeted her. Again she searched for a light switch, sure that this time it would work. Mike used this room.

The light came on, dazzling her with its suddenness.

Valentina looked around her.

It was a boy's bedroom, with sporting trophies, school-books, and posters and pennants on the walls. There was a bed, quite intact, against the wall on the left, and on the right a large desk with a computer, neat piles of books, and bundles of files. Beside the desk, a metal shelving unit, also full of books, and on the wall above the desk, a large poster that didn't seem to belong. It showed the insignia of the

FBI and, beneath it, the words
FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia.
Next to it was a framed photograph that showed a group of young men in T-shirts and caps with
FBI
on them. One of them was Mike, but his hair was different, longer and darker, chestnut brown perhaps. Did he dye his hair?

At the far end of the room, an armchair and a reading lamp stood beside a large French window covered with two planks of wood nailed on in the shape of an X. All the cracks were sealed with brown packing tape. To Valentina, the window seemed like an ugly blemish in a room that in every other way was pleasant and clean, and meticulously tidy.

She approached the metal shelves and looked at the books. The first two titles she saw were
Killers on the Loose: Unsolved Cases of Serial Murder
by Antonio Mendoza, and Still
at Large: A Casebook of
20th
Century Serial Killers Who Eluded Justice
by Michael Newton.

The others were all in the same vein:
To Die of Horror: A Hundred Years of Serial Killers and Crimes Told as a Novel
by Enzo Catania,
I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Serial Killers
by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman,
Serial Killer: Methods of Identification and Investigative Procedures
by Silvio Ciappi,
The Killers Among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation
by Steven A. Egger . . .

Valentina was puzzled. Hadn't he told her he wasn't interested in the subject and that he had no intention of writing a book about the Monster of Florence? If she remembered rightly, he had dismissed her suggestion out of hand. So why . . .?

She sat down at the desk.

The books here were similar to the ones on the shelves. She turned her attention to the files. As she pulled them towards her, something slipped to the floor, but she didn't take any notice of it. She was hypnotised by the letter heading on the first document in the pile:

The other documents were also from the FBI, some stamped in blue ink with the word
CLASSIFIED.

Valentina was bewildered. Who was Mike Ross? Was the journalism a cover, and was he really an FBI agent? What was he looking for in Italy?

13