The Marshal's Own Case (7 page)

a)The blows to the head were effected with a smooth wooden object and the first of the seven blows was fatal.

b)The victim offered no resistance to the attack (see (e)).

c)Livor mortis discernible on the lower back and under the forearm indicates that the body lay whole and supine for 10 to 12 hours after death occurred (see (d)).

d)The limbs and head were severed by mechanical means—probably an electrically powered saw— more than 12 hours after death occurred.

e)The contents of the stomach indicate the consumption of a heavy meal immediately before death and the administration of a sleeping draught mixed with red wine.

The above information and the lack of any traces of blood on the site where the body was recovered indicate that the attack took place in another locality and that the body remained there, intact, for at least 12 hours.

General note: The subject, a male, age approximately 20 years, was severely anæmic, a condition attendant on the constant administration of female hormones. As noted in a preliminary report the victim had been given artificial breasts of silicone. As regards the identification of the subject, it should be noted that these weighed 11 ½ ozs. and that the normal maximum weight would be approximately 8 ozs.

No clothing was recovered for examination but the disposition of the marks of livor mortis indicates that the victim was dressed when the attack took place and remained so until the time when the limbs were severed.” ’

The Marshal paused in his reading and looked at Ferrini who was examining one of the photographs. ‘Shall I read his summary?’

‘I don’t think you need to. It seems clear enough. Nice meal with a sleeping pill in the wine. A blow on the head once he’d passed out—and then the long wait—why the long wait? An electric saw . . . My God . . .’

‘Perhaps he didn’t have one,’ suggested the Marshal.

‘You could be right. I mean, if all this happened at night there are no all-night ironmongers like there are all-night chemists.’

‘No. I’d better switch the light on.’ They were closeted in the Marshal’s office on the afternoon following his visit to Carla. At half past five it was already going dark. The photographs, suddenly illuminated, were sharp and detailed but hardly shocking. It was too difficult to connect them with anything human. Except for the head, of which only a part had been eaten away. It was the head that Ferrini was staring at.

‘So it’s Lulu,’ he said. ‘It seemed likely enough yesterday when the Spanish doctor said he hadn’t turned up for the appointment, but those eleven and a half ounces tell the story. Eleven and a half ounces, for Christ’s sake! He mentioned that on the phone. It’s unheard of—and apparently they were giving some trouble which was why he was going back to the clinic. Do you reckon that’s sufficient for an official identification?’

‘It’s a bit unusual. The Public Prosecutor’s the one to decide. I suppose I’d better inform him . . .’ He didn’t know which distressed him most, having to deal with the transsexuals or having to deal with the Public Prosecutor whose attitude from the start had been pretty much the same as the Captain’s and who’d even gone so far as to say, ‘If people like that kill each other off they’re doing society a favour.’ He’d said it to the Marshal, of course, not to the newspapers. The last two days’ papers were on the Marshal’s desk. No pictures of the remains had been released but there was one that showed them, covered by a sheet, on the rubbish-strewn hillside with what seemed to be the Marshal’s own feet just visible at the top corner. And in the distance, Bruno. There was no keeping Bruno out of this. He hadn’t enough men to pick and choose. At least there was Ferrini, but he couldn’t push the Prosecutor off on him.

‘Mind if I light up?’

‘No, no . . .’

‘Are you going to ring him now? Or do you want to wait till we’re quite sure?’

‘I am quite sure,’ the Marshal said, ‘I’ve seen a photo of Lulu alive.’

‘You have? How come?’

‘Yesterday, at Carla’s house.’

‘Ah, Carla. Carla’s all right. Intelligent. Brutalized by so many years on the game but intelligent underneath.’

‘Yes. What Professor Forli said about anæmia . . .’

‘They’re probably all anæmic. Pale as corpses they are, under all the paint.’

‘These hormones they take . . . it seems they lower the blood pressure, too.’

‘I wouldn’t know, though like as not they’re what makes them so unbalanced and hypersensitive. They go up in smoke at the slightest provocation—well, you saw that for yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘But Carla’s one of the more reliable ones. Maybe you could get her to identify this head. Not a pleasant sight, mind you.’

‘No. I’ll ask her for that photo, anyway. The trouble is, there’s one of Lulu’s clients in it.’

‘Cut it. Know who he is?’

‘They call him Nanny. Apparently he has a wife and family so he wouldn’t have told them his real name.’

‘You never know. He won’t fancy giving evidence, though, none of Lulu’s clients will. It’s a non-starter even if he’s still in circulation.’

‘He is, I think. A regular client.’

‘Well, one thing’s certain, whoever bumped Lulu off was a client or a friend, not a random maniac. They ate together.’

‘From Carla’s account Lulu wasn’t the sort to have friends. “If she gets the chop it’ll be from one of her own kind.” ’

‘Carla said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, let’s hope he’s right. We won’t have far to look, in that case. Shall we make a move?’

Luigi Esposito, otherwise known as Lulu, lived, or used to live, in the Santa Croce area which the Marshal had visited only a few days before. But the flat they walked into now was a far cry from the bare and squalid bedsitter where the cheery saxophonist was camping. It was quite large and very luxurious. Ferrini gave an appreciative whistle as they opened the sitting-room door.

‘Made a good living, our Lulu. I wouldn’t mind a stereo like that myself.’

They wandered from room to room without touching anything, waiting for the technicians to turn up. The Marshal automatically went first to the kitchen where the remains of a meal were congealed on dirty plates on a round white table in the middle of the room. If it was
the
meal there was nothing special to indicate it, no overturned chair, no stain of blood. The wine bottle was empty and two glasses still had dregs in them. He would have liked to look in the fridge but it was safer to wait for the experts.

‘Marshal? Where are you?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘Come and look in here.’

He joined Ferrini in the bedroom. The double bed was unmade, but if the room was in disorder it was the disorder of opulence rather than squalor. The crumpled sheets were silk and the open wardrobe was crammed with obviously expensive clothes, including one compartment bulging with furs. Ferrini sat on the bed and bounced.

‘Perfect! And a coloured telly laid on. Videos, too—and I wouldn’t be surprised . . .’ He jumped up and crouched before the glass shelves next to the television; ‘Porn. And very special porn.’ He slid a cassette from the collection using his handkerchief and slotted it into the machine. ‘There’s a shop in the centre rents this stuff out . . . Lord, look at that. Prefer the straight stuff, myself . . .’ He sat down on the edge of the bed again and lit a cigarette. ‘What language do you reckon that is? German or Swedish?’

‘I don’t know.’ The Marshal turned away from the lurid, slow-moving image and went to look in the bathroom. There was no disorder here. The floor was white marble, the walls white-tiled. There could be no doubt that every surface was spotlessly clean. In the Marshal’s humble opinion it was a good deal too clean. It didn’t fit in with the kitchen and the bedroom. There should have been more stuff about, more signs of life.

‘They’re long enough coming,’ came Ferrini’s voice from the bedroom. ‘Christ! Just look at this!’

But the Marshal didn’t move. He stayed where he was, staring at the empty bathroom until the doorbell rang and Ferrini went to let the technicians in. Even then he kept himself apart, wandering around the rooms and doing his best to keep his considerable bulk out of the way of electric cables, open boxes of equipment and crouching figures. Nobody bothered to turn off the television in the bedroom and, every now and then, one of the men would pause in his work and park himself in front of it, sniggering or exclaiming. Once they’d finished fingerprinting the bedroom he and Ferrini started going through the drawers and cupboards. It was Ferrini who found a handbag on the floor near the bed.

‘Identity card, that’s good . . . Hm. Still resident in Naples where he was born, according to this . . . Airline ticket for Spain, even better. Gives us the date of the murder, wouldn’t you say? I reckon he must have died that day or the night before, since the others thought he’d gone.’

‘Probably. What’s that? A receipt from a bank?’

‘Looks like it . . . yes. Receipt for payment of traveller’s cheques . . . intending to spend a fair bit of money. I suppose that clinic costs but it looks like he was going to make a bit of a spree of it as well . . .’

‘Where are they? Are they in there?’

‘Wait . . . I can’t find them but there’s so much stuff in here, junk and make-up—shall I tip the lot out?’

‘Yes.’

Ferrini overturned the snakeskin bag and showered the contents on to the crumpled silk sheet. ‘I don’t know,’ he smirked. ‘The things men stuff in their handbags!’

‘Marshal?’ One of the technicians came into the bedroom dragging a suitcase. ‘This might interest you.’

The suitcase, when they opened it, was neatly packed with women’s clothing, most of it new or nearly so.

‘All ready for off,’ the technician commented as the Marshal sifted through the clothes, ‘but what’s interesting is that it was hidden!’

‘Hidden where?’

‘Pushed behind the sideboard in the sitting-room. Not the usual place to park a suitcase when you’re ready to leave.’

‘People have their funny ways . . .’ said the Marshal doubtfully.

‘Funny’s right. The sideboard had been moved out to make room for it. It stands on the edge of that Persian rug and there’s another set of depressions on the rug from where it normally stands. Didn’t want somebody to know he was leaving, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ The Marshal went in there and looked at the depressions on the rug but they didn’t hold his attention long. Within a moment he was at the door of the bathroom, watching. A young man was taking minute scrapings from between the wall tiles. The Marshal stared for a long time, his big eyes expressionless. Then he sniffed. The bedroom smelled strongly of perfume but the bathroom had a different smell.

‘Bleach,’ he said at last.

‘That’s right,’ agreed the young man cheerily. ‘Spotless. I’m going through the motions but I can tell you I don’t expect to find much. No signs of death in this room.’

‘No signs of life,’ the Marshal said, unconsciously correcting him. Really he was talking to himself and when the young man paused in his scraping and gave him an odd look he turned away, embarrassed, murmuring as if in explanation of his queer remark, ‘There are no towels . . .’

Everyone was so occupied, so sure of what they were doing. Everyone except himself. The technicians knew their job and it was pointless to interfere with them. Ferrini knew his job, too. He was busy writing a list of the contents of Lulu’s handbag, dropping the things back inside it as he wrote, a Cellophane bag ready to package the whole thing for removal.

‘No traveller’s cheques,’ he said without looking up.

On the TV screen a huge red mouth opened and zoomed slowly forward.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ the Marshal said. ‘Have a word with the landlady and tell her we’ll have to keep the keys and seal the place up.’

The landlady lived on the top floor. He could have taken the lift but he started up the stairs without thinking, so anxious was he to get away from the flat and that wretched television. He arrived on the landing out of breath.

‘Oh, it’s you again,’ the woman said, peering round her door without enthusiasm. ‘What is it now?’

Her grey hair was newly waved. She looked sixtyish and aggressively respectable.

‘I’d better come in,’ the Marshal said. He saw that she was none too pleased but the door opened sufficiently to admit him. He got no further than the highly polished entrance hall but he made no protest about it, standing there hat in hand.

‘What exactly is going on?’ She was already on the defensive.

‘Your first-floor tenant has been murdered.’

She didn’t repeat the word questioningly as anyone else might have done, only stared at him as though waiting for some more impressive communication. He was forced to go on without any help from her.

‘How long has he lived here?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly what I say. How long has he been your tenant?’

‘What do you mean “he”? You took the keys of the first floor left. The tenant is a woman.’

‘The tenant was Luigi Esposito, a transsexual.’

‘How disgusting! I had no idea.’

‘Really? You rented a flat to someone without seeing any identity document? What about the contract?’

‘I—we hadn’t got round to making a contract. It’s something I’ve been meaning to see to . . . You know how these things are . . .’ There was no aggression in the voice now.

‘How long?’

‘She—it must be almost two years.’

‘And you hadn’t got round to making a contract.’

‘It started off on a more or less friendly basis and I suppose we just never got round to it.’

‘I see. How much did this friendly arrangement cost Luigi Esposito per month.’

‘Really, I couldn’t say without checking. I never think about money—’

‘If you’d like to check I have plenty of time.’

‘Let’s say half a million, plus condominium expenses, of course.’

‘Of course. You have the receipts?’

‘Receipts. No, you see—’

‘It was a friendly arrangement. Yes, you said so. I imagine—this being a friendly arrangement—he agreed not to register his residence here at the town hall?’

‘That’s really none of my business. I had no idea— and no idea of its not being a woman, either, I assure you. When you only see someone passing occasionally on the stairs I doubt if we so much as said good morning to each other more than once in all the two years.’