Bella Italia (17 page)

Hans stood up. It was an uncontrolled movement and his thigh slammed against the side of the table, sending the glasses flying through the air, landing somewhere between the other guests. In an attempt not to lose a single second, he made another clumsy move that almost made him lose his balance.

The irritated crowd grumbled around them. His father’s fumbling went completely unnoticed by Niels. He grabbed his mother’s arm. “There he goes!”

Hans could see that a man was making his way through the crowd. Slowly but surely he was increasing in speed and the distance between them became greater.

Hans didn’t waste a moment and pushed his way through the crowd of people who were all avoiding the broken glass and red wine on the ground.

“Stay here,” he called out over his shoulder. Petra needed to try to calm down Niels. But he was going to get this bastard, once and for all.

He was beginning to gain speed and zigzagged through the crowd. Not an easy task and one that earned him a lot of angry comments. He didn’t care, he barely noticed.

A family with small children blocked his way. He didn’t hesitate for a moment, turned around, and put his hand next to his mouth to amplify the sound. “Call Carlo and Arturo!” he yelled in Petra’s direction. She heard him, because she raised her hand.

He walked around the family and sped up again. The small street, filled with so many people, caused him quite a delay, but not only him. Thankfully, he could see that the white shirt was now almost standing still in the crowd.

Stay there
, he thought.
Just give me a little more time, and I’ve got you, asshole. And once I get you in my hands, I will never let you go again
.

He balled his fist when the man somehow found an opening in the crowd and made his way through. The distance between them grew again.

Now he also reached the same point where the crowd was very thick. He tried to maintain his speed as his eyes searched for an opening. When two fat men suddenly took a step back, he found it. Even though people were packed in around tables and various displays on the left side of the small street, the right side of the street seemed reasonably open. He could see children with their mothers, mesmerized by something in the window of the toy store.

He shot right past the women and children. He barely slowed down and could feel how he almost clipped a storefront. Suddenly a table with small moving toy soldiers appeared in front of him. He slammed right into it and on his way down he hit a man watching the toy display with his son. The man lost his balance, fell backward, and landed in the crowd behind him.

Hans shook his head in a daze. It had been a pretty hard blow. His right shoulder hurt and without even having to look he could feel that his body was covered in scrape wounds. It didn’t matter. He had to continue. This was just a small delay; he couldn’t let anything stand in his way.

When he got back up, a man placed his hand on his shoulder. Besides this pushy guy he could see more men shuffling toward him. Apparently, they weren’t very happy about his actions and were coming to address him.

“Let me go!” he said sternly. He shoved the hand off his shoulder, turned around, and sprinted away, leaving the angry crowd behind him.

Much to his relief, he could see that the distance between them hadn’t increased all that much. He could still see the man, which was the most important thing. He had to avoid one more display on the street but this time he made sure to watch out. Suddenly the man was gone. Hans kept running. When he reached an intersection, he slowed down and looked left and right. There! The man had gone left; now he understood how he had lost sight of him. This street was just as narrow as the last one. Because of his speed, colliding with others was unavoidable. He showed no mercy to adults, but tried to avoid any children at all cost.

“Stop that man!”
he screamed at the crowd.

“Please, stop that man! He is a criminal!”

There was a turn to the right in the street. Again, he lost the man for a brief moment. Like a bat out of hell, he kept on running, shoving his way through the crowd as he reached the turn.

“No!” his scream frightened a few of the people passing by. To his disappointment, the street changed into a zigzag pattern, making it almost impossible to keep track of the man, meaning he would have to improvise from here on. He started running again and kept looking for a glimpse of the man.

The street seemed endless. A few minutes later he reached its end point. It was a T-section, leaving two possible options. He looked to his left and to his right, but saw nothing.

The man had escaped. He had failed.

He put his back against a stone wall and slumped down on his knees. Only now did he feel how tired he was. The parts of his body that had been hit suddenly began to protest. He moved his hand over his right arm, brought his fingers to his mouth, and tasted blood. Obviously, it was a little more than a scrape wound. Though it didn’t matter to him very much. Many thoughts were shooting through his brain. The shame of having failed, wondering whether he should have gone after him alone to begin with—he should have left it to Arturo. Had Petra reached Martuccia? Did the police come into action already? He should call her. He needed to let her know how and where he was.

His fingers moved down to his breast pocket, searching for his phone, but he didn’t feel it. Shocked, he pulled on his shirt, almost causing the pocket to rip from his shirt completely. The pocket was empty. He had lost his phone on the way, most probably during his fall. He put his hands on his head and his chin sank to his chest. “Oh, no. Not the phone too. What a disaster. I’m such a schmuck.”

While drowning in his own misery and trying to prop himself up so he could walk back, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Arturo and a police officer in uniform stood before him.

“What took you guys so long?” he said in English and got up, clearly disappointed.

Hans grimaced from the pain as the doctor put the stitches in his upper arm. “I thought it was no big deal, but this hurts pretty badly.”

Petra gave him a wink. “Be brave now, darling. This is what happens when you try to be a hero.”

Hans grunted. “Some hero I am.”

“At least you tried, Dad,” Niels said, consoling him and suddenly sounding very mature. “Too bad you didn’t catch him.”

Hans mumbled something and looked around. After the fiasco in Peschiera, they had gone directly to the police station in Verona, at the request of Detective Martuccia. When they got there they were met by a female police officer, put in this office, and were told that Martuccia and a doctor would get there as soon as possible. The doctor came first, started looking Hans over right away, and began stitching him up.

The door opened. Followed closely by Tardelli, Martuccia entered. Karin wasn’t with them, though they had expected her to be there. Her presence was especially calming for Niels. But they could manage to speak English with the detectives.

Martuccia and Tardelli nodded at them and each pulled up a chair. They didn’t look very happy. Martuccia asked the doctor something in Italian, and he answered quickly.

“The doctor tells me that you have some cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. At least not anything he can see on the surface. Maybe later you should have an X-ray.”

Hans nodded. “We will see about that later. Right now all I want is a warm bath and a soft bed.”

Tardelli made a reassuring gesture with both of his hands. “You will have more than enough time for that later. First we have a few questions.”

Martuccia took over. “Why in the hell would you take such a risk? I thought we made it very clear that if you needed us, you should let us know right away. We are doing everything we can to protect you, but then you go chasing after him on your own, also bringing other people in danger.”

“I know, I know. But what would you have done if it was your child?”

Martuccia nodded. “It’s fine, but from now on I need you to stay unnoticed and in the background. It is best that you remain in your hotel. We cannot take a single risk, certainly not now that the suspect has seen you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Good. Would you ask Niels if he is sure that he saw the same exact man tonight that he saw in the bushes at Lake Garda?”

Petra translated quickly, and Niels indicated that he understood what they had said in English. He nodded decisively. “It was the same guy.”

“Okay, what is happening at this very moment is unique in the history of Peschiera. After today’s events, we have contacted the department of justice prosecutor. Our plan got the green light right away. Usually this takes hours or sometimes days between the request and permission. This shows how important this case is to everyone involved and that we see possibilities in solving the case.”

Hans looked at him questioningly. “So, what is going to happen then?”

“From this moment on, a large-scale police search is getting started. I wouldn’t call it an all-out city raid just yet, but it comes damn close. We are basically locking down Peschiera. Blockades are being set up on all the highways, so anyone leaving the city will be checked. If anyone matches the description of the suspect, they will be brought into the police station for questioning. Different teams are doing a neighborhood search all around the city, both in the streets and door to door. We are starting in the area where you lost the man, and we will broaden the circle from there to the edge of the city. We will knock on every single door.

Petra translated quickly. Niels nodded.

“What if someone isn’t home?” he wanted to know.

Martuccia put his thumb up. “That’s a very good question. When no one answers, it will be noted and the next day a police officer will come by again.”

Tardelli took over the conversation and turned to Niels. “You did a great job today, young man.”

“But … he also saw me. Now he knows I’m here. What if he comes to our hotel?”

Tardelli nodded slowly. “In order to get to your hotel you have to get past a lot of police officers first. But imagine that he does succeed, that he is very smart, then he will be making the biggest mistake of his life, because your hotel, specifically your room, is being guarded and watched by undercover policemen. If he does manage to get to your room somehow, we will handcuff him on the spot and throw him in jail.”

“Really?”

“You have my word,” Martuccia said.

“Good,” Niels answered.

The doctor grabbed his bag, said good-bye to everyone by nodding his head, and left the office.

Hans stretched out his arms. “Come on, let’s go. The prospect of a bed in my near future sounds heavenly.”

They said good-bye to the detectives. They would see them again tomorrow. When they arrived at the hotel, they could see that Niels started to relax once the undercover police officers introduced themselves to him.

Salvatore sat behind his desk and stared straight ahead. The fear had slowly subsided after the chase. He was breathing calmly and his heart had a normal rhythm again. After he had stormed back into his apartment, the fear had taken over. Lying down spread out on the floor, he had waited to see if he’d hear the man who’d been chasing him at his door. Now that he was beginning to calm down, he realized that his response had been quite ridiculous. He had almost lost the control over the situation and hoped he would never experience that again.

Meanwhile, he started thinking rationally again. He realized that danger could come from unexpected places. In order to avoid unpleasant situations like this in the future, he had to think of something. What that would be, he had no idea, but he had proven that he could be unpredictable before. He had to rely on that now. He was smarter than the rest; he had to make use of that now.

The boy at the table who had recognized him was the kid who had walked into the bushes earlier that year when he had just finished. He had motioned for him to come over, and the boy had come over. He had covered his mouth and looked him dead in the eye. He couldn’t believe how stupid he had been now.

Because the boy’s sudden appearance had startled and surprised him and made him want to go home as quickly as possible to relax, he had made the decision to let the boy live. He wasn’t the kind of killer who killed at random. Such an intense and unplanned event went against the way he worked. He could have easily killed the boy, but the risks had seemed far too great at that moment. Besides, he had assumed that his threatening manner had been enough to scare the boy into shutting up and that it had been far too dark in those bushes for the boy to ever recognize him again.

The next day he followed the story in the local media. He had realized quickly that a certain Ottavio Galli had been a gift from heaven to him. To the justice department and to the general public, Galli was the Monster of Garda. And according to the general public’s opinion, no sane human being mourned his death. Problem solved. Case solved and closed. The news had confirmed his pure genius.

But what had happened in the meantime to the boy he had let live remained a mystery to him. If the boy had talked, apparently the police could do very little with the information. If he hadn’t talked, it was even better, until now. They must have a lot of trust in him as a witness to bring him all the way back here after all this time. Given how he had seriously threatened the boy, they may have had to work very hard to get him to talk.

The turmoil in the streets below startled him and woke him from his deep thoughts. He got up and walked over to the window. A quick glance out the window made his knees buckle, and he continued to watch, hunched down and peeking over the windowsill. There was some commotion. A man was being handcuffed by two police officers. The man screamed that they had the wrong guy. The police officer that was farthest away, as far as he could see from his window, looked down at a piece of paper quickly and nodded decisively. His colleague grabbed the man by the arms and pulled him along. The curious crowd that had surrounded the three men was now scattered in a circle around them. A few seconds later the police officers and their detainee disappeared from his sight.