The Monster of Florence (33 page)

Young Noferini was on his feet, distributing photocopied maps of the area concerned. The Marshal accepted his, keeping his eyes fixed on Nenci who, on the other side of the table, was trying to maintain an attitude of someone sitting in a bar, passing the time of day. He was a tall, well-built man, a bit pockmarked. He kept one foot crossed over his knee and the foot gave away his agitation since it never stopped wagging. He held an ankle with one hand but there was no keeping it still, even so. He was pushing the back of his chair, tipping it as if to look absently at the ceiling. Once or twice the Marshal saw him purse his lips as if he were about to whistle a tune but remembered in time that this would be out of place, however helpful it might be in showing just how relaxed he was.

The Marshal wondered why this should be. Nenci’s story was that, on Sunday evening, September 9th, 1985, he had been returning by car from a weekend trip to the seaside with his family. He had described the route he’d taken home, which at one point joined a fork coming from his left, coming, to be precise, from the scene of the murder of the French couple. Travelling in his car along this road from the left had come the Suspect. They had reached the
fork at almost the same moment and Nenci had seen his face quite clearly.

All of which might or might not be true. The Suspect had been asked for an alibi for that night and produced one, but it wasn’t by any means watertight. But as far as the Marshal was concerned it was the all too familiar story. How come after five years someone appears who’s quite sure he saw the Suspect near the scene of the crime that night? It wasn’t credible.

The question had to be asked, of course. It would be asked in court.

“You waited a very long time to come forward.”

“Nobody asked me to. Besides, it was only when I found out you suspected him that I remembered.”

“If you didn’t suspect him yourself, why remember?”

“Maybe I did suspect him. I mean, I heard about the murder next evening on the news and then I remembered seeing him. On that same road. So of course I remembered. He doesn’t live round there. Why should he be there by himself? It just struck me, that’s all. Stayed in my mind, you know? I should have come forward then, I realize that. Only, you don’t, do you? Then I saw his picture in the paper and I started having a conscience about it.”

There’d been a moment’s silence. Simonetti had sat back and looked at young Noferini, who was typing all this rapidly into his computer. Perhaps that moment’s silence unnerved Nenci. At any rate, he was unable to tolerate it and, with that foot wagging faster than ever, he’d suddenly blurted out:

“All right?”

It had been a rehearsal, not an interrogation.

Now they were bringing the Suspect in. Beside him, his lawyer was fidgeting nervously. There must have been some preliminary discussion and he knew there was going to be trouble.

At this point the Marshal would have liked to look the two detectives, Di Maira and Esposito, in the face but they were seated on the other side of Simonetti who was to his right and he had no chance to even glimpse their expressions.

Ferrini, on his left, only looked bored. Still on his left, but separated from everyone else down at the end of the table, Noferini was perhaps the only one to look interested. Simonetti at least had the good sense to seat the lawyer between the Suspect and Nenci on the opposite side of the table. Both looked capable of coming to blows if an argument ensued.

An argument ensued. It took barely a minute before Nenci’s claim to have seen the Suspect that night brought his red-faced adversary to his feet.

“You lying bag of shit! You—”

The lawyer grabbed at him, but it took the carabinieri of his escort to get him down into his seat again. The debacle that followed could hardly be called a confrontation in any real sense since Nenci never looked at or spoke directly to the Suspect, who did little except accuse him, in the foulest terms he could muster, of lying through his teeth. The Marshal had never seen him so enraged, even the day they’d “found” the bullet. Since he was of the same opinion as the Suspect himself he didn’t find it very surprising, but he didn’t understand what the underlying quarrel was about.

These two had been friends; Nenci didn’t try to deny that like so many others had.

“Of course I know him or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“You went out together?”

“A time or two. When he wanted a woman I’d sometimes take him down to Florence. He didn’t like spending too much so I took him to one or two I was friendly with. They gave him a good price.”

“Didn’t like spending?
I
didn’t like spending?
I
paid for the fucking petrol every time we went out.”

“So what?”

“You great stinking bag of—”

“Sit down! And keep your voice down! Did you frequent these same prostitutes yourself, Signor Nenci?”

“Frequent them? What d’you mean by that?”

“Were you a client?”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Of course I was a client. What else do you go to a prostitute for except—”

“Thank you. Were you aware of your friend’s activities as a Peeping Tom?”

“I know nothing about that.”

“Can we return to the night in question? Can you remember commenting to your wife, or even your children, on seeing the Suspect?”

“Not that I remember, no.”

The lawyer, keeping a restraining hand on his client’s arm the while, asked permission to speak to the witness.

“You can ask what you want,” bellowed Nenci, as though he’d been threatened. “I go where I want with whoever I want and I’m not ashamed of anything I do! You ask anything you feel like but don’t imagine that I give a tuppenny shit for what he says or what you say!”

“Signor Nenci! It is for me to decide who may or may not speak here! Go ahead.”

“Thank you, Mr Prosecutor. Signor Nenci, would you mind telling me what you had for dinner that evening?”

“Eh? I don’t know. We stopped at a pizzeria, I think, on the road. We always do that when we’re coming back from the sea.”

“Thank you. What sort of pizza did you choose that evening?”

“You what? What sort of fucking stupid question is that?”

“Signor Nenci—”

“Is he off his bloody head? Is he half-witted, or what? What sort of pizza did I choose some night five years ago?”

“I was just wondering. How very fortunate then that for no apparent reason you remember seeing my client pass near you in his car. After five years.”

The lawyer looked Simonetti in the eye without further comment. Simonetti only shrugged and changed the subject. He had Noferini pass a copy of the map to the lawyer and began to explain the events as described by Nenci. But in seconds the Suspect threw off the lawyer’s grip and stood up roaring.

“You creeping Jesus, you toad! You never used that road to come
home from the sea! That’s not your road home—that’s not his road! Look at a real map, it’s miles out of his way!”

Simonetti cued Nenci in with a faint nod of his head.

“It’s not my usual road. I never said it was. I had to make a detour because my road was closed for repairs.”

At this point there was a slight disturbance at the end of the table. Noferini had stopped typing and stood up. Simonetti, without turning to him, sensed his movement and held up a warning hand. The boy came forward, even so, his face red, and a whispered conversation followed.

“I’m sorry … I left it on your desk … But surely they …”

The Marshal caught no more of it than that. Noferini was dismissed to his seat and returned there looking as mortified as a punished schoolboy.

“If we can continue: Signor Nenci, you are absolutely certain that it was the Suspect you saw that night?”

“I’ve said I saw him and I saw him—oh, there’s nothing in this world that’s a hundred percent certain, is there? I am as certain as you can be about anything. Put it this way: if there’s a doubt it’s not more than say fifteen, twenty percent. Let’s say twenty percent.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning …”

Simonetti, for once, was a little nonplussed. The Suspect, on the other hand, took his meaning, whatever it was, and rose to his feet purple with rage.

“You cretinous clown! You filthy baboon! I’ll twenty percent you, you and your shitty poisonous lies! I’ll twenty percent you!”

This time nobody could stop him. He was hysterical with rage and in the end he had to be dragged forcibly from the room, still screaming. The witness was dismissed. There was no point trying to interrogate the Suspect any more. They broke for an early lunch. And it was decided that he should remain under escort and be fed in a nearby room in the hope that he would calm down sufficiently to be further questioned on the details of his alibi for that Sunday night.

“I want one of you with him, in case he should let anything slip while he’s in that state. Ferrini.”

So there went their lunch-time chat, thought the Marshal wearily. Then he remembered how little it mattered, since Teresa and the boys weren’t coming after all, and his heart sank.

They passed a cold and wearisome afternoon going over the witness’s story on the spot, taking measurements, judging distances and, when it went dark, visibility. Only once were they sufficiently out of earshot for the Marshal to say to Ferrini: “What do you make of this twenty percent story? I’d say there was something behind it. Those two were as thick as thieves but there’s been a falling out. It sounded like blackmail, but twenty percent of what?”

Ferrini only shrugged. “God knows.”

When at last the day’s work was over and they took their separate ways he said, “I was hoping Teresa and the boys wouid be home but they haven’t set off. If you want to have a bite with me we might as well eat up the stuff I bought for them. We can talk as we eat and finish a bit earlier.”

“No, I’ll get home. There’ll be something ready. I’ll give you a call later, maybe.”

No hope of an early night, then. Ferrini seemed out of sorts but he must be tired and it had been an unsatisfactory day, even for Simonetti who must surely be wondering to what extent he’d be able to control his witness in court.

To compensate for the emptiness of the flat, the Marshal left the little television in the kitchen on after putting some water to boil for pasta, and went to have a shower. He watched what was left of the news as he ate, anxious now that there might be a rail strike or some other calamity that would prevent Teresa coming home. There was no rail strike. He switched off the television and washed up meticulously before going to his office and bringing his notes and files back to the kitchen so they could talk there. That way Lorenzini wouldn’t find a smoked-out office in the morning. The kitchen had an extractor. Ferrini still hadn’t rung. It was getting late by this time and the later it got the more irritable the Marshal became. He couldn’t do with being up half the night again. If it got past a certain hour, he was going to bed. Even
if Ferrini rang now he still had to get over here, and after that they wouldn’t get down to business until an hour of anecdotes and a pack of cigarettes later.

“Ouffa!” His patience exhausted he rang Ferrini himself.

“I had a few things to do, you know how it is. We’ll have a chat some other time.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong.” His tone said clearly that something was very wrong indeed.

The Marshal thought of Di Maira’s watchful eyes and then said, “Has somebody said something to you?”

“We’ll talk about it another time.”

“Not over the phone …”

“No, no, no! I don’t give a toss if my phone’s tapped. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’m just sick of wasting my time, that’s all. There’s never going to be a proper outcome—I’m talking about a judicial outcome, am I making myself clear? With Flavio dead we’ll get nowhere unless it’s to work the thing out for our own satisfaction. And I’ll tell you straight, I’ve no interest in that. I’ve better ways in life of finding satisfaction, you know what I mean? I’d rather spend time with my family. I’m not like you, Guarnaccia. When you get your teeth into something you can’t let go but I’ve been thinking it over … Anyway, we’ll talk about it sometime …”

“Well, if you feel like that …”

“I do feel like that. This job’s hard enough to do at the best of times. Not a day goes by without asking myself why I don’t pack it in. I mean, why bother? And on top of that to be looking for trouble …”

“Something has happened. If you want to tell me about it tomorrow that’s all right.”

“No, no, no! It’s nothing like that. You’re being paranoid again. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you. I was left alone with him at lunch time, that’s what happened.”

“The Suspect?”

“It wasn’t for more than a few minutes. We weren’t even alone, strictly speaking. The two carabinieri were just at the door having a
fag. Anyway, it just came into my head to ask him something, so I did. I said to him, listen, I said, strictly between you and me? I’m offering you a word of advice. You’ve done time for murder once, I said, but this is altogether different. If you play your cards right this could be all over in less time than you’d get for stealing a car. What you ought to do is confess the lot and plead insanity. With any luck you’ll avoid even going to trial—they can find you unfit to plead—you’ll go to some psychiatric ward somewhere for a bit with every journalist and trick cyclist in Europe coming to hear your story. Then, when the fuss has blown over, you’ll be sent quietly home because of your age and your heart condition. You want to think about it seriously because if you go to trial and defend yourself you’re a goner.”

“And did he give you an answer?”

“Not right away. He sat there looking at me sideways, dead still, like he does sometimes with that little watery eye of his. He was thinking about it, you see. He was actually
thinking
about it as a way out!”

“But … you can’t be sure what he was thinking. Didn’t he say anything?”

“Oh, he said something all right. After a long time staring at me, all of a sudden he said, ‘And what do I tell their parents?’ Well, I don’t know what that means, do you?”