The Last Enemy (5 page)

The tidiness of it all was baffling. The skirt pushed up to the hips, yet carefully arranged to cover the dead woman’s genitals. Minelli had been wearing a garter belt underneath her panties. If rape were intended, why had the rapist taken the time to roll down Minelli’s stockings. A leg fetish, perhaps, yet nothing else at the crime scene suggested a sexual ritual. The choice of murder weapon was likewise baffling. It was doubtful that the murderer would have brought such a weapon with him. The idea was outlandish and the statue of the Virgin would have been difficult to conceal. Looking around him at the Cimabue reproduction and the pristine and expensive stone vases, Cenni wondered how anything so commonplace could have found its way into this memorial to taste and money.

After fifteen years with the police, he’d learned to trust his instincts. He was sure that the rape scene was a staged diversion to mislead the police and was just as sure that a woman had created it. Just then he heard the voices of Elena and the mortuary attendants in the background. They were returning to remove the body. He took one more look at Rita Minelli before standing. Was Batori right, he wondered? Had she known about the baby? Had she been happy? He hoped so.

Alex Cenni was different from many of his colleagues and, at times, regretted it. The years of viewing battered and mutilated bodies had dulled his colleagues’ stolid imaginations and, in some cases, their souls, allowing them to view murder victims with detachment. The worst of them, those he actively avoided, treated the dead with disdain, even with brutality. But after fifteen years with the Polizia di Stato, thirteen of them investigating homicides, Cenni still felt the burden of recognition of the dead. They were his teammates from the football fields, the waiters who brought him coffee in the cafés, the neighbors who greeted him on the streets. And because he still harbored a residue of Italian chauvinism, women and children created the greatest burden. Five years ago, he had done what few Italian men do voluntarily: He had gone to see a psychiatrist, a friend from his university years in Bologna. He was concerned about the personal attachment he felt to each new victim. His friend, the Freudian, had focused on Chiara.

Alex had met Chiara in his first year at the University of Bologna, in the registrar’s office. They were each heading for the same line at the same time. He’d jumped over a trashcan trying to get there first and had landed on his knees. She had laughed uproariously, peals of delight that invited everyone within hearing distance to join in.

“Perhaps you should add Western Civility to your roster,” she’d said jokingly, offering him a hand to help him stand. After that they became inseparable. At the end of their first year of law school, they’d shocked their parents and even some of their friends by living together. They’d planned to marry after receiving their law degrees.

But those years of happiness also coincided with the era of kidnappings. Everyone who was anyone in Italy had been vulnerable. On the right or left, it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes the kidnappers wanted money, sometimes they wanted to draw attention to their causes, and sometimes they weren’t sure what they wanted. Some of the victims survived and returned home, some came home minus body parts, and some never came home. Chiara was one of the latter. Her kidnappers were never caught nor was her body recovered. Her parents both died within a few months of her disappearance. Her father, a judge sitting on Italy’s highest court, had died from the effects of the heart attack he’d suffered after opening a package containing his only child’s right index finger, her mother, by suicide, a few months later.

Alex was also a victim, an outcast from love, an encyclopedia of neuroses, if he were to believe the incantations of his friend. Psychic trauma, self-inflicted pain, repetition of unpleasure, death instinct, post-traumatic stress syndrome were some of the terms Sandro had used. Alex had quit after four sessions, feeling sane enough if he reflected on those of his colleagues who were not suffering from repetition of unpleasure. One thing that Sandro had said was true, however: that his job as a policeman was the cause of his pain. “Quit, do something else,” Sandro had also said. “I’ll think about it,” Alex had replied—adding to himself, but not until I’ve found Chiara.

6

“I think Batori should keep his opinions to himself until he’s completed the postmortem,” he responded. He noticed the blush rising on the back of Elena’s neck and realized that he’d spoken too roughly. “Sorry, Elena, but I’d prefer to wait for the postmortem before jumping to conclusions. But, yes, I too think the rape was staged,” he added, his tone of impatience a clear signal to his subordinates that he was thinking and didn’t want to talk. Elena and Piero exchanged knowing looks, and Piero used the opportunity to go through a stop sign.

“What was the exact time that the Assisi police identified the body?” Cenni asked a minute later, addressing his question to Elena, adding rhetorically, to Piero, “Was that a stop sign back there?”

“Around eight o’clock,” Elena answered, turning to address him directly. “Sergeant Antolini said she was supposed to end her tour of duty at eight but when she called
il lupino
at home . . . Commissario Russo,” Elena amended, noticing Cenni’s raised eyebrow, “he told her to stay with the two flower ladies until he got there. He then insisted that Antolini accompany him and the two flower ladies back to the cemetery. That was just after eight o’clock.”

“The questore called me at the stadium close to eleven!” Cenni said aloud. A three-hour lapse of time, he thought. Plenty of opportunity for Russo to make mischief.

Fulvio Russo,
il lupo
to his friends, of whom he had none, had now been commissario of the Assisi station for twelve months. Assisi is one of those backwater towns where the commissario is either on his way up or on his way down, or as in the case of Assisi’s previous commissario, on
her
way up. Anna Duccio was now in Rome enjoying a spectacular career, a rising star, whereas Russo, as everyone in police circles knew, was destined for obscurity, although he himself was not yet convinced that his time had passed. He was still young, not yet forty, and until a year ago, had enjoyed a career of firsts: the youngest officer in Perugia to be promoted to commissario, the best-looking (if one admires Nordic muscularity), the one with the richest wife. Even his flaws were excessive. His disposition for cupidity and backstabbing was unequalled, but if one is rich and good looking in Italy, such flaws are generally overlooked.

It was the cupidity that finally sank Russo, and the questore had done the sinking. Russo had been caught suppressing evidence of fraud by his brother-in-law, a parliamentarian, who had devised a scheme to buy two thousand hectares of Umbrian land that had been secretly earmarked by the government to become a national wildlife sanctuary. This type of land grab is not unusual in Italy—it happens every day, in fact—but Russo had acted imperiously when the papers had first stumbled upon it. He had huffed and puffed, cajoled and threatened, and in the end had tried to bribe one of
L’Unita
’s more intrepid reporters who, as it happened, had come to their interview wired for sound. That Russo was still on the police force was a testament to his brother-in-law’s millions. That he was no longer stationed in Perugia, and unlikely to return, was partly due to
L’Unita
, but mainly to the questore, who also had a rich wife. The questore had his own talent for backstabbing and very much disliked competition.

Russo had been given his nickname by a subordinate some ten years earlier. An attractive woman, she’d found it necessary to ward off Russo’s advances whenever they were together. The name caught on rapidly, helped no doubt by his almond-shaped eyes of that curious shade of green that turns to a dirty yellow in certain lights. The nickname (amended to
il lupo
when repeated to Russo by one of his minions) had delighted him at first. He reveled in the image of himself as a rapacious predator. What he didn’t find out until much later was that the woman had used the diminutive,
il lupino.

Cenni had worked with Russo for five years in Perugia. He had learned to work around him, by flattering him or whatever else was necessary. He was prepared to do the same again, but he was beginning to suspect that Russo had his own plans, none of which included being worked with. He had already violated the rules of engagement twice, the first time by not calling Cenni or the questore immediately after the body was found, and the second by speaking to the Casati family directly to inform them of the American’s death.

It’s a high-profile investigation, Cenni reflected. A clever man could rise by it. Perhaps Russo thinks it’s his opportunity to climb back up. Cenni knew that would never happen.
Il lupino
was a backroom joke in police circles, and a dirty one at that, but he was still in a position to throw a spanner into the investigation. “Tread lightly, Alex,” the questore had warned him. “The count has lots of high-placed friends, and he’s rumored to be Opus Dei.”

Fulvio Russo had now been commissario in Assisi for a year. Plenty of time to worm his way into the count’s social circle. He and his new-money wife Grazia had been notorious in Perugia for name-dropping and self-promotion. When they’d first started working together, Russo had treated Cenni in the same way that he’d treated most of his colleagues, and all of his subordinates—with contempt—until the questore had mentioned that Cenni’s mother was a Baglioni, one of
the
Baglioni’s. After that, every time that Russo threw a climbing party, Cenni had to find a new excuse to stay away. It had gotten close to the point of direct rudeness when Russo was exiled to Assisi. Did the banished Russo now hope to find Minelli’s killer himself, thereby acquiring her uncle’s gratitude and, with that, access to his high-powered friends? Russo was a barbarian from the north and given half a chance, he would screw up the Minelli investigation for his own purposes, of that Cenni was convinced.

Il lupino
was waiting for his counterpart inside the front door when Cenni arrived at the Assisi barracks. Given Russo’s history of skipping out of the office early on weekends, and of never showing up on holidays, Cenni found this unnerving.

“Alex,
Come ste
?” Russo said, using the familiar Umbrian
ste
, suspicious in itself since Russo was from Valle d’Aosta and in the past had always made fun of the Umbrian dialect. “Come into my office where we can talk in private,” he urged. “Your people can wait out here,” he said, slamming the door in Piero’s face. As soon as they were alone, Russo confirmed Cenni’s suspicions.
Il lupino
had an agenda.

“We have an airtight case here, Alex. You need to know that, so you don’t waste your time talking to the family. They want their privacy. I have the murderer right here in the station, Sophie Orlic, the woman who found the body. She threatened the American a few months ago, and more than once. I have it on record,” he said triumphantly. “She’s a Croatian, a
straniera
,” he added. A stranger, the clincher!

“How did you arrive at that conclusion, Fulvio? Has Orlic confessed? I wasn’t aware that we’d established that Minelli
was
murdered. There’s no evidence of injury beyond a small bruise to her temple and a bump on the back of her head. Both could easily have resulted naturally, a fall after a heart attack, for example. Batori hasn’t done a postmortem yet.”

Russo sneered: “After she had a heart attack, she staged her own rape! Come on, Alex. We both know
this
is no rape, and Batori confirms it. It points to a woman, to Orlic directly. But it’s your turf, Alex. Just trying to help!”

“It’s not a matter of turf, Fulvio. We need to work together here. I’ve already spoken to Sergeant Antolini about working with us directly, and I can use anyone else you can spare.” Cenni had full authority to requisition whatever personnel and resources he needed, those of Assisi included, and they both knew it, but he viewed unnecessary displays of authority as counterproductive.

“What about Minelli’s handbag?” he asked, not waiting for Russo to accede openly to his earlier request. That too would have been counterproductive.

“It’s here,” Russo said, retrieving the bag from the bottom drawer of his desk, placing it on top. It was not plastic wrapped and Russo had handled it without putting on gloves. Cenni groaned inwardly.

“Another reason why we should focus on Orlic!” Russo insisted. “A convenient way for her to account for her prints being all over Minelli’s bag, carrying it away from the crime scene like that. I checked the bag’s contents myself and made a list. There were only six euros in her bag, all in coins, and Minelli usually carried large sums of money on her person.” Noting the surprised look on Cenni’s face, he added quickly, “Information from her family.”

“If you can wrap that, Fulvio,” Cenni said, nodding to the bag, “I’d like to take it with me. Include the list of contents as well. Perhaps I should talk to Orlic now.” He looked at his watch. “It’s after one. Has she eaten?”

“My budget doesn’t extend to feeding suspects. When she’s under arrest, we’ll be happy to feed her,” Russo replied. “She’s right next door, primed and ready,” he added with disdain, swinging the door open between his office and the interrogation room.

7

SOPHIE ORLIC HAD been sitting on the wooden bench in the police interview room for more than four hours. It was the first time in years that she’d been alone with her thoughts for so long a period, without an invalid to feed or dress, flowers to arrange, or deadening sleep to repulse memory. She’d found early on that it was impossible to keep the dark memories at bay through all her waking hours, so she’d devised ways to keep them in check. She would remember only those that gave her pleasure. And even then she had certain rules: No reminiscences after the age of fourteen, the year that she’d met Sergio at the lycée.