The Discordant Note (2 page)

“Excuse me, but the area is under Police jurisdiction, do you need something, miss?”.

“No, no, I came here for Master Brandenburg, I had a lesson with him, actually I’m late ...”.

“I understand ... but unfortunately a crime has been committed in this house and then ... I'm sorry if I express myself in these technical terms but not ...”.

“Do not worry”.

The long black hair hid a good part of her face and eyes, that, however, hardly lifted off the ground during most of the short interview with the commissioner; Germano, indeed, was able to meet her green eyes only once before she headed back towards her scooter parked a short distance away and then left.

The commissioner’s thoughts were, shortly after, interrupted by the inspector walking towards the gate, drawing the attention of his superior as soon as he crossed the threshold.

“Tell me, Angelo”.

“Nothing relevant, Vincent ... Silvestri said he needs at least one hour more, maybe two, to finish it all, the house is large and I think that the things that have to be checked are too many for us, I don’t know, maybe it's better if we begin to organize the work”.

“Well ... we could also use my house as a small base, Angelo, we will avoid doing back and forth all the time, we will bring to the police station only what is strictly necessary for the investigation, maybe some unequivocal clues, but I doubt we’ll find ...”.

“But that will make your home a sort of a sea port ... are you sure that your wife is okay with it?”.

“I do not think she is actually, but she left with the guys two days ago for the holidays, I will join them at the end of the next week ... so, for about ten days, I will put my house at disposal ... even if the plans I had were far different”.

“Okay, okay, Vincent, then let’s wait that Silvestri goes out and we’ll start”.

The Police men were fortunately able to complete their preliminary work on the case before the news spread and before dozens of people did peek in front of Brandenburg’s house.

When this happened, the commissioner and Parisi were already in the living room of Germano’s house, the big table in the living room was cleared of jars, doilies and saucers of any kind and prepared to accommodate a good amount of objects and paperwork.

Silvestri let it slip only that the probable murder weapon could have been a broom handle, compatible, indeed, both with the type of wound and with the fact that a brush without its handle had been found in the kitchen.

The subsequent search inside the house, led by Germano in person, lasted less than half an hour; although the house was quite big, the furniture turned out to be quite scant, actually, so the cops found there were few places where they could find something relevant.

The room that, at least at first glance, seemed to be the one that could provide more clues was the Master’s bedroom; when they walked inside, indeed, they found some magazine or piece of clothing scattered here and there.

Germano headed immediately to a small desk facing the window, he opened one of the drawers and withdrew its content, represented by an agenda, some arrangements and a copy of the newspaper Der Spiegel, dating a few weeks before.

Inspector Parisi directed his attention to the bedside tables, which was completely empty, and to the dresser, which instead seemed to finally give a direction to turn to.

In the second drawer there were, almost maniacal arranged, four rows of hand-written letters received by Ralf Brandenburg during the last ten years, at least that was the impression both the inspector and the commissioner had at a first glance.

They were immediately taken by Agent Venditti to Germano’s home, then placed on the dining room table, already cleared of the rest.

At that point the commissioner left Parisi and two other men to continue the search as he walked outside, already with the phone in his hands.

“Hello ...”.

“Hi Piazza, it’s Germano”.

“Hello, Commissioner”.

“Hi ... listen, we're still here on the place where the music teacher was murdered and I think we will stay here at least

until mid-afternoon, you should loan me a little bit of the work I have to do, by starting to prepare the papers to get the printout and password of any e-mail account the deceased had ever  used ”.

“Okay, I need you to repeat again the name, Commissioner ...”.

“Ralf Brandenburg, have you written or want me to spell it?”.

“No, I got it; was he German, right?”.

“Yes, Piazza, though he lived in Italy at least fifteen or twenty years, you should be able to find something to work with”.

“I see, Commissioner, I will keep you updated then”.

“Okay, Piazza”.

At that point, Germano closed his cell phone and took the way up to the first floor of the house but was suddenly stopped by Parisi, when he was already halfway up the flight of stairs; the inspector, indeed, had already completed much of the work of research there and suggested to the commissioner not to spend more time up there, at least not for the moment; they already seemed to have enough on their plate, indeed.

The group of police officers, consisting of Germano, Parisi, Venditti and Inspector Di Girolamo, reached the house gate and then walked towards the commissioner’s dwelling; after closing the door behind them and placing the various objects they had taken from Ralf Brandenburg’s room on the table, Germano’s team began to inspect them one by one.

The first thing that jumped to the eye of the commissioner was the incredible amount of correspondence that the Master received and, therefore, sent.

Germano remembered he had thought before that such an amount could have been more than ten years of private communications that a single person normally receives; instead, according to the dates given on postage, those two or three hundred letters were at most a couple of years old.

The letters came mainly from Italy, except for a few greeting cards sent from the United States and some handwritten letters from Germany.

Germano picked the five letters in German and verified that the sender was always the same, a woman called Corinna; the calligraphy denoted the young age of the girl.

The commissioner started to update its notebook with some of the latest information but was distracted by Inspector Parisi.

“Found anything, Vincent?”.

“Maybe, some of these letters, five to be specific, were written in German and the writer is a woman named Corinna; I think she must be quite young”.

“I see ... do you think we should bring them to the station?”.

“Definitively, Angelo; meanwhile, also ask the headquarters to send us an interpreter of German, I'm curious to know what they say”.

“Okay”.

“What about you?”.

The first to answer was Inspector Di Girolamo.

“Nothing special, Commissioner, a lot of formal correspondence, exchange cards, contracts and agreements, and even some letters from admirers who must have thought that the best way to express their feelings was to write him a letter”.

“Okay, Giulio, keep the letters from admirers, they could turn out to be useful”.

“Okay ...”.

“Something's wrong, Giulio?”.

“No, no, Commissioner, I was just thinking that there are people who have never, and never will receive a love letter, and others, even if they are no longer so young as this Ralf Brandenburg, who instead receives many of them every month”.

“What can I say ... I would not put myself in the philosopher’s shoes ... but I think we should not be surprised if someone like the Master Brandenburg, despite having nearly sixty years, receives these letters; you see, Giulio ... we are compelled, for the work we do, having to be in contact every day with sadness and meanness of the human being, but it does not happen only to us; others, in everyday life, indeed, encounter and are forced to see the superficiality, cunning, hypocrisy and even worse, so then when you meet a person like Brandenburg, you can’t help to be fascinated, this holds true especially for women”.

“Maybe, Commissioner, it happens only because of the fame that surrounds characters like him ...”.

“I can’t be sure but ... I do not think that this kind of people, commonly known as
artists
, are able to move thousands of people only with their music, their movies or because of what they write; I think instead that they are able to do it in everyday life as well, which is, perhaps, the reason why it is so hard to forget them ... however ... we should go back to work, now ... you Venditti? Have you found anything relevant?”.

“No, Commissioner, just some letters of the same kind of those found by Di Girolamo; however, I’ll keep trying”.

“Good”.

The research of the four men went on for another thirty minutes until, glancing at his watch, Germano realized that the lunch hour was long past; he instantly suspended the work and walked into the kitchen to see if there was still something left of his meal the night before.

The search was, unfortunately,  in vain. With the thirty-five degrees in the shade, in that early afternoon of July, having a batch of fried vegetable for lunch was not exactly the best thing; the commissioner, however, resigned to the fact and convinced himself that in the end that was better than nothing. The four, then, began to fill their mouth with stuffed olives and rice balls without protesting too much.

Inspector Parisi’s eye fell on a 20x15 white envelope, and he decided to show it immediately to Germano.

“What's wrong with it, Angelo?”.

“Take a good look inside this envelope, Vincent ... I found only two letters in it, but if you look carefully just the way it is   warped ...”.

“Yeah ... it seems that it contained more than the two letters you found, are you sure you haven’t drop anything in the carry from the Master’s home to my table?”.

“One hundred per cent sure, Vincent; I even had to remove a paper clip that held it tightly sealed, to see its content, two minutes ago”.

“I see ... you've already prepared the paper clip to be sent to the scientific department, right?”.

“Of course, Vincent”.

“Well, I was leafing through what appeared to be Brandenburg Ralf’s agenda, you see ... he used to write down the things he had to do during the day and the time of the lessons, but nothing more; however, let’s take this to the station as well, without sending it to the scientific department though”.

“It will be done, Vincent”.

The verification work ended shortly before five in the afternoon; Germano and his men gathered everything that was useful to the investigation, small thing to be honest, and headed back to the police station, where another series of already planned activities were waiting for them.

Upon their arrival, they found Inspector Gianni Piazza already  dealing with the analysis of the Master’s printout and correspondence by e-mail; the shrug with which he received them meant that, at least for the moment, there was nothing so important for the investigation to be shared with others.

In addition to Piazza, they found Marco Farina, the gardener who did the call to the police station and now, as asked by Germano, was there to make his formal deposition; about this matter, Inspector Di Girolamo told the gardener to follow him in his office where he would have handled administrative tasks.

Parisi and Germano, on the other hand, headed to the commissioner’s office, in order to start and make the first hypothesis about the case.

Before starting the conversation, the commissioner remembered he had to make a phone call; that’s why, after looking inside of his phone book, he picked up the phone and dialed a number; the communication immediately seemed too disturbed.

“Hello”.

“Do you hear me, Ferrucci?”.

“Not that clear ... who is it?”.

“It’s Vincent Germano, I need ...”.

“Look ... the condominium meeting has been moved to the end of the month because of unavoidable commitments that I had”.

“Ferrucci? I'm not calling you because of the condominium but as Commissioner ...”.

“Ah ... Any problem in sending the shares?”.

“Not that I know, however, the point here is not whether you are able to do your job as building administrator or not ... a very sad thing happened this morning and I need the recording from the camera that was installed at the beginning of the road, the driveway to the residence, I mean”.

“I understand ... The company Fossi & Sons is dealing with it, you should ask them”.

“Listen, Ferrucci ... this morning, Master Brandenburg was murdered, I do not have time to go to this Fossi, you call him, tell him to prepare the video and tell him to come to the police station; on his arrival, Fossi will find all the permissions of the Judicial Authority for that video, is that clear?”.

“For God's sake ... You should give me a few minutes, Commissioner ...”.

“Excuse me, but where the hell are you?”.

“I am in Sardinia with some friends of mine, at the helm of a small boat”.

“I see ...”.

“The boat is not mine, Commissioner, however, I ...”.

“Well, for one who always acts the poor-mouth like you do, a boat, indeed, seemed too much to me”.

“My friends own it, however ...”.

“For God's sake! Take that damn ship to the port and contact your representative to Fossi & Sons, tell him to let me have that video as soon as possible, end of story”.

“It will be done, Commissioner”.

“I hope so”.

After closing the phone in a discouraged way, Germano told his colleague Parisi about the phone called he just had; he was about to add something when he was interrupted by someone knocking on the door.

The commissioner invited Agent Fiorini to enter and make them aware of what was happening.

“The interpreter’s here, Commissioner”.

“Well, then, Angelo go with him into your office and show him everything we have, if he asked for a copy of the letters to examine them later, just allow him to make a copy, but hold the original”.

“Okay, Vincent, I’ll come back downstairs later and let you know something more”.

“Okay, see you later then”.

After that Inspector Parisi and Agent Fiorini left, the commissioner was left nothing to do but wait, something that he did not like that much, to be honest, but that he found himself forced to do.