The Marshal's Own Case (6 page)

‘Haven’t seen you before. How long have you been in Florence?’

‘Since the summer.’

‘Before that?’

‘Milan.’

‘Address—what the devil’s the matter now?’

A quarrel had broken out in one corner of the room and it was turning into a hair-tearing fight.

‘Marshal, do you mind?’

By this time all the others were joining in, shouting at the tops of their voices. They all seemed to have it in for a rather undersized creature sporting a pile of upswept chestnut curls. As the Marshal stepped forward slowly, mortified at the thought of having to touch any of them, somebody snatched at the topknot of curls, which came away leaving behind a head of straggling black locks. All the others roared with derisive laughter and the one who had recently made an attack on the Marshal turned on him again now to protest.

‘Look at him! A dirty little transvestite! Look at the beard under all that make-up! I refuse to be in the same room as a nasty little pervert like that! Well? Look at him!’

Baffled, the Marshal turned uncertainly to Ferrini who suggested: ‘Take him next door, will you, or we’ll have no peace.’

The straggly-haired boy was snivelling. The Marshal led him away pursued by hoots of derision.

‘You want to lock him up! There ought to be a law against men who go about dressed as women!’

‘Trying to pass himself off as one of us!’

‘Must be some sort of nut!’

The Marshal shut the door on the racket, relieved to have an excuse to escape. The office next door was dark and empty. He took the boy in there and switched the light on.

‘Sit down.’

He sat down himself and regarded the snivelling boy. He was a pathetic sight enough denuded of his curls; his beard was visible as his catty accuser had pointed out. His lips were smudgily painted and mascara was running down his cheeks mixed with tears.

‘Bitches,’ he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

The Marshal, who had understood nothing of what the quarrel was about, offered him a handkerchief in silence.

‘Thanks. I’ve a right to earn a living same as them, haven’t I? Well, haven’t I?’

‘Do you?’

‘Eh?’

‘Do you make a living?’

‘Enough to manage. I can pay my rent and eat. Nothing to compare with
them.
’

‘Hmph.’ He didn’t understand what the difference was. He stared at the boy. As far as it was possible to tell, he did have breasts under his cheap short frock but the only difference that was clear to him was that those large doll-like perfumed creatures next door had something theatrically grotesque about them which terrified him, while this kid was only pathetic.

‘Couldn’t you get some sort of job, an ordinary job?’ he asked.

‘I did have one but it wasn’t enough to live on so I got fed up. What’s the difference, as long as I can manage?’

The Marshal gave it up.

‘Documents.’

‘They’re next door on the other chap’s desk—you won’t make me go back in there?’

‘No.’ The Marshal had no wish to go back in there himself so there was no danger of that.

‘They can get really vicious, some of them.’ He had stopped crying and was now rubbing away the mess of lipstick, mascara and tears with the Marshal’s handkerchief. When he finished he offered it back.

‘No,’ the Marshal said hastily, ‘keep it.’

‘You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘I never carry anything with me except my documents and I keep them inside my clothes. Once I was robbed by a client, do you know that? People say that we’re the ones who do that sort of thing and it’s true that it happens sometimes, but I’ve never stolen a penny from anybody. People have no idea what somebody like me has to put up with—once a man tried to strangle me. I got away because we were out in the open, in the park. If we’d been in his car he’d have killed me. I don’t like getting in their cars if I can help it, it’s dangerous.’

‘It’s also against the law.’

‘Eh?’

‘Obscene act in a public place. You should know that.’

The boy shrugged. ‘In the park at that time of night? Who’s to see? Anyway, it’s still a public place whether we’re in the car or out of it.’

‘You never take them home?’

He shook his head. ‘My landlord lives above me. I don’t want to lose my flat, and anyway, I share it with two others, so . . .’

‘This man who tried to strangle you—when was this?’

‘Last summer.’

‘You know that somebody’s been murdered?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you think you were brought here?’

He shrugged again. ‘How should I know? Listen . . . I don’t feel so good . . .’

It was true that his limbs were shaking and he was looking pale and sickly now that his face was cleaner. The Marshal stood up and went round to him, taking a grip on his wrist and looking hard into his eyes. Then his huge hand turned the puny arm gently to expose the needle scars on the inside.

‘Let me go.’

The Marshal let him go and sat himself on the corner of the desk. ‘Not just rent and food, then. This as well.’

But the boy’s attention was drifting as his need increased.

‘Will they give it me back? It was only enough for me and I need it . . . You could get me some anyway. There’s plenty here, I know that.’

‘You do?’

‘I know they keep plenty here, to give to informers. I’ve heard. For God’s sake . . . I feel sick!’

To the Marshal’s relief Ferrini knocked and came in.

‘I’m about finished. Here.’ He gave the boy his identity card. ‘Hop it.’

The boy stood up but didn’t leave. His eyes were fixed on Ferrini, pleading.

‘Hop it,’ repeated Ferrini, ‘before I change my mind and charge you.’

The boy emitted a faintly audible groan and slunk out.

‘He’ll likely find what he needs before dawn,’ observed Ferrini. ‘Shall we go back next door?’

‘How much stuff did he have on him?’ the Marshal asked as he switched off the light.

‘Too much for it to be his own. Kids like him are often used as small-time pushers, selling to their clients. But what’s the use? The prison’s choc-a-bloc and putting him inside would only serve to shorten his life. By the look of him he hasn’t got much of a life expectancy as it is—Lord, what a stink of perfume. I’ll open the window.’

They sat down together at the desk and looked at the results of their night’s work: a list of names and addresses, a packet of heroin and a large diamond ring.

‘It was stolen, then?’

‘The ring?’ Ferrini laughed. ‘Yes and no. It’s listed as having been stolen from a very well known Florentine jeweller. On the other hand, the very well known Florentine jeweller is a regular customer of Titi’s—I’ve seen them together in his Mercedes many a time. No doubt he thought he could be clever enough to make Titi a fancy present and claim it on his insurance.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Give it back to him and leave the rest to Titi, who was none too pleased, I can tell you. He’ll get it in the neck next time they get together.’ Again he laughed. ‘It’s a rum world!’

He fished in his pocket and pulled out a rather squashed packet of cigarettes. The Marshal watched him light up. He liked this man, so very different from himself. A relaxed, comfortable, grey-haired man who laughed so easily and could chatter away to anybody, even to those . . .

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no . . .’ The Marshal pulled himself together. ‘I’m dropping with sleep, to tell you the truth.’

‘Not used to these long nights, eh?’

‘No, not at all. I was thinking . . . well, it’s a good job you are used to . . . I don’t know much about this sort of thing, I don’t mind telling you, and as for running this case . . .’

‘Oh, you’ll soon get into it.’

The Marshal wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to ‘get into it’ but he didn’t say so. He only said, ‘That quarrel that broke out, for instance, about the boy—’

‘Ah yes. Thanks for getting him out of the way or all hell would have broken loose!’

‘But why?’ the Marshal insisted.

‘Why? Because he was a transvestite. They don’t think much of transvestites, our friends.’

‘I see.’ It was clear from the Marshal’s large, puzzled eyes that he didn’t see at all. ‘It’s just that, to be honest, I thought they were all transvestites.’

‘Transsexuals. Half-way house, as it were. You get some transvestites with these silicone breasts like that kid but they’re not on any hormone treatment, still got normal male hormones, body hair and so on and certainly still think of themselves as men. Your transsexual, like our Titi, is a female or reckons to be— only one detail that’s anomalous. A lot of them reckon that once they’ve made enough money they’ll have the final operation and retire from business to be fully-fledged females.’

‘But . . . some of them seem to have plenty of money now . . .’

‘Oh, they have that, plenty. But they can’t have their source of income cut off, can they? Their customers wouldn’t want them any more.’

‘It beats me what they do want . . .’ The Marshal’s face was red.

‘De gustibus non disputandum.’

‘No, no . . .’

‘Right. Well we have a list here of who’s missing from the scene. Nobody, at first sight, who seems to be our victim as they’ve all got a reason for their absence, but we must check all those reasons out. I’ll start first thing tomorrow morning with Gigi and Lulu who should be in the clinic in Spain, make sure they’re there. Sorry— you should be deciding, but I thought as I know the surgeon . . .’

‘Whatever you think . . . What surgeon?’

‘The one who does their breasts. They all go to the same clinic in Spain. I’ve talked to this chap before when I was working on the last two cases, so he knows who I am.’

‘Then you do it, yes. How many of these cases have you worked on?’

‘Three altogether. Unsolved like this one will be, I suppose, but we have to go through the motions. I’ll call the clinic tomorrow. They have to go back there, you see, every so often. It’s not a one-off job like their faces. You noticed their faces?’

‘No . . .’ The Marshal had barely noticed anything, he’d been so embarrassed.

‘Noses and cheekbones have to be fined down. That they get done here in Florence; there’s a very good plastic surgeon they almost all patronize. Now, there’s Paoletta whose real name is Paolo Del Bianco, supposed to have gone home to Sicily for granny’s funeral, and this other one . . . where is it . . . Giorgio Pino—another Gigi who, they say, has transferred his operations to Milan. Our chaps up there will know. That leaves Carla. I know Carla, she’s all right. Carlo Federico, said to have the ’flu. Only two minutes away from you if you want to go and have a word.’

The Marshal didn’t want, but he had to be seen to be doing something. He couldn’t leave everything to Ferrini, much as he would have liked to. So he said, ‘All right’ and was relieved that soon after that Ferrini seemed to think they’d had enough for one night.

He knew, when he got home at half past five in the morning, that Teresa was only pretending to be asleep. But if she noticed that he spent an inordinate amount of time under the shower, scrubbing away at himself as if he’d fallen into a midden, she made no comment. He slept peacefully enough until his usual time of waking, then passed a few uncomfortable hours trying to sleep through the noises of morning, achieving only troubled dreams and a sweaty, aching back. He had another shower.

At four that afternoon, when he presented himself at the appropriate number in Via de’ Serragli and rang the bell marked Federico, he was strapped and buttoned tightly into his uniform as if it might protect him from what he had to face. When the door clicked open he went in holding his breath.

‘First floor,’ directed a man’s voice, thick with sleep.

Four

W
hatever he had been bracing himself against, it wasn’t the pale shiny face, devoid of make-up and a little red about the nose, which peered at him round the door upstairs.

‘Federico?’

‘That’s right. Come in.’

He took his hat off. ‘Marshal Guarnaccia.’

‘I was expecting you. A friend of mine telephoned me. Sit down, will you? I have to make myself a cup of coffee, I’ve only just woken up and I feel wretched. Chinese ’flu. Have you had it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s lousy. I won’t be a minute.’

The Marshal sat himself down on the edge of an armchair. The sitting-room was small but nicely furnished and very clean and tidy. Two canaries were singing in a cage near the open door to the kitchen where he could see Carla moving about, getting the coffee on. The room was filled with pale November sunlight.

‘Do you want a cup?’

‘No . . . no, thanks.’

Carla came back, stirring a glass of colourless liquid. ‘You’ll have to excuse the dressing-gown and slippers. I’ve been so ill I haven’t got dressed for three days and I can’t face washing my hair because I’ve still got a bit of fever.’ It was tied back loosely with a scrap of ribbon and some of the dark brown locks had escaped to fall on the pale smooth cheeks.

‘Sugar and water,’ Carla said, indicating the glass and then draining it. ‘My blood pressure’s so low . . . the doctor says it’s the hormones. Last time it got so low he gave me injections for it but I hate injections, don’t you?’

‘They’re not pleasant,’ the Marshal agreed.

‘That’s the coffee coming up. I’ll be right back.’

The Marshal was baffled. He couldn’t connect Carla with the wild, theatrical band of last night, and what was more, if it hadn’t been for the voice he wouldn’t even have been able to tell . . . He felt disorientated.

Carla reappeared with a tiny cup and the aroma of the freshly made coffee filled the sunny little room. ‘You’re sure . . . ?’

‘No, no . . . I had mine before I came out.’

‘I thought it might be Ferrini who’d be coming. He’s all right, is Ferrini, even if he is a carabiniere—no offence meant, only we don’t get treated as human beings by cops as a rule, or by anybody else, either, if it comes to that—Mishi! Mishi, come to me!’ A glossy little black cat with very bright eyes had crept silently into the room.

‘She was fast asleep on my bed,’ Carla said. ‘She never budges from my side if I’m ill or depressed. Up you come!’

The little cat jumped and settled down with a yawn in the lap of the flowered silk dressing-gown, looking brightly across at the Marshal. It seemed to have a perfectly round head as though it had no ears. Carla held the glossy head gently in large, slender hands.

‘He’s never seen a cat like you before, has he, Mishi? Look.’ Carla lifted up the black ears with careful fingers. ‘She belongs to a special breed. Her ears are folded over so you can’t see them. She cost me a fortune and she keeps me on the hop. She’d like to go out, poor thing, but this road’s too dangerous. I have to shut her in my bedroom before I open the front door or she’d be out like a shot and it would only need somebody to be going in or out of the street door and she’d be under a car in no time. She once made it as far as the bottom of the stairs and I just got down and caught her in time. Nearly broke my neck doing it, too, didn’t I, Mishi? You have to stay at home where it’s safe. Poor little prisoner. See how she’s staring at you? She’s jealous. Sometimes when I bring a client home she makes such a scene scratching at the bedroom door!’

‘You bring all your clients home?’

‘Always. You won’t catch me getting in anybody else’s car. You get some real nut-cases at times, you know, on this job.’

‘No trouble with your landlord?’

‘I don’t have a landlord. This house is mine. I have one neighbour who’s a constant pain in the neck—she even came here complaining one day that Mishi made too much noise! Can you imagine? A tiny creature like this, you can barely hear her when you’re in the room with her! I could understand it if I went in and out at night slamming the door, but Mishi, I ask you! But that’s the way people are with us. I’m lucky that it’s only that one old bag. The others are all right. What harm am I doing to anybody, when it comes down to it?’

‘Perhaps,’ the Marshal suggested, ‘it’s your clients they’re afraid of underneath. You say you get some nut-cases . . . You’ve heard about the murder?’

‘My friend told me on the phone. Is it true the body was chopped up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Christ! It sends shivers down your spine. And you don’t know who she is, the victim?’

The Marshal was about to say it was a he but thought better of it. ‘No, we don’t know. That’s why I’m here. Is there anybody missing from the scene, that you know of?’

‘No. But then, I haven’t been out for a few days. I’ve seen all my own friends because they’ve been round in the afternoons to see how I am and pick up my medicine for me, but that’s not much to go by.’

‘No . . . With a group of over two hundred . . .’

‘It’s more complicated than that. They’re not a group, do you understand? There are a lot of little groups and they don’t mix, they hate each other. I’ve been in this game ten years or more and I can tell you it’s complicated. Look, I’m the way I am and always have been, do you understand? I don’t even need the hormones I occasionally take. It’s just a sort of beauty treatment when I want an extra bit of plumpness. But there are people who get this way on purpose, just for the money that’s in it, if you follow me. Well, I for one don’t have anything to do with people like that—and then there are the transvestites, people who live as men during the day and dress up at night like women. Well, I know what I am but I don’t know what they’re supposed to be, do you?’

‘No . . . I . . . No.’

Carla tapped her temple. ‘Those people have sexual problems, that’s the way I see it.’

‘Ah . . .’

‘Like a lot of the clients we get—oh, not all of them. I have some very good regular clients, what I call mature people, do you understand? They want a transsexual for fun, for a change, out of curiosity, whatever you like, but they want a transsexual and say so. You can have a real relationship with somebody like that. Friendship, a bit of affection even, but the others—you can’t imagine!’

‘No.’

‘Pick you up pretending to think you’re a woman for a start—as if there were any young women on the streets in Florence. Then they act all surprised—but they don’t go away, do you understand? They don’t go away, they just carry on, still pretending you’re a woman. And then—listen to this! Florence is a small place, you know, so then maybe after a day or two you happen to pass each other in the street and he’s with his nice little bourgeoise fiancée. Well, a client’s a client—he’s paid for what he’s had and I don’t expect more. I don’t even look at him in the street, right? But what does he do? He nudges his girlfriend and sniggers and says, “Look at that! It’s one of
them!
” They’re sick, people like that, sick! And of course there are all the hundreds of homosexuals who can’t admit it even to themselves. Wives and kiddies at home and all the rest. But fancy not being able to admit it even to yourself! That’s awful, I think, pitiful. So they need somebody like me. There are a lot of people who need somebody like me, Marshal, but only the mature ones admit it. An all-purpose toy is what most of them want, that satisfies their weirdest dreams and doesn’t have to be acknowledged as a human being when they wake up. Do you understand?’

‘Perhaps . . .’ More, at any rate, than he’d understood the night before. ‘You’ve thought a lot about it . . .’

‘What else have I got to think about, given the life I have? Or are you surprised I can think at all?’

‘No, no . . . I didn’t mean—’

‘I’ll tell you something else. I studied philosophy at university. I graduated, too. But I couldn’t go on pretending. I’m made the way I am. It’s not very nice to be obliged to dress up as a man when you feel like a woman. I couldn’t take it any more so I decided to accept the way I am, only nobody else will accept me. I wanted to be a teacher, do you understand? Do you think anybody will give me a job in this country?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘You suppose right. And yet they need me and those like me, enough to keep over two hundred of us in luxury in one small city. In luxury, but without any human rights. So I go out of here every night dressed up for the show and I survive—until some lunatic chops me up. That’s not my real life. My real life is here, by myself—or with my little Mishi, and my books and records. It’s peaceful here. That’s what I like.’

It was peaceful. The canaries singing and chattering, the sunlight slanting in through the muslin-curtained window, the little black cat purring. It was a long way from last night’s nightmare scene in the park, from the severed limbs on a rubbish dump. But for Carla the nightmare became reality, night after night until, as he said . . .

‘Do you know of any client going the rounds who might be really dangerous?’

‘Not specially—only you want to watch out for the ones who insist on dressing up as women themselves when they’re with us. For me they’re the worst sort.’

‘Dress up . . . ?’ This was really one twist too many.

‘Wait, I’ll show you. Mishi, get down a minute.’ Carla rummaged in a drawer of the sideboard and came back with a photograph. ‘See that? That’s me.’ He would never have guessed it and said so.

‘It’s no wonder. I look a sight now because I’m ill. But mostly it’s because I’m dressed up like that. We have to, I told you. It’s a show. Anyway, it’s that chap in the middle I’m showing you. That’s Nanny.’

Nanny was very evidently a man and a robust one who could have done with a shave. Nevertheless he was wearing a woman’s evening gown and his lips were inexpertly painted.

‘That’s an old frock of mine he’s wearing. The one I’m wearing I’ve still got. It’s a beauty—cost me over three million. He used to be an occasional client of mine until Lulu got her nails into him. That’s her in the middle.

‘But surely, that . . .’ He couldn’t believe it wasn’t a woman, or rather a girl, since Lulu looked very young. He was posing provocatively in a long sequinned gown open to the waist, turning slightly away from the camera, breasts thrust out, long dark hair falling back over the shoulders, directing straight at the viewer a voluptuous, dazzling smile.

‘Not bad, eh? Oh, she’s a beauty, all right, is Lulu, but a real bitch, I can tell you. If she ever gets the chop it’ll be from one of her own kind. Nobody can stand her except her clients who’ll pay anything to have her, though she gives them a hard time, too. Nanny’s a fool for running after her. He must have been drunk that night, too, to let himself be photographed like that. Just look at his eyes. He’s well away.’

They were certainly bleary but that could just as easily be the effect of the flashlight.

‘Well,’ the Marshal said, giving back the photograph, ‘I don’t think it’s Lulu who got it this time by all accounts, since they all seem to think Lulu’s gone to Spain.’

‘Very likely. I wouldn’t know. I keep my distance from her.’

‘But you were together in the photo.’

‘That was a big party—in any case, it was Nanny who insisted. It must be nearly two years ago now. It may even have been that night that he started with her—is that the doorbell? It is. Will you keep hold of Mishi? Otherwise I’ll have to shut her in the bedroom.’

The Marshal took the little cat on his lap. It made no objection but sat still, purring gently and watching Carla’s every move.

‘It’s only my shopping. I’m not fit to go out.’

A fat grocer’s boy came in with a box of food and placed it on the table.

‘How much?’

‘Thirty-five.’

Carla was fishing in a brown leather purse. ‘Did you put me a carton of cigarettes in?’

‘It’s there in the corner.’

‘Thirty-five. Thanks, Franco.’

‘Be seeing you.’

‘ ’Bye.’ Carla opened the red and white carton. ‘I’ve not smoked for three days. Probably shouldn’t now, but still . . .’

‘I may as well leave you,’ the Marshal said, standing up, still with the shiny little cat between his big hands. ‘I really only came to make sure you were alive and well.’

Shaken by a fit of coughing, Carla stubbed out the just lit cigarette. ‘That tastes foul. I’m not better yet. Give Mishi to me if you’re going. I think I’ll go back to bed.’

‘It might be just as well,’ the Marshal said. ‘And if you can afford it you might do well to stay at home a bit longer, until we get our hands on this murderer.’

‘Are you kidding? Listen, if I can be of any help, don’t hesitate to call me. A lot of the people in this game are out of their minds and would tell you anything, but as for catching whoever did the job . . . It’ll be like all the others, once the novelty’s worn off things’ll go back to normal and it’ll all be forgotten. No offence, do you understand?’

What could he say, after seeing all those files marked ‘Unsolved’?

‘You look like you don’t know much about this sort of thing, if you don’t mind me saying so. If one of us gets bumped off how much do you think anybody cares? Bit of a thrill reading about a chopped-up body in the papers and we’ll probably have more trouble than usual with you people and that’s about all it’ll amount to. No offence meant, but that’s the way things go. Anyway, I’ve told you, I don’t mind a chat any time as long as it’s in the afternoon. I sleep in the mornings when I’m working.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll put the light on for you. These stairs are a bit dark.’

He felt he ought to shake hands. It had been a very helpful conversation for him, after all. But his hand lagged behind his feelings and Carla, seeing his hesitation almost before he was aware of it himself, withdrew quickly to save him embarrassment, saying goodbye and shutting the door. He felt ashamed.

‘ “One: Time of death approximately three days previously.

Two: Cause of death first of multiple fractures of the cranium, see photographs attached.

Further to the examination of the body
in situ
an autopsy carried out by the undersigned Prof. Forli, Ernesto established as follows: