The Deliverance of Evil (45 page)
“Sir, if I may, we’re dealing with something highly complex that was planned down to the last detail.”
“So you don’t think Marius Hagi could have done all this on his own?”
“I don’t know. And this might be just the start.”
“The start?” Floris shouted. “Five young women have been brutally murdered, the first twenty-four years ago, then Camarà, Colajacono, Tatò, Coppola, Pasquali—you were nearly killed yourself—and now Fiorella Romani. The start of what? World War III?”
There was no way Balistreri could reassure him. The fact that Pasquali already had his pistol in his hand while the plainclothes officer knocked at the trailer door was a real concern.
“I have to talk to Hagi again,” Balistreri said.
“He has a plan. If we want to try to save Fiorella Romani we have to play along with him.”
“What good will it do to play along with him?” Floris asked.
“Either Fiorella Romani is already dead or she will be soon. If Hagi’s got her hidden away somewhere and we don’t find her, she’ll die of starvation. On the other hand, maybe he wants us to find her. Maybe Hagi’s playing a game with us.”
“What are you talking about?” the chief of police asked, exasperated.
“It’s too complicated,” Balistreri concluded.
Floris sighed, exhausted. He’d been a well-respected man, but now he was flailing. He was chained that was sinking into on quicksand.
Evening
It was already dark when Balistreri returned to Regina Coeli for the third time. The image of Angelo with Linda was tormenting him. He brushed it aside angrily and tried to concentrate on Hagi and Fiorella Romani. But that image took him back to his worst nightmare, back to Africa in the summer of 1970.
Corvu called from Kiev to ask how things were going. Balistreri told him Hagi had confessed to everything, including the killing of Elisa Sordi and the letter O. Then he told him about Fiorella Romani’s disappearance.
“I’m coming back tomorrow. I can’t stay away any longer.”
“Okay, Corvu. In that case I’m going to ask the chief of police to transfer you to the beautiful and peaceful mountains of Sardinia immediately. You can count goats there. That should calm you down.” And he snapped his cell phone shut.
Balistreri entered the room with the public prosecutor and Morandi, who felt it was his duty to mutter some more words that Balistreri ignored completely.
Hagi appeared to have rested for the last few hours. The corrections officers who were watching him said he had eaten a little and had slept. Medical reports confirmed he had late-stage lung cancer. The doctors said he had little time to live.
“You’re tired, Balistreri. You’ve got terrible bags under your eyes. If you keep going like this you’ll die of a heart attack before I die of cancer,” Hagi said cheerfully.
“Don’t worry about me. I’d like to talk about Fiorella Romani. Is she alive?”
Hagi appeared to consider the question carefully. “I think so. Naturally that depends on how strong she is.”
The public prosecutor couldn’t contain himself. “You should be thankful that in this civilized country, where no one can torture you like Ceausescu’s hired killers tortured your brother. I only wish I were allowed to torture you.”
Hagi looked at the public prosecutor pityingly. “You wouldn’t have it in you to harm a hair on my head. You people are as spineless now as you were during the fall of the Roman Empire. The people you call barbarians are going to rape your women, steal your houses, and take over your country, while you sit and watch.”
Morandi felt moved to intervene. “Mr. Hagi, I’m begging you to save Fiorella Romani’s life. The court will take it into consideration.”
Hagi laughed. “I’ll die before I go before a judge. But I’m willing to save Fiorella Romani’s life on certain conditions.”
Balistreri bent toward Hagi. “What do you want in exchange?”
“The truth, Balistreri. It would be simple if you weren’t so incompetent.”
The public prosecutor and Morandi looked at him, disconcerted.
But Balistreri was ready for him; he knew what truth he meant.
The one I haven’t found. The one I gave up finding all these years. The one I thought to atone for by giving up on life.
“He wants me to speak to Fiorella Romani’s grandmother and reopen the investigation into Elisa Sordi’s murder. In the meantime, Fiorella could be dead,” Balistreri said. He might as well have been speaking Chinese for all the comprehension displayed by the public prosecutor and Morandi.
“We’ll do our best to keep her alive a little longer. But be a little quicker this time, Balistreri. Fiorella won’t live another twenty-four years.”
The public prosecutor cut in. “I don’t understand. You confessed to killing Elisa Sordi, Mr. Hagi. Are you retracting that statement?”
Hagi looked at them with scorn.
“I never said I killed her, just that I threw her body in the Tiber. You’re as incompetent as Balistreri here, this street sweeper in paradise. I want the truth—only the truth can save Fiorella Romani.”
The chief of police and the public prosecutor agreed to reopen the investigation immediately and contact eighty-four-year-old Gina Giansanti. Her daughter, Franca, Fiorella’s mother, told them that Gina was ill and had been living in Puglia for more than twenty years in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Lecce, her birthplace. A military airplane would be provided to transport Balistreri and Fiorella’s mother there the following morning.
. . . .
It was almost midnight when Balistreri left Regina Coeli. He had smoked at least thirty cigarettes and drunk a dozen cups of espresso. He was physically and psychologically destroyed. Keeping himself from reacting to Marius Hagi had been extremely tough. His nerves were in shreds, his thoughts roiling.
He’s kissing her right now on her terrace, where I hesitated. Next he’ll take her to bed.
. . . .
He took the walk home from Regina Coeli through Trastevere, where the chaos was greater because it was Friday night. There were cars everywhere tooting horns, music at top volume, ice cream, kids with bottles of beer walking in and out of the traffic. And yet he didn’t hear a thing—he was walking down a tunnel that had only one possible exit.
And if he carves up another girl?
This had been Linda Nardi’s question the first time they had gone out to dinner on December 30, 2005. It was time to know where that idea had come from.
Don’t confuse the investigation with your anger. Stop here, Michele, while you still have time.
But his footsteps led him toward her apartment. When he got to the main door it was a little after midnight. He looked up and saw a faint light in the windows. He still had the key she’d given him. Breathing heavily, he walked up the staircase.
Linda Nardi’s door was the only one on that floor. The lock was gleaming, evidently new. He rang the bell. He heard steps coming to the door. He was tempted to run away but remained nailed to the spot in front of the door like a man condemned to death facing a firing squad.
“Who is it?” Linda asked from inside.
“It’s me.”
There was a brief silence, then Linda opened the door but left it chained.
She looked not surprised, but sad. “What do you want, Michele?”
“We have to talk. Right now.”
He saw the vertical line furrowing her brow. She could have said no, never. Or not now, we can speak tomorrow. But that would not have been Linda Nardi.
She can leave you outside of her life, but not outside of her door.
When she took off the chain and opened the door, Angelo Dioguardi was standing in the middle of the small, softly lit living. His hair was more ruffled than usual, his eyes tired, the lines deep on his face.
“He has to leave,” Balistreri said to Linda.
Angelo didn’t wait for her reply and stepped toward toward the door. As they brushed past one another, Balistreri felt him hesitate a moment and halt as if he had something to say, a last attempt to clarify things. But it was only an exchange of silences and then Angelo left, pulling the door behind him.
Linda stared at him, arms folded. She wasn’t angry. “I’m listening, Michele.”
She was so beautiful. He had never seen her more attractive. Her blouse was buttoned almost to the neck and held the breasts he’d imagined so often but only now wanted to fondle and kiss. Her trousers, as usual, were baggy but were more intriguing precisely because of that, and he wanted to put his hands inside them, where perhaps a few minutes earlier Angelo’s hands had been.
The desire he had repressed during the months they had spent together suddenly erupted with a violent force, making him almost reel. He felt his knees buckle. He should have taken her in his arms instead. He should have told her he did not understand her, but he trusted her. He should have promised her he would do everything for her, anything at all, even without understanding. He should have. But he didn’t want to, not anymore. Linda Nardi was now only flesh and blood, a woman he desired, a woman who had sent him packing and thrown herself into the arms of his best friend.
Surprising himself, he said in a harsh voice “Who told you about the letter carved on Samantha Rossi?”
Her eyes were sad. Linda felt sorry for him, and he couldn’t stand it. “You told me yourself, Michele, the way you reacted that night in the restaurant.”
His desire added to his frustration and his frustration added to his anger, which was flowing through his veins with an effect so strong it might have been heroin.
“Bullshit! You knew. Someone told you.”
“I had my suspicions, but your reaction that night made me certain,” she said calmly.
“I don’t believe you. About anything.” He stopped himself before he cut all ties between them forever. He recognized the uncontrolled anger that the young Michele Balistreri had felt when things didn’t go the way he wanted—the anger he’d tried to bury at the bottom of the Mediterranean in the summer of 1970.
She knew what he was going to say. “Angelo doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“If someone lies about something, she’s capable of lying about everything. Did you play nurse with me to be sure I’d get better and continue looking for the Invisible Man? Did you want the scoop when I found him?” His voice was growing louder and more threatening.
“Michele, get out of your prison cell now or you’ll never get out of it.”
“I should have fucked you like an ordinary whore. So much for all your bullshit about Saint Agnes.”
She was looking at him with a different light in her eyes. She was looking at him with regret. She was saying good-bye.
“Yes, you should have. Maybe then you’d understand.”
The words themselves, her calm tone, her eyes shining in the semidarkness. He found himself as he had been thirty-six years earlier, in a place where there would never be enough remorse to find repentance.
His slap sent Linda reeling against the wall. He held her wrists together with one arm and grabbed her hair with the other, forcing her to look at him. He kissed her violently. He forced his tongue into her mouth. She didn’t cry out or offer any resistance. She was lifeless, defenseless.
It was her passivity that was the last straw, the absence of any attempt to defend herself. He ripped off her blouse and bra and flung her on the sofa. Linda confined herself to covering her breasts, crossing her arms while he took off her sneakers and pants. Then he leaped on top of her, breathing heavily from desire and fury.
“Have you already had sex tonight?”
She turned her face away and he tore off her underwear. He would have done it; he was ready. But he had to stand up to unzip his pants, and when he did, their bodies separated in the dim light. In the silence broken only by his own heavy breathing, Balistreri saw the slim figure of a seminaked woman with her clothes torn, her breasts shielded by her arms, naked from the waist down. She could have been Elisa, Samantha, Nadia, Ornella, Alina, or Saint Agnes. She could have been another woman, too, one he’d never forgotten since that last night of August in 1970.
And, as Linda had predicted, he saw the first glimmer of truth. It was only a sensation, not a real and fleshed-out idea. Incredulous, horrified, he took a step back, staggering. He crashed into a table lamp, which fell and broke, and he left the apartment in total darkness. He took advantage of it to escape into the night.
Morning
B
ALISTRERI ARRIVED AT THE
airport after yet another sleepless night. His beard was unshaven, his clothes dirty and wrinkled. He smelled of alcohol and tobacco. He wasn’t sure whether his excitement, wedded to his fatigue, was the result of going off of his antidepressants or was simply the result of how quickly things were happening now.
I don’t care. I’m going to get to the bottom of this, wherever that may be.
The last time he saw Franca Giansanti was twenty-four years ago on that wretched day when Ulla had launched herself into the air and the concierge had come back from India with her part of the truth. She was somewhat bewildered to find him in a state of total disintegration, but acted as if nothing were amiss.
During the flight to Lecce, Franca spoke through tears about her daughter, Fiorella. She was thirteen when Franca’s husband had died from cancer. Cardinal Alessandrini found a place for her in a boarding school, where they encouraged her studies. Then Fiorella went to Milan, where she graduated from the Catholic university, and recently she had begun working for a bank in Rome.
Balistreri’s thoughts wandered from Linda Nardi to Fiorella Romani—locked up without food and water in an isolated farmhouse where they would find her starved to death.
When they landed, a car with two policemen was waiting for them. They passed through Lecce’s splendid Baroque center, which was already hot in the morning sun. On the bypass they encountered the Saturday summer traffic and Balistreri ordered them to switch on the siren.
“My mother has heart trouble. We haven’t told her what happened to Fiorella.”
He remembered Gina, the touchy old concierge, devoutly religious and taciturn. “We may have to inform her in order to get her to help us.”
The car stopped outside a row of terraced houses on a quiet street in Lecce’s outskirts. Franca rang the bell, and Gina came to the door. Her severe, tight-lipped face was now wrinkled with age. The dark shadows under her eyes, her trembling, and her swollen ankles all indicated that she wasn’t in good health.
The house was full of crucifixes and photographs of Padre Pio, the pope, and Cardinal Alessandrini, as well as many photos of her daughter and her granddaughter, Fiorella: recollections of a life that was about to be shattered.
“I’m not surprised to see you, after Elisa’s mother’s suicide,” Gina Giansanti said. “Are you here to arrest me?”
“I’m here to talk about Elisa Sordi, but not to arrest you, although I suspect that twenty-four years ago you forgot to tell us something.”
“You’re only getting suspicious now?” Gina said harshly.
Franca intervened. “Mamma, did you hear on TV about that Romanian who killed the policeman and all those women?”
“Of course. They said that animal confessed to killing Elisa Sordi.”
“No, Mamma. He said he’d killed all of them except Elisa.”
The lines on Gina’s face deepened as she frowned. “What did the gypsy have to do with her then?”
“He was there at the time,” Balistreri replied. “He was working for Count Tommaso dei Banchi di Aglieno.”
“Oh, the count,” Gina mumbled with a tone that spoke of resentment that had survived for decades. “Only a man like him would give work to an animal like that.”
“It wasn’t the count’s fault—he didn’t know what kind of a man Hagi was. But please try to remember. Was there something you didn’t tell us at the time?”
“No,” Gina Giansanti replied firmly. “There’s absolutely nothing I didn’t tell you.”
Balistreri looked at Franca. She was biting her lip.
“Mamma, this is very important. I want you to swear on Fiorella’s life that you’re not keeping anything from Captain Balistreri.”
With the kind of contempt and authority that only a Southern Italian mother could muster, Gina Giansanti said, “How dare you ask me to swear on Fiorella’s life.”
“If you lie, Fiorella will die,” Franca replied.
Balistreri saw that threat transfigure Gina. There was no limit to the pain that Marius Hagi was able to inflict on his victims even from inside prison, using Balistreri as his blunt instrument.
“I don’t understand, Franca,” she said. All of a sudden she was an old trembling woman with a heart condition.
Franca burst into tears. “That man kidnapped Fiorella and is holding her somewhere, Mamma. And he says he’ll let her die if you don’t tell us the truth.”
Gina Giansanti looked as if she might pass out. “Oh, my God. Lord have mercy upon me.” She hugged her daughter and wept silently.
Balistreri watched the two women cry. Their bodies distorted with pain; their bony hands clutched each other’s shoulders. He remembered them embracing like that on a rainy morning outside the Via della Camilluccia gate, while Cardinal Alessandrini held Gina Giansanti’s hands in his.
He clearly remembered the sound of Teodori’s cup as it shattered on the floor tiles, the end of Michele Balistreri’s dreams of power, and the beginning of his farewell to life.
Elisa Sordi left while I was getting into the taxi to the airport, at eight that evening.
He cursed himself for having believed her, for having given up thinking and reacting, then and for the next twenty-four years, and for not having the courage to follow his instincts and his convictions, for not remembering Christ’s words to the Jews, when he said that faith comes before morality for God’s children, and also Cardinal Alessandrini’s words about divine and earthly justice.
How many times since then had Gina Giansanti remembered that untruth and then cursed herself for telling it? What debt had she paid with that lie?
Balistreri knew he had little time. “Gina, you have to tell me when you really saw Elisa Sordi for the last time.”
Gina Giansanti lifted her sorrowful face to him. “Elisa called me on the intercom just before five, before you and Angelo Dioguardi arrived. I went up to collect the paperwork from her to take to Cardinal Alessandrini. She was glad to be finished. That was the last time I saw her, poor child.”
There was no time for Balistreri to ask any more questions.
“I have to leave immediately,” he said.
The old woman embraced him, and for a moment she pressed her face against his chest. “I’m begging you, Captain, please save my granddaughter.”
In the car, Balistreri looked at the marks that Gina Giansanti’s tears had left on his jacket: damp rivulets right near his heart. They brought back ugly memories.
Twenty-four years earlier, in a residential complex that had seemed like paradise, a group of people above suspicion had deceived inexperienced and unconcerned police officers with lies and cover-ups.
Balistreri thought again of poor Teodori and the inglorious end to his career, and of all the deaths caused by that shameless lie. The truth that everyone was looking for had been buried under it for twenty-four years.
All of them, the investigators and those under investigation, had contributed to leaving a horrendous crime unsolved and had put in motion an infernal mechanism whose victims were still piling up.
Afternoon
He spent the return trip rereading the Elisa Sordi file. Gina Giansanti’s false testimony had turned the case upside down, raising suspicions again against Manfredi and all the other possible guilty parties associated with the Via della Camilluccia residential complex. By saying that she had seen Elisa leave the office at eight o’clock, Gina Giansanti had given alibis to everyone. With the World Cup final beginning at eight thirty and the celebrations afterward, everyone had a friend ready to swear they were somewhere else.
Now they were coming back to the point of departure, to the time card Elisa had stamped at six thirty. Between six thirty and eight o’clock, no one had a solid alibi: certainly not Valerio, Manfredi, or Paul. The count had gone to see the minister of the interior, and it would be necessary to reconstruct the details of that visit. Cardinal Alessandrini had gone to the Vatican, which would be difficult to check. And there were other people to add to the list: Hagi, Colajacono, Ajello—and who knew where they had been on July 11, 1982, after such a long time had passed?
The airplane landed in Rome early on Saturday afternoon. Balistreri crossed the blazing hot city by taxi; it was empty of its residents, the streets full only of tourists. Anti-immigrant graffiti was everywhere. He saw that the Pakistanis, who had once raced up to cars stopped at intersections to offer to squeegee their windshields, now approached cautiously. Passing by the Termini train station, he noticed that the Africans selling counterfeit goods had disappeared. Not a single Romanian was out. They had vanished into thin air.
When he arrived at the office, Piccolo and Mastroianni were waiting for him. They said nothing about his appalling appearance. The air conditioning was on and the blinds were half-closed. Balistreri immediately noticed the changes on the blackboard, the latest questions and answers were written in capital letters.
. . . .
What does the letter R mean? And the E? Is that the right order? OR BEFORE? AFTER THE V AND THE I OR BEFORE THE O AND THE A.
Why did Colajacono want to take Marchese and Cutugno’s shift? Because he knew Ramona might come in about Nadia.
And how did he know that? Mircea told him.
Why was Colajacono already tired on the morning of December 24? BECAUSE HE’D BEEN AT BELLA BLU ON THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 23.
Why was Deputy Mayor Augusto De Rossi serviced by Ramona? In order to blackmail him and make him change his vote.
Who blackmailed him? Mircea and Colajacono. AND HAGI.
On behalf of whom and why? THE SAME PEOPLE AS IN DUBAI.
Is there an Invisible Man in the Samantha Rossi case? Who is he? There is, AND IT’S MARIUS HAGI.
Is he the same person who phoned Vasile to ask for the Giulia GT? YES.
When was the Giulia GT’s headlight broken? IT DOESN’T MATTER.
Where was Hagi between six and seven on the evening of December 24 when Nadia was taken away? And then after nine? FIRST COLLECTING NADIA, THEN KILLING HER.
Same question for Colajacono and Ajello. WE DON’T KNOW, BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER.
Where was Hagi the night Coppola and the others died? WE STILL DON’T KNOW.
Same question for Ajello. WE DON’T KNOW, BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER.
Were Mircea and Greg guilty of murder in Romania? And who were the two victims? THE MEN WHO KILLED HAGI’S BROTHER.
How did Alina Hagi die in January 1983? SHE WAS RUNNING AWAY FROM MARIUS HAGI.
Why did Colajacono want Tatò with him, even though he knew he intended to spend time with his sister? HE WAS TOLD TO HAVE HIM THERE. IT WAS A TRAP SO THAT HE’D HAVE NO ALIBI.
Why did the Giulia GT slow down when the driver saw Natalya? HAGI TOOK HER FOR NADIA.
What was the relationship between Ornella Corona and Ajello and his son before her husband died? SHE ALREADY KNEW THEM.
Who suggested that she take out a life insurance policy on her husband? AJELLO.
How did Sandro Corona really die? IN AN ACCIDENT, PERHAPS LIKE THE ONE IN DUBAI.
Why did Camarà die? Because he’d seen Nadia with someone in the private lounge on December 23.
Who owns ENT? SAME PEOPLE IN DUBAI WHO WERE BLACKMAILING DE ROSSI.
WHERE WAS HAGI WHEN ORNELLA CORONA DIED? HE WAS THERE TO KILL HER.
WHERE WAS AJELLO WHEN ORNELLA CORONA DIED? HE WAS THERE JUST BEFORE.
WHAT DO THE LETTERS R, E, V, I, O, AND A MEAN?
WHAT WILL THE NEXT LETTER BE?
WHAT’S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HAGI, BELLA BLU, DUBAI, DE ROSSI, ETC.?
IS FIORELLA ALIVE? WHERE IS SHE?
. . . .
The writing was Piccolo’s, but Balistreri recognized Corvu’s style. “Where did he call from?” he asked Piccolo brusquely.
“He’s back but he stayed home. He says that if you don’t want him in the office, he’ll take some personal days and spend them in Rome.”
Balistreri decided to ignore the tone of disapproval in Piccolo’s voice. This series of calamities had forged an indissoluble bond of solidarity between these deputies who were otherwise very different.
“Tell him to come in immediately. There are some key questions missing.”
Piccolo smiled and immediately sent a text message. Balistreri went up to the blackboard and added his latest questions.
WHY NADIA IN PARTICULAR?
WHOSE VOICE DID SELINA AND ORNELLA HEAR ON THE TELEPHONE?
DID HAGI DO EVERYTHING BY HIMSELF?
. . . .
Corvu arrived fifteen minutes later, looking contrite.
“What did Natalya say?” Balistreri asked him.
“That I should come back here, finish what I’d started, and then come back to Ukraine. If you don’t send me off to count goats, that is.”
“I wouldn’t want to inflict you on the goats, Corvu.”
He told him about the new details gleaned from his visit to Gina Giansanti. Corvu stared at the latest questions on the blackboard.
“So, there’s definitely a link to Elisa Sordi?” Piccolo asked.
“Yes, it all starts there, with Alina Hagi and the church of San Valente. And Hagi wants to know the truth. Why?”
“To get his revenge on someone who injured him. We’ve seen how cruel and vengeful he is. He waited years to get even with his brother’s killers.”
“Hagi played a role in Elisa’s death,” Balistreri explained, “and Alina learned about it from Ulla, I think. That’s where the problems between them started, and then she fled on her moped and died.”
“And in his sick mind, Hagi blames everything on Elisa’s murderer,” observed Piccolo. “For him, it’s as if the murderer killed Alina, too.”
Balistreri said, “Correct, but if he knew for sure who it was he would have taken his revenge already—he’s not lacking in means or imagination. But Marius Hagi knew that Gina Giansanti had lied. That’s why her granddaughter, Fiorella, is his latest victim. But did he know back in 1982, or has he only recently come to know?”
“How could he have known?” Mastroianni asked.
Balistreri thought about Mastroianni’s question. The answer was obvious.
Hagi knew that Elisa was already dead at eight o’clock that evening.
