The Villa Triste (12 page)

‘Porn,’ Enzo said. ‘Politely known as erotica. Probably valuable. Maybe very. I’d say, eighteenth century. It looks to be some kind of set. Maybe two. I didn’t study them.’

‘Boys?’

Enzo nodded. ‘Every one.’

Pallioti turned away from the dark etched figures, the grinning faces and flying shirt tails. He had never found pornography titillating, no matter what its date. He sighed. Sexual proclivities were people’s own, what consenting adults did together the most private and inviolate of private lives. But he knew as a policeman how often and easily the word ‘consent’ could be twisted to suit one party and not the other. He didn’t know what he had hoped to find here, but it wasn’t this. A decorated partisan porn dealer. The story was not going to read well.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s—’ But before Pallioti could finish the sentence, or the thought, the medical examiner swore from the hall.

By the time the two men got there, she was sitting back on her heels, the body rolled over, face up, beside her.

‘Dottoressa?’ Enzo reached her first.

The medical examiner looked up, shaking her head.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’

As Pallioti came up behind them he looked down and saw the old man’s face. His cheeks, obviously lean and probably usually sunken, were puffed out, making him look like a cartoon child at a birthday party, mouth stuffed with cake. The man’s eyes stared in panic through lopsided glasses. One lens was cracked. His lips were caked with something white that had spilled down his chin and onto the scrawny skin of his neck.

‘It looks like someone packed his mouth with—’ The medical examiner shook her head again. ‘I don’t know. Heroin? Cocaine?’

Enzo knelt down and touched the old man’s chin. He sniffed his finger, then, before Pallioti or the doctor could stop him, dabbed at it with the tip of his tongue.

‘Not coke.’

Looking up at them, he licked again, the pink tip of his tongue darting.

‘Salt,’ Enzo Saenz said. ‘Whoever killed him packed his mouth with salt.’

Chapter Two

Marta Buonifaccio felt something like dread as she watched the man in the dark overcoat come towards her.

He was neither tall nor short, this policeman. Nor was he ugly. Or handsome – not like the young one.
Yai.
Marta did not want to think of the trouble he must cause. Or how much fun it might be to be in that kind of trouble. That would be a pleasant thrill. Which this wasn’t. Because unless she was careful, this man walking towards her would cause trouble too, but of a much more serious kind. It was the quiet ones, she thought, always the quiet ones. Then she told herself that she had not done anything wrong. It was just men in well-tailored dark clothes. That was all. The ones who talked softly had always frightened her most.

‘Signora Buonifaccio, thank you for taking the time to talk to me.’

As a gesture, it was gracious. Both of them knew she didn’t have any choice.

‘I’ll try not to keep you too long at the moment,’ Pallioti added. ‘I realize this must have been a terrible shock for you. I will need you to give a complete statement to someone later.’

The woman nodded without lifting her eyes. The scarf she had tied over her head hid her hair, making her look curiously ageless. That, combined with a solid body that showed no signs of the frailty she had ascribed to her housemate upstairs, made it difficult for Pallioti to age her. She might be an old fifty, or a young eighty. What was apparent about her was that she was scared. Contrary to the received wisdom, Pallioti invariably found that frightened people did not fidget. They became very still. This woman was attempting to turn herself to stone.

‘Could you tell me,’ he asked gently, ‘exactly what happened, this morning?’

The question was left deliberately vague. It was always interesting to see where people chose to begin.

‘It started to rain,’ Marta said. ‘At about eleven o’clock.’ She glanced up at him. ‘You could hear it. Like drums. I came to watch. I’ve always liked it better,’ she added. ‘Winter.’

Pallioti smiled. A tiny spark of complicity lit between them. Marta looked down again, and went on.

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ she said. ‘I watched for a while. Then I came back in. Up there’ – she gestured with her head towards the stairs – ‘the second floor, left, they were cooking. So it was lunchtime. I don’t eat lunch,’ she added. ‘But I was going in, my television show is on, and there were some of those things, you know, menus and things, on the floor. So I picked them up.’

‘Who were they from?’

‘From the Chinese place down the street,’ Marta said, ‘the one they closed two years ago because of the dead rat.’ Found in the toilets, if Pallioti remembered the headlines correctly. It had caused quite a row. ‘And a taxi company. You can look, if you want,’ she added. ‘I put them in the dustbin. Which is when I saw the letter, addressed to Signor Trantemento.’

‘It was in the dustbin?’

She nodded. ‘Over there, beside the table. It happens sometimes. People collect their mail, and throw things out they don’t want. Well, they used to just drop them on the floor, which is why I got the waste-paper basket. Sometimes they get mixed up and throw out things they don’t mean to.’

‘Did Signor Trantemento do that often?’

‘No. Not often. But he was getting old, you know? So I decided to take it up to him.’

‘And the mail? How is it delivered? Does the postman have a key?’

Marta looked at him as if he were daft. How many keys would a postman have to carry if that were the case?

‘It comes into the basket, through the front door,’ she said, ‘and I put it in the mailboxes.’

‘So, you have a pass key. To the boxes?’

She nodded. ‘Everyone used to collect their own. But it got all confused. So, I don’t know, ten years ago, I volunteered. I don’t mind.’ Marta shrugged and shook her head. ‘There isn’t much more to tell you. I went upstairs. I saw the blood, coming from under the door. I tried the door and it was unlocked, so I opened it. And there he was, just inside.’

‘Did you touch him? Feel for a pulse?’

She hesitated for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘I put my fingers on his neck. He was dead. I came back downstairs, and I called you people. Then I waited.’

‘Down here?’

‘Right here. Where I’m standing.’

‘And did anyone come or go before the first policeman arrived?’

‘No. No one. It was only about fifteen minutes. The ambulance and the police, they arrived together.’

Pallioti nodded. ‘Do you have a mobile phone?’

That actually caused her to smile. A small pucker twisted her lips upward.

‘So you came all the way back downstairs to call the police?’ Pallioti asked. ‘Or did you use Signor Trantemento’s telephone?’

Again, she hesitated. Then she said, ‘I came back downstairs. I – I don’t know why. I’d never been in his apartment, I suppose. I didn’t know where the phone was, and—’ She shrugged.

And he was dead, Pallioti thought, so there was no real rush, was there?

‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘The elevator. You didn’t use that? Even when you knew he was dead and you needed to call the police?’

She shook her head emphatically.

‘And can you tell me, by any chance, if you noticed where it was?’

She looked at the grille with the crime scene tape strung across it as if Pallioti had just suggested that the elevator itself might have dashed outside and into the building next door. Then she said, ‘Oh. I see. No. No, I don’t know what floor it was on. I don’t pay any attention to it,’ she added, as if the elevator were a badly behaved child.

Pallioti reached into his pocket for a card.

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘I won’t trouble you further now, but if you think of anything you’d like to tell me—’

She took the card gingerly and dropped it into her apron pocket. He was about to turn away when he heard Enzo call his name.

‘Boss?’

Enzo dodged past the policewoman who, having placed the bollards in the road outside, was now standing guard under the portico, her neon anorak dripping onto the tiles. Enzo himself was soaked, and apparently oblivious to the fact. He had an excited clip to his stride, and was holding up an evidence bag for Pallioti to examine. In the dull light, it took Pallioti a moment to see that it was a wallet. A long black leather man’s wallet.

‘His ID’s inside,’ Enzo said. ‘Initials on it.’

He flipped the bag so Pallioti could see a brightly embossed gold G.B.T. It would be Giovanni Battiste, of course. Pallioti didn’t need to ask what the man’s birthday would turn out to be.

‘Where?’ he asked.

Enzo grinned.

‘Alley beside the house, about halfway down. I’ve had it taped off. There’s the ID, a couple of cards. Not a single banknote inside it. But there is this.’

He produced a second evidence bag from somewhere inside his jacket, flourishing it like a magician. Inside was what appeared to be a soggy piece of white paper.

‘Cheque receipt,’ Enzo said.

Pallioti had almost forgotten the things existed. Little plastic cards had taken over the world.

‘It was in the cash pocket,’ Enzo was saying. ‘He cashed a cheque for five hundred euros at twelve minutes past three yesterday afternoon. I’m going upstairs to find the chequebook.’ Enzo wheeled away and took the first steps of the staircase two at a time. ‘The safe guy’s on his way,’ he called.

His words echoed in the hallway. Watching him, Pallioti wondered what it was he had been about to ask Marta just before Enzo appeared. Then he remembered. Turning back towards her, he said, ‘Forgive me, Signora Buonifaccio, but the letter?’

‘The letter?’

Marta was staring at the spot on the landing where Enzo had vanished, turning up the next flight of the staircase. ‘Oh,’ she said suddenly, ‘the letter. Yes.’

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to Pallioti. The paper was thick, expensive. The inky writing on the envelope had run slightly in the rain, making the address look as if it had dripped. He turned it over and saw the little dragon rearing in its circle. Then he said, ‘It’s open.’

Marta looked at him. Then she nodded, nothing more than a slight dip of her head.

‘It was open when you found it? In the waste-paper bin?’

Marta’s head dipped again. ‘I thought I should check,’ she said. ‘Be certain he hadn’t made a mistake. It didn’t look like the sort of thing you’d mean to throw away.’

October 25, 2006

My Dear Signor Trantemento,

It was such a pleasure to see you, as ever, last month in your beautiful city.

I have considered the proposal you made at the time in order to help me expand my collection, and after some thought on the matter, have decided that it is by far the best course of action, since – as you pointed out – I am unable to travel as frequently as would be desirable in order to view potential acquisitions. Your proposal also, as you remarked, avoids the increasingly intrusive nature of the ‘wretched airport security’ (may they rot in Hell!). I would therefore like to empower you to act on my behalf, as I consider your taste impeccable and in close tandem to my own. I look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration in celebration of our shared enthusiasm.

Yours truly,

The letter was typed on a single sheet of paper embossed with the heading David, Lord Eppsy, Eppsy House, 15 Pont Street, London SW1. For the life of him, Pallioti would never understand why it was that the fancier a man’s title was, the less likely it was that he would be able to sign his name as anything more recognizable than a scrawl.

He pushed the letter away with a pang of disappointment. He had not seriously expected that it would hold some magical clue that would give him the name of Trantemento’s killer. But he had hoped that it might be marginally more interesting than a little billet doux between pornography collectors.

Of course, he thought, looking at it again, David, Lord Eppsy might have been referring to a shared passion for stamps. But the reference to, and damnation of, the already benighted airport security workers suggested otherwise. A pair of dirty old men, he thought sourly. That was what was disappointing him. The Englishman – well, they liked that kind of thing. But somehow it made him unhappy to think of a great hero of the liberation, one of those sharp-eyed, too-thin boys with a rifle slung over his shoulder, being reduced to this – a lonely old man living out his life in a mangy overstuffed apartment surrounded by exquisitely drawn depictions of sodomy.

He glanced at his watch. The autopsy was due to start in half an hour. He had volunteered to be present, leaving Enzo free to get his team up and running. It was a strange thing, but Pallioti, who had been known to feel queasy putting a sticking plaster on his own finger, had never found autopsies bothersome. He sometimes found it difficult to deal with the wounded living, but never the dead. They had no pain left in their eyes.

‘It wasn’t just his mouth.’

‘Oh.’

The medical examiner looked up at him and nodded.

‘Yes. Oh. There is salt in his stomach, oesophagus, and throat. Rather a lot of it. In fact,’ she added, ‘if he hadn’t been shot, he probably would have choked.’

‘So the killer made him—’ Pallioti shook his head. There was something about it. It was brutal in a way he hadn’t before encountered. He had seen stabbings, shootings, stranglings – any number of things. But there was some kind of odd, symbolic – and very personal – cruelty to this that made him cold despite the ample heating in the observation room.

‘Eat it,’ the medical examiner said. ‘Whoever killed him, made him eat salt.’

‘How much?’

She cocked her head and considered the eviscerated body that lay open on the table in front of her.

‘Quite a lot,’ she said. ‘I’ll be precise in the report, obviously. But I’d say at least half a kilogram. Perhaps more.’ She glanced up at him. ‘It must have been horrible. But people can do extraordinary things when they’re terrified.’