The Alchemist’s Code (15 page)

“How can you be sure?”

“From the CCTV system that you've got in the gallery and from forensics. Whatever killed Bruno was injected into him. Having failed to find any trace of that substance in his body, we carefully examined other details emerging from the investigation, the autopsy and from the film. The autopsy showed a tiny puncture in the palm of his right hand – the place where, according to the doctor, the murderer could have injected him with poison or whatever it was.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, by comparing the information gleaned from the medical examiner with that of the forensics and the video, we concluded that the injection occurred more or less at the time when the tobacconist saw the man enter the store, i.e. closing time, twelve hours before his death. We went over the recordings with a fine tooth comb, we were convinced that we'd catch him within twenty-four hours. The man was right there, standing brazenly in front of a CCTV camera.”

“So?”

Oscar shook his head. “After extracting his face and inserting it into the database, the only correlation we found was a dead end that left us completely dumbfounded. The face belonged to a little known German actor. Through INTERPOL we managed to locate him, traced him to Berlin and put the screws on, but the poor guy had a cast-iron alibi and it was all just a huge waste of time that made us look ridiculous internationally. The techs have come to the conclusion that the killer either wore a mask that perfectly reproduced that actor's features, or else he'd undergone plastic surgery to alter his features.”

“I see. And apart from that, what did you get out of the video camera?”

Oscar frowned. “You can see the exact moment when the man kills Bruno – with a simple handshake. You see Bruno quickly retract his hand and rub it, probably because of the pain caused by the puncture. The guy must have had a needle or something hidden between his fingers, maybe a ring.”

I shook my head, stunned. “All this is absolutely incredible. A handshake only lasts a second or two, how on earth did he manage to inject enough stuff into him to
kill
him? And what the hell is powerful enough that even a small amount of it can destroy a person's innards in twelve hours and then disappear without a trace?”

Oscar just shrugged. “And don't forget the gunshot to the face, which gives the whole thing a weirdly
retro
touch.”

“What do you mean?”

“First things first. The morning after the… the
handshake
in the Églantine, the footage from the CCTV cameras at Bruno's villa show someone: we see the figure of a man opening the electric gate as though it were the most natural thing in the world, going through it and then… nothing. The cameras, both inside and outside, go off. Maybe the murderer himself tampered with them. According to the coroner and forensics, the man got to Bruno just as he was dying, probably waited for him to die and then shot him in the face, for no apparent reason, with a rather antiquated nine mm.”

“What do you mean 'antiquated'?”

“Do you know anything about historical weapons?”

“Well, they're not exactly my favourite topic for bedtime reading, but I know a bit.”

Oscar handed me a plastic bag containing a cartridge case. “That's what we found at the crime scene. It's the only thing that the killer left. Deliberately, at a guess.”

I turned the cartridge case over in my hands, then read what was written around the end plate. “DWM 1944. 1944 – is that the date?”

“According to ballistics, this is a German World War II bullet. The acronym DWM, in fact, stands for… Hold on, I have to read it, because I don't remember it. Here,
Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken
– German Arms and Ammunition Factory.”

“What a mess,” I said, turning the cartridge case over in my hands. “Maybe they used this heirloom to send you off on a wild goose chase after that German actor.”

“It's perfectly possible,” admitted Oscar. “Initially we thought the killer had shot Bruno to make sure he was dead, but that's not it, because he fired a single, oblique shot, and at point blank range. In short, if Bruno hadn't been poisoned, the shot wouldn't have killed him. He'd just have had a nasty scar on his face. Add to that he used a bullet from the Second World War, and it can only mean one thing.”

“That the killer wanted to leave a message,” I concluded, finishing his train of thought for him.

“Exactly.”

“But for who? Bruno had no enemies, he was an honest antiquarian, he was always above board, he never got mixed up in anything shady.”

“Perhaps the message was for his partner,” suggested Oscar, giving me a hard look.

The astonishment on my face was evident. “For me?”

“You can't say that you haven't made a few enemies around the world, Lorenzo. Your adventures in search of mysterious artefacts have often got you into trouble. And if what's happened to you in the last month and a half is true, if someone has deliberately kept you drugged, it's pretty reasonable to think that the two things – Bruno's murder and what happened to you – are connected. And moreover, the timing coincides. Bruno is killed in late November while you're in Zurich attending to your wife. You're alerted to the death of your partner, you come back to Naples just long enough to help me open an investigation, then, practically before you've touched ground you announce that you're going back to Switzerland. Right then, however, your curious amnesia starts, and you never actually get back to Zurich.”

“You mean, they started drugging me while I was here in November.”

“That's the way it looks.”

We sat there in silence for a moment, trying to work out the series of events that had brought us to that point. It almost looked as though Bruno had been killed to make me come running back to Naples.

“Have you got something else to show me?” I asked, looking again at Oscar.

He stood in front of a box containing some wrapped objects.

“I won't show you the photos of Bruno's body. Last time… I mean, before you lost your memory, you got very upset when you saw them. And we haven't found anything new. But I would like you to take a look at what we took from the Églantine and from Bruno's house.”

In the box were business cards, pens, sheets of paper, a small notebook and a watch. All things that belonged to Bruno.

“These are images of the killer. We took them from the CCTV video,” said Oscar, handing me an envelope. It also contained a photo of the German actor whose face had been used as a model for the mask worn by the killer.

“Incredible,” I murmured, “I would never have doubted that this man was the killer.”

“Yes, but believe me – our investigation was very thorough. The man was definitely in Berlin when Bruno was murdered.”

I nodded, and went back to look at the photos. Suddenly, something popped into my memory.

“Oscar, can I see the film it was taken from?”

“Sure,” said Oscar. He opened a video file on his PC and beckoned me to his desk to watch it. In the film, the man entered the store, approached Bruno and offered him his hand. I felt a shiver as I saw my friend quickly pull his hand away. A moment later the two men were sitting down talking quietly, then, after a few minutes, the man got up and handed something to Bruno.

“What's he giving him?” I asked, pointing at the screen.

“We asked ourselves the same question,” said Viola, “it looks like a piece of paper, perhaps a business card. See? Bruno looks at it and simply puts it on the desk, then says goodbye to the man without offering him his hand. As you can see, the two of them laugh about something. Pretty chilling, if you consider what had happened a few moments before.”

In subsequent images, the man left the shop and you could see Bruno placing the card in a little book that was on the desk.

“That's his personal diary – he always carried it with him.”

“Yes, that's what you told us last time,” said Viola. “In fact, it was the last thing you told us. Then you asked us if you could get back to your wife and you disappeared off the face of the earth. We studied all the films of that day and we saw Bruno put the diary in his bag before leaving. But—”

“But—?” I pressed her.

“We didn't find it at his house. Not even in the safe,” said Oscar.

I raised an eyebrow. “Which safe?”

Oscar looked confused. “The one hidden behind the bookcase in the study – the only one we found.”

I nodded, then I got up and put on my coat. “There's another one. One whose existence only he and I knew of. Let's go.”

*

Bruno lived in a villa in the country between Via Posillipo and Marechiaro, a place of breath-taking beauty with incredible views of the Bay of Naples. He loved the peace and quiet of the house, where his jazz trio could practice without disturbing anyone. Safety was never a problem: a burglar would have had to deal with hi-tech security systems. The home of an antiques dealer needs to be as secure as a bank vault. Evidently, however, he hadn't expected anyone like the man who killed him, who seemed to have such incredible resources at his disposal.

Bruno lived alone. He was shy, and very refined, and his manner was almost effeminate. He liked women, but had very refined tastes.

“A woman must resonate along with the chords of my piano, to the notes of a piece arranged by Teddy Wilson. Only in this way can she arouse my interest,” he would say. I would shake my head and remark that perhaps, at the end of the day, it wasn't actually so hard to find a woman like that.

“In short, old boy, the world is
full
of special women,” I would reply.

Ever the pessimist, however, he was convinced that the perfect woman for him didn't exist and so he merely pursed his thin lips, put on a record and said, “Until you bring me an authentic one, I'll continue to limit myself to whores. I don't ask anything from them, except that they be beautiful and know how to do their job. And the morning after, they can, in the nicest possible way, go to the devil.”

But they were just stupid words – a way of giving some strength to his conviction. The talk of a sophisticated, snobby man who loved nothing more than provoking others.

Now, in the whirlwind of events that had turned my life upside down, facing the fact that he was dead left a huge hole inside me. In the blink of an eye, I had lost a valuable employee and a friend.

In any case, I tried to concentrate so as to provide as much information as possible to Oscar in the time that I was dedicating to my policeman friend.

*

At Bruno's house there were seals to prevent the crime scene being contaminated. Even Bruno's only living relative, his sister Maria, had not yet been allowed to enter.

We slipped on sterile coveralls and bootees and went inside.

“We didn't find any signs of forced entry or theft,” said Oscar, heading towards the living room, “no sign of a struggle or anything. Everything seemed in order and apparently you too confirmed that nothing had been stolen.”

“This appears to suggest that Bruno was killed in order to send a message and not because he had something precious that his murderer wanted.”

“Exactly. And in the days immediately following the discovery of the corpse, we turned the house upside down. We didn't find anything that could be attributed to the killer – not a footprint along the driveway that leads from the gate to the villa, not a hair. Nothing. It was as though he was made out of thin air. Believe me, with the tools we have nowadays, we can normally guess what a man's body temperature is. But this time, there was nothing. The suspect was so obviously there, right before our eyes but at the same time invisible. The only important thing was the bloodstain on the carpet where he opened fire on Bruno's face and where we found the body, and the shell that I showed you. That's all.”

We crossed the living room and headed towards the kitchen.

“Obviously it was my idea to hide the second safe in here,” I said, making way for Oscar and Viola. “He thought it was vulgar, but as far as I'm concerned, my kitchen is my sanctuary. In the end I was proved right.”

“What an incredible gourmet you are.”

“Think what you want, but you didn't find it!” The decor seemed more like a country house than a luxurious seaside villa, with a large, simple marble sink from an eighteenth century Umbrian farmhouse, cupboards from the successive century in the same style and a big table in the centre. One of the walls, the one that separated the kitchen from a small pantry, was made of stone. I walked over and pressed some of the stones in a precise sequence.

“I don't believe it—” said Oscar in amazement.

As I pressed the third stone, a portion of the wall, nearly two metres high by half a metre wide, opened up and slid across the floor. Behind it was a small room.

“Ingenious, isn't it?”

“Amazing, more like!”

“The utility room next door is a fake – it serves to create a further diaphragm to protect the wall of the safe, which is made of granite bricks forty centimetres thick and perfectly welded together. You'd have to hack away at it for a week just to scratch it.”

We entered the small room, whose walls were furnished with plain shelves upon which were stacked documents, cash and small valuables such as the rare medieval statues or eighteenth century artefacts that Bruno preferred to keep there. On a small table against the wall opposite the entrance was the famous diary.

“There it is! Why on earth did he put it in here? I know it was precious to him, but not so precious that he had to hide it in the safest place in the house.”

My hands covered by the latex gloves, I picked up the small diary and opened it. Inside were notes on appointments, pieces viewed and the clients who were interested in them. There were also some business cards that had not yet been put in the neat file that he kept at the Églantine. Among them, tucked into the page of the day before his death, was what we were looking for – the business card of his murderer, along with a rather mysterious object.