The Whisperer (39 page)

A
lphonse Bérenger was a baby-faced sixty-year-old.

His ruddy face looked as if it was held together by a dense network of capillaries. Every time he smiled, his eyes narrowed to two slits. He had run the prison for twenty-five years, and he was a few months away from retirement. He was a passionate fisherman; in a corner of his office he kept a rod and a drawer of bait and hooks. Soon that would be the main occupation of his days.

Bérenger was seen as a good man. During his governorship of the prison, no serious episodes of violence had been recorded. He had a human touch with the inmates, and his guards rarely resorted to the use of force.

Alphonse Bérenger was an atheist but read the Bible. He believed in second chances, and always said that every individual, if he so wishes, has the right to forgiveness. Whatever crime he has committed.

He had the reputation of being an upright man, and considered himself to be at peace with the world. But for some time he hadn’t been able to sleep at night. His wife told him it was because he was about to retire, but that wasn’t the case. What troubled his dreams was the thought that he would have to release prisoner RK-357/9 without knowing who he was and whether he had committed some terrible crime.

“This guy is…ridiculous,” he said to Mila as they passed through one of the security gates, heading for the wing that held the solitary confinement cells.

“In what sense?”

“He’s completely imperturbable. We’ve stopped his running water, hoping that he would stop washing. He went on cleaning himself all over with rags. We confiscated those as well. He started using his uniform. We forced him to use prison cutlery. He stopped eating.”

“Then what?”

“We certainly couldn’t starve him! He responded to all our attempts with disarming perseverance…or mild determination—you decide.”

“And the scientists?”

“They spent three days in that cell, but they never found enough organic material to extract DNA. And I wonder: how is it possible? We all lose millions of cells every day, in the form of tiny eyelashes or scales of skin…”

Bérenger had used all his patience as an experienced fisherman in the hope that it would be enough. But it hadn’t been enough. His last resort was the policewoman who had turned up by surprise that morning, telling a story so crazy that it sounded true.

As they walked down the long corridor, they reached an iron door, painted white. It was solitary confinement cell 15.

The director looked at Mila. “Are you sure?”

“In three days this man will get out of here, and I have a sense that we won’t see him again. So yes, I’m absolutely sure.”

The heavy door was opened and closed right behind them. Mila took the first step into the little universe of prisoner RK-357/9.

He wasn’t as she had imagined him from the identikit that Nicla Papakidis had drawn after looking into the memories of Joseph B. Rockford. Except for one detail. The gray eyes.

He wasn’t a tall man. He had narrow shoulders, and protruding collarbones. His orange prison overalls were too big for him, so much so that he had had to roll back both the sleeves and the hem of the trousers. He had very little hair, and it was concentrated on the sides of his head.

He was sitting on his folding bed, with a steel bowl on his knees. He was wiping it with a yellow duster. Laid out in an orderly fashion on the bed beside him were some cutlery, a toothbrush and a plastic comb. He had probably just finished polishing them. He lifted his head slightly to look at Mila, rubbing away as he did so.

Mila was sure the man knew why she was there.

“Hello,” she said. “Do you mind if I sit down for a moment?”

He nodded politely, pointing to a stool against the wall. Mila took it and sat down.

The regular, insistent rubbing of cloth against metal was the only sound in that narrow space. The typical sounds of jail had been banished from the solitary section, rendering the mind’s solitude even more oppressive. But prisoner RK-357/9 didn’t seem to mind.

“Everyone here is wondering who you are,” Mila began. “It’s become a kind of obsession, I think. It certainly is for the director of this prison. And for the public prosecutor’s office. The other prisoners tell the story of your legend.”

He went on imperturbably looking at her.

“I know you’re the person we called Albert. The person we’ve been hunting.”

The man didn’t react.

“You were in Alexander Bermann’s armchair in his pedophile lair. And you met Ronald Dermis at the religious institution, when he was still a little boy. You were at Yvonne Gress’s villa while Feldher was slaughtering the woman and her children: that’s your outline in the blood on the wall. You were with Joseph B. Rockford when he killed for the first time in that abandoned house…They were your
disciples
. You instigated their disgrace, inspired their evil, always crouching in the shadows…”

The man went on rubbing, without losing his rhythm even for a moment.

“Then, just over four months ago, you decide to get yourself arrested. Because you did it on purpose, I have no doubts about that. In jail you meet Vincent Clarisso, your cell mate. You have almost a month to teach him, before Clarisso serves his sentence. Then Clarisso, just out, starts pursuing your plan…kidnapping six children, amputating their left arms, placing the corpses in such a way as to reveal all those horrors that no one had ever been able to discover…While Vincent took his task to its conclusion, you were here. So no one can incriminate you. These four walls are the perfect alibi…but your masterpiece is still Goran Gavila.”

Mila took from her pocket one of the audio cassettes that she had found in the criminologist’s study, and threw it onto the bed. The man watched it travel before landing a few inches from his left leg. He didn’t move, he didn’t even try and avoid it.

“Dr. Gavila never saw you, he didn’t know you.
But you knew him.
”

Mila felt her heartbeats getting faster. It was rage, resentment, and something else.

“You found a way of contacting him when you were still inside. It’s brilliant: when they put you in solitary confinement, you started talking to yourself like some poor lunatic, knowing that they would plant a microphone so that they could have the recordings listened to by an expert. Not any old expert, but the best in his field…”

Mila pointed to the cassette.

“I’ve listened to them all, you know? Hours and hours of electronic surveillance…those messages weren’t just ramblings. They were for Goran…‛
Kill, kill, kill
’…He took notice of you and killed his wife and son. It was patient work on his psyche. Tell me one thing: how do you do it? How do you manage it? You’re brilliant at it.”

Either the man didn’t catch the sarcasm, or he didn’t care. In fact he seemed curious to know the rest of the story, because he didn’t take his eyes off her.

“But you’re not the only one who can get into people’s minds…Lately I’ve learned a lot about serial killers. I’ve learned that they’re divided into four categories: visionaries, missionaries, hedonists and power seekers…But there’s a fifth kind: they’re called subliminal killers.”

She rummaged in her pockets, took out a folded piece of paper and opened it up.

“The most famous is Charles Manson, who inspired the members of his famous ‘Family’ to carry out the massacre of Cielo Drive. But I think there are two even more emblematic cases…” She read: “‘In 2005, a Japanese man called Fujimatsu managed to persuade eighteen people he had met on chat lines, all over the world, to take their lives on St. Valentine’s Day. Different in age, sex, financial status and social origin, they were very normal men and women, without any apparent problems.’” She looked up at the prisoner: “How he managed to subjugate them all remains a mystery…but listen, this one’s my favorite: ‘In 1999, Roger Blest of Akron in Ohio kills six women. When he’s arrested, he tells the investigators that the idea was “suggested” by a certain Rudolf Migby. The judge and jury think he’s trying to pass as mentally ill, and sentence him to death by lethal injection. In 2002, in New Zealand, an illiterate workman called Jerry Hoover kills four women and then tells the police that it was “suggested” by a certain Rudolf Migby. The prosecution psychiatrist remembers the case in 1999 and—since it’s unlikely that Hoover could know the case—discovers that the man has a work colleague by the name of Rudolf Migby, who lived in Akron, Ohio, in 1999.’” She looks at the man again: “So, what do you say? Do you see any similarities?”

The man said nothing. His bowl was gleaming, but he still wasn’t entirely satisfied with the result.

“A ‘subliminal killer’ doesn’t commit the crimes in a material sense. He’s not chargeable, he’s not punishable. To put Charles Manson on trial they resorted to a judicial trick, whereby the death sentence was commuted to several life sentences…Some psychiatrists call you
whisperers,
because of your ability to impress weaker personalities. I prefer to call you wolves…wolves act in packs. Every pack has a leader, and often the other wolves hunt for him.”

Prisoner RK-357/9 stopped rubbing the bowl and set it down next to him. Then he rested his hands on his knees, waiting for the rest.

“But you defeat them all…” Mila shook her head. “There’s nothing to demonstrate your involvement in crimes committed by your disciples. Without proof to convict you, soon you will be a free man again…and no one will be able to do anything.”

Mila sighed deeply. They stared at one another.

“Shame: if only we knew your true identity, you’d become famous and go down in history, I can assure you.”

She leaned towards him, her tone of voice suddenly subtle and menacing: “Anyway, I’ll find out who you are.”

Standing up, she cleaned her hands of imaginary dust and hurried from the cell. First, though, she allowed herself a few more seconds with the man.

“Your last pupil failed: Vincent Clarisso couldn’t complete your plan, because child number six is still alive…which means that
you too have failed
.”

She studied his reaction, and for a moment she almost thought that something had stirred in his face, which had until then remained inscrutable.

“We’ll see each other outside.”

She held out her hand. He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected that. He studied her for a long time. Then he raised a slack arm and shook it. At the touch of those soft fingers, Mila felt a sense of repulsion.

She let her hand slip from his.

She turned her back on him and walked towards the iron door. She knocked three times and waited, knowing that his eyes were still on her, burning into a spot between her shoulder blades. Someone outside started to turn the key in the lock. Before the door opened, prisoner RK-357/9 spoke for the first time.

“It’s a girl,”
he said.

Mila turned towards him, not understanding. The prisoner had returned to his rag, meticulously rubbing another bowl.

She left, the iron door closed behind her and Bérenger came towards her. With him was Krepp.

“So…did it work?”

Mila nodded. She held out the hand with which she had shaken the prisoner’s hand. The scientific expert picked up a pair of tweezers and delicately detached from her palm a thin transparent film in which cells from the man’s skin were trapped. To preserve it, he immediately put it into a flask of alkaline solution.

“Now we’ll see who this bastard is.”

5 September

T
he sky was crisscrossed with isolated white clouds that enhanced its pure blue. Had they been put all together, they would have covered the sun for good. And yet there they were, carried on the wind.

It had been a very long season. Winter had made way for summer, without a break. It was still warm.

Mila drove with both windows open, enjoying the breeze in her hair. She had let it grow, and that was only one of the little changes that had happened recently. Another was the clothes she wore. She had abandoned her jeans, and now wore a floral-patterned skirt.

On the seat beside her was a box with a big red bow. She had chosen the gift without thinking too hard about it, because now she trusted to instinct in everything she did.

She had discovered the fertile unpredictability of life.

She liked this new course of things. But the problem now was the whim of her emotions. Sometimes she found herself stopping in the middle of a conversation, in the middle of a task, and bursting into tears. For no reason, a strange and pleasant longing took possession of her.

For a long time she had wondered where those emotions came from, the ones that regularly filled her in waves or spasms.

Now she knew. But she hadn’t wanted to know the sex of the child.

“It’s a girl.”

Now Mila was avoiding thinking about it, trying to forget the whole affair. She had different priorities now. There was the hunger that assailed her too often and unexpectedly, and which had restored some femininity to her figure. Then there was the sudden, urgent need to pee. Finally there were those little kicks in her belly, which she had started feeling some time ago.

Thanks to them, she was learning to look only to the future.

But inevitably, from time to time, her mind drifted back towards the memory of those events.

Prisoner RK-357/9 had come out of prison one Tuesday in March. Without a name.

But Mila’s trick had been successful.

Krepp had extracted the DNA from his epithelial cells, and it had been fed into all available data banks. Comparisons had also been made with unidentified organic material from unsolved cases.

Nothing.

Perhaps we still haven’t discovered the whole plan,
Mila said to herself. And that hunch worried her.

When the nameless man had regained his freedom, the police had at first kept him under constant surveillance. He was living in a house put at his disposal by the social services and—ironically—had taken a job as a cleaner in a big department store. He revealed nothing about himself that they didn’t already know. So, over time, the policemen’s checks had drawn a blank. The senior officers were no longer willing to pay overtime, and the voluntary surveillance had lasted only a few weeks. In the end they had given up.

Mila had kept her eye on him, but he had become increasingly exhausting for her as well. After the discovery of her pregnancy, her checks had become less frequent.

Then, one day in mid-May, he had disappeared.

He had left no traces of himself, and no one could imagine where he might have gone. At first Mila had been angry, but then she had discovered that she felt a curious sense of relief.

The policewoman who found people who had disappeared basically wanted that man to disappear.

The road sign to her right indicated the road towards the residential district. She turned into it.

It was a lovely place: the streets were lined with trees which cast the same repeated shadow, as if they didn’t want to offend anyone. The little villas stood side by side, with an area of land in front of them, all identical.

The directions on the piece of paper that Stern had given her ended at the junction in front of her. She slowed down and looked around.

“Stern, damn it, where are you?” she said into her phone.

Before he answered she spotted him in the distance with his mobile to his ear, waving to her with one arm held aloft.

She parked the car where he indicated and got out.

“How are you feeling?”

“Apart from the nausea, the swollen feet and always running to the bathroom…pretty good.”

He put an arm around her shoulders: “Come on, they’re all round the back.”

It was strange to see him without his jacket and tie, with his blue trousers and a floral shirt open at the chest. If it hadn’t been for his inevitable mints, he would have been almost unrecognizable.

Mila let him guide her towards the back garden, where the former special agent’s wife was laying the table. She ran to hug her.

“Hi, Marie, you’re looking great.”

“Obviously—she has me at home all day!” said Stern with a laugh.

Marie slapped her husband on the back. “Shut up and cook!”

As Stern walked away towards the barbecue, ready to cook sausages and corncobs, Boris came over holding a half-empty bottle of beer. He hugged Mila with his strong arms and lifted her in the air. “How fat you’ve got!”

“You’re one to talk!”

“How long did it take you to get here?”

“Were you worried about me?”

“No, I was just hungry.”

They laughed. Recently Boris had put on weight because of his sedentary life and the promotion he had been given by Terence Mosca. Roche had presented his resignation immediately after the official closure of the case, but had first drawn up an exit procedure that involved a ceremony featuring the award of a service medal and a solemn commendation. It was said that he was considering the possibility of going into politics.

“I’m such an idiot: I left the box in the car!” Mila suddenly remembered. “Could you go and get it for me, please?”

“Of course, straightaway.”

As soon as Boris shifted his bulk, she was able to see all the other people.

Sandra was sitting in a wheelchair under a cherry tree. She couldn’t walk. It had happened a month after she was let out of hospital. The doctors said her neurological block was the result of shock. Now she was on a strict rehabilitation program.

She had a prosthesis where her missing left arm had been.

Standing beside the girl was her father, Mike. Mila had met Mike when visiting Sandra, and had liked him. In spite of his separation from his wife, he had gone on looking after his daughter, with affection and dedication. Sarah Rosa was with them. She had changed a lot. She had lost a few pounds in jail, and her hair had turned white very quickly. She had received a stiff sentence: seven years and a dishonorable discharge, which had also cost her her pension. She was there on special leave. Not far away was Doris, the surveillance officer who had come with her, and who nodded a greeting to Mila.

Sarah Rosa got up and walked over to her. She tried to smile at her.

“How are you? All OK with the pregnancy?”

“The worst thing is the clothes: my size is constantly changing, and I don’t earn enough to change my wardrobe so quickly. One of these days I’m going to go out in my bathrobe!”

“Listen to me: enjoy these moments, because the worst is yet to come. For the first three years, Sandra didn’t let us get a wink of sleep. Isn’t that right, Mike?” And Mike nodded.

They had all met up several times. But no one had ever asked Mila who her child’s father was. God knows how they would have reacted if they’d known she was carrying Goran’s child.

The criminologist was still in a coma.

Mila had gone to see him only once. She had seen him from behind a pane of glass, but she had managed only a few seconds before having to leave.

The last thing he had said to her before throwing himself into the void was that he had killed his wife and child
because he loved them
. It was the incontrovertible logic of someone justifying evil with love. And Mila couldn’t accept it.

Another time Goran had claimed:
We think we know everything about people, when in fact we know nothing at all…

She thought he was referring to his wife, and she remembered the words as a banal truth, no real match for his intelligence. Until she had found herself involved in what he was saying. And she of all people should have understood. She who had said to him,
Because it’s from darkness that I come. And to darkness that I must, from time to time, return.

Goran too had often visited that same darkness. But one day, when he had reemerged, something must have followed him. Something that had never let him go.

Boris came back with the present.

“What took you so long?”

“I couldn’t close the door on that old banger of yours. You should get a new car.”

Mila took the box from his hands and gave it to Sandra.

“Hey, happy birthday!”

She bent down to kiss her. The little girl was always pleased to see her.

“Mum and Dad gave me an iPod.”

She showed it to her. And Mila said, “It’s fantastic. Now we’ve got to fill it up with some good honest rock.”

Mike disagreed: “I’d rather have Mozart.”

“I’d like Coldplay best,” said Sandra.

They unwrapped Mila’s present together. It was a velvet jacket, with various kinds of frills and studs.

“Wow!” exclaimed the birthday girl when she recognized the label of a famous designer.

“Does that ‘wow’ mean you like it?”

Sandra nodded with a smile, without taking her eyes off the jacket.

“Let’s eat!” said Stern.

They sat down at the table in the shade of a gazebo. Mila noticed that Stern and his wife were constantly coming back to one another and touching each other like young lovers. She felt a little bit envious of them. Sarah Rosa and Mike were acting out the role of good parents for the benefit of their daughter. But he was also very solicitous of Sarah. Boris told a lot of jokes, and they laughed so much that officer Doris choked on a mouthful of food. It was a pleasant, carefree day. And Sandra probably forgot her condition for a little while. She received lots of gifts and blew out thirteen candles on a chocolate and coconut cake.

They finished lunch just after three. A gentle breeze had blown up, making them want to lie down on the lawn and sleep. The women cleared the table, but Stern’s wife let Mila off because of her belly. She took advantage of the fact to join Sandra under the cherry tree. With a little effort she even managed to sit down on the ground, next to her wheelchair.

“It’s lovely here,” the girl said. Then she watched her mother carrying in the dirty dishes and smiled. “I’d like this day to go on forever. I kept missing my mother a lot…”

The use of the imperfect tense was revealing: Sandra was talking about a different kind of longing from the one she felt when her mother went back into jail. She was talking about what had happened to her.

Mila knew very well that those little hints were part of the effort that the girl was making to put the past in order. She had to arrange her emotions and come to terms with a fear that, even though it was all in the past, would lie in wait for her for many years to come.

One day the two of them would broach the topic of what had happened. Mila thought of telling the girl her own story first. Perhaps it would help. They had so much in common.

First find all the words we need, my little one, we have all the time in the world.

Mila felt great tenderness for Sandra. In an hour, Sarah Rosa would have to go back to jail. And each time that separation was a source of great distress to both mother and daughter.

“I’ve decided to let you in on a secret,” she said to distract her from that thought. “But I’m going to tell only you…I want to tell you who my baby’s father is.”

Sandra gave a cheeky smile. “Everyone knows.”

Mila was paralyzed with amazement for a moment, and then they both burst out laughing.

In the distance Boris saw them, without knowing what was going on. “Women,” he called out to Stern.

When they finally recovered, Mila felt much better. Once again she had underestimated someone who loved her, creating pointless problems. But in fact things were often incredibly simple.

“
He
was waiting for someone…” Sandra said seriously. And Mila understood that she was talking about Vincent Clarisso.

“I know,” she said simply.

“He was to come and join us.”

“That man was in jail. But we didn’t know. We’d also chosen a name for him, did you know that? We called him Albert.”

“No, that’s not what Vincent called him…”

A gust of warm wind stirred the leaves in the cherry tree, but that didn’t stop Mila from feeling a sudden chill running down her spine. She turned slowly towards Sandra, and met her big eyes, which stared at her completely unaware of what she had just said.

“No…” the girl repeated calmly. “He called him
Frankie
.”

The sun was shining on that perfect afternoon. The birds sang their song in the trees, and the air was full of pollen and perfumes. The grass of the lawn was inviting. Mila would never forget the precise moment when she had discovered she had much more in common with Sandra than she imagined. And yet those similarities had always been there, in front of her eyes.

He always took girls, never boys
.

Steve preferred girls too.

He chose families
.

And like herself, Sandra was an only child.

He cut off a left arm from each of them
.

She had broken her left arm when she fell down the stairs with Steve.

The first two were blood sisters
.

Sandra and Debby. Like her and Graciela many years before.

“Serial killers, with the things they do, are trying to tell us a story,” Goran had once said.

But that story was
her
story
.

Every detail sent her back into the past, forcing her to look the terrible truth in the face.

Your last pupil failed: Vincent Clarisso couldn’t complete your plan, because child number six is still alive…which means that you too have failed.

And yet it hadn’t happened by chance. And that was Frankie’s true finale.

It was all meant for her
.

A movement behind her brought her back. Then Mila lowered her eyes to her ripe belly. She struggled not to wonder if it too was part of Frankie’s plan.