The Monster of Florence (16 page)

“It’s heavy!”

“Do as you’re told. Salva?”

“Get on the train and stop worrying. I’ll phone you.”

“And you’ll shout?”

“And I’ll shout. Get on the train, it’s leaving.”

He watched it go, his heart a dead weight inside him.

On Christmas morning at eight o’clock when the journalists were sleeping off their midnight suppers, the Suspect was released from prison. There wasn’t a soul in sight at the prison gates, but as an extra precaution he was driven home in a bread van.

“Holy Mother of God, can’t we just get to sleep? If I’m dead on my feet tomorrow it’ll be worse. What am I supposed to tell them? It’s you they’re after so what am I supposed to say?”

“You’ll keep your mouth shut! You say what I’ve told you to say and then you keep your mouth shut! Stupid bitch that you are, they’ll run rings round you. You say you and me have worked hard all our lives and never done any harm to anybody. And you don’t start gabbling on, do you hear me?

“We’ve worked hard all our lives and never—”

“I don’t know anything …”

“We’ve worked hard all our lives.”

“All our lives …”

“And we’ve never done any harm to anybody.”

“Any harm to anybody. But what if—?”

“Are you listening? What if, what if! Of course they’ll keep on at you but you know nothing, right? You know nothing so you say nothing. You say, ‘I don’t know anything except we’ve worked hard all our lives and never done any harm to anybody.’ Because if you say one word more they’ll make something of it, mark my words, and they’ll write it down. They write everything down and then you’re done for. Then they’ll say, ‘His wife said this,’ and, ‘his wife said that.’ In court they’ll say it, stupid buggers that they are. They’ll do for you if you open your mouth, so watch it. They twist every word you say and if you forget something and make a mistake and then remember, they say you’re lying. So keep it short, d’you understand? ‘We’ve
worked hard all our lives and never done any harm to anybody, neither me nor my husband. So leave us in peace!’ ”

“Oh, Holy Mother of God, how will I manage … Damn, blast and set fire to them all, what am I supposed to …? Me and my husband have always … We’ve never … Mother of God …”

“I’m not getting anything … I’ve lost her …”

Young Noferini was sitting at the controls but all his efforts produced nothing more than shuffling sounds and static.

The Marshal understood nothing of the technical problems but said, “She’s crying. She’s probably buried her head in the pillow.” He got up from the edge of the stone-hard single bed where he’d been sitting and walked about a bit, out of sight of the small low window. His shoes were noisy on the uneven red tiles. It was almost two-thirty in the morning and the room was as cold as death. He’d been sitting in his greatcoat and now he fished in his pockets and put his leather gloves back on. Just their luck that the house opposite the Suspect’s had no heating. So many of these old country cottages had been abandoned by the peasant farmers for whom they’d been built and taken over by young couples escaping from the city or, as often as not, by foreigners. But not this one. Except for the television and the washing machine this one was the same as it had been for centuries and the only fireplace, huge and stacked with oak and olive wood, was in the kitchen.

“Are you still getting nothing?”

“Not a sausage. I think he must have got up … That’s him … I can’t make out a word, probably gone for a pee. You’re right, though, she’s crying.”

“No wonder. I’m going downstairs for two minutes.”

He took a shaded torch with him. The kitchen was much warmer and the remains of a small log still glowed under the ash when he blew on it. A tiny mouse, pink eared and long nosed, popped up from behind the wood pile and fixed him with a beady-eyed stare that was more annoyed than frightened. It vanished again, waiting for this out-of-hours intruder to take himself off.

He remembered his mother and her unrelenting war against
these cheeky field mice who came in each night for shelter and whatever they could find to eat. Their strict timetable had only ever been disturbed by births, deaths and marriages, never by The Law.

He found a poker and turned the glowing log over to warm his hands. Goodness only knew the extent to which their presence was disturbing the family, never mind the mice. There was a man in his fifties, still working for the countess who owned all this land but for a wage, now, not as a peasant. He hadn’t left his cottage for a flat in the village because, though his wife was all for it, he refused to leave his vegetable garden and his rabbits. His wife, Marilena, her name was, had not forgiven him for this and clearly never would. The Marshal didn’t blame her. A spanking new little flat, central heating, smooth new floors, no smoke and ash, no stairs for her tired legs to haul buckets and laundry up and down …

It would have been paradise for the exhausted woman and would surely have guaranteed her a more cheerful and probably longer old age. There was a grown-up daughter in the house, too, a lumpish-looking girl who worked in the sausage factory near the village. She rarely opened her mouth, even when young Noferini attempted to kid her along in the hope of keeping the atmosphere relaxed. The husband’s old mother had died recently, which was why there was an empty bedroom to watch from.

The family never complained. They couldn’t. Before the Suspect was released, they and all their neighbours had complained bitterly and publicly that the man was known to be dangerous and that it was outrageous they should be exposed to his presence. Their fear seemed genuine, though the Marshal privately considered it exaggerated. They could hear him shouting and raging at his wife every evening, but that wasn’t the reason so much as their knowing—now it had been in the papers—that he had murdered a man in another village forty years before. As for his being accused of being the Monster, that seemed to leave most of the villagers unmoved, except that some of them got angry because of the number of journalists and sightseers hanging about day after day. Well, that would get worse before it got better.

The pink ears appeared from behind the log again and the mouse eyed him severely. The Marshal sighed and turned away from the feeble source of heat to face the icy bedroom again.

“How’s it going?”

“He’s back in bed.”

“Lucky him.”

“I think he took some aspirin or something. In any case, he’s gone to sleep. She’s still moaning to herself but you can’t make half of it out.”

“Mother of God … What will I …? We work, we’ve always—and we haven’t done any harm, haven’t done any harm … I can’t … How can I—? What will they ask me? I’ll just say we work hard, I don’t know anything and we work … Mother of God. No … I’ll say no. They can’t make me. I’ll say … I’ll say no, I’ll walk. No, thank you very much, I’ll walk and I can walk back … I can get a bus and then walk. I don’t want them to make me get in a car. What will they do to me? I don’t want … I don’t … Police Station, oh God …”

“Good morning, signora.”

“Good morning. Can I offer you—?”

“No, signora, nothing. We’ll be going now.”

She always insisted on offering, though they’d explained over and over that they wouldn’t take anything. The husband had already left for work. They’d seen him go from the upstairs window at the same time as his neighbour, the Suspect. They had nodded to one another. Then the police car had come for the Suspect’s wife. She had let herself be put into the car without a murmur. She had been awake all night and had risen just after six. She was probably too exhausted to react. The Marshal had come down after seeing her driven away.

“Good morning, signorina.”

“ ’Morning.” She answered without looking up as she always did, then sat down in front of the breakfast her mother had set out. In silence she broke up a brioche and dropped pieces into a bowl of
caffellatte
, fishing them out again with her spoon. She kept her head
low over the bowl and her eyes almost closed. Her mother stood near the smoking fire, polishing her shoes for her.

“Here. You’ve a ladder in that stocking.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Will you be out tonight?”

“Moh.”

“I don’t want you coming home by yourself, even if …”

She didn’t finish the sentence though she clearly meant “even if we have got two carabinieri in the house.”

“Mind what I say. Are you listening?”

“Stefano’ll bring me home.”

“Well, don’t let him leave you at the villa. The road’s not that bad. A fine thing, thinking more of his car springs than of you, especially after what it said in the paper. Am I right?”

The appeal was to the Marshal who was standing silently near the door wishing Noferini would hurry up in the bathroom so they could get to the bar for their breakfast.

“It’s always as well to be careful,” he conceded without committing himself to any comment on what it said in the paper. He knew well enough what she was referring to. An article warning couples that every time the wrong man had been arrested and accused of being the Monster, the real Monster had struck again immediately. It seemed highly unlikely that it would happen this time, even if they did turn out to have made another mistake. The Monster, be he the Suspect or anyone else, had been out of action for too many years. But far be it from the Marshal to hazard any such opinion to these people. He was aware, nevertheless, that extra patrols were out on Saturday nights, especially at new moon, despite the fact that it was midwinter and all the murders had been committed in the heat of summer. Simonetti was hedging his bets. When Noferini did appear and they left, Marilena was still reading the riot act to her daughter and her voice followed them along the stony track that met the country road at the gates of a villa and then curved left towards the village. During the day a man from the local carabinieri station kept an eye on the Suspect as he worked on the land. No attempt was made to hide from him the
fact that he was being watched. All that mattered was to make sure that he removed nothing from his house before the search was about to take place. They were pretty sure he knew that his telephone was tapped, or guessed it might be, judging from some of his calls. He was unlikely to have guessed that the house was bugged.

Knowing that every crime reporter in Tuscany was camping out in the bar in the main square, they stopped at a smaller place near the road down to Florence.

“Two coffees, one brioche, one toasted sandwich, right? Or was it one coffee, one
caffellatte?
I’ve got you muddled up.”

“Two coffees.” The
caffellatte
was Bacci, the Marshal imagined. Ferrini would be more likely to add grappa to his coffee than milk.

“How’s it going?” enquired the barman, slapping two cups under the coffee machine. “Any news?” He always asked, though he never got an answer. “You know what I say?” he proceeded cheerfully—he never took offence—“It’s that girl I feel sorry for.”

“You mean his daughter?”

“That’s right. A young woman she is, by this time, though she’s not right in the head. They say they’ll have to take her away.”

“Who says?”

“Oh, people … Father Damiani, for one. He’s had it up to here. Here you are. The toast’ll take another minute. I mean to say, that little flat’s right on the square. She can’t put her head out of the door because of the journalists. Of course, there’s those that are glad enough of all the money this business has brought in.”

“Yes,” observed the Marshal, getting his drift. “I suppose you’re a bit out of it, being the farthest away from his house.”

“I can do without making money out of other people’s misfortunes. They’ve been in here, you know, all these journalists. Somebody or other from the telly as well. I say the same to all of them. Leave that girl out of it. It’s not right. She’s not responsible for what her father has or hasn’t done. She’s had enough trouble. Anyway, profit or no profit, everybody’s going to be fed up of this lot before it’s over.”

“That’s true,” said the Marshal.

“It’s like some sort of lottery. Everybody you meet it’s the same question: ‘Are you for the Guilties or the Not Guilties?’ There are people keeping a book on it—did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“One toast.”

“Thanks.” Noferini sank his teeth into it hungrily, ignoring the barman as he always did. For a young policeman like him, an enquiry meant sitting at a computer or at that contraption he’d been fiddling with this morning, not listening to gossip in the bar. The Marshal listened.

“What you can’t get into their heads, these journalists, is that nobody round here knows him. What he’s like, who are his friends, does he come in here, does he fight with his neighbours, does he drink, is he nasty, is he a pervert, is he a Peeping Tom …? And you should hear the answers they get! From people who’ve never said two words to the man, who didn’t even know he existed until they saw his picture in the paper! There was a fellow last night—on the eight o’clock news, this is, if you can believe me, spouting on for ten minutes with he’s this and he’s that, he’s terrorizing the whole village! Fat-headed twit. Anything to be on the telly, that’s what it comes down to, or to get your name in the papers.”

“Well”—the Marshal blotted his mouth with a paper napkin—“I suppose some of them must know him.”

“You suppose wrong. Pardon me, but he only moved here just before they arrested him for messing with that poor girl. All the time he’s been theoretically living here he’s been in prison. They know him as well as I knew him. Good morning, Good afternoon, Goodbye.”

“He did come in here, then?”

“A time or two, like anybody else.”

“But you weren’t frightened of him?”

“Frightened of him? That’s all rubbish to get attention. I’ve nothing against him and I couldn’t give a toss whether he’s guilty or not. If he’s guilty he goes back inside, but if they do him for it and he’s not guilty, then that’s all right by me. After what he did
to his daughter he can stay inside for the rest of his life. Best place for him. It was bad enough what he did to her, but can you imagine having to tell it all in court? She didn’t want to testify, you know, she told them. She never wanted to.”