The Whisperer (30 page)

“It wouldn’t be the first time…it’s happened in the past. In Gloucester, for example, with Fred and Rosemary West.”

The criminologist quickly ran through the case of the serial killer couple. He a bricklayer, she a housewife. Ten children. Together they kidnapped and killed innocent girls after forcing them to take part in their erotic parties, before burying them in the back garden at number 25 Cromwell Street. One of the girls who had ended up under the paving stones was the couple’s sixteen-year-old daughter, who had probably dared to rebel. Two other victims were found in other places that could be connected to Fred. Twelve corpses in all. But the police stopped digging at the little gray house for fear that it would collapse.

“Perhaps the woman is looking after the sixth child.”

Goran seemed very intrigued. But he didn’t want to let himself get carried away with enthusiasm.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mila: it’s an excellent hunch. But we’ve got to check it out.”

“Will you mention it to the others?”

“We’ll take it into consideration. Meanwhile I will ask one of our men to take a look at the pictures and films taken at the fair.”

“I could do that.”

“Fine.”

“There is one more thing…It’s something I’m curious about. I’ve tried to find the answer on my own, but I haven’t got there.”

“What is it?”

“In the decomposition process, a corpse’s eyes undergo a transformation, don’t they?”

“Well, usually the iris discolors over time…”

Goran stopped to stare at her, he couldn’t work out what she was getting at.

“Why are you asking me?”

Mila took out of her pocket the picture of Sabine that her mother had given her at the end of her visit. The same one that she had kept on the passenger seat all the time while she was driving back. The one that she had found herself staring at after she had got over her fear of being followed, and which had aroused her doubt.

There was something wrong.

Goran took it and looked at it.

“The corpse of the little girl that we found in the Kobashis’ house had blue eyes,” Mila pointed out. “Sabine’s eyes were
brown
.”

In the taxi, Goran hadn’t said a word. After she had told him her discovery, Mila had seen his mood suddenly change.

“We are looking at someone we think we know everything about, when we don’t know anything about him at all…” He thought for a while. “He’s played us for fools.”

At first, she had thought the criminologist was referring to Albert. But he wasn’t.

She sat through a quick sequence of phone calls to people including not only the members of the team, but also Tommy’s babysitter.

“We’ve got to go,” he had said to her, without further explanation.

“What about your son?”

“Mrs. Runa will be here in twenty minutes, he’ll go on sleeping.”

And they had called the taxi.

The lights were still on at Federal Police headquarters. In the building there was a bustle of policemen changing shifts. Almost all of them were busy with the case. For days now, they’d been involved in following up phone calls from eager citizens, in search of the sixth girl’s prison.

After paying the taxi driver, Goran headed for the main entrance without even waiting for Mila, who had trouble keeping up with him. Climbing the stairs to the Department of Behavioral Sciences, they found Rosa, Boris and Stern waiting for them.

“What’s happening?” asked Stern.

“We need clarification,” Goran replied. “We have to see Roche straightaway.”

He found the chief inspector in the middle of a meeting of senior Federal officers that had already been going on for a number of hours. The meeting was about the Albert case.

“We need to talk to you.”

Roche got up from the armchair and introduced him to the others: “Gentlemen, you all know Dr. Gavila, who has been working with my department for years…”

Goran whispered in his ear: “Now.”

The polite smile faded from Roche’s face.

“You must excuse me, gentlemen, some information has come in that requires my presence elsewhere.”

“This had better be important,” said the chief inspector after throwing the file down on the desk in his office.

Goran waited for everyone to come into the room before closing the door and facing Roche down.

“The corpse found in the Kobashis’ sitting room didn’t belong to the third missing girl.”

The firmness of his tone left no room for denial. The chief inspector sat down and clasped his hands in front of him.

“Go on…”

“This isn’t Sabine. It’s Melissa.”

Mila remembered child number four. Even though she was the oldest of the six, she was physically immature for her age, which could have confused the investigation.
And she had blue eyes.

“Go on, I’m listening…” Roche said again.

“This can mean only two things. That Albert has altered his modus operandi, because until now he’s been letting us find the girls in the order in which they were abducted. Or else that Chang has made a mistake with his DNA tests. I think the first hypothesis is almost impossible…and with regard to the second, I actually think you ordered him to falsify the results before giving them to Mila!”

Roche turned purple. “Listen, Doctor, I’m not going to stay here and listen to your accusations!”

“Where was the body of child number three found?”

“What?”

The chief inspector was doing everything he could to seem surprised by this assertion.

“Because it plainly has been found, otherwise Albert wouldn’t have continued with his sequence by moving straight on to number four.”

“The corpse had been in the Kobashis’ house for over a week! Perhaps, as you say, we should have found child number three first. Or perhaps we’ve simply found the fourth one first! And then Chang got muddled, what do I know?”

The criminologist stared straight into his eyes. “That’s why you gave us twenty-four hours off after what happened at the orphanage. So we wouldn’t be under your feet all the time!”

“Goran, I’ve had enough of these ridiculous accusations! You can’t prove any of the things you’re saying!”

“This is because of the Wilson Pickett case, isn’t it?”

“What happened then has nothing to do with that, I assure you.”

“But you don’t trust me anymore. And perhaps you’re not entirely wrong…but if you think I’m losing control of the investigation, I’d rather you said it to my face, without playing political games. You say so, and we’ll all take a step back, without causing you any embarrassment, and continuing to shoulder our responsibilities.”

Roche didn’t reply immediately. He held his hands clasped under his chin, and rocked back and forth in his armchair. Then, very calmly, he began: “Honestly, I really don’t know what you’re—”

“Come on, tell him.”

It was Stern who interrupted him. Roche glared at him.

“You stay right where you are!”

Goran turned to look at him. Then he stared at Boris and Rosa as well. He immediately realized that everyone knew, apart from him and Mila.

This is why Boris was so evasive when I asked him what he did with his day off,
she thought. And she also remembered the slightly threatening tone her colleague had used with Roche outside Yvonne Gress’s house, when he refused to send him inside before the special units. The threat implied blackmail.

“Yes, Inspector. Tell him everything and let’s get it over with,” Sarah Rosa cut in, backing up Stern.

“He can’t be left out, it’s not fair,” Boris added, nodding towards the criminologist.

It was as if they wanted to apologize to him for keeping him in the dark, and that they felt guilty for obeying an order that they considered unfair.

Roche let a few more seconds pass, then looked in turn at Goran and Mila.

“Fine…but if you say a word about this, I’ll ruin you.”

A
shy dawn was spreading across the fields.

It barely lit the outlines of the hills that followed one another like massive waves of earth. The intense green of the fields, freed from snow, stood out against the gray skies. A strip of tarmac slipped among the valleys, dancing in harmony with the movement of the landscape.

With her forehead resting against the back window of the car, Mila became aware of a strange sense of tranquility, due perhaps to fatigue, perhaps to resignation. Whatever she discovered at the end of that short journey would no longer surprise her. Roche hadn’t given much away. After telling her and Goran to keep their mouths shut, he had locked himself away in his office with the criminologist for a face-to-face confrontation.

She had stayed in the corridor, where Boris had explained to her why the chief inspector had decided to exclude her and Gavila.

“He’s effectively a civilian and you…well, you’re something like a consultant, so…”

There wasn’t much else to add. Whatever the big secret that Roche was trying to protect, the situation had to stay under control. So it was vital to avoid any leaks. He’d made sure that the only ones who knew anything were those who were directly under his command, and who could be intimidated for that reason.

Apart from that, Mila hadn’t found out anything. And she hadn’t asked any questions, either.

After a few hours, the door to Roche’s office had opened, and the chief inspector had ordered Boris, Stern and Rosa to take Dr. Gavila to the third site. Although he didn’t name her directly, he had allowed Mila to take part in the expedition as well.

They had left the building and gone to a nearby garage. They had taken two saloons with anonymous plates that couldn’t be traced to the police, to avoid being followed by the journalists who were constantly parked outside the station.

Mila had got into the car with Stern and Gavila, deliberately avoiding the one in which Sarah Rosa was sitting. They had traveled several miles; she had tried to get some sleep, and had actually got some. When she woke up they were nearly there.

It wasn’t a very busy road. Mila noticed three dark cars parked by the side of the carriageway, each with two men on board.

Sentries,
she thought,
to keep rubberneckers away
.

They drove along a high red-brick wall for about half a mile, until they reached a heavy iron gate.

The road stopped there.

There was no bell or entry phone. There was a TV camera attached to a pole and as soon as they stopped, it sought them with its electronic eye. It remained fixed on them. At least a minute passed, and then the gate began to open. The road continued, disappearing almost immediately behind a hump. There were no other houses to be seen beyond that boundary. Just an expanse of field.

It was at least another ten minutes before they saw the spires of an old building. The house appeared in front of them as if it was emerging from the bowels of the earth. It was vast and austere. Its style was that of the early nineteenth-century country house, as built by steel or oil magnates to celebrate their own good fortune.

Mila recognized the stone coat-of-arms that dominated the facade. It contained an enormous R in bas-relief.

It was the home of Joseph B. Rockford, the president of the foundation of the same name who had put up a reward of ten million for the discovery of the sixth child.

They passed the house and parked the two saloons near some stables. To reach the third site, on the western rim of an estate of several acres, they had to take some electric cars that resembled golf carts.

Mila got into the one driven by Stern, who started explaining who Joseph B. Rockford was, his family origins and his vast wealth.

The dynasty had begun over a century before, with Joseph B. Rockford I, the grandfather. Legend had it that he was the only son of an immigrant barber. Not satisfied with scissors and razors, he had sold his father’s shop to seek his fortune. While everyone at the time was investing in the new oil industry, Rockford I had had the lucky hunch of using his own savings to set up a company to drill artesian wells. Considering that oil is almost always found in the least hospitable parts of the world, Rockford had concluded that the people who were busy getting rich quick would soon lack one essential commodity: water. And the water extracted from the artesian wells, sprung from the main deposits of black gold, was sold at almost twice the price of oil.

Joseph B. Rockford I had died a billionaire. He had died shortly before his fiftieth birthday of a rare and devastating form of stomach cancer.

Joseph B. Rockford II had inherited a vast fortune from his father, which he had managed to double by speculating on everything that had come within his reach: from Indian hemp to real estate, from cattle breeding to electrical goods. To crown his rise, he had married a beauty queen who had given him two lovely children.

But shortly before he reached the age of fifty, he had showed the first symptoms of the stomach cancer that would carry him off in less than two months.

His oldest son, Joseph B. Rockford III, took over his huge empire at a very young age. His first and only act of command was to get rid of the irritating Roman numerals attached to his name. Since he had no financial goals to achieve, and since he could afford any kind of luxury, Joseph B. Rockford led a purposeless existence.

The family Foundation had been the idea of his sister Lara. The aim of the institution was to provide less fortunate children with healthy food, a roof over their heads, adequate medical care and an education. The Rockford Foundation had immediately received half of the family inheritance. In spite of the generosity of the arrangement, according to their advisers’ calculations the Rockfords would have enough wealth to live comfortably for at least another century.

Lara Rockford was thirty-seven, and at the age of thirty-two she had miraculously survived a terrible car crash. Her brother Joseph was forty-nine. The genetic form of stomach cancer that had struck down first his grandfather and then his father had also appeared in him just eleven months before.

For thirty-four days, Joseph B. Rockford had been in a coma, waiting to die.

Mila carefully listened to Stern’s account as the electric car bounced over the bumpy ground. They were following a path that must have formed naturally over those two days, because of the continuous passage of vehicles like these.

About half an hour later they reached the edge of the third site. In the distance, Mila made out the busy white overalls that enlivened every crime scene. Even before getting there to see with her own eyes the spectacle that Albert had prepared for them this time, it was that sight that distressed her most.

There were more than a hundred experts at work.

A tearful rain beat relentlessly down. As they made their way through the workmen removing large quantities of earth, Mila felt uneasy. As the bones were unearthed, someone cataloged them and put them in transparent bags to which labels were attached, so that they could be put in the appropriate boxes.

In one, Mila counted at least thirty femurs. In another, pelvises.

Stern turned to Goran. “The child was found around about here…”

He pointed to a fenced-off area, covered with plastic sheets to protect it against the weather. On the ground an outline of the body was drawn in latex. The white line reproduced its shape, but without its left arm.

Sabine
.

“She was lying on the grass, in a state of advanced deterioration. She had been exposed for too long for the animals not to sniff out her presence.”

“Who noticed she was there?”

“One of the gamekeepers who check the estate.”

“Did you start digging straightaway?”

“First we brought the dogs, but they couldn’t smell anything. Then we flew over the area in a helicopter to check for any irregularities in the layout of the terrain. We noticed that around the point where the body was found the vegetation was different. We showed the photographs to a botanist, and he confirmed that those variations might indicate that something was buried beneath it.”

Mila had heard of this before: similar techniques had been used in Bosnia to find the common graves containing the victims of ethnic cleansing. The presence of bodies underground affects the vegetation above, because the land is enriched by organic substances produced by decomposition.

Goran looked around. “How many are there?”

“Thirty or forty bodies, who knows…”

“And how long have they been down there?”

“We found some very old bones, others seem to be more recent.”

“Who did they belong to?”

“Males. Most of them young, between sixteen and twenty-two or twenty-three. In some cases this was confirmed by analysis of their dental arches.”

“This puts everything else in the shade,” said the criminologist, already thinking of the consequences when the story got out. “Roche won’t try and cover this one up, will he? With all the people here…”

“No, the chief inspector is only trying to put off the announcement until everything’s satisfactorily resolved.”

“That’s because no one can work out what a common grave is doing in the middle of the Rockfords’ lovely estate.” He said it with a hint of indignation that escaped no one present. “But I think our chief inspector has an idea…what about you?”

Stern didn’t know what to say. Nor did Boris and Rosa.

“Stern, one thing…were the bodies found before or after the reward was announced?”

The officer admitted, in a faint voice: “Before.”

“I suspected as much.”

When they got back to the stables, they found Roche waiting for them beside the Department car that had brought him there. Goran got out of the golf cart and walked resolutely towards him.

“So, am I still involved in this investigation?”

“Of course! Do you think it’s been easy for me to keep you out of things?”

“Not easy, no, given that I’ve discovered everything. I’d be more inclined to say it was
convenient
.”

“Meaning?”

The chief inspector was starting to get annoyed.

“That I would already have identified the perpetrator.”

“How can you be so sure of his identity?”

“Because if you hadn’t thought Rockford was the man really behind all this, you wouldn’t have gone to so much effort to keep the story hidden.”

Roche took him by an arm. “Listen, Goran, you think it’s all up to me. But it isn’t, believe me. There’s so much pressure from above, more than even you can imagine.”

“Who are you trying to cover up for? How many people are involved in this filth?”

Roche turned and nodded to the driver to leave. Then he turned back towards the team.

“Fine, let’s get things clear once and for all…I feel like throwing up when I think about this story. And I don’t even have to threaten you to keep all this to yourselves, because if so much as a word about this comes out, you’ll lose everything in an instant. Your career and your pension. And so will I.”

“We understand…now, what’s behind it?” Goran broke in.

“Joseph B. Rockford has never left this place, the house where he was born.”

“How is that possible?” asked Boris. “Never?”

“Never,” Roche confirmed. “At the start it seems he had a fixation on his mother, the former beauty queen. He had a morbid love for her that kept him from having a normal childhood and adolescence.”

“But when she died…” Sarah Rosa tried to object.

“When she died it was too late: the boy wasn’t able to establish any kind of human contact. Until then he had been entirely surrounded by deferential people who worked in the service of his family. And then there was the so-called Rockford curse, the fact that all the male heirs died of a stomach tumor at the age of fifty.”

“Maybe his mother was unconsciously trying to save him from that fate,” Goran suggested.

“And his sister?” Mila asked.

“A rebel,” said Roche. “Younger than him, she was able to escape the mother fixation just in time. Then she did what she felt like with her life: she traveled the world, squandering her wealth, burning herself out on the most unlikely relationships and trying drugs and experiences of every kind. All to seem different from the brother who had remained a prisoner in this place…until the road accident five years ago effectively locked her away with him in this house.”

“Joseph B. Rockford was homosexual,” said Goran.

And Roche confirmed this: “Yes, he was…and the corpses found in the common grave tell the same story. All in the bloom of youth.”

“Then why kill them?” asked Sarah Rosa.

It was Goran who replied. He had seen this happen before.

“The chief inspector will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Rockford couldn’t accept being the way he was. Or perhaps, when he was young someone discovered his sexual preferences and he never forgave them.”

Everyone thought of his mother, even though no one mentioned her.

“So every time he repeated the act, he felt a sense of guilt. But rather than punishing himself, he punished his lovers…with death,” Mila concluded.

“The corpses are here and he has never moved,” said Goran. “So it was here that he killed them. Is it possible that no one—the servants, the gardeners, the gamekeepers—ever noticed anything?”

Roche had an answer, but he let them guess for themselves.

“I can’t believe it,” said Boris. “He paid them!”

“He bought their silence for all those years,” added Stern with disgust.

What price a man’s soul?
thought Mila. Because that, in the end, was the issue. Sometimes a human being discovers that he has an evil nature, which means he can only find happiness by killing someone else. There’s a name for him: a murderer, or serial killer. But what do you call the others, the ones around him who don’t stop it happening, or who even take advantage of it?

“How did he get hold of the boys?” Goran asked.

“We don’t know yet. We’ve put out an arrest warrant for his personal assistant, who seems to have vanished into nowhere since the body of the girl was found.”