The Monster of Florence (24 page)

“What?”

“Are you all right? You sound a bit distracted.”

“I’ve just woken up. When
will
you be coming home, then?”

The arrest of Flavio. He remembered that. He’d been more or less awake when he’d read that. He dropped it on the rug and spread some more papers to separate them and find the chapter heading he’d read last. He was sure it had been a chapter heading that had stuck in his
mind and that he’d been unable to decipher the text below it. That was it … then Ferrini had appeared so he must have fallen asleep. He hadn’t actually appeared but he was there, behind the tall reeds, and the child had lifted a pale hand in the dark and pointed.

“There was a noise …”

“It’s all right. I’ll take you home.”

“And will you give me a piggy back?”

“Get moving!”

There had been another voice, and he felt the small hand, cold with fear, slide itself into his own. He had started walking, not wanting to alarm the child, but he realized that in this total darkness he’d never manage. He didn’t even know where the child lived.

“Will my mum come?”

“No, she’s dead.”

“But tomorrow will she come?”

He’d been carrying the child then but he was so tiny and cold he weighed nothing at all. And why didn’t he cry? They had plodded along in the darkness and Ferrini’s voice had come from behind the reeds.

“You’ll never find the right road. There’s a page missing.”

A page missing. It was just a dream, then, caused by his letting the papers fall as he fell asleep.

“I’d better go.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Salva?”

“Of course I am. But if I don’t get moving I’ll be late. Besides, I haven’t had coffee yet.”

“Ah, that’s what’s wrong with you.”

“Ring me tonight. Say hello to the boys. Are they enjoying themselves?”

“They’re all right, but they stay up late every night, so they’re still fast asleep.”

He could feel the tiny hand in his, as cold as death.

“Tell them …”

“What shall I tell them?”

“Tell them … nothing, tell them to have a good time.”

He stood for a moment after hanging up, staring about him with his huge eyes, his forehead creased in a slight frown. Then he made for the bedroom.

“Ouffa!”

He wasn’t cut out for reading. A good night’s sleep would have been more to the point. Even so, he gathered up the piles of papers from there and the sitting room and took them through to the kitchen with him.

There he got the coffee on and sat down at the table to begin sorting through the muddle he’d made. He didn’t even think of glancing out of the window to check on the weather which was what he always did in the mornings. The first part of the document was in order since he’d been wide awake when he’d read it. Some of the chapter leading up to Flavio’s arrest had got muddled, but it was all more or less together and he put it back in order and set all the chapters, up to and including that one, aside.

“Right …”

Coffee first. It was bubbling up. He turned it off and poured himself a tiny cupful.

The muddle wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought, it was just the bit he’d read last that was in confusion, the pages as muddled as his memory of them. He scanned them as he put them in order, separating dream and fact as he went.

Amelio Vargius, Flavio’s nephew and his accomplice in some recent crimes, including an arms theft for which Flavio was wanted at the time of his arrest, said Flavio was unfairly arrested for the ’68 murder, that he was always being accused unjustly when other people got away with things they’d really done. It transpired that Amelio’s relationship with his real father, Silvano Vargius, was so negative that he had been to all intents and purposes adopted by his uncle, so it was understandable that he should go out of his way to defend him. This same transferral of affection likewise explained why Silvano was so very bitter against his brother Flavio, confirming that he was Belinda Muscas’s lover at the time of the murder. He admitted that he, too, had had an affair with Belinda but that it had
ended long before Flavio took up with her. He confirmed stories of Flavio’s violent jealousy whilst failing to confirm Flavio’s alibi.

A young man by the name of Salvatore Angius, a friend of both Silvano and Flavio, recounted that he had been in prison with Sergio Muscas twice, in 1969 and 1970, and that Sergio had told him he was innocent and Flavio had murdered Belinda and Lo Russo. Other witnesses claimed that Flavio Vargius had a Beretta 22 and was often seen practising shooting with his nephew in the woods near his home. He could produce no alibi for the times when the couples had been murdered.

During 1981 extensive checks had been made on the registration numbers of cars being driven by men alone in the countryside at night in the hope of tracking down solitary Peeping Toms. These numbers were looked at again now and though none could be traced to Flavio, one did turn out to belong to the nephew Amelio who might well have lent it to him.

Enquiries revealed that Flavio was a habitual Peeping Tom from the same band as Elio Sassetti. Bullets and cartridges were then recovered from the woods where he had been seen shooting. They were Winchester 22-calibre with an H impressed on the base, the ammunition used by the serial killer.

The warrant for Flavio Vargius’s arrest was signed on 6th November, 1982.

The Marshal put aside this chapter and the next, imagining the frustration of the investigators when that little house of cards had been blown down. Not only had Flavio been checked by psychiatrists and found to be perfectly normal, but the bullets found in the woods turned out to have been fired from a quite different gun; the one he used, as he had quite truthfully told them, was for playing target shooting with his nephew. And if that weren’t enough, while they still had him in prison in September 1983, Herman Mainz and Ulrich Richter were shot and killed in their camper with the Beretta 22 L.R.

So much for Flavio. At which point, after a visit from his brother which must have gone badly, Sergio suddenly accused
him
, producing as evidence a note in his brother’s hand which said:

“Keep accusing Vargius. You have to protect the family.”

There should have followed a report on the investigation leading to Fabio’s arrest, but the Marshal couldn’t find it. If he remembered rightly, Fabio had some pretty weird sexual habits and an alarming collection of knives which he claimed were for his hobby of carving cork. None of it had come to anything because they’d had to release him after the next murder in Vicchio. Where was the thing? That must have been the missing page he’d dreamt about, perhaps aware of having dropped it as he fell asleep. He ran it to earth at last under the television and put it back in the pile.

“Even so,” muttered the Marshal as he went off to the shower, “he was in up to his neck in that sixty-eight job with Sergio, though nobody will ever prove it now.”

He wasn’t feeling as tired as he had a right to. Whatever the reason, it was encouraging. And even more encouraging was the thought that all being well, this would be the last day of their much-publicized search of the Suspect’s house. He’d had enough of that.

“I’ve had enough,” the Marshal said.

“What about you, Bacci?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then I’ll finish it.” Ferrini forked the last slice of salami on to his plate.

They were in the back of the little bar where they regularly ate breakfast and where four tiny tables were set each day for cheap lunches cooked by the barman’s wife and her mother. He kept one table for them by arrangement and they went there in relays. The other three tables were occupied by workmen from the sausage factory. The salami presumably came from there. There was no menu. If you didn’t want the meat they’d prepared you could ask for an omelette instead. There was always pasta with either meat or tomato sauce. Today it was meat sauce. The barman’s wife set their three bowls down.

“Everything all right?”

“Fine … you can take it.” Ferrini popped the last scrap of salami on to a piece of bread and let her remove his plate.

“In a perfect world,” he went on, continuing the discourse that the last slice had interrupted, “everybody’d be in uniform—well, not exactly in uniform but identifiable. The Monsters of this world ought to go about with knives hanging from their belts and have green faces and little horns so when you caught one you could say, ‘Ah! A Monster!’ I remember a chap I arrested once. Burglar. He went about Florence wearing a striped T-shirt, driving a little truck with ropes and ladders on the back and a blonde gangster’s-moll-type girl beside him. And when he was on the job he’d wear a black mask.”

“But he’d surely have got caught,” protested Bacci, looking at the Marshal to see if Ferrini was just having them on.

“He did.” Ferrini wound a generous forkful of spaghetti. “All the time. Spent more of his life inside than out, but he didn’t mind that. Part of the job. He just wanted to be a burglar. The trouble with this case is that even if you pick the right man you’d have a job proving it without the gun.”

“They always confess,” Bacci offered. “That’s what I’ve read. They enjoy dodging and teasing and playing the investigators, but once the game’s over and reality steps in they confess.”

“Well, that’s as may be, but I don’t think we’re in any danger of reality stepping in here, eh, Guarnaccia? Did you read that stuff?”

“A lot of it. I’ve still some to go. Did you read it when it was first published?”

“I haven’t read it—not all of it; I’ve skimmed through it. I knew already what was in it. Being at Headquarters I couldn’t help but know what was going on from the men on the job. Have you got to the missing page yet?”

The Marshal stared at him.

“Second to the last chapter?”

“You mean … there really is a page missing? I don’t think—”

“No, no. Second to the last chapter. It’s headed: ‘The Missing Page.’ That’s when things got interesting, you’ll see. Now then”—he picked up the jug of red wine—“Bacci? Give me your glass.”

He poured the wine and pushed it back. “Get this down you and don’t take life so seriously. It’s never worth it. Tell you what, though,
I’ll be glad if we really do finish the job today. I should have thought, in the circumstances, they could have done without emptying the poor bastard’s wine vat. I think even I’d have cried. Right, what’s it to be? The breaded veal cutlet or an omelette?”

“I thought an omelette because—”

“Your diet. But you’re about to remember how bad eggs are for your liver. You’re all liverish in your family, you told me so yourself this morning. So: three veal cutlets and a nice green salad. Signora? We’re ready for you!”

It seemed as though they really would finish today. The Marshal and Ferrini were in the tiny bedroom of the daughter’s flat. From the window they could see the piazza and its little church. The young woman was not present. Her name was still on the doorbell but she no longer appeared to be living there.

“Where is she, do we know?” the Marshal asked as he moved a few clothes about in the nearly empty drawers.

“There’s a question,” said Ferrini, grinning. “We do but we don’t. She’s being ‘protected’ from the journalists.”

“I was wondering …” The Marshal closed the bottom drawer of the dressing table and walked over to the window. “It struck me as funny and I’ve been meaning to mention it to you.”

“Eh? What’s funny?”

“I don’t know … this business of this young woman suddenly deciding to bring an action against her father. It doesn’t sound right to me.”

“Does anything in this whole business sound right to you?”

“No … no, it doesn’t but, after all, this was before and—Well, it sounds all right on the surface but I never heard of such a thing. I mean, she’s grown up and she no longer lives at home. Can you imagine her getting up one morning and saying, ‘Well, it’s a nice day: I think I’ll go and report my father for raping me from when I was nine.’ She can hardly get two words out about it now, three years later. She’s desperately embarrassed, she doesn’t want to talk. She’s frightened.”

“That’s true. She’s certainly frightened.”

“Well, it doesn’t ring true to me. I’ve been meaning to mention it to you for a while but what with one thing and another … Then, last night, reading about Flavio Vargius, it struck me.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“Nothing. But when they thought he was the Monster and he disappeared they needed a warrant so as to get hold of him fast and investigate him.”

“And?”

“And they didn’t have any real evidence to warrant arresting him as the Monster. The judge’s report said something like, ‘A visit to his wife Valeria resulted in her reporting him for domestic violence. They arrested him for that and were able to keep him inside. Then another murder happened …’ ”

Ferrini stopped dragging the mattress off the bed and turned to look at the Marshal. “I see … Right. You mean they’d already chosen him as the Suspect. He went to prison and another murder, for one reason or other, didn’t happen, so they felt safe.”

“Not just that. They’d made him into a monster. You’ve heard the people in the village, read the articles in the paper—and if we’re honest, we’ve said it ourselves: what does it matter if he’s not guilty? The murders have stopped and given what he did to that girl …”

“It’s true. You’re right. But that’s a pretty clever move for an imbecile like Simonetti, I’d have thought.”

“He’s not pulling the strings, though, is he? He’ll go down if this show doesn’t come off, but I doubt if he’ll get the credit if it does.”

“That’s true, too, only—I’m being the devil’s advocate here—they couldn’t actually force the girl to sign, could they? Or force her to give evidence. You’ve seen what she’s like.”

“I’ve seen that she’s frightened. I just don’t know why. The barman—where we have lunch—he said something one day … something like she’d told his wife she’d
had
to sign, that otherwise she would have gone to prison.”

Ferrini shrugged. “But she’s completely off her head. I suppose they could have got the story out of her and then, once she realized
what it meant she tried to back out. It’s one thing confiding in a friendly employer, another having to testify in court. They might have come on a bit strong with her in terms of, ‘You told us this story and if you don’t sign it looks as if you were lying to us.’ Something of that sort might have happened, but I can’t see anything more than that in it. Local Marshal’s probably known her all her life, knew how to handle her.”