A Florentine Death (19 page)

'It's a pity you're not a woman,' Mike said, 'only a vision. A Renaissance Madonna.'

'You embarrass me.'

'Why?'

'Because you don't think of me as a woman. Who knows, maybe you should try'

It came out like sounding like a challenge. She hadn't meant to say anything like that. Perhaps it was the thought that in a few hours, in 'their' apartment in Bologna, Cinzia might be sharing 'their' bed with someone else . . .

'There'd be no point.'

They were lying completely naked on his big four-poster bed.

The room was enormous, with a fire in the hearth and heavy curtains at the windows and hanging from the canopy above the bed.

Valentina's hand was on Mike's penis, which had remained inert the whole time.

'I told you,' he said. 'It's pointless.' She didn't mind.

She was surprised that she could touch his penis without feeling any disgust, but sympathy and tenderness instead. It didn't seem 'hideous', but soft, delicate, almost lovable. She remembered the ones she'd seen on statues, harmonious and inoffensive, so different from those obscene, erect rods in pornographic photos and films.

It was like a defenceless child, and she would have liked to continue stroking it, perhaps even kiss it.

She felt curiously free and happy. Cinzia was far from her mind. Right now, she didn't care a jot for Cinzia.

'You know something?' she said on impulse. 'I think I'm in love with you.'

The penis didn't react, and nor did Mike.

Valentina turned over.

She felt exhausted. It had been a trying day, a day of too many emotions.

Rocked by his rhythmic breathing, she fell into a deep sleep.

A languid dampness between her buttocks.

Perhaps a caress, but insistent. Insinuating.

Valentina moved slightly in her sleep, and realised that sturdy, athletic arms held her in a vice-like grip. She heard laboured breathing in her ear, and felt an unfamiliar, imposing, constricting weight on her body.

She didn't feel as if she had woken up. She didn't want to. Maybe she was only dreaming that she'd woken up . . .

She waited, frozen, terrified, yet yearning.

The unfamiliar weight was concentrated between her legs, which were wide open. It became hard and pressing. It insinuated itself with unprecedented force between the folds of her flesh and she realised all at once that it was too late to stop it now.

'No!' she cried. 'Not there!'

Now she was wide awake, feeling the pain that was ripping her open, the obscene intrusion into the wrong part of her body.

'NOOOOOOO!!!'

Mike had raised himself on his arms and was thrusting into her, grunting 'Mother, mother' between plaintive sighs.

Valentina wept with the pain, as Mike, undaunted, unstoppable, obsessive, sodomised her.

When he came back from the bathroom, he was as white as a corpse.

He did not dare lie down next to her. He sat down on the edge of the bed, shamefaced.

Valentina was still crying. She didn't dare move, she was afraid it would hurt if she did.

'I
...
I don't know what came over me. I swear to you. It was like
...
I don't know! I'm a monster, Valentina, a monster! How
could
I?'

She turned slowly towards him. Without saying a word, she gestured to him to lie down.

She placed a hand on his chest. 'It's possible,' she murmured, 'that I still love you.'

She didn't understand what was happening. This man had just defiled her, but she was quite calm. She felt as if she were in limbo, sore but relaxed, languid, perhaps even proud of having given him an erection. Even though he'd taken her from behind, as though she were a man . . .

The thing she really didn't understand was the strange mixture of feelings that the bestial act had stirred in her. At the end she had been shaken by a violent spasm, and she wondered if it had been an orgasm.

He turned to her, his eyes moist, agonised. He looked at her for a long time, incredulously, as if his Madonna had given birth to a miracle.

Then he let his body fall on her breast, unable to contain his sobs.

Valentina stroked his hair. She felt happy and at the same time terribly uncertain. Uncertain about her past, which may have been one big mistake, and uncertain about her future, which now seemed even more of an unknown quantity.

'What about you?' she asked.

He said nothing.

'Do you love me?'

Still he said nothing.

'It doesn't matter, you know. It doesn't matter
..."

Mike Ross lifted his head. His cold eyes had become bright and intense, wet with tears of guilt.

For a long time, they lay staring into each other's eyes.

Then she noticed that something was moving between them, starting to press against her belly.

She smiled.

He smiled too, shyly, uncertainly.

Valentina put one arm around his shoulders and slid the other between their bodies. To guide him to the right spot.

7

'Death
always
wins
in
the
end.

it
plays for
a
while
with
its
"prey

And
then
swallows
it

Like
a,
cat
with
a,
mouse.

which
one
of
us
is
the
cat?

You
certainly
don't
have
many
lives
Left

Four
down,
three
to
go!

The contents of the letter were imprinted on Ferrara's photographic memory. The letter itself was still in his office. He had a photocopy in his pocket.

It had come to Police Headquarters this time, not to his home. It had been logged along with the many anonymous letters that arrive almost every day, denouncing, threatening, claiming real crimes - or more often imaginary ones - and then, as it was addressed to him directly, it had been brought to his office.

Ferrara had immediately connected it to the two others. Instinctively, for no particular reason, even though it was quite different in both form and content. It hadn't been put together from letters cut out of a newspaper, nor had it been typed on a computer keyboard. It was handwritten: to

Ferrara, a clear sign that the killer was gaining in confidence and becoming ever more defiant.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind. The three murders had been committed by the same person, and the final target was him. The letter stated clearly that there was already a fourth victim, or would be. Then two more. And finally him.

It was still possible that this was the same person who had led the Monster and his accomplices, but he was inclined to rule it out.

The thought that the killer might be committing his latest crime at that very moment made the air inside the blue Alfa 166 even more stifling. Ferrara and the Commissioner were on their way to see the Prosecutor. They had both been summoned, separately, by Gallo in person, to an emergency meeting. It was a summons that Ferrara was duty bound to respond to, and Riccardo Lepri wouldn't have missed for anything in the world. From the Prosecutor's tone, he had gathered that Gallo had it in again for Ferrara, and he was curious to see what was going to happen. It could turn out to be a momentous occasion.

'You seem lost in thought,' he said to Ferrara as the car went along the Via Cavour. He had insisted that they take his car, saying that he only trusted his own driver. The fact was, he preferred to be seen in the most luxurious means of transport available. Anything wrong?'

The Commissioner's tone was as calm and cordial as ever. But his face looked drawn, his cheeks were unusually ruddy and his eyes streaked with tiny red veins. He must have eaten to excess last night, Ferrara thought.

'No more than usual,' he replied laconically.

'Do you think the Prosecutor has some bad news for us?'

'It won't be good news. He doesn't call impromptu meetings like this to praise or promote anyone.'

'You're right there,' Lepri sighed, with ostentatious resignation, as if he were the intended victim.

For the rest of the drive to the Prosecutor's Department in the Piazza della Repubblica, they were silent, each absorbed in his own thoughts.

When they had got out of the car and were standing alone together, Lepri said, 'Follow my advice, Ferrara. Drop this business about the Monster. That case will bring you nothing but trouble. If Gallo mentions it, play it down. Show him you're concentrating on these latest murders. In any case, you should be devoting more time to them, without delegating everything to your men, if you don't mind me saying so . . .'

Ferrara said nothing. These words, a clear warning of conflicts to come, merely bored him.

Instead of being taken to Gallo's office, they were led into a conference room. It was large and well lit, the bottom part of the walls covered with elegant wood panelling and the top part by frescoes that reached all the way up to the high ceiling, itself decorated with allegorical scenes. There was a screen on the wall at one end of the large table, and a projector at the other, which both jarred somewhat with the classical solemnity of the room.

Gallo was waiting for them, together with five other men and two women. Ferrara already knew the three deputy prosecutors, Luigi Vinci, Guido Fornari and Anna Giulietti, as well as Chief Superintendent Alessandro Polito, head of the Bologna
Squadra Mobile,
and Chief Superintendent Stefano Carracci, director of the Central Operational Service in Rome, which coordinated the activities of all the
Squadre Mobili
in Italy.

He had never seen the fifth man and the second woman.

They all looked slightly guilty. The men were in jackets and ties and the women, apart from a few discreet touches of colour, were wearing severe-looking tailored suits.

This was worse, much worse, than Ferrara had been expecting.

Gallo greeted them with an engaging smile. 'Come in.
I
think almost all of you know each other. For those of you who haven't yet had the opportunity to meet them, may
I
introduce Professor Stefania Prestigiacomo, lecturer in behavioural psychology at the University of Florence, and Professor Guido Marescalchi, lecturer in forensic psychopathology at La Sapienza University in Rome.' Then, for the benefit of the two professors, 'This is our Commissioner, Riccardo Lepri, and this is Michele Ferrara, head of the Florence
Squadra Mobile.'
And to everyone, 'Please, sit down.'

They all took their seats around the table as if they had all had places assigned to them, Ferrara noted. He himself sat down on one of the chairs that had remained free at the end of one side of the table. Professor Prestigiacomo sat down at the head of the table, in front of a laptop computer connected to the projector. Prosecutor Gallo remained on his feet, to her right.

'Before we begin,
I
'd just like to explain why Chief Superintendents Polito and Carracci are here. Chief Superintendent Polito is interested in the subject of serial killers because as head of the
Squadra Mobile
in Bologna he's been investigating a number of murders of prostitutes over the past few months, all apparently the work of a single person. Knowing that
I
was planning to take an in-depth look at the subject, he asked if he could take part today, to learn what there is to learn, and to make his own contribution if he can be of help in any way. Chief Superintendent Carracci, on the other hand, is here as an observer. He'll be reporting back to the Head of Police and the Minister of the Interior, who are both very concerned about the growth of this phenomenon. Naturally he is also at our disposal to provide technical support and specialised personnel if we judge it necessary.

'As I've indicated, the subject of this meeting is an examination of the type of criminal known as the serial killer. More specifically, I'd like to look more closely at the murders that have been taking place in Florence, within our jurisdiction, in the light of the theory put forward by Chief Superintendent Ferrara that these crimes are in fact the work of a serial killer.'

'One
of the theories,' Ferrara said.

'Of course,' Gallo conceded. 'But you're an expert. You've already had to deal with similar cases, unless I'm mistaken?'

'You're not mistaken.'

'So I assume your theory has some basis in fact. Based on your experience, what, in your opinion, is the likelihood that the murders of Micali, Lupi and Bianchi are the work of one person - that is, of a serial killer?'

'One hundred per cent. . .'

His words were greeted with an astonished murmur. Given that his previous remark had suggested a note of caution, they sounded exaggerated, even provocative.

'One hundred per cent that they're the work of one person,' Ferrara continued serenely. 'Only fifty per cent that he's a so-called serial killer.'

Gallo raised his eyebrows. 'If there's only one killer, surely we have to consider him a serial killer. Unless you have any evidence, of which we're not aware, that there's a connection between the victims that has nothing to do with their being homosexuals, but involves some kind of underworld vendetta. To the best of our knowledge, their sexual preference is